She loves this city, even in the freezing winter, maybe more so. The grand pink and cream buildings and narrow streets feel smaller, more intimate, when dusted with snow. The people look at each other with careful, conspiratorial joy and sometimes she is drawn into it, able to forget herself. She steals glances at them as she crosses the frozen square, strung with colourful bunting and already bustling with smiling people, carefully wrapped in their thick coats and sturdy boots, crunching their way through the compacted white ground.
The air is crushingly cold and a barely-there snow hangs weightlessly around her, coating her hair and her skin in tiny frozen flakes. She stops opposite the coffee shop, pulls her hat down further over her ears and takes a few delicious gulps of thick, glacial air before lighting her first smoke. She thinks about her life, how ordinary it is. How small, how insignificant, how different from how she imagined.
The shop is bright and warm, heavy with the smell of muffins and coffee. Carrie is already there, prepping the machines.
“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” Carrie asks, scrubbing the milk frother robustly, her dreadlocks bouncing on top of her head. Carrie enjoys big questions and big conversations and abhors small talk - refuses to engage in it - and while this is one of the reasons Sonja enjoys her company, it also makes her somewhat exhausting to be with.
“I don’t know. That’s a hard question and I’ve not even drunk any coffee yet. Doesn’t it kind of depend on what you think is bad?”
“Yes but from an objective standpoint.” Carrie shouts over the pouring of coffee beans. “What would the majority of normal people think was the worst thing you’ve ever done?”
These situations arise from time to time, when something causes the truth to stir within Sonja and attempt to scramble out into the open. Sometimes she can taste the words in her mouth and her lips start to form the sounds and a rush goes through her, part terror, part euphoria. So far, it hasn’t escaped; but she’s never confident that it won’t. Sonja racks her brain for a plausible response, enough to seem like she is giving something of herself, some secret part of her soul, but not so much as to encourage further digging on Carrie’s part.
“I killed a guinea pig once.” is what she finally settles on. Carrie winces and stares at her. “It was an accident, but it was my fault. I fed it turps. I thought it was water.”
“How old were you?”
“Pretty young. Seven, I think.”
Carrie pauses and ruminates as she wipes down the counter, then throws her cloth into the sink before delivering her verdict.
“Well, that’s not so bad. Firstly it was an accident and secondly you were really young. That’s not a very juicy confession, Sonja. I don’t believe that’s the worst thing you ever did.” Carrie is right of course. It is far from the worst thing Sonja has ever done, and isn’t even her story.
“Sorry.” she says and heads into the back to hang up her coat.
Carrie is Sonja’s only friend, apart from those who have been thrust upon her through neighbourly proximity. A friend to Sonja is somebody with whom she has conversations. It never goes any further than that, not any more. Life has taught her, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that a friendship is a weak link for people like her, and while she is willing to concede that they are somewhat necessary to her sanity, she certainly doesn’t go out of her way to cultivate them and she always knows that they are temporary.
Carrie makes a good friend. She is kind, she is engaging, she is interesting and intelligent, but most importantly, she knows when to leave Sonja alone. Most of the time.
By five o’clock, the customers are thinning out to the ghostly dregs that normally lurk until five thirty - the ones who seem repelled by their own lives, desperate to hide from themselves in the darkest corners, wired on the ten cups of coffee they felt obliged to buy throughout the day. These are the ones Sonja can’t bear. Their pain sings out to her so loudly that she can’t ignore it, like the cry of a newborn baby, a note that resonates fiercely in her, so that her body can’t help but sing with them. She busies herself with restocking while Carrie clears tables.
The last man leaves at five twenty nine, obviously embarrassed by his own blatant reluctance to leave, but still not hurrying. Carrie locks the door behind him and sighs heavily.
“I thought he’d never leave. Don’t these people have families to go home to?”
Not everyone does Sonja thinks.
Carrie lives with her girlfriend, in a small apartment in a tiny back street by the river. They have been together for seven years and intend to get married and start a family. Carrie is of the opinion that there is someone for everyone, you just have to keep looking until you find them and then be prepared to do whatever it takes to hang onto them. Sonja admires Carrie’s approach to love, it is fierce and it is consuming. She loves like she talks: directly and without compromise, or fear of judgement.
“Are you still seeing that guy?” Carrie enquires. “The doctor.”
“On and off. He’s very busy.”
“Is it worth it? I mean, he lives far away, he’s never free, he hardly ever comes to see you...are you sure he’s worth the investment? You’re not getting any younger you know and while you’re seeing him, you might be missing out on something really meaningful.”
Sonja pictures her doctor, this enigmatic older man with the healing hands and the hectic lifestyle, and she realises that she has grown quite attached to him. She is almost sad that he isn’t real.
“Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps it’s not going anywhere.”
“Do you love him?”
“No, not yet.”
“Do you think you could?”
“I have no idea.”
“Then move on. He’s not worth the effort. If you don’t feel like you could love him after dating him for three months, he’s not the one for you.”
The shutter door grinds to a clanging stop and Sonja waves goodbye to Carrie and watches her dash off across the darkening square, off to her home full of love and comfort. A spike of envy needles her heart. It is short lived and quickly replaced by a gritty relief that no one is waiting for her, she misses no one, is reliant on no one. These two feelings mingle but do not quite mix. Instead, she has her home, her tiny studio apartment, where she will light a fire, eat some food and read a book, until she drifts off to sleep. She is soothed by this thought as she falls into the crowd dissecting the square, gets pulled into its currents and lets herself be carried along.
Lost in her somnolent state, she floats, half-real, immersed in the comforting near future of home, when a face appears in the crowd. Time freezes as it comes into view, as if a flash bulb goes off at the very moment she looks up. He is brighter than all of the other faces around him, framed by a vignette, spotlit and vibrant. Something old and deep and multidimensional stirs in her, coated in smells, unidentifiable textures and sensations without form. Memories. As if she is hit by a wave, her feet sucked into the sand by the fast retreating water, the ground itself suddenly unreliable and threatening.
And then he is gone, has passed her by, and she stands swaying in the ebb and flow for a moment before refocusing and stepping forward to continue.
“Josie.”
All is quiet, all is silent, apart from that one voice.
“Josie!”
Why turn and look? She doesn’t have to. She could carry on into the frozen evening and nothing would change, nothing would happen, she could return to her home, light her fire and read her book, fall asleep alone and safe, the future a known entity. There is no reason to change that.
But she does.