Page 75 of 56 Days
“Yeah. We want things to be different but we start by telling the other person how they were the last time, and that kind of, like,limitsus to being that person again... I suppose what I’m saying is that, for once, I’d like to start something clean. Without any stories limiting where this can go, who we can be.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” she says, frowning.
“What if you’d told me you were shy? Just for example. I wouldn’t have thought so otherwise, not based on your actions, but you said you are, so that’s what I think now, and I treat you differently. Maybe we don’t do things or go places we would’ve otherwise, because I’m worried it’ll make you uncomfortable, because you’ve told me you’re shy. But what if you’re not really? What if it’s something you mistakenly believe about yourself, or that someone else made you feel, or mistook you for? Wouldn’t it have been better then that I didn’t know, that you didn’t tell me?”
I just want a chance to try to convince you of who I am before you find out what I did, before you find out what theysayI am.
“When you’re working out here,” Ciara says, indicating the living room, “are you actually, or have you been watching oldOprahshows on repeat?”
He grins. “Hours of it.”
“Thought so.”
“And, Ciara...” He takes a deep breath. “Look, the truth is there isn’t really anyone for you to meet. Not here in Dublin, anyway. My family aren’t here, and all the guys at work are older than me, and married with kids, and kinda boring, and I haven’t really had the chance to meet anyone else yet. I’ve only been here a few weeks and, well, how do you meet people except through work and college and stuff? I didn’t go to college here and I don’t play sports and, well, we can’t go anywhere or do anythingnow, can we?”
She smiles. “You’re so lucky you met me.”
“I am.”
“And I’m in the same boat,” she says, “in lots of ways.You’rethe only person I know here. So I get all that. But... Well, there are things Idowant to know, that I want you to tell me.”
“Like what?”
He holds his breath.
“Like, who was texting you at four o’clock in the morning?”
“My brother,” he says. “Richard. Rich.”
She nods, understanding. “The one in Australia. The time difference.”
“It was lunchtime there.”
“Okay, but why get up in the middle of the night for it? It was just a text. And you were dressed; you didn’t just hop out of bed because you heard the notification.”
He has to give hersomething, he thinks.
“I didn’t get up for it. I was already up. I usually am, at that hour. I don’t really sleep.” Admitting this reminds him of one of those sequences from nature documentaries warning of climate change: the cracking of ice, a cliff of it suddenly breaking off from a gigantic glacier, the steady downward slide as it sinks and disappears into the sea. He feels lighter, but what’s just happened is a terrible thing—he’s revealed a secret. “I’m an insomniac.”
Ciara raises her eyebrows. He thinks what’s on her face reads more like concern than suspicion, but he can’t be sure.
“On a good night,” he says, “I get about two hours. Three is great. Three is positively refreshing. I go to bed and fall asleep, like normal, but at some point, I wake up and that’s it. I cannot get back to sleep. Doesn’t matter what I do. Usually by five, six a.m.—it depends on the time of the year, it seems tied to when it gets light outside—I manage to doze off for another hour or two, if I’m lucky, but it’s not proper sleep. Certainly not the restorative kind. Then I wake up, get up, and feel like absolute shit all day. Repeat as required.”
“Do you get up every night?”
“Most nights, yeah. Before you were here, I might have turned on a light and tried to read a book or watch something on my phone, but I don’t want to disturb you, so...”
“But how do you function on so little sleep?”
He shrugs. “You just get used to it.”
“Can’t you take something? A sleeping pill?”
“I do take something, sometimes. Tranquilizers. But they’re pretty strong. They knock you out, basically. I get a great night’s sleep but then I’m groggy for the next two days. So I use them sparingly. I go as long as I can without them and then when I’m in danger of having, like, hallucinations, I take one. Usually on a Friday night, so I can just veg out for the weekend and be okay for work on Monday. That’s the only thing that works for me. All the other stuff is like swallowing Tic Tacs.”
“When did you last take one of those tranquilizer things?”
“The weekend after we met. It’ll be time to again, soon.”
