The Girl in the Box 01 - Alone (24 page)

“I haven’t seen you here before, have I?” the man asked.

Samantha sipped. “I sincerely doubt it.”

All he did was nod at that, and then turned to his display. Samantha took the opportunity to twist away from him, just incrementally – just enough to perhaps give the hint that she wanted to be alone.

The song changed, fading from the low beat to something frenetic and poppy. Samantha
definitely
didn’t recognise this.

“Good choice!” came a muted electronic voice, followed by, “Please swipe your card.”

The man did, and in short order a pint glass presented itself and was filled with a brownish liquid. Cider maybe; it had an amber sort of colour and less a head than a film of froth.

But Samantha’s deterrent wasn’t enough; the man said, “Looks like you got pretty wet. Weather out there’s nasty, huh?”

“Don’t I know it.”

Another pause – and was it inexplicably less awkward than before? – and then the man turned in his chair and stuck out a hand.

“My name’s Rupert.”

For a moment Samantha eyed it tentatively – and then she swivelled halfway and extended a hand of her own. “Samantha.”

A bright smile passed over Rupert’s face. “It’s good to meet you, Samantha.”

3

The wall behind
Thoroughfare
’s bar was lined with bottles – all of them empty, just for show. After taking one, two long draughts of his drink, it was these that Rupert studied.

“So,” he said, “forgive me for asking, but what were you doing out in the storm? Streets are usually pretty clear this time of evening when the sun’s out, let alone pouring it down.”

“I got out of work late,” Samantha answered. Like Rupert, she didn’t look around; instead she lifted her glass, leant in and drank from it. The ice was working fast. Not ideal. The rain hadn’t been cold, but as it seeped further into her clothes she was starting to feel the first hints of a chill. No, Samantha didn’t need a cocktail topped off with ice. What she needed was something like hot chocolate – teaspoons extra heaped.

“What do you do?” Rupert asked.

“Graphic design.”

Rupert made an impressed kind of noise. Samantha had heard it before. Apparently in some circles confessing you worked in the entirely unglamorous world of graphic design was on par with announcing you were a brain surgeon. “Not bad!” Rupert looked across to face her. “What kinds of things do you work on? Like logos, or products …?”

“My team is product design,” she responded, and then after a momentary pause she tacked on, “We’re behind on an upcoming deadline and I got stuck there for a few hours and missed my bus. And all the ones that came after it.”

“Riding out the storm in here, then.”

“Pretty much.”

Silence descended upon the two again save for the music playing in the background, which drew to a very low, very quiet crescendo and then petered out. Nothing came in its wake.

Rupert pushed out of the chair and returned to the jukebox, taking his half-finished glass with him.
Great
, Samantha thought to herself.
Maybe he’s done talking to me now.

He wasn’t.

“Any requests?”

Samantha’s eyebrows twitched. She cocked her head across her shoulder. “What?”

Rupert nodded his head toward the jukebox. “Any requests?”

“I, uh …” Ah, music; another of those things Samantha was out of touch with – and now she’d have to admit it. Which was always wonderfully embarrassing. Especially when it was a stranger you were stuck alone with. “Um, I don’t really listen to much music, I’m afraid.” A touch of red bloomed, if only very slightly, at the tops of her cheeks.

“No?” Rupert asked. He nodded to himself, shrugged and turned around. “Never mind. I’ll pick a few songs. You can tell me what you think afterward.”

Samantha stared. He was so
determined
. His interruption had been unexpected (and maybe even a touch pleasant), but now all she wanted was to be left in peace, to drink her drink (drinks?) and then wander home whenever she was permitted. Just because she was the only other person in the place didn’t mean she wanted his company. Even if his attention and clumsiness had been, in a way, sort of nice.

A new song started. This had a jazzy sort of twang, an American woman singing over the top. As Samantha listened to the intro, she took another sip of her cocktail. A third of it was gone now, and in addition to becoming ever colder it only served to remind her that her stomach was empty.

God, she was so hungry. Did this place do food? She didn’t suppose it did. Or if it did then it was the kind that was dispensed through a tube; certainly nothing hot.

She looked down at the screen, but it had dulled and changed to match the surrounding mahogany. So well did it match, in fact, that she had to run her fingers across to even locate the minute seam between device and surface.

“Having trouble?”

Samantha looked up. Rupert had returned and he peered at Samantha’s futile swiping. Still the screen remained, for all intents and purposes, dead.

“Um,” she started, feeling another hot rush in her cheeks out of embarrassment, “yeah.” She looked back down at it, rubbed her fingers across this way and that, jabbed in a few places, and then turned back to him. “Do you know how this thing works?”

Rupert leant forward and indicated a tiny red dot an inch or so beneath the screen’s bottom edge. “See this? Touch it and the display reactivates.”

He pressed it lightly, and the faux mahogany the screen had displayed faded and was replaced with the menu from before.

“Hello! Welcome to
Thoroughfare
! Please make your selection.”

Samantha glanced at Rupert. He grinned back at her, not condescendingly, and she averted her eyes and mumbled, “Easy when you know how.”

“Don’t get out much?” he asked.

“Err, no.”

