TOURIST ATTRACTIONS Page 3

  "It is when the local boys offer to show you around," Eileen giggled.

  "Ah. I see. And where are these local boys?"

  "They were going into a pub on the Royal Mile, but we said not tonight. We should sleep. Where's Laurence?"

  "Debating with some weird Christian chick in our hostel."

  "Oh. Was it Cathy?" Sharon asked.

  "Yeah. You met?"

  "Uh-huh. In the kitchen. We told her about Eileen's ghosts, and she practically threw garlic at us. 'Get thee back, spawn of Satan,' all that."

  "'Spawn of Satan?' She really said that?"

  "No, but she warned me I might be inviting demons into my life," Eileen answered, scornfully. She looked toward the hostel. "She's pretty fanatic...do you think Laurence needs rescuing?"

  "I don't know; I left. But I seriously doubt it. He was letting her ramble about fornication, and he had that smirk--you know the one. He was obviously about to squash her. I didn't feel like watching."

  Eileen cackled, and led us back toward the hostel. "I love that boy sometimes."

  "Ugh," I said. "He makes it so hard to make a decent impression on anyone."

  "But Eva," Sharon said patiently, "Cathy's weird. You just said so yourself."

  "Yes, but is it so hard to be polite?"

  "Says the poster child for PMS," Eileen teased, and then danced away laughing when I tried to swat her.

  "Oh, and you know what she called Catholics?" I said, unable to drop the subject. "Papists. Can you believe that? Who says that? Outside a George Eliot novel, I mean. And she seems to think they're about equal with satanic cults."

  "So you don't like her, but you don't like Laurence picking on her," said Sharon. "Which side are you on?"

  "Oh...Laurence's, I guess. But he's such a brat."

  We went back into the hostel, and found Laurence alone in our room, reading a book. "You missed all the fun," he told me. He was gloating.

  "Did I?" I said coldly.

  "I got called 'sacrilegious' at least five times, mostly for suggesting that the Bible is allegory and not fact, and that anyway you can't take it out of historical context."

  Eileen flopped on his bed beside him. "Exactly. Why can't everyone see it in a scholarly way, like you do?"

  He smiled complacently. "They just haven't learned to worship me yet. It will all go much more smoothly when they do."

  Eileen giggled, and rolled over so that her head fell onto his leg.

  Laurence looked at her, then at us. "Has she been drinking?"

  "No," said Sharon.

  "So did you drive Cathy out?" I asked.

  "No. She's in the basement with her Christian-rock stereo. Said she had to put the dark load in the dryer. I told her she better not have any mixed-fiber clothing in there, or we and the Old-Testament God would need to have a serious chat." When Eileen giggled again, he looked down at her and added, "I don't think she appreciated the humor."

  "You're swell, Laurence," said Eileen.

  "Yes," he said. "I taught you that."

  Sharon and I exchanged a quick glance, then made mutual noises about exploring the rest of the hostel, and got out of the room.

  "Is it me, or is Eileen flirting with Laurence?" Sharon asked in the stairwell, before I had a chance to say it.

  "Yeah, and even weirder...is it me, or is he flirting back?"

  She looked thoughtfully at the door at the top of the stairs. "I don't know. I've never seen Laurence flirt before."

  Chapter Four

  The Magic Pub

  Whatever might have been their mutual feelings for one another, Laurence and Eileen didn't mind separating the next day when the three of us (Eileen, Sharon, and I) went out job-hunting. Laurence stayed behind; he could well afford a couple weeks of unpaid vacation, and anyway, he said he wanted to wander over toward the university and admire the architecture without girlies giggling at kilts at his elbow.

  Looking pitifully like tourists, on a corner with a street map, Sharon and Eileen and I figured out how to get to the student employment office, and walked there. This was the organization that had helped us arrange our work permits, and they had notebooks full of job opportunities that we could look at.

  After perusing these for a while, we each had a long list of possibilities jotted down, and decided to split up to pursue them. So, with a street map apiece, we agreed to meet at the hostel by dinnertime, and parted on the Royal Mile.

  Three and a half hours later, I was ready to cry. I had tried six places, and none of them wanted to hire me.

  The retail shops on Princes Street had said, "We're looking for someone with retail experience."

  The pubs had said, "We're looking for someone with bartending experience. And a nice little thing like you, lassie, wouldnae like tae deal wi' the louts as comes in here."

  The grocery store, about which I was lukewarm anyway, said, "I don't think we have positions for the checkers right now. You might ask next week."

  I had paused at restaurants, but they all seemed either too nice, which would require waitress experience, and they might prefer a Scottish accent for the tourists, or too American (read: fast food). I did not come to Scotland to serve pizza, I insisted to myself.

  Nonetheless, I ate some for lunch, in a mall that was also a bit too American for my idealistic tastes. Having eaten, I felt better, and walked off to the next place on my list: a hotel on a quiet street facing some public gardens.

