A Work in Progress

by L. T. Smith

  Gill’s eyes squinted as if she was reading me. “Did you bang your head?”

  I shrugged again.

  She came close, dipped her head, and stared straight into my eyes. “Your pupils seem okay. Small.”

  “Small?”

  “Or maybe it’s the light in here.” She tilted my head back and then harrumphed. “I have no clue what I’m looking for.”

  That comment resonated within me. Did I have a clue what I was looking for? Or was I being too melodramatic? And I wasn’t referring to my pupils.

  I pulled back from her and turned to look at my reflection in the mirror. Apart from my lipstick needing to be reapplied, everything else seemed to be in order. I don’t know what I was expecting to see, but I looked pretty much the same as I had when I’d left the house. I leaned closer to the mirror, my attention on my eyes. The pupils appeared normal, the green of the irises dark, unlike Virgina’s, the woman I couldn’t get out of my mind.

  “You okay? Apart from your tumble, of course.”

  My eyes met hers. She was standing close to me but had sounded farther away. I managed a nod.

  Gill was observing me acutely, her head tilted, her lips parted as if she was about to speak.

  I grabbed my handbag and started to fumble and fish about for my lipstick, the clatter of the contents sounding a little too loud in the silence of the restroom, where there seemed to be an air of expectation.

  Grabbing the cylindrical case, I slipped off the lid, twisted the base until the tip of the Auburn Whisper lipstick was in place, and then swiftly applied the colour. I pressed my lips together, tracing the contours with my pinky finger in case I’d smudged any onto skin. The taste of lipstick always gave me a slight buzz; though it was not usually my own that was the cause. And I didn’t usually trace my lips so slowly, so intently. Maybe my fixation was because I wasn’t visualizing my own lips whilst I was now performing this typically mundane duty. That realisation stopped me in midstroke as I stared at my mouth.

  “Are you sure you’re okay, Brynn? You’re freaking me out.”

  I’d forgotten she was there. Fuck. How could I have forgotten that Gillian Parker was behind me? “I...well...I was just wondering if this shade suits me, or...” The excuse sounded lame, even to my own ears, but Gill allowed it.

  “Looks good. Especially with your colouring.” She crossed her arms and rested her back against the counter where I was standing. “Why didn’t you answer your phone? Or call me back? I could’ve come and helped you.”

  “I was too busy trying not to be even more of an idiot than I actually was. I mean, sprawled out on the street and answering my cell instead of getting up? I was embarrassed enough.”

  Why I didn’t add that someone had helped me up, taken care of me, checked me over with the most beautiful eyes I’d ever seen. I didn’t know why I didn’t just say “No worries, Gill. This woman who was passing by helped me. She was pretty fit, too. And I got her number!” whilst holding my hand in the air, expecting a high five for my revelation.

  But I didn’t. I turned the focus back onto Gill. “Why were you calling me anyway? It wasn’t as if I was late. Not to start with, at any rate.”

  It was at that point that Gill proceeded to check the other cubicles in the restroom, tentatively moving each door back as if she was expecting a masked assailant to fly out and attack the both of us.

  I wanted to smirk, but I was also intrigued. “What’s going on, Gill? You’re acting weirder than I usually do, and it’s unnerving me.”

  Gill moved towards me and slipped her hand around my wrist. A slight pull and I found myself beside her.

  “Remember that woman I told you about?”

  My face answered her question.

  “You must do! The one I think Tom fancies!”

  This time I added a grunt of negation to my blank expression.

  “The bloody trainee doctor?”

  Something was emerging from the murk in my subconscious, but it was still blurry.

  “Gina Donaldson.”

  Still nothing. Not a spark.

  “Forget it.”

  “When did you...?”

  Gill sighed, her eyes flicking as if they were tutting in place of her mouth. “Are you sure you didn’t bang your head?”

  I frowned, lifted my hand to my head and touched it. “It feels fine. Why?”

