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She worked on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, but not on Fridays or Wednesdays. Occasionally, there were exceptions to this rule, occurring, Lyle assumed, when she was covering for someone or in need of extra cash. But usually, her schedule was reliable. Knowledge of it was not something Lyle had actively sought out, rather something that he couldn’t help but acquire, the way that we notice patterns in our daily lives and form opinions based on them. This is just the way the human mind works.

Did this knowledge of her schedule affect Lyle’s behaviour? Did he choose not to lunch at the café when the chance of seeing her was low? No. Of course not. That would be strange. It was true however, that on Wednesdays and Fridays, he was slightly more likely to be tempted by the meal-deal they did in the supermarket down the road. But not always, no, he was mostly faithful to the café, even on the days she wasn’t working.

Lyle liked to remember the first time he came into the café. He found it elicited a peculiar sensation, not unpleasurable, to recall his first meeting with her, distance rendering both parties attractively naïve. Perhaps this is why couples subject others to the story of their first tryst, and why friends sometimes ask each other, “What did you think when you first met me?” If she were to ask Lyle this question, he would say that he liked her straight away, though not, at first, with anything like the intensity with which he would grow to.

As he recalled, it had been a dreadful day, the rain coming down in unbroken streams like piss while the wind flattened his trousers, exposing the shape of his calves and thighs in alternating gusts. Lyle had half-staggered in, ripping off his coat, and sunk himself in a chair. The café was a trendy establishment, meaning that the bread would be sourdough and the milk oat, and Lyle felt instinctually annoyed. Then he looked up and saw her, and his mood lifted.

She was pretty, yes. Undeniably so. Each of her features neat and pleasing, classical even, the sort of beauty often overlooked nowadays, and she didn’t wear too much make up. She was younger than him, but not as young as all that. Twenty-seven, twenty-eight maybe, and she had a smart look about her, educated, well brought up. Her dress on that day was teal green and close-fitting, accentuating her figure, ample yet well proportioned. You could tell she was the kind of girl that liked to be noticed. But the thing that stood out to Lyle most of all was her smile, which she seemed to offer to him, saying Take it, it’s for you.

“Hello,” she said, “how’s it going?”

“Not bad,” Lyle said, “apart from the weather.”

He indicated the small puddle forming around the foot of his chair where his mac hung, dripping apologetically. She laughed, and Lyle was able to appraise her teeth, which were white and slightly crooked.

“I’ll have to get the mop out if you’re not careful.” She said, as if scolding him, then winked, to show it was a joke. Lyle relaxed. “What can I get for you?”

“I haven’t got a menu yet.”

“It’s behind you.”

Lyle had to rotate his body awkwardly in his chair to read the day’s specials, which were chalked up on the wall. He wondered if she was looking at the spot on the back of his head where his hair thinned, and chose quickly, eggs benedict.

“Good choice,” She said, as she scribbled down his order “that’s my favourite.”

Lyle noted the slightness of her wrist, and that she held her pen like a child that hadn’t been taught properly, gripped between middle and ring.

“That’ll be just a few minutes for you.”

She smiled once more, tripping off to the kitchen with his order, and that was it, he liked her straight away.

Despite his immediate inclination toward her, it was few days before Lyle came into the café again. Work was busy, requiring him to lunch at his desk, so it wasn’t until Thursday that he strolled out of the office at noon and made straight for it, almost without thinking.

Taking a seat, Lyle waited for her to finish up with another customer, a man slightly younger than himself, who said something to her which made her laugh. When she came over to Lyle’s table, she was friendly and solicitous just as before. Lyle strained to think of something funny to say. She was about to walk away when he attempted a call-back.

“You’ll be pleased I’m not getting your floor wet this time.”

At this remark, her forehead crinkled, and it was clear that she hadn’t remembered their previous meeting. This should have come as no surprise to Lyle, who had lived forty-three-years of un-memorability. His style of dress unremarkable, his height medium, his face neither handsome nor ugly, he knew he was not the type of person people remembered, yet somehow this had slipped his mind. He experienced a moment of mental anguish, but then, tactfully, she giggled, and said,

“Right, yeah.” Which allowed Lyle to feel positive about the exchange as he mulled it over later that day.

