Come See About Me (10 page)

I fly off the
curb near a stop sign and come down hard on the road, my right ankle flipping
underneath me and toppling the rest of my body. With the wind knocked out of
me, I go to pieces, my lungs screaming for air and tears leaking out of my eyes
in response. It’s not that my ankle hurts that much—it’s the panic anyone feels
when they have their breath stolen from them, only my panic’s worse because I
was already losing grip.

For several
seconds I sit motionless, waiting for my body to remember how to breathe. Once
my lungs start working again I plant my hands on the cement under me and propel
myself slowly upwards, testing the weight on my right ankle. It’s sore but it
will take a bit of weight. I stand, my eyes draining like they haven’t realized
the physical emergency’s over with, and having started crying, I can’t stop.
The endless longing for Bastien shakes in my chest as I limp along the
sidewalk.

It doesn’t
matter that I’m outside and anyone could see. It doesn’t really feel as though
anyone else exists anyway. I keep moving towards the lake because I don’t have
it in my head to do anything else, and just steps from the path along the water
the first person to lay eyes on me does a double take and then looks past me as
though he’s decided not to notice, which is sensible because there’s no point
in noticing—and anyway, from my point of view he doesn’t really exist.

“Hey,” he says,
defying my thoughts by suddenly coming closer. “Are you all right?”

I massage my
eyelids with my thumb and forefinger. “I…fell. I’m okay. Just got the wind
knocked out of me.”

My chest hasn’t
stopped vibrating and I don’t sound nearly okay. Through my tear streaked
vision I see that the guy’s the Irish one I first noticed at The Cunning Café
and then spotted again near this very spot over a week ago.

“Do you want to put
your weight on me?” he offers, looking concerned. “We can walk you over to the
bench.” He motions to the nearest one, which, thankfully, is currently
unoccupied.

“Okay,” I say in
a soggy voice. “Thanks.”

He bends so I can
swing my right arm around his shoulders and then winds his left around me. We
inch over to the bench together, where I plop down with a sniffle.

“Thanks,” I say
again.

“Do you think it
could be broken?” he asks. “You might want to get it X-rayed.”

I shake my head.
“I doubt it. It doesn’t really hurt that bad. It’s probably just a little
sprain.”

The guy nods
like this makes sense, although he must be wondering why I’m crying so hard
over something that doesn’t hurt much.

I press the heel
of my palms against my eyes and will myself to stop crying. I’ve already
attracted more attention than I want. “I’ll be okay,” I say. “Really.”

The guy’s
standing in front of me, watching my breakdown and probably silently debating
whether he can discreetly excuse himself. “Are you sure you don’t want me to
walk you to your car?” he says, motioning to the bench. “I don’t want to leave
you stuck here.”

“I’m not stuck.”
I stand to demonstrate, only wincing a little. “And I don’t have a car. I ran
down here and flipped along the way.” I plop down on the bench again. “It’s not
really my foot.” I wrap my arms around my stomach and fold in on myself.
“I’m…you know…I’m just not having a good day.”

“I know the
feeling,” he says with a measure of sullenness in his tone. “I don’t mean
this
,”
he adds hastily. “Just about not having good days in general.” His lips form a
grim line.

I taste the salt
of my tears on my lips but they’ve listened to me and slowed their pace. The
last time I cried like this in front of someone I barely knew I ended up moving
in with her, but mostly people don’t want to know what’s wrong with me and I
don’t want to tell them. This guy doesn’t want to know either, and I don’t
blame him because I couldn’t care less about his version of a bad day.

I glance past the
guy, who’s about twenty-five with short brown hair and the sort of
clean-cut-with-a-dash-of-urban-edge good looks that are hard not to notice,
unless you’re oblivious to pretty much everything, like I’ve been for months.
Down at the lake a lone goose is ducking its head into the water, unaware that
anyone considers it a pest. It makes me think of Marta.

“I hate shitty
days,” I mumble, shifting my gaze back to the guy.

“Yeah.” He
squints as he turns to stare at the goose too. “I hope it gets better for you,”
he says with a finality that means he’s going to leave me in peace.

“You too,” I say
generously. I can afford to be generous now that he’s going. My eyes are nearly
dry.

