I blinked at him. It was hard to imagine a less likely candidate for sexual harassment.
"Aye," he said, interpreting my look. "Did I even say this comment to her? No. Did she even hear of it? No. Did she even ask me if it were true? Did I ever treat her with disrespect?" He waved it off and shook his head. "So my friend Dave took me on at the pub and I learned to be a barkeep. This was, oh, five months ago."
"That recent," I commented.
"Mm-hmm. Havna seen either John or Shelly since."
I tapped my feet slowly on the pavement, alternating left and right. When he stayed silent for another half a minute, I ventured, "Is it too personal to ask what exactly you said about her?"
He smirked. "I've been debating whether or no I should tell ye that."
"I think I can handle it."
Gil looked up at the moon. There was almost a smile on his face. "Well...'twas after she made some row about us wasting too much time and money...and when she left, I said that if she were any tighter, you could put coal in her bum and end up with diamonds, and that I wouldnae mind being the first man to try it."
My mouth opened with shock. Then I fell over onto the bench, laughing.
"You wanted to know," he said, and shrugged.
"I can't decide if that's a high insult or a high compliment," I said.
"Aye. I think that's what infuriated her father as well."
"So which was it?"
"Perhaps it was a bit of both. But that's just it, they never asked me. They just assumed it was meant as harassment. Now tell me: how can it be 'harassment' if I never said it to her?"
I set myself properly up on the bench again. "I'd say it was an inappropriate remark, but you shouldn't have been fired over it. Maybe you can sue?"
He made a face, in derision. "That's the American way, isn't it? Nay, it's not worth it. And anyway, they know lawyers. I don't."
"I don't know lawyers either," I said, "American though I may be."
Now he was amused. "Ooh, scary toureest," he said. "Are ye going to pull a gun and shoot me? Ah thought that was the American way as well. 'Guns don't kill people--Americans do!'"
"Yeah, it's much better to kill them with national health care, like you do here." Then I closed my mouth, horrified to realize that I had just thrown a Laurence-ian remark at him.
Luckily, he only laughed. Like Laurence, he found my irritation really funny. He nearly sprained my neck with a playful hair-tousle, and jumped to his feet. "Come on, then. I'm freezing my arse off on this bench."
Another lesson to file away about Scotland: insulting other people in a childish manner is the national pastime.
When I got back to the hostel, it was late, and I was cold and grumpy.
"How are we this evening?" asked Laurence, who was alone at the front desk.
"Mad at you," I answered. I slumped against the counter.
"Now, that cheers me up," he said. He meant it, too. "What's the complaint tonight?"
"You're making me think of this whole thing as sordid. And when Gil made some anti-American joke tonight, I snapped at him with a remark that I must have picked up from you. So apparently your nasty attitude is contagious."
"First of all, it is a bit sordid; and second, the world would be a better place if more people had my attitude."
"Thought you'd say that," I muttered.
"What was his comment, anyway?"
I explained the conversation, and though Laurence undertook a look of disgust at the coal-to-diamonds part, he only chuckled at Gil's remarks about America. "You let that bother you? That's nothing."
I growled and smacked my palms on the counter. My hands were still cold, and it hurt, which made me more frustrated. "He makes me feel inferior for being American. You make me feel inferior for feeling inferior. Am I never doing anything right?"
"I never called you inferior."
"You think everyone's inferior."
"True, but I didn't actually say so, did I? Look," Laurence set down the pen he had been rotating in his fingers, so that he could steeple his fingertips in fine psychiatric form. "Your local laddie obviously likes you. He's just developmentally arrested at age five, when little boys hit their favorite girls over the head with chalkboard erasers to show they care. So kindly stop taking your insecurities out on me, and go get some sleep."
"Great. Thanks." I deserted the counter.
"Oh, and Eva," Laurence added, "Sharon wants me to reserve Friday night with you. She wants you to meet her English boy."
"Okay; I'll talk to her," I said, as I shambled up the stairs.
I brushed my teeth and washed my face in ice-cold water in the drafty bathroom, shivering in the boxer shorts and T-shirt that I wore as pajamas, and hating the world bitterly. I wanted Gil to admire me, American to the core just as I was, but instead he seemed to treat my nationality as a characteristic he was willing to overlook. I wanted Tony to share this city with me, for I knew he would love it. But if he were here, I would either have to lie about Gil or choose between Gil and Tony--no fun in that. I wanted Laurence to be in oblivion about this whole mess; or at least, since he knew, I wanted him to stop tormenting me; but if he didn't torment me, he wouldn't be Laurence. And Laurence, as his grand sanctimonious self, was occasionally useful for something. Like making soup.
Maybe Sharon was doing better than me, I thought, as I re-entered the quiet Room 17 and saw her sleeping silhouette on a lower bunk. At least I would get to meet this Thomas Chester-Brighton on Friday and be reassured by that.
Sure. My blankets were chilly, and I cringed as I burrowed into them. Sure. Then I would just be jealous that she was free to have a British affair and I wasn't, and therefore hers had the possibility of eternal happiness ahead of it, and mine didn't.
