Acts of Love

by Talulah Riley

  ‘Bernadette, call an ambulance,’ said Elizabeth quietly, before Bernadette even had a chance to register what was happening. She looked round in a panic. Several of the other diners were dithering too, fumbling for cell phones, but a quick-thinking waiter was already dialling 911 from the restaurant telephone.

  Elizabeth was kneeling on the floor beside the man, talking to him calmly. She looked up at Bernadette, who was in shock. ‘Bernadette, get some aspirin please,’ she said in the same quiet tone, before turning her attention back to her patient.

  ‘Does anyone have any aspirin?’ Bernadette asked loudly, appealing to the other diners. Someone found some and passed it over, and Bernadette thrust it at Elizabeth, her hands shaking. Elizabeth had wrapped her own coat around the man to keep him warm, and was asking him questions about his daughter. Bernadette wanted to cry, it was so unexpected and awful. Bile and panic rose in her throat, and she huddled back, feeling like an intruder on what should be the most intimate moment of a person’s existence.

  ‘She’s a doctor,’ she announced to the watching room, pointing at Elizabeth as if she were a movie star. ‘She’s a doctor.’

  The ambulance arrived after what seemed like a lifetime, and Elizabeth quickly filled the paramedics in on what had happened. The poor man was clutching at her hand, tears in his eyes.

  ‘Would you like me to come to the hospital with you?’ she asked, and he nodded gratefully.

  She quickly gathered her belongings while Bernadette stood uselessly by, feeling like a child being abandoned by its mother.

  ‘What about—’ Bernadette began, but Elizabeth gave her a quick hug before turning to leave. ‘I’m pretty sure he’s going to be fine,’ she said. ‘Try not to worry, sweetie. I’ll text you as soon as I know anything. I’ll wait till his family can join him, maybe a bit longer. See you tomorrow. Get some sleep!’

  And she was gone. Bernadette slumped heavily at the table, replaying her own part in the scene. She had been powerless to help, and Elizabeth had been wonderful. There is nothing more defeminising than being faced with an opportunity to care and minister, and realising you are completely redundant. Elizabeth had won all the glory and Bernadette was a blithering idiot, a waste-of-space cotton-headed dawdler. And she was selfish now, to be thinking only of her own performance rather than focusing on the man at the centre of the tragedy.

  It was odd, she noted, how she had wanted rid of Elizabeth, wanted to be free of the awkward dinner, and now here she was all alone. The universe often conspired to help Bernadette, and rather than be grateful, she resented it. What a cruel thing the universe had done this time – she must be more careful what she wished for. It was in such an introspective reverie that Radley found her.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. He had appeared over her, and was glancing around the restaurant, overtaken by the odd feeling of ruinous aftermath. She gaped up at him wordlessly.

  ‘Your mother, wonderful woman that she is, is resting at the hotel. She said she would see you in the morning. Where’s Elizabeth?’

  Bernadette didn’t quite know where to begin. A waiter approached them. ‘Your friend was incredible,’ he said to Bernadette. ‘I guess she’s not coming back? Do you two want to order?’ He glanced appreciatively at Radley. ‘Your meal is complimentary, of course. We’re so sorry for the upset.’

  ‘I can’t eat,’ said Bernadette. ‘But thank you.’

  The waiter nodded understandingly. ‘Please thank your friend from us. She was amazing. Any time she wants to come back and dine, we’ll arrange something special.’

  Bernadette smiled weakly, trying to look extra pretty to make up for her own lack of heroism.

  ‘What on earth did you do? Where’s Elizabeth?’ asked Radley, deeply concerned now.

  ‘I didn’t do anything!’ she cried indignantly. ‘Let’s just go.’

  They exited the underground restaurant and were hit by the thick New York night. The air was heavy with heat and scent. Bernadette took Radley’s hand in a natural fashion and began walking up the quiet street. His questioning halted by the good fortune of hand-holding, they managed to walk silently for almost half a mile before he began again.

  ‘All right, out with it. Why are we wandering aimlessly across the city? What did you do to Elizabeth?’

  ‘Will you stop accusing me? I didn’t do anything. A man almost died, right in front of us! He may be dead now, for all I know. And Elizabeth went with him to the hospital.’

