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An elderly woman came to the door between the restaurant and the kitchen and said “Aye?”
“Are you still serving di
“Aye.” She looked at him disapprovingly, from his muddy boots to his tousled hair. “Are you a guest?”
“Yes. I’m in room eleven.”
“Well…you’ll probably want to change before di
“So you are serving.”
“Aye.”
He went up to his room, dropped his rucksack on the bed, and took off his boots. He put on his sneakers, ran a comb through his hair, and went back downstairs.
The dining room was no longer empty. Two people were sitting at a table in the corner, two people who seemed different in every way that people could be different: a small woman who looked to be in her late fifties, hunched and birdlike at the table, and a young man, big and awkward and perfectly bald. Shadow decided that they were mother and son.
He sat down at a table in the center of the room.
The elderly waitress came in with a tray. She gave both of the other diners a bowl of soup. The man began to blow on his soup, to cool it; his mother tapped him, hard, on the back of his hand, with her spoon. “Stop that,” she said. She began to spoon the soup into her mouth, slurping it noisily.
The bald man looked around the room, sadly. He caught Shadow’s eye, and Shadow nodded at him. The man sighed, and returned to his steaming soup.
Shadow sca
A flash of gray; Dr. Gaskell peered in at the door of the restaurant. He walked into the room, came over to Shadow’s table.
“Do you mind if I join you?”
“Not at all. Please. Sit down.”
He sat down, opposite Shadow. “Have a good day?”
“Very good. I walked.”
“Best way to work up an appetite. So. First thing tomorrow they’re sending a car out here to pick you up. Bring your things. They’ll take you out to the house. Show you the ropes.”
“And the money?” asked Shadow.
“They’ll sort that out. Half at the begi
The waitress stood at the edge of the room, watching them, making no move to approach. “Yeah. What do I have to do to get some food around here?”
“What do you want? I recommend the lamb chops. The lamb’s local.”
“Sounds good.”
Gaskell said loudly, “Excuse me, Maura. Sorry to trouble you, but could we both have the lamb chops?”
She pursed her lips, and went back to the kitchen.
“Thanks,” said Shadow.
“Don’t mention it. Anything else I can help you with?”
“Yeah. These folk coming in for the party. Why don’t they hire their own security? Why hire me?”
“They’ll be doing that too, I have no doubt,” said Gaskell. “Bringing in their own people. But it’s good to have local talent.”
“Even if the local talent is a foreign tourist?”
“Just so.”
Maura brought two bowls of soup, put them down in front of Shadow and the doctor. “They come with the meal,” she said. The soup was too hot, and it tasted faintly of reconstituted tomatoes and vinegar. Shadow was hungry enough that he’d finished most of the bowl off before he realized that he did not like it.
“You said I was a monster,” said Shadow to the steel gray man.
“I did?”
“You did.”
“Well, there’s a lot of monsters in this part of the world.” He tipped his head toward the couple in the corner. The little woman had picked up her napkin, dipped it into her water glass, and was dabbing vigorously with it at the spots of crimson soup on her son’s mouth and chin. He looked embarrassed. “It’s remote. We don’t get into the news unless a hiker or a climber gets lost, or starves to death. Most people forget we’re here.”
The lamb chops arrived, on a plate with overboiled potatoes, underboiled carrots, and something brown and wet that Shadow thought might have started life as spinach. He started to cut at the chops with his knife. The doctor picked his up in his fingers, and began to chew.
“You’ve been inside,” said the doctor.
“Inside?”
“Prison. You’ve been in prison.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.”
“So you know how to fight. You could hurt someone, if you had to.”
Shadow said, “If you need someone to hurt people, I’m probably not the guy you’re looking for.”
The little man gri
“They don’t look like monsters to me,” said Shadow.
“I’m teasing you, I’m afraid. Local sense of humor. They should warn you about mine when you enter the village. Warning, loony old doctor at work. Talking about monsters. Forgive an old man. You mustn’t listen to a word I say.” A flash of tobacco-stained teeth. He wiped his hands and mouth on his napkin. “Maura, we’ll be needing the bill over here. The young man’s di
“Yes, Doctor Gaskell.”
“Remember,” said the doctor to Shadow. “Eight-fifteen tomorrow morning, be in the lobby. No later. They’re busy people. If you aren’t there, they’ll just move on, and you’ll have missed out on fifteen hundred pounds, for a weekend’s work. A bonus, if they’re happy.”
Shadow decided to have his after-di
Gordon from reception was working behind the bar. “Je
“What? No, she was just helping out. She’ll do it if we’re busy, sometimes.”
“Mind if I put another log on the fire?”
“Help yourself.”
If this is how the Scots treat their summers, thought Shadow, remembering something Oscar Wilde had once said, they don’t deserve to have any.
The bald young man came in. He nodded a nervous greeting to Shadow. Shadow nodded back. The man had no hair that Shadow could see: no eyebrows, no eyelashes. It made him look babyish, and unformed. Shadow wondered if it was a disease, or if it was perhaps a side effect of chemotherapy. He smelled of damp.
“I heard what he said,” stammered the bald man. “He said I was a monster. He said my ma was a monster too. I’ve got good ears on me. I don’t miss much.”
He did have good ears on him. They were a translucent pink, and they stuck out from the side of his head like the fins of some huge fish.
“You’ve got great ears,” said Shadow.
“You taking the mickey?” The bald man’s tone was aggrieved. He looked like he was ready to fight. He was only a little shorter than Shadow, and Shadow was a big man.
“If that means what I think it does, not at all.”
The bald man nodded. “That’s good,” he said. He swallowed, and hesitated. Shadow wondered if he should say something conciliatory, but the bald man continued, “It’s not my fault. Making all that noise. I mean, people come up here to get away from the noise. And the people. Too many damned people up here anyway. Why don’t you just go back to where you came from and stop making all that bluidy noise?”
The man’s mother appeared in the doorway. She smiled nervously at Shadow, then walked hurriedly over to her son. She pulled at his sleeve. “Now then,” she said. “Don’t you get yourself all worked up over nothing. Everything’s all right.” She looked up at Shadow, birdlike, placatory. “I’m sorry. I’m sure he didn’t mean it.” She had a length of toilet paper sticking to the bottom of her shoe, and she hadn’t noticed yet.
“Everything’s all right,” said Shadow. “It’s good to meet people.”
She nodded. “That’s all right then,” she said. Her son looked relieved. He’s scared of her, thought Shadow.
“Come on pet,” said the woman to her son. She pulled at his sleeve, and he followed her to the door.