The bitter ill-boding eyes were back. Not that it was entirely a surprise. He’d been anticipating something of the sort for almost half of his life and it was written somewhere that it had to happen at some point, but even so, when the thing finally comes to be there’s no way of avoiding a certain sense of wonder. It was the eyes, the ever-present familiar eyes, the eyes and all the variants of comeuppance that came attached. So the imbecile had found the time to incubate a son. He’d stopped keeping count of the years, but there you go, there’s always some sort of progeny that fails to be eradicated and that festers and haunts. Here we are then, face to face, after such a delayed journey to attain your… What will you call it? Your duty, your atonement, your curse? Oh well, what an ordinary culmination this will be.

 

Not doing great, is he? She sighs and takes her time to gauge and dissect the banal words that make up his question. Better days he’d most certainly had. Most of the time now I can’t even tell who I am anymore, not today for sure. Her face has to turn to the other half of the square where it inspects absentmindedly the Carta de Logu Eleanor is holding. She never made the effort to warm up to Oristano, this achromatic run-of-the-mill place, just another parochial city to be moaned about. But the square she likes. And to the square she drives the twenty-minute distance every day. It’s not that she’s that interested in the statue, it’s that she simply loathes when people notice her tears are ripe to well up, set on clouding her eyes, her judgement, her. To Eleanor: Some days it’s just like he’s totally exiled from any world I understand. What a hellish bottomless pit this nightmare has turned into.

 

She has put on some weight, much sparser make-up these days, dimmer flashes of exuberance, the defiant flare virtually gone. Almost fifteen years had gone by. First impressions didn’t really lie, as thick and shallow as they come. He abhorred the sleazy gold digger from the day the dimwit ferreted her out from sluttyland, especially because he knew that it wasn’t in his power to prevent him going ahead with the idiotic farce. It was rather agonizing to revive the picture of his old man’s sardonic smirk the accursed day he dared to query his inane intent to bequeath her yet another obscene chunk of money. You’ve got to admit that she always performed her role to a fault, and that, my boy, on its own, makes her emoluments fully and utterly deserved, would you not agree? Regrettably, the same assertion could not be stated concerning your good self. Gratifying words. The last they exchanged for a lengthy period. Fifteen years, at the end of which she winds up growing fond of sugar daddy and still sticks around.

 

She senses that his hand on hers has overdone its stay and slots hers into her bag after some elusive cigarettes that don’t appear to be in a desperate rush to be found. When the odour of the irksome silence that looms for a few seconds too many gets into her nose she cuts through it with the first question that pops into her mind. How’s Claudia? He watches her taking a tense drag. Short nails undone, a light touch of restrained lipstick. Things do change. How is Claudia? Short answer – no-one knows. He feels impotent and her mother, on the rare occasions she bothers to emerge from her snorting expeditions, doesn’t give a monkey’s. Claudia’s far beyond the just-another-phase stage, third school in, what?, less than two years? And counting, by the looks of it. Gave up on keeping her away from the wrong crowd – she’s the wrong crowd.

 

His daughter makes for uncomfortable thoughts. The only real progress he positively made on the subject of her over the last months was on his ability to keep her out of his mind. Making use of that recently honed technique he swiftly slips her out of his concerns. When he now leans on a lamp post allowing his thoughts to settle lethargically on his father he’s fully childless once again. And that guy who’s speaking with him, do you know him at all? She didn’t, no.