  Radley stopped abruptly and hugged her tight. Bernadette felt obliged to cry, as the situation demanded, but was unable. She cursed herself. She had collapsed weeping in Radley’s arms earlier in the day when confronting her own disappointment, but now, when facing someone else’s life-and-death situation, she couldn’t produce even one salty tribute. She was a bad woman. She tried scrunching her face and sniffing a little into his lapels, hoping that would suffice.

  He let her go and reached for his iPhone, tapping out a text to Elizabeth. ‘Why don’t you and I go for a stiff drink?’ he said, looking up at Bernadette with dark eyes, and smiling with his least offensive smirk.

  ‘I’ve stopped drinking,’ she said.

  ‘Since when?’ he asked, surprised.

  ‘Since … For a while,’ she murmured vaguely, wringing her hands and looking blindly down the street.

  ‘Then let’s keep walking,’ he said quietly, taking one of her hands and tucking her arm under his, pulling her close to his side. They moved briskly, marching almost, dodging piles of trash and other sidewalk hazards without skipping a beat. Their rhythm was a good one, and Bernadette welcomed the physical movement. When she couldn’t bear to think, she needed to move. She came at the world with her head high and every muscle braced for action. The flight instinct was strong in her, and each internal demon triggered a reaction.

  Radley had sensed the distress in her and guessed at a remedy. They covered ground, him steering them without seeming to, so that Bernadette could remain in her purposeless state. It wasn’t until she was properly panting that he slowed. They were in the middle of a tourist area, brightly lit kebab shops and pizza joints all around. Their two cell phones buzzed simultaneously, and both reached for their respective lifelines.

  He is fine, Elizabeth had group-texted them. Will make a complete recovery. Family is with him. All okay. Love you both x.

  Bernadette and Radley looked from the screens into each other’s eyes, their vision blurring slightly at the sudden change in the light. They were both smiling, and Bernadette realised with some relief that she had been genuinely concerned for the poor maître d’.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ asked Radley. ‘Pizza?’

  ‘Sure.’

  She perched on a sticky high stool at a greasy Formica counter, while Radley ordered slices from an Italian-themed tourist trap. He pulled a wad of hundred-dollar bills from his pocket.

  ‘Hundreds? That’s very gangster of you,’ Bernadette observed as he paid.

  ‘Sam withdraws for me,’ he shrugged.

  ‘Your assistant withdraws your cash? You’re too important to use the ATM? That’s disgraceful!’

  ‘Not important. Time-constrained.’

  ‘Well I’m honoured that someone so constrained should waste so much of his time eating pizza with little ole me.’

  ‘I don’t consider this a waste. I’m very careful with time, and with money.’

  He came to sit next to her, their knees touching as they balanced, preferring to rest the paper plates on their laps rather than the counter top.

  ‘You’re careful with a lot of things,’ she said. His look was a question mark. ‘You’re careful with your heart, for instance,’ she continued. ‘You won’t be tempted from the path of righteousness, in search of baser pleasures …’

  ‘Not by you,’ and he bit fiercely into his pizza in a manner that discouraged her from continuing.

  She wished they were sitting under more flattering lighting, dreading to imagine the strange
shadows cast by the bright down-lights, and shuddering at the close proximity of Radley’s penetrating eyes to her open-pored, freckled face.

  ‘Elizabeth was quite impressive,’ she said speculatively, though a mouthful of margherita.

  ‘That doesn’t surprise me.’

  ‘I, of course, was useless. But let me guess, that doesn’t surprise you either.’

  ‘It was a scary thing to witness,’ he said gently. ‘No one knows how they’re going to react in situations like that. Elizabeth is practised at such things, being a doctor. You are not.’

  Radley leant forward and brushed his fingers lightly over her cheek, tucking a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. Bernadette pulled back from his touch. It wasn’t that she disliked it – quite the contrary – but she had been keeping as much of her hair over her face as possible, using it as a shield from his keen gaze. She hated it when romantic gestures went wrong. So often she had pulled away from a man because he was trying to hold her hand when her skin was dry, or kiss her when she’d just eaten garlic, or pull her hair back from her face when she was trying to hide a pimple behind the dark curtain. Every time she would withdraw coyly, and leave him to guess at the reason for the rejection, rather than communicate her vanity like an adult.

