TOURIST ATTRACTIONS Read online

  No, I was thinking instead of a certain young bartender. An oven mitt in the kitchen had the same yellow, blue, and red tints that were splashed all over Gil's shirt. It made me smile.

  When I got back to the hostel, however, I was surprised to find Laurence sitting behind the front counter, leaning back in the rolling chair with one arm folded behind his head. The other hand held the phone against his ear, and he was saying, "Nope, absolutely not. No morals here. We house males and females in the same room. Right. Bye bye, then." He hung up, and greeted me, "Poor Puritans. They have no place here."

  "What are you doing?" I asked.

  "Working," he said. "Did you miss me?"

  "What do you mean, working?"

  "They gave me a job," he said patiently. "I translated another group of tourists for them yesterday, then helped them evict a German crack head who wouldn't pay his rent. They pretty much begged me to work for them after that."

  "I thought you didn't need any money," I said.

  He shrugged. "It pays practically nothing. The nice thing is that I get to stay here for free. Oh, and they're willing to look the other way if I take over the room with the fireplace on the top floor. Nobody really uses it."

  His easy success stung me. "Probably because it's cold and mildew-y," I said, determined to be nasty.

  "No more so than the other rooms. And I can build a fire. Well, actually-" He resumed a regular sitting position and rested his arms on the desk. "They said I wasn't supposed to use the fireplace. But that's just a suggestion, don't you think?" He had the nerve to wink.

  "You're a brat," I told him, and tromped up the stairs.

  I washed my face in the bathroom, which was draftier than the rest of the building, and sure to be freezing come November. The sinks only ran cold water, so my face did not get as clean as I might have liked. However, it would do, and I was still in good spirits.

  I mean, I was in Edinburgh! How cool was that? So I untangled my frizzy hair with a comb, tamed it into a bun, and trotted downstairs again.

  "Where are we off to now?" asked Laurence as I passed the front desk.

  I gave him an acrid smile. "Off to stand on a street corner and leer at boys in kilts. Just like you expect of me."

  "Good. I'll have the disinfectant ready at the door when you get back."

  Twerp. I shoved through the double glass doors, and the September sunshine revived the smile on my face. Forget Laurence. It was time for some exploring in my new city.

  I took a walk on the Royal Mile, admiring the old stone buildings that I had only seen in moonlight, and while slightly drunk, the night before. I lingered outside the iron gates of Holyrood Palace and felt a thrill to know that the royal family had been up and down those steps and all over those lawns. I peered shyly into gift shops and bakeries and restaurants.

  Higher up, almost to the castle, I found the paving stones arranged in a heart outside St. Giles Cathedral, where everyone was supposed to spit as they walked by, for luck. From the look of it, this custom was duly observed. Yuck.

  I arrived, panting for breath, at the uphill end of the Royal Mile, which was Edinburgh Castle's parking lot. (Castle Esplanade, the street maps elegantly said.) Eileen, last night, had hauled me to the middle of it and informed me that countless men and women had been hanged on the gallows or burned at the stake right where I was standing.

  For a while I leaned on the waist-high stone wall at the edge of the Esplanade, with the setting sun behind me, and gazed at the orange light on the thick towers of the castle. I looked at the little windows high up there, where prisoners had looked their last on the sky.

  Some, said Eileen, had even managed to escape from the castle through those windows, but nearly all had fallen to their death on the jagged rocks below. Others who had looked through those windows had been knights, lords, princes, and queens. Some had been sheltered there and went on to live great lives; others had been slaughtered by their political enemies.

  The true stuff of history books. That was hard for a girl from the American West to grasp, a girl who hadn't seen any historic landmarks older than Lewis and Clark's wagon ruts.

  If only I could make a real connection here, I thought. If only I could prove to a real Scot that I, too, was a descendant of great ones, and not just an American mixed-breed. If only...

  My head swiveled to peer down the Royal Mile. If only I knew of a pub nearby where a cute Scottish lad worked the bar.

  I set off down the high street. When I got there and stepped inside, I didn't see Gil anywhere. So I approached the man tending the bar and asked timidly, "Excuse me, is Gilleon Leslie working tonight?"

  "Gil? Aye, he's here--doing dishes in the back, he is. You want me to fetch him?"

  "No! No-no. Thank you. Will he, um, be here long?"

  "Ah think he's done at six. Shouldna be much longer."

  My watch said it was ten minutes to six o' clock. Not long at all. I thanked the man, and went back outside to wait on the sidewalk.

  After a little while, the pub door crashed open and Gil hopped out. He looked up the street, then down, and spotted me. "There you are," he said.

  I walked a few paces to meet him.

  "Dave said you were waiting for me," he added.

  "I was looking at the castle," I said. "Thought I'd drop by and see if you were around. You're the only person I know in all of Scotland."

