by Lucy Carey
* * *
Mariana watched the girl as long as she could as she sped away up the cobblestone street outside, weaving through the throng of pedestrians in her way.
David came to stand by her shoulder.
“What was all that about?”
Mariana shook her head. “I really don’t know.” But she would like to, she thought as she stared out the window. There was so much about that girl she wanted to know.
Chapter Three
“What’s up, Nerdly?”
Susie slid in beside her best friend Paul as quietly as she could. The lecture hall was packed but quiet and she was aware of the sound of her every movement as she eased herself in past the other students in his row. She thought she heard one of them tut at her and she fought the urge to shake the rain from her sodden clothes at him.
“Why are you late? You’re never late.”
Susie wiggled out of her jacket and sat down.
“Take a wild guess.”
Paul snorted and the tutter shushed him. He curled his lip in the tutter’s direction but dropped his voice to a whisper.
“Those arseholes again? Ah, Suze, we’ll have to do something about that. Preferably something involving slow torture. I’m thinking Ace of Base on a loop.”
“I vote for something more violent... Especially because”—Susie shimmied out of her coat—“I can never go back to that little coffee shop up the road again. Not after I took a little nap there this morning.”
“What do you mean ‘a little nap’?”
“I mean, I conked it. Passed out. I’m not sure but I may have dribbled all down their chair, I was so out cold.” She grimaced, remembering the waitress’s worried and slightly bewildered expression. “Jesus, Paul, I’m mortified.”
Paul gave her shoulder a little squeeze, then yanked his hand back.
“That’s crap and all—it is, Suze. But I’ll hug you when you’re less soggy.”
At lunch (and after a thorough blast under the hand drier), Paul’s sympathy for Susie was more forthcoming. Too pissed off to join the mile-long queue, Susie forewent eating and sat and watched Paul shovel food into his mouth. She hadn’t much time for lunch anyway—she was supposed to be using this time to work on her assignments.
The college canteen was buzzing with students, the loud cackles of a nearby group lacerating Susie’s tired brain like a rusty blade. She rested her head on the table, cushioning her head with her arms to block out the noise.
“Do you want me to go up and deal with them, Susie?” Paul asked. He stabbed a tomato violently with his fork for emphasis.
She weighed up the offer for longer than she otherwise might, picturing the look of terror on her housemates’ faces as Paul brought his brand of rugby-player justice to them. She shoved down the feeling of glee that the thought elicited and forced herself to use her better judgement.
She propped herself up on her elbow and sighed. “There’s probably no point really. I doubt it would do much good. They’re too thick-skulled to be capable of understanding why they’re arseholes.”
“Well, if you ever change your mind...” Paul’s voice trailed off and with it went his gaze. Susie sat up straighter and followed his line of sight. It led to a girl from their class, a petite, slim blonde with a wide smile named Liz. Who else would he be looking at? Susie thought.
“Have you spoken to her since?” Susie asked and Paul pretended to look around the room.
“To who?”
Susie grinned.
“To who? How about to the girl you’ve been staring at, smooth stuff?”
Paul shook his head and jutted out his lip innocently.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Susie crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. “Oh really? No idea, huh?”
She moved her head to look directly at him even though he tried to avoid her eyes. He looked at the ceiling, then at his plate and then at his fingernails.
If she could catch his eyes, Susie knew he would crumble instantly—and Paul knew it too. Paul had been Susie’s best friend from the first week of college, since they had discovered a mutual appreciation for beautiful women. Both had been eyeballing a tall, leggy brunette moving across the campus, and had rumbled the other watching her go. Laughing about their woeful attempt at subtlety had sealed it. The brunette had kept on walking, never to be seen again, but from that day, they had spent most of their time together. From even the beginning of their friendship, Susie could read him like a book.
“I don’t know why you don’t just go and talk to her. She obviously liked you enough to be with you on the class night out.”
Paul stopped looking around and focused on Susie.
“Do you really think so? I mean, what if she was drunk and regrets it now? I’ll make an arse out of myself if she doesn’t want me to talk to her.”
Susie smiled. Despite being a hulk of a guy, almost as wide as he was tall, and outwardly loud and cocky, Paul was fiercely self-conscious.
He rubbed his black-stubbled jaw.
“I don’t know, Susie.” He shook his head again. “I’ll leave it till another time.”
She stood and leaned over the table. “I’m sorry about this,” she said quietly.
A look of alarm flashed across Paul’s face. “Susie, I’ll—”
“Liz!” she yelled, waving to her classmate. Liz waved back and started towards them. Paul shot Susie a murderous look, masking it as Liz came to the table.
“Hi, Susie,” she said. She smiled at Paul.
