Cloakroom

He’s been waiting for twenty minutes with the others lining the stairs before he reaches the top, then he hands her his jacket and a fifty pence coin. He waits again, with hands in pockets, as she puts his jacket on a hanger, and he wonders if she remembers her. Looking back down the long queue of long haired indie kids, he realises how many people she must see every Saturday evening, and that like bumping into his old primary school teacher in Tesco’s, he has probably faded from somebody’s memory.

The routine occurs the same every week. She returns with a small ticket with a number on, as if he was playing a raffle or waiting at a supermarket deli. She’s made of circles and ovals, a round face, dark hair flicking off it and onto her neck in strands. She’s not what anyone would call skinny, and she wears clothes that are too big and hide her. His friends, who enjoy nicknames as much as they lack imagination, have named her ‘cloakroom goth girl’, although it is only he who has noticed that the book left by her cash box and ledger for quieter moments is by Margaret Atwood, someone who’s books –to him- carry the weighty tag of history and classicism, that require already learnt knowledge and that he has always approached in bookshops with a too-high level of irrational fear and trepidation. Books that as such has never read. Now, as she says, as she always says, “Initials please?” and dashes off the two letters onto his ticket, he wishes he was not so ignorant about Margaret Atwood. He wishes for some element, some square metre of common ground to grasp and haul himself up onto like a man drowning. She must not remember him, he thinks, else she would remember his initials. But then another thought, like a rising smell of something unattended burning on a stove, maybe she does remember, but feels that presenting him with the fact that she knows his name, or at least his initials, before they have even met would seem awkward at least, stalker-like at worst. Does she think him boring for being here every week? Does she look down on him as a creature of routine, a dog used to it’s regular walks and trails and scents, and when presented with a new park or new route, will pull and tug at the lead and lie down in heap refusing to go any further. Perhaps she looks down on him for even coming to this particular club at all, after all if the music and the atmosphere and the venue were to her own taste, surely she would be working behind the bar, or even visiting as a patron rather than here, at the top of the stairs shut away in a box room surrounded by peoples coats and bags shed like snakeskin in a glass tank in a zoo somewhere.

He wants to say something. Say anything. But what is there to say to this woman who has, stubbornly and consistently, like an embarrassing past event or a long forgotten secret, provoked these tiny attacks of curiosity and self examination once a week for this entire term. Every week he forgets of her presence until walking up the iron stairs; he wonders if she will be up there waiting or whether she will have been replaced, like billboards viewed on a daily commute, that seen every morning of every day, become like the architecture and landscape of the cities they surround; that become landmarks in their own right and induce the pang of a questioning thought, a wonder of what’s changed upon their inevitable removal.
But what is there to say other than, as originally prompted, his initials? He does so and smiles, tries to meet her with an expression that somehow expresses familiarity. He wants to be conspiratorial but he is mute and gestures cannot transfer ‘I have seen you here many times and you have seen me. I remember you. I recognise you. I know you. I want to know you’.

He descends the staircase, bass gently vibrating his skeleton like an orthopaedic chair, knowing routine will once again get the better of him, knowing that as sure as she is always manning the cloakroom when he gets into the club, she is always safely gone by closing time.

When he returns back up the staircase, shuffling up one step at a time in a queue, he is buffeted by alcohol and surrounded by friends. He has forgotten the cloakroom girl, and is thinking of the evening, the drink and the dancing and the chances of getting a cab home. His friends are talking of going down to the beach to revise for upcoming exams and finals. He almost does not notice her returning coats and bags to unstable hands and legs, sighing and weary at the behaviour of others in the superior hindsight of sobriety.

“Hello” he says to her when he reaches the booth.
“Hi” she says, and he wonders whether it is reaction or recognition.
He hands her his ticket and yawns, trying to conceal shock and delight at a second chance. She goes into the back as he vigorously rubbing his head and his hair and his face, trying to remove the dull fuzz, the nervous tinnitus of alcohol in his muscles and his brain. She can see his warm cheeks and the sweat on his forehead. She can sense everything. He is disarmed and looks like an idiot. Such a fool. A drunken fool in a crowd of drunken fools. He is a caveman, Neanderthal and primal, he knows nothing of the world and of Margaret Atwood.

She returns and hands him his jacket. He remembers a story of a man who fell over putting on a coat whilst trying to talk to a woman. He is determined not to fall, and slips the jacket on without trying to appear that this does indeed require great concentration. There’s a half second, and the man behind him in the queue has not noticed it is his turn. He bites his lip reflexively. She has not ushered him on, said ‘next please’ or ‘thank you’ or anything else that would indicate she wants him to leave. She smiles. He smiles. She wants him to stay. She knows. She knows about Margaret Atwood and about history and behaviour of cavemen and she knows this is not the real him. She knows him from before, from every week, and she admires he is not going to attempt to chat her up in some desperate attempt to couple with the last available woman on the premises. She finds his over dramatic putting on of his coat charming. She remembers everything and remembers him.

His mouth is dry and tastes of enamel, it tastes of the taste first thing in the morning before you brush your teeth. He needs to say something now. She nods as if encouraging it. He needs to tell her everything he knows and has thought of her. She will take it and understand and ask him to wait for her, wait at the end of the queue, wait until the last stragglers have gone and the staff are closing up. There amongst the scraping of chairs being stacked and floors being mopped and glasses being collected, she will take him amongst the empty racks and hangers, sit down on the floor and talk until the sun comes up. He tries to speak

“Thanks” he says, the word stillborn in his throat, and then he takes his coat and notices the man behind is already trying to push past him.
“Have a good night” she says.

He walks down the stairs and tries to work out how many coats she will have given out by now. By now. By each step.

The bouncers open the double doors into the fresh air, and instead of meeting his friends at the taxi rank, he pulls his own coat up over his head as if it was raining. Then he runs home, like some gangling monster being pursued by something far more terrible.