Through decades of experience, Lyle knew the antidote to his mediocrity to be persistence. Though she hadn’t remembered him on his second visit, and perhaps didn’t even on his third, after five consecutive lunches, wonderfully, she asked his name.

From then on, their conversations began to grow in scope and length. On July 12th, she asked him what he did for a living. On August 27th, she asked where he’d grown up, and said she had an aunt there. On September 9th, she asked his star sign, which Lyle didn’t know but made sure to find out for her. Indeed, on days when the café wasn’t busy, she might linger at his table for between four and seven minutes, a stack of dirty plates forgotten in her hand, as they conversed.

What Lyle liked most was to observe her movements. The way she balanced a tray just so, adjusting to its weight as she loaded it with cups. The practiced conservation of motion as she closed the glasswasher with a bump of her hip. The confident flick of her wrist as she tore a receipt from the card machine. Walking, her feet seemed barely to graze the ground, as if she were moving along the bottom of a swimming pool, being continually pulled toward its sun-dappled surface. For Lyle, who had always felt out of sync with the world, it was affecting to watch one so in tune with hers.

Over the course of his visits, Lyle also became familiar with the other members of staff, an Australian barista, an Irish waitress, and a self-conscious, clumsy boy, probably a student. He did not feel particularly disposed to like these people, as, young and trendy, they represented a sect of society that he was, by principle, against. However, he accepted that, to some extent, they were her friends, so he made an effort, smiling politely at the Irish waitress and instigating brief chats about the football with the Australian barista when he went up to pay his bill. Considering his connection with her, Lyle could imagine the other staff referring to him as “her friend”, if for some reason he should come up in conversation. Not that he thought this was happening, but he could imagine it.

Lyle liked to imagine even more than he liked to recall. Sometimes he imagined while he lay in bed at night, it helped him sleep. Nothing perverted. Harmless stories, in which he played the hero. He felt mildly embarrassed about these stories, the way one might feel embarrassed about still possessing a childhood toy, but he refused to give them up. Naturally, they sometimes borrowed characters from Lyle’s real life.

In one story, Lyle came into the café and noticed she was lacking her usual pep. As he looked closer, he perceived a black eye, clumsily concealed with makeup. When he discreetly asked her what had happened, she confessed to having a violent, controlling boyfriend. Sometimes this boyfriend was the Australian barista, on days when his tone towards Lyle had felt condescending. Other times it was the grown-up version of a boy called Ken Stringer, with whom Lyle went to secondary school. In the story, Lyle escorted her back to his flat and calmed her nerves with a cup of tea. Once pacified, she drifted around his living room, complimenting him on its spaciousness and enquiring about his collection of World War Two memorabilia. This was usually the end of the story. Nothing perverted.

Lyle had been coming to the cafe for around six months, when, one Monday, he arrived and she wasn’t there. Undeterred, he set up in his usual seat, with a good view of the whole room, and spread his copy of The Times over the table. From here, Lyle watched the Irish waitress interacting with the Australian barista. She laughed musically at everything he said, tilting her head back to look up at him through her eyelashes. In return, the Australian barista groped and slammed parts on the espresso machine. Disgusting, Lyle thought, people can be so obvious. When the Irish waitress finally came over to take his order, he took the opportunity to chide her.

“I’ve been waiting for over ten minutes.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It’s not like you’re busy. Just pure laziness.”

“Like I said, I’m sorry. I’ll make sure your food comes out as fast as possible.”

She smiled at him, but on her way to the kitchen, paused by the Australian barista. When Lyle’s cappuccino came over it was slightly cold, with no picture in the foam.

That night, in the story Lyle told himself, he was leaving work. It was deep winter, and although not late, already dark, the streetlamps casting sickly orange pools of light over the paving stones. As Lyle passed the café, he heard a scream coming from the alley around the back. Running round to investigate, he saw her there, being assaulted by a youth in a balaclava. Without hesitation, Lyle pulled the assailant off her, throwing him to the ground and delivering a firm kick that sent him flying across the pavement. Then, Lyle received her into his arms while she thanked him profusely, trembling like a newborn kitten. With his hand he encircled her thin, bruised wrist. As this vignette played out, Lyle sunk into a happy sleep.

