Thanks for the Memories

by Cecelia Ahern

  The mime blinks once and proceeds to walk against an invisible strong wind.

  “Here I am!” a voice calls beyond the crowd.

  There she is! She recognized me!

  Justin shuffles from foot to foot, trying to catch sight of her red coat.

  The crowd turns and parts to reveal Sarah, looking excited by the scene.

  The mime mimicks Justin’s obvious disappointment, plastering a look of despair on his face and hunching his back so that his arms hang low to the ground.

  “Oooooooo,” goes the crowd, and Sarah’s face falls.

  Justin nervously replaces his look of disappointment with a smile. He makes his way through the crowd, greets Sarah quickly, and leads her away from the scene while the crowd claps and drops coins into the mime’s container nearby.

  “Don’t you think that was a bit rude? Maybe you should have given him some change or something,” she says, looking over her shoulder apologetically at the mime, who is covering his face and moving his shoulders up and down violently in a false fit of tears.

  “I think he was a bit rude.” Distracted, Justin continues to look around for the red coat as they make their way to the restaurant where he’s made reservations for lunch, which he now definitely wants to cancel.

  Tell her you feel sick. No. She’s a doctor, she’ll ask too many questions. Tell her you made a mistake and that you have a lecture right now. Tell her, tell her!

  Instead Justin finds himself continuing to walk with Sarah, his mind as active as Mount Saint Helens, his eyes jumping around like an addict needing a fix. When they reach the basement restaurant, they are led to a quiet table in the corner. Justin eyes the door.

  Yell “fire” and run!

  Sarah shuffles her coat off her shoulders to reveal much flesh, and pulls her chair closer to his.

  Such a coincidence he bumped, quite literally, into the woman from the salon again. Though maybe it wasn’t such a big deal; Dublin’s a small town. Since being here, he’s learned that everyone pretty much knows everyone, or at least someone related to somebody that someone else once knew. But the woman—he definitely has to stop calling her that. He should give her a name. Angelina.

  “What are you thinking about?” Sarah leans across the table and gazes at him.

  Or Lucille. “Coffee. I’m thinking about coffee. I’ll have a black coffee, please,” he says to the waitress setting up their table. He looks at her name badge. Jessica. No, his woman wasn’t a Jessica.

  “You’re not eating?” Sarah asks, disappointed and confused.

  “No, I can’t stay as long as I’d hoped. I have to get back to campus earlier than planned.” His leg bounces beneath the table, hitting the surface and rattling the cutlery. The waitress and Sarah eye him peculiarly.

  “Oh, okay, well—” She studies the menu. “I’ll have a chef’s salad and a glass of the house white, please,” she says to the waitress, and then to Justin, “I have to eat or I’ll collapse. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “No problem.” He smiles. Even though you ordered the biggest fucking salad on the menu. How about Susan? Does my woman look like a Susan? My woman? What the hell is wrong with me?

  “We are now turning onto Dawson Street, so named after Joshua Dawson, who also designed Grafton, Anne, and Henry streets. On your right you will see the Mansion House, which is home to the Lord Mayor of Dublin.”

  All horned Viking helmets turn to the right. Video cameras, digital cameras, and camera phones are suspended from the open windows.

  “You think this is what the Vikings did way back when, Dad? Went clickety-click with their cameras at buildings that weren’t even built yet?” I whisper.

  “Oh, quiet,” he says loudly, and the tour operator stops speaking, shocked.

  “Not you.” Dad waves a hand at him. “Her.” He points, and the entire bus looks at me.

  “To your right you will see St. Anne’s Church, which was designed by Isaac Wells in 1707.” Olaf continues to the thirty-strong crew of Vikings aboard. “The interior dates back to the seventeenth century.”

  “Actually the Romanesque facade wasn’t added until 1868, and that was designed by Thomas Newenham Deane,” I whisper to Dad.

  “Oh,” Dad responds to this, eyes widening. “I didn’t know that.”

