The proprietor asked them if they were ready to order anything. "Coffee," said Spider, and Rosie nodded her agreement. "Two coffees," said Spider. "And if you can give us, um, five minutes? I need a little privacy here."
The proprietor withdrew.
Rosie looked at Spider inquiringly.
He took a deep breath. "Right. Okay. Let me just say this, because it isn't easy, and I don't know that I can- right. Okay. Look, I'm not Fat Charlie. I know you think I am, but I'm not. I'm his brother, Spider. You think I'm him because we sort of look alike."
She did not say anything.
"Well, I don't really look like him. But. Y'know, none of this really comes easy to me. Ookay. Uh. I can't stop thinking about you. So I mean, I know you're engaged to my brother, but I'm sort of asking if you, well, if you'd think about maybe dumping him and possibly going out with me."
A pot of coffee arrived on a small silver tray, with two cups.
"Greek coffee," said the proprietor, who had brought it.
"Yes. Thanks. I did ask for a couple of minutes-"
"Is very hot," said the proprietor. "Very hot coffee. Strong. Greek. Not Turkish."
"That's great. Listen, if you don't mind - five minutes. Please?"
The proprietor shrugged and walked away.
"You probably hate me," said Spider. "If I was you I'd probably hate me, too. But I mean this. More than I've ever meant anything in my life." She was just looking at him, without expression, and he said, "Please. Just say something. Anything."
Her lips moved, as if she were trying to find the right words to say.
Spider waited.
Her mouth opened.
His first thought was that she was eating something, because the thing he saw between her teeth was brown, and was certainly not a tongue. Then it moved its head and its eyes, little black-bead eyes, stared at him. Rosie opened her mouth impossibly wide and the birds came out.
Spider said "Rosie?" and then the air was filled with beaks and feathers and claws, one after the other. Birds poured out from her throat, each accompanied by a tiny coughing-choking noise, in a stream directed at him.
He threw up an arm to protect his eyes, and something hurt his wrist. He flailed out, and something flew at his face, heading for his eyes. He jerked his head backward, and the beak punctured his cheek.
A moment of nightmare clarity: there was still a woman sitting opposite him. What he could no longer understand was how he could ever have mistaken her for Rosie. She was older than Rosie, for a start, her blue-black hair streaked here and there with silver. Her skin was not the warm brown of Rosie's skin but black as flint. She was wearing a ragged ochre raincoat. And she grinned and opened her mouth wide once more, and now inside her mouth he could see the cruel beaks and crazy eyes of seagulls-.
Spider did not stop to think. He acted. He grabbed the handle of the coffeepot, swept it up in one hand, while with the other he pulled off the lid; then he jerked the pot toward the woman in the seat opposite him. The contents of the pot, scalding hot black coffee, went all over her.
She hissed in pain.
Birds crashed and flapped through the air of the cellar restaurant, but now there was nobody sitting opposite him, and the birds flew without direction, flapping into walls wildly.
The proprietor said, "Sir? Are you hurt? I am sorry. They must have come in from the street."
"I'm fine," said Spider.
"Your face is bleeding," said the man. He handed Spider a napkin, and Spider pressed it against his cheek. The cut stung.
Spider offered to help the man get the birds out. He opened the door to the street, but now the place was as empty of birds as it had been before his arrival.
Spider pulled out a five-pound note. "Here," he said. "For the coffee. I've got to go."
The proprietor nodded, gratefully. "Keep the napkin."
Spider stopped and thought. "When I came in," he asked, "was there a woman with me?"
The proprietor looked puzzled - possibly even scared, Spider could not be sure. "I do not remember," he said, as if dazed. "If you had been alone, I would not have seated you back there. But I do not know."
Spider went back out into the street. The day was still bright, but the sunlight no longer seemed reassuring. He looked around. He saw a pigeon, shuffling and pecking at an abandoned ice cream cone; a sparrow on a window ledge; and, high above, a flash of white in the sunlight, its wings extended, a seagull circled.
CHAPTER NINE
IN WHICH FAT CHARLIE ANSWERS THE DOOR AND SPIDER ENCOUNTERS FLAMINGOS
Fat Charlie’s luck was changing. He could feel it. The plane on which he was returning home had been oversold, and he had found himself bumped up to first class. The meal was excellent. Halfway across the Atlantic, a flight attendant came over to inform him that he had won a complimentary box of chocolates, and presented it to him. He put it in his overhead locker, and ordered a Drambuie on ice.
He would get home. He would sort everything out with Grahame Coats - after all, if there was one thing that Fat Charlie was certain of, it was the honesty of his own accounting. He would make everything good with Rosie. Everything was going to be just great.
He wondered if Spider would already be gone when he got home, or whether he would get the satisfaction of throwing him out. He hoped it would be the latter. Fat Charlie wanted to see his brother apologize, possibly even grovel. He started to imagine the things that he was going to say.
"Get out!" said Fat Charlie, "And take your sunshine, your Jacuzzi, and your bedroom with you!"
"Sorry?" said the flight attendant.
"Talking," said Fat Charlie. "To myself. Just um."
But even the embarrassment he felt at this wasn't really that bad. He didn't even hope the plane would crash and end his mortification. Life was definitely looking up.
He opened the little kit of useful amenities he had been given, and put on his eyeshade, and pushed his seat back as far as it would go, which was most of the way. He thought about Rosie, although the Rosie in his mind kept shifting, morphing into someone smaller who wasn't really wearing much of anything. Fat Charlie guiltily imagined her dressed, and was mortified when he realized that she seemed to be wearing a police uniform. He felt terrible about this, he told himself, but it didn't seem to make much of an impression. He ought to feel ashamed of himself. He ought to-.
Fat Charlie shifted in his seat and emitted one small, satisfied snore.
He was still in an excellent mood when he landed at Heathrow. He took the Heathrow Express into Paddington and was pleased to note that in his brief absence from England the sun had decided to come out. Every little thing, he told himself, is going to be all right.