Astrobleme (Part 2)

Without even meaning to, I step back a tad, like stepping back from the heat from an oven. 'Sorry, madam. It's just,' I try a different tack, 'we're getting a bit busy. Chocabloc, really. You know, lunchtime rush and all that. So, not that I wish to hurry you or anything, but I can see you're almost finished, so perhaps if I get you the bill now ...'

The scar looks at me more intently than her eyes do.

My hand instinctively goes to my own throat.

Checking.

It's soft and intact. Still in one piece.

Then it happens.

The movement of my own hand must stir something in her. Like we are playing a child's game, she copies me: I touch my throat, so she touches her own.

Her fingers come away, shocked.

Her nostrils flare.

Her eyes widen.

She looks at me, guilty, like I've seen something I shouldn't have.

She tries to compose herself, erase the last five seconds.

Nothing's happened, right?

Then she speaks, and when she does, it is in an eerily flat and accentless voice, as though she's reading from a phrasebook: 'Where is the toilet?'

'Erm. It's -' I point towards the corridor at the back of the restaurant '- shall I have your bill here waiting for you when you come back?'

But she is already up.

Raincoat rustling.

As she walks off, I see from behind, her hands, both of them, go to her throat.

She bumps into Melissa, who quickly adjusts herself and says, 'Oops, sorry.'

But that is enough time for me to see.

In the impact, the raincoat lady's hair ... it slipped.

A sliver of baldness gleams above one ear.

She is falling apart.

As she puts herself together, I lose sight of her in the far corridor.

I feel the tartan lady's eyes on me. How much did she hear? How much did she see?

Someone says the word 'barmy'.

A Mediterranean-looking man gives me a weird look, like I'm the mad one.

But these are just niggles among the crowd.

What just happened has mostly gone unnoticed, as far I can tell.

I start to walk - I don't bounce, I don't breeze - I walk. Not to get the bill. But towards the toilets.

I half-embrace a man as I squeeze past him down the tight corridor, and head into the Ladies.

I don't know what I'm expecting.

I don't know what I'm doing at all, really.

I should probably have called someone in here with me. Make sure a weirdness doesn't become something more. Doesn't become a problem. Something dangerous.

But as I push through the second door, I do it alone.

She's not by the sinks.

Two cubicle doors hang open, like broken jaws.

Both empty.

The third is closed.

I bend down, looking for feet in the gap.

Nothing.

I tug on the door.

It opens.

Nothing.

I don't understand, of course. Who would?

Perhaps the tartan lady has her wish: the raincoat lady is gone.

I move in a pointless, stupid circle - because pacing will make her appear, obviously.

I check the cubicles again.

Also pointless. Also stupid.

It's only as I step, baffled, back out into the corridor that a thought occurs.

And sure enough, when I push through into the Gents, there she is.

The usual stink of the urinals is overwhelmed.

I almost choke.

She is staring into the mirror over the sinks.

At first I think she is throttling herself.

Her hands work frantically at her throat: she pushes the skin together, but it falls back, opens every time.

Her hands have gone black, slick, like she has dipped them in oil.

She sees me.

'Are you okay? Should I get someone?'

A hand slips into her raincoat, rummages, pulls something out.

It glints sharply in the greenish light.

'No,' I say. 'Don't.'

But it's like I'm not there. She joins the needle and the thread and raises them to her neck.

She watches her mirror-self carefully. She has to get it right.

I think I'm going to throw up.

The needle moves slowly towards her throat, but then her hands start to shake.

'Stop, please. I'll get someone. Someone who knows what they're doing.'

Her hands shake so violently and yet her face remains blank as she watches the needle feed its way into her throat in the mirror-world.

Then she starts to sew.

There is a clacking sound.

And then a sound like someone sucking an entire river through a straw.

When she is done, she pushes at her throat with her black fingers. Tests it. Dab dab.

She is happy.

She flicks on a tap and starts to wash her hands. It is like watching someone clean up after a murder.

The oily black substance goes easy as you like, like it was never there, but as she scrubs and shakes I see something else.

Where she has picked at the delicate flesh around her fingernails - a nervous habit perhaps - little quicks, horns of dead skin, have developed. And some, some which she must have really picked at, have been torn away to leave long strips of tender red flesh running all the way up her fingers. Under the taps now, some of the skin comes clean off like wallpaper. Once her hands are white and clean again, she gathers all the leavings, all the dead skin, and pushes them into the plughole.

She goes to the hand drier and kneads her hands under its blare.

When the drier ends its too-long noise, she shakes her hands, shakes off the final few clinging drops, then turns back to the mirror.

She squints at herself.

Very precisely, she dabs at the wig. Centres it.

She strokes her throat.

She is pleased.

She looks at me. Strokes her throat.

The child's game again: I stroke my own throat.

She nods.

The smell, I realise, is fading.

A hand slips into her big coat again. This time it pulls out a little book. She flicks through the pages. Stops. Reads.

'Could we have the bill, please?' she says. 'And,' she flicks the pages again, stops, reads, 'Do you know the way to the train station?’