Life definitely sucked.
Or else Laurence was right, and I just needed sleep. I was willing to try his way for once.
Chapter Ten
Our Lady of Perpetual Suffering
Thomas Chester-Brighton looked just like you would expect an English university student to look.
He had bright blue eyes, baby-smooth cheeks with a bloom in them, curly brown hair that tumbled onto his eyebrows, not-quite-straight teeth, and a lot of wool clothes in earth tones. He was on the heavyset side, but not fat; you could tell that he would someday fade and swell into the typical middle-aged British scholar: round and mostly bald, but such an interesting speaker that you would find him charming and even cute.
Right now, at age 21, he was certainly cute, and it was obvious that Sharon thought so. He met us at the front door of the hostel, just before dinner. I had called Gil to tell him I was busy tonight; he said it didna matter much, as he was working fairly late. Friday nights, ye ken. Aye.
So Laurence, Eileen, Thomas, Sharon, and I sallied forth, and sat down for a light dinner at a cafe. It turned out to be a match made in heaven: not Sharon and Thomas, necessarily, but Thomas and Eileen.
He, as a history major studying in Edinburgh, knew practically everything about the gruesome past of the city, and she swilled at the fountain of his knowledge for hours. It was mostly interesting, but sometimes Laurence and I drifted off into fashion critique of the passers-by, and even Sharon's attention seemed to flag.
After dinner, Thomas dragged us to several spots in the city where blood had flowed, and told us all about it.
One thing that caught my attention was the treatment of adulterers.
"Oh, heavens, yes; you could be hanged for it," Thomas said, in answer to my question, as he led us up the steep Royal Mile.
Meanwhile, Laurence cast me a smirk, as if to say, Wonder why you ask?
"Adultery first became a capital offence under Mary, Queen of Scots," Thomas went on. "Plenty got hanged, but some lucky ones were only branded on the cheek and banished from the kingdom."
"We should institute that in America," Laurence mused.
I glared at him.
"There was even a Concealment of Pregnancy Act," said Tho
mas, from deep in the crypts of history. "1690. I used that in a paper just last month. Can you believe? It was actually illegal to try to hide your pregnancy."
"Was that a hanging crime, too?" asked Eileen.
"Oh, yes. Practically everything was."
We weren't far from the castle now. Thomas Chester-Brighton led us into a creepy, high-walled alley--a close, it was called, appropriately enough--and hushed us for a moment.
"Beneath our feet," he said, "lies the underground city. They lead tours of it, you know, but not all of it. There are parts they don't dare break into. There are probably bodies under there yet."
"Poured into the cement, like the Mafia does in New York?" I asked.
"Oh, no. Locked up there to suffocate or starve. You see, when the Black Plague swept the city, it was established that the lower levels of the buildings, and these narrow passageways, where the riffraff hung about, were a great health hazard. Poor drainage, and of course not as sanitary as it is today. So they built up the street a couple of levels, and sealed off the under-layers, with lots of said riffraff still inside. Some of the passageways weren't opened again for centuries."
I shivered a little, and Laurence glanced into the shadows around us with new appreciation. Eileen and Sharon, who already knew this story from one source or another (i.e., from books or from Thomas), just watched us with darkly complacent smiles.
"So!" said Thomas. "Who fancies a drink?"
I didn't exactly fancy a drink, as it was already 9:00 p.m. I was tired from all the walking and the rough week, and I had to work in the morning, even though tomorrow was a Saturday. But, for the sake of being polite, I went along with the crowd.
Too late I realized that it was the magic pub we were going to. Gil's pub. Gil, who was working tonight.
Gil, whose half-pulled-back ponytail and familiar profile smacked me like a wet towel from across the pub when we entered.
He didn't even notice us at first. He was counting change for somebody. He had on a red shirt with green three-quarter-length sleeves, and a white threadbare apron tied around his waist. Thomas, with Sharon by the hand, led us in a winding snake across the smoky room to a booth. I ducked my head and prayed that maybe, somehow, Eileen and Sharon wouldn't recognize Gil, or that he would be called into the back to wash dishes for the rest of the evening.
No such luck. The booth was all of ten feet from the bar, for one thing. Then, we had thumped ourselves down and been arrayed for about five seconds when Eileen craned her neck and said loudly, "Hey, Eva, your boy's working tonight!"
Laurence positively lit up with evil delight, and swiveled in his seat to look. I pretended to be surprised, then disinterested, and picked up the menu from between the saltshakers to read it.
"Wow, that really is a gross shirt," said Laurence, who was crunched up against my left side.
The others had already turned away, and were discussing drinks. "At least it's cotton," I muttered back. "He's normally in polyester. Or rayon."
"Ewww," answered Laurence, and plucked the menu from my hands to look at it.