  A lot of streets in Edinburgh had buildings on one side and gardens on the other; it was apparently part of the planners' design. I approved of that. It also amused me that even the smallest of these gardens, such as a tenth-acre of grass fenced in with iron spikes, had a name.

  A tidy bronze plate on this one said Dalrykirk Gardens. Dalrykirk Gardens was triangular; maybe ten paces to a side, with a sidewalk bisecting it, and had exactly one tree and one bench. I smiled, and went up the steps to enter the Dalrykirk Hotel.

  Fifteen minutes later, I came out beaming. I had a job.

  Sure, it was washing and stacking dishes in the kitchen, and setting tables and pouring coffee in the dining room, but it was a job. A real job in a real Scottish hotel.

  I had even been able to understand the proprietor. He was about 45, dark and heavyset, and seemed bored, but he was polite and his words were thoroughly recognizable. I had thanked him a little too profusely for letting me have a job. He ended up breaking into a smile and telling me, "Well, it's nae brain surgery."

  None of my companions were back at the hostel to share my good news, so I climbed to the top floor to enjoy the view. Sharon and I had gone up there the previous evening, and had found a TV room smelling heavily of cigarette smoke, a few supply closets, a study room with books all over the floor, and a smaller room with a couch and a cold fireplace. I had a letter to write to Tony, so I settled into the room with the fireplace.

  I had been there about half an hour when Laurence opened the door and came in. He nodded to me, and stood in the middle of the room, looking around at it with his hands on his hips.

  "Hi," I said. "What are you doing?"

  "Surveying."

  "So I see. What for?"

  "A better place to stay than that god-awful Room 17."

  I rolled my eyes and arranged the pages of my letter. "You're rich and wonderful, Laurence. Find a different hostel, not a different room. Rent a suite at the--what's-it. The famous one down the road."

  "The Balmoral?"

  "Right."

  He turned and went back toward the door. "I'll ask around, but in the meantime, free is a very good price."

  "Free?" I called after him. "You call this free? It's seven pounds a night, you know."

  I heard only his footsteps pattering down the stairs. I muttered, "Rich snob," and returned to the letter. Compared to my parents, or Eileen's, Laurence and his father were indeed rather rich. (His mother had died of an illness when he was fourteen.) I resented him for this, and for his superior intelligence; I'll admit it
up front.

  I was soon hungry, and went downstairs to the kitchen. Before long, Sharon breezed in and told me happily that she, too, had found work at a hotel. She was to be a chambermaid. Bed making and curtain straightening were much more her element than mine; Sharon's recent Associate's degree was in art and she specialized in making clothes.

  Eileen got back shortly after that. She'd gotten a job at a classy pub. I guess with a sultry voice like hers, they were willing to overlook an American accent. We all got to work daylight hours, leaving our evenings free for ghost watching or pub hopping.

  In fact, as we cooked pasta in the kitchen, we decided we would go out that very night to the pub on the Royal Mile where Sharon and Eileen had seen the Scottish lads. Evidently, this idea was more alluring than seeking the ghosts of the murdered thousands who had made this city the witch-burning capital of the world.

  So, when we were done eating, we rushed upstairs, put on our least-wrinkled clothes, and sallied forth to the magic pub. (We left Laurence a note at the front desk, but that was as much notice as he was getting. This was, after all, an expedition to hunt boys.)

  Once there, we were a little shy. We didn't have much experience in regular bars in the States, and had no clue how to behave at a British pub.

  We sat at the bar, though we didn't know if that meant something different from sitting at a table. The music from the jukebox was very loud, and we occasionally yelled a comment to each other while admiring the rows of Scottish whiskey over the mirrors. There were a few good-looking fellows in the place, but we didn't approach them; we just murmured and giggled to each other like idiots.

  Then, horror of horrors, a man approached me. Why he picked me when Eileen and Sharon were both prettier, I don't know. He probably figured I would be the most grateful for his attentions. I was irritated at the thought of this, mostly because he was not good-looking himself.

  As he slouched on the bar beside me, I also realized with disgust that he was sloppy drunk.

  "How ya doin'?" he asked, in a broad Australian accent. Now that I was in Scotland, I was meeting more Australians than ever.

  "Swell," I said.

  "I think you'd want to come home with me, ya know," he said.

  I looked across the room, pretending to be studying something on the far wall.

  There was a tug on my braid. "I like your hair," he said. "Blonde and curly, like."

  And he had dared to touch it. I narrowed my eyes. Eileen was giving him a discouraging glare.

  Just then, a crisp male Scottish voice said from behind me, "Don't mind him, dear. He's guttered."

  I turned. One of the bartenders, a lad about my age with a wildly patterned shirt, was leaning against the rail and smiling at me.

  His hair was shoulder-length and brown, with the top half pulled into a ponytail at the back. When we had ordered our drinks, I had muttered to Sharon that it was the stupidest way a guy could possibly wear his hair. We also agreed that nobody should wear a shirt like that, which looked like a traffic signal thrown into a blender.

