Page 6 of Kiwi Sin
Inside the café, things got odd. Not odd in the way I’d thought they would. Odd in a way I couldn’t have imagined.
The place was bright, cheerful, and small, most of the tables occupied, and an older woman with a good-natured face standing behind a counter, the glass cabinets around her fairly bursting with food items, each individual thing prepared and ready for you to choose it. Whatever you liked.
Bacon and egg quiche with salad,one sign read, beneath a plate of fat pastry-clad wedges.Cheese roll,said another.Carrot cake,proclaimed a sign in a different cabinet.Fruit custard tart.That one looked like something you’d get on a feast day, rich pastry piled high with fruit and cream. You could buy that kind of thing anytime here?
I was still staring at it when the woman said, “Lovely to see you, Drew. Not with the family today?”
“No,” Drew said. “Here with my mate instead. He wants to try everything, I’m guessing, and small wonder, but we need to fill up fast. What d’you have that’s good today?”
“Got some lovely beefburgers with chips,” she said. “That should do the two of you pretty well.”
“That’ll definitely do,” Drew said. “Cheers.”
She spoke to a girl behind her, then turned around to ask, “Do you play rugby, then? Haven’t seen you before, I don’t think.”
Oh. She was talking to me. I said, “Uh … pardon?” Now that I was standing, I was getting a bit lightheaded. Shivering as well, which was awkward.
Because I was cold. I’d got wet despite the running, and I was barely wearing ashirt.
“Nah,” Drew said. “Though he looks it, eh. Just a mate.” He reached for a glass bottle filled with what looked like water from a different cabinet, handed it to me along with two glasses, and said, “Find us a table, would you, and pour us some water? Sit down. I’ll be there in a sec.”
He’d noticed the shivering, then. I was embarrassed, but I hadn’t been raised to argue, even though he’d pulled out his wallet and was paying again, and I didn’t even know how much it was, so I could write it down. I did sit down, with my back well away from the chair, poured my water, sipped at it slowly, and tried not to be sick.
It wasn’t even five minutes before the woman was at our table with two cups of tea and a pot, and I had to admit that the hot liquid felt good going down. I’d barely started drinking it, though, when a couple of boys of the littler sort came up to the table and the older one said, “’Scuse me.”
“Hi,” Drew said. “How’re ya goin’?”
“Good,” the older kid said. The younger one just stared at Drew, all round eyes and breathlessness. “But we wanted a selfie,” the older kid said, “and our mum said we couldn’t bother you when you’re eating. You’re not eating now, though, and she’s in the toilet, but she took her phone, so …”
“Ah,” Drew said. “Found a loophole, did you? Got a pen?”
“Uh …” The boys looked at each other, then back at him, and he said, “Tell you what. Go ask Janet, behind the counter there, to borrow one. Go quick, though, before your mum comes back.”
They did, and when they came back, Drew scribbled something onto two paper napkins and handed one to each boy. He’d no sooner done it than another woman, as bold as the serving-woman even though she was younger, came rushing up and said, looking Drew right in the face, “I’m so sorry. I told them not to disturb you.”
“No worries,” Drew said. “Cheers.” Then turned back to me as if nothing had happened and picked up his mug.
They wandered off, the boys practically jumping up and down with what looked like excitement, and I thought,What?“Is it a game?” I asked, despite my no-questions policy, maybe to distract myself from the shivering, and maybe because I didn’t think there was any amount of looking and listening that would answer this. “Do people collect …” I tried to think of a word. “Clues?” I finished.
“Something like that,” he said. “Ah. Beefburgers. Cheers, Janet. Also—your pen.” He handed it over, then told me, “Get that down you, and you’ll feel better.”
It was a sandwich. With some kind of beef in it, raw vegies, a fried egg, a couple of slabs of bacon, and a thick slice of pickled beetroot. Looked good, and mostly like things I recognized. Beside it was a pile of something else I knew about. Chips, those were, with tomato sauce. A treat I’d rarely had, and one that was making my mouth water now with the prospect of that crunchy/chewy potato taste, not to mention the salt.
Drew took a bite.
I froze.
He chewed, swallowed, then asked, “Problem? Is Mount Zion vegetarian, then? Never heard that. Sounds unlikely.”
I thought,Harden up. You know people Outside don’t do this. Doesn’t mean you can’t.Did I even want to? I didn’t know.Notdoing it, though, felt as naked as … well, as standing about on the side of a roadway without my shirt on. I said, “Just a moment,” then folded my hands, bent my head, closed my eyes, and muttered the prayer under my breath.
When I looked up again, half-afraid of what I’d see, Drew wasn’t eating. He’d set his own sandwich down while I’d said the blessing, in fact. Now, he picked it up and took another bite, and didn’t say anything else.
I ate all the chips. I also ate all of the sandwich thing. It was delicious.
People in the cafe held up their phones while we walked out. They talked amongst themselves, too. Excitedly. I was wearing a regular shirt, though, the same kind most of them had on.Couldthey tell? How?
I needed to learn how to fit in. I’d ask later, when I could summon the energy for it.
