Fay led them straight to a café a couple of streets past the square. He stopped in front of the door, sat down on the step, and waited.
“Your cat’s got it all figured out,” said Axel.
“Always,” Eva replied. And she opened the door.
The place was tiny and cozy. Worn floor tiles, a dark wooden counter, and a sign advertising a soft drink from forty years back.
Everything very old, a bit beat-up even. But it was spotless and smelled of fresh coffee and warm bread.
And on top of that it was packed. A couple of workmen were wolfing down their toast at the counter. A young couple were laughing under their breath about their own stuff. An old man was reading the paper, moving his lips. Someone was loudly ordering a cortado from the back.
A real bar. The kind they don’t make anymore.
Fay crossed the place, tail straight up, and hopped onto the chair of a corner table, the one by the window.
Axel dropped the backpack on the floor and sat down.
It has to be said that not everyone in there was quite so carefree.
At the next table, also up against the window, sat an old woman, alone. Well dressed and well groomed, very proper, one of those who sit with their back straight and never touch the chair. In front of her was a coffee and a half-eaten little pastry.
She watched them come in the way you’d look at a stain on a clean tablecloth.
First she eyed Axel’s muddy backpack. Then she looked Eva up and down, slowly, paying special attention to her bare feet. She twisted her mouth a little and went back to her pastry with a look of disgust.
Axel didn’t even notice. Eva did. Eva always noticed looks like that.
The waiter came over right away, a kid with a grease-stained apron and a good-natured face.
“Morning, what can I get you?”
“Black coffee for me and a toast with oil, ham and tomato,” said Axel. “And you?”
“A glass of water,” said Eva.
Axel gave her a funny look.
“Water? Come on, get yourself something. A coffee at least.”
“No, it’s just that I don’t really fancy a coffee.”
She didn’t say it like she meant it.
“Go on,” Axel insisted with a smile. “A nice little coffee and a nice bit of toast. My treat.”
“There’s no need, really.”
“Well, if you don’t eat it I will.” He turned to the waiter. “Two coffees and two hearty toasts, please.”
While the waiter was writing down the order, Eva made a move to stop him.
From the next table came a sour voice.
“Girl, if you can’t afford a coffee there’s no need to make a scene, just say so.”
She didn’t shout. She said it slowly, with a thin smile, looking at the waiter like someone sharing a joke with an equal.
“And barefoot, no less. What is the world coming to…?”
That part she said good and loud, so the whole room would hear.
And the whole room heard.
The workmen at the counter stopped chewing and turned their heads toward the girl’s feet. The couple in the corner dropped their giggling. The old man lowered his paper.
Eva’s face turned to stone. Not red, not furious. Stony.
Axel, on the other hand, felt his blood boil. He opened his mouth, ready to give the lady exactly what she deserved.
But he felt Eva’s hand on his arm.
“Leave it, it doesn’t matter.”
The words stayed stuck in his mouth.
Instead of answering the old bat, he turned to the waiter and raised his voice a notch, not much, just enough to carry across the room.
“Hey, sorry. Add two fresh orange juices too. Because today we’re celebrating being alive.”
And he winked at Eva.
Half a smile slipped out of her.
“You’re nuts,” she murmured.
“So I’m told.”
The woman let a couple of jabs out of her mouth before going back to her coffee.
“The sucker who pays for everyone, would you look at that.”
And then Axel saw it.
At first he thought it was a rat. Something small crossing the floor, hugging the wall.
It wasn’t a rat.
It was a little figure shaped like a tiny person. About the size of a bottle.
A little Brownie, dressed in a jumble of rags. Heading straight for the old woman’s table.
Axel’s heart stopped.
“Not again…”
Like the one he saw last night in the woods. Like the one that threw tomato sauce onto the shirt of some complaining customer at the hotel reception. Like the ones he’d seen loads of times.
He looked around. The workmen were still at their toast. The old man at his paper. The couple lost in their own thing.
Nobody was looking at the little figure.
Nobody could see it.
Only him.
The Brownie reached the woman’s table and climbed up the leg of the chair where she had her handbag. It peeked inside.
It vanished for a moment.
And came back out hauling, with both little hands, a leather wallet.
It dragged it over the edge with a tremendous effort. It let it drop to the floor with a dull little thud. And it started dragging it backwards, between the chair legs, pulling with its whole tiny body.
The woman didn’t notice a thing. She kept sipping her coffee with her pinkie out, very pleased with herself.
The little figure hauled the wallet behind the counter and dropped out of sight.
Axel wasn’t breathing. He’d seen the whole thing. Every step.
And the usual question came into his head: “am I making it up again?” And with it the usual answer, the one he gave himself just to stay calm: “you’re tired, they’re hallucinations, it’s nothing.”
He turned his head toward Eva.
But Eva was already looking.
Not at him. At the floor. At the exact trail where the wallet had disappeared.
Their eyes met.
And there was no need to say anything. The same stunned look on both of them. The same “this can’t be happening” written in their eyes.
They searched for the Brownie at the same time. It was gone. Not on the floor, not among the chair legs, not in the corner.