  Gill stepped forwards, her face close to mine. “Because the reason I asked you to come here tonight is because I wanted your take on what is going on between those two. Remember? I said you could always smell a rat.”

  Fuck yes. And I also remembered that I had made up half of what I had told her about her exes just so I could have a chance with her, someone who, deep down, I knew I’d never have a chance with.

  “Fuck! How could I have forgotten that?” I rubbed the back of my head vigorously, as if the action would shake my memory loose. Instead it just charged my hair with electricity and made strands of it begin to lift at odd angles. But then I thought of Virgina, and suddenly I didn’t care that my hair was acting with more spark than I was. I also couldn’t help the smile spreading across my lips.

  “Brynn?”

  The way Gill said my name showed how close she was to losing her temper with me.

  “So, is she here? The trainee.” Not the most enlightened question, but at least I was on the same thought track as Gill for the first time this evening.

  My pausing and grinning and electrified hair lost on her, Gill nodded rapidly. “When she turned up, she made a beeline straight for Tom. I was hanging about near the doorway, hoping to spot you, and I saw her come in, smoothing her dress down like she was readying herself for a date.”

  “Have you met her before?”

  Gill shook her head. “Just seen her at the surgery. Always smiling, always being overly friendly with everyone.”

  Something didn’t feel right, but I was still trying to work it out. Gill was being cagey, paranoid, so unlike my best friend. “So, if she’s overly friendly with everyone, why haven’t you met her?”

  She shrugged and turned away from me, not meeting my eyes.

  This was the part where things didn’t add up. Gillian Parker had always been a social butterfly. Even when the shit hit the fan at home and her dad was exposed for being the absolute bastard he was, she had still looked the world in the face and pushed herself on. If she had a problem with someone, she dealt with it—asked if she had done anything wrong, if there was anything the matter, if she could do anything to make up for it. Gill always tried to come up with a solution, even if it meant her not speaking to that person again, whether by her choice or mutual agreement. She might have been a train wreck when it had all happened, but not in the public eye. In front of others, she had always been Gillian Parker—popular and loved by all.

  “Why haven’t you introduced yourself to her?”

  At that point she seemed to splinter open right in front of me, shatter and break into a thousand pieces. I was so surprised by the shift that I could see her fracturing happening as if in slow motion. It was as if she was just about to be hit by a speeding car and I was the only one who could save her, but my responses were too slow, too sluggish.

  The scene unfolded, the agony of it, the despair flooding out with an abandon. Instead of halting it in its tracks with a drawn out “No!” my own inadequacy and despair joined hers as I realised, once again, that whatever I did now could never change what had happened to her all those years ago.

  Her sob mingled with mine, the crack of it raw and self-exposing. Without words I knew why we were sobbing, knew why Gillian Parker was my best friend and why my life was so entangled with hers. Yes, I loved her, had always loved her. I loved our history together even if it wasn’t all sunshine and roses. Her pain was my pain. She was my reason to be, my purpose to keep moving forwards each and every day. Or was she?

  Her arms wrapped around me and pulled me forwards against her, dipping her head as she did so. Her face m
ashed up against my chest, her mouth open, the sobs spilling out onto my dress. I held her close. The ache of the moment rippled through me: Gill was both close and unobtainable at the same time. I think that was the very first instance in all the time I had known her that I fully realised the futility of my absolute adoration of her.

  Before I had time to process this newfound knowledge, Gill pulled back, her hand swiping over her eyes and then quickly over her nose.

  “Bollocks.” Gill snorted and swiped again at her eyes. “I’m making a mess of my face.”

  She turned to the mirror and began to stroke underneath her eyes as if her mascara had started to run. It hadn’t, but that didn’t stop her, didn’t stop her snatching at a tissue from the box on the counter and erratically wiping at her face.

  I just watched. She seemed like a bird nervously pecking at herself. It was a strange simile, but it suited her movements—fitful, as if she was jazzed on caffeine. Then she suddenly stopped, and slumped slightly, the utter inaction in stark contrast to her previous frenetic motion.

