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Joey stopped at the convenience store each night after a shift because he liked the attendant’s face.
Said face was on the left side of conventionally handsome; eyes a touch too sleepy, features narrower than would have suited to such a square jaw, but it was interesting. The guy was interesting, and after 12 hours of hospo work with people screaming at him, with sweat tricking down his neck and into the collar of his shirt; with the single staff meal he was allocated spread across the entire day, then, yeah. Whatever. Joey was gonna indulge. He set the energy drink on the counter and tossed a packet of chips alongside, and watched as the attendant scanned and bagged both.
There was a time before Joey realised the interesting lines and angles of the attendant’s face, where he was quite happy to wait in a haze of hunger and exhaustion; mouth a little slack and feet too sore to bother with conversation, but that was then and this was now, and so – charmed by the springy curls on the attendant’s head that fell a bit too long against the curved plane of his cheek, Joey asked, “Hey, man, what’s your name again?” A pause before, “because I’ve been coming here a while and if it’s gonna be a thing...” Then: “I’m Joey.”
The attendant’s hand had paused, long fingers (that led to a square palm and thick wrists, nothing bony and sinewy, and short, like Joey) clamped around the narrow rim of the energy drink.
Joey wasn’t worried about overstepping a line; lines didn’t faze him, but he also was comfortable in the knowledge that Attendant was good people. Joey’d already seen it in the way he said to the chick from last week – the only other person in the store at 3AM – “Don’t worry about it,” when she was almost five bucks short and panicking. And the time before that when some guy was being picky about his purchases and Attendant had cancelled and rung up the sale at least a half dozen times without even glaring.
Which.
Being the guy in line behind him, Joey had been doing the entire transaction.
So—
“Uh, Kevin,” the attendant said, punctuated with the sharp beep as Kevin slid the drink across the scanner. “Yeah, I lost my tag a while ago.” He rubbed his hands together, fingertips white with residual cold, and shrugged.
“Huh, okay,” Joey said. “’s no big deal, since I know now anyway,” he slid a five across the counter and said, “guess I’ll see you tomorrow then,” once he pocketed his change.
Kevin smiled, glanced up at him with sleepy blue eyes in a way that Joey accepted as flirting, considering the long, shitty shift he had slogged through.
“Yeah, sure,” Kevin said, slow and easy like they had all night. “Same time, same place.”
-
It was a thing, in the end. Camaraderie in low paying jobs and unreasonable hours.
And so Joey told Kevin all the horrifying stories of patrons throwing up on/around/in the general vicinity of themselves/the bar/the bathrooms, while Kevin countered with the dramas of ordering stock.
They conceded that while Joey had it harder – aside from the occasional clean up in aisle 5 for Kevin and that one time a couple fucked in the space between the freezer and the canned goods – hospitality was more straightforward than the stock issue, so Joey let him have it.
“My brothers are throwing this thing,” Kevin said, apropos of nothing after explaining the freezer incident.
Kevin tended to talk to whatever he was holding rather than to someone’s face. He always corrected himself though, blink, sort of nod, and then look up. Right then he studied a red and gold packet of split peas as he told Joey about ‘this thing’, hand big enough to cradle the bag; a crease between his brows, the slower cadence of his words possibly because Kevin was reading the ingredients label (split peas, Joey hazarded, possibly salt. HFCS).
There was a word for how Joey felt. For how Kevin’s semi-frequent lapses into space land made Joey pause and wait it out rather than coax Kevin from it. It took a couple of sleep muddled days for him to remember, clamped on the memory of his Nan back when Joey was little, with eyes too big for his face and a god-awful lisp thanks to three missing front teeth. Endearing. The head-nod thing endeared Kevin to him.
“Next week,” Kevin said, finally, and looked up. “Wednesday-Thursdays were your weekends, right?”
Joey went for a broad grin, charged and goaded by his endearment, eager to see how far he could push it. “You introducing me to the family, huh? Am I gonna have to dress up? Bring something with?”
Kevin considered and then shrugged. “They’ve been hassling me to bring you round a while.”
And Joey paused, because implications.
