‘You!’ the blonde says to Justine disdainfully. ‘You’ve got your free coffee, now get out.’
Justine dances forward as if she’d like to take a swing at the woman behind the counter, but I drag her towards the door. ‘Thanks again,’ I say, ignoring the blonde’s evil eye from across the room. ‘You’ve really helped me out. I forget things all the time. Some days are better than others. Actually, today’s a good day, would you believe?’
Justine’s colour is still high but she gives me a tight smile and murmurs, ‘Anytime. It’s not like you haven’t helped me out before, hey?’
Her womanly figure, broad through the shoulders and hips, cuts back through the crowd and is gone before I can ask her what she means. We are once more sealed off from the outside world by the ancient glass-fronted door, that disgusting plastic curtain.
I drift back towards the coffee machine and the drag-queen blonde grabs the back of my apron and yanks me into motion.
‘Deal ’em out,’ she orders, taking off her own apron and throwing it over a mop and bucket propped in one corner. She heads towards the narrow corridor that runs past the cramped galley kitchen towards the toilets. ‘Ciggie break,’ she calls out with relish, her fingers doing the universal victory sign understood by smokers everywhere. ‘And it’s gonna be a long one. So hold the fort. If you can.’
The short-order cook glances up at us both for a moment.
‘Quit staring at me, you Muslim fundamentalist,’ the blonde snaps as she passes the serving hatch. ‘Haven’t you seen a real woman before?’
He looks down unhurriedly, keeps chopping.
‘Who’s next?’ I say coolly into at least a dozen ticked-off faces, the angry corporate gnome among them, as the barista girl shakes her head and keeps on pouring shots of coffee.
Thanks to my preternaturally good eyes and ears and a weird mnemonic ability with words, most of the patrons I serve this morning probably won’t even notice that I’m only a rough facsimile of the girl who’s served them before.
It doesn’t really get quiet until after 10.30 am. I know, because I’m watching the clock, dispirited by the smells, the noise, the sheer barefaced rudeness of the people that constantly wash in and out of this place. Let’s just say that there’s a twitch in Lela’s left hand that wasn’t there earlier. If the purpose of me being here is that I gain some kind of empathy for this girl and her miserable existence, hey, it’s working. I hate her life as much as she does already.
‘I think nice people like nicer surroundings, you know?’ the barista says with a shrug when she finally gets a moment to wipe down the surfaces of her machine. ‘We get all kinds here. Mostly not so nice.’
‘You’ll think this is really . . . odd,’ I say carefully, ‘but you’re going to have to remind me who that man is.’ I point to the silent, glowering giant in the kitchen, massive shoulders bunched over lunch prep. ‘And who the woman is who went outside for a ciggie break, uh, well over two hours ago.’
The barista girl makes a clicking sound through her teeth. ‘You not joking, right? You really can’t remember? You been here over four months already. You not pulling my leg?’
I shake my head, looking at her expectantly, and she says finally, ‘His name is Sulaiman, North African man, he start working here last month. Nice man, very quiet, like to pray. The devil woman is Reggie. The old cook, he quit. Said Reggie push him too far. I’m Cecilia, originally from Cebu.’
She can almost see the gears of my brain grinding sluggishly into motion and takes pity on me. ‘In the Philippines.’
‘Oh, right,’ I say, still troubled by the gaping hole in my recall. Just probing the name Carmen Zappacosta is enough to bring on a shock wave of mental anguish. It’s as if that past identity comes with an added electrical charge, is ringed around, in my mind, by fire. And I know, without knowing how, that it has something to do with my dream. The dream that had seemed so real and so beautiful, which I hadn’t wanted to wake from and can’t now remember.
Cecilia misinterprets my expression and gives me a reproachful look. ‘You like me, but you don’t like her. You say Sulaiman just okay. That’s what you tell me before.’
I give her what I’m hoping is an apologetic smile. ‘It’s the drugs,’ I say.
Cecilia shakes her head. ‘You university students all into weird shit. Bad for you brain.’ She starts putting her tiny universe into some kind of order before the next onslaught of caffeine hounds: cups over here, spoons over there, sugar, cocoa sprinkler, new bottle of soy milk, new bottle of skinny milk, new bottle of regular milk, dishcloths for spillages.
I laugh at the indignation in her voice. ‘No doubt. Uh, the woman that was here before, with me . . . Justine?’ I ask. ‘Do I know her, too?’
Cecilia is silent for a while, just looks at me with her solemn, liquid eyes. ‘You for real?’ she says. ‘She one of them exotic dancers from the Showgirls Lounge.’
When I screw up my face in confusion, Cecilia clicks her tongue. ‘You know, she dance for men for money. In a club. Don’t ask me what else she do in there.’
Well, that explains a lot. Like why, in her down time, Justine dresses to hide her shape, making herself plainer and more ordinary than she needs to be. The ‘hooker’ comment had probably hit a little too close to home.
Cecilia adds, ‘She got ex-boyfriend trouble — he follow her everywhere, won’t leave her alone. She leave him because he beat her so badly she go to hospital one time. But every time she move club, he find her again. She move house, he find her, too. No one take her seriously, but you. Not even the police. You let her hide in Mr Dymovsky’s office once, when he not there, remember? Justine crying, say she gonna die.’
There’s disbelief in Cecilia’s eyes that I could forget something like that. I don’t blame her — I wouldn’t believe me, either. Justine begged Lela for shelter once from an abusive stalker? Christ. No wonder she thought I was playing a sick joke on her before.
The way Justine looks and carries herself makes total sense to me now. It’s always men doing it to women, I find. Crimes of passion? There’s never any passion about it from the female point of view. Here’s hoping she manages to outrun the creep and find herself a healthier line of work.
Cecilia’s made me a coffee while we’ve been talking, and I try to drink it because it’s a kind gesture and probably the last thing she wants to make in her spare time. But I’m no fan of the stuff — doesn’t take me long to work that out — and I shove it discreetly to one side.
Everything in this place is as antiquated and plug ugly as the coffee machine. The refrigerated soft- drinks cabinets; the air-conditioning unit with pieces missing from the control panel; the two ceiling fans that are wobbling away at full tilt; the tables, all with wads of folded-up paper jammed beneath the legs to keep them even; the speckled linoleum-tiled floor; the mismatched chairs; the rounded, green plastic light fixtures, like so many space helmets; the pink-framed pictures of lovely Slavic destinations that probably no longer exist, replaced by car parks and shopping malls. It’s a hideous place, the Green Lantern coffee shop, and I can’t understand why the well-dressed young man sitting alone at a table with an open laptop in front of him would want to work here.
Sunlight falls upon his light brown hair, which has a slight wave to it, cut short. He has blue eyes, straight brows, a pale complexion, and the faint lines on his face give him a perpetually stern, slightly cold expression. He’s just above six feet in height, with poor posture that makes his suit look a little too big on him. He has a bad habit of leaning his head and neck into his computer screen, like a turtle or a duck. He’s probably shortsighted,