Page 59 of 56 Days
She doesn’t really care what it tastes like; it’s mostly the smell she finds she needs in the morning.
The door that leads to the littlerailed-interrace unlocks with a gentleclick, but makes a louderwhooshingnoise when she slides it back. The table still has the checked tablecloth on it from last night and the lights are still twisted around the railing; she feels silly when she recalls her suspicions that he had something more sinister hidden in the backpack.
What did she seriously think was in there?
She pictures Oliver’s face just after the reveal, when he was apologizing for having to scavenge hisromantic-mealmaterials from Tesco. The hint of heat on his cheeks, the nervous smile, the way he dips his head when he’s embarrassed so it’s as if he’s looking up at you, despite his height...
Ciara smiles at the memory.
She chooses the chair that gives her a better view of the courtyard and, around it, the other apartments, and holds her coffee with two hands.
The sky is growing brighter by the minute. It is striking how quiet it is. But it’s adisquiet. The city has been winding down for, what? Two weeks now? But over the weekend, it’s come to a stop. The absence of traffic noise—of engines and horns and tires on tarmac—is the biggest change, and the most disconcerting one of all. She is aten-minutewalk from the heart of the half of the city that sits on the south side of the river, and there is no sound at all save for distant birds and the rustle of a light breeze through the courtyard’s trees.
She thinks, I could be the last person on earth and not know it.
And then that she could be the last person on earth and no one would ever have even known she was here.
Movement.
Ciara sees thebright-pinkthighs first and for a split second is confused about how the legs they belong to seem to disappear at the knee, but then she blinks and realizes what she’s looking at: not a woman levitating in the air but one wearing leggings that are gray from the knee down, doing yoga stretches on her balcony.
Oliver told her there’s a gym in the building, but it preemptively closed last week and now, under this de facto lockdown, it’ll have to stay that way for the foreseeable future. He’d said he was going to start running again; she’d said, “Off with you,” and told him about her rule of only running if she was being chased, if it was runningaway. She likes the idea of going for walks, though. It’s nice around here—it’s leafy, and there’s the canal—and some of the city is still within their two kilometers. It’ll be interesting to see it as it must be now, all emptied out. And walking will give her a chance to think.
She takes another sip of her coffee.
Yoga Woman is lunging now. She’s blond and lithe. Even from this distance—the woman is on the other side of the complex and one floor up—Ciara can see how the material clings to the woman’s skin and how that skin clings to her body. She supposes that’s why this woman has the confidence to do thison her balcony, to a potential audience of all her neighbors. She wonders if the woman wants people to watch, if it’s the yoga that makes this woman feel good in the mornings, or the attention.
As if she can hear Ciara’s thoughts, the woman straightens up, comes to the glass railing and rests her hands on top of it.
And turns her head to look directly Ciara’s way.
That’s what it feels like, anyway. It’s hard to tell from so far away and there’s the leaves of a courtyard tree equidistant between them, but Ciara feels her skin prickle with the sense of being watched.
She looks down into her coffee cup, exaggerating the movement, so the woman gets the message thatsheisn’t staring back at her.
“Oh, for God’s sake.”
Ciara jumps at the sound of Oliver’s voice right behind her, inadvertently sloshing coffee over the rim of her cup and splashing a few drops onto her thighs. She turns to see him standing in the open door, holding two cups, one of them out to her.
“Give me that,” he says. “And take this.”
“What is it?”
“Coffee,” he says. “Which I know isnotwhat you’re drinking, I saw the jar on the counter. That’s for, like, when we get toThe Roadstage of the apocalypse. No need to punish yourself with it until then.”
Ciara rolls her eyesgood-naturedly, dutifully puts the cup she has down on the table and reaches for its replacement.
“Why didn’t you use the machine?”
“I forgot how,” she lies. She takes a sip of her new, proper coffee. It does taste better. That machine must be quieter than she thought.
“Thank you,” she says. “And good morning.”
“Good morning to you, too.” He steps outside now, bare feet on the cement, and bends down to kiss the top of her head. Then he sits into the other chair, a careful action designed to keep all his coffee in his cup. “So, do you always get up this early on a school day?”
“Isit early?”
“Just gone seven.”
