56 Days by Catherine Ryan Howard
53 Days Ago
“And so unnecessary,” Ciara says. “Like, just serve good drinks and be nice to people and stop with all the shite. But that kinda thing—that’s a secret. And secrets are about denying people things. The truth, yes, but also the experience, the knowledge . . . You’re just trying to keep them out of the cool gang. You’re trying to decide who gets in the cool gang, and that’s just . . .” She stops, apparently having lost her train of thought. “It’s not secrets I like. It’s discovering things that are new to me but actually were always there. Secrets are a different thing. They’re destructive.”
Secrets are destructive.
The words flip a switch.
Oliver had been happily riding a wave of warm, fizzy drunk thanks to those things Ciara had recommended, but now he feels that shift into an uncomfortable heat.
A sheen of cold sweat at his temples, a flush on his cheeks.
The sudden surety that he’s made a terrible mistake.
He chose this bar because it was deep inside the hotel and unlikely to be frequented by passersby; the clientele was mostly travelers from other places who would soon go back there. But now its distance from the outside, its lack of fresh air, makes his chest constrict with panic.
He can feel her eyes on him.
A single bead of sweat is threatening to depart from his right temple, the one she can see.
“I know what you mean,” he says absently.
This was supposed to be a fact-finding mission. He’d decided to meet up with her, glean as much information as he could, and then use it to determine once and for all whether she was something he needed to worry about.
That’s what he’d told himself he was doing, anyway. He’d refused to dwell on how much he’d been looking forward to doing it.
To begin with, everything had gone to plan. He hadn’t bothered booking tickets to that documentary; there was no point risking this kind of contact just to sit beside her silently in the dark for the night. They needed to talk. He was intending to “realize” he’d got the start time of the film wrong and suggest they go for a drink while they were waiting, but then she’d brought up cocktails and given him an easy in.
She evidently wasn’t time-conscious and didn’t notice they were drinking themselves late and, better yet, didn’t care when she discovered this. It had all been working out.
So much so that he’d forgotten what it was supposed to be.
Getting to be normal always did that to him. The pretending could be potent. And he liked her, liked being around her, liked the way she made him feel.
Which was bad, because he couldn’t afford to feel good.
That was always when bad things started to happen.
“Sorry,” he says, shifting his body away from her and out of the booth. “I need another bathroom break.”
She frowns a little. “Three times in one night?”
“I’ve broken the seal.”
“I actually have to go, too. I’ll go when you get back.”
“I can wait?”
He can’t. He feels shivery and feverish and a little bit sick.
He has let this evening get away from him.
“I can wait longer,” she says, waving a hand. “Go on.”
He hurries down the carpeted stairs, keeping one hand on the gold railing. The steps feel soft and unsteady beneath his feet, like they’re unmoored and floating. The main doors are directly opposite the last one, but so are the doorman and a couple pulling suitcases out of a cab. Oliver makes an abrupt left turn into a tunnel of polished marble and heads for the automatic sliding glass doors at the far end, slipping down a couple of the marble steps, willing the electronic sensor to hurry up, to let him out—
The doors separate with an excruciating slowness and he turns sideways to push through them and out onto a dark, deserted street.
It has the look of a place mostly made up of the worst sides of other places: loading bays, back doors, trash cans. Directly opposite is a tanning salon squeezed in between a gym and a medical supply shop, the kinds of stores that cover up their windows instead of using them for display. The only person he can see anywhere nearby is a Deliveroo cyclist stopped at a distant corner, her face lit by the blue light of her phone.
The night air feels cold and sharp as he leans against a wall and gulps it down.
He’s so sick of all this, of being this. He wishes he could just settle for his lot in life, make some kind of peace with it. Because every time he’s tried to build a sarcophagus over the past, it’s cracked before he’s even finished it.
So why does he keep torturing himself by trying?
He freezes at the whoosh of the automatic doors sliding open for a second time, thinking Ciara has followed him outside, but it’s a different woman who emerges into the dark.
She’s older, and skinny in that tight, severe way, with a long blond ponytail swishing halfway down her back. She’s wearing very thin, very high heels and carrying a leather purse like a large envelope under one arm.
It occurs to him that he is a six-foot sweaty man standing in the shadows on a dark deserted street at the exact same moment she turns and sees him and her features jerk with fright.
“Sorry,” he says, holding up a hand, stepping forward into what he hopes is the light from inside. “Sorry.”
She stands stock-still, blinking at him.
The deep V of her dress and the bright light above the door conspire to showcase a thin, pale, three-inch scar at the base of her throat, neat enough to suggest she got it during some long-ago surgery.
It makes him think of his own scar and the various lies he’s told to explain it.
“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he says.
The woman’s features soften and she makes a noise somewhere between a laugh and an exhale.
“Jesus,” she says, “I think I just actually had a heart attack.” She pulls the bag from underneath her arm and begins to root in it. “Okay, I get it, Universe. Smoking is bad for my health.”
“Sorry,” Oliver says again.
She takes a box of cigarettes from the bag. It’s had a time of it: the lid has been ripped off and the remaining cardboard is creased and misshapen. She takes two limp cigarettes from it and holds them up, offering him one.
“I don’t really smoke,” he says, eyeing it.
She shrugs. “Neither do I.”
He takes the cigarette and lights it with the matches she offers: a small black matchbook branded with the name of the hotel.