  Moments ticked by and neither of us moved. The air thickened, and so did my expectation, of what, I had no idea.

  The door to the restroom opened and a blast of disco music rushed in and broke the silence. My head swivelled to where the outside world met ours. A woman in her mid-fifties was coming in.

  She looked from me to Gill, from Gill to me. “Oh. Is there a queue?”

  I shook my head and smiled. “Nope. Just a make-up crisis. Take your pick.” I gestured to the stalls.

  The woman smiled back and scurried to the farthest cubicle, the lock clicking loudly into place behind her.

  Gill took a step towards the door. “Come on. Let’s make a move.”

  I caught her arm. “What’s going on, Gill?” I kept my voice soft, not wanting the woman in the loo to overhear me. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  Gill shook her head sharply, her lips puckering. “Honestly, Brynn, I just want to find out what’s going on with…” her eyes darted over to the locked cubicle, “…you know who.”

  I lifted an eyebrow with an expression intended to indicate that I didn’t believe a word she was saying.

  She tipped her head towards where the woman must’ve been peeing out the contents of a two litre bottle of water, then mouthed, “She’s a nurse at the surgery.”

  “And?” I didn’t bother mouthing it. Maybe because I didn’t give a shit who was listening, nurse or no nurse, peeing or not.

  Gill flapped her hands as if to tell me to shut the fuck up, so I flapped mine back at her as if to say, “I’m taking the piss out of you in a sarcastic and fucked-off way.”

  She glared.

  I glared back. Both of us were wearing a thin-lipped expression, and neither of us were showing any sign of backing down.

  Then the toilet flushed and we both darted for the door, our laughter breaking the melodrama of the moments before.

  As we approached the entrance to the function room, Gill turned and stopped me in my tracks, her hand on the centre of my chest.

  “I know I’ve been acting like I’m losing the plot, but just trust me a little longer, yes? I’ll explain later.” Even though the corridor was a little more dimly lit, her eyes reflected light from somewhere, their brown depths glistening.

  Her pupils were dilated, but not as much as I would have expected, considering the lighting and how agitated she’d been only moments previous. Still, her face held an ethereal magnificence that I’d never seen in her before. Weirdly, although she was positively prepossessing, my attraction to her was not sexual. I was fascinated, but in a way that made me want to capture this fleeting moment before it evaporated.

  “Brynn? Are you okay?”

  I nodded.

  “I’ll tell you later, yes?”

  I nodded again. It wasn’t until she broke eye contact that the spell was also broken. Then she was gone, her back to me as she disappeared into the noise and artificially lit room that apparently was hosting the hospital get-together.

  Chapter 9

  I hadn’t really considered how big the party might be when I had agreed to attend. In retrospect, I should’ve realised that it would be a pretty large affair if it was to be hosted at The Maids Head. However, the number of guests had never been at issue until I entered the throng and couldn’t find Gill, even though I had parted from her less than a minute earlier. It was as if she had been swallowed up by the thrumming mass of people, people I struggled to squeeze by. Maybe I was exaggerating the quantity of people a bit, but the dim lighting, the noise, and the groups of bodies clumped together did nothing for my spatial awareness and observation skills, although I did spot the bar, and at that specific moment that was all that mattered.

  I was deliberating among my choices of non-alcoholic beverages when I felt a presence uncomfortably close behind me. I understood that the bar area was teeming, and the presence wasn’t jamming against me, either to try to push in front of me or rub their body up against mine. It was just there. Close. I could feel the energy of it, the hairs on my arms lifting with an onset of goosebumps.

  I rubbed my hands over my forearms to alleviate the sensation, but the judders of electricity just moved upwards. The presence behind me moved, shifting to my right. I knew without looking that instead of focusing on the availability of the bar staff, the person was staring at the side of my face. I also knew before I turned my head that this person next to me was not Gill. I’d experienced many sensations with her, but never this heightened expectation.

