This Must Be the Place Read Online Free PDF Page B

Really, it was too strange. Her face was so familiar, that expression so known: where had I seen her before?
    ‘Your grandfather?’ she repeated.
    I shrugged. I was not, I felt, bound to provide her with any explanations. ‘He’s been feeling a little under the weather lately.’
    ‘Seriously? You carry him around with you?’
    ‘So it would seem.’
    She passed the monkey wrench from one hand to the other. ‘Ari tells me you help children with speech impediments.’
    I winced. ‘The term “impediment” is generally considered to be a little pejorative. You might try “challenged”.’
    A diva-ish sigh. ‘Speech-challenged, then.’
    ‘Well, I did. A long time ago.’
    Her extraordinary eyes – I’d never seen eyes like them, pale green they were, with darker circles around their edges – flicked over me assessingly, desperately. Her exquisite porcelain face acquired an expression of vulnerability, and it was easy to tell that it was not an arrangement to which her facial muscles were accustomed. ‘You think he can be cured?’
    I hesitated. I wanted to say I didn’t like the term ‘cured’ either. ‘I think he can be helped,’ I said carefully. ‘He can be helped a great deal. As a post-grad, I was involved in a research programme to help kids like Ari but it’s not strictly my line of—’
    ‘Come,’ she said, in the imperious manner of one used to being obeyed. I half expected her to click her fingers at me, like a dog-owner. ‘You can hold the jack while I tighten the wheel and you can tell me about this programme. Come.’
    I thought: no, I won’t come. I thought: I won’t be bossed around by some hoity-toity madam. I thought: she’s used to getting what she wants because she happens to possess the face of a goddess. I thought: I will not come anywhere with you. But then I did. I steadied the jack while she replaced the wheel. I told her what I could remember about the dysfluency programme while she turned the bolts. I looked away, with effort, when the hem of her shirt got separated from the waistband of her overalls. I did what a good man might do: I helped, then left.
    Later that night, I was lying on the bed in the B-and-B, contemplating the remains of my dope stash, which wasn’t, I was realising, going to last me until my return. How could I have neglected to buy enough at that dodgy bar in Dublin? I didn’t stand a chance in hell of getting any more around here. Would weed even grow in Ireland? I mused. Wasn’t there just too much damn rain?
    There was a knock at the door and my landlady, a Mrs Spillane, a woman with hair that stood out around her head, like dandelion down, and an apron surgically attached to her front, stood there. I had hastily stubbed out the joint and done that pathetic smokers’ wave in front of me – why do we do that? – but her expression was that of a woman who knew she was being robbed but couldn’t yet prove it.
    ‘Mr Sullivan,’ she said.
    ‘Yes?’ I said. I even pulled myself straighter, as if to withstand and refute accusations of getting high, alone, in the middle of nowhere, thousands of miles from home.
    ‘This came for you.’ She was holding, I now noticed, a small parcel, wrapped in a calico bag.
    ‘Thanks.’ I put out my hands to take it but she pulled it away. She glanced up and down the corridor, as if checking for the presence of the FBI. ‘She wants to see you,’ she whispered.
    ‘Who does?’ I replied, noticing that I, too, was whispering. It appeared to be catching.
    Mrs Spillane examined me at our new proximity. I wondered for a fleeting moment what she saw: a large American man, starting to grey at the temples, the whites of his eyes scribbled with red calligraphy? Could she read, in its runes, my jet lag, my long-term insomnia, a dope habit and unassailable paternal grief? Hard to tell.
    ‘ She does,’ my landlady said, leaning forward, attempting what seemed to be a wink.
    Dope makes most people paranoid but I