The Crane Wife(27)
Author: Patrick Ness

‘Wally is fine?’ Rachel said, a little frown (plus, Amanda was thrilled to see, a little frown line) briefly scarring her immaculate face.

‘He’s called Wally?’ Amanda said, for what was the third or maybe fourth time. ‘Who’s called Wally these days?’

‘It’s a perfectly normal name?’ Rachel said. ‘Unlike certain other names I could mention? I mean, Kumiko for someone not even Japanese?’

Amanda blinked. ‘What a weird thing to remember. And how do you know she’s not Japanese?’

‘Not really weird?’ Rachel said. ‘You talk about it, like, incessantly? Like you have no life of your own so you’ve got to live through your father’s? It’s sad? Is what it is?’

‘Sometimes, Rachel, I don’t know how you think–’

‘The report, Amanda?’ Rachel said, green eyes flashing.

Amanda gave up. ‘By lunchtime,’ she said, then put on a huge fake smile. ‘And hey, maybe we can have a bite and go over it together. What do you say?’

Rachel made a fake disappointed sound. ‘That would have been super? But I’ve already got plans? Just on my desk by one?’

She walked away without waiting for Amanda’s response. We could have been friends, Amanda thought.

‘And yet somehow, no,’ she said to herself.

‘Out of the way, fat ass!’

The cyclist’s elbow sent Amanda’s coffee flying towards a pavement heaving with City workers on their lunch breaks, including a businesswoman who’d picked the wrong day to wear cream. The cup hit the pavement at the woman’s feet, splattering her with a wave that reached all the way to mid-thigh.

The woman stared at Amanda, mouth agape. Amanda, torn between the embarrassment of having so many people hearing her called ‘fat ass’ and the embarrassment of having practically thrown coffee at an innocent bystander, tried to seize the initiative.

‘Fucking cyclists,’ she said, feeling the sentiment truly but also hoping the woman would follow her on the shift of blame.

‘You’re standing in the bike lane,’ the woman said. ‘What did you expect him to do?’

‘I expected him to give way to a pedestrian!’

‘Maybe your ass was too fat for him to avoid.’

‘Oh, f**k you,’ Amanda said, giving up and walking away. ‘Who wears cream in January anyway?’

‘You’re paying to clean this!’ the woman said, stomping after her.

Amanda tried to push her way through all the suits, male and female, that had slowed to watch the altercation. ‘What are you going to do?’ she said. ‘Have me arrested for dry-cleaning?’

A handsome Indian businessman stepped solemnly in front of Amanda. ‘I really think you should offer to pay for the woman’s cleaning,’ he said, in a thick Scouse accent. ‘It’s the proper thing to do, like.’

‘Yeah,’ said a second handsome man. ‘It was your fault, after all.’

‘It was the cyclist’s fault,’ Amanda said. ‘He knocked into me, and now he’s miles away, no doubt cresting the wave of his own self-righteousness.’

The cream-wearing woman caught up and grabbed her by the shoulder. ‘Look at me!’ she said. ‘You’re going to pay for these.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said the handsome Indian Scouser. ‘She will.’

Amanda opened her mouth to fight. She was even ready, she found to her surprise, to physically threaten this woman in some way, ready maybe even to follow through on an actual slap (even an actual punch) if the woman didn’t take her goddamn hand off Amanda’s shoulder. Amanda was tall enough and big enough not to be messed with and by God people should just go ahead and learn–

But when she opened her mouth to start, she found herself, once again, overflowing with tears.

Everyone was looking at her, their faces angry that she’d brought injustice into their day, waiting firmly to see it righted. She tried to speak again, tried to explain in no uncertain terms what the woman could do with her cream trousers, but all that came out was a choked sob.

‘Seriously,’ she whispered to herself, ‘what is wrong with me?’

Moments later, though they seemed like hours, Amanda had exchanged business cards with the woman, under the disdainfully triumphant eyes of the two handsome men. She left them to whatever high-finance ménage à trois they’d end up with and took the rest of her lunch to a small green-space near the office, only realising as she sat down on the one remaining open half of a bench that she now no longer had a coffee to go with it.

They’re angry tears, she told herself as she cried into her cress sandwich, made in a hurry this morning without mayonnaise because she was late for JP’s nursery. They’re angry tears.

Henri was right, though. Not very different shadings.

‘Are you all right?’ said a voice.

It was the woman sitting on the other half of the bench, a woman Amanda had barely registered as she sat down, a woman also, bafflingly, wearing cream. Seriously, it was f**king January, people.

But this time, at least, it was a cream outfit embracing a kind face, yet one that had (Amanda was surprised to find herself thinking) also seen the world, and had returned knowing maybe not so much about the world but more about herself than Amanda could learn in a lifetime.

‘Long day,’ Amanda coughed out, confused. She turned back to her sandwich.

‘Ah,’ said the woman. ‘Myths tell us the world was created in a day, and we scoff and we call them metaphors and allegories, but on a day like today it seems as if we could break our backs the whole morning to make the universe and someone would still ask us to come to meetings in the afternoon.’

Amanda smiled back politely, feeling the first inklings of alarm that she’d sat next to a mad person. But then again, no. This odd little woman seemed, somehow, to have understood and was merely saying so. In an odd way, yes, but one that was also oddly comforting.

I keep saying ‘odd’, Amanda thought. The woman’s accent was also oddly (‘and again’) unplaceable, clear but foreign in a way that suggested not a country but a kind of ancientness. Amanda shook her head. No, she thought, she’s probably just Middle Eastern. Or something.

‘I am sorry,’ the woman said, three words, not the usual contraction, but even then it wasn’t an ‘I am sorry’ that meant ‘I’m sorry’. It was an ‘I am sorry’ that meant ‘Excuse me’.