Читать книгу Little Secrets - Anna Snoekstra - Страница 12

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Rose heaved the keg onto its side. It was heavy, pulling on the sockets of her arms and tightening the ligaments in her neck. She let it fall the last few centimeters, for no other reason than to enjoy the violent thud as it hit the cement floor. The windowless storage room at the rear of the tavern smelled like damp. Squeezed into the small space were the beer kegs, a large freezer full of frozen meat and fries, and a few boxes full of dusty beer glasses.

Bending over, butt high in the air, she pushed the keg around the tight corner into the back corridor with little baby steps. She looked ridiculous. If Frank could see her now maybe he would stop looking at her like she was hot shit. Or maybe he’d get off on it. The thought of that made her straighten up. She hated having men’s eyes on her. It made her feel as though she didn’t own her own body. As if by staring her up and down they were possessing her flesh. If it weren’t so damn humid she’d wear long pants and turtlenecks and never, ever shave her legs.

She was starting to get blisters. Every step she took her heels grated down against the rough fabric of her shoes, slicing through another layer of skin. She was starting to wince as she gently kicked the keg down the corridor. She passed the stain on the carpet from where Mark Jones had puked up his beer and the crack in the wall that seemed to be getting slightly bigger every day. She tried to remind herself that sometimes she didn’t totally hate this job. Quiet nights goofing around with Mia could be fun. But right now she wanted to pull her hair out. Every night, for years and years, the same bloody thing, one shift identical to another. The only difference was the aging of the patrons.

The numbness she’d felt earlier had worn off now. Her stomach was crumpling inward with shame and disappointment at the email from the Sage Review. She hadn’t told Mia yet; she couldn’t. If she did, then it would be real. Mia would ask her what she was going to do, where she was going to live, and she didn’t have the answers. Instead, she kept her body moving and tried to breathe. Rose had written about everything she could think of. She’d written about the financial crisis and its effects on her town; she’d written about the search for the arsonist who had killed poor Ben Riley and burned down the courthouse. She’d written film reviews, celebrity gossip and, worst of all, attempted an awkward video series on YouTube.

Regardless of the topic, the rejections were always the same. “Thank you for submitting...” they would begin, and already she knew the rest. Everyone always said the only person who stood in your way to success was yourself. She knew that; she really did. Rose just needed one good story, something truly unique. If she just had a great story, they couldn’t say no.

This cadetship had been made for her; she’d fit the requirements exactly. It had been so perfect, so exactly right.

The corner of the keg whacked against the wall, causing a framed picture to fall to the floor.

“Fuck.” She hadn’t been paying enough attention. She couldn’t cope with this. There was now a large crack in the glass across the photograph of the Eamon family: the husband with his war medals, the wife with her strained smile, the little curly-haired girl with her curly-haired doll and the boy with his frilly shirt. Rose hung it back on the wall.

The feeling in her stomach was turning to pain, and she was struggling to swallow it away. It was like acid reflux, spilling out from her gut in a poisonous torrent and into her throat.

She put her head into the kitchen. “All right if I take my break now?”

“Sure,” the manager, Jean, said, not turning around as she chopped a mound of pale tomatoes.

Sometimes she took her break up at the bar, attempting to eat something Jean had made and continuing to chat with Mia and whoever else was sitting there. But if she was going to get through today she needed to have a few minutes to herself. She grabbed the first-aid kit off the shelf and went back into the corridor. She pushed open one of the motel room doors and sat on the end of the bed. Carefully she slid one of her shoes off and examined her heel. The skin was bright red. A blister was forming, a soft white pillow puffing up to protect her damaged skin. Carefully, she traced her finger over it, shuddering as she touched the delicate new skin.

Unclipping the first-aid kit, she rummaged through the out-of-date antiseptic and the bandages still in their wrapping until she found the box of Band-Aids in the bottom. She pulled one out and stuck it on her skin, stretched it over her blister and then fastened the other side down. The process of putting on the Band-Aid reminded her of being a little kid. Of being looked after, of knowing there was someone there to make everything okay. Her throat constricted and she couldn’t hold it in. Holding a hand over her face to muffle the sound, she began to cry. Horrible, aching sobs rose from inside her.

Clenching her eyes closed, she tried to force herself to stop, but she couldn’t. She was so tired, too tired. Her eyes turned hot, tears overfilling them and burning down her cheeks. Crying was easier than not crying.

She stood, looking up to pull the door closed so there would be no chance they would hear her at the bar. Through her watery vision she saw someone. A man, standing in the hallway, staring at her. She tried to reset her face, wiping her cheeks with her hands.

“I’m sorry,” he said and, weirdly, he looked like he might cry too. She stood, her hand still on the doorknob, staring at him, not knowing what to say, so aware of her crumpled forehead, of a tear inching down one of her wet cheeks. His eyes flicked away from hers and her face prickled with humiliation.

