Painted Faces (2 page)

“
Hello there,” he says, shutting the door behind him and locking it with his key. His accent is mildly Australian, not Irish. He steps toward me, holding his hand out for me to give it a shake. I give him a look that's probably somewhere between confused and exasperated, as I clearly can't get my hands free for the shake he's waiting on.

“
You must be Freda, your flatmate Nora invited me in for a cup of tea earlier. Lovely girl.” He says.

Oh, I'm sure she did. Nora is quite the opportunist when it comes to men, and I'd say she thought this fellow was a fine specimen. Even within this short conversation, I've noticed something sort of electric about his personality, something addictive. His eyes pull me in, like they hold secrets that could make my boring old life so much more exciting. You don't come across men this alluring very often.

“
Fred, you can call me Fred,” I tell him stupidly, placing the plastic bags down on the floor so that I can finally shake his hand.

Our palms touch, our fingers entwine, and I can't believe I'm admitting this, but the tiniest tingle goes through me at the contact. Of course, he doesn't know that, and thank fuck, because he'd probably think I was some kind of a pervert. I mean, who exactly gets tingles when they shake a person's hand? You might as well say,
Hello, you'll be starring in my dirty dreams tonight, Mr Blue Eyes
. Not creepy in the slightest. Perhaps it's been too long since I last had a boyfriend.

I let go first and try to ignore his magnetism. He laughs, a wonderfully low sound that vibrates through to my toes. “Okay Fred, you can call me Vivica.”

Our eyes connect and we both smile at his joke. It's funny, but not funny enough to solicit a laugh. “Cool, if we become close friends can I call you Viv?” I respond.

He mock flicks his hair over his shoulder, a very feminine gesture, and puts on a sweet Marilyn Monroe voice. “You can call me whatever you like, Frederick.” The gesture suddenly opens my eyes to a certain fey aspect in his demeanour, maybe he's gay. He certainly dresses well enough.

“
Why thanks, I'll keep that in mind, Viv. It was a pleasure to meet you. I hope you're finding the place to your liking.”

“
Oh it's a palace fit for a queen, Freddie, a real find.”

I take note of his obvious sarcasm. He still faces me, walking backwards down the hall, twirling his keys around his fingers. Clearly he has somewhere he needs to be.

I laugh. “Well, that's good to hear. Drop in for tea any time.”

He nods and leers at my wet top, where my purple D-cup bra is blatantly visible through my cream t-shirt. “Damn it,” he says humorously. “Did I miss the wet t-shirt competition,
again
?” The way he's staring at my top makes me 99% sure he isn't gay.

“
Ah you did I'm afraid, in Dublin we put on some great ones too. We all gather down by the river Liffey and dive in with our clothes on. When we climb out the junkies on the board walk give us marks out of ten.”

He smirks at me. “If that's the case then you must have gotten an eleven. Sounds like a real classy affair Fred, I'll make sure I don't miss the next one.”

“
Come along whenever you like. We always welcome newcomers.” I tell him, running with the joke.

He salutes me then, smiling at me fondly, and disappears around the corner. It's only at that moment that I realise he still hasn't told me his real name.

Inside our apartment is empty. Nora must have gone out somewhere. I drop the shopping bags in the kitchen and go in search of some fresh clothes and a hair dryer. Once I feel like the living again, I unpack my baking ingredients.

I have two jobs. One is working in a charity shop down the road three mornings a week, a handy little number. The other is baking for a cake shop in the city that prides itself on fresh home made produce. I make all of their cupcakes. In fact, I've been told that I make the best cupcakes in Ireland, though since it was my mother who said it she might have been slightly biased.

Baking cupcakes for a living has its ups and its downs. The up side is that you get to put a smile on people's faces, even if you're also putting a few extra pounds on their backsides. The down side is that you have to get up at four o'clock every weekday morning to bake the things and have them down at the cake shop by eight-thirty. I have a bicycle with a carriage affixed to the back of it. I put the cupcakes in boxes, stick them in the carriage and deliver them to the shop. Oh yeah, and when I call it the cake shop, I'm not avoiding telling you the name. It's a cake shop called The Cake Shop. So hip and modern, you know.

Another bad thing is that I have quite the sweet tooth, so baking cakes all the time sort of indulges it a little too much. In terms of size I'm a small fourteen, which isn't so bad I suppose, but I could always stand to lose a bit of weight. Oh, and I'm talking UK sizes, not US. If I lived in America I could go around telling people I was a 10. Even though there's no actual difference, it would please me no end.

I put my purchases away, ready for tomorrow morning's batch. I bake sixty a day and most days they sell out down at the shop. I divide them into five sections toppings wise, as follows; twelve lemon, twelve orange chocolate, twelve strawberry, twelve toffee and twelve vanilla. Sometimes I'll shake things up a bit with a few red velvets or mint. The oven in my apartment is probably the most expensive thing in the place. It took me two years to save up for it.

There's something therapeutic, I find, about baking the exact same thing each morning. I could do it with my eyes closed. I tend to listen to music when I bake. I enjoy old punk stuff like
Dead Kennedys
and
Social Distortion
. I know, it's an unusual mix, punk and cupcakes, but it works for me. The fast paced punk music gives me an extra bit of a pep in my step at such an early hour.

