The guards are less visible now, replaced by an algorithm of motion sensors and silent pings that make me feel less like a prisoner and more like a specimen under glass.
I am in a dressing gown and nothing else.
I like the way it clings, the way it invites accidental glimpses.
I tell myself this is strategic, that even here, with no one to see, it pays to cultivate the illusion of vulnerability.
The book I'm reading is a history of Dublin's ports, written in the kind of bureaucratic English that can render even mutiny or smuggling as a matter of gentle correction.
The charts are beautiful—lines and dots and flourishes, acity reduced to tributaries and competing currents.
I run my finger along the Liffey and imagine tracing it in reverse, from the mouth of the sea back to the river's source, and then further, to wherever the first cut was made in the land and someone decided it was a harbor.
I do not hear the door open.
I do not hear anything at all, and so when I glance up from the page, Ruairí is already there, standing in the darkness just beyond the lamp's reach.
His hair is damp, and he has changed into a shirt I have never seen before, charcoal linen with the sleeves rolled to the elbow, the collar a little too sharp for comfort.
He carries no weapon, but his body is a weapon, the movement of his shoulders and the calculation of his stance communicating that this is not a social call.
He watches me for a long moment before speaking, and in that interval I pretend not to see him.
I let my finger hover above a notation on the map, a red X at the mouth of the Dodder, and trace a circle around it with my nail.
When he finally speaks, the sound is so low I feel it before I hear it.
"You've lasted longer than I expected."
I do not look up, but I close the book and let it rest in my lap.
"You say that as if it's an achievement."
He steps forward, slowly, as if approaching a creature that might spook.
He comes close enough for me to smell the echo of whiskey on his breath, the ghost of tobacco in his hair, and something else, metallic and clean, as if he has just come from a fight or a confession.
He crouches next to the armchair, so our faces are at the same level.
The lamp throws both our shadows up the wall in grotesque proportion.
He glances at the map, then at my hands, then at my mouth.
"You're avoiding me," he says, not a question.
"I'm keeping myself busy," I reply.
He grins, and it is not an expression of happiness so much as a flex of muscle.
He leans in so the book is between us, his hand resting on the open page.
His skin is hot, the pulse in his wrist visible even in the low light.
"Show me," he says.
I turn the book, so the map faces him.
My finger finds the port schedule for the year my father was born, the annotation in blue ink that marks the transition from coal to oil.