  His hair was not in the half-ponytail today; it was loose and fell around his neck. The color was a rich brown, almost orange in the sunset. He definitely would have caught my attention on the street if I didn't know him, despite the shirt he was wearing, which was a different one from last night, but equally hideous. It featured a paisley motif containing every shade of purple known to man. I tried not to giggle.

  "Don't your friends keep you from getting lonely?" he asked.

  "Sure, when I'm not sick of them. I didn't come to Scotland to hang out with Americans."

  "Hmm, or Australians either," he agreed.

  "Exactly."

  "I'm famished," he said, as we began walking down the street. "When I have a day shift like this, I tend to go oot for my tea afterward. You can come if you like."

  "Sure. Thank you." As we crossed the street near a dark, spiky church, I added, "I wouldn't think tea would satisfy hunger."

  "Ah, no; tea--it's a nickname for dinner here, you see. 'Eat ma tea,' all that. Means having your nightly meal."

  "Oh. Sorry. Stupid American."

  "It's a'right; I'm used to it."

  A girl could have taken that as an insult to her country, but it was our first time out together, and he was cute, so I was inclined to be forgiving.

  I won't bore anyone with our entire conversation from that evening. It was getting-to-know-you stuff, and in retrospect I can't even say we were learning all that much. But we thought it was greatly instructive at the time, and chock-full of the most amazing coincidences. ("You had a dog as a kid? So did I!")

  We each had one little sister, and no other siblings--again, highly amazing. We each liked this sister and protected her from our parents, but she could drive us crazy. Surely this was a sign! Nobody else understood siblings this well!

  Best of all, we liked the same kind of music. I won't name any bands, because I don't want them to feel responsible, but it was a pretty typical list for sensitive, sarcastic people like us. They were the post-punk and new-wave types that you wail along with in the car, but turn the volume down if anyone else gets in, because only a few of their songs are pleasant enough for conversation.

  We thought that they were also very obscure, and that it was a miracle we had both heard of them. I know now that we were barely scratching the surface when it comes to obscure bands. How obscure could a whole set of bands be, when both a provincial Oregon girl and a provincial Scottish boy knew of them?

  Still, when you're relatively young--we were both 22 (again, the coincidence!)--you know that nothing binds you closer to someone than liking the same kind
of music. When you get to be a little older, you realize that there only are so many kinds of music. Furthermore, one 22-year-old is very likely to have the same tastes as another.

  No matter. That didn't occur to us. If it had, I would have ignored it. I wanted to have things in common with Gil. And, to my joy, it seemed he was seeking common ground with me, too.

  At nine o'clock, when we agreed it was time to go our separate ways for the night, he cordially shook my hand and said, "Why not come up the pub more often? Bring friends if you like; just come. I get bored."

  "Okay."

  "If you don't, I'm coming doon that hostel and dragging you oot by the ear."

  "All right; I promise." I smiled.

  And he dashed off to catch his bus, and I strolled back to the hostel. But slowly my smile went away and ended on a sigh.

  Despite all the sharing we'd done that night, I had managed to leave out the somewhat significant fact that I had a boyfriend back in the States.

  Chapter Six

  Attachment

  When Eileen and Sharon saw me in the hostel lounge and asked where I'd been, I answered that I had had dinner with Gil.

  I said it as casually as possible. When they exclaimed, "The bartender? With the shirt?" I simply said, "I was up by the castle and happened to run into him."

  Well, I got no end of teasing anyway, especially from Laurence, who called from the next table, "See? I told you she was out chasing boys!"

  But I let it slide. If this had been a nobody, a guy who I had no chance with, I would have made unflattering comments about his looks, and gone off on a tangent with Eileen and Sharon about hot actors, until Laurence made sounds of disgust and finally left the room. That was the usual tableau.

  But since I knew-- I just knew-that I had a good shot at kissing Gil within the week, I didn't discuss him.

  As I did dishes and laid out silverware in the Dalrykirk Hotel the next day, I made the decision not to tell my friends about meeting him in the future. I could say I was out for a walk, or visiting the library, or that I joined up with a tour group or something; excuses wouldn't be hard to come up with.

  For even a dunce like me knew that if you were going to have an affair, you had to be careful: you couldn't tell people, or you risked ruining everything. You only told people years later, after it was all over and no repercussions could possibly touch you. Oh, when I was young and foolish, I once...

  I saw myself married to Tony Pavelich, my altar boy, and telling him about it over coffee someday when we were 40. Maybe by then he'd even have something more wicked than mere lustful thoughts to confess.

  But that was the future. Would the here-and-now actually evolve into that? It was true Tony wanted to marry me; that is, he seemed to consider it a given and had no objections to it. But was it true that I actually had a Scottish affair ahead of me?

  I didn't dare traipse up to the high street to find Gil again until after dark, and he had already gone home. Sometimes he worked evenings; sometimes he worked day shifts. My bad luck. So I left the phone number of the Dalrykirk Hotel with Dave, the cooperative proprietor, and asked him to tell Gil I stopped by.