  My own eyes widen at this random piece of information. “Me neither.”

  Dad chuckles.

  “We are now on Nassau Street, and we will pass Grafton Street on the left in just a moment.”

  Dad starts singing, “Grafton Street’s a wonderland.” Loudly.

  An American woman in front of us turns around, her face beaming. “Oh, do you know that song? My father used to sing it. He was from Ireland. Oh, I would love to hear it again; can you sing it for us?”

  A chorus of “Oh, yes, please do…” surrounds us.

  No stranger to public performance, the man who sings weekly at the Monday Club begins belting out the song, and the entire bus joins in, swaying from side to side. Dad’s voice reaches out beyond the plastic fold-up windows of the DUKW and into the ears of pedestrians and traffic going by.

  I take a mental photograph of Dad sitting beside me, singing with his eyes closed, two horns propped on top of his head.

  Justin watches with growing impatience as Sarah slowly picks at her salad. Her fork playfully pokes at a piece of chicken; the chicken hangs on, falls off, grabs on again, and manages to hang on while she waves the fork around, using it as a sledgehammer to knock pieces of lettuce over to see what’s beneath. Finally she stabs a piece of tomato, and as she lifts the fork to her mouth, the same piece of chicken falls off again. That was the third time she’d done that.

  “Are you sure you’re not hungry, Justin? You seem to be really studying this plate.” She smiles, waving another forkful of food around, sending red onion and cheddar cheese tumbling back to the plate. It’s like one step forward, two steps back every time.

  “Yeah, sure, I wouldn’t mind having some.” He’s already ordered and finished a bowl of soup in the time it took her to have five mouthfuls.

  “You want me to feed it to you?” she flirts, moving the fork in circular motions toward his mouth.

  “Well, I want more than that, for a start.”

  She spears a few other pieces of food.

  “More,” he says, keeping an eye on his watch. The more food he can squeeze into his mouth, the quicker this frustrating experience will be over. He knows that his woman, now called Veronica, is probably long gone by now, but sitting here, watching Sarah burn more calories playing with her food than ingesting it, isn’t going to confirm that for him.

  “Okay, here comes the airplane,” she sings.

  “More.” At least half of it has fallen off again during its “takeoff.”

  “More? How can you possibly fit more on the fork, never mind in your mouth?”

  “Here, I’ll show you.” Justin takes the fork from her and begins stabbing at as much as he can. Chicken, corn, lettuce, beets, onion, tomato, cheese; he manages it all and hands it back to her. “Now, if the lady pilot would like to bring her plane in to land…”

  She giggles. “This is not going to fit in your mouth.”

  “I have a pretty big mouth.”

  She shovels it in, laughing all the while, barely fitting it all into Justin’s mouth. When he’s finally chewed and swallowed it all, he looks at his watch and then again at her plate.

  “Okay, now your turn.” You’re such a shit, Justin.

  “No way.” She laughs.

  “Come on.” He gathers as much food as possible, including the same piece of chicken she’s deserted four times, and “flies” it into her open mouth.

  She laughs while trying to fit it all in. Barely able to breathe, chew, swallow, or smile, she still tries to look pretty. For almost a full minute she’s unable to speak in her attempts to chew in as ladylike a way as possible. Juices and dressing dribble down her chin, and when she finally swallows, her lipstick-
smudged mouth smiles at him to reveal a great big piece of lettuce stuck between her teeth.

  “That was fun.” She smiles.

  Helen. Like Helen of Troy, so beautiful she could start a war.

  “Are you finished? Can I take the plate?” the waitress comes by to ask.

  Sarah begins to answer, “N—” but Justin jumps in.

  “Yes, we are, thank you.” He avoids Sarah’s stare.

  “Actually I’m not quite finished, thank you,” Sarah says sternly. The plate is replaced.

  Justin’s leg bounces beneath the table, his impatience growing. Salma. Sexy Salma. An awkward silence now falls between them.