She pulled the door closed and sat back on the bed. Staring at the back of the door, she took some deep breaths. The surprise of seeing him had made the crying stop, at least, but now her heart was hammering in her chest. Rubbing her hands over her face, she wondered who that guy had been. She’d never seen him before. That wasn’t common in Colmstock. Not just that. He didn’t look like the other men in town. His face was so unusual, she wasn’t sure what his ethnicity was, and he was wearing a T-shirt with a band’s logo on it and blue stovepipe jeans that looked brand-new. Definitely not the usual uniform for the men around here. She crept over to the door again and opened it an inch, peering out, sure he was going to be standing there still. He wasn’t. But she noticed a Do Not Disturb sign hanging from the knob of the other motel room. Of course, they had a guest.

Closing the door, she went into the bathroom to throw some cold water onto her face. She had been rejected before; she should know how to handle it by now. If she could make it through the rest of her shift, she’d figure everything else out tomorrow. That was all she had to focus on now, getting to the end of the shift. She stood still, centering on just the feeling of her bare feet on the carpet. Then quickly and cleanly she put the Band-Aid on her other heel and, gritting her teeth, pulled her shoes back on.

Back in the kitchen, Jean was flipping a burger on the grill. It sizzled and smoked. Rose’s nose felt itchy with the acrid smell of burning, but she didn’t say anything. She would never tell Jean how to cook and not just because she was her boss. No one would say a word to Jean even if their meat was as black and rubbery as a tire, which was often the case. Even though she was nearing sixty, no one would want to cross her. You’d know it if she didn’t like you.

Rose still remembered the one and only time someone did insult one of Jean’s steaks. Some dickhead friend of Steve Cunningham’s had demanded a refund. He’d told Jean that if she wanted to cook bush tucker she should go back to her campfire. That man had never got his refund, and he had not been allowed to set foot in Eamon’s again. Rose herself would have made sure of that if she’d had the chance, though Jean never needed any help. Even thinking about the guy now made Rose’s blood boil. Steve was lucky; he’d apologized repeatedly to Jean, and Rose could tell he meant it, so eventually he was allowed back.

“Do we have a guest?” Rose asked as she bent down to install the keg she’d brought in earlier.

“Yep. William Rai.” You could hear the pack-a-day habit in Jean’s voice.

“What’s he like?” Mia called from behind the bar.

“Quiet.”

Rose wiped her wet hands on her shorts and went around to the bar. She put a jug under the beer tap and began running the froth out, happy to be away from the stink of singed meat.

“Have you seen him yet?” Mia asked, quietly.

“Yeah,” Rose said. His eyes had looked so shiny, but surely that was just the light.

“And?”

“What? You think he might be your soul mate?” she joked.

Mia shrugged. “You never know.”

Rose smiled and leaned back, watching the white creamy froth overflow from the jug as it slowly turned to beer.

“So I’m guessing you haven’t heard back from Sage yet?” Mia said, looking at her carefully.

Rose flicked off the beer tap. “No.”

“Don’t stress about it—one more day won’t make a difference.”

Rose looked up at Mia and smiled feebly. She wanted to tell her, she really did, but she was afraid she might start crying again in front of all their customers. Just as she was opening her mouth to ask if they could talk about it later, the tavern went silent. It was the sudden, loud kind of silence that felt wholly unnatural. Mia and Rose looked around.

It was the guest. Will. He was paused in the doorway, every single pair of eyes in the bar on him. Rose had been right before—this man was not from Colmstock. He took the stares in, not appearing unsure or uncomfortable, and sat down at the far table. The cops turned back to their beers and the talking resumed.

“Wow. He’s not bad,” Mia said quietly.

“He’s all yours,” she told Mia. She could feel the humiliation crawling back. He must think she was such a weirdo, sitting there with the door open, crying. Hopefully he wasn’t staying long.

Rose watched Mia peel a plastic menu from the pile. She walked swiftly over to Will’s table and put the menu down in front of him. Mia put her hand on her hip and, even without being able to see her face, Rose could see that she was flirting. The girl was hardly subtle. Will smiled at her, only politely, Rose noticed, and pointed at something on the menu. He didn’t know yet not to order Jean’s food. His eyes flicked away from Mia, and he looked straight at Rose, making her breath catch ever so slightly. She turned away and busied herself washing glasses.

By the time his meal was ready, Mia was on her break. She was sitting up at the bar, eating what she normally did for dinner: a burger bun, the insides slick with tomato sauce and nothing else.

“Order up,” Jean called.

Mia shrugged at Rose, her mouth full. “I donf fink he fanfies me.”

Rose looked around, trying to think of a way to avoid a second encounter with the stranger. Maybe she could ask Jean to do it? But she knew then they’d want to know why and telling them would be even worse.