Susie sat back down and pushed the seat beside Paul out with her foot.
“I need a favour,” she told Liz as the other girl took a seat. “I was a bit late for college and then when I got to class, me and Paul got stuck into this massive conversation, so I missed out on some of the notes from this morning. You wouldn’t mind if I borrowed yours? Or if Paul did?”
“Oh yeah, of course,” Liz said. “I’ll get them for you now.”
Liz pulled her rucksack up onto her lap and rustled through pages of a notebook until she came to the relevant pages. “Do you want to write them down now?”
Susie picked up the open notebook from Liz’s hands.
“You’re an absolute angel!” she said, then frowned in what she hoped was a natural way. “There’s quite a lot here. Would you mind if I took these for a little while to photocopy them?”
Liz nodded. “Sure thing. Give them back to me tomorrow or whenever you’re ready. I’ll just need them back in plenty of time to work on the assignment.”
Susie adopted a serious expression, but struggled to keep it from cracking as Paul squirmed in his seat. If he was mad at her now, he’d be furious in a minute.
“Absolutely, Liz,” she said enthusiastically. “I don’t want to keep you late. Tell you what, I will go and photocopy these right now. I might not be here later so I might give them to Paul to give back to you.”
Paul glared at her but consciously softened his expression when Liz turned to face him.
“You sure you don’t mind, Paul?” Liz asked him.
“Not at all,” he said a little too brightly, his smile frozen in place.
“Great, thanks, Liz.” Susie got up from her seat a final time. “I’ll see you both later.”
Liz gave her a small wave and Susie thanked her again. She looked beyond Liz and winked at Paul, ignoring the death threats he was mouthing as she left.
* * *
Mariana sat outside the Central Bank on her lunch break, sipping a black coffee. The rain had abated and, though cold, the day had turned into one of those crisp, bright autumn days she had come to love so much about Ireland.
She adored this place during the day. At night the area the bank backed onto, the popular locale called Temple Bar, played host to drunken students and tourists, its many pubs overflowing with revellers chasing the “craic”. Live and recorded music drowned out normal conversation and Mariana had found it too pulsing and loud on the few
occasions she had been persuaded there on a night out.
During the day, however, before the pub scene woke up for the night, it was among her favourite spots in the city. She came here most lunchtimes to watch the world go by, to shelter under the large, gold, leafy globe outside the bank—the “Crann an Óir”, or the “Golden Tree” in English. Here, looking out at Dame Street, she could watch the world go by, lost in her own thoughts. Buses rumbled by every few minutes, pulling up to spill passengers into Temple Bar. She watched the faces of those who got off intently, searchingly. People were at their most candid when they were unaware of any eyes on them and here she traced the entire spectrum of human emotions—the joys, the sorrows, the losses, the angers.
It had occurred to her previously that what she was searching for was a face flashing with emotion that mirrored her own. But today, a part of her admitted, she was searching for something else: a glint of the red hair that had been playing on her mind since this morning. Something in the face that had been framed by those wild, rain-soaked curls had spoken to her. The girl’s hazel eyes, when they first opened to Mariana shaking her awake, had—for just the briefest moment—held a hint of that something Mariana recognised but could not name.
She had spent a long time on her own in Dublin—much too long. Sure, there are had been one-night stands and brief relationships, but even at those times she felt alone. She had friends and colleagues, people she liked, but no one she could abandon herself to, to completely be herself with.
She watched another crowd disembark from a bus heading south. She was surprised how disappointed she was not to see the girl. She chuckled wryly to herself, at the ridiculousness of the expectation that her wishing would manifest the girl, and tipped a cigarette out of its box in her pocket.
She had just taken her first inhale when she heard the wheels of a skateboard slow to a stop beside her. A teenage boy with blue hair and several piercings peered down at her. She smiled curiously at the interruption.
“Do you speak English?” he said, the question reverberating around the open space.
Mariana’s smile dimmed a little. Did she really look so noticeably different that people presumed she wasn’t local? “Yes,” she said shortly.
“Cool,” the teenager answered. “Can I have a cigarette?”
She wordlessly pulled another cigarette from the box and handed it to him.
“Cheers,” he said before skating off.
Mariana sat for another few minutes, desperately chasing the comfort of her favourite spot. Her frustration at the intrusion, at the boy’s assumption that because she was dark-skinned that she couldn’t speak English, won out. She squashed the remains of her lit cigarette out with her foot and got up to walk back to work.
* * *
Susie got home at about four o’clock that day. She figured it would be early enough that her housemates wouldn’t have started their partying yet, so she could get a few hours’ shuteye before they kicked off their nonsense again.
