#whhaaaa

Beatrice awoke to her alarm blasting inches from her head. Groaning, she checked the time. The alarm was her fourth backup. Mary had set it up for her and so had free reign over their labels. The current alarm, with its sweet dulcet melody of blaring klaxons, was aptly labelled: 'Now you’re really in the shitter.’’ 

In so many words, Beatrice was late for work. 

Whatever happened in the twenty minutes it took Beatrice to get up out of bed and to the library was between Beatrice and God. Needless to say, she spent the first ten minutes of her work day doubled up against her desk, mopping her brow and wheezing.

All through her shift Beatrice barely thought about her dream or the night before. Her mind was occupied solely with the blinding mundanity of searching up book requests and logging new arrivals and carting returns up and down the library and directing people to the nearest toilet. 

“Jesus Christ, Bea –”

Beatrice’s spine, with no urging from her conscious thoughts, snapped up all on its own. 

“– you look like shit.”

A dark hand laid itself lazily flat against the reception desk from behind her. Beatrice exhaled hard through her mouth and let her body go slack against her chair. For one moment, one single, awful, catastrophic moment, she really thought… she thought…

But it was just Lucia. She was leaning up against the desk with a mug of tea in her hand and biscuits tucked under her arm and was smiling down at Beatrice with her eyebrows raised.

“I’m guessing you and Lily had a pretty wild night.” Lucia dragged out the word ‘pretty’ while at the same time dragging her eyebrows up and almost off of her face. “You should’ve seen yourself though. For a second I thought you were about to blast up out of your little rolly chair and through the ceiling, yelling like goofy all the way.” Lucia placed the tea next to Beatrice’s mouse and began tearing open the packet of biscuits.

Beatrice looked up at her, scowling, then turned back to her computer and said, “You know I don’t know who goofy is. I thought that was just an adjective.”

Lucia didn’t reply. Beatrice heard her shift and felt the pressure of her body against the desk as she leaned further down upon it. Beatrice added another entry to her spreadsheet and let Lucia indulge in sighing wistfully at her for a few more seconds. Only when she felt Lucia gearing up for a really heavy sigh did she turn and say, “What?”

Lucia had her hands folded in her lap and had stretched her legs out so they tapped against one of the wheels of Beatrice’s chair. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” she said. “But you do look like shit.”

“Thanks. I slept through my alarm,” Beatrice croaked. 

Lucia laughed at that, saying, “Fucking hell, you sound like shit too.” She nudged the mug of tea closer to Beatrice with her knuckles and put the open stack of biscuits close to her keyboard. “Hard night of slamming shots and… knitting socks, or whatever it is you two do in your free time?”

“No,” Beatrice said sharply. She wasn’t in the mood for banter, but the tea, along with Lucia’s wounded expression, softened her significantly. She sighed and rubbed her eyes from under her glasses. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I do feel like shit. I’m just tired.”

Lucia nodded. She looked down at the desk and pulled out a biscuit with a fore and ring finger. She crossed her arm over her chest, resting her elbow against it, and tapped the biscuit on her lips. She squinted at Beatrice critically. “Is it because of the girl and the postcard stuff?”

For a moment Beatrice had genuinely no idea what she was referring to. Then, as she was always bound to, she remembered. She remembered weeping pathetically in an almost empty theatre and getting rained on and falling asleep and – Ava. She remembered Ava invading her dream, because it couldn't have been anyone else in those robes.

Beatrice dropped her head into her arms, almost knocking over her tea and flattening the biscuits, and she moaned miserably. “Yes.” 

“Pardon?” Lucia asked, amused. “I can’t make out a word you’re saying with your head buried in your armpit.”

Beatrice raised her head to issue her reply. She was aiming for something along the lines of, ‘Yes it bloody well was about the girl and the postcard’, but it came out as, “Yes it – oh my bloody – fuck.”

Before Lucia had time to react, to even so much as drop her biscuit in surprise, Beatrice was already on the ground and rolling herself underneath the desk to crouch by Lucia’s feet. 

“Bea —”

“ —Shushushhhhhh,” Beatrice hissed, pressing her finger to her lips. “Pretend to be me,” she whispered. 

"What?" Lucia choked and spluttered biscuit crumbs onto the floor. She looked around the library, jerking her head left and right, looking for whatever had startled Beatrice into stopping, dropping and rolling so dramatically. A few people were sitting at tables with their heads down, an elderly man just making his way through the front door, and a young woman wandering towards the front desk looking lost – nothing out of the ordinary.

“Pretend to do my job. Don’t – don’t look at me! Just do it.”

Lucia ignored Beatrice’s incoherent demands (as she should) and crouched down beside her. She reached out to press the back of her hand against Beatrice’s forehead and asked, warily, “Are you feeling alright, Beatrice? You look pale and you’re, like, suddenly really sweaty. ”

Beatrice batted her hand away. “Yes, just get up for Pete's sake."

“Hello?” A voice from the other side of the desk called out. 

The front desk was, blissfully, one of those colossal monsters whose tops reach up to chest height, with a little nook for computers behind it and a wide, wide berth underneath for foot space and cables – and now, it seemed, for Beatrice. 

Beatrice paled. A spasm of fear and shock rocketed across her face. “I am begging you,” she said. “Just do it.”

