uneasy. ‘Now. Right now. Ask Mr Dymovsky to give you the day off. He will understand. There is no time to be lost.’
I feel Lela’s brows shoot up in surprise.
‘Thanks for your concern, Sulaiman,’ I reply quickly, unable to comprehend his sudden interest in Lela’s private life. ‘But it’s under control. Someone’s with Mum, if that’s what you’re worried about. I intend just to work out the morning shift and head off around noon. I’m waiting for someone.’ I break into a grin that I can’t hold back. ‘He’s meeting me here and then we’ll leave together.’
Together. Just the thought of Ryan walking through that door, looking for me, makes me feel like putting the bread knife down and hugging myself. I want to jump up and down on the spot like a Japanese cartoon character.
It’s almost as if Sulaiman can sense my underlying glee, my unalloyed joy, because he frowns harder, harsh lines etching the smooth, dark skin on either side of his strong nose and wide mouth.
‘I can’t be any clearer than this,’ he snarls, his face a mask of sudden ferocity. ‘Get out now. Go home now.’
He points one massive arm at the front door and something in the gesture triggers a memory in me wholly unrelated to this dowdy, dated coffee shop. Of a tall man with flaming red hair, emerald-eyed, more beautiful than the sun, extending a flaming sword in one alabaster hand. A gesture of anger. Of negation. For a second, there is a jump cut between past and present, so intense that I feel I could step from one to the other as easily as one would leap between stepping stones.
Then the vision of fury and beauty is gone and I am left looking up into Sulaiman’s dark, angry, mortal eyes.
‘Leave,’ he hisses. ‘Leave before it is too late, foolish creature.’
Cecilia, at the coffee machine behind us, darts a frightened look in our direction. Reggie pretends she’s not listening to our raised voices, but I can tell by the tilt of her head as she hands out coffees and bags of food that she’s hanging on our every word.
If Mr Dymovsky were here, he would find some way to defuse the situation, but he is moving around in the kitchen, whistling a folk song I do not recognise.
I pick up the knife again, something hard and spare, something flinty, rising in me. Who is Sulaiman to order me about in this way? If he knew what he was dealing with here, he would not be so imperious, so hasty.
My words come out more forcefully, more spitefully than I intended. ‘I know what you must think of me, of Justine, of Reggie, of all the women around you, with our loose western ways, our moral fibre that is so weak and wanting in comparison with your own impossiby high standards, Sulaiman. But I refuse to be judged by you. I am past anyone’s judgment these days. I am done with it.’
I brush back a stray lock of Lela’s hair with trembling fingers and force myself to speak more calmly. ‘Now,’ I say, ‘I am meeting someone here today and we will be leaving together.’
Sulaiman and I glare at each other fiercely, and I refuse to blink, will not back down. For a moment, I get the sense that I can see behind his dark eyes and am disoriented by the fleeting sensation that we have met before.
Maybe in a past life, I tell myself. Stranger things have happened — and frequently do, around me.
‘You misunderstand me,’ he breathes after a moment, looking away, backing down, and the sensation of familiarity dissipates. ‘Forget I spoke.’
He turns and pads back into the kitchen without another word, another glance in my direction.
Reggie looks at me speculatively as she jostles fried dim sum with a pair of tongs. ‘He’ll call a fatwa down on you if you’re not careful,’ she says. ‘What did ya do to upset him like that? That’s more than I’ve ever heard him say. To anyone.’
I shrug, past caring about his good opinion of me, or hers. What is it these people say in their broad, laconic voices? Ah, that’s right. Like I give a shit. I think those words sum up the situation both pithily and well. I’m leaving today. There’s no need to play nice any more.
At that moment, the door opens and Ranald enters, paler than usual, his short hair standing on end. He almost trips over in his haste to get inside, tightening his grip on his computer bag convulsively, as if it is an extension of his body that requires special protection.
And I go cold. I’d forgotten about Ranald altogether, and that stupid dinner date he’d startled out of me at an unguarded moment.