On Tuesday, she was not there again. When Lyle went up to pay, he hovered for a second after tapping his card, intending to raise the question of her absence casually with the Australian barista.

“Actually,” he said, and the Australian barista looked up from the espresso machine, lifting his eyebrows perfunctorily. Immediately, Lyle imagined her showing up for work the next day and the barista teasing her,

“That sad, old guy was in here yesterday asking where you were.”

He pictured her snorting derisively, or affecting to gag, or worst of all, looking concerned, frightened. Instead, he dropped a fiver into the tip jar and left, furious.

As he walked back to the office, Lyle recalled an incident from his adolescence. He had been in Year 10 biology, dutifully doing his work, when a girl called Kirsty Murray came and sat next to him. Though they had been in the same class for four years, Kirsty had never spoken directly to Lyle before. But on that day, she asked him questions, leaning forward, so that, if he had been looking, Lyle could have seen the plump, goose flesh cleft of her breasts below her uniform. As her sugary voice wheedled at him, his cheeks grew hot. She smelt like apple juice and her long, beige hair hung just above the table, centimetres from Lyle’s arm. After fifteen minutes of this, by which time Lyle’s polyester shirt was thoroughly damp under the armpits, she got to the point.

“Do you like me, Lyle?”

“What?”

“Do you fancy me?”

He was silent, aware that it was a trap. Kirsty dropped her voice an octave, her breath grazing his cheek,

“Do you want to fuck me?”

“Fuck” was a word that Lyle sometimes used, but never in reference to its literal meaning, an act which, at this age, belonged wholly to the realm of fantasy, existing in thoughts he could neither rationalise nor fully understand. He could only describe the way they felt; soft and loamy to the touch, smelling sweetly sour like a baby’s throw-up. There in the classroom, Kirsty had conjured up Lyle’s most private feelings, laying them out under the fluorescent lights like so many limp, grey frogs to be dissected.

Lyle said nothing, but the uncontrollable, micro-rearrangement of his expression must have revealed to Kirsty all she need know. She turned then, shrieking with laughter, to Ken Stringer, who sat behind them, grinning his ugly grin, and in her cheap, falsetto voice, repeated the exchange, so that the whole class could witness Lyle’s shame.

He had worked hard to bury this memory, but it surfaced now, bobbing like a turd that wouldn’t flush, as he made his way back to the office.

The next morning, Lyle woke before his alarm. Wiping condensation from his windowpane, he looked out at the rimed, black earth showing through the sparse grass in the dog park. It was a Wednesday, when usually she wouldn’t be working. As Lyle showered, he debated whether he would visit the café that day. On the one hand, it wasn’t one of her usual days, and he was not happy with the Irish waitress or the Australian barista. On the other hand, since she had taken two days off, it was likely she would be making up for it today. In fact, Lyle was almost sure she would be. He was so sure that when he walked into the café that afternoon and didn’t see her, his dismay was visible on his face. When the nervous student came over to take his order Lyle was short with him, and the boy left even more of a shivering wreck than usual.

Thursday was a bright, cold day, the sky like a ream of printer paper. Lyle did not go into the café. The sun shone onto his computer screen, revealing a fine layer of dust, as he masticated his Southern fried chicken wrap, which was white on the outside and white on the inside, with shreds of iceberg lettuce for textural variation. As he ate, he agonised over the possibility that he had denied himself the sight of her. And for what, his pride?

He was back at the café on Friday, and despite her continued absence, returned every day for the next week. With each passing lunch he grew more frustrated, more hurt –if she was leaving, couldn’t she have said goodbye? – and more irritated by the rest of the staff. Watching them hawkishly each afternoon, he eventually concluded that he had never met a more self-satisfied, unskilled cohort in his life. The Irish waitress and the Australian barista were clearly having an affair, and the boy was completely useless, likely coddled by his mother. At night, they intruded on his thoughts.

