Page 32 of I Am the Messenger

"Haven't seen you for a while."

"I've been busy."

Audrey and I are on my front porch, drinking cheap alcohol, as usual. The Doorman comes out and asks for some, but I give him a big pat instead.

"You still getting those cards in the mail?" She knew all along of course that I was lying about throwing out the diamonds. No one in their right mind would throw diamonds out, would they? They're valuable. If anything, they need protecting.

Milla, I think. Sophie. The woman on Edgar Street and her daughter, Angelina.

"No, I'm still on the first one."

"Do you think there'll be more?"

I think about it and can't figure out if I want another one or not. "The first one's hard enough." We drink.

I drop in regularly at Milla's place, and she shows me her photos again and I continue reading from Wuthering Heights. I'm actually starting to like it. The cake got finished a few nights ago, thank God, but the old lady's as nice as ever. Shaky as hell but nice as ever.

Sophie loses again the next week at athletics, this time in the eight hundred. She doesn't run the same in those patchy old shoes. She needs something better to even come close to how she runs in the mornings. That's when she's true. She's apart. Almost out of herself.

Early next Saturday morning, I go to her house and knock on the door. Her father answers.

"Can I help you?"

I feel nervous, like I've come to convince him to let his daughter go out with me. I'm holding a shoe box in my right hand, and the man looks down at it. Quickly, I lift it and say, "I've got a delivery for your daughter Sophie. I hope they're the right size."

The shoe box passes between our hands, and the man looks confused.

"Just tell her a guy brought her some new shoes."

The man looks at me as if I'm heavily intoxicated. "Okay." He tries his hardest not to mock me. "I will."

"Thank you."

I turn around and start walking away, but he brings me back. "Wait," he calls out.

"Yes, sir?"

He holds the box out, puzzled, lifting it into the conversation.

"I know," I say.

The box is empty.

I haven't shaved, and I feel like death warmed up at the track. I didn't bring the cab in till six this morning and went straight over to Sophie's place and over to the track. I've got a sausage roll for breakfast and some coffee.

She gets called for the fifteen hundred, and she goes barefoot.

I smile at the thought of it.

Barefoot shoes...

"Just don't let her get stepped on," I say.

A few minutes later, her father approaches the fence. The race begins.

The other dickhead starts yelling out.

And Sophie gets tripped up on the back straight after a lap.