With a night off from work, Bailey was ready to enjoy himself. No longer able to sleep with the rest of the world, he lived in permanent jet lag and often headed to clubs as the conservative crowd were thinking of coming home. On the second level of a club called Hades, in the darkness behind the upstairs bar, Bailey stood watching the dance floor. He didn’t notice the girl who moved in behind him, but she noticed him.

"Hi.”

Bailey looked around to see the attractive young woman sitting on the divide between the booth and the walkway. She was almost entirely dressed in black. She wore a cap and had her hair tied back. She swung a bottle of beer on her finger, jammed inside the neck.

“Hi,” Bailey said, desperately trying not to sound too eager.

"You don’t remember me, do you?"

Bailey looked at the girl, wishing he did. He smiled, trying to be confident.

"From college, right?” He had no idea.

“Nope.”

The girl was enjoying his confusion.

“If I asked you for something, would you lie and say you haven’t got it?"

Bailey screwed up his face, puzzled.

"A fresh doughnut maybe?”

Suddenly the girl’s face jumped into context. Bailey was on his third drink, and while he wasn’t drunk, he had a buzz going. The next half hour flashed by like seconds. They talked about work; they laughed about nothing and danced to any song sounding vaguely familiar. Then the girl’s tongue was down his throat. It was still there when the lights came on, and the other clubbers ducked for cover as harsh fluorescent lights gave away makeup, age and imperfection.

"So?"  Bailey said, urgently searching for a way to continue what they’d started. “Time to get going.” He regretted the words the moment they came from his mouth.

“You could come home with me - if you want?” the girl in black offered. It was the most beautiful sentence Bailey had ever heard.

Minutes later they entered a third floor flat, shed their clothes as they crossed the main room and walked entwined to a bedroom where they closed the door behind them and fell to the bed naked.

As the two lay panting in the afterglow of sweaty, passionate, satisfying sex, Bailey noticed the room for the first time. Hanging from the cupboard at the foot of the bed was a brightly coloured, ‘See how I grow chart’. The rest of the room was equally pre-teen. There were primary coloured toys displayed along a series of shelves, and the side of the bed was modelled in wood to resemble a racing car.

"Is this your room?"

"Sort of," the girl said, as she leant over and lit a joint. “It’s my brother’s flat, but he lets me use the room when his son doesn’t stay over.”

Bailey nodded as if he was okay with the idea of staining a young boy’s bed sheets.

A poor excuse later and he was hopping around on one leg and slipping into his boxer shorts. Once he’d found his jeans and shirt, he headed for the door with only the briefest goodbye. As he walked home, passing suits on their way to work, he began thinking of the girl and that room. He couldn’t work out why he’d been so uncomfortable, or why he left so quickly. The girl was beautiful; the sex was great, so why didn’t he stay longer? He fished in his pocket for his phone and checked a text message from her that read, ‘this is me’. That’s when his heart sank. He’d heard the girl’s name only once and now, after beers, dancing and sex, he’d completely forgotten it.

That night at his store he had a strange feeling in his stomach, nerves of excitement. He was showing all the signs of having a crush on someone and not being sure if they felt the same way. Bailey was a schoolboy again. Every time the door to the shop opened he looked to see if it was ‘that girl’, it never was. By the second night, the butterflies in his stomach had cocooned themselves into deep nagging self-doubts.

He chastised himself for the way he left and the coldness he displayed on recognising the child’s room. He berated himself for not remembering her name, and he tried to compose a text to her a dozen times, but each time left it unsent for fear she’d discover he’d forgotten her name.

Kylie arrived at three, her usual visiting hour.

“My feet are cold,” she said, as she came behind the counter and sat on a milk crate.

“You’ve got bare feet.” 

“I had bare feet yesterday, and they weren’t cold then.”

Bailey was in no mood to deal with Kylie’s strange view of the world or her warped logic.  

“I could get you a towel to wrap them.”

Kylie nodded, and Bailey headed to the storeroom to grab a towel. When he arrived back, Kylie was microwaving a seafood roll and helping herself to coffee.

“Hey Kyles, I’ve told you before, the coffee’s okay, but you’re going to have to pay for the roll.”

“I’m not eating it.”

