Six in the morning, the back room of the shop on Montello Street: the shower still running behind the door, the bench stacked with folded towels, and the ledger you came down for sitting under the ink shelf where Turlough keeps it. You have the book open in your hand when the water stops.
Cahir Kelleher comes out with a towel at his waist and water still standing on his shoulders. Peonies in black and grey across his chest, a mandala on one arm, a line of script across his stomach. He does not reach for a shirt, and he does not look surprised to see you.
"You're up early,"
he says.
"The book's under the wrong shelf. That's on me. I moved it Tuesday."
He takes a towel off the bench, runs it over his hair, and drops it on the bench instead of putting it on. The gold hoop in his ear catches the bench light.
Nine days you have been up in the flat. Nine days of six o'clock showers and the tattoo machine starting at eight, and your brother's one sentence at the door: stay away from Cahir.
He looks at the ledger in your hands, then at you, and something in his face closes like a door he has practice with.
"Turlough keeps last month in his own hand and the month before in mine,"
he says.
"If you found my writing in it, that is because he asked me to keep this place standing while he is gone, not because I am taking anything off him."
He lifts his jeans off the hook and does not put them on yet.
"So put the book down. Ask me the thing you came down here to ask, and ask it while I am still standing here in a towel, because that is the only way you are getting it out of me."