As he sat in the café the next Monday, listening to the Australian barista laugh loudly at something the nervous student was showing him on his phone, Lyle wondered how she had ever put up with these people, to whom she was so obviously superior. He wasn’t surprised that she got out, if that was what had happened, which, now that he thought about it, probably was. Lyle made a decision. This would be his last visit to the café. For a moment he felt good, self-assured. He turned his attention to the congealed yolk of his egg, cutting off a piece and raising it to his mouth, then froze. If he never returned to the café, how would he ever see her again? And if he never saw her again, who would ask about his day? Who would smile at him with two rows of perfectly crooked white teeth? Who would laugh brightly at his terse, shy jokes? Even if he did keep coming back to the café, every day until he died, he might never see her again.

Just then, the Irish waitress approached Lyle and said something which he didn’t hear. He rounded on her,

“What do you want?”

“I was just checking if you wanted another– no, you know what, you can piss off.”

She turned from him, and walked briskly towards the counter, where the Australian barista placed his hands on her shoulders. She said something that Lyle couldn’t hear, and the Australian barista looked over at him. As the nervous student led the Irish waitress into the back, the barista approached Lyle’s table.

“Right,” he said to Lyle, “I didn’t have a problem with you, mate, but you’ve been consistently rude to my staff this week, and we don’t tolerate abuse here.”

Lyle’s pulse throbbed in his forehead, his hands felt clammy.

“I’m sorry, I’m not entirely sure what I’ve–”

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

The Australian barista had picked up his plate and coffee cup, the look on his face was pitying but firm. Another customer, a man in his mid-twenties, was staring at Lyle. When Lyle looked at him his eyes darted to his laptop. Lyle had never liked people who cause scenes. He stood, retrieved his jacket, folded his paper and tucked it under his arm. He had to say it now.

“I’ll be on my way. Just, before I go, could I ask you, that other girl who works here, the English one, do you think you could pass on a message for me, or my phone number, if I write it down…”

The Australian barista’s expression of pity had turned into one of disgust.

“Get out, mate,” he said, “I’m serious.”

Needless to say, the next day, Lyle’s lunch was purchased at the supermarket. He kept his head down as he passed the café, his eyes fixed on the pieces of dried chewing gum that Pollocked the paving stones. It was agony for him to recall what had happened there and he tried to scour it from his mind, yet he could still sense its presence, like dirt under his fingernails.

He was leaving the office late on Friday when he noticed that the light in the café was still on. This drew his attention, being unusual at this hour, so that, for the first time since he’d been asked to leave, he let himself look at it squarely. There, in the centre of the lit-up window, she stood. So, she hadn’t quit, she’d merely been away, perhaps on holiday or attending the deathbed of a relative! If it hadn’t been for Monday’s unfortunate incident, he would have been reunited with her within a matter of days. He cursed the Irish waitress and her rampaging emotions.

But what did it matter now? There she stood, beautiful as ever, leaning against the counter, making marks with a pencil on a long reel of receipts. A melancholic tableau, Lyle thought, alone in the vast, unfeeling city. He watched her fold and staple the receipts and tuck them into the till, then switch off the light and step outside, locking the door behind her.

Lyle wasn’t following her, not at first. She happened to be going in the same direction as him, and he wasn’t going to alter his route on her behalf. Eventually, she did take a left that wasn’t part of Lyle’s usual journey, and then yes, it could be said that he allowed her to lead him, but he made sure to cross to the other side of the road, having read online that women felt safer if you did this when walking behind them at night.

They cut through a market where animals carcasses swung from awnings, leaking blood onto the pavement, and dead-eyed fish lay in beds of melting ice. The air smelt of sawdust and iron, and something sweeter, fermented. Lyle skirted a rail of ladies’ underwear in clear plastic packaging, nearly knocking over a pyramid of mangos, as he fought to keep her in his sights. Then they turned a corner and were alone together once more.

He matched her pace, so that the walk became a kind of waltz, the softness of his footsteps lulling him into a dream state. In fact, it was like a dream, the glow of the streetlamps reminding him of one of his favourite stories, the one with the youth in the balaclava. From a distance, Lyle watched her descend the steps of a terraced house divided into two flats. As she disappeared through the door, he moved closer. What now? He could knock, say he’d happened to be passing and seen her going in. She would be pleased, surely. But perhaps he should wait for the right moment.