He lopes off in
the general direction we came from. I stay put for an hour, until my ankle
feels better and watching the waves has stabilized my emotions. The sadness
never really stops but the explosive quality it had earlier fades into a dull,
tired gloom. I wish I’d thought to bring
The Handmaid’s Tale
with me as
a kind of protection against further interaction. People don’t usually try to
talk to you when you’re reading, and now that I’m feeling level I notice
hunger’s gnawing at my stomach and my thirst is even more acute. I haven’t
eaten or drunk anything since last night. Didn’t take a bath this morning
either. I’m not smelly or gross but I feel stale.

I head for
coffee, my ankle twinging slightly as I stumble towards The Cunning Café.
Inside I order a latte and gnocchi in rose sauce and seek out a table near the
back of the room. Someone’s wearing lavender—copious amounts of it—and I glance
instinctively around to look for the source, but my eyes land on someone else
instead: that same guy I keep seeing around town. He catches me staring and I
tighten my grip on my tray and walk over to him, regretting my fall earlier
because it means I can’t ignore him now.

“Hi,” I say
quickly. “Thanks for helping me out earlier.” I tap my right foot on the floor.
“It’s much better.”

“Good,” he says.
“What about the rest of your day?” He points to the empty seat in front of him.
“Do you want to sit down?” He sees the hesitation in my face and starts to
smile. “You’re allowed to say no. It’s just that there aren’t many empty
tables.”

I swivel to do a
quick visual sweep of the room and find he’s right. The only table left is one
near the front door and there are two people on their way over there who will
definitely beat me to it. “Sorry,” I say as I set my tray down on his table, “I
don’t mean to be rude. I’m just very antisocial these days.”

“Then why are
you stalking me?” he deadpans. “Sorry.” He gives a quick shake of his head.
“I’ll stop taking the piss. You don’t seem like you’re in the humor for it.”

I shrug lightly
and resolve to finish my food as quickly as possible. “If I were stalking you I
guess I probably wouldn’t be an hour behind.” I smile just enough to make it
seem like I could be joking.

“True enough,”
he says, fingers reaching for what’s left of his sandwich. “Glad to see your
foot’s better anyway.”

I nod and dig
into my gnocchi. Bastien would love it. We used to say we should go to Italy
after graduation and cultivate some serious love handles. “How about you?” I
ask. “Is it a good or a bad day?” It never used to be so difficult to talk to
people. Pretending to care what they say takes more energy than it’s worth.

“I’d say…” He
stares over my head as he thinks it over. “Indifferent, really.”

“Indifferent is
okay.” I shovel more gnocchi into my mouth. He doesn’t seem any more inclined
to talk than I am, which means maybe we don’t really have to say anything, but
for some reason I go on. “So you’re from Ireland?”

He nods.
“Dublin. Have you ever been?”

“No. Never been
overseas at all. I wanted to.”

“Wanted to?” he
repeats. “Not anymore?”

I loop my fingers
through my coffee cup handle. Abigail never breaks when she speaks of Alrick,
although I know she loved him. I try to imagine what she would say in my place.
“My boyfriend died in January,” I tell him. Hot as it is, I gulp my coffee. The
heat makes one of my top teeth throb. “I haven’t really wanted to do anything
since.” So far I’m doing a good job of being dispassionate—it reminds me of how
I felt during the move—but I don’t trust that it can last. The faster we can
changes subjects, the better. “I’ve basically…crashed. Shut down. Cut myself
off.”

The Irish guy
shifts in his chair. “I’m sorry.” His eyes are so blue that if he wasn’t Irish
I’d bet they were contacts. He stares blinkingly down at the table like I’ve
hit him with a conversation killer. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

If he keeps
looking so downcast my veneer of calm won’t last until I finish my lunch.
Impulsively, I rap on the table and say, “So what about you? Tell me something
awful.”

“Something
awful?” he echoes in surprise. He shifts in his chair again, an uncomfortable
look spreading across his features. I bet next time he sees me he won’t ask to
me sit down. No, he’ll look away, even if I’m wiping out right in front of him.

But I follow
through with a nod because I need the spotlight off me in a hurry. I cross my
legs under the table and go for my coffee. Every time I swallow a bit that same
top tooth hurts. I’ve twisted my ankle and somehow ended up with a cavity.
That’s some kind of special talent.