The actual act of smoking is never anywhere near as good as the anticipation of doing it but even so, the first drag makes him feel better. So much better that he decides not to worry about Ciara smelling it on him when he goes back upstairs. He’ll make something up, say he got a phone call and went outside to take it, and some guy came and stood right next to him and smoked.
“Having a good night?” the woman asks.
He can’t even begin to establish the real answer to that question. He exhales, blowing the smoke away from her, into the night.
He says, “It’s all right.”
“Drinking or dining?”
“Drinking.” He takes another drag. “Too much, maybe. You?”
“Dining.”
“How is it?”
“The food is great,” she says, “but the company is awful.”
“Bad date?”
She laughs sharply, as if the idea of her being on a date is utterly preposterous.
“Bad boss. Bad job. It’s a work thing.”
“What do you do?”
She takes a short, light drag. “I’m a kind of head-hunter.” Releases a thick cloud of smoke. “Recruitment. Finance. All that boring stuff.” She holds the cigarette close to her face and watches the orange glow of its tip burning through the paper. “Anyway, it’s free food and a night out. With the way things are going, we might not get to have many more of those this side of Easter, so . . .”
She takes another pull and winces.
“You really don’t smoke,” Oliver says, “do you?”
“Am I that obvious? No. Not regularly. I just like the smell—and how they’re a cast-iron excuse to get away from people when the need arises and you’ve already used up a socially acceptable number of bathroom breaks. They’re my very expensive, very bad-for-you escape hatch.” She stubs her cigarette out on the wall and nods toward what remains of his. “If that tastes like the sticky strip on an envelope, it’s because they’ve probably been in my bag since Christmastime—at least.”
“It tastes fine,” he says. “Thank you.”
“Are you on a date?”
The look she gives him as she asks this suggests more than an idle curiosity.
“The truth is,” he says, “I don’t really know.”
But he silently adds I hope so, which surprises him.
And then worries him.
“Well . . .” She gives him a little wave as she turns toward the doors. “Either way, enjoy the rest of your night.”
He goes back upstairs with the aim of bringing this evening to a close at the earliest opportunity. He pays the bill while Ciara’s in the bathroom so having to pay it later won’t delay their leaving. He gets the waiter to take away what’s left of his cocktail and drinks determinedly from his water glass, trying to dilute the dominance alcohol currently has in his bloodstream. He’s resolved to remain alert for however long it is until there’s a natural moment to suggest they go, sitting rigidly, his physical discomfort a reminder that this isn’t a situation into which he should relax.
If Ciara notices a change in him, she doesn’t let on. She’s at least a little drunk, too. Her eyes look different now, her pupils larger than before, and here and there she trips a little over words or stutters once or twice before she gets them out.
Maybe she’s just not that observant. She didn’t question why he was gone so long or seem to detect the smell of smoke on his clothes or breath. He didn’t even have to bother coming up with a lie to explain them.
Another one.
She jokes about the cultlike nature of her company’s orientation program while he watches the levels in her glass. As she lifts it to her lips to drain the last mouthful, he suggests they go.
She nods enthusiastically. “Sure. Let’s.”
She seems a little unsteady on her feet so he gently steers her to and then down the stairs with a hand on her back. She’s carrying her coat over her arm and he can feel the heat of her skin through the thin material of her dress.
He wonders what she can feel.
They face their own reflections in the dark glass of the doors, and he is struck by how good they look, coupled together.
And then, how quickly this has happened.
Three days ago they didn’t know each other. Now she is beside him, letting him touch her, telling him things about herself. The speed of it feels dangerous, like a race car approaching a tight corner without any working brakes.
They leave the warm glow of the hotel and push their way through the revolving doors into the night.
“Can we get a cab?” he asks the doorman, a different one from before.
He steals a glance at Ciara’s face but there seems to be no reaction to this at all.
The doorman steps into the street and waves at something unseen around the corner. A beam of headlights lights up his lower half, and then a cab backs up to the door. Before the doorman can do it, Oliver steps forward and opens the back door, motioning for Ciara to get in.
She gives him a little smile of gratitude as she does, but her face falls when he closes the door and makes no move to walk around to the other side.
He leans down, one hand on the roof, until his face is level with hers.
“I’m gonna walk home,” he lies.
“Oh.” She seems to deflate with disappointment. “Sure. Right.”
“Are you around Thursday evening?” he asks. “We could actually go see the film this time.”
He has no intention of seeing her ever again. But the invitation will make this moment more comfortable and that’s all he can think about right now: extricating himself from this with as little friction as possible.
She nods, smiles briefly. “Yeah.”
“I’ll text you.”
“Okay. Great.”
“Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
He closes the door and moves to the driver’s open window. He pulls a twenty from his pocket and drops it through, onto the seat. The driver frowns at it, then looks up at him in question. He waves a hand to signal to him that he’s not getting in. The driver shrugs and moves to release the handbrake.
Oliver gives Ciara a wave as the car moves off.
He thinks he’s been lucky, in a way. Her saying that thing about secrets pulled him out of . . . whatever he was in earlier in the evening. A false sense of security. Complacency. Under some kind of spell.
He’d been enjoying himself, that was the problem. Enjoying her.
He starts for Grafton Street; he’ll get his own cab. They could’ve shared one, really, but he’s not sure where she lives and he couldn’t risk revealing his address to her.
There’s losing the run of himself for half an hour and then there’s doing something so monumentally stupid it might force him to start all over again.
Again.