Page 139 of Undefined Terms

Celyn’s shoes on my concrete. Celyn’s pen writing words about my steel. Celyn asking Dave about arches and Dave answering like Dave answers anyone who asks an intelligent question which is, completely, and without noticing anything except the question.

Jay comes down the scaffolding, passes Celyn on the way to the mixer. Doesn’t stop, doesn’t speak, the gap. The same gap as the pub.

Celyn doesn’t notice. Or notices and doesn’t show it. Same thing, with Celyn.

Gaz brings tea, three mugs, one each for him and me and Celyn. The site mugs, the ones with the brown stain that doesn’t wash out and the handle that burns your thumb.

‘Milk, one sugar, yeah?’ Gaz says to Celyn.

‘Cheers. How’d you know?’

‘Ron takes three. Figured one of you had to be reasonable.’

Gaz walks away. Celyn looks at me. The mouth does the thing, not the half-smile, the full one. Rare. The one using both sides.

I drink the tea, Celyn drinks the tea, the site, the noise. The mixer, the generator, someone drilling on the second floor. The noise I’ve worked in for a year and the person I’ve loved for fourteen months or maybe more and the space holding.

Celyn walks the site. I follow. Half a step behind, like someone reading a room. The hard hat’s slightly too big and tips forward when Celyn looks up and Celyn pushes it back with the pen hand.

The south wall. Celyn puts a hand on the brick. Flat, the fingers spread. The way I do it. How I check a surface, how the hand reads what the eye can’t. I’ve never seen Celyn do this.

‘It’s warm,’ Celyn says. To the wall.

‘South-facing. The sun’s been on it since seven.’

‘No, warm like.’ Celyn’s hand stays. The fingers pressing. The face changing, the writing face. The one I know from the bar and the bed and the desk. The face that means the page is being written behind the eyes. ‘Like something’s behind it.’

The wall is warm because I’ve spent a year watching south-facing masonry and the sun does its job every clear day since seven in the morning. It’s not metaphor, it’s physics. But Celyn’s hand stays and the face is doing the writing thing and I realise Celyn’s reading it the same way I read a pour gone wrong, not with the eye. With the skin, the sense memory.

The character in the novel, the man on the threshold, he understands buildings how Celyn understands words. The inside of them, the pulse.

Dean does not talk but he knows. How he looks at the joints, the stress lines, the places where different materials meet and have to say yes to each other. Dave’s the same. They read the site how Celyn reads that wall, not looking for what’s broken. Looking for what’s holding, what’s necessary.

The hand presses. Celyn’s saying it out loud now, the character, the counter, the warmth.

The kitchen in the novel. The warm counter that breathes. The hand that should have pulled away, and didn’t.

‘You’re doing the house thing,’ I say.

The hand still on the wall. Hard hat tipped back.

‘The character in your book. She touches the counter and it’s warm and she doesn’t pull her hand away. That’s what you’re doing. Right now. To my wall.’

The face, the mouth. The full smile, not the half, the one that breaks open.

‘I’ve been telling you about the house for fourteen months,’ Celyn says. ‘You understand it better than my tutor.’

‘Your tutor hasn’t poured concrete.’

‘Exactly. That’s exactly the point.’ The hand comes off the wall. The pen goes to the notebook. Writing. Fast. The green ink on the page. I watch over the shoulder, can’t read the handwriting, never could, the letters leaning into each other like they’re holding on.

Dean comes up the corridor, the grinder off, the visor up, he sees Celyn. Doesn’t blink, nods at me.

‘Dean,’ I say. ‘You remember Celyn.’

Dean puts a hand out. Celyn takes it. The handshake, Dean’s hands are enormous, scarred, the grip that bends steel. He holds Celyn’s hand.

‘The writer,’ Dean says. More than Dean usually gives anyone.