‘Hola, how are you doing?’
She looked up to find herself gazing into the eyes of a young man in his early twenties. A shock of unruly brown hair tumbled across a strong brow with thick, dark eyebrows. He possessed a long aquiline nose, and full lips that seemed pale set against the deep tan of his face. He was tall and quite skinny and smiled at her, and for the first time in her life Ana felt her stomach flip over.
‘I’m alright,’ she said uncertainly.
‘Good,’ he said. Then made a series of signs with his hands that left her mystified.
She shrugged helplessly.
‘You lip-read?’
She nodded. Reading lips had never been a conscious process, simply something she had learned to do over the years out of pure necessity. She said, ‘But I’m not completely deaf.’ She saw him watching her lips intently.
He said, ‘I am stone deaf. I could hear perfectly well until I was seven years old, then a virus damaged my auditory nerves and I’ve been unable to hear anything since. I don’t like to speak now, because I’m always afraid I sound like a deaf person.’ He laughed. ‘Which I am, of course. But it’s safer to sign.’ He paused. ‘Have you come to learn?’
She shook her head. ‘I’m here because my father brought me. I doubt very much if I’ll be back.’
His smile faded, replaced by a look of disappointment. ‘Oh, you must. You can’t leave me here on my own with all these old people.’
She glanced around self-consciously and he laughed again. ‘Don’t worry, they can’t hear me. They’re deaf.’ Which made her laugh, too. Of course they were. ‘Blind people come on Thursdays to learn to use the white stick. The lucky ones get guide dogs.’ He paused. ‘I sometimes wonder which is worse – being deaf or blind. But I think losing your sight would be the worst of all. I can’t imagine not being able to see the world around me.’ He glanced towards the kitchen hatch. ‘Someone will likely come and take your registration details shortly. Can I get you a coffee?’
She nodded. ‘Please.’ And she watched him cross to the hatch. He had an easy gait, and she could see from his T-shirt that he had well-developed arms and pectorals, in a wiry sort of way. He wore tight-fitting jeans, and she found her eyes drawn to the lean but well-rounded buttocks that filled the seat of them.
He returned with two mugs of black coffee. ‘I forgot to ask if you wanted black, or . . .’
‘I prefer it with milk.’
‘No problem.’ He set the mugs down on the table and hurried away to the kitchen, returning a few moments later with an open carton of milk. He poured milk into her coffee until a wave of her hand indicated that it was enough. But as he put the carton down he was too busy looking at her, and caught it on the edge of the table. It slipped from his grasp, and milk went cascading down the front of her blouse and over the legs of her jeans. He leapt back as if he had been burned, and her chair toppled backwards as she jumped to her feet. Both mugs of coffee went flying.
‘Oh my God, oh my God,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry. Wait, I’ll get a cloth.’ He hurried off again to the kitchen.
Ana stood with milk dripping on to the floor and running in white threads through dark pools of coffee. She looked around with embarrassment, expecting all eyes to be on her. But apart from an old lady at the far side of the room, no one seemed to have noticed. The young man returned with a tea towel and began feverishly wiping it up and down the front of her blouse. Before suddenly realizing that his fingers were brushing her breasts.
‘Oh my God!’ he said again, and once more jumped back. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean . . .’ He held out the tea towel for Ana to use for herself. ‘Honestly, it was an accident.’
Ana fought hard to keep a straight face. In truth she was furious at him for ruining her blouse and her jeans. But she had also quite enjoyed the sensation of his fingers touching her breasts. Only once before had a boy put his hands on them. It was after a school dance and he had offered to walk her home. There had been a kiss, and then his hand sliding slyly beneath her blouse. She had slapped his face.
The young man blushed furiously.
She tried to soak up the milk from her blouse then glared at him. ‘Well, since you have managed to ruin almost everything I’m wearing, the least you can do is tell me your name – if only so I can take it in vain.’
It was clear from his face that he was not quite sure if she was being funny or not. ‘I’m Sergio,’ he said, and held out an awkward hand.
She thrust the milk-soaked tea towel into it. ‘I’m Ana. And maybe this time you’d like to get me a proper café con leche, without spilling milk all over me!’
*
They spent the next two hours just talking and drinking coffee. His lip-reading was better than hers, and she had at least some hearing to augment her comprehension. After ten minutes Ana had completely forgotten that either of them was anything other than a normal young person having a normal conversation. It was the first time in her life that she wasn’t aware of her handicap. That it didn’t seem to matter. That there were no obstacles to communication.
Sergio told her he had just turned twenty-one. He was studying online for a degree in Spanish. The internet was relatively young, but was already opening up possibilities for the deaf that could never have
