Free At the Edge of the Game by Gareth Power

George?’
    Just ignore him,
that’s the only approach. I resume my position at the x-ray machine.
    ‘No, I’ll do the
rest of them,’ says Candy. ‘You help Al with the sorting.’
    So, humiliation
compounded, I trudge over and pick up a pile of envelopes.
    Bradley… where
is Bradley? I scan up and down the wall. Should be able to remember this one.
Just can’t. The wind’s been taken out of my sails completely. Al snaps the
envelope out of my hand, shoves it into the Bradley pigeon hole. He starts
whistling.
    ‘By the way,’ he
says, ‘you need to do your time card.’
    ‘Oh, yeah.’ I
have it in my pocket.
    ‘Just write in 8
on each row, Monday to Friday. Stick it in an envelope, address it to the
agency and frank it.’
    ‘Thanks.’
    I run it through
the franking machine and put it in the Outgoing bin.
    One more mail
run today, and then it’s home for a precious couple of days of rest. Darkness
is closing in outside now. Cars splash by on the wet roadway as I shove the
covered cart over to D-3.
    ‘You the lad
that called the alert?’ the D-3 security guard says.
    Jesus. ‘Why?’
    ‘Listen, you’d
want to watch it here, mate. You’re only a temp, you know.’ There’s a cleaning
woman in the corridor running a machine over the floor. ‘Tracey! Here’s the
fella who called the alert.’
    ‘God love ya,’
she says.
    I move on.
    This is the
lightest run of the week. Not a lot to drop, and almost nothing to pick up. I
take the time on the top floor to take a look at the view. The lights are
coming on in Dublin city. For miles the vista is one of grim industrial
development. Vast majority of those buildings are shut down these days. Avatan
is a shining light of corporate vitality in an economic wasteland. Will west
Dublin ever again fill with workers, become choked with traffic and fumes,
break the skyline with columns of smoke and steam or hanging tall cranes? Further
off to the south, beyond these dead zones and the foothill habitations, are the
rising forest and gorse slopes, today white-on-dark with the persisting sleet
or snow driven in turbulent shock out of the dense roof of tumbling cloud. The
higher peaks are beyond view. There’s a sliver of sea to be seen over to the
east, identifiable by a few gliding lights in the deeper dark. Below in the car
park, the first drivers are departing for home. I long to be in mine. I grip
the cart handles and get moving.
    Ten minutes of
sorting in the mailroom when I get back. Then, at last, Candy turns off her
computer, gets her coat.
    ‘See you on
Monday, lads.’
    ‘See ya, Candy.’
Al gets how own mouldy old blue anorak and scarf, takes off without a word to
me.
    I switch off the
mailroom lights, close the door. At last. Free.
    The bus windows
are fogged with human breath. Up front the wipers are on full, sweeping away
layer after layer of sticking sleet. There’s a hold-up – again – at the Red
Cow. I wipe a patch clear on the window to see the police and army transports
heading up the hard shoulder. Whatever’s going on ahead must be fairly serious.
If the driver saw fit to turn the radio to the news, we might get some idea,
but instead it’s some horrible old pop station. The fella sitting beside me
sticks his nose further into his paperback, totally uninterested in happenings
outside. An old hand. Probably seen it all before dozens of times at this
junction, this strategically vital nexus so beset by terrorist sabotage.
    I phone Helen. ‘I’m
going to be a bit late, I’d say. We’re stuck at the Red Cow. Nothing’s moving
either way.’
    ‘Oh, right. I
won’t put the dinner on yet, then.’
    ‘Has there been
anything on the news about it?’
    ‘I haven’t seen
anything,’ she says, evincing no inclination to check for me.
    I try to settle
back into the corner of this uncomfortable seat – almost an impossibility. The
tiredness of the day is starting to hit me now, made all the worse by the
carbon dioxide level in this