by PJ Adams
Tasha was a perceptive thinker, but far too prone to conspiracy theories for Sunita’s liking – although right now, Sunita could have been forgiven for being drawn to such theories, too, given the way she seemed to be surrounded by dark forces and secret agents and the like. Now she looked at the annotated map where Tasha was doing her best to make a case that the distribution of the current avian flu outbreak was an artificial distribution, and not a natural outbreak at all.
“It’s there on the map,” Tasha said. “There are too many locations where the virus is crossing over from bird to human. Nature doesn’t act that way. Normally there’s only one Typhoid Mary, one source. This is like seeds being sown rather than spontaneous mutation. It could be the Chinese or the Koreans. It could be the Americans trying to destabilize the region, or it could be a terrorist group. It could be an accident, even: someone experimenting with the virus, with vaccines, perhaps, and inadvertently releasing it. It’s not my place to tell the story, I’m just presenting the science.”
“It’s an interpretation,” said Sunita.
“But not a proof,” finished Libbie.
It was so easy to apply subjective interpretations to things when the data didn’t add up. An easy trap to step into.
They argued in circles until the board was covered with notes and arrows and shading and Sunita finally came up with the killer solution to their debate: “Shall we take this to the bar?”
§
The bar.
The Student Union bar occupied most of the ground level of one of the concrete teaching buildings on the Riverside Campus. Sunita had always thought it strange that while one entire side of the bar ran along the river, that wall was solid concrete with only narrow letterbox windows along the top, and the main windows looked, instead, over a square on the other side of the building.
Why would you not make the most of that riverside view, even on a wet, cold day like this?
She hated being anywhere that shut you away from the natural world, and loved that her own desk made the most of a view almost identical to the one the SU bar shunned. Proof that she could never be a city girl, she supposed.
She saw Alex Mitchell entering the bar, saw him peering around as his eyes adjusted to the gloom of the interior.
He either hadn’t seen her or chose to ignore her, heading instead for the line of stools at one end of the long bar.
Where the other day in the park he’d looked frozen, tonight he just looked like shit.
And he knew it, judging by the drinks he lined up. Was it normal for him to drink alone, alternating pints of beer with whisky shots, or was this some kind of special occasion?
She remembered her assessment of him as he had sat in the park while she debated whether to approach him, that broken, wounded warrior thing. And she wondered how drinking like this sat with his other role, the hidden side of his life.
Weird to think that here she was, sitting in the Student Union bar after work, normal life all around her, and there, sitting at the bar was a man whose experience of the world was so utterly different. A man familiar with the depths to which humankind could sink, familiar with violence and perpetrating violence.
It made you reassess everything. Everyone around you. They all had hidden secrets, they were all different people in different contexts. Not necessarily trained killers, but she knew that every day she must encounter apparently normal people who were also religious zealots or criminals, people who were grieving, dying, cheating, abusive...
This wasn’t a healthy line of thought.
Someone had joined Alex now, the campus security guy who was seeing Tasha.
“Hey,” said Sunita, leaning in close to her friend. “Are you seeing Terry tonight, or is it purely coincidence that you suggested this bar and he’s just walked in?”
§
Coincidence or not, it was inevitable that Terry and Alex would come over, and Sunita would see up close just how rough Alex looked.
She could barely tease a word out of him at first, beyond a “You don’t want to know.” He was a man who found it easy to draw barriers around himself and tonight he seemed in no mood to let anyone break through.
And, as so often when she thought about Alex Mitchell, she had to pull herself up, thinking of course he defaulted to defensive camouflage, to hiding what was in his head. It’s what he did.
But tonight there was something more...
A couple of drinks down the line, she sat with one knee drawn up so she could twist on the leather bench seating to face him. “You look like you need to talk, ” she said.
Alex sat leaning forward, cradling his pint glass between both hands on the table. His dark eyes flitted up, met hers for a moment, then turned away.
Libbie had gone already, and Tasha was lost in her gruff security manager. In practice, it was just Sunita and Alex, a small bubble set in the noisy babble of the bar.
“I need another drink. You want anoth–?”
His words were cut off by contact, Sunita reaching across to put a hand on the back of his wrist. Was she trying to calm him, or cut him off?
They both looked down at her hand as she drew it away.
“You look like you need a friend right now, not another drink,” she said, surprised how small her voice sounded.
What was this? And, even as she thought that, she remembered his defense: I’m in a relationship . And at the same time as she felt that confusion at how she was feeling, she worked it out. There aren’t many occasions when someone looks like Alex Mitchell had looked when he walked into the bar tonight, but one such occasion was...
“You had a fight with... with your partner?” Hell, she didn’t even know if his partner was a woman or a man, let alone their name. “You want to tell me? I’m a good listener. Or just tell me to fuck off and I’ll go straight to the bar and get another round in.”