The mortal terror sweating out of every one of Beatrice's pores was what probably got Lucia off of her in the end. She gave Beatrice one last concerned look then shuffled awkwardly backwards out from under the desk. Brushing her shirt free of crumbs, she stood up. "Ah," she said, smiling widely, "there it is." From Beatrice's position on the floor, she could see Lucia pretending to dust off her half-eaten biscuit. "I'm so clumsy," she said, shrugging and putting on her best companionable air.

"That's okay," the voice said with an uncertain laugh to their voice. "Three-second rule, or whatever."

“Yeah, right,” Lucia agreed, also laughing a little unsteadily. Beatrice nudged her foot. Lucia didn’t look down at her, but got the message and made a show of looking busy; tapping randomly at the computer in front of her, humming and scratching her chin, and probably mangling Beatrice’s spreadsheet. Beatrice gritted her teeth and pinched Lucia's leg. At the pinch, Lucia jumped and blurted out, far too formally, “May I help you with anything?”

“Yeah, actually. I’m wondering if a particular member of staff is in today?” said the voice.

Beatrice's heart dropped into her bowels. She was going to be sick. She was going to vomit all over Lucia’s shoes and pass out under her desk. She reached out and held onto Lucia’s leg like a lifeline.

“Oh, yes? And who might that be?” Lucia asked with an affected accent, covertly trying to shake Beatrice off.

Beatrice put a hand over her eyes, partly to steady herself, partly to stop herself from throttling Lucia. She had never heard her speaking so ridiculously in her life. Was she taking what Beatrice said literally and actually pretending to be her? God, Beatrice thought, is that what she thinks I sound like?

The voice hesitated, then said, "I'm looking for Beatrice. She mentioned she worked here. I wanted to see her. She does work here, right?"

Beatrice carefully took her hand from her eyes and waited. Lucia waited too, perhaps for Beatrice to pinch her again, or to be struck by inspiration. In any case, she waited far too long to be natural. At last, Beatrice tugged savagely at Lucia’s trouser leg, almost bringing her down to her knees.

“Hold on… uh – just a second,” Lucia said to whoever was standing in front of the desk. 

“Say yes,” Beatrice hissed when Lucia bent down to the floor.

Lucia gave her a dirty look and pulled her leg free, then straightened again. Her wide smile was back in place. She beamed and raised her eyebrows. “Yes,” she said, as though she were a charismatic TV presenter telling the person in front of her they had just won the lottery. She might as well blow on a horn and do jazz hands while she's at it, Beatrice thought, miserably.

“Oh.” The person at the desk’s voice rose. They sounded relieved. “Is she here?”

Beatrice reached for Lucia’s leg again, but Lucia beat her to the punch. She jabbed Beatrice with her foot, almost crushing her fingers under her boot heel. Not losing her smile for even a moment, Lucia said, “I’m afraid not. She’s out for the day.” Out of spite, Beatrice guessed, she added, “Maybe try again tomorrow?”

Beatrice almost leapt out from under the table and bit Lucia’s ankle like a feral dog. Lucia, as though anticipating just that reaction, stepped nimbly out of Beatrice’s reach.

“Alright,” the voice said with a sigh. “But hey,” – there came two quick thumps on the desktop as a hand slapped down upon it – “thanks anyway.”

Lucia gave a high, choked “Mhmm” in response. 

When the person left and their footsteps receded, Lucia turned on Beatrice and, in tones as dark and forbidding as the library permitted, said, “And what in the hell was that?”

Beatrice was just crawling out from under the desk, peering up over the top of it as though facing a firing squad. “That was the –” she began, but Lucia cut her off.

“I guessed who that was,” Lucia said peevishly, “but why drag me into it? Why launch yourself under the desk and make me improvise doing your job?”

Beatrice flopped down onto her chair and gave Lucia a rueful, pathetically hang-dog look. Lucia folded her arms and glanced away. “Whatever,” she said. “The things I do for you, and this is the thanks I get?”

Beatrice rested her chin in her hands and stared out at the entrance to the library. She took a few steading breaths through her nose, saying nothing.

“I should lock you in the archives for a day, see how you like it.” Lucia was grumbling on, pacing the space behind the desk and gnawing angrily on her biscuit. Only when she caught Beatrice’s expression did she stop mid-tirade. Reassuming her position beside the biscuits and the tea, she leaned down and said, “She was pretty.”

“Yeah?” Beatrice asked dreamily. 

Lucia barked a laugh and slapped Beatrice on the back, knocking her out of her reverie. “Uh, yeah,” she said. “I think I’m starting to get it now.”

“Get what?” Beatrice asked, but Lucia was already backing away. “Get what? Lucia, get what?”

Lucia shrugged and ambled away from the desk, almost swaggering. “Lucia, your radar is impeccable,” she said to herself, then pushed open a set of doors to her left and disappeared. 

“Radar?” Beatrice mumbled under her breath. “What radar?”

Beatrice spent the rest of her work day behind her desk trying desperately to untangle the events of the past few hours. She ran through her dream first, but she had learnt not to place too much importance in them and so quickly disregarded it. Then she thought about her conversation with Lucia, which had crossed a boundary neither of them could uncross for various reasons that involved pinching and hissing and kicking – Not good. 

I ALMOST DREW DARWIN WITH HANDS