Page 60 of Undefined Terms

Shit.

‘Liverpool. Liverpool, someone, wasn’t paying attention.’

‘You’re meant to support West Ham.’

‘Mum. I support West Ham. I watched a Liverpool game. The two things are not.’

She sips. The mug down on the plastic tablecloth, I can hear the click.

‘I told your dad you were settled. That right?’

‘That’s right. I’m settled.’

The settled word. The flat with two mugs and a key in someone else’s pocket and a message I haven’t answered. Settled.

‘Anyone in your life I ought to know about, love?’

The toast on the plate, half-eaten, the butter gone soft. Past the toast, through the open bedroom door, the kitchen counter. Celyn’s mug. The bird clip on the windowsill where Celyn left it.

‘Nah. Just work.’

‘Just work.’

‘Yeah.’

She doesn’t say anything for a beat. The Mum-pause, the one that’s a question without a question. I let it ride. The pause goes long enough that I hear the radio in her kitchen, faint, violins.

‘Alright, love.’

‘Tell Dad.’

‘I always tell Dad.’

‘Bye, Mum.’

The thumb on the red button. The room the same as before, the toast the same, the mug the same. Nothing’s moved.

Except the air in here’s got a shape and the shape’s the wrong shape.

I pick up the toast. Eat it. Cold.

I put the kettle on for another tea I won’t drink. Celyn’s mug, still on the counter. I don’t move it.

By the time I get back from work, the flat’s full of it.

The voice saying you work with your hands like that’s all I am, and the key I gave someone who said that, and the message on the phone I didn’t answer, and the morning.

The flat’s cold. I slept in the cold. Cold’s cold.

I make tea. The kettle that sounds too loud because nobody’s speaking over it. The toast, one side, flipped, the toaster still only does one side. I eat it with jam because there’s no butter. There was butter; Celyn brought it on Thursday, and it ran out because I ate toast for three meals.

I shower. Change. Clean shirt. The blue one, the one Mum bought for Christmas that I never wear because it’s too nice for anything. Don’t know why I’m wearing it.

The walk’s five minutes, the same five minutes. Same street, same turn, same door, same smell of hops and wood. Evening. A couple at the bar, someone reading near the window. The bartender, not the usual one, the girl with the buzz cut who always overpours.

The Christmas shirt, in the bar. I catch my reflection in the glass behind the taps, the blue, the collar, the thing Mum bought that’s too nice for anything and I’m wearing it to a bar like it means something. It doesn’t.

Celyn was right, the job isn’t shit. But how it was said. The weapon of it, the aim, the delivery.