  “I’m sorry, Salma, I don’t mean to be rude—”

  “Sarah.”

  “What?”

  “My name is Sarah.”

  “I know that. It’s just—”

  “You called me Salma.”

  “Oh. What? Who’s Salma? God. Sorry. I don’t even know a Salma, honestly.”

  Sarah speeds up her eating, obviously dying to get away from him now.

  He says more softly, “It’s just that I have to get back to campus—”

  “Earlier than planned. You said.” She smiles quickly, and her face falls immediately as she looks back down at her plate. She pierces the food with purpose now. Playtime over. Time to eat. Food fills her mouth instead of words.

  Justin cringes inside, knowing his behavior is uncharacteristically rude. Now say it like you mean it, you jerk. He stares at her: beautiful face, great body, smart woman. Dressed smartly in a trouser suit, with long legs and big lips to match. Long elegant fingers, neat French-manicured nails, a smart bag to match her shoes by her feet. Professional, confident, intelligent. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this woman at all. Justin’s own distraction is the problem, the feeling that a part of him is somewhere else. A part of him, in fact, that feels so nearby, he is almost compelled to run out and catch it. The problem is, he doesn’t know what he is trying to catch, or who. In a city of one million people, he can’t expect to walk outside this door and find the same woman standing on the pavement. And is it worth leaving this other beautiful woman sitting with him in this restaurant, just to chase an idea?

  He stops bouncing his leg up and down and settles back into his chair, no longer at the edge of his seat or ready to dive for the door the second she puts down her knife and fork.

  “Sarah…” He sighs, and means it this time when he says, “I’m very sorry.”

  She stops forking food into her mouth and looks up at him, chews quickly, dabs at her lips with a napkin, and swallows. Her face softens. “Okay.” She wipes away the crumbs around her plate, shrugging. “I’m not looking for a marriage here, Justin.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “Lunch is all this is.”

  “I know that.”

  “Or shall we say just coffee, in case mentioning the former sends you running out the door yelling ‘fire’?” She acknowledges his empty cup and continues flicking at imaginary crumbs now.

  He reaches out to grab her hand and stop her fidgeting. “I’m sorry.”

  “Okay,” she repeats.

  The air clears, the tension evaporates, her plate is cleared away.

  “I suppose we should get the check,” she says.

  “Have you always wanted to be a doctor?”

  “Whoa.” She pauses while opening her wallet. “It’s just intense either way with you, isn’t it?” But she’s smiling again.

  “I’m sorry.” Justin shakes his head. “Let’s have a coffee before we leave. Hopefully I’ll have time to stop this from being the worst date you’ve ever been on.”

  “It’s not.” She shakes her head. “But it’s a close second. It was almost the worst, but you pulled it right back there with the doctor question.”

  Justin smiles. “So. Have you?”

  She nods. “Ever since James Goldin operated on me when I was in junior infants. What do you call it, kindergarten? Anyway, I was five years old, and he saved my life.”

  “Wow. That’s young for a serious operation. It must have had a huge effect.”

  “Profound. I was in the yard at lunch break. I fell during a game of hopscotch and hurt my knee. The rest of my friends were discussing amputation, but James Goldin came running over and gave me mouth-to-mouth. Just like that, the pain went away. And that’s when I knew.”

  “That you wanted to be a doctor?”

  “That I wanted to marry James Goldin.”

  Justin smiles. “And did you?”

  “Nah. Became a doctor instead.”

  “You’re good at it.”

  “And you can tell that from a simple needle insertion at a blood donation.” She smiles. “Everything okay in that department, by the way?”

  “My arm’s a little itchy but it’s fine.”

  “Itchy? It shouldn’t be itchy, let me see.”

  He goes to roll up his sleeve and stops. “Could I ask you something?” He squirms again in his chair. “Is there any way that I can find out where my blood went?”

  “Where? As in, which hospital?”

  “Well, yeah, or even better, do you know who it went to?”

  She shakes her head. “The beauty of this is that it’s completely anonymous.”

