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It’s funny that James and I turned out to be
such great friends, considering that for the first
two weeks of our friendship he thought I was
someone else entirely.
[5] I remember our first meeting like it’s a scene
from a movie about someone else. It was a
Thursday ........ November, and I was standing
behind the counter ........ O’Connor Books. This
was 2009. It was my final year ........
[10] university, and there were twenty-nine days
until Christmas. Our manager, Ben, was
already worried that it would be a
disappointing season, and was always walking
around saying things about “the industry”. He
[15] talked about the book industry as if it were a
dragon that was chained in the basement, and
would tear us limb from limb at any moment.
He spoke about that year’s spate of stocking
filler books – Dawn French and Julie Walters
[20] had competing memoirs out, I believe – as if
they were charred corpses that we were flinging
into the dragon’s throat to keep it sated.
“This will keep the industry going”, Ben said,
with almost touching sincerity. He had more
[25] faith ........ the memories of character
actresses than I imagine either Julie Walters or
Dawn French had when writing them down. I
lifted another stack out of the stockroom, the
book tower starting at my waist and sitting
[30] under my chin.
James Devlin had started as a Christmas temp
the Thursday before, which I had taken as time
off so I could finish my end-of-year essays for
college. James had spent his first shift with
[35] Sabrina. Later, he would say that he was so
inundated with new faces and names on his
first shift that they were a blur, and when I said
that was nonsense, he threw his hands up and
said straight women all looked the same to him.
[40] The first shift with Sabrina must have been fun
– puzzling, considering how little craic Sabrina
was generally understood to be – because
when James opened the wooden flap to the
counter area, he was full of conspiracy.
[45] “Someone here has scabies”, he said, “and
they left the lotion in the jacks”.
It feels strange now, setting that first
conversation down like this, because it does
nothing to communicate how James was. How
[50] utterly charming this opener was to me.
“Someone here has scabies.” He said it like he
was Poirot investigating a country house
blighted by murder. Like someone who saw the
inherent prejudices of our polite society and
[55] was prepared to unveil it. The second part of
the sentence was a whole different thing: “and
they left the lotion in the jacks.” He was from
Cork county, Fermoy to be exact, which was
strictly country to me. But he had grown up in
[60] the UK – all over it, I would later learn – and
so his voice had a peculiar quality that was
hard to place. I was born in Douglas, a
suburban little village that was two miles south
of the city centre, and I was still living there.
Adaptado de: O’DONOGHUE, C. The Rachel Incident. New York: Knopf Publishing Group, 2023. p. 10-11.
Assinale a alternativa que preenche adequadamente as lacunas das linhas 07, 08, 09 e 25, nesta ordem.