  I worked the next day with a pulse of girlish excitement that I hadn't felt since high school. It had been a while since I'd waited for a boy to call. And this one actually called.

  He was doing the evening shift tonight, he said, so it would be very late indeed afore he could get oot. Tomorrow, perhaps? It was his day off. Couldnae I meet him for drinkies? Oh, aye.

  Meanwhile, Eileen was spending a strangely large amount of time with Laurence--while he worked, while he explored the city, while he did whatever else he did. I began to get suspicious. Those four years while I was away at the university, she and Laurence were still home in Wild Rose, Oregon, still together. Could the icy and rock-steady science-boy have enchanted her?

  If so, I pitied her. Laurence tolerated Eileen, but she obviously didn't have a chance. If he fell for anyone, it would be for some high-IQ older woman with a Ph.D. A daughter of one of his father's colleagues, maybe. He wouldn't cuddle with a girl who trafficked in spooks or got a thrill from hallucinating, no matter how curvy and comely she was.

  So about two weeks into our stay, while I was beginning to hypocritically see Gil on the sly, I found a moment in the kitchen to ask her, "What do you and Laurence get up to all day, anyway?"

  She shrugged. A little smile rippled over her lips. "Not a lot. Shopping; tourist things; harassing the Euro-trash peasants."

  She had taken on his lingo. Bad sign.

  "Don't know how you can stand it," I said. "I always end up fighting with him if I see him for more than five minutes."

  She calmly smoothed chocolate-hazelnut spread onto a crumpet. "That might be your fault, Eva, not his."

  I unpeeled the lid of a margarine tub very deliberately, to avoid snapping at her. I mean, whose best friend was she, Laurence's or mine? "I suppose that could be possible," I answered. "Except that he's always the one calling me names."

  She licked her fingers. "You know he's kidding. If you get mad when he winds you up, you're only humoring him." She took her toasted crumpet and wandered off.

  Lovely.

  Is it any wonder I took to bitching about my friends to Gilleon Leslie? He absorbed it all very easily, walking in his fast long strides through the city while I hustled along, panting with the effort of keeping up and delivering soliloquies at the same time.

  Just when I'd think he wasn't listening, he would answer with a phrase like, "Seems it's difficult, the four of ye being in a place far from home. Drives you to do things you mightn't otherwise. Like them two, shyin' up to each other, and you out here with a dangerous strange person."

  "You're not dangerous," I told him, that particular night. "I could take you down." He was slender to the point of malnourishment, and while taller than me, was not as tall as Laurence (who was 6'1").

  "Could you, now?" His eyes twinkled. "We'll be seeing aboot that."

  And he shoved me, so that I stumbled into a brick wall. He skipped ahead, backwards, grinning at me. Under his open purple jacket he was wearing a red bandanna-patterned shirt. Incensed at the shove, yet eager to laugh at the outfit, I ran at him.

  He skittered and bolted away. I kept on his heels. We dashed perilously across streets, down narrow sidewalks, between tourists, over small dogs, and finally out into a grassy field somewhere beyond Holyrood Palace.

  It had probably been half a mile. We were gasping for breath. He turned to face me. I dived for his chest with my last burst of energy, and we plunged to the ground.

  "See," I wheezed, "I took you down."

  "Dowwwwn?" he teased, making fun of my pronunciation.

  "Yeah, down. How do you say it?"

  "Doon."

  "Dooooon?" I mimicked.

  "Smart-arse." He sat up. "Ach. Grass is wet."

  I climbed to a crouch, and appraised the stars and the silhouette of Arthur's Seat, a hill outside of town. There didn't appear to be much between it and us anymore. We seemed to have reached a less populated area.

  It was early in October, a month I always loved. The moon was above us, the night wind was chilly, and the grass smelled fresh and damp. We could kiss if we weren't careful. But to be fair, I ought to tell him about Tony first.

  "Ah, you're all quiet," said Gil. His voice was gentler and more affectionate than I had ever heard it. His hand brushed the arm of my coat a few times. "Bit of grass. Hope you didn't hurt yourself?"

  I shook my head. He looked very pretty, in the moonlight and the wind. His eyes shimmered faintly in dark blue shadow. I adjusted my crouch so that we were a little closer together. "I was just thinking I ought to tell you something."

  "Hmm, what's that, then?"

  "I'm an evil girl with ulterior motives."

  He shifted to a steadier crouch himself. "Hoping to take advantage of me, were you, out here in the dark?"

  I tilted my head in a yes and no motion, and began, "
When I decided to come here with Eileen, the first thing I thought was that I might meet someone like you..." I was shivering, and not just because it was cold.

  "An' that's your confession? You were oot to nab a Scot, and ye did so?"

  "I did? I succeeded?"

  "Aye, silly toureest. You know that." He caught me around the waist with one arm, and pulled us both to our feet.

  "Oh. Well, then," I said, intelligently.

  He moved his hair out of the way with his free hand, and gave me a kiss. Something inside me shouted, Victory! But all I said was, "Very nice."