No wonder she’s gone.
Think about it.
She’s having a chat with someone, she sees this kid in a dumb
black hat and a triple-X hood…she sees him standing there, gawping at her, his mouth hanging open, his tongue hanging out, dribbling like a moron…
What do you think she’s going to do?
Ask him for a dance?
I shook my head and got moving, trying not to think about it, trying not to think about
her
—the way she’d stood there looking at me, the way she’d cocked her head and smiled, the way her skin rippled lightly around her midriff, like the gently lapping surface of a pale white sea…
God’s sake, Joe…
Don’t even
think
about it.
I was caught up in a crowd of pedestrians now, getting carried along with the flow. I didn’t really know where I was going. I started to turn around, to get out of the crowd, but there were too many people moving in the same direction and someone was swearing at me for getting in the way and then someone else shoved me in the back, so I decided they were probably going my way, anyway, and I might as well just go with the flow.
We crossed a busy road, waited on a traffic island, then crossed again to the other side. As the crowd began to split up, moving off in different directions, I stepped to one side and got behind a pillar-box and started looking around again to see where the tide had taken me. I could see a junction, another traffic island, another junction, a few burger places, a bank, a couple of cafés, a bureau de change, all sorts of grimy little shops—and there, stretching out in front of me, was Pentonville Road. Just what I wanted. All I had to do now was cross the junction and keep on
going for about another half mile, and I’d be there. Ten minutes at the most. My appointment wasn’t until 6:30. It was quarter to six now. I had some time to spare. And I hadn’t eaten since lunchtime.
There was a McDonald’s across the road.
I could nip in there, get something to eat, sit down for a few minutes…
Sit by the window.
Watch the streets.
Watch the station.
Yeah, I could do that…I mean, it wouldn’t be like I was looking for anyone in
particular,
would it? I wouldn’t be sitting there wringing my hands and leering at the streets like some sappy little kid with hormone trouble…
No, I’d just be sitting there, eating a burger, gazing coolly through the window, just passing the time…
Nothing wrong with that.
It was fairly busy inside. Most of the tables were already taken and there were lines of customers shuffling around in front of the counter—bunches of kids, older couples, some hard-looking black guys in hoods and chains. I joined the back of the line and started scanning the menu boards. I don’t know why I bothered, really. I can never understand them—large meals, extra meals, extra-large meals, two somethings for 99p, regular this and regular that…it’s way too complicated for me. I always get the same thing, anyway—a quarter-pounder-with-cheese meal and a black coffee.
The line shuffled forward.
The woman in front of me was thinking about joining
the line to our left. I could see her weighing it up, trying to work out which line was moving the fastest. She hesitated, changed her mind, then decided to go for it. As she stepped to one side, I stepped up, but then she changed her mind again and squeezed back in front of me.
I moved back to give her some room, then started digging around in my pocket, looking for some money. Dad had given me £20 that morning, and I still had most of it left.
“Make sure you get yourself something to eat,” he’d told me. “And get a taxi back from the station if it’s late.”
He’d given me the look then, the look that says,
I’m not going to lecture you about what sort of food to eat or what to spend my money on, because you’re old enough to act responsibly now…and I’d like to think I can trust you…but just watch it—OK?
His face flashed into my mind for a moment—long and gray and serious—and I wondered, as I’ve often wondered before, why he always appeared so distant to me…so detached, so remote. It sometimes felt as if he wasn’t my father at all, just a tall gray man called Dr. Beck, who lived in the same house as me and told me what to do.
I pulled a £5 note from my pocket. It was folded up into a tight little square and, as I yanked it out, the edge got caught in the lining of my pocket and a handful of coins came flying out. I made a grab for them with my other hand, but they were already clattering to the floor—
chink-chink-chink
—and rolling like mad all over the place. Everyone looked around, of course—looking at the floor, watching the coins, watching them roll. God, they rolled a long way. A few people started stamping on them, or bending down to pick them up, but most of the others
couldn’t care less. After a quick look to check out the dumb kid throwing his money around, they just shook their heads and got back to their business.
