Eight Perfect Hours by Lia Louis
Chapter Four
‘Oh, Noelle, I can’t believe it. Do you have food? Drink? Are you warm enough? It’s all over the local news. Lorry got into trouble apparently. Thank God nobody’s hurt. But now with all the snow too, oh, God, it’s a nightmare – you’re OK, are you?’
‘I’m fine, Mum. But are you OK?’
‘Ian’s here.’
‘Is he? Really?’
‘He was passing! How lucky is that? He popped in to see to the gate next door. The new tenants were moaning about it. I said to him – I said Noelle and I are always saying that new tenant seems stuffy, like she’s got a broom jammed up her arse – that you smiled when you took the bins out and she ignored you. Doesn’t surprise me that she complained about the gate, of all things––’
‘Will he stay?’
‘Ian, she’s asking if you’ll stay. He – right. Yes. He says he’ll stay until you get back. I’m sure you’ll be home by – elevenish, do you think?’
‘I don’t know if I’ll be back by eleven, Mum. We’re at a total standstill––’
‘Oh, Noelle––’
‘I’ll be home as soon as I can, I promise. But look, I don’t have a lot of battery––’
‘Don’t you? She’s running out of battery, Ian. What? Ian says to switch your phone to airplane mode, save the battery, and to get off the phone now to be safe––’
‘It’s fine. A guy next to me offered to let me charge it in his car, so I’ve just been sitting in there. But I don’t know how long I can charge it for––’
‘A stranger? Oh Christ, please be careful.’
‘It’s fine, Mum. He’s fine. He was parked next to me. American. On his way to the airport.’
‘Oh. Oh.I see. Right. OK. Is he … your age?’
‘Um. Yes, I suppose—’
‘Tall? Good looking?’
‘I … I don’t know. Yes? Yes, I guess, he – he seems to have long legs. Look, Mum, I’m getting soaked, I’m standing outside––’
‘Well, you know what Dilly said about that American he went out with.’
‘Mum––’
‘Very lively. Full of energy, very fit, you know. And not afraid to show it off either. Walked around nude apparently, making breakfast, don’t you remember? Pancakes. That’s what they eat, you know. Not for dessert either. For breakfast.’
‘I’m going now.’
‘With scrambled eggs.’
‘Bye, Mum. I’ll be home as soon as I can.’
It’s amazing how quickly an hour and a half passes when you’re having one of those conversations – the unexpected effortless kind that makes you feel as though you can’t get the words out of your mouth quick enough. Ones where minutes slip into hours but seem to bring the world outside of your little bubble to a complete standstill. A flaming meteor could hit, and you wouldn’t even look up and say, ‘Oh, did you feel that? That little tremor?’
My phone sprang to life over an hour ago, yet still I find myself in the warmth of American Sam’s car. Still. I can’t believe it either.
I’d ducked outside to call Mum when my battery charged to ten per cent, awkwardly hovering at the open car door, zipping up my coat on the concrete, unsure whether or not I should just thank him and say goodbye. Because I had enough charge now to do what I needed to – check on Mum, arrange for Ian to stay with her, to help her up to bed. But Sam and I were in the middle of a conversation I was desperate to get back to – ghosts, for some reason, and the best thing we’d ever eaten. And to be honest, simply and totally unexpectedly (and slightly guiltily): I was having such a nice time.
‘You could uh – charge up your phone some more,’ Sam had suggested, leaning across from the driver’s seat, hair bristling in the gentle but icy breeze. He has such nice hair. Thick, dark, probably smells like showers and coconuts. ‘If you want to.’
And I’d nodded from the road, phone in hand, relieved that he’d asked. ‘Plus, we haven’t finished that crossword yet, have we?’ I’d joked, and he’d laughed and said, ‘Yeah, I’m not sure we ever will.’
I tingled as I spoke to Mum on the road, snowflakes falling relentlessly, as if from a lifetime supply – that lovely deep exhale of relief once I knew she was OK, and that warm-blooded feeling of having had fun. Away from home. With someone new. Even when I rack my brains, I can’t remember the last time that happened. Years. Definitely years. And I’d forgotten the fizz of it, I think – of meeting a fresh, new person, and that purging you can do when to each other you’re clean slates, and everything shared is new and interesting and a little bit of universe expanding. Maybe that was part of the guilt too, besides Mum, knowing she’d be worrying – that it’s been so long.