  “But someone, somewhere, would know, wouldn’t they? With hospital records or even your office records?”

  “Of course. Products in a blood bank are always individually traceable. It’s documented throughout the entire process—donation, testing, separation into components, storage and administration to the recipient—but—”

  “There’s a word I hate.”

  “Unfortunately for you, you can’t know who received your donation.”

  “But you just said that it’s documented.”

  “That information can’t be released. Though all our records are kept in a secure computerized database where your donor details are kept. Under the Data Protection Act, you have the right to access your donor records.”

  “Will those records tell me who received my blood?”

  “Justin, the blood you donated was not transfused directly into someone else’s body exactly as it came from your vein. It was broken up and separated into red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets—”

  “I know, I know.”

  “Why are you so keen to know?”

  He thinks about it for a while, drops a brown sugar cube into his second coffee, and stirs it around. “I’m just interested to know who I helped, if I helped anyone at all, and if I did, how they are. I feel like…no, it sounds stupid, you’ll think I’m insane. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Hey, don’t be silly,” she says soothingly. “I already think you’re insane.”

  “I hope that’s not your medical opinion.”

  “Tell me.” Her piercing blue eyes watch him over the brim of her coffee cup as she sips.

  “This is the first time I’ve said this aloud, so forgive me for speaking while I think.” He sighs. “At first, it was a ridiculous macho ego trip. I wanted to know whose life I saved. Which lucky person I’d sacrificed my blood for.”

  Sarah smiles.

  “But then, over the last few days, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. I feel different. Genuinely different. Like I’ve given something away. Something precious.”

  “It is precious, Justin. We need more donors all the time.”

  “I know, but not—I don’t mean that. I just feel like there’s someone out there walking around with something inside them that I gave them, and now I’m missing something—”

  “Your body replaces the liquid part of your donation within twenty-four hours.”

  “No, I mean, I feel like I’ve given something away, a part of me, and that somebody else has been completed because of that part of me and…my God, this sounds crazy. I just want to know who that person is.”

  “You can’t get your blood back, you know,” Sarah jokes weakly, and they both f
all into deep thought; Sarah looking sadly into her coffee, Justin trying to make sense of his jumbled words.

  “I suppose I should never try to discuss something so illogical with a doctor,” he says.

  “You sound like a lot of people I know, Justin. You’re just the first person I’ve heard blame it on a blood donation.”

  Silence.

  “Well,” Sarah says as she reaches behind her chair to get her coat, “you’re in a rush, so we should really get going now.”

  They make their way down Grafton Street in a not uncomfortable silence that’s occasionally dotted with small talk. They automatically stop walking at the Molly Malone statue, across the road from Trinity College.

  “You’re late for your class.”

  “No, I’ve got a little while before I—” He looks at his watch and then remembers his earlier excuse. He feels his face redden. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” she repeats.

  “I feel like this whole lunch date has been me saying sorry, and you saying that it’s okay.”

  “It really is okay.” She laughs.

  “And I really am—”

  “Stop!” She holds her hand to hush him. “Enough.”

  “I really had a lovely time,” he says awkwardly. “Should we…you know, I’m feeling really uncomfortable right now with her watching us.”

  They look to their right where Molly stares down at them with her bronze eyes.

  Sarah laughs. “You know, maybe we could make arrangements to—”

  “Roooooaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrr!!”

  Justin almost leaps up from where he’s standing, startled by the intense screaming coming from the bus stopped at the traffic light beside them. Sarah yelps with fright, and her hand flies to her chest. Beside them more than a dozen men, women, and children, all wearing Viking helmets, are waving their fists in the air and roaring at passersby. Sarah and the dozens of others on the pavement start laughing, some of them even roaring.

  Justin, whose breath has caught in his throat, is silent. He can’t take his eyes off the woman on the bus laughing uproariously with an old man next to her. Even with a helmet on her head, long blond plaits flowing on each side, he knows it’s her.