Candy by Kevin Brooks Page A

look irritated, but Candy’s reaction showed that I did.
    “I was only asking, ” she said sulkily. “I don’t care what you do.”
    “Sorry,” I said. “I was just thinking, that’s all.”
    She lit a cigarette and breathed out her irritation in a stream of smoke. “Thinking about what?”
    “You.”
    It came out before I knew what I was saying, and I think it shocked her a bit. I know it shocked me. She didn’t say anything for a while, just looked at me for a moment, then started tidying the table, piling the plates and the cutlery on the tray. When that was done, she sat back, patted her belly, and burped contentedly, like an old man after dinner at his club. Then she took another long drag on her cigarette and looked at me again.
    “You’ve got egg on the side of your mouth,” I told her.
    “Where?”
    I pointed to the corner of my mouth.
    She touched the other side of her mouth. “Here?”
    “No…the other side.”
    “Show me,” she said, sucking the end of a paper napkin and passing it to me. I hesitated a moment, then reached across and touched the napkin to her mouth. Without meaning to, I brushed her cheek with the back of my fingers…Her skin was delicate and smooth. The bones of her face felt small and unknown.
    “Thanks,” she said, licking her lips.
    I nodded quietly, crumpling the napkin and placing it carefully on the tray. The ball of white tissue paper sat there for a moment, then slowly uncrumpled, revealing an inkblot pattern of lipstick-pink and yellow. I stared at it fora while, looking for hidden meanings in the pattern, but there was nothing there—it was just a smudge of lipstick and egg.
    “Joe?” said Candy.
    I looked up. Her face was pale and drawn, making her eyes seem even darker than usual.
    She said, “You don’t want to know about me.”
    “Why not?”
    “It’s just best if you don’t.”
    “Best for who?”
    “You…me…I don’t know.”
    She seemed tense—fiddling with her cigarette lighter, blinking her eyes, tapping her finger on the table. It was as if she was desperate to go somewhere or do something, but equally desperate not to.
    “It’s all right,” I said. “I don’t mind—”
    “Sorry,” she interrupted, starting to get up. “I need to go to the loo.” She picked up her handbag from the table and looked around the café, looking for the lavatory.
    “It’s over there,” I said, pointing to a doorway across the room.
    “Thanks,” she said, walking off quickly. “I won’t be a minute.”
    I watched her go, remembering the last time she’d walked away from me, when I’d first seen her at the station. Then she’d walked with a sway of her hips and a quick smile over her shoulder, as if she knew that she was being watched and wanted to make the most of it, but now she was walking without any vanity at all—no swaying hips, no pretense, no frivolity. She was walking with a purpose. Either not knowing or not caring that I was watching her.
    As she went through the doorway, I wondered briefly ifshe was running out on me. I imagined her going down the corridor, slipping into the kitchen, then sneaking out the back door and legging it across the zoo…
    Yeah, right, I thought to myself. She’s going to do that, isn’t she? She’s going to go to all that trouble just to get away from you.
    I sat there for a while, staring through the window, thinking about things, listening to the steamy hiss of tea urns and the clatter of plates and cutlery, then I got up and went to wait outside.
    It was early afternoon now and the temperature was starting to drop. The sun was still shining, though, still brightening the sky, and the grounds of the zoo were bathed in a crisp wintry light. The air was crystal clear. I could see for miles. I could see brightly colored birds, goats on hills, zebras and llamas, capuchin monkeys playing in the tops of trees…
    I looked back inside the café.
    Candy was taking a long time.
    I wondered what she was