Inside The Rising Sun it’s dark and damp-smelling and warm. Radiohead’s new album is playing loudly. It sounds like videogame music; funny little electronic melodies. There are about ten people in the pub: two guys who always claim they can sort you out with a firearm; three women who have tattoos and piercings and tarot cards and a load of kids at the primary school over the hill; a huddle of four grunge-kids drinking snakebite & blacks; and the homeless guy who sits in here all day, waiting for students to buy him guilt-drinks. Charlotte isn’t here, not that it matters.
‘You’re weird,’ says David.
Julie’s drinking Coke. She specifically asked for no ice and a straw. She is terrified of ice in drinks in pubs: she’s seen too many people scrape up ice with glasses rather than plastic scoops – a practice which is illegal because the glasses often break this way and the glass gets in the drinks. Inexperienced bar staff never know the rules.
By the way David’s been looking at her you’d think she was trying to be cute by having a straw. Now he’s saying she’s weird. He wouldn’t really know either way; they hardly worked together before Julie started doing days.
‘In what way?’ Julie feels in her pocket for the pack of Superkings she picked up in The Edge. They’re probably Leanne’s.
David studies her as if her weirdness is imprinted on her on a barcode that he could scan if he could find it. ‘Eh?’ he says.
‘In what way am I weird?’
‘I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to work out. Leanne reckons you dropped out of school. It was some big drama.’
‘She can’t talk. She dropped out of college in the first year.’
Julie’s heard rumours that David isn’t doing so well on his degree course. One time she overheard him telling the general manager of The Edge, Owen, that he needed a couple of days off to do an essay or he was going to get chucked out. Owen said no. When David came out of the office his eyes were red. Julie had started liking him a bit more after that. Previously he’d just been another annoying chef as far as she was concerned, making jokes about anal sex and blow jobs the whole time, asking each waitress if they reckoned they could take his cock and balls in their mouth at once. Mind you, all the chefs piss around like that, in the same way that all the waitresses talk about cystitis and diets and how many calories there are in a small pizza. It’s just part of the job. David always was the nicest chef, even if he did always seem like he was up to something.
‘You’re still weird,’ David says. He makes direct eye contact with Julie but immediately looks away as if it’s uncomfortable. He turns the beer mat on the table through ninety degrees three times. Two hundred and seventy degrees, Julie thinks.
‘How, though?’ she asks.
‘Well, all that lot at The Edge seem so retarded. You seem different but I can’t work out why that would be.’ He looks at her again. ‘You’re not a student. Only students and retards work at The Edge, or so I thought. And you aren’t either of those, and you don’t seem to want to leave The Edge and do anything else. Why is that?’
Julie smiles. ‘Maybe I am weird,’ she says.
David frowns. ‘Huh?’
‘Isn’t that reason enough?’
‘Not really. Come on. How long have you been at The Edge?’
‘Um, I suppose about three years or so. Something like that.’ Julie starts twisting a section of hair around her fingers, then realises that she read in a magazine that this is something you can do to let a bloke know you fancy him, so she stops, and plays with the straw in her drink instead.
‘And you’re not looking for another job or waiting to go to college or anything?’
‘Nope.’
‘For fuck’s sake, Julie. Why? Do you like it or something?’
She shrugs. ‘Yeah, kind of. I dunno. It’s simple, you know. I go there and it’s not like it’s a real effort or anything, because it’s pretty close to where I live, and when I get there I can do a good job without it being too demanding. I like the customers and the other people that work there, and it doesn’t, you know, take over my life or anything. When I get home I can go and chat on the Internet, or see my friends, or listen to music and it’s not like I’m having to prepare a report for a scary boss or worry about having to go abroad for a meeting or whatever. Life should be a lot simpler than people make it.’ She fiddles with her straw some more. ‘People sometimes forget that work is just something you do to get money. It’s not your life. If you spend your life working or getting qualifications to work, or just stressing about it generally, you totally waste it.’
‘Really? Is that what you think?’
‘Life isn’t a videogame, is it? It’s not about how many points you can get or how many possessions you can collect, or how many levels you can complete before you die. Life’s this real thing that everyone wastes and . . .’
‘You’re not wasting yours by working at The Edge?’
‘No, I’m not. It gives me time I use for other stuff.’
Julie can feel that her face is going red. She didn’t mean to say all this.
‘You don’t even like pizza, do you?’ David says.
‘Not really.’
They both laugh.
‘Leanne said you were a freak.’
Julie smiles. ‘I bet those were her exact words.’
‘Yeah.’ David frowns. ‘She said you were a freak and she told me about this guy . . . Your next-door neighbour or something. He never goes out.’
‘Luke? Yeah. So?’
‘I thought you were just shy, or boring, or quiet or whatever.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Yeah, but then I’m hearing about this weird neighbour, and you dropping out of school, and now all these mental reasons why you work at The Edge . . .’
‘Yeah?’
David stops talking and plays with a beer mat. ‘I dunno.’
Julie feels a bit like she’s being interviewed by the worst interviewer in the world, for a purpose neither of them is really sure about.
Then she sees the expression on David’s face.
She frowns. ‘This isn’t actually about me, is it?’