I could still feel my face turning red, though.
I knew I was expected to do something, but I didn’t
want
to do anything. I didn’t want to go scrabbling around on my hands and knees looking for 10p pieces. I didn’t want people
looking
at me. But then, if I
didn’t
start picking the coins up, if I just stood there and left them on the floor, everyone would think I was a spoiled little brat, some fancy-pants rich kid with too much money for his own good. I could imagine them thinking,
Look at him, who does he think he is, standing there throwing his money away…
I didn’t know what to do.
I wished I’d never come in here.
Eventually, I decided on a compromise. I’d pick up the coins I could see, then have a quick look around, like I was looking for the rest of them, then I’d shrug my shoulders and casually stroll back to the line. Maybe I could even try smiling a bit…you know, one of those self-mocking smiles that says,
Sheesh, I dunno, what am I like, eh? What an idiot…
I was just starting to practice the look when a young woman came up and handed me a £1 coin.
“Thanks,” I said.
She smiled and pointed across the room. “There’s another one over there—it went under that table.”
“Right,” I said, looking anxiously at the black guys sitting at the table—shaved heads, hammered eyes, skullcaps. One of them turned his head and gave me a look that froze my blood. “Uh…yeah, thanks,” I told the woman. “I’ll probably get it later.”
She shrugged and went back to the line. I looked down at the floor. I could feel the black guys watching me, and I could feel my face getting hotter and hotter, and I could feel the sweat seeping out from under my hat—and then someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, “You want me to get it for you?”
I was too flustered to recognize the voice at first. It was just another voice, just another Good Samaritan sticking their nose in, making things worse. I sighed to myself and turned around, getting ready to say thanks-but-no-thanks, but when I saw who it was, the words disappeared from my head.
Everything disappeared.
It was the girl, of course. The girl from the station. The girl with the smile and the skin and the eyes…
“They’re not as bad as they look,” she said.
I tried to say
who?
but my mouth had gone numb. All I could do was pout my lips and look stupid.
The girl smiled. “Those guys at the table…they’re not as scary as they look. They won’t mind you getting your quid back.”
“Oh,” I said.
She looked at me.
I could feel myself drowning in her eyes.
Her head shook with a little laugh, then she turned away and walked across to the table where the black guys were sitting. They looked up as she approached, and she raised her hand and said something to one of them. He shrugged his shoulders and showed his palms, then smiled and said something back. She laughed, touched his arm, then bent down and picked up the £1 coin from under the
table. As she stooped down, her skirt rode up, and the guys at the table leaned across to get a better look. One of them closed his eyes and shook his head, as if it was just too much to take.
The girl straightened up, nodded at the black guys, then turned around and came back to me.
“There you go,” she said, passing me the coin.
“Thanks,” I told her. “You didn’t have to…”
“No problem.”
“I was just…I was going to…”
She touched my arm and looked behind me. “You’re next.”
“What?”
She nodded at the counter. “You’re next. They’re waiting for you.”
I looked around. I was standing at the counter. Somehow I’d managed to get to the front of the line. A lanky kid with floppy hair was standing behind the register, looking expectantly at me.
“Help you?” he said.
“Yeah…sorry. I’d like uh…I’ll have…um…” I was looking up at the menu board again, not seeing anything, just looking for the sake of looking, because I didn’t know where else to look and I needed time to think, to find the courage to say what I wanted to say. I must have stood there for a thousand years, looking up at that menu board, staring blindly at the senseless blur of pictures and words, my heart ticking away like a frantic clock, pumping blood and oxygen into my muscles, my cells, my nerves…heightening my senses. It was a really weird feeling. My mind was racing, but I couldn’t think. I could see everything, every dot and every movement, but
none of it made any sense. The silence inside me was deafening.
In the end, I took a deep breath, swallowed hard, emptied my mind, and turned to the girl.
“Would you like something to eat?” I asked her.
