The golden thread
A short story of blurred realities
Sweat crawls down my back like the ants that creep across the scratched floorboards of Mano’s Beach Bar. I keep beneath the fringe of the thatched roof, away from the static glare of the afternoon sun, and face the three-sided counter, patchworked with drinkers holding cool bottles to warm faces, watching football on the bar TV.
Beyond them is the low concrete terrace raised above the sand, with mismatched chairs and tables under faded blue umbrellas. I’m supposed to be weaving among them, taking cocktail orders, but Mano is skiving duties and I’m on my own, so I take the opportunity to lean one hip against the sink, blur my eyesight and rediscover the golden thread.
I tug on it and follow where it leads me, out of this soup of humidity and into the crisp scent of a once-familiar season.
I take in a lungful of air – notes of moss and a dewy green, spiked with morning. Drizzle starts. I run for the café’s steps, grasp the cool brass of the door handle...
‘Excuse me?’
I blink myself into reality. A woman leans on the counter, cocktail menu in hand. Her skin’s as pale as a northern winter. I smile and approach her, dusty feet slapping in flip-flops. A mosquito whines in my ear.
‘What can I get you?’
She’s wide-eyed, taking it all in. Smiles excitedly. ‘A mojito, I think. Yes – why not?’
I clap dead the insect. The woman’s one of the new arrivals, she still has rain on her breath. Guests come down the path from the hotels, avoiding the overgrown aloe vera that spikes unwary ankles. They search for a favourite bar, then stick to it like heat to a monsoon morning. I crave the air they bring in their suitcases, packed into the creases of their summer clothes – the metallic cool of a European night.
I grin. ‘A mojito, sure.’ I swipe my hair into a knot and pull mint from the fridge, closing my eyes to better savour the welcome blast of cool.
The woman sighs. ‘This is like, I don’t know, a dream of paradise, or something.’
I muddle the mint with lime and sugar, scoop ice into a glass. She’s gazing beyond the white sand of the shore, out to the endless sea, and the thick midday sky stretched tight like a drumskin to meet it at the horizon. I try to remember when I felt like her. ‘Mm.’
‘You’ve been living here long?’
She listens while I recount my story – my dream, the escape, my life at the beach and the bar, but I sense she’s only listening
to the parts she wants to hear. And as I tip rum into the glass, she sighs again, handing me a note. ‘I’m so envious. Here, have one yourself.’
‘I’m not supposed to...’ I begin, but I can see Mano in his red Speedos, flirting with the girls by the shore. He’ll be gone for another hour, at least. ‘All right. Thank you.’
I pour coffee liqueur into a cocktail glass. The woman looks on, puzzled, as I add a straw. ‘We don’t serve coffee,’ I explain.
‘This is the closest I can get.’
‘Goodness, who’d want coffee in this climate?’ She rests her chin on her fist and looks at me. ‘Can we swap lives? Please?’
I laugh. ‘Yeah, sure.’ Perhaps she means it. Then again, perhaps I mean it too.
I take a sip, lean against the counter, half-close my eyes. I fumble for the thread once more, the path that will lead me away from the bar and the ants and the formless sky. I walk into the café: high-ceilinged, large-windowed, infused with light as cool as a blast of refrigerated air. The floorboards are wide, my table a slab. There’s a tiny concrete pot containing a spurt of aloe vera. My seating is padded, upholstered in orange twill, dry to the touch.
I sip my double-shot Americano and notice the university professor turn the pages of a newspaper. I breathe in the quiet hum of chatter – polite, sober conversation, turn-taking, discussions of avant-garde art and literary novels.
‘Reality never quite lives up to our dreams, does it?’ the woman is saying and I open my eyes, back in the sweaty heat, the buzz of the flies, the sand between my toes.
Has she sensed my golden thread? I squint at the palm trees fringing the beach and speak slowly. ‘Perhaps it’s sometimes better not to achieve our ideal.’
‘And to be grateful for the things we have that exist in other people’s dreams.’
‘Spring,’ I say. ‘And a high-ceilinged café and rain spattering a window pane.’
‘This beach,’ she murmurs. ‘This sky, the scent of flowers –the space to breathe.’
I hold up my glass. ‘To the golden thread,’ I say.
She raises her glass and I gaze at the faded blue umbrellas, the soft thatch of the bar roof, the stretch of white sand and the sea, undulating to the horizon, where all my dreams are stored.
Words: Stephanie Lam
Stephanie is the author of The Mysterious Affair at Castaway House, published by Penguin Books. Follow her @StephanieLam1.
