Chapter 16 #2
“I got it at Pears,” she says. The jeweler’s in Dublin was one of the first shops to stock his work. He nods, deciding to pull back from saying anything more because it can surely only make him seem even more awkward than he already does.
“So, Julian the jeweler,” and he notices a dimple appear as she says this, then finds himself focusing on the smoothness of her cheek, waiting for it to reappear. “A few of us are going to the pub later. I—we—wondered if you fancied joining us.”
“Oh. Ah.” He runs through the reasons why he can’t in his head. That he’ll have to let Sílbhe know he’ll be late for dinner. That the next episode in a series he’s been watching is on tonight. But his reasons sound lame even to him, so he hears himself saying, “That’d be grand.”
She smiles and the dimple reappears. “I’ll knock for you. You all right to finish around five?” and as she goes to leave, she adds, “I’m Orla, by the way.”
There are only four of them at the pub—few enough for one conversation, rather than splintering off into groups.
He’s glad of this, although he soon realizes it’s not the kind of chat he’s had to feign enthusiasm for with Connor and Liam: sport, cars, sports cars.
Instead, the conversation feels familiar, as if a reflection of his own thoughts has grown wings and fluttered out into the world.
Frap is telling them about a problem with a globe he’s developing that can be spun in any direction on a double axis, so even the North and South Poles can be studied.
Balancing the sphere of plaster so it always returns to rest in an upright position is proving trickier than he’d imagined and they discuss its weighting and what might be throwing it off.
And then the conversation moves on, and Orla is telling them about a film set in Morocco, where a tiled floor in a mosque has sent her work on a whole new tangent.
She finds a screenshot on her phone and they discuss how she’ll deal with replicating the center, where the tips of a sixteen-pointed star converge.
In the mosque they have grout between the pieces, which allows for imperfection, but Orla will want her slivers of wood to butt up against one another perfectly, meaning each must contain a precise 22.
5-degree internal angle. There is an understanding between these people who work with their hands.
They come from different disciplines, but they are all able to envisage the potential issues and apply knowledge from their own field to someone else’s.
A few weeks earlier, Julian had come across a 3D-paper artist based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Something in the geometry of his work had reminded him of Orla’s and he finds himself showing it to her now.
She pinches the screen to zoom in. “Wow,” she says.
“That’s amazing.” They scrutinize what the man makes and discuss whether he’s laser-cutting the shapes.
Julian notices that whenever Orla becomes animated or wants to make a point, she momentarily touches her hand to his arm, his knee.
It seems unselfconscious and he wonders if she does this to everyone.
Frap and Seamus are across the table, not close enough to receive these casual touches, so it’s hard to know for sure.
Later, after he’s watched the episode Cian thought to record for him, he goes up to Maia’s room in the attic and asks her.
“You think I’d know because I’m, what, female?
” She laughs, but it is not an easy laugh.
“Maybe if I’d touched more men’s arms, I wouldn’t be a thirty-year-old spinster still living with my grandmother. ”
They sit in silence for a while and Maia looks like she might cry. Julian isn’t sure why he’d assumed she’d know. But her response unsettles him. Up to now, he’s never really considered if she’s happy with her life.
He’s about to say something, but when he opens his mouth, Maia interrupts. “What’s she like then, this girl? Apart from touchy-feely?”
He wants to say that she’s bold. That she seems to realize he’s trapped inside his own awkwardness and doesn’t take that as a slight.
She seems curiously fascinated by him, as though he might be one of the shapes in her artworks that needs puzzling into place.
And although a part of him is uncomfortable with the attention, another part of him craves it.
But he doesn’t say this to Maia. Instead, he offers a non-committal, “Oh, just nice, you know.”
Julian starts to leave his workroom door open more and finds he likes the interruptions, the setting down of tools to go to the refectory for a cup of tea.
It’s open to the public, but there’s always someone from the studios in there too, and the combination of people he finds there changes each time.
And he realizes he’s comfortable with any of them.
It’s surprising, but also very…ordinary.
If Orla is there, he finds himself drawn to her and tries to balance out his attention, forcing his eyes toward Frap or Gráinne.