Across from me,
the guy sinks down in his chair, his head tipping back as he thinks it over.
“There are so many things that’s it’s hard to pick just one.” The sullenness
from earlier is back in his voice and I lean closer, so I suppose I do want to
know what his version of a bad day is after all.

I continue with
my gnocchi as I wait for him to enlighten me.

He pushes up his
left sleeve with his right hand and fiddles with his leather watch strap.
“Okay, how’s this then?” he begins, frowning deeply. “My fiancée cheated on me
with someone I work with. And as if that wasn’t horrible enough on its own, it
was in all the papers back home.”

“It was in the
newspaper?” I set my fork down.

“Yeah, well…” He
motions with his hands. “I’m known a bit there.”

“Known?”

His lips are
clamped shut like he doesn’t want to say another word about it. “I was on an
Irish TV show,” he replies dismissively. “You wouldn’t have heard of it—it
doesn’t air over here.”

Somehow I’m not
really surprised to hear that; he looks like someone who could be on a TV
show—only a little more real, I guess. Maybe that’s the way Irish TV is. His
version of bad days doesn’t trump mine, but I have to admit having your fiancée
cheat on you isn’t pretty. “I guess it’s a good thing you didn’t marry her,” I
say. “I mean, that’s terrible anyway, but marrying her would’ve been worse.”

His forehead
creases. “Believe me, it was bad enough. Bad enough that I came all the way
over here to wait for the dust to settle.” I was wrong in thinking that he
didn’t want to say more. He furrows his eyebrows and continues, “Me and the
other bloke, we got into a fight when I found out. I lost the head—broke one of
his arms and his nose. He almost pressed charges.”

The guy keeps on
going, his words picking up speed as he describes the next time he’d raised his
fists to someone—a fight he didn’t start and where no one was really hurt but
the fact that it broke out late at night outside a bar didn’t look good in the
media. Then there were additional women troubles in the aftermath of his
breakup. On the rebound he slept with an actress co-star from the same TV show,
a woman twelve years older than him, as well as a former close friend of his
sister who had grown obsessed with him and then subsequently aired what little
there was to their relationship online and to the press.

All in all his
life sounds like a story ripped from a tabloid—the only things missing are a
sex tape and a bout in rehab—and I find myself looking at him the same way I
might regard some kind of exotic zoo animal. Personally, I just don’t know
people that have that kind of crazy drama in their lives.

“I can’t believe
I just told you all that,” he murmurs, driving his fingers into his short brown
hair. His eyes look all the more stunned because of their shocking color.
Clearly he wishes he could take the last few minutes back. I know how that
feels—if it were up to me I’d rewind my life back to the day at the food bank
with Bastien in high school and attach myself to him like super glue.

“It’s okay,” I
say. “It’s not like I’m going to tell anyone.” I finished my coffee and food
during the course of his story, nodding and reacting with appropriate amounts
of dismay and sympathy during the telling, but faced with the end of the
revelation I’m not sure what else to say. I grab my fork and flip it over on my
empty plate a couple of times. Bastien used to be the restless one. I guess the
sparkler energy isn’t completely dead yet, or maybe it’s just the strangeness
of having a real conversation with someone that isn’t about birds or Bastien.
“I hardly talk to anyone these days anyway. Besides, I don’t even know your
name.”

He smiles at the
bizarreness of sharing the most embarrassing facts about his life with a total
stranger. “It’s Liam,” he says.

I wasn’t hinting
for his name. I hope he doesn’t think I’ll run home and Google him. “I’m Leah,”
I tell him. “And seriously, if I ever see you again I’ll pretend that’s all I
know, okay? That your name is Liam.”

“Okay.” He bobs
his head and I notice that he’s finished his food too; we’ve both just been
sitting here, talking. “Thanks. I better head now—before I tell you other
things I probably shouldn’t.” His smile, as he gets up from the table, is both
wry and embarrassed. “But try to watch your step, Leah, okay? We don’t want to
make a habit of these confessions, do we?”

“I’ll be
careful. Thanks again.” I return his smile. “It was nice talking to you.”