Of course, I only listen to music with my earphones on, because Nora works as a bartender in a night club in Temple Bar and sleeps in. She'd probably have a coronary if I played my music at four o'clock in the morning, since she only gets home after two. I think she has a secret desire to take a hammer to my electric mixer.

We have opposite routines, me an early bird and she a night owl. But in the same way that the punk rock and cup cakes work for me, our opposite routines work for us. She's my best friend and I love her to bits, but I think if we had to spend all of our time together somebody would end up with a broken nose. And it wouldn't be me.

I flake out in front of the television for a while, watching the afternoon soaps. It's five o'clock when Nora strolls in the door, carrying a little beige and white striped bag from the evil department store that is Brown Thomas. I
cannot
stand the place. It's Dublin's answer to Harrod's of London, and I swear to God every single employee is a replica of the bitchy attractive girl you knew from school.

I always get a sick satisfaction as I mosey on past on a Saturday and see the anti-animal cruelty protesters outside, giving out hell because the store sells items made from real fur. The aggravated faces of the girls who work beyond the big glass front windows make me happy in a twisted but very fundamental way.

“
So, what did you get from Satan's lay-by this time?” I ask her, as she goes to the fridge and pulls out a bottle of water.

“
I'm roasting,” says Nora, ignoring my question and sitting down on an armchair with the cold bottle pressed to her forehead. She doesn't like me commenting on her penchant for spending what little extra money she has on stupidly expensive items, such as tiny pots of eye shadow from the Mac counter. I know we're twenty five year old women and genetically predisposed to want to spend money on things we don't need, but come on.

“
Yeah well, you're lucky you didn't get caught in the downpour earlier. I was effing soaked,” I tell her crankily.

“
Mm hmm,” she mumbles, fanning herself with the material of her blouse. She picks up her precious bag and peers inside, before pulling out a silky neckerchief looking thing. It's pale blue, reminding me of the colour of Vivica's eyes, or whatever his real name is.

“
So, did you meet our new neighbour Vivica?” I ask her jokingly. The joke goes right over her head though, because her brown eyes dart to me.

There's something like disappointment in her expression as she sighs and says, “Don't tell me he's got a girlfriend living with him, that will just completely ruin the fantasy I've currently got going on.”

I'm tempted to torture her and draw the whole thing out, but I like to think I have a kind nature, so I don't. “Nah, at least he never mentioned one. We talked for a minute out in the hallway. I told him everyone calls me Fred and he joked and said I could call him Vivica.”

Nora eyes me and smirks. “Sounds like you two had quite the cosy little chat.”

“
Yep, that was right before he pushed me up against the wall and took me right out in the open. I was going to tell him that I was a lady and didn't go in for that sort of thing, but my birthday's coming up in a couple of months so I thought I'd allow myself an early present.”

“
Shut up Fred!”

She throws a cushion at me. I pick it up and throw it right back at her, knocking her sleek ponytail slightly off kilter. I laugh as she scowls and takes great pains to set it back to rights.

I suppose this is a good time to tell you a little bit about Nora. She is absolutely
obsessed
with her appearance. Not so much in a vain way, but more in a control freak sort of way. Everything has to be neat as a pin. Just so. Clean as a whistle. She has straight dark brown hair, deep sultry brown eyes and a tan. She's one of those Irish people who have a slight Spanish look to them. Some say that this “look” came about when Spanish ships arrived in Ireland hundreds of years ago and the Spanish began “mating” with the local talent. So historically accurate aren't I? I suppose Nora's great-great-great-great grandfather could have been a Spanish sailor.

Nora is also one of those stick thin people with an abnormally fast metabolism who could eat a whole buffet table and still not put on a pound. She's around a size eight. If
she
lived in America she could go around telling people she was a four. Anyway, if Nora's metabolism is an Olympic gold medal runner, mine is one of those slugs that you step on by mistake when it's cold and damp out. We have very different bodies, although the one benefit I get from being a “bigger girl”, as they say, is that I'm not lacking in the chest department.

I think Nora is secretly pleased that I'm the “fat one”, because it means she tends to get more attention when we go out together. Yes, despite my ample bosom the men always seem to flock to her, however that might have something to do with my more
abrasive
,
shall we say, personality. If a guy came up to Nora in a club and said, “You must be lost honey, because heaven is a long way from here,” she would eat that shit right up. If the same scenario were to occur with me, I'd cock my head to the side, tell the guy to “piss off” and be on my merry way.

When I look back at her she's still scowling at me for messing up her ponytail. “Just because you can get out of bed and have perfect hair, doesn't mean we all can,” she says in a pissed voice.

Somebody's having their time of the month, I think. I have curly golden brown hair, and yes, because of the curls I don't ever really attempt to do much about taming it. I take a lackadaisical approach to hair care, and let's just say that I know it drives Nora up the wall.

I roll my eyes. “Nora, your self-pity monitor is beeping, it's telling me you're feeling sorry for yourself over something trivial and need to get a life.”

She shakes her head, finally having gotten her ponytail emergency taken care of, and takes a drink out of her water bottle.

“
Anyway,” she says. “Back to the topic of our new neighbour. His name is Nicholas and I asked him to join us for dinner tonight before I go to work, so you need to cook something.”

“
He never mentioned dinner,” I tell her. “Are you sure this didn't happen in one of the many fantasies you've had about him since meeting him earlier today?”

She lets out a sigh to end all sighs. “Can you refrain from taking the piss for just one minute Fred, please, I'm really not in the mood.”