What Ailsa felt she needed was a distraction.

The problem was, they seemed to be few and far in between. Since they had gone out for lunch and texted afterwards about the great time they had, she hadn’t heard from Andrei. There did not seem to be anyone of the male gender interested in her otherwise.

She was so desperate for a distraction, she felt she could have wept with gratitude if someone merely breathed in her general direction.

She had texted Andrei the night before, although the conversation had been short. Even if he didn’t have a crush on her as she had thought earlier in the week, he certainly gave her a lot to think about every time they had interacted before.

“I’m singing tomorrow, if you’re free,” She’d told him, after the usual pleasantries had been exchanged.

“Sounds good, I’ll see if I can make it :)” he had replied.

Feeling let down that Andrei might be busy that night, she hadn’t texted him anything in response. Even now, the conversation was stagnant. Andrei hadn’t texted her to say it he could make it after all.

Ailsa placed her phone back in her pocket.

Sekani was polishing a tumbler carefully, but she could feel him glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. Ailsa looked at the stage, where Remy was winding up. She was on soon. Her hands felt slightly sweaty with anticipation.

“Your friend isn’t coming tonight?” Sekani asked.

Ailsa, who had been doing a breathing exercise to calm her nerves, turned to him. In surprise.

“What?”

“Your friend... the white guy. Isn’t he coming to watch you today?”

It was a rather strange question; there was something in his tone or his expression that Ailsa recognised, but couldn’t quite place, but she didn’t know if she liked it.

“Um,” she said carefully, “No he’s busy. His name is Andrei.”

She wanted to add that he wasn’t her friend, but then she didn’t know what to call him. Andrei could not be described as an acquaintance either, it felt top impersonal. If there was a word, she thought, that described a person who you went to high school with, suddenly thought a lot about and who held your hands in ponds, then she would have called him that.

And perhaps Sekani should have referred to Andrei as “the Greek”, but it was highly likely Sekani did not know Andrei was Greek.

Ailsa wrinkled her nose and turned away from the conversation. It was awkward and best to just physically remove herself from it. The closing notes were playing for Remy anyway.

Ailsa climbed the stairs and looked out on what seemed to be a sea of people. Remy took her hand and handed her the mic, giving her a quick smile before she stepped away.

Ailsa took a deep breath in, slowing her breathing. The stage lights softly illuminated her with a warm sunset orange glow.

The drums kicked up suddenly in a steady beat. And then, three chords on the keyboard, and the song felt like home to Ailsa. She lifted the mic to her lips.

“Yeah…” She crooned.

On the first of the next set of chords, her mouth opened and she heard herself sing,

“Sunday Morning rain is falling…”

Someone whooped. It was probably Remy. Ailsa’s lips curved into an appreciative smile, and then she stepped forward with the song; her smile dipping into a seductive smirk that sent the audience twisting to fit the mould that she was in; just as the lyrics described.

When she was on stage, she didn’t know herself. The many thoughts melted away and she was fully present in the moment and thought of no others.

The next song was slower, but with the same gentle beach vibe. She was completely lost in it all...

And then it was over, and she was nodding demurely, and people were clapping.

Remy was already taking a seat on a tall barstool.

Ailsa started down the back stairs, which could be tricky enough in the daytime; at night they needed more careful navigation. The problem was the way the lights fell on the stairs, placing them half in shadow. She stepped where she thought the next step should have been, and as her foot sunk lower than expected, she remembered the large gap between the first and second of the stairs. Uncle Mikhail had complained about it for weeks when the carpenters had been finished with it.

She tried to break her fall, and landed rather awkwardly. There was an audible collective gasp from the diners. For a moment, nobody moved. There had been a strum of the guitar, but it cut off abruptly as she fell.

And then everybody moved at once.

A man stepped forward from the closest table, his hands already held out to her. There, another woman stood, moving closer, but it was Mada who reached her first.

Ailsa’s wrist had borne the brunt of the impact, and it stung quite badly. She took Mada’s arm and rose to her knees, brushing the grass off of her black shirt.