“Fuck off and get some drinks in.” He said it with a surprisingly mischievous grin that transformed his features, the kind of charm he could probably get away with 99 per cent of the time.
Sunita reached for her purse, stood, and squeezed past him, far too aware of the proximity, of his eye level as she passed.
She paused, glancing back at his empty glasses, raising her eyebrows.
“Just a Ghost Ship, thanks,” he said, putting a hand over his empty whisky glass.
When she came back with the drinks a few minutes later and found her seat he said immediately, “Not a fight, as such. A... an incident. An event.”
“You don’t have to talk. We can just drink our drinks and pretend Terry and Tasha aren’t trying to eat each other’s faces off across the table.” She would have offered the other two drinks when she went to the bar, but... well, they were otherwise occupied. Like teenagers who’d just discovered tongues.
He shrugged. “You don’t need the details. Hell, I don’t need the details. Sufficient to say, it’s done. Finished.”
“Nothing you can do?”
“Not even if I wanted to.”
She smiled what she hoped was a sympathetic smile. In brief flashes, that wounded warrior look of his shifted into simply wounded. It wasn’t a good look on him.
“All I’ve got is clichés,” she told him.
“Plenty more fish in the sea.”
“Give it time,” she said, taking her turn.
“Take every day as it comes.”
“You’re better off without her. Him?”
Their eyes met, his mask cracked, and they both laughed.
“Her,” he said. “Laura.”
“Had you been together long?”
“Four years.”
Her eyes widened. She couldn’t help it. That was a long relationship to lose just like that, so decisively.
“And it’s over?”
He nodded.
She took a sip of Shiraz.
“Good times?” she asked. “Memories to enjoy, or is it all gone?”
He paused.
She was aware
she did that sometimes, departed from the obvious and asked things that put people on the spot when they were least prepared. It hadn’t been a deliberate ploy tonight, and was one that could easily backfire, but now Alex smiled and the tension slipped from his frame a little as he nodded.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I suppose so. We had our moments. We went through a lot together, got into a few scrapes, saw the world. There’s things that will stay with me forever.”
“I always try to believe that life is, generally, good,” she said, following that thread. “You didn’t waste four years of your life. You lived it, and you became the person you are now. You might hate what I’m saying and you might just feel like shit right now, but, well...” And even as she spoke, the thread unraveled.
“All part of life’s rich tapestry, eh?” he said, and that mischievous grin cracked his features again.
“I told you I was good with clichés when you need them, didn’t I?”
§
She made him have food, nachos and buffalo wings between them, something to soak up some of the alcohol.
She’d only come here for a quick drink with Tasha and Libbie. She had reading to do, and a report to proofread.
She hadn’t anticipated a boozy night of commiserations and propping up the broken spirits of a guy she barely knew. But then she never had been one to ignore a good cause.
Shortly after the food came Terry and Tasha made their excuses and left.
“They should have got a room an hour ago,” said Sunita, as she watched the two of them heading for the main exit. “It was in danger of becoming a porn movie at one point.”
“How long have they been a thing?” asked Alex. “I always thought Terry was, well, he was just Terry. Funny to see him with someone. Like that.”
“Oh, a month or so,” said Sunita. “Maybe six weeks. New love.”
Alex looked away, down at his hands in his lap.
The silence drew itself out.
“Sorry,” she said softly, after a time.
“Why?”
“Oh, you know. Saying the wrong things. You a pathetic heartbroken wreck and here I am talking about new love.”
“I just need to take every day as it comes,” he said. “You know, give it time.”
They laughed again.
Now, Alex looked around. The bar had filled up again after the early evening lull. “The funny thing is,” he said, “there goes my bed for the night. I think Terry must have forgotten he said I could have his sofa.”
“You don’t have anywhere?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t exactly plan tonight,” he told her, trying to make light of it. “Or tomorrow, or any of what comes after. Don’t worry, I’m fine. I’d been planning to stay at the Travelodge on King Street for a night or two anyway – Terry was just taking pity on me.”
Sunita had a spare room. She could offer, but instead she held back. What was it about Alex Mitchell? So many conflicting things about him that confused her responses.
She knew one thing, though: he’d misread those responses once before, and she couldn’t let him read anything into the offer of somewhere to stay, no matter how much compassion she felt.
They settled into companionable silence as they tackled the food. Not exactly fine dining, but it did the job.
She tried to think of safe topics for conversation. Anything but questions about Laura, or what had happened, or the practicalities of what would come next for Alex. He would need to get his stuff, or wait for Laura to move out, depending on what arrangements they had about the place where they had lived, assuming they had actually lived together. He would probably need to find somewhere new. There would be financial arrangements to disentangle, bills to stop splitting, subscriptions to cancel or transfer.
All the practicalities...
Sunita had been through all that in the past. Alex probably had, too, before Laura. People change, move on. Relationships end.
