Chapter 5.2

  

"This is my room, though." She finished hammering home the nail she'd just started. "I pay rent for it."

"That's not the point, though. The point being is that making a racket like that is being socially irresponsible, and there's a clause in the contract that says no disturbing noise after eleven PM."

"I've heard you banging away at all hours of the night." She winced at her own turn of phrase. That could have come out better. "Nobody seems to complain about you."

"You've been here two nights. I haven't even worked on my art since you got here. It's all been my part-time jobs, eating, sleeping and looking after you. I don't know why I've bothered, though. You don't seem very conscious of other people's needs."

Roisin stood and crossed to the door to open it. The hall outside was dim, and Paul was backlit by the light from his bedroom bulb spilling out from his doorway opposite and giving him a backlit aura. He leaned against the doorframe of her room with a face like a wet weekend, or an admonishing saint in the marginalia of a medieval Book of Common Prayer. His jaw was tight, his voice low but sharp, carrying the kind of irritation that indicated sleepless hours. "You're lying. I've heard you chipping away at sone at all hours of the morning. It was keeping me awake, so I thought I'd get some work done while I waited for you to stop."

Paul shook his head. "I'm not lying. I don't lie. Our Ma would clip my hear if I ever so much as exaggerated. I haven't picked up a hammer since you arrived." He looked down and she followed his gaze to the tool in her hand. "Is that my bloody hammer? That's for stone, that is. Using it to bash in nails will damage the surface and make it no good for use with stone chisels." He looked up again. "Where did you get it, anyway? Have you been in my room?"

Suddenly, she found herself on the defensive. "It was an emergency. I didn't think you'd mind." She tried to make her voice as needle-sharp as her mother could. "Anyway, I saw that sculpture in your bedroom."

He stepped back, throwing a glance into his bedroom as if to check it was still there. "You didn't touch it, did you?"

She closed her eyes, letting the silence stretch between them like a taut wire. When she finally spoke, her tone was measured. "It looked dangerous. I was going to touch it, but something stopped me. It's magical, isn't it?"

"Magic?" Paul laughed. "There's no such thing as magic, dude. Have you been on the waccy baccy? Only I hope not, 'cause it's a no smoking house."

"Don't call me dude. I don't like it" Roisin scowled. "What is it, if it isn't magic, then? And by 'magic' I'm including science that's currently unknown to the general population."

"It's just a piece of sandstone with a statue in bas-relief." I don't even know who made it. I found it in an old antiques shop years ago. It's why I became a sculptor. I wanted to be able to make something like it."

"If it's just a piece of sandstone, why were you so worried I might have touched it then?"

"Because it's fifteenth century and the oils on your fingers might have damaged it. It's not that you can't touch it, just that you need to wear gloves if you do."

"If it's fifteenth century, why is it a sculpture of me? And if it's just stone, how can it move?"

"What the fuck are you actually talking about? It's not of you. It's nothing like you. And it most definitely doesn't move."

She could feel her jaw clenching with frustration. "It most certainly is. And does."

"Are we even talking about the same thing? The only sculpture I have in my room is an antique bas-relief of an westernised angel."

Roisin frowned. "Aren't all angels westernised?"

"No. They originated in the middle east, so they were first depicted as djinn and elementals. Thinking angels are all long-haired dudes in billowing nightdresses blowing trumpets is just churches appropriating an earlier civilisation's culture. It's like depicting Jesus as a blonde Scandinavian with long hair. He was a Palestinian Jew and would have been moderately well off with close cropped hair because of the prevalence of lice."

"Whatever." She dismissed his whole series of projections with a dismissal. "I don't know what sculpture you're talking about, but I mean the one on a little table at the end of your bed."

Pauls face creased in puzzlement. "You're crazy. That's the angel."

 

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