fought the urge to laugh at his own bleak musings.
He needed to do something to break his mood, so he slowly rose from the chair and started moving in a crouch towards the bar. At the last minute he jinked to the right and walked along the length of the bar, following its curve towards the jukebox.
The woman picked that exact moment to stop feeding money into the machine. She turned around and faced the room. Marc was too close to her by now to back out, so he kept going and only stopped walking when he was right in front of her.
Suddenly this seemed like a bad idea. It was as if he’d entered another of those drunken fugues and only come out of it when it was too late to make any difference to the situation.
“Hi,” he said, aware that he was swaying gently.
The woman stared at him. Up close he could see that she was wearing too much makeup. The dark rings around her eyes looked like week-old bruises. Her lips were thin and her skin, beneath the layer of foundation, was slightly rough, as if it had been sandpapered. But her eyes were beautiful: ice blue, piercing, holding within them the promise of something that he couldn’t define. Staring into those eyes was like catching sight of a cold, quick, elegant movement; the flickering of something living encased within an iceberg.
“I, erm... I noticed you earlier. Thought I’d come over and say hello.”
She didn’t stop staring at him but she looked bored, barely even interested in what he had to say. Not that he could blame her: his patter was as stale as the air inside the pub, and as lifeless as her stoic face.
“Okay... sorry. I’ll go away.” He started to turn, his cheeks burning. He wasn’t usually this awkward around women. In fact, he usually found it easy to turn on the charm; faking was simple, it was honesty he found a difficult trick to pull off. But there was something about this woman that disturbed him – the same thing that drew him to her.
“White wine and soda,” she said, without moving. She had her back to the wall. The glass in her hand was almost full. Slowly, she raised the glass to her lips and swallowed the contents. Her eyes never left his face.
She handed him the glass.
He struggled to think of a witty response, but there was nothing left to say. He turned around and walked over to the bar, ordered the drinks. Then he returned to her side, feeling as if he’d been trapped somehow, or manipulated into doing something against his will. Not a big thing, just a tiny act of coercion, something unnoticeable to everyone but himself: a minuscule defilement of his sense of self, or a minor mutilation to a part of his body that would remain unseen.
He handed her the drink and waited. Why was he acting like this? What the hell was wrong with him?
“What’s your name?” He couldn’t stop looking at her eyes. He wanted to see that movement again, to try and discern what had caused it.
“Abby.” Her voice was cold and hard, the inflection flat. The vowels were truncated, as if she could barely be bothered to form the words.
“I’m Marc.”
“Oh.” Her thin lips twitched apart as she spoke. She took a sip of her wine.
“I’m not usually this crap with women,” he said, thinking that honesty might be the way forward. “You make me feel uncomfortable. Do you know that? The effect you have. Are you aware of it?”
“Do I look like I give a shit, Marc?” Those icy eyes, that tough voice.
“Listen... you’re obviously not interested. Enjoy your drink and I’ll –”
“No.” That was all she said. Just one word. But it was enough to keep him there, as if someone had applied quick-setting glue to the soles of his shoes.
“You don’t want me to leave you alone?”
She shook her head. “You can hang around for a bit. Talk to me. Nobody else does around here, not these days. It’s like they’re afraid they might catch something off me.”
Puzzled by her choice of words, he wondered if she perhaps had some kind of disease. She looked thin enough that something might be eating her away from the inside. The suit jacket hung loosely on her frame and her legs beneath the hem of the skirt were so thin that he was afraid they might buckle if she stepped away from