‘So, this slightly bonkers-sounding alpine guide thing,’ I say. Sam is swivelled to face me in the driver’s seat, his broad back against the car window. ‘Your job …’
‘My job.’
‘Do you get to go all over? Travel a lot – go here and there?’ A mountaineer. Sam is an actual mountaineer.
He nods. ‘Wherever I’m needed. Although, my base is in Oregon right now – place called Mount Hood? They run summit programmes and I’m a guide with a few other climbers. But not sure for how much longer.’
‘Mount Hood,’ I repeat. ‘I say that I like know it. My mountain knowledge is – well, it’s shite, to be honest.’
Sam laughs, that little crescent of a dimple in his cheek. ‘Ah, it’s super high, super snowy, super mountainy. That’s all there is to know, right?’
‘Wait, so, you climb icy mountains?’
Sam smiles shyly, taps the side of his finger absentmindedly on the steering wheel. ‘Are you going to ask me if I worry about plummeting to my death again?’
‘You leave me no choice. Sorry.’
I keep drifting from my body and watching myself from the other side of the window, and I’m ninety-nine per cent sure the Noelle Butterby outside with her nose pressed against the glass is silently muttering, ‘Kindly, what the fuck is happening to us here?’ Because things like this don’t happen. Not really, not in real life. Especially to me. People like Charlie, yes, I’d almost expect this to happen to her. Before the baby, she and her husband Theo were always out, always falling in instant-love with fast friends on yoga retreats and coming home with stories about people they room-shared with who cured their migraines with enemas and forgiveness, and how they’re going to meet up for brunch. But me. These things don’t really happen to me. I mean, first of all – stranded due to snow? We’re barely on first-name terms with sleet in England, let alone proper, Last-Christmas-music-video snow, yet here I am, in what is practically a blizzard, sitting in someone’s car who over ninety minutes ago was a nameless stranger – a bloke in a car. And I feel – something. I don’t know what exactly. Alive. Buzzy. Like my blood is rushing with stars, with electricity. And I didn’t even want to get into this car. It’d be painfully awkward, I thought, sitting there, looking like a melted waxwork with swollen bee-sting eyes and cried-off make-up, and a ridiculous dress I’d never usually wear in a million years – red, faux-satin. Something I’d picked out of Charlie’s wardrobe because I thought it said, ‘worldly adult’ and ‘student most likely to be settled and happy with her shit perfectly together, so what were you thinking, eh, Ed?’
But sitting here with Sam – I can’t even really explain it. I just know that I don’t want to leave. I imagine Charlie’s face, if she could see me now. ‘Erm, excuse me,’ she’d say. ‘Are you Noelle Butterby? Is that an unidentified male? Are you actually – holy shit – having fun?’
Sam stretches in his seat beside me, clears his throat. ‘Do you think your mom will be all right?’
‘I think so,’ I say. ‘Our friend, our old neighbour, Ian – he said he’ll stay with her. He used to help us a lot with Mum before he moved in with his girlfriend, so … best man for the job.’
Sam nods, turning a biro in his hand. ‘How long has she been sick?’
‘She’s – not really sick.’
‘Oh …’
‘Well, no, I mean, she is sick but – I don’t know.’ My heart clenches now, at the mention of Mum. A single icy shot of reality in this tiny little warm bubble, miles from it. ‘I suppose it’s just when you say ill or sick, people think hospitals and meds and being stuck in bed or something and, Mum … she doesn’t really fit in those boxes. She had a stroke, six years ago. And she hasn’t really been the same since.’
Sam is quiet, then says, ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘We’re lucky really, that she bounced back. She struggles on her feet, she lost a lot of sensation in the beginning, on her left. But now – mainly, it’s lost confidence. And I’m not complaining, because, well, things could always be so much worse, but – she’s doing less and less lately and I’m doing more and more and …’ And then nights like this happen, I want to say, but I don’t, and you wonder how much longer you can keep floating on like this, being at the helm of what feels like a gigantic ship you feel totally ill-equipped to steer, and one that just keeps getting bigger and heavier. ‘But we’re OK,’ I say instead. ‘Most of the time.’
