Free Some Great Thing by Colin McAdam Page B

or how to describe it, and if I had to build it I wouldn’t be able to make a mix thin enough.
    The fifteen days passed and I was walking back to Mrs. Brookner’s after work one night, and I saw Kathleen’s truck parked on the wrong side of the road. I didn’t know whether anyone was in it because the lights were off, but the serving window was down which she usually closed when she wasn’t around. I walked up to it and maybe I shat in my underwear a bit and I knocked on the side of the truck but there was no answer. I said “Kathleen?” through the window but I couldn’t hear anything, and then I said it again in a higher voice like a little sister.
    “Kathleen?”
    She came to the window looking tidy and beautiful and completely different like she was borrowing someone’s blood.
    “It’s Jer.”
    “I’m not serving.”
    “I’m not hungry.”
    “Just so yiz know. I’m not serving. It’s what, it’s eight o’clock, and there’s no reason for me to be serving anyone.”
    “Right.”
    “I’m just having, I’m just taking a nap in there, in the back.”
    “Sorry.”
    “So you woke me up.”
    “Sorry. I saw the truck.”
    “And you were hungry.”
    “No.”
    “Well, everything’s turned off, the griddle and all that and I can’t be arsed to make anything, and there’s no need or reason.”
    “I just saw the truck, and I was seeing whether, you know, you were all right. Where you’ve been.”
    “Since when?”
    “Since, you know, a couple of weeks.”
    “What do ya mean couple of weeks? Where have I been? I’ve been everywhere I always am. In this truck. Where have you been, if it’s any of my business?”
    I told her where I’d been.
    “Well, I don’t know about all that, there, Jer, because, we’ve not been far apart and it’s not like I’ve got to tell any fella where I’ve been and all, like he’s the priest who’s gonna tell me mam. I’m bloody tired at the moment to be honest with yiz.”
    “Well, like I says …”
    “Yeah, well, it’s like I says too, I’ve been doing nothing to make someone come asking after me like he’s Father Flippin McGuinty, especially when I’ve just been here and if I haven’t seen him it’s not my fault. I’ve been here, right here in this spot for a couple of days with the men from the DeFalco site coming over every day for lunches and sandwiches and that, you know, for a couple of days, and you can ask them.”
    Which wasn’t true because I’d been all over looking for her and I was sure I would have noticed that truck right there. Even if I never really looked away from the Rossi walls.
    “And I’ve been driving around to new areas because that’s the point, Jerry, of having this van. Ya drive around and find the new business, and so I’ve been working. And I was right here. And we saw each other just a few days ago, anyway, not a couple of weeks, Jerry. We had dinner, remember?”
    “That was fifteen days ago.”
    “What’s wrong with yiz?”
    “It was.”
    “We had that dinner with all the talk and that. And afterward. I remember all of it. That was just a few days ago. I don’t like that, Jerry. I don’t like a man telling me what time it is. I know where I am and how long I’ve been here and it’s always someone telling you where ya should be or where ya should have been, and that’s what you’re doing, Jerry, so I wouldn’t mind, if you’ll excuse me, if you’d flippin stop, is all. I was having a nap back there, a bit of a nap after a long day of selling the sandwiches to the DeFalco men who’s a bunch of flirts, and getting whistled at all day and I was tired of playing the game and I’ve gone and run out of the feckin sausages, so I got tired. It was just a moment of peace right now where a woman can have a small nip and a nap and God help her for relaxing. And maybe you couldn’t have known, but you might know in the future, and, you know, here I am after a perfectly honest day’s work and I’m