Restless Souls by Dan Sheehan

Author:Dan Sheehan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781632460677
Publisher: IG Publishing
Published: 2018-03-26T00:00:00+00:00

At the hotel bar, Jimmy and Jelena were deep in conversation. She was furiously rotating her opal ring, the one speckled with red flecks that she wore on our first date. I didn’t realize at the time that it had, in fact, been a date. All we did was drink thick Bosnian coffee out of dented copper cups in the hospital canteen and talk about the logistics of transporting medical supplies across the city. Well, Jelena did most of the actual talking, her teaspoon twisting through the sweet black liquid, while I nodded and tried to think of something interesting to say; storing up what I hoped weren’t egregiously stupid questions for the moments she drew breath. The ring, she said later, should have tipped me off. She only wore it on special days, days that merited a marker.

“How would I have known that then, though?” I asked.

“You didn’t think it looked special?”

“No, I mean yes, yes, I thought it looked very special,” I spluttered, secretly grateful for my obliviousness that day in the canteen. I’d been nervous enough as it was, sitting there across the table from her, our hands almost touching, in what I assumed was a sort of informal interview. Being blindsided by a surprise first date would have instantly robbed me of what little cool I had left. I did notice the ring though; its slow orbit around the lip of her cup as she stirred. I noticed the tiny chip missing from her left front tooth and the way she held eye contact while sipping and how her nose wrinkled when she searched her brain for a misplaced English word. There were a lot of little things to notice.

She blew me a kiss as I approached on Mac’s heels. She was wearing this flowing summer dress I’ve never seen before.

Cotton, the same color as her left eye. Around her wrist was another new bracelet, this one a made of pink and purple twine twisted loosely together. She has so many on each wrist now that together they look like rainbow cuffs. I swear she’d wear a neon bulls-eye around her neck if those kids made it for her.

Jimmy and Jelena were arguing about the paramilitaries. Half soldiers, half gangsters. The ones who’ve been seen drunk-walking reluctant part-time troops from cafes and ordering them back up to the front lines to man the trenches. All summer the kafanas selling black market coffee and booze, liberated from UNPROFOR silos, have been doing a roaring trade. Smirking fixers sip espressos in the warm summer sunshine. Fed-up soldiers abandon their posts to drink and fuck and feel something that isn’t fear before the city’s last shaky defenses crumble. Now the Powers That Be have had enough of it. As of this week all but the slyest of bars have gone black. Even The Bunker, everyone’s favorite den of iniquity, has been boarded up. It’s not fair, the radio broadcasts say, for able-bodied men to sit idle all day long while the army defends them; so they’ve made a show of taking away the temptation.

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