  ‘Do you think life is real?’ she asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you think there is anything more? Sometimes I feel quite certain that what we feel is true is actually a great big trick. You know, my experience of reality is that my feelings – my thoughts and emotions – are the truest things about me.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Radley. ‘You make that quite evident.’

  She wrinkled her nose at him and smiled. ‘I’m being serious! Physical reality seems like the less real and less important thing. Maybe we’re all just brains in a jar somewhere.’

  Radley munched on his pizza, stopping to lick some tomato sauce from his wrist. ‘Life is a mathematical projection.’ He shrugged.

  ‘That can’t be right!’

  ‘I hate to break it to you, but no one gets to know the secrets of the universe, Bernadette, not even you. Maybe we’re all stuck inside a complex simulation – but if we are, we’ll never know it. Accept it as something beyond your reach.’

  ‘Never,’ she said stubbornly, rising from the table with an imperious look. He laughed and took her hands (she had moisturised recently, so she let her little paws rest lightly in his great palms).

  ‘Would you like it if I told you that our having pizza in New York right now was written in the stars? Predetermined by weeping angels, who wrote the date across the firmament in an everlasting constellation?’ he said, with muted drama.

  She raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘Why are the angels weeping?’

  ‘That,’ he said, ‘is the first happy thought you have had all night, and I’m going to take it as an excellent omen for us. Why are the angels weeping indeed?’

  They soon resumed their walk up the wide avenue, their previous frenzy replaced by a delicious pizza-fed languor. ‘I think perhaps this is a simulation,’ Bernadette mused. ‘A giant video game. You are being controlled by a skilled gamer. Mine is a little more amateurish, a weekend player.’

  ‘As a biologist, I would like to point out how difficult it is to correctly simulate even the most simple life forms—’

  But Bernadette had cut him off with a cry, pointing towards a neon sign in a black second-floor window. ‘Look!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Fortune-teller?’ he read, looking at her in surprise. ‘You didn’t strike me as the type.’

  ‘I’m not,’ she assured him. ‘But tonight I feel like it, for some reason. After all your talk of angels, it seems like The Thing To Do.’ She spoke the last in obvious capital letters, and Radley grinned indulgently.

  ‘I’m not one to argue with destiny. It seems like An Idiotic Idea to me. But if you really want to …’ He indicated that she should enter the building.

  Bernadette felt unaccountably excited; alive with good humour, as though the maître d’s recovery had given her a shot of new life as well. She turned coquettishly to Radley as she pushed open the glass door. ‘Of course, I don’t believe in any of this kind of tosh. Fortune-telling, like horoscopes, is a lie designed to please women. But since so many things fall into that category, it seems rude to ignore them entirely. Let’s waste some money and have some fun.’

  ‘I don’t like to waste money, remember?’ he said.

  The door opened immediately on to a narrow stairway that smelt strongly of Chinese food. Bernadette climbed the stairs between two white-painted walls, conscious that Radley was following close behind. At the top, she had the choice of turning right into a tattoo parlour, or entering a door on the left that promised palmistry, tarot and fortune-telling. She stopped on the top stair, Radley just below her.

  ‘Perhaps we should get something pierced instead?’ he asked, looking to the tattoo parlour. ‘It might be less painful.’

  ‘Don’t be dull. This is going to be fun! It’ll be something we always remember.’

  ‘I like that. I appreciate the idea of permanence it suggests.’

  ‘We can remember it separately,’ Bernadette clarified.

  Radley looked like the patient general of a forgotten army, his athletic frame relaxed, one foot resting a stair higher than the other, as though about to mount a waiting steed. ‘Well go on then,’ he prompted as she stared. ‘Or are we to stay in this stairwell all evening?’

  She hastily pushed open the door on the left, glancing back over her shoulder to wink at him, full of mischief, and most pleased with their endeavour.

  ‘I’m closed!’ called a shrill voice from the depths of a dark room. It took a moment for Bernadette’s eyes to adjust to the gloom. A huge moth-eaten Indian rug covered the floor. There were scatter cushions and hookahs littered around, clustered near low Turkish tables. The air was thick with patchouli, and the low light came from standing lamps covered with saris of various colours. In one corner a small woman was fiddling with an improbably old television set. She looked at Bernadette with dark, beady eyes. ‘I’m closed,’ she repeated, waving a dismissive hand.