  But now I was noticing his lovely blue eyes, and his clean teeth, and was inclined to be more generous.

  "Just thwack him one with a chair if he keeps at it," he added, and pushed off to fetch a pint for someone.

  I should note that he actually didn't pronounce the final T of any of those words, nor had he pronounced the double T in guttered. It had only been implied. It was the way he and his countrymen spoke when being casual: a total disregard for T's, made up for by an extra roll of R's.

  "Thinks he's a big man or somethin'," slobbered the Australian. "Ter, fine, just 'cause I don't fancy trouble..." He lurched off and presumably found a table to sleep under.

  I spun on my barstool to smile at the lad who had come to my defense. (So it was his job; what of it?) He scooped a few pound coins off the bar and brought them to the cash register near me. "Thank you," I said.

  "Aye, not a problem." He slid the cash drawer shut, and leaned on the brass rail again. "He's in here constantly, seems. I say he needs deported."

  There was a second's delay after each phrase while I translated the words under his accent, but I didn't mind the difficulty. It was the prettiest accent, and one of the prettiest voices, I'd ever heard. A quieter jukebox song made it easier to hear for the moment, too.

  "I just got into town," I told him. "Yesterday, actually. I didn't know I'd be meeting so many Australians."

  He nodded. "You can't walk round a corner without falling over one. Especially in pubs. I'm a rare beastie--an actual Scotsman working in an Embra pub."

  "What's your name?" I asked him.

  "Gil," he answered, though, at the time, I didn't catch it.

  "Kell?" I tried.

  "Gil; G-i-l. Short for Gilleon."

  "Ah. Unusual name."

  "Not here. It's an ancient ancestral sort of a name, like."

  Eileen, who had turned to watch us, asked him with sincere concern, "Are you colorblind?"

  I snorted and tried not to go into a fit of giggling.

  "Ooh, cheeky sod," he said cheerfully. He rested his chin on his hand. "And who are you two troublemakers, then?"

  "My name's Eileen," she said. "And I'm just kidding; I like your shirt, really." She was speaking dryly, so I knew she didn't like his shirt, really. This just made me giggle more.

  He looked at me. I sobered up and said, "I'm Eva. Short for Evangeline."

  "Fancy name for a wee Yank."

  "Gee, how did you know I was American?"

  "Oi, with an accent like tha'?"

  "I don't have an accent; you do," I said.

  "Aye, you're the center of the universe, aren't you, now?"

  We went on with this friendly banter for the next hour or so. Meanwhile, Sharon had stopped to talk to some university students on her way back from the restroom, and Eileen had asked directions to the site of the old Tolbooth Jail. They both started pulling on my arm to get me to leave at about 9:00 p.m.

  Mr. Gilleon Leslie had engrossed my attention thoroughly (we had established each other's last names in that hour), but I decided it would be unseemly to protest. I didn't want my sister and friends to notice any Scottish flirtations I might embark upon. So I put on my coat like a good girl, and lingered until Gil sauntered over to me.

  "On your way oot, then?" he asked.

  "Yeah. My friends want to see ghosts."

  This didn't strike him as unusual, apparently. "Ah, right. The Jekyll-and-Hyde tours and such."

  "Well...I don't know if we'll catch a tour. Eileen just sees ghosts."

  "Does she, now? Not a skill I'd like to have."

  "Me neither." We smiled at one another. Then I fished a pound coin out of my pocket and slid it across the bar to him. "Almost forgot. Good service deserves a good tip."

  He looked a bit mystified. "Listen, come here, I'll tell you something." He leaned across the bar. I leaned close enough to count his eyelashes. "Tips aren't expected at pubs," he said. "Restaurants, aye, but not bars. See, I'm honest; I could've said nothing and cheated a toureest." He smiled, and slid the coin back toward me.

  I plucked it off the bar and placed it flat in his palm, saying, "I see. Then as a reward for telling me, you get to keep this."

  A waver in his eyes showed that some streak of male pride in him wanted to refuse it, but he let my monumental charm win him over. "Thank ye," he said simply. We both pulled away from the bar, and he added, "Come again sometime."

  "I will." I waved, and left the pub with my impatient companions.

  Chapter Five

  Connection

  Call me dense, or call me drunk if you prefer, but I honestly didn't notice that Laurence was absent from our room until I got up the next morning. His bed was empty and untouched, and his suitcases were gone. But as I had a headache, and was preoccupied about it being my first day of work, I didn't think much about it.

  I spent the next six hours learning where all the dishes went in the Dalrykirk Ho
tel kitchen, and how to serve coffee and tea. It was still charmingly quaint to me, being in a real British building where real British people lived and worked, and I enjoyed looking up from the dishwashing and getting cool breezes from the open window, where I could see the picturesque fenced-in courtyard behind the hotel.

  And though it occurred to me to wonder why Laurence wasn't in Room 17 this morning, I wasn't worried. He was too predictable to do anything interesting like disappear.