“It’s in the computer,” I say, in what I think is a light-hearted tone, and then I tap my left temple, but the two need to be done together so I try again.
“It’s in the computer.”
I’m so happy about how my Penelope meeting went that I consider burning down the house with me in it, so good things can’t unravel. My legs are too excited to sit down and the day hasn’t yet been emptied of light, so I decide to visit my thin places—places in which non-humans might live, potential gateways to the world I came from. My parents used force to try and shunt me back to this Otherworld; I will use willing.
After the Phibsborough crossroads, I walk down the steps into Broadstone Park. A sign tells users not to drink alcohol or cycle and to keep dogs on leashes; in this part of the park alone, people are disobeying all of these rules. At the end of the park, I close my eyes and pass through a black door in a wall into Blessington Basin. Doors in outdoor walls remind me of the magic door of a red-haired puppet in a children’s television programme that I used to watch as a child. No magic world opens for me now. I emerge facing the basin and walk to a bench to sit for a while and watch the birds. I like pigeons; I like their greed and their laziness and their determination to avoid flying if at all possible. A sign says: DON’T FEED THE PIGEONS, which seems unfair. I don’t understand how people are supposed to feed the swans and ducks without feeding the pigeons. I watch a thin pigeon eating a chunk of bread. A fat pigeon comes along and pecks him until he drops the bread. I wave my arms to shoo away the fat pigeon, but both fly off and I’m left with a half-pecked chunk of bread. When a woman in a fluorescent yellow vest passes, I stop her.
“What’s your policy on bird bullying?”
She looks at me like I’m Christmas in July.
“Sorry, what’s that?”
“I’m just wondering how you deal with the issue of big pigeons bullying smaller ones.”
The woman checks her walkie-talkie.
“I’ll have to get back to you on that, excuse me.”
And before I can ask about the possibility of kitting out Thin Pigeon with a helmet and wing pads, she quickly walks away. The gate leading onto Blessington Street isn’t as good as a door in a wall, but I make a wish as I pass through, just in case. I walk straight down North Frederick Street and stop by the Gate Theatre, in front of a small grey metal box that could be a small hut (or hutlet) for elves. It’s rectangular, with a slanted metal roof and two metal doors, the perfect size for a shin-high elf couple. I picture rocking chairs on either side of a stove, and a spiral staircase leading to a four-poster bed covered with a patchwork quilt. I stop and crouch down on my hunkers, pretending to fix my shoe and peek in, but I don’t look too closely in case I see wires and circuit boards and no elves. My elves wear tracksuits and play Scrabble when they’re tired, or Twister when they’re full of energy. I whisper goodbye, straighten up and head south to D’Olier Street. I cross at the lights, follow the curve of the college around to College Green and stop outside an ivy-covered house at the edge of the college, facing the hotel that used to be a bank. I imagine a kind of everyday Santa Claus and his wife living in this house, plotting ways to rid the world of its problems. The ground floor is a control room, with lots of maps and gadgets and wires and devices all connected to enormous screens. Everyday Santa and Everyday Mrs. Claus wear headsets and hold remote controls and joysticks to give the superheroes the coordinates of their missions: “Delta Spiderman, bike thief on the quays, Roger that” or “Oscar Superman, girl weeping in front of Central Bank, bring tissues, stat.”
I leave before I catch any detail that would sully my imaginings, and walk up Grafton Street, turning right onto South King Street and into Zara. I take the escalator up to the first floor and walk to the left, to the opposite wall. I pick up a shirt from the rail and drop it like a hot mistake. Then I kneel down to pick it up and catch sight of the small door in the wall. I saw a shop assistant step out of that door some years ago, and I’ve kept it on my list of thin places ever since. Inside that door I picture a kind of candy-laden paradise, a combination of the Hansel and Gretel house made of sweets, the mountain the Pied Piper led the children into and the chocolate factory that Charlie visits. I put the shirt back on the rail and leave before I can be disenchanted by a glimpse of a non-chocolate reality.
I head west along St. Stephen’s Green and down Kildare Street, passing Leinster House and a small band of protesters outside carrying posters of foetuses or foxes. A man wearing a cycle helmet walks up and down holding a small black-and-white sign on a stick, a paper lollipop that says “Close Sellafield.”
I go into the library, leave my bag and coat in the locker, and climb the stairs to the reading room with my pencil and notebook. At the bottom of every recessed bookshelf lining the room is a small wooden door coated in mesh. I pretend to look at a Welsh dictionary and bend down and peek through the mesh. Behind these doors I picture a maze of tunnels that house living examples of creatures believed to be extinct. There’s a dodo, of course, and an auk and an Irish elk, along with others I have written in my notebook: “Pygmy Mammoth, Stilt-legged Llama, Shrub-Ox, Pocket Gophers, Dwarf Elephant, Cave Bear, Spectacled Cormorant, Heath Hen, Golden Toad, Cebu Warty Pig, Caspian Tiger, Gastric Brooding Frog, Sharp-Snouted Day Frog, Pig-Footed Bandicoot, Toolache Wallaby, Laughing Owl, Narrow-Bodied Skink, Big-Eared Hopping Mouse, Indefatigable Galapagos Mouse, Chadwick Beach Cotton Mouse, Christmas Island Pipistrelle, Scimitar-Toothed Cat, Giant Aye-Aye, Quagga.”
They have duped the human race into believing they’re extinct, so that they can live un-pestered by zoos and breeding programmes, animal versions of death-faking tricksters.
I sit down and open my notebook on a fresh page. I read somewhere that the words “month,” “silver” and “purple” cannot be rhymed with. I stare hard at my silver pencil and try to come up with rhymes, but I can only invent words:
Pilver: To quietly steal from one’s wealthy hostess.
Bilver: A dry retch at the end of a vomiting bout.
I try “month.” The problem with “month” is that I pronounce it “munth,” so my definitions are:
Bunth: A collective noun for a group of flags.
Thunth: The noise a jaw makes on contact with the bottom step of the stairs.
They don’t quite reach the essence of the thing, so I have a go at “purple”:
Gurple: The sound of a baby post-feed when it’s full of wind and joy.
Vurple: The chief of a fox clan with jaunty taste in clothes.
I could keep inventing words, but that is not my place. I stare at the backs of the other library users. They seem to know what they’re doing and are getting on with doing it, instead of making up words that will never be used. I stare up at the domed ceiling. The coloured ceiling panels run from white through peppermint to old-library green, like a swatch of paint-colour charts.
When my stomach rumbles, I gather my belongings and head downstairs to the café. I sit at the table nearest to the cash register, from where I can see the inner workings of the café. I see the waitresses spill milk when they pour it into the coffee machine, and I see their faces get red and tense when lines of lunchers form, demanding all manner of breads I have never heard of. Where do they hear about such breads, and why does it matter so much? Bread is beige or white fluff that will be swallowed in as much time as it takes them to complain. I like seeing the mismatched delph scattered about the perfectly matched Tupperware tubs of dry foodstuffs: a tinge of disorder in an ordered system. I don’t want to seem nosy so I act as if I’m staring thoughtfully into the middle distance, then I scribble some words in my notebook. But the words I write are just “mischief mischief mischief,” over and over again; “mischief” should always be spelt with a lower case “m”—it seems more mischievous than its sensible big sister, upper case “M.” And “mumps” should never be capitalised, but “Measles,” its spottier cousin, should. “Rubella” works either way. We should be allowed to choose when to use lower and upper case letters; having to use