  Bernadette stopped in the doorway, cross. She didn’t like her plans to be derailed by short women. And she expected more sympathy from someone supposedly in commune with higher powers. The fortune-teller was oldish, probably in her fifties, with an abundance of dark curls, and shapeless garments covering her thin body. Bracelets jangled at both wrists and large silver hoops dangled from her ears. It was cheap theatre, illusion-lite, and Bernadette was determined to have it. ‘Couldn’t you just squeeze us in?’ she wheedled, smiling her most unthreatening little-girl smile.

  ‘Who’s us?’ asked the woman. Her voice was scratchy and nasal with New York intonation. Radley stepped into the room behind Bernadette. The fortune-teller looked him up and down with some interest. ‘I’m closed,’ she said, but more amiably this time.

  ‘Please?’ Bernadette coaxed. ‘It’s very important.’

  The woman shook her head and walked towards them, shooing them like they were poultry. ‘I’ve finished for the day, hun. Why don’t you try tomorrow? It’s late. Take your man home. I was about to head out myself.’

  ‘Look,’ said Bernadette, standing her ground, ‘we’ll pay you well. Triple your rate. And I don’t want long. Twenty minutes.’

  The little woman stared up into her determined face and sighed heavily. ‘Okay. Twenty minutes. What do you want? Cards? Palm?’

  ‘Just a bog-standard fortune-telling.’

  ‘For you? Or you want a joint read for the both of you?’ she said, jabbing Radley in the stomach with a bony finger.

  ‘We’ll have a joint read,’ said Bernadette firmly, before Radley could object.

  ‘Take a seat.’ The woman pointed to two of the larger floor cushions. Bernadette dropped gracefully on to one of them; Radley, sighing audibly, lowered himself carefully to the other, snorting disgruntledly. The fortune-tell
er settled herself on a third cushion, pulling her mass of hair back behind her shoulders and pushing the bracelets up her arms like a drunkard rolling his sleeves before a brawl. ‘Okay, kids,’ she said, beaming professionally at them. ‘Where are you from?’

  Radley opened his mouth to answer, but Bernadette whacked a restraining arm across him. ‘Don’t tell her anything specific,’ she hissed, eyeballing the woman. ‘That’s how they do this. They take what you say and repeat it back to you, making you think it’s magic.’

  Radley blinked at her, nonplussed, rubbing his chest where she had hit him. The psychic folded her arms and arched a fuzzy eyebrow in a papery brow. ‘Listen, girlie,’ she said, ‘if you’re not going to talk, this is going to be a long twenty minutes. What is it you want to know? How can I help you?’

  Bernadette shook her head vigorously, clamping her lips together. Radley and the fortune-teller exchanged an exasperated look. He shrugged apologetically.

  ‘Okay,’ the woman sighed. ‘Here’s how this works. We chat through what’s going on in your life right now, and I give you some possible solutions for the future, okay? I need you to work with me here.’

  ‘You’re meant to be a psychic, not a psychiatrist,’ said Bernadette. ‘You should be able to divine my future without me giving you any information about myself.’

  Radley scratched at his cushion, embarrassed. Bernadette continued to stare down the little New Yorker.

  ‘All right,’ said the woman. ‘You want the truth? Let’s do this.’ She squinted challengingly at Bernadette and then shut her eyes, throwing her head back dramatically. She swept her arms out to the sides and cried loudly, ‘Spirits! Come to me now!’

  Radley jumped in alarm. The fortune-teller was swaying backwards and forwards, muttering to herself. It was difficult to catch her exact words, but Bernadette was confident she heard ‘hocus pocus’ in there somewhere. The woman’s eyes snapped open and she stared at Bernadette meanly. ‘You’re obviously English. You grew up in the south of England. Your parents divorced when you were young. Your father was neglectful, and you lost contact with him years ago. You take pride in your appearance. You’re unmarried. You’re incapable of monogamy. You’ve had a series of unfulfilling relationships. You suffer because you hate yourself, and you despise anyone who would love you. You’re too smart for your own good. You’re motivated by love, not money. You have money of your own. You have exacting and unrealistic expectations of yourself and those around you. You have a reputation for being an ice queen, a bitch, a snobby English girl, yada yada. You’re inconsiderate of other people’s feelings and you have trouble with empathy. There you go.’