“Yeah?” Joey said. He slid his hands against his jeans, material rough against along his palms. “Well, uh, any other details?”
Kevin reached across the register and sheared out a blank piece of receipt roll, sliding it across the counter with a ballpoint. “Give me your number.”
Joey wrote it down after a second wondering how Kevin managed to wrong foot him in casual flirting, and made sure to make each number legible, considering that his numbers and letters often looked like they crossbred. He didn’t want to ruin whatever this was because Kevin thought that an 8 was a 6 that had been evolving into an H.
Kevin took the paper back and folded it, corner to corner, before he put in the front pocket of his jeans, satisfied. Smug, even, if Joey took a second to study his expression.
Joey… he could deal with smug.
“Right,” Joey said, and Kevin smiled. A slow little number made Joey feel exhilarated and terrified at once, 10 feet tall as well as 13 years old and waiting after class for Chantelle to please, please, don’t be with any of her friends right now.
“Right,” Joey said again before he gathered up his energy drink, his packet of chips and his newly established perspective on how he dealt with Kevin, and bumbled out of the store.
-
Hey man its Kevin. 7PM Wednesday.
Ok, thx. C u
-
Kevin lived a couple of blocks away, but in the same area. It made sense. No point in massive travel time if it wasn’t a fancy pants desk job gilded with prestige. Joey could walk to Kevin’s.
Which—
When Joey was a kid, his Pop – old and creaky, smelling of cigarette smoke and cloves up until the day he died, God rest his soul – had called him Joey Ice Cream. He dusted off the memory attached to the name: about seven and freaking out over a scoop of the stuff on the pavement.
Pop had cuffed him one over the ear, not hard, and said, “Kid, you’re just like ice cream. One little thing goes wrong and you’re a mess.”
And, sure, the memory had been altered and embellished, but he wore the nickname like a badge of honour all through high school, fixed to his chest until the sting of his Pop’s death dulled enough for him to remove it.
The heart of it was his Pop though, and the puddle of mint choc chip.
Joey wondered what the old man would think of Kevin. Probably cuff him over the ear and tell him not to lose his shit over a pair of baby blues. (He may have changed his outfit three times.)
Kevin’s apartment block was similar to the ones surrounding – red bricked and squat, eaves coated in pigeon shit and the street number buffed bronze on the face, as if the bulk of the building and maintenance fund had been spent ensuring its shine.
Joey strode up the stoop, fumbled with the top step, nerves jangled as he studied the long column of intercom buttons.
Donnelly, Kevin had texted, along with his address. There were three Donnellys, but only one preceding with T, J, K, S. Shit, three brothers. Four boys. He’d never get over that. Joey pressed the button, felt the buzz of the intercom right down to his boots and tried not to shiver. Here he was, an only kid passed between his Ma and grandparents; one cousin that he had known of, ten years older and working interstate as an accountant.
The intercom buzzed and Joey entered.
The door to the Donnelly’s was propped open with a crate of beer, the sound of bagpipes and rock music leaking through the gap in case someone missed the Irish heritage thing.
There were enough people inside for the apartment to feel busy, but not cramped, and Joey looked around, a little lost, before catching the glint of light across gold curls.
“Kevin,” Joey said when he made it across the room, plastic cup of beer in hand, half-drunk to settle his nerves.
Kevin sat hunched over a fan of cards, fingers a little tight for a good hand. Joey dragged a stool to the table and settled in, close enough for Kevin to reach over and take his beer, not bothering to acknowledge where it came from as he took a solid mouthful.
One of the men across from Kevin, dark haired, with a wide, thin mouth; eyes sharper than Kevin’s and never missing a thing, caught Joey’s attention and grinned.
Kevin mumbled, “Shut up, Tommy,” never lifting focus from his hand.
Tommy said, “You fold?”
Joey glanced at Kevin’s cards and tried not to wince when Kevin shook his head. Tried.
Kevin lost. He stood abruptly as the last of his chips were swept away and said, “C’mon, Joey.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Joey snagged another beer as they wove through the crowd. Someone in the room had started smoking, the smell reminding Joey suddenly of his Pop, only sweeter, which made Kevin swear first under his breath, and then louder, when he found the offender.