Thomas bounded over to the bar to order us a few pitchers of ale, or cider, or mead, or whatever history majors from England ordered. Even from there I could hear Gil answer, "Aye; I'll bring it oot to you." I looked toward him timidly. His eyes tracked back to Thomas's table to see where the order would go. The notepad he was tucking into his apron stopped in midair. Then resignation flattened his lips, and he sent me a subtle nod.
I tried to convey the sentiment, I had nothing to do with this, but I can't imagine I did very well.
In any case, he could only turn around and do his job. And I could only pretend that nothing was wrong. And maybe, maybe, without Laurence there, I could have pulled it off.
But Laurence's unusually lively smirk weighed upon me like a bag of sand. My armpits felt clammy. I tried to stay in the conversation, but my eyes kept getting pulled toward Gil, who dutifully served pints, counted change, leaned on the bar to hear people over the noise, and swept away crumbs with a dishtowel.
Drink, something desperate in me said. I became a nicer person when I drank; a more relaxed person. In the old British novels they were always giving people wine or brandy to calm them down when they were ill and unsettled. So, when in Britain...
I did feel better after the first pint of ale. Edges seemed smoother in the room. My nerves eased. But that didn't last. It had been four hours since our light dinner, and I only weighed about 110 pounds. So when I stood up to walk to the restroom, the floor did sway a bit.
Food, I thought, after I came back to the table. Food is what you need to soak up alcohol.
The others were already talking about getting some pub fare, and before I knew it there were baskets of fish and chips, deep-fried cheese, onion rings, and chutney on the table. Fish seemed the most substantial, so I took that. I still wasn't calm. Here were these people who knew and trusted me, and I was being completely deceptive. And one of them knew it, and kept shooting me sly glances.
And over there was poor Gil--literally, poor. Just a part-time bartender, a fellow who had never been to college and still lived with his parents and sister in a thin-walled house, serving us to earn his living, and pretending not to care for me. Occasionally, during a lull in the bar crowd, he would lean on the brass rail, cock his head at me, and wave casually. That just made my stomach lurch.
Sometimes he would slip swiftly between tables with hands full of empty pint glasses, and his rear would bump a chair, and for some reason it made him look common and downtrodden. Those gray jeans, that fabric that swiped against greasy pub furniture and customers' sleeves--I had pressed my hands all over those; that knee had latched across mine awkwardly on a park bench; I knew the metal feel of those rivets, buttons, and zipper, and I knew the softness and hardness of what they concealed. I had manhandled him through that denim; and the only reason I hadn't ever tugged it off him was because we couldn't get a room.
Lord, have mercy.
I didn't know if it was desire or regret that was making me feel so ill. They are both powerful drugs, and probably shouldn't be mixed.
Drink some beer. Eat some fish. Drink some cider. Eat some chips. Avoid Laurence's eyes. Avoid Gil's body. Listen to Eileen and Sharon and Thomas.
Surprisingly enough, I was able to walk home. I don't remember much about the last half-hour at the pub, but the food did help absorb the wallop of the alcohol, as did the cold night air.
On the other hand, solid food did not want to digest for me. It felt like I had a bowling ball in my stomach. I knew I must be pale green. I did not foresee a pleasant remainder of the night.
To his credit, Laurence said nothing more about Gil on the way to the hostel, nor had he said anything else in the pub, though he did snicker a few times, and when he went to the bar to pay our tab, he exchanged words of some sort with Gil. Just imagining what they might have said made me so queasy I had to close my eyes.
Back at the hostel, I kept up the facade of being fine; just tired, and even got into bed. After all, there was the faint hope that sleep would overtake and heal me.
But no. At about 1:00 a.m., I climbed down from my bunk, stole to the bathroom in bare feet, and crouched in a stall, where I shivered convulsively until finally throwing up fifteen minutes later.
I still felt horrible. I couldn't stop shivering, and the fetal position was the only comfortable one. I took the duvet from my bed and hauled myself up to the study room on the fourth floor, where I could sit on a couch, with a lamp on. For some reason this was necessary. The idea of lying in a dark room full of people asleep in beds was just hellish.
Still, there was nothing to do but stare straight ahead and listen to the muted sounds of traffic from below. Even cracking a book took more energy than I could now spare. Trembling, I let my head loll to the side on the smelly leather couch, and watched nightmare images flash across my eyelids.
A faceless magistrate in a hooded robe pulled me onto a raised
platform in the stinking medieval streets of the Royal Mile. I was wearing only rags, had been forced to chew on rats while in prison in the Tolbooth, and was barely able to keep from vomiting. But people were watching, and no, no, I couldn't throw up in public; this had always been a phobia of mine.
People were not only watching me, but were also throwing cold mud at me. I was trembling and blue. I could die of hypothermia. And here I was, drawn up before the public while the magistrate read my crimes off a huge scroll. I was an adulteress, being sentenced to hang. Or, no... was he commuting it to a burned mark on my cheek and banishment from Scotland?
There was Gil, blood dripping from a blackened, flaking scar on his face, being whipped through the streets so that his apron fell in rags around his legs. Oh, I would do anything to right my wrong; I begged them not to punish me; I hadn't known it was illegal, what I did.
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