Mr Dymosvsky, back at his usual post behind the till, looks at him, looks at his watch, looks at the clock above us, which says 7.12 am, and I know that he’s thinking the same thing we all are.
Ranald’s over three hours early for his first coffee, but already he seems agitated, buzzy, as if he’s been pulling all-nighters for a week and is surviving on nerves and caffeine alone.
He sets up his laptop at the table closest to the counter. Today, strangely, he does not bring forth a multitude of doodads. Just the machine itself and a single device: small, grey, flat, the size of my thumb maybe. It has a cap, but he leaves that on. Turns the device around in his hands a few times, as if he’s studying it with fresh eyes, or seeing it for the first time.
He lines up the laptop precisely with the edges of the table, lays the small device beside it, exactly parallel to the side of the machine. Still, he does not remove the cap.
After snapping his fingers imperiously at Reggie, at Cecilia, calling for his usual coffee, he turns the laptop on. I see that the screen bhind the usual gaggle of icons is pitch black. On it is written, in brilliant white, the words: Dies Irae.
And I feel the world tilt, for a moment, on its axis, hear a brilliant snatch of music, a requiem for the dead that I cannot name nor keep in my memory. Then the music is gone and the world telescopes, narrows, grows flat, becomes less than the sum of its parts again. But those words, they were the words set to that music. The music of genius, of madness, of death. And they mean, literally, the day of wrath.
Some would prefer the more common translation, I suppose, which is: Judgment Day.
Hours crawl by in which I am called on to make endless ham, cheese and tomato toasties, a Vegemite and cheese sandwich to go, nine more eat-in bacon and egg breakfast specials, and to cut up the ‘cake of the day’, which is to say, the cake of yesterday served with a generous side of canned cream. I am also instructed to take out three loads of garbage, help unload the industrial dishwasher twice, scrub the toilets, paying special attention to wiping down the sink areas, rearrange the contents of the ancient drinks fridges, and place the day’s salad special — tuna pasta studded with olives and cherry tomatoes — into a sea of takeout containers for the women workers in runners who come in looking for a lighter lunch option.
Jobs done, and conscious of Ranald’s glowering, agitated presence as he pounds away at his laptop, checking his email inbox incessantly, I collar Mr Dymovsky in his office and ask him quietly if I can leave as soon as my friend arrives to take me home this morning.
‘I don’t think Mum is going to see out the day,’ I say, and Mr Dymovsky can tell from the expression on my face — unfeigned and genuinely sorrowful — that I speak the truth.
‘But of course you may go!’ he exclaims. ‘Go now, go whenever you wish.’
‘As soon as he arrives,’ I repeat. ‘And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t, uh, let Ranald know of my plans? We were supposed to go out for dinner tonight — he talked me into it, and I regretted it instantly — but that’s not going to happen now.’
Or ever, says evil me.
‘I’m taking the coward’s way out,’ I add. ‘I’m going to slip out of here and hope he doesn’t notice. He’ll call again for me after five, but I’ll be long gone.’
It’s my fault — anticipation has made me careless. I just hadn’t factored Ranald’s stupid morning coffee ritual into my plans for today. Maybe part of me had been hoping that Ryan and I would’ve left already by the time Ranald arrived with his laptop bag. All I know is that he can’t see Ryan and me together. I don’t want to deal with the fallout. Not now. Not today. It’s kinder, in a way, if Ranald just never sees me again.
Mr Dymovsky nods understandingly. ‘He is a strange fish that one. Stranger than usual today, I think. We have a saying: Ne boysya sobaki, shto layet, a bosya toy, shto molchit, da khvostom vilyayet.’ He laughs at the confusion on my face. ‘It means, watch the quet ones. The dogs who are silent and wag their tails, you know?’
‘Uh, okay,’ I say. I’ve got one more thing to drop into the conversational mix. ‘After Mum, uh, you know,
