JF04 - The Carnival Master by Craig Russell Page B

all the hallmarks of them having sought out the café as nothing morethan a place for them to sit and carry on the one-sided argument they had clearly been having outside. Andrea studied them: he was a loathsome little toad; she was surprisingly pretty to be with the likes of him. But soft. Andrea had begun by occasionally glancing in their direction; listening to the odd exchange as she had worked the tables. But as their argument became louder, it became impossible to ignore. And it was beginning to disturb the other customers. With a sigh, Andrea closed her accounts and crossed the café.
    ‘Is there a problem?’ Resting her red-fingernailed hands on the table, Andrea leaned in close and spoke in a calm, quiet tone. The couple had been so engrossed in their heated exchange that they had not noticed Andrea approach. The young man turned his acne towards her. His eyes traced the contours of her body. Andrea was wearing a tight black T-shirt with the café’s logo on it. Her biceps bulged beneath the short sleeves, and her breasts were pulled into small, tight buns on her wide, taut pectoral muscles. There was a trace of a smirk on the man’s lips.
    ‘What’s it to you?’ The smirk ripened into a sneer.
    ‘You’re beginning to disturb the other customers.’ Andrea kept her voice calm and low. ‘That’s what it is to me. I think you should leave. Now.’
    ‘What about our coffees?’ asked the man. The girl had her head down, letting her hair fall like a curtain to hide her face from the other customers in the café.
    ‘You’ve drunk most of them,’ said Andrea. ‘Leave the rest. It’s on the house.’
    ‘Just what the fuck are you?’ The young man with the acne now seemed aware he had an audience. He leaned back as if appraising her: the mane of platinumhair tied back in a ponytail, the heavy make-up, the deep red lipstick, the power-lifter shoulders. ‘I mean, we were just trying to work that out – what you were born as. Male or female. Fuck knows I can’t tell now. You a shemale?’
    Andrea straightened up. ‘Leave. Now.’
    ‘What makes you think you can work here among
normal
people? I mean, they sell food in here, for fuck’s sake. People
eat
here. You’re enough to turn anyone’s stomach.’
    Still his female partner sat still and silent behind her curtain of hair.
    ‘You’ve got two seconds to leave,’ said Andrea, her calm tone belying the furnace of hate and anger that burned in her belly. ‘Or I’ll call the cops.’
    The man got up and tugged at the girl’s sleeve. She rose quickly, slid out from behind the table and slipped swiftly out of the café without making eye contact with anyone. The ugly young man eyed Andrea hatefully. He tried to push her out of the way but Andrea’s body wouldn’t yield.
    ‘Fucking freak …’ He laughed derisively as he was forced to squeeze past her sideways. Andrea watched them as they left the café and walked past the window, the man laughing through the glass at her, his companion still trying to be unnoticed. When they were out of sight Andrea took a deep breath and turned to the other customers with a broad smile of red lips and strong white teeth.
    ‘Sorry about that,’ she said. There were a few regulars amongst the customers and one of them said: ‘Well done – that’s the way to deal with trash like that.’
    Andrea kept her smile in place. ‘Could you spell me for a while, Britta?’ she asked the other waitressand strode into the kitchen. Andrea swiftly exited through the back door onto the alley. She sprinted along the narrow lane to where a side street ran at right angles to Eintrachtstrasse, then up to the junction with Cordulastrasse. They were there. The girl still had her head bowed while the little shit berated her loudly about something. Their body language, his aggressive, hers submissive, expressed to the world the whole dynamic of their relationship; and Andrea could see that violence played a part in it. There were