  Moistening my mouth, I readied myself to speak, to say something profound, or failing that, just to ask the person why he or she felt the need to unnerve me in this manner. Not the most enlightened reaction, but I couldn’t think of anything else. Even my ability to turn and smile, or just say hello, had failed me. Maybe I had hit my head when I fell. At that moment, a concussion seemed a distinct possibility.

  “Can I get you anything?” The question from my right came in a voice that was surprisingly familiar.

  My head shot around, my neck bones making a crunching sound that I hoped was only audible to me.

  Virgina’s smile was wide and welcoming, and my own instantaneously surfaced to meet hers. “Hey! I didn’t know that this was where you were coming.”

  She grinned.

  Considering I was usually tongue-tied in such situations, I felt that I had handled the opener pretty damned well. “I’d love a Coke.” Still not bad. “And before you ask, yes, I’ll have ice and a slice.” Still pretty good.

  Virgina nodded, her expression indicating I had made a wonderful choice. I grinned.

  “Why didn’t you say you worked here at The Maids Head?” And that’s when it went tits up.

  It was as if the music stopped, the people stopped, the everything stopped. It didn’t. The music continued to play, the people continued to talk, the everything continued to get as fucked up as it usually did when I was around.

  Virgina half-closed an eye as if trying to weigh me up or work me out, her expression unreadable. In that instant, I knew I’d made an error. My assumption was way off base, especially considering she was on the wrong side of the bar to begin with.

  “Work here? Why on earth would you think I work here?” Her tone was not as friendly as when she’d asked me if I wanted a drink, and I am definite the air around her became cooler.

  Her negative reaction to me asking whether she worked there raised the hackles on my neck. Working behind a bar was nothing to be ashamed of. It involved a lot of hard work and unsociable hours, and the workers didn’t need a pretentious snob looking down her nose at them whilst they were trying to earn a living.

  Before I had the chance to tell her exactly that, she smiled, the change in her expression a stark contrast to the one a moment before.

  “Researchers have found that we should never have lemon in our drinks when we are in a bar,” she said.

  I was dumbfounded by her shift in subje
ct, so I shrugged stupidly. I do think I grunted too, but that could have been swallowed up by the noise in the room.

  “Yes.” She leaned in closer, as if she was divulging government secrets. “In almost 70 percent of lemon samples tested, they found twenty-five different microbial species.” She nodded vigorously as I just stared at her. “They have the potential to cause infectious diseases.”

  I wasn’t really interested in lemons and how having one in my Coke might give me the shits. The only shit I was giving now was about how the woman I had believed to be wonderful could be so superior. “Why did you pull a face when I asked if you worked here?”

  “I didn’t.”

  She looked shocked, I’ll give her that. Probably because I pulled her up on her behaviour. Disappointment flooded through me. Virgina had been the only woman I had experienced any form of a deeper attraction to in the majority of my adult life, and she had turned out to be an elitist—and then she had denied it. That was something I couldn’t deal with.

  “I just couldn’t work out why you had asked me if I worked here. And then I was trying to recall the research stats. I was trying to come across as clever. Seems as if that backfired.”

  Too damned right it had backfired. And her reasons were not really the kind of reasons that warranted the look of horror she had given when I had asked her if she worked behind the bar. Well, not exactly horror as such, but it warranted at least a “miffed” on the reaction scale.

  “I’m sorry, Brynn. Have I offended you?” She placed her hand on my arm and the heat of her spread through me. “If I have, then please accept my apologies.”

  “It’s not me who you should be apologising to. It’s them!”

  I swept my arm dramatically towards the bar staff, not realising that the person to my left side was being served, his drinks placed neatly in front of him. The elaborate swirl of my hand smacked against a large glass of white wine, which launched itself at the high ball glass and knocked it sideways. The contents of both glasses sprayed into the air and splattered the barman and the nearest customers. The loud squeals definitely expressed both surprise and dismay.