Grabbing the plate, fingers below and thumb on top, she strode toward him. Looking down at it, she saw that he seemed to have ordered a burger without the meat, just limp lettuce, pale tomatoes and cheese on the white bun. He was leaning back in his chair, reading a book, but she couldn’t see the title. As she stepped in front of his light, he looked up at her.

“Here you go,” she said.

He leaned forward. “Thanks.” He paused. “I wanted to ask...are you all right? Before I—”

“I’m fine,” she snapped. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

She looked him right in the eye then, daring him to mention what he’d seen. He didn’t.

“Just checking,” he said and half smiled, creating little crinkles around his dark eyes.

* * *

At closing time, when all the stools were on the tables and the floor was mopped and drying, Springsteen was singing about dreams and secrets and darkness on the edge of town, and Mia and Rose sat on the bar, drinking beers. Their aching feet feeling blissful now that they weren’t on the hard concrete. Jean stood behind them, counting the money in the register.

“How long is our guest staying?” Rose asked, trying to sound casual.

“He’s booked in for a week,” Jean muttered, writing down figures on an order pad.

“You keen?” Mia asked.

“Nah, the opposite. He seemed like a dickhead. Really patronizing.”

The sound of something banging on the window interrupted them. It was Frank, rapping his knuckles on the glass. He waved good-night, his brown eyes so hopeful that he looked more like a small scruffy street mutt begging for a scrap than a policeman in his thirties. They waved back.

“That man needs to take it down a notch,” Jean said, slight disapproval in her voice.

Rose didn’t respond.

“He’s a nice guy,” Mia said, pushing it.

“It’s not about that,” Rose said. “There’s just no point. This won’t be where I end up.” She took a swig. Mia watched her, carefully.

“You heard back from Sage, didn’t you?”

Rose didn’t look at her; she couldn’t.

“I was so sure you had this one,” Mia said.

Rose felt warmth on her hand and looked down. Jean had placed her weathered palm on top of Rose’s fingers.

“You’re a fighter—it’ll happen for you. It might take a while, but it will happen.”

For the first time that night, the tightness in Rose’s throat loosened.

Jean withdrew her hand and placed two envelopes between them on the bar.

“Patronizing or not, our guest tips well.”

* * *

The air felt cooler as Mia and Rose stepped off the porch outside. The cicadas were trilling loudly. Despite everything, Rose felt a sense of victory. She’d done it. She’d got through the shift, and now she could go home to grieve, while she still had a home. She looked back at the tavern as they walked toward Mia’s car, wondering again about the guest, Will. He must be a relative of someone, down for some family occasion. She couldn’t think of any other reason someone would want to stay in this town for a whole week.

“Oh.” Mia paused next to her.

“What?”

Mia ran to her beat-up old Auster and pulled a parking ticket from the windscreen. She looked at her watch.

“I was only three minutes late!”

“They must have been waiting for it to tick over.”

They looked around. The street was empty. Getting in the car, Mia held the ticket up to the interior light.

“It’s more than I even made on my shift.”

Rose took her envelope from her bag and put it on the dashboard.

“You don’t have to,” Mia said, but Rose could already hear the relief in her voice.

“I know.”

They didn’t talk as Mia drove. The radio played some terrible new pop song that Rose had heard one too many times, but she knew better than to mess with the stereo in Mia’s car. She stared out the window, looking forward to the oblivion of sleep. She slid her heels out of her shoes. Tomorrow, she decided, she wouldn’t wear shoes at all. The tavern was closed on Tuesdays, so maybe she wouldn’t even get out of bed.

The car went past the fossickers. At first it was just a few tents set up in and around a gutted old cottage that had been there for forever. Now it was a real community. People lived in cars; structures were set up. Some people just slept under the stars. It was warm enough. They kept to themselves, so the cops didn’t seem to bother them, even though they all sported missing teeth and raging meth addictions. Rose hadn’t known why they were called the fossickers at first, but then found a couple of years back that they fossicked for opals and sold them on the black market. That was how they got by. Her stomach clenched with fear and she looked down at her hands. She would never end up there.

“So, I heard some great gossip today.” Mia couldn’t stand to sit in silence for too long. No matter how miserable she was, Mia always seemed to feel better when she was talking. “Maybe you can write your next article about it? Working at a cop bar has got to be good for something.”

Unlike Mia, Rose often craved solitude. She didn’t need to answer anyway. Mia usually seemed perfectly happy to just listen to the sound of her own voice chirping away.

“Apparently someone has been leaving porcelain dolls on doorsteps of houses, and the dolls look like the little girls that live in the house. How freaky is that?”

Rose snapped her head around.

“The cops are worried it might mean something. Like maybe it’s a pedophile marking his victims.”

Rose gaped at her.

“What?” asked Mia.

Rose scrambled through her bag, trying to find her cell phone, the image of Laura in her mind, sleeping cheek to cheek with her tiny porcelain twin.