Bailey threw the towel on the ground near the milk crates. Kylie took the heated roll and placed it in the centre of the towel. She then wrapped the whole thing around her feet. Bailey looked on in awe. He didn’t have time to list the problems relating to the sale of a seafood roll preheated and used as a foot warmer, so he let it slide and went to do a money drop.

By the time he’d finished, Kylie’s feet were warming nicely, and she was happily sipping on her slushie-enriched coffee.

“So what have you been up to?” Bailey asked.

“There’s a rat in my room. I can hear it at night.”

“A rat?”

Kylie nodded.

“They say they’re bad, dirty and that, but it went straight for my soap and ate it. If it’s so dirty, why does it love soap? I told them about it, but no one believed me, so I set this old mousetrap. It worked, sort of.”

“You caught it?”

“Yeah, but then it ran away with the mousetrap on its head like a necklace. It looked pissed. I think he knows it was me.”  Kylie took another sip of her coffee.

“You think rats are that smart?”

“Not smart-smart”. Kylie said as she drank. “Just rat smart. That’s why there’s so many of them. Hard to get rid of something when they only think about not being got rid of.” 

Bailey went to the back office, grabbed the mop and bucket and guided the bucket with the mop’s handle into the main area of the shop. As a slow song piped through the speakers, he mopped to the beat, removing a thousand steps taken across the floor over the past twenty-four hours. He meditated as he moved the mop in a figure-eight, slowly covering each aisle. Kylie never once took her eyes off him.

She watched the way he swivelled the handle in-between strokes. She watched his lips moving as they mouthed words to the song wafting into the air from above. She saw the moments his mind reflected on the girl and checked the door in a vain hope. As he neared the end of his mopping, a customer arrived and walked across the still wet floor. Bailey breathed deeply through his aggravation. The moment the customer left he flicked the almost dry mop over the footprints until there was no trace the intruder ever existed.

"Do you think he’ll get tired?" Kylie asked. Bailey looked at her confused. Kylie had seen the expression many times before.

"The rat; do you think he’ll get tired carrying the mouse trap around on his head?"

"I don’t know, maybe.”

“But he knows. He knows what a trap looks like so he won’t go near another one, will he?”

“I don’t think a rat is that smart, Kyles.”

Kylie shook her head in disagreement. She was accustomed to Bailey’s naïve view of the world.

“I think I’ll start wearing shoes,” she said.

Bailey grabbed the use-by date gun and went through the door at the back of the shop that led to the office and storage area. To one side stood a large cold room door, he opened the door and walked into the fridge. He grabbed a box of chicken rolls, ripped open the tape on the box and began to use the gun on each roll before stacking them in the fridge. With every click of his gun, he extended the lifespan of the processed rolls as edible food.

And then the girl he’d been waiting for appeared. Something made him look up when she entered. She looked at Kylie, then around the store. She meandered up and down the aisles, looking at the front desk, glancing at the door leading to the back office and procrastinating in the hope of spotting Bailey.

Bailey did what most twenty-three-year-old men wish they could do when confronted by a woman they’d slept with and then forgotten their name; he hid in the fridge behind the chicken and seafood rolls.

"Chicken rolls are good," Kylie called out, as the girl swung around the front of the shop near the counter.

“Yeah?”

“Just don’t eat them.”

The girl looked confused, but Kylie pointed a finger to the fridge doors at the far end of the store and Jenna slowly walked to them. She saw Bailey working inside. He was suddenly too busy to notice anything. She gently knocked on the glass. Bailey looked up; doing his best to act surprised at seeing her.

“Hi,” he said with enthusiasm, his words muffled and repelled by the airtight seals on the fridge.

“I was hoping you’d call me,” the girl said with a raised voice.

“Sorry?” Bailey held a hand to his ear to indicate he hadn’t heard. The girl opened the fridge door.

“I was hoping you’d call me. You weren’t at the club last night. I almost sent you a message. But I figured, you hadn’t sent me one... so,” she spoke in a disappointed tone.

“I’ll come around.” Bailey pointed towards the end of the fridge; he was looking to buy himself time.

When he re-entered the shop, he asked Kylie if she’d mind watching the store for a few minutes as he ushered the girl into the back office for privacy. Kylie nodded, took a sugar jam doughnut, placed her lips to the hole and squeezed hard. She was always happy to watch the store for Bailey.