A tree was conveniently located in front of her house, which Lyle situated himself slightly behind just as the large windows bloomed with light. Her front room was laid out with a kitchen at the back and a sofa and TV closer to the window. Somewhat studenty in décor, discarded jackets and books lay strewn about. Not quite what he’d pictured for her. Lyle had imagined more crocheted cushion covers and less CDs. He watched her cross to the fridge and take out a Tupperware and a can of Stella Artois. While the Tupperware rotated in the microwave, she cracked open the lager and sipped on it. A glass of Sauvignon Blanc would’ve suited her better, Lyle thought.

Rain started to fall, lightly at first and then in fast, fat drops. Lyle pulled up the hood of his mac as she took the Tupperware out of the microwave and over to the sofa. She pressed a button on a remote control, and the TV flared to life, a reality show, pancake faced sluts in bikinis and veneered gym lads lounging across the screen. Finishing her food, she lit a cigarette. Lyle frowned. He hated the smell of smoke, especially on women. Her face ghoulishly lit by the TV, she looked tired, older. A car drove up the street, its headlights creating two solid orange cones in the torrent as it passed.

How different Lyle felt standing there in the rain, to the day on which he’d met her, when too it had been raining. He felt a wave of nausea, beginning in the base of his stomach and moving upwards until it reached his head, where it condensed into a single thought: She had tricked him. How had he been so foolish? Never one to judge, he had met her on the plane of acceptance, and thought, here is an attractive young girl, with good manners, working for a living. Looking at her now, chain-smoking, necking booze, gorging herself before trash TV, he couldn’t believe how mistaken he had been. Not mistaken, tricked, he reminded himself. Lyle was too trusting, a virtue in theory, but people exploited it, exploited him. It had been that smile that clinched it, that lovely, crooked smile. It had said I’m on your side, or so he’d thought. Really, it had said, give me a tip. Really, she was no better than a whore, touting her good looks for loose change. And were her looks so good? He took a step closer to the window. Her posture was poor, her stomach bulged above the waistline of her jeans, her upper arms were pimpled, her nose, from this angle, was much larger than it looked front on. The barista’s scornful smirk flashed before his eyes. For this slattern’s sake, he had been humiliated, publicly and completely. She was no better than the rest of them, no better than Kirsty.

With his foot, Lyle made contact with a rock the size of a fist. He picked it up, it was jagged at the edges, not a natural stone but a shard of concrete forced up by the roots of the tree. Lyle tested it in his hand, it weighed the same as his portable radio. He raised it above his head, imagining the shock on her face as the glass shattered. Would it shatter? He had never been a star at cricket, but her flat was on the basement level, gravity would aid his arm. Perhaps–

Lyle felt a sharp crack at the back of his neck which exploded outwards through his skull in a flood of pain. The noise of a motorway filled his head. He had been shot. Someone was trying to kill him. He collapsed against the tree, sliding down to the base of its trunk. Looking up, his eyes swimming, he saw the Irish waitress standing over him. In her left hand she held a pair of housekeys, in the right, a bottle of wine.

“What the fuck are you doing?” She asked him.

Lyle pressed his hand to the back of his head, it came away clean, no blood.

“You hit me.” He said.

“Okay? You were about to put a brick through my window.” Recognition broke over her face. “Oh my god, it’s you. Are you stalking us?”

Lyle got to his feet, the pain having subsided to a dull ache.

“I’m calling the police.” He said. “You’ve assaulted me.”

“I’m fucking calling them first, twat.”

Lyle had never liked people who cause scenes. His feet made a smacking sound against the slick concrete as he ran, throwing up sprays of dirty water. He thought about how upset she was going to be when she found out what the Irish waitress had done. She would probably reach out to apologise. Perhaps she would come round to his flat, with a nice box of biscuits, asking to talk. Yes, she was good like that, she would want to make things right. She liked him, after all.

 

 


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