It was all motherfucking perfect.
And all I wanted to do was making a perfect fecking mess of it.
Abbi
A back alleyway at night wasn't what you'd call an appropriate changing room for a proper lady, but then again, I wasn't exactly a proper lady.
I ducked behind the cleanest dumpster and threw down my duffel bag, which was covered with tags and stickers from so many planes and buses and trains and ferries, I'd lost count: LA to Berlin, Rome to Prague, Sicily to Bern, Budapest to Lyon, Lisbon to Athens.
My stomach growled as I tore off my wrinkled t-shirt and slipped into a white button-up shirt. It was the only thing I kept folded in my duffel bag along with a pair of black slacks and a black vest I'd bought at a flea market in Zagreb for less than a euro. The rest was a mess of tattered blue jean shorts, bikini tops, and cheap gas station sunglasses.
"Hey there, little girl."
I whipped around in my underwear and black high top Converses to find a drunk wobbling precariously against the brick wall across from me. Traveling across Europe on your dead parents' inheritance at nineteen was so glamourous. I rolled my eyes, flashed him my middle finger, and hopped into my slacks. I tucked in my shirt, buttoned up my vest, and smoothed down the front.
"Hey," I called to the drunk who was mumbling to himself, "how does my hair look?"
My cell phone was dead and there weren't exactly tons of mirrors hanging around alleyways in downtown Dublin. It wasn't like I owned a mirror.
The drunk squinted one glossy eye at me.
Hell, maybe it could be the start of a beautiful friendship, whatever the hell that was.
"Does it look like I just got off a ten-hour bus ride?" I asked, pulling at my tangled locks.
"Looks like you just got off a ten-hour ride on my d—"
"Thanks," I interrupted before the obvious conclusion.
I did my best in the dim light from the lamp post at the end of the alley to corral my long windswept blonde hair into a braid down my back.
"Better?" I asked the drunk, who I then realised had finally fallen over and was passed out, his empty beer bottle rolling away down the cobblestones.
All that was left to do was wait by the back door and pray I didn't die of starvation in the meantime. I lit a cigarette I bummed off a guy from the bus and leaned against the brick wall. I was nineteen and though I'd been everywhere, it felt like I'd gone nowhere. The more countries, cities, towns I added to the list, the more I realised the answer wasn’t out there. I was alone and there wasn't any place on earth where that wasn't going to be the inescapable, unavoidable, unalterable truth.
The back door swung open and I hastily flicked away the butt of my cigarette, slung my duffel over my shoulder, and hurried toward the door.
"Oh my gosh, my boss is going to kill me!” I cried. “I'm so late!"
I barrelled inside past the startled line chef so quickly that he didn't have time to see me, let alone question what I was doing. The door clicked shut behind me, and I found myself in a back hallway with concrete floors and low ceilings. I stashed my duffel on an abandoned silver serving cart and followed the noise of clattering pots and pans, the sizzle and pop of grease on the stovetop, and the loud curses and shouts of stressed and worn-out chefs.
I slipped into the kitchen and swerved to avoid colliding with a sweaty-faced server struggling under the weight of a silver tray of steaming-hot mini beef wellingtons. I managed to snatch one, plop it into my mouth, and mutter after him, "Hey, watch it!"
The key to feeding yourself for free when you just spent most of your remaining money on a bus trip is chaos. The more chaos, the better. You want to hit the busiest restaurant on the busiest street on the busiest night. Find the place where the staff looks like they're chickens running around without their heads and you've found dinner. Because when people don't have time to even tell their right hand from their left, they're not going to notice that you're not wearing a bow tie when everyone else is. They're not going to notice that your Irish accent sounds like it was learned from Gerard Butler in P.S. I Love You, who, by the way, is actually Scottish. And they're not going to notice that you're doing much more eating than serving.
In the chaos of twisting smoke and spitting oil and clattering metal on metal, I ducked under the serving line.
"What's next, chef?" I shouted. "They're like hungry wolves out there."
The row of men stooped over the grill in their dirty white jackets didn't even turn to look at me.
"Two minutes on the chicken satay."
I drummed my fingers on the hot metal edge. Chicken satay and I weren't exactly on great terms after a regrettable street food selection in Bangkok.
"What else you got?" I shouted.
The server next to me swept up the chicken satay tray, wincing at its heat and disappearing within seconds.
"Eh, Seamus fucking burnt the scallops again so the quickest I can get out are those bacon-wrapped dates."
Bingo.
"Five minutes, though."
Not a problem. I licked the buttery, flaky remains of the mini beef wellington from the tips of my fingers and leaned against the wall of the
