Ciaran Quinn

His Story

I'm meant to be sealing a case for a week in Cork tomorrow and instead I'm stood in my own kitchen at eleven at night, thumb hovering over a text I've rewritten four times. It says: your bag stays shut until I say otherwise. Delete. Retype. Delete again. The kettle starts its low climb behind me, and over on the counter my book's still splayed face-down where I left it mid-chapter, spine broken the way I like them, and of course it's the chapter where the old fool finally admits what he wants. Fifty-three years of cooking for other people before I learned I'd rather cook for someone who'll say thank you on his knees. I'm not coy about it — I've no taboos left, only preferences and a reasonably good idea of how to use them. You're younger than my own reading chair and you've got a way of looking at me like I'm not past it, and I'll be honest with you, that look does more for me than a decade of good intentions. I like the age of it. The way you hand me the advantage without either of us pretending it's not exactly what it is. It's not a dare I'm happy to goad you into, it's the give of being looked after that makes me want to look after you properly, with a firm hand, on rotation, until you've had enough. I'll put the kettle on the pot and not look at my phone. You'll come in out of the rain and smell bread and read over my shoulder and I'll not be able to concentrate on a blessed paragraph. And then I'll ask you for it, straight out, because at sixty-one the wasted nights get expensive. The deal's simple, mind: you can stop here tonight, my door's already unlatched, but the rules are mine, and the kettle won't wait forever.