Not fail, though: end. That was one belief she clung to, that you should hang onto the positives, the happiness and achievements, the shared victories. Never sit in judgment over your past choices. She genuinely believed what she had told him earlier, that the time hadn’t been wasted but was part of who he had become.
But he didn’t need heavy-handed lectures on her philosophy of life, either.
§
“Walk me to the Travelodge?”
“You scared of the dark?”
“Something like that.”
Was he coming onto her? Again, she struggled to read the signals where Alex Mitchell was concerned. She couldn’t let this get messy, for both of their sakes.
In truth, she was glad of the company on the walk through town. It was dark outside now, and the High Street could be an intimidating place at night for a single young woman of Asian descent. The Travelodge was on King Street, down the full length of High Street, and it was pretty much on the way to Sunita’s small house. She’d only have a couple of minutes more to walk alone after she left Alex to check in.
And anyway, after all that beer and whisky, he might need some help...
Out in the Riverside Campus’s main square, the cold was a shock to the system, and the driving sleet was like a slap to the face. It sobered them up in seconds, and then they were standing there staring at each other, as if unsure what to do next. Then Sunita pulled her leather jacket tight around herself, straightened the strap of her small shoulder bag, took Alex’s hand and ran to the shelter of the nearest building.
She stepped away from him, and the two burst out laughing. He didn’t even have a coat, and he was soaked through already.
“Come on,” said Alex, reaching for her hand again. “Let’s do this.” And they ran again, across the square to an archway, another brief respite from the sleet.
Cutting across a corner of the town park, there were trees for occasional shelter, those big evergreen oaks that Sunita loved. On the High Street they ducked into a succession of shop doorways, each time waiting for a lull in the Arctic downpour before darting a little farther along the street.
When they reached the King’s Head on the junction with King Street, the doorway, although wide and deep, was crowded with smokers, even on a night like this. Sunita found herself standing chest to chest with Alex, and it was natural for his arms to coil around her, and her hands to come to rest flat on his chest.
She leaned in closer, this whole thing becoming surreal – the proximity, the contact, the intense discomfort of the wet and cold, the smell of damp cigarette smoke, the gruff voices all around.
“You were wrong,” she said, her mouth close to the side of Alex’s face.
He stared at her as she drew away a little, another of those silences that were questions.
“When you thought I was interested,” she explained. “When you fended me away by saying you were in a relationship. You misread me: I was just being friendly. There was nothing more to it than that.”
She saw the understanding on his face as she drew away again.
He nodded, opened his mouth and then hesitated, then said, “Sorry.”
She shrugged, smiled. She’d been amused, flattered, confused. That kind of thing happens. Instead of saying all that, though, she simply said, “It’s fine. No big deal.”
She glanced out over the street. The sleet had turned to rain and was coming down harder now. When she looked back at Alex his eyes were fixed on her.
“Tell me,” he said. He put a hand to her jaw then, and she let him, and in that instant she knew something had shifted, something twisting and turning in what they were, what they were doing. “Tell me,” he said again, “am I wrong now?”
His mouth on hers...
It was such a shock she almost jerked her head away. Then, it became even more of a shock that she had not pulled away and, instead, was pushing back against him, her lips meeting his, soft against firm, the smoothness of her skin against his harsh stubble.
Whisky and beer and that indefi
nable taste of another person’s mouth, the pressing wetness of his tongue against hers.
She felt intensely aware of his body against her, too, his arms drawing her harder into his embrace. Of the people all around them appearing to recede, either a lull in the conversations or her senses merely shutting them all out.
The thumping of her heart in her chest and the ache in her lungs as she realized she had forgotten to breathe.
The sudden confusion as she pulled away from him, stepped back, felt a renewed blast of cold wind and rain hammering against her face.
She spun away, out onto the wide pavement, no shelter now, no man pressing against her, no mouth mashing with hers.
She stopped, looked back, and he was standing on the edge of the crowd of smokers, watching her, his soaked suit clinging to him.
She couldn’t work out if he was being sensitive by giving her space, or holding back, just as shocked and confused as she was.
She shouldn’t have done it. Allowed it to happen.
They’d both had too much to drink. He was over-emotional, vulnerable. She was the one who should have seen all that and stayed in control. She was the responsible adult here.
She should never have allowed herself to get into this situation.
The kiss. It was reckless. Insane. The element of surprise, of it just happening. The inevitability. The implications.
She couldn’t process it right now. The madness of that kiss, the why and the what next of it.
She turned away from him, finally dipping her head against the relentlessness of the chill winter rain. Her face was numb. Her brain, too.
She started to walk, and didn’t know if he was following or not, didn’t know if she wanted him to be, or what she would do if he was.
And that last... that scared her more than anything.
10. Alex, Friday, a month later
This Bowler, the real Bernard Bowler, was everything Mitchell had expected.
Where his stand-in had been a flat and lifeless facsimile who shouldn’t have fooled anyone – so easy to see in hindsight – the man himself...