Only the old woman was left, very dignified, trying to scrape the bottom of her already empty cup with the spoon. She gave a couple of taps with it on the edge of the saucer to call the waiter.
“The check, please.”
Axel and Eva looked at each other again. And at the same time, without a word, it hit them both.
The wallet.
The woman was still busy with her empty coffee cup, trying to get one last sip. The kid leaned his face closer to Eva’s.
“Hey… tell me you saw it too.”
She didn’t say anything. But her eyes made it crystal clear.
“Bloody hell. I’ve been seeing stuff like that for ages. At work, playing cards, out on the street. And I always end up telling myself the same thing: that I’m tired, that I’ve lost my marbles.” He dropped his voice even lower. “But never like this, in broad daylight and with someone else who sees it.”
Eva stayed quiet a while. Not looking at him. And when she spoke, she did it slowly, like someone leafing through the pages of an old diary.
“The night I ran away from home, there was one.”
“What?”
“The night I left it all and took off without telling anyone.” She still wasn’t looking at him. “I was sitting on my bedroom floor, scared to death, not daring to take the leap. And one appeared on the windowsill. Just like that one. Barefoot, in its little colored rags, with a mischievous face.”
She swallowed.
“It stayed there a good while. Not moving. Just watching me very closely, until it spoke.”
“And what did it say?”
Eva lifted her eyes and looked at him straight on.
“‘Now or never. Go shake up your life!’”
The two of them fell quiet.
“And I left,” she said, shrugging, playing down the most important thing that had ever happened to her. “I listened to a Brownie, just like that. And ever since I’ve been asking myself whether I made it up, whether I was so desperate I invented the whole thing to work up the nerve to go.” A crooked half-smile. “I’ve never told anyone. Who do you tell? ‘I left home because a Brownie told me to.’ They lock you up and throw away the key.”
Axel stared at her without blinking.
“You’re not crazy,” he said. “And if you are, then we both are. Which is a whole lot better than being crazy on your own.”
A laugh slipped out of Eva. A real one.
The waiter arrived with the check.
The woman opened her handbag and reached in without looking.
She frowned.
She reached in with the other hand.
She rummaged. Out came a handkerchief, a pair of glasses, a little mirror, a small pill bottle. She dug in again with both hands, turning it all over.
“But… I had it right here…”
The waiter waited, tray resting on his hip.
The woman ended up tipping the whole handbag out onto the table. Everything came out. More pills, a fan, a wad of old receipts, a sweet stuck to a hairpin, and a little plastic case.
It fell to the floor and popped open, letting a set of false teeth spill out.
Half the bar turned to look.
And this time they weren’t looking at Eva.
“I don’t understand. I always keep it in the same place.” Her voice was fading. “It’s not here. I can’t find it. I… I’ve got no money on me.”
And there it was.
The proper lady, the one with the straight back and the deluxe pastry, red to the ears, without a penny to pay for her coffee.
Exactly the scene she’d been laughing at two minutes earlier.
“I… I’m sorry,” she said to the waiter in a trembling voice, without a trace of the superiority she’d shown before. “I swear I had it. I never…”
She didn’t finish the sentence. She looked this way and that, searching for a way out that didn’t exist.
Axel didn’t think twice.
He reached across the little gap between the two tables and put some coins in her hand. Without even getting up.
“Here. It’s on me.”
The woman looked down at the coins in her palm. Then she looked at him. At the kid with the backpack. At the barefoot girl she’d just humiliated.
She opened her mouth to say something. Nothing came out.
Her chin trembled. Her eyes filled up. And that woman, so stiff, so proper, burst into tears right there, the coins clenched in her fist.
“Forgive me…” she said, between sobs, her face buried in her hands. “Forgive me… for what I said. I don’t even know why I said it, my God. I don’t even know why.”
Silence flooded the café, making the woman’s sobs sound louder still.
Axel pulled his chair over and sat down beside her. Eva followed.
She dried her eyes with the napkin, ashamed to be crying in front of strangers and at the same time unable to stop.
“How embarrassing,” she kept saying. “How embarrassing, my God.”
“It’s all right,” said Eva, softly.
The woman looked at her. At the barefoot girl. And something inside her broke for good.
“It’s been a long time since anyone came to my house,” she said, though no one had asked. “A long time. Since my husband died, the place is… ” her voice trailed off. “It’s very quiet.”
She blew her nose.
“He wasn’t one for laughing. Or for letting anyone laugh.” A sad, broken little laugh. “I always wanted the house to be full of… ” she stopped, swallowed, didn’t say it. “Anyway. Silly old-lady nonsense.”
She sat for a while turning the napkin over between her fingers.
And suddenly she lifted her head. Still with red eyes, but with an idea in mind. Something that had been switched off for a long time and had just lit up with very little.
“I live right nearby,” she said. “I’ve got a huge house and no one to show it to. Come. I’ll make you lunch, a shower, whatever you like. Please.”
Axel looked at Eva. Eva looked at Axel.
Neither of them quite knew what to say. But there wasn’t much that needed saying.
When they got up, Fay had already hopped down from the chair and was waiting by the door, tail straight up.
They paid for breakfast and walked out of the bar.