In the back room, Bailey considered any number of white lies to get out of this awkward situation. He desperately wanted more from this girl, but he feared being hurt. In the past, he’d protected himself with a string of empty sexual encounters, but this girl was exciting, edgy and unafraid. If he allowed this to become more than a one night stand, she might discover how much of the world he couldn’t make sense of and then she’d confirm what Bailey secretly feared; that he wasn’t someone of substance.

They stood awkwardly smiling at each other for a moment before Bailey decided he had to tell her the truth about forgetting her name. He knew it would probably end things before they’d actually begun, but strangely he felt he’d rather be disappointed now than heartbroken later.

"I couldn’t remember your name.”

The girl was shocked.

“I usually make more of an impression.”

“You did. It was a fantastic night, but…you told me your name when we first met, and, I don’t know; I guess I was a little buzzed.”

The girl smiled. She liked honest. She hadn’t come across it often. She leant forward and kissed him. It wasn’t what Bailey was expecting.

“What’s through there?” She asked, pointing to the cold room door.

“Nothing... storage for the stuff in the fridges.”

The girl opened the door and looked.

 “My name’s Jenna.” She grabbed Bailey’s hand and led him through the cold room door towards the back of the fridge. She would make sure he never forgot her name again. A few minutes later the fridge windows facing the store began to fog up.

Over the next 40 minutes, Kylie rimmed five doughnuts and served three customers. One customer wanted a pouch of tobacco and some papers, one just wanted papers and the third, a middle-aged woman, wanted balloons, two shoelaces, a packet of wooden skewers, and papers. 

The milk delivery man arrived with five full crates of milk stacked and loaded on his trolley. He entered the store with a smile and nodded to Kylie as he passed, heading for the fridge. Kylie giggled to herself as the man wheeled his crates into the back office and opened the cold room door.

“Jesus!”

The crates came off their trolley.

Jenna and Bailey were lying behind a wall of soft drink boxes, hidden from anyone in the shop. But from the main door of the fridge, the deliveryman saw everything. They had their pants down and a rhythm they weren’t ready to lose, until the interruption. They jumped to their feet and quickly turned away from the delivery man, who was standing with the door and his mouth open. They dressed like two teens caught by a parent. Still adjusting her top, Jenna strode confidently past the milkman and out into the store. She opened one of the display doors to the fridge as she passed.

“Are you working tomorrow night?” she asked. Bailey was still trying to button his jeans.

“Yeah.”

“I’ll see you then.” 

Within four weeks of that chilly second meeting, Jenna was virtually living in Bailey’s apartment. The first week she had a toothbrush in the bathroom, the second and third weeks began a slow trickle of possessions, and by the fourth week all she needed was an official invitation, and she could change the address on her licence.

Bailey’s apartment was on the first floor of a red brick building. From the street, it had the architectural charm of a standard Russian tenement. Through the front door, there was a small entrance hall with a bathroom to one side. The large single room made up the rest of the flat. It had a Japanese futon that stood as a couch during the day and a bed at night. On one side of the room was a television, with CDs, DVDs and various games all neatly stacked in cheap wooden shelves. On the other side, tucked away behind a curtain, was a tiny kitchenette. It boasted a sink, a stove and a bar fridge with a microwave sitting on top. It was everything Bailey needed.

Jenna loved it.

“You can stay if you want,” Bailey said, one night in the afterglow of sex.

“I should hope so after that.”

“No, I mean for good.”

Jenna was lying on Bailey’s chest. She looked at him with a grin on her face. He looked at her, also smiling. It was one of those ‘couple’ moments, a private memory only shared by them.

“Yeah?” She said, wanting it confirmed.

“Yeah.”

Jenna put her head back on Bailey’s chest and listened to his heartbeat. Now it was her heartbeat as well. A smile travelled through her.

The next few weeks were relatively uneventful. Jenna moved in and made Bailey’s flat her own. It took on a distinctly Japanese feel, not because Jenna liked the motif, but because she liked the price of items made out of paper and bamboo. They also seemed to go with the aesthetic of the room and more importantly, made sense of the futon.

One evening, as Jenna was cooking, following each step in a complicated recipe, a neighbour came to the door. He was around thirty, dressed in dirty denim jeans that probably weren’t bought that way, but had, over time, come to resemble the fashion.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” Bailey said, establishing standard first contact between two male neighbours.