She smiled. “I thought you’d never ask.”
We found a table by the window, cleared off all the rubbish, and sat down. I’d gotten myself the usual, and the girl had gone for a chocolate doughnut with an extra-large Coke and tons of ice. I watched her now as she put the drink on the table and lowered her mouth to the straw.
“Are you sure that’s all you want?” I asked.
She nodded, sucking hard on the straw, drinking with the breathless concentration of a child. I unwrapped my burger and started to eat. I wasn’t really hungry anymore, but I was glad to have something to do with my hands. Nervous hands are hard to disguise when they’re idle. I chewed and swallowed, wiped some relish from my lips, glanced at my watch…
“Meeting someone?” the girl asked.
“Not really,” I said.
“Sorry?”
I coughed, choking on a bit of lettuce, realizing the stupidity of my answer.
Not really,
I’d said,
not really…
How can you
not really
be meeting someone?
God…
“You all right?” the girl said.
“Yeah…I’ve got a—
huh-uhh
—excuse me. I’ve got a doctor’s appointment.”
“You’ve got a what?”
“You asked if I was meeting someone…”
“Yeah?”
“I’ve got a doctor’s appointment.”
“Oh, right—I thought you meant that’s why you were coughing.”
“No…that was just…I was just coughing.”
“Right,” she nodded, smiling to herself. “That’s that sorted out, then.”
“Yeah…”
She went back to her Coke for a while, and I picked a few crumbs from my burger and fiddled around with the napkin, folding it and twisting it and wiping my fingers with it, all the time listening to the sweet little slurps from across the table. Then we both looked up and started speaking at the same time.
“Where are you—”
“I don’t usually—”
“Sorry,” I said. “After you.”
She smiled. “I was just going to ask where you’re going. I didn’t know there were any doctors around here.”
“Pentonville Road,” I told her. “It’s a private place…”
She raised her eyebrows, as if to say,
Private, eh? Well, well, well,
but she didn’t say anything, just nodded quietly and bit into her doughnut.
“My dad’s a doctor,” I explained. “He knows other doctors, you know, friends of his…”
“Right,” she said through a mouthful of doughnut.
“It’s quite handy sometimes…”
“It must be. What’s the matter with you?”
I pulled up my sleeve and showed her the lump on my wrist.
“Ugh!” she said. “What’s
that?
”
“It’s nothing really…just a lump. It’s called a ganglion.”
She laughed, spitting out bits of chocolate. “A gangly
what?
”
“Ganglion—it’s like a…like a muscle thing…” I was trying to remember what Dad had told me about the lump. He’d explained it all to me, drawing little pictures and everything, but I hadn’t really been listening. “It’s something to do with the fluid from your muscle,” I told the girl. “It kind of leaks out and forms this lump—”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why does it leak out?”
“I don’t know.”
She’d finished her doughnut now and was digging out lumps of ice from her Coke, popping them into her mouth and sucking them.
“Can’t your dad fix it?” she said. “You said he was a doctor…”
“He’s not that sort of a doctor.”
“What sort is he, then?”
I blushed, as I always do when this question comes up. “He’s a…uh…he’s a gynecologist.”
She didn’t laugh, or smirk, or make any jokes. She just crunched an ice cube and looked at me. “A gynecologist?”
“Yeah…this other doctor, the one I’m going to see, he’s a specialist—”
“A lump specialist?”
“Right,” I said, smiling.
Her face changed when I smiled. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but it was almost as if a layer of skin had sloughed away, revealing another face, an even prettier
face, hiding beneath a mask. “That’s the first time I’ve seen you smile,” she said, looking into my eyes. “You ought to do it more often. It looks really nice.”
My head crumpled under the strain of the compliment, and I had to look down at the table. My skin was so hot I could hear it sizzling.
“Sorry,” she said quietly. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you. I’m not coming on to you or anything, I was just saying, you know…you’ve got a nice smile. That’s all. It’s the truth.” She paused. “You want me to say you’re ugly?”