Still, as she pushed the front door open, the house seemed unusually quiet—suspiciously quiet, she thought. There was always at least one housemate here, watching TV or playing computer games. She picked her way through the hall, around the junk that cluttered the passage—a bike, a stack of newspapers (she had no clue who was collecting them or for what), cardboard boxes—and peered into the sitting room. No one there.
“Hello?” she hollered up the stairs and again a little louder when she heard no reply. Nothing.
The excitement rose from her toes, sweeping up her knees and into her stomach. She was finally alone in the house after months of constant noise. She almost skipped into the kitchen to turn on the kettle.
The whole house to herself with nobody yelling or blaring music or talking about meaningless crap outside her door—heaven.
She popped a teabag in a mug and poured in some hot water and some milk, then used the remaining contents of the kettle to fill up a hot water bottle.
Milky tea in hand and hot water bottle tucked under her arm, she headed up to bed and snuggled under the covers. The tea remained untouched on her bedside locker; she fell straight asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.
The thump-thump-thump of a drum and bass dance song jolted Susie from her deep sleep and she pulled herself up in bed. A glance at her watch told her it was eight o’clock at night.
Not even four hours’ sleep, she thought bitterly. They couldn’t even fucking let me have four hours’ sleep.
The tears came unexpectedly but heavily, plopping down to her cheeks and off her chin against her will. She didn’t wipe them away—she couldn’t even muster the energy or the will to bring her hand to her face.
She was tired, so very tired. It ached throughout her body, weighing like a cinder block on her chest. And the worst of it was that she was trapped: too far from home to move back there and still too poor to pay her way out. She was trapped and hopeless—utterly unable to do anything about it.
She reached down to her bag to take out her phone to ring someone—anyone—to vent her frustrations. She patted the pockets of her bag; finding nothing, she began to root through the bag, slowly first and then with more agitation. It wasn’t there. She checked her trousers and the floor, the realisation slowly dawning on her.
She hadn’t seen it all day, at least not since this morning. At least not since she’d taken it out to check the time...in the Coffee Bean.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. She momentarily considered just abandoning the phone before reminding herself that she couldn’t afford to replace it right now. She’d just have to bite the bullet, go back…and hope the woman she humiliated herself in front of wouldn’t be there—or that at least she wouldn’t remember her snoring.
Because life can be kind sometimes, right?
Chapter Four
The next day was a better day for Mariana. The rain, which had picked up again all yesterday afternoon and continued to lash down last night, had cleared completely, the morning dawning to a bright, clear day. The sun was streaming through the window as she worked now, bathing the counter where she served in light. It was one of those days where her work had taken on a comfortable and comforting rhythm; she swished around David as he moved alongside her; twirled to upend cups to fill with coffee.
“And what will it be for you, madam?” she trilled to a middle-aged, understatedly elegant woman standing in line.
A flutter of apprehension flitted through Mariana’s stomach as she took in the woman’s appearance. Though expensively clad and expertly made up, a hint of derision tugged at her glossy, coral-slicked lips.
“I want a single shot of espresso and the rest of the cup filled with hot water.” Her lip twitched again. “To go.”
Mariana smiled.
“So you want an Americano,” she said. “No problem.”
She turned to ready a cardboard cup for the drink but was interrupted by an exaggerated sigh.
“No, sorry,” she said, though Mariana surmised from the tone that she really wasn’t sorry at all. Mariana turned back to her. “What I want—” she slowed her voice to a crawl, “—is one single shot of espresso, followed by hot water to the brim of the cup.”
Mariana smiled again at the woman, a smile wearing a little thinner on her lips.
“Yes, miss, I know. What you have asked for is an Americano. One shot of espresso and the rest hot water. I will get that for you.”
The woman huffed, a tiny snort escaping her nostrils.
“For God’s sake, no. I don’t want an Americano. I want what I have asked you for.”
Mariana chewed at the inside of her lip, as if trapping the retort that threatened to escape. If she agreed with the woman, it would be easier. On the other hand, her temper wouldn’t allow her to give the smug idiot the satisfaction of thinking she was right. She was about to correct the woman, once more, as calmly as she could, when she became aware of another customer standing behind the troublesome one. The sight of the red-haired
girl struck her momentarily dumb, the humiliation of being chastised in front of her paralysing her.
The customer in front of her sighed again and began to look around and past Mariana impatiently.
“Is there anyone here who speaks English?” she asked in the same slow, patronising tone. “Someone who might understand what I’m looking for?”
A flush of hot irritation and embarrassment spread across Mariana’s neck and cheeks as she looked from the customer to the red-haired girl, who was now standing with her mouth agape at the spectacle. She had just turned to call for David when she heard the girl speak up.
