Adam cleared off the fifth table in seven minutes, and paused to wipe his hands on his apron. It was the middle of the lunch shift.
Anywhere else, the cafe would have been called "busy"; in New York, it was considerd a only little more crowded than a normal "slow hour" would warrant.
He was watching the girl by the window, and had been for the past half hour.
She had appeared, or so it seemed, by magic, silently materialising under the cover of a large crowd of dazed French tourists and assorted noisy high school students. For about twenty minutes, they had clusterd around the counter like a swarm of obnoxiously loud, brightly dressed flies and completly blocked his view of the rest of the cafe.
Then the last couple of rucksacks dissapeared; he looked up, and there she was- a pale girl, sitting by herself with her back to the window, long tangled hair the colour of cornsilk and a plate of food in front of her, that had grown progressivly colder as the minutes ticked by.
And Adam, in the middle of his everyday routine of stacking plates and distributing trays of drinks, was entranced.
He knew how you met girls.
You saw them (sometimes they saw you first), approached them with some opening line, or offer of assistence, struck up a conversation on some non-threatening topic (music, if it happend to be at a gig or a club; Proust or Hemmingway, if you were at a library; price of alcohol, if you were at a pub; Anserl Addams or Warhol, if you were at a gallery) that assured them you did not intend on a)cornering them in an alley later or b) coercing them into taking part in some disturbing sexual fetish you may be hiding, and took them back to your flat (her flat, if your own was particularly messy) as soon as possible, on the understanding that neither of you was under any obligation to return the others calls the next day.
It was harmless, it was fun, and what was more, it was easy (there existing, unsurprisingly, more than a few single women who enjoyed casual relationships with attractive and intelligent single men).
The girl at the window had an interesting air of detachment about her, and, although she had barely looked up since her arrival, Adam could tell she was pretty.
She was on her own; it would be easy to talk to her. A greeting, a conversation, a propostition, and a night or two together, no strings attached and no hurt feelings, Adam thought, as he approached the table.
Easy.
"You should eat it; it's good"
"I think I'm hungry-"
She looked him full on for the first time, looked at him with big pale eyes and an inscrutable expression.
"But then I'm not..."
No.
Not easy.
Not easy at all.
Not just because close up, she looked so much younger than he had assumed (seventeen? eighteen? it was suddenly so hard to tell, although from a distance, he could have sworn she was at least four years older than she seemed now)- she just looked so lost.
Detached- yes, still detached, from him, from the cafe, the customers, the noise, everything- but so lost, so pale. So thin. Hair matted, a smudge on her cheek; a bag at her feet and boots meant for walking. The english accent. If not lost, then so new to the city that she may as well have been lost.
Fragile
, he thought. Still pretty, beautiful, even... but not the type of girl to take back to your apartment for a casual fuck- something about it just felt fundamnetally wrong now, because surely there must exist a law that prevented doing anything, ANYTHING, to someone so obviously vulnerable.
She trailed her fork lightly across the edge of the plate. The food was untouched, the coffee in its chipped mug was cold; as if remebering something, she held out a fistful of crumpled one-dollar bills in silence, and Adam wonderd how much money she actually had with her.
"Leave it"
Not a lot, he was prepared to bet on that. He'd meant she didnt have to pay; he'd couldnt bring himself to take money from her, for food she hadnt even eaten... but as he said it, she put down her fork, as if eating was a pretense, undergone for the sake of politeness, and he had given her permission to stop.
"I meant the money. It's on the house."
Pale fingers closed around the notes again. She didn't speak.
"So... i guess you're not from around here?"
"No"
"English?"
A slight nod, not really looking at him.
"Are you, uh, here... on holiday?"
It was a stupid question, one he already knew the answer to, but he asked it anyway.
"No. I'm not on holiday. Just here..."
Her voice was light, dreamy, as if she was somewhere else entirely. Her eyes flickerd to him briefly, then back to the middle distance.
"Ok-"
"I told them... that i wanted to go somewhere nice..." She looked slowly around the bustling cafe. "And they brought me here... I don't know if this is the right place, though..."
"The right place for what?"
"Just the right place..."
She lapsed into silence again. Adam considerd her.
"Do you... know wher the right place is?"
"No. Thats why i askd them. It wasn't Bri-...It wasn't where i used to be. So i looked here instead..."
There was a pause, then Adam took a plunge.
"Do you have somewhere to stay...while you're looking for the right place?"
(She came with him so easily it made him wonder if she'd have gone with anyone, and greatful, for her sake, that she hadn't.)
xxxxxx
The digital alarm clock by the bed said half past four.
