Mercy Seat by Wayne Price

wordlessly again.
    I saw Alex at the bar, I told Jenny. He didn’t see me.
    The boy next door?
    I nodded.
    You didn’t say hello?
    He was pissed.
    You could have said hello. She turned to Christine. He helps me out with Michael sometimes. If I need a babysitter for a little while when Luke’s at work. He’s really good like that. She turned back to me. You should have said hello, she insisted, disappointed with me. If I see him I’ll say hello, she said. I might even ask him over. I’m going to the loo and then I’ll get another round.
    Christ, steady on, I said. I’m still fine with this.
    We haven’t got much time. Drink up, she ordered Christine. You need to make up for your boring teens.
    Why do you call him the boy next door? Christine asked as soon as Jenny slipped away.
    I shrugged. Because he lives next door.
    She smiled. He’s a fool, isn’t he?
    I must have looked surprised because she laughed at me, delighted. I met him, she said. With Jenny. We were in the kitchen. He took us down to his room and made a pot of herbal tea. She leered at me.
    Why is he a fool?
    She laughed again, as if the question was a huge joke. But she was right: secretly, and for no good reason at all, I despised him. I’d never thought much about it, but something in his harmless, easy-going friendliness made me angry and contemptuous. It was petty jealousy, I suppose. I understood instinctively, the first time I met him, that he belonged completely and sincerely in the world, in his skin, in his rickety Victorian room at Bethesda. It would have been impossible for him to live anywhere and not belong. He made me feel I was back at school or in the colliery again, resentful in the presence of so many comfortable Martians who breathed my own air better than me, and left me gasping. He was stronger than me, and everything that floated in from the world to the tiny pocket of place and time we randomly shared must, I felt at some deep level, belong to him.
    I opened my mouth to speak again but Christine shook her head. Don’t, she said simply, then reached out and took a long gulp from one of the highball glasses that had been left on the table. It was dark and flat – some kind of Coke mix. Ugh, she said and set it deftly back in the same spot she’d taken it from. So when is this party you’re taking me to?
    It took me a moment to understand what she meant. My mind was still on Alex and the way Christine had cut so effortlessly, so casually, to the truth. I knew Jenny would never have suspected the meanness of my contempt; notin a hundred years. Yes, Jenny’s a different species too , I half-expected Christine to say. And Michael too. They don’t belong with you. You must hand them back . I was almost waiting for it, and it terrified me.
    Well? she said, and I realised I’d been lost in thought.
    You mean Bill Kerrigan’s party?
    She nodded. I’ve been looking forward to it, she said, and her mouth pursed a little in the same way it just had when she’d tasted the flat, sweet drink in front of her.
    Wednesday night.
    She ran the tip of her tongue along her lips. She seemed distracted again suddenly. Then she smiled, focusing on me again. Kerrigan, she said. He’s a fool too, isn’t he? And despite the bright smile there was something intense in the way she said it, as if there was something suggestive in the idea.
    No, he’s fine, I protested. He’s a nice guy.
    Jenny called him a prick. When we were talking after you’d met him that time. Why does she think that?
    I shrugged, uncomfortable. As far as I knew, Jenny still felt nothing more complicated than affection for Bill. I don’t know. He’s let us down a few times, promising things and then forgetting, you know? And I think Jenny and him were closer once, before I came on the scene. But he’s never done anything bad to either of us. He’s fine, I said again. I was