she’d laughed with me when I said something stupid. I’d been laughed at before by girls, but it was rare for me to laugh with one. It was rare to feel okay with a city over my shoulder and a girl’s face so close to mine. She had breath and sight and she was real. That was the best thing. She was realer than the dental nurse because she wasn’t behind a counter being paid to be friendly. And she was definitely realer than the women in that catalog thing because there was no way I would ever tear this girl up. There was no way I would dare to hurt her or curse her or hide her under my bed.
Eyes. Alive eyes. Light hair falling down her back. A pimple at the side of her face, near her hairline. Nice neck, shoulders. Not a beauty queen. Not one of those. You know the ones.
She was real.
She played music later on and it wasn’t anything much that I liked, but that made her realer still. The whole situation even made me smile at Dad when he told me off for digging something in the wrong place.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” I said.
“Dig over there.”
I wonder if he knew. I doubt it. He didn’t seem to catch on when I asked if we’d be back here next week.
“Yeah, we’ll be back,” he’d answered bluntly.
“Good,” but I said it only to me.
A bit later, I asked, “What’s these people’s last name?”
“Conlon.”
The thing that hit me most was that I suddenly started praying. I started saying these prayers for Rebecca Conlon and her family. I couldn’t stop myself.
“Please bless Rebecca Conlon,” I kept saying to God. “Just let her be okay, okay? Let her and her family be okay tonight. That’s all I ask. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” and I crossed myself like the Catholics do and I’m not even a Catholic. I don’t know what I am.
During the next week, I kept praying, and I kept making sure to remember her face, and her voice.
“I’d be good to her,” I kept telling God. “I would.”
I was actually torn between the love I had for her face and her body and the love I had for her voice. Her face had character all right. Strength. I loved it. I definitely loved her neck and her throat and her shoulders and her arms and legs. All of it — and then there was the voice.
The voice came from somewhere in her. It came from somewhere that didn’t show itself, I hoped, to just anyone.
The question was, Which part of her was I interested in most? Was it the look of her, or the inner realness I could sense slipping out?
I started taking walks, just to think of her — just to imagine what she was doing and if by any chance she was thinking of me.
It became torture.
“God, is she thinking of me?” I asked God.
God didn’t answer so I just didn’t know. All I knew was that I walked parallel to urban traffic that laughed as it went past me. Crowds of people dropped out of buses and trains and ignored me as they went past. I didn’t care. I had Rebecca Conlon. Nothing else meant a whole lot. Even back home when I bickered with Rube I didn’t worry. I just kept not worrying, because she was somewhere near it all in my thoughts.
Joy.
Is that what I felt?
Sometimes.
At other times I was shouldered by thoughts of doubt and a kind of truth that told me she hadn’t thought of me at all. It was possible, because things never work out how they should. It was most likely that a sweet girl like that could do a whole lot better than me. She could do better than a fella who plotted ridiculous robberies with his brother, got thrown out of newsagencies, and humiliated his mother.
Sometimes I thought about her naked, but never for long. I didn’t want her only like that. Honestly.
I wanted to find the place where her voice came from. That was what I wanted. I wanted to be nice to her. I wanted to please her, and I begged for it to happen. Begging gets you nowhere, though. I knew that was true, but I did it inside me anyway as I counted the hours till I was going back to her.
Things happened during the that will follow in the next chapters, but now