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In his usual attire: a red, vintage windbreaker that sported the charity logo, aHandshakeironed onto the front, a man stood lackadaisical until seeing her—a man who looked well for some approaching sixty.
“Hiya, Aziz! I have them all ready for you, only ten percent stale this week.” She smiled at him despite tiredness beginning to beckon her bones south.
Like clockwork, he came twice a week for food. He’d also make a point of staying to update Áine on the homeless situation. She didn’t think this was to guilt her into offering a third weekly donation, but because Dublin’s homeless crisis wasn’t actually improving.
She turned her steady smile on Fionn and waved for his tray of sweating sandwiches.
He quietly passed them.
“Many out tonight?” she asked as she passed Aziz the trays.
Aziz looked out into the long empty street as if the cool air could provide the answer. “Too many,” was all he replied.
“Too many is right. Well, you’re a Saint in my books.” Áine didn’t actually appreciate the concept of Sainthood but used the phrase often by Catholic reflex. It also made her cringe by reflex, although more so because it was inaccurate to name any living person a Saint, and Áine’s need to be accurate, even internally, was a powerful, rash-inducing one.
Aziz stacked the sandwiches atop one another, caving the bottom trays triangular points to free a hand for lighting his smoke.
She wondered then, a devil’s advocate to herself, ifAzizdid this for self-gratification. If he headed to the pub afterwards, still wearing his red windbreaker, to share the stories of his charity. For all her woes on the topic of morality, she thought no, Aziz didn’t seem the type. She felt a bit nauseous for thinking that about him. And so, he must have been the altruistic exception to her view.
“You know we’re hearing whispers of a homeless uprising. Apparently, Apollo House up the road is tipped for a bit of an ‘invasion’.” He jolted his body in association with the word invasion, which suggested this wasn’t the first time Aziz had conversed over the matter.
“Christ, wouldn’t that be great! Get everyone off the streets for at least this Christmas. Having said that, I’m sure the Government will find a way to take the credit.”
“I won’t hold my breath for it anyway. As always, Áine, you’re an angel. And God bless.” He saluted her, already heading on his merry way through rain and a cloud of his own smoke.
Her body arched out the door. “Mind yourself now.”
When closing over the lock, an exhale of relief bellowed from her. She couldn’t recall ever feeling relief any other time Aziz left. Then again, it was often the most exciting thing to happen on the night shift. Tonight, many exciting things were happening. So much so, she wondered if it would dampen all other nights to come after.
No, not wonder,worried. She worried it would dampen all nights to come.
“Nice chap.” Fionn nodded to the door with his hands in his pockets, all formal when he probably thought nothing of Aziz.
“If you’re wondering, I do think he’s in it for good reasons,” she said on return to him. “And I do wish I could do more for the world than donate a few sandwiches and go out to the protests. I’m not all wicked.”
His face creased as he took an urgent step closer to her. “You’re not anything wicked!”
The response stirred similar in her, a kind of urgent interjection, but of thankfulness. It made her pant a blatant exhale when words couldn’t find her. He’d stuck up for her against her internal unkindness when he needn’t have. Most would have let the joke be. Let it further her conclusion of what she’d always feared; she really was faulty.
She closed the slight gap between them, so close the tiny space hummed with possibilities, and vulnerability made the ground feel like it was vibrating again.
“You sound passionate about that,” she said. By seductive habit, her head inclined to him. What usually didn’t accompany was the rapidly beating heart she was feeling now proximity was anything but scarce.
“I am. I’d hate you to think that of yourself. Especially when I know your honesty and passion don’t make you cruel. Everyone thinks bad things, even Aziz.” Fionn flung his venting arm to the door to little effect. “Just because you voice some controversial thoughts that everyone else is probably thinking anyway, you become the villain? The fucking target? No. I won’t have it.”
For all the things Áine wanted to say—again, thank you being the first—she took his hand in hers.
Fionn quietened and stared at Áine for some time, in anticipation of a response he was never going to get. But these were not wasted minutes of the thirty they had left according to the Padauk clock above the door. These were momentous and seared in her brain, now only partially wicked.
It was official, what she earlier believed in the night was her being satiated just for seeing him no longer stood true.
“Come with me.” She led him by the hand he’d let her take with a clench so strong, she wanted to melt in his arms. A place where loneliness had no name. “I want to show you something.”
“Alright.”
Positive she’d come to regret this decision for how little it went in favour of what she’d hoped might happen in their last moments together, Áine knew what she was about to show him would be the perfect way to end the night, not for her, but for Fionn.
And so perhaps, against her earlier write-off of herself, she was capable of altruism after all.