“There’s a balcony, asshole,” Kevin said. He shoved the guy towards it, a stocky blond with his hair slicked back and prickly fuzz over his chin. Joey met the guy’s hazy grin before he stumbled to the open fire escape.
“You… really think he can negotiate that?” Joey asked as he watched the guy attempt to heave a leg over the sill.
Kevin waved the question off. “Worst that’ll happen is that he’ll fall off. He’s fine. That’s Jimmy,” he added, then: “My brother.”
Joey craned his neck back to the fire escape, interested now that he knew they were related; curious as to the kind of relationship they had and how much they would have looked similar to each other, what basis of physical resemblance lay beneath the immediate differences.
Joey knew that he looked most like his Nan, with his narrow face and lean body, with pieces from his father in his nose and the shape of his hands. What would a brother had looked like? Shit, or a sister?
“Hey,” Kevin said, and it was only then that Joey realised that he had stopped, the hand holding his beer a little wet, shirt kind of damp and opposite shoulder a minor ache, where someone must have bumped into him.
Kevin grinned. “You zoned out for a second there. Habit?”
Joey rolled his eyes.
Kevin led them out into the hallway and to the stairs, tucked away behind an unlabelled door. The staircase was narrow, concrete and rail of mostly unpainted metal, save for the turns, where patches of taxi-yellow stubbornly held. Their footsteps echoed through the enclosed space, first Kevin’s heavy tread followed by Joey’s, almost in sync but not quite.
Six floors later, they came to a heavy blue door that had a sticker in large, bold print that instructed the door to be kept locked at all times. Kevin didn’t consider the sign as he hitched the handle up and shouldered the door open.
“We on the roof?” Joey said as they stepped out, which, retrospectively, was a question that answered itself considering the condensers and water tanks laid out on the otherwise flat surface.
But Kevin said, “Yeah,” like it didn’t even bother him, before he slung himself into one of the deck chairs that were arranged into a semi-circle towards the street, spaced out and clean enough to suggest frequent use.
Kevin glanced up at Joey then, features half in shadow, lit up only where the street lights could reach. “You gonna take a seat?”
Joey made himself comfortable before he leaned across, chest almost to his knees to account for the hammock of fabric he sat on, to hand the plastic cup of beer to Kevin, who accepted with a nod.
Kevin continued, “Jimmy finished a semester with top grades. He’s good, y’know.”
“Yeah?” Joey said, “Hey, you’re shit at gambling, by the way.”
Kevin took the time to put away a good quarter of the beer and set it down on the ground, settling back on his deck chair with his hands folded on his stomach before he said, “Nah, I’m lucky. I’m a lucky guy. Just waiting for the rest of the universe to catch up to that.”
He tipped his head back and smiled, the same slow one that had thrown Joey through the loop a week ago.
Joey said, maybe too quickly, possibly a little slow. “Is that what you call it?”
“Yeah,” Kevin said. “My dad—“
Joey glanced across to Kevin at the pause. Kevin frowned, brows pulled together before the expression eased and he continued, “He said I was the lucky one,” then a shrug.
The night had long since settled, black sky yawning above them and seemingly void of stars for all the light pollution. The silence didn’t feel uncomfortable, not in the same way Joey tended to find gaps in conversation, pulling at his skin to fill them in with whatever junk that floated through his head. He shifted in his seat, copied Kevin’s position with his hands on his stomach and one foot steadied on the ground.
“Sean’s not here,” Kevin said eventually. He lolled his head back towards Joey. “He’s the baby of the family. Not here tonight ‘cos he’s gotta date with some chick he stole off Tommy.” Kevin rolled his eyes.
“Shit,” Joey said. “That a thing that happens between brothers?”
Kevin shrugged. “It is when you’re Tommy and Sean. Good thing Joannie’s never really been into Sean, ‘cos Jimmy wouldn’t be as forgiving, by that I mean he’d kick Sean’s ass.”
Joey licked his lips. “What about you and Sean then?”
Kevin grinned, lopsided. “Sean’s not into dick.”
And Joey snorted, settled back. “Doesn’t sound like my kinda guy anyway.”