He made an ‘mm’ kind of a noise and nodded, and then slipped back down into a seat – but not the seat he’d first had, but the one right beside her! Samantha tried not to shoot him a sidelong glance – or glare – and instead fixated on the menu in front of her, that twinge of redness still riding the very tops of her cheeks like the first hints of sunburn.

The first screen on the display was full with only drinks, but along the right-hand side were a number of sub-categories. Right at the bottom, stylised with a cartoon graphic of a crisp packet, was an icon underlined by the word
FOOD
. Samantha thumbed it.

Just as she’d thought. Nothing hot: only pub snacks. Crisps, nuts, crackers, pork scratchings … She cringed inwardly, touched the icon for salted peanuts – and was cut off by Rupert swiping his card before the electronic voice could even prompt.

Samantha stared at him as a mechanical arm flipped a white ceramic bowl onto the bar surface and a tube appeared to spew out a mound of nuts. Rupert grinned back.

“Think of it as that drink I couldn’t get you.”

Peanuts all coughed out into a neat heap, the tube removed itself from sight with a whir. A moment’s pause, and Samantha muttered a slow, “Right. Thanks for that,” before turning to her bowl and leaning forward on crossed arms. Cocky fucker.

These peanuts would have to do, Samantha mused. Something in her stomach was better than nothing – even if she wished the
something
was something more substantial. Like chips. Or a burger.

As she ate, Rupert hummed along to the song, tapping out the beat on the bar with his hands. The only pause came when he picked up his glass to drink again, and even then it gave only three to four seconds of respite.

Something quicker replaced the jazzy number, with electric guitar and a frenzied drumbeat. That made Samantha’s nose turn up.

Rupert caught it. “Not a fan?”

“No.”

“What about the last one?” he asked with genuine curiosity.

Samantha shrugged, swallowed a half-chewed peanut and said, “It was okay. Better than this.”

“I guess it’s kind of an acquired taste.”

He went back to tapping out the beat on the bar, although much faster this time, and he struggled to keep up in places. Samantha continued at her bowl, took another sip of the cocktail – the coldness stung the ends of her front teeth – and shot a glance toward the door. Two very thin, very long panes of glass were inset in the wood. Rain continued to hammer down, and a very brief flash of lightning threw the buildings opposite into relief.

Samantha wasn’t going anywhere for a while. Well, it could be worse. Rupert hadn’t yet asked the next logical question she usually received about her work, and that was a pleasant change.

“So what kinds of products do you design?”

Well. Wasn’t that something.

4

“Mostly packaging,” Samantha said. She pulled a face. “On occasion we’ll have toys or games, but it’s rare. Nothing too quirky.”

Rupert nodded. “What’re you working on right now?”

“Can’t say. Non-disclosure agreement until it’s launched.”

Rupert snapped a finger and punched his leg in mock frustration. “Damn. Still, sounds pretty interesting.”

Does it?
Samantha thought.
Does it really?

“So is that near here, or …? No, it must be. Or you wouldn’t be out in the rain like this.”

It was Samantha’s turn to nod. “Quarter mile away, give or take. At a business park nearby.”

“Oh, I know the one you mean!” Rupert’s eyebrows knitted, and he started clicking his fingers. “Erm, Haagensen? Haakenson?”

“Close,” Samantha said. “Haakenstad.”

“Ah.” Rupert seemed to visibly relax into his chair. “What kind of name do you suppose that is? German?”

Samantha shrugged. She picked up another peanut, popped it between her lips. After she swallowed she said, “Dutch maybe?”

“Dutch,” Rupert said, nodding slowly. “Dutch. You know, I think you might be right.” And he looked at her and grinned.

Before Samantha could stop them, her lips turned up in an inexplicable smile. She twisted back toward her peanuts, which were now almost gone, and pretended to fiddle with the hair on the right side of her face. Although she suspected he’d seen regardless. That was always the way it happened.

But if he did, Rupert didn’t say anything. Instead he asked, “What do you think of this song?”

Samantha opened her mouth to answer – with a no, because hip-hop was another brand of music she had not come to enjoy throughout her little exposure – when her phone jingled blaringly from her jacket pocket. She stepped up, grabbed at her folder and said, “Sorry, I’ve got to take this,” and hurried off into the ladies’ room.

Door closed safely behind her, Samantha looked down at the display. It hadn’t been a call, but a text message – although Rupert didn’t need to know that.

Where are you? Mum.

Place called
, Samantha began to type, hesitating as she tried to remember the name of the bar,
Thoroughfare. Got out of work late and no buses. When’s the storm supposed to finish?

Ten seconds passed before a reply came through.

Not tonight. Want me to pick you up? Mum.

Please. How long will you be?

Another pause, then:
Give me ten mins. Roads are wet. I’ll honk.

Thanks
.

Samantha replaced the phone in her jacket pocket, gave herself a quick once-over in the wall-length mirror. She looked presentable, and her hair was even drying now, so she adjusted her jacket, realigned her folder in her grip and pushed back out into the bar.

No one had entered in the short time she’d been gone; only Rupert was in the room still, moved to one side where he now stood observing a small framed painting – or print, most likely, Samantha thought – with a new glass in hand.

He looked up. “Welcome back.”

“Hi,” Samantha responded briskly, weaving between the seats for her former position at the bar.