“I had a plant on my balcony. It’s gone.”

“I didn’t see anything.”

“Someone climbed onto the balcony, and they had to come from yours to do it.”

“Unless they had a ladder.”

The neighbour was growing annoyed at Bailey’s attitude.

“Look, you know what I’m talking about. It was perfect, almost ready.”

“I’m not much of a gardener.” 

“Do you think you’re smart?”

“What did I say?”

“I think you took it.”

“Come in and have a look if you want.”

Jenna came to the front door.

“What’s going on?”

“There was a plant on my balcony and genius here claims he knows nothing about it.”

“He hardly smokes and unless you think I took it...?” Jenna gave their neighbour her most disarming look. It was enough to make him back down. 

Bailey realised what was going on and couldn’t believe how incredibly stupid he’d been. The disgruntled neighbour took one last angry look at him, then turned and went home.

“Can you believe that?” Bailey asked, astonished.

“I thought he was going to hit you.”

“It’s not my fault I didn’t get what he’s on about. How stupid would you have to be to have it on your balcony where people could see it?”

“I know. I’ve been waiting for it to be ready for weeks. It’s in our bathtub, by the way.” 

Bailey stood with a stunned look. He was hoping he’d misheard. Jenna returned to the kitchen to work on straining plant fibres out of gee she’d shortly be using to make brownies.

Bailey opened the bathroom door and drew back the cheap plastic curtain. There was the plant, complete with its ceramic pot. It even had the planter tray that it sat on next door.

“Don’t turn off the heat lamp,” Jenna called out, sounding like a growing expert.

“Are you insane?”

“What?”

“If he finds it he’ll kill us.”

“He looked pretty harmless.”

“He’s growing dope on his balcony!”

“He’s not growing dope; he’s saving money. And now I’m saving time and money.”

Bailey shook his head. He knew Jenna wasn’t like any girl he’d ever dated. But she seemed to get him, or at least put up with him. And that’s why he was suddenly so happy. 

That evening, as the two sat eating brownies and talking about nothing, Bailey discovered more about Jenna. The afternoon’s events made him curious, and the brownies made her talkative. As she’d struck her teenage years, symbolised in independence and individuality requiring all friends to dress and act identically, she took to being a Goth.

At a private girl’s school, it was difficult, tartan grey being the colour of the uniformed skirt with a white blouse and equally bland grey jumper. But for Jenna, the uniform was nothing but a challenge: the jumper became black, a scarf around her waist hid the skirt, and her foundation became paler, highlighting the black eyeliner. Her teachers despaired, removed and reported. At every opportunity, Jenna and her friends withdrew, reapplied and re-emerged highlighted.

It was at a time when her parents were in the middle of a protracted divorce and neither wanted to say or do anything to suggest either of their children were less than their favourite. She learnt few lessons by word but many by deed during those months. Jenna instantly began using what she’d discovered to negotiate her way through life.

More recently she’d begun studying for a diploma in education, her goal, to teach primary students. Bailey had known she wanted to teach, but not young children.

“I think I could do something with kids that age,” Jenna said. “That’s when a person needs someone to help work things out.”

“What sort of things?” Bailey asked, intrigued by the comment.

“Everything. How the world works.”

Bailey was finding new layers to Jenna every day, and everything he discovered made him like her more.

As for her, she didn’t feel she knew Bailey any better than when they’d first met. She did of course, but she was making the same mistake others made, assuming he couldn’t be as straightforward as he seemed. When he told the truth, he must cloak it in ambiguity. When he acted for the good of someone, he must see an advantage for himself. Jenna felt sure Bailey’s mind was working through agendas the way a computer works through binary combinations. She was sure he was plotting and evaluating every circumstance, every scenario, predicting a thousand different outcomes and was too slick to be discovered. What she saw was a master of spin delivering a perfectly honed public image of benign innocence. Bailey swore he wasn’t holding anything back, but Jenna didn’t believe him; that would make him an outcast in a world of players plotting many moves ahead. In her mind, a person could not get to Bailey’s age and still be so naïve. She was certain there were sides to his personality he wasn’t ready to reveal. It all added up to an intriguing personal riddle, a riddle Jenna was determined to solve.

Next Chapter: A First Timid Step