I look up at Sam, snowflakes drifting beyond the glass behind him, rhythmically, like an old nineties screensaver, and I wait for the wince, the eyes widening, the judgement and most of all, the pity I notice ripple across people’s faces sometimes. Pity for Mum, of course, but also for me. Thirty-two years old. Always needing to be close to home. A world the size of a tiny speck in the sky compared to most people’s giant planets. Instead, Sam says, ‘That sounds super tough. Always having to be … the shoulders.’
Yes.The shoulders. I’ve never heard it put like that before. ‘Sometimes it can be. Like, tonight, for example …’ I look down at the red satin dress, the inky spots of snow slowly drying back to crimson. ‘Tonight was my first night out in about ten months and I had to plan with military precision, make sure I’d get home at a certain time and––’
‘And look how great that turned out,’ grins Sam, outstretching his hands, like a magician presenting the end of a trick.
I laugh. ‘Well, it could be worse.’
Sam looks at me sideways. ‘Yeah. Agreed,’ he says.
The hard buzz of a vibrating phone in the cubby beneath the stereo cuts through the calm of the car, and as if automatically, we both reach for it. My hand collides with Sam’s and a jolt fizzes through me, bubbles in my stomach as the warmth of his skin touches mine. Sam flinches his hand away as the phone tumbles into the footwell at my feet, and of course, I realise now, that – shit. The phone isn’t mine. The name ‘Jenna’ is on the screen on the floor, between my ankle boots, calling, and I definitely don’t know a Jenna.
I bend to pick it up. I know my cheeks must be bright shrimp-pink because my bloody ears are on fire and they always do that when I’m embarrassed. Crayfish Face, Dilly calls me, when it happens, and I know I must be in full Crayfish Face mode right now. ‘S-sorry, I thought it was mine, I thought it might be my mum …’
‘It’s cool, no worries.’ Sam takes the phone from me as Jenna’s name disappears and the screen flashes with a little grey rectangle of a missed call.
‘And now you’ve missed the call. Sorry.’
‘It’s no big deal, seriously. It’s just a call,’ he says, but something in his face, in his dark brown eyes, has changed and I can’t put my finger on what. An injection of reality perhaps, for him this time, in the shape of a phone call. He clears the notification with a swipe of his thumb. ‘Life was easier when we weren’t all so available and easy to interrupt, right?’
‘What, when we all wrote to each other?’
Sam nods. ‘I know nobody does that any more, but I dunno, it’s tempting. Less pressure to answer right this second, you know?’
‘Some people do,’ I say. ‘Steve and Candice did.’
Sam’s eyebrows knit together and he looks at me. ‘Who?’
‘These two people that work together at an office I clean,’ I say. ‘That’s what I do. I’m a cleaner. Houses, workplaces. Not exactly glam, but it fits in around Mum …’ And I’m not sure if waffling will help dilute the rising cringe levels in the car, but clearly, I’m going to try. Because trying to steal his phone. The touch of our hands. Sam’s flinch away like he’d touched shit on a stick. All these things that have ticked the cringe barometer from zero into a firm reading of seven out of ten, and suddenly this all feels a bit ridiculous again. Me. In this car. With him. ‘These two people who work there, Steve and Candice,’ I say, ‘they were having an affair and I used to find their Post-it notes to each other screwed up in their bins every Friday evening.’
‘And what did they say?’ asks Sam, a coy shadow of a smile on his face.
‘It was mostly tea-based. Like Steve, tea at three? And Candice, your tea is way too hot. And once there was a very straight-to-the-point nice tits one.’
Sam laughs. ‘Wow.’
I burst out laughing. ‘I know.’
‘See, maybe you’d have got somewhere with your Portland pen pal if you’d been more like Steve and Candice.’
‘Or I’d have been expelled.’
The buzzing of Sam’s phone cuts like ice through the quiet of the car again. His dark eyes drop down at the screen.
‘Ah. I really need to take this …’
‘Let me leave you, give you some peace. Plus …’ I pick up my phone now, ‘… eighty six per cent charge. I should probably stop stealing your power now and leave you be.’
Sam hesitates, Jenna in one hand, car door handle in the other, and I don’t know what I want him to say, but I know I don’t want to leave. Not really. Not one bit. ‘No, it’s – I mean, you don’t have to – seems silly not to let it get to a hundred, if …’
‘I – I’ll give you some peace,’ I say again, opening the car door. ‘I um. I need to check in at home, anyway.’
Sam nods, wordlessly.
I slide out of the car as I hear him say into the phone in a new voice – sweet, low, ‘Hey, you.’