He observes Orla in snatched moments, waiting for her dimple to appear.
He knows now she is tactile with everyone, not just him, and not just men. He is relieved. And disappointed.
In early August, rain falls heavy from the crack of dawn, lashing at the windows of the Old Chocolate Factory.
Around lunchtime, Julian hears the sounds of people locking up their studios early.
Seamus puts his head in before leaving. “Don’t stay too long,” he says.
“The drains are starting to overflow. The corner of Lower Geraldine and Mill is already underwater.” Julian isn’t worried.
It’s already rained so much this summer; they’re used to seeing the end of their street collecting the run-off where the two roads meet at the bottom of a hill.
Julian is immersed in his work—a new piece that looks like a small, hammered satellite dish in gold, a diamond mounted off-center in a polished silver setting that he’s been refining all morning.
As the afternoon slips away, he is vaguely aware that he rarely hears cars sloshing by in the road below, only the percussion of rain against windows.
Besides that, there is an almost unnatural quiet.
He works on, only taking a break when he feels his back cramping.
Then, he goes to the window and sees the street below is a river, and when he cranes his neck to look right up Dooley Street, a driverless car appears to be floating across the junction.
He’s had his phone on silent and when he takes it from his pocket, he finds several messages from Sílbhe letting him know the river near home has burst its banks and the road will be impassable until the water level drops.
He will be fine here, he decides, as long as he has food. He goes down to the refectory and finds the building empty. The lights in the canteen are off. He’s never seen it without customers before.
On the counter, cakes sit beneath glass domes.
He leaves some coins on the side and maneuvers a wedge of carrot cake onto a plate, then sets it down on a table and sinks into the old church pew behind.
With the first bite, he realizes how hungry he’s become, and he is head down, forking up the crumbly sponge, when he hears something.
He looks up to see Orla. Her jeans are saturated darker blue from the thighs down, and her Converse squeak with water against the cement floor.
“Mother of God, it’s wet out there,” she says.
“You don’t say,” Julian smiles.
“My car died when some eejit in a four-wheel drive roared past and sent a tidal wave under it. So, I’m back.”
He puts his fork down. “Will I help you move it out of the road?”
“No, I’ll just hope it’s still there tomorrow.”
“How did you get in without flooding the place?”
“The door at the back. It’s five steps up,” she says. “Although the water’s already up to the fourth.”
She sits on a bench at the next table and starts to unlace her trainers. Julian realizes she is probably planning to take her jeans off too.
“I’ll cover my eyes,” he says, laughing gently.
“You’ve got a sister. It’s just a pair of legs.”
But where Maia’s are soft and dimpled in places, Orla’s are firm and smooth. He finds his attention drawn to them, covertly, between mouthfuls of carrot cake, which he is no longer hungry for, but continues to eat to distract himself from the undressing.
“Will I get an apron for you?” he asks, nodding toward the kitchen.
She pauses. “Like one of those hospital gowns, all demure from the front but turn around and…no thank you!”
Julian laughs.
Back upstairs, he puts her jeans and socks over the radiator in his studio and shakes out the scratchy gray blanket he keeps rolled up behind his desk to dampen the sound of hammering.
He gives it to Orla, who is sitting with her back against the old Victorian radiator, with those legs—those perfect legs—knees up, in front of her.
He stands by his workbench, and she says, “Will you make something for me? Can you do that? Make something in just a few hours?”
“What would you like me to make for you, Orla?”
“You decide. But tell me what you’re doing. At each stage. So I’ll know how it’s been made.”
He goes to the shallow shelves where he keeps the metals and then turns back, assessing the tone of her skin, although he knows it already. “I’ll use mainly silver,” he says, taking down a small sheet, “because it’ll suit your coloring best.”
“What coloring do you think I have?”
“Cool,” he says, and he tells her to look at the veins on the inside of her arms. “People with warmer skin have greener veins, but yours will be purply-blue.”
She studies the inside of her wrists and nods but doesn’t look at him. He feels as though he’s just run his finger along her skin, even though he’s on the other side of the room. He wonders if she feels it too.