So- Cassie counted backwards in her head- an hour since they left the cafe, three since the taxi driver had dropped her off outside with the money she was still holding. She'd been walking for more than an hour before she found the taxi rank, and the flight had taken another 8. She'd had to wait two hours before her flight was called. Three hours to get to Heathrow from...
No. She couldn't go there.
Don't think about it, Cassie. Don't think about it.
She had to believe no time had passed in Bristol. It was like pausing a dvd- everything waited for you in suspended animation until you were ready to go back to it.
That was what it was like now: she'd put enough distance between herself and home that it didn't seem as real as it once did, and one day, she'd go back to it again. Maybe. When thinking about it didn't make her feel like she was suffocating under some invisible oppressive load.
She was so tired. Mentally, of everything. Physically, tired didn't cover it, and as she lay down in the unfamiliar bed, she reflected that this was exactly what she had wanted.
The ache in her arms and legs and head was comforting; it allowed her mind a focus, and the pain blocked out the deep, dark void that had opend up the minute Chris had stiffend and breathed his last in her arms.
Forget it, Cassie. Don't think about it yet. Today isn't real. You're not laying in some strangers bed
- he'd told her his name, twice, and both times, she'd prompty forgotton it-in New York, and Chris is still alive, he's fine. Recovering, but fine. Go to sleep now, and when you wake up, you'll be at home, in your own bed. And you can tell Jal that you had this totally weird dream when she wakes up, and you'll ask her what it means, and she'll laugh and say "you know i don't believe in that stuff, Cass", and Chris will... well, it doesn't matter what Chris will do, as long as he's alive to do it.
Because him being alive is all that matters.
Cassie slept.
xxxx
He wants to be able to look at her, but he knows that it'd seem like boarderline stalker-ish behaviour to anyone else, and that they'd be right, so he settles for looking towards the bead curtain that separates the bedroom form the rest of the flat.
He has the feeling of a very close call; slightly increased heartrate and slight adrenaline boost. Not for him. For Cassie.
It's like a bad movie; or even newspaper articles- young girl goes to the big city. Alone. Young girl has no money, and no friends, and no where to go, and she's lucky if she's not hooked on something, pimped out or dead within five years. He's seen more than movies to convince him of the reality of this, because he routinley gives spare change to the evidence: the girls in doorways and alleyways surrounded by plastic bags. And there are the others- the ones who don't need his spare change, who stand on the street corners every evening and wait for passing cars...
That could so, so easily have been Cassie: a girl he has known for less than four hours, and whom he already feels responsible for. She seems nice, and not too crazy, but most of all, she seems like she needs help.
And how could he not offer her as much help as he could- a place to stay that wasnt the street, with a real door that locked out the rest of the world?
When he heard her turning restlessly, and crying in her sleep, he knelt beside the bed and held her hand until she stopped.
He spent the next two days tormenting himself with wondering what had happend to her and where she had come from.
xxxx
Her dreams were as crowded and busy as the bustling streets of the city, and, like the advertisents and lit shop signs, they were in full technicolour: tableaux upon tableaux, snippets of conversations long forgotton.
The plastic casing of the razor cracks and splinters... the razor lighter than air in her hand, slicing into her skin so easily it was hard to believe that it wasnt made for this purpose... Michelle, oh so casually, "Cassie, Tony asked if you'll do something for him...", and she'd said yes, even when it turns out the favour is fucking his best friend... the polished wood floor of the school hall, faces all wide-eyed and starring, the unfinished maths SATS paper still on the desk because she'd fainted in the middle of it, and no one had thought to ask an eleven year old if she was eating or not...Effy at her door with a strange blonde girl in tow, she used to be like that, once upon a time, except that the blonde girl seemed innocent, and Cassie had always known she had a self-destructive side, that threatend to pull her under...Sid, meeting her, smiling at her...ignoring her and letting her down again and again...Sid and Michelle, and the park bench, the pills that she took with cheap, straight vodka, hoping she was doing it properly this time and that she'd never wake up...then waking up in hospital and sobbing bitterly because nothing seemed to work, she was chained to life and there was nothing she could do about it...
... and a hand on hers, which she thought was Jals... am I in the ambulance?...except that it couldn't be because it was a mans hand, and it was too rough to be Sids...
...and then the dream started to slow... it was summer, and they were under some trees on the edge of the lake, around a bonfire, smoke rising and mixing with smoke from the spliff and cigarettes, vodka shots and bottles of Sambuca on the grass, and the glowing embers lighting up everybodys faces... Sid, Jal, Michelle, Maxxie, Anwar, Tony...and Chris.
And he was laughing his loud laugh, and he looked at her, and smiled.
And Cassie smiled back...
xxxxxxxxxx
Ok ay, the end =) I hope you liked it. I only just finished watched series 2_my friend said i remind her of Cassie and i cant tell if its a compliment or not XD Please review!