The embarrassment gradually washed over her, like thick, tepid mud. She looked to the stage, and Remy had stepped down the barstool, mic in hand.

The whole restaurant was looking at her.

She didn’t know whether to smile or look down and wait for the earth to open up and swallow her. It felt like she had been down there for hours.

She rose onto her feet, but her ankle was throbbing, and she wobbled rather precariously before someone else took her hand. She felt so grateful for the support she only looked up after she had allowed herself to lean into them. It was the new waitress whose name she had just learnt, and quickly forgotten.

Mada and the waitress helped her away; heads turning interestedly to watch the procession.

On stage, the guitar started up again.

People were just concerned, and she knew that, but was mortified all the same. She had gone down like a sack of potatoes. And uttered a quick “Yip!” as she sunk.

They stopped in the back office, letting her down onto an old chair with a padded seat.

It seemed they had picked up people as they progressed, for Ailsa looked up to see uncle Mikhail, Sekani, another of the servers and then Remy, who rushed in a few moments after everyone else. It was Remy who spoke first.

“Are you okay?” Remy asked. “Oh my god Ailsa-”

Mikhail was fussing and waving his arms about, in a manner that reminded Ailsa of a chicken. While his concern had prompted him to join the procession, he was now concerned with the patrons.

“Get away! Get away!” He said to the servers. “You’ve left the diners!”

“I’m okay,” Ailsa said.

“She’s okay, go! Go!” Mikhail stressed, but no one paid him any attention. Out on the restaurant floor, the band had quickly recovered their composure and were playing some reggae covers.

“Are you sure?” Remy said, stepping closer.

“It was that step-” The door swung open, and Ailsa glanced up. It was Andrei. She faltered and immediately dropped her eyes. It wasn’t enough that she had fallen in front of the whole restaurant. Of course, Andrei had to have seen it too.

Ailsa felt that if she stayed there any longer, she would cook alive with the shame.

“That step is bad,” Mada agreed.

“Go back to the stage,” Ailsa said, shooing Remy away. “Sekani, you left the bar unattended-”

“Ailsa don’t be silly,” Remy said.

Mikhail was becoming increasingly distressed. He seemed to be puffing up with frustration. This couldn’t be good for his blood pressure, Ailsa thought.

“Are you hurt? Maybe we should go to the hospital,” Remy suggested.

“I know First Aid, I could take a look,”

They all turned to Andrei at this point, eyebrows raised. Some of them had only just noticed he was in the room.

His lips turned up, reassuring.

Ailsa for one, was surprised. He didn’t mean those life-skills classes they put us through back at school did they? It was such a long time ago and she could barely recall any skills learned aside from the horrific safe-sex classes, where they had been shown pictures of STD and STI infested genitals.

“No, you don’t,” she said, without thinking.

“I do,” Andrei looked directly at her as he spoke. “I took a class and got certified,”

Ailsa simply said, “Oh.”

Sekani and Remy’s eyes bounced from Ailsa to Andrei, Mikhail needed no further convincing. He began to usher the servers towards the door.

“He knows First Aid okay! Go, go!”

But Remy and Sekani lingered.

Andrei approached Ailsa and sunk into a crouch in front of her.

“I’ll be fine Remy,” Ailsa said.

Remy slowly backed away, and then exited the room. Mikhail scurried after her.

For a moment, it was just Ailsa, Andrei and Sekani left. Ailsa turned to Sekani, but his face had fallen into a strange expression, and he abruptly exited the room.

Ailsa didn’t know where to look.

“Are you okay?” Andrei asked her.

She met his eyes, which were soft with genuine concern.

“Yeah,” she said.

He pushed his hair back, his brow furrowing as he pursed his lips doubtfully. She held his gaze, unwavering, until she was beaten and had no choice but to laugh.

“Mostly a bruised ego,” Ailsa said.

“And a swollen wrist,” he suggested.

She looked down to her arm, which she had been cradling in her lap. “Yeah,”

Andrei reached forward carefully, raising his eyebrows. Ailsa nodded her consent, and he gently lifted her arm, keeping her wrist from moving.

“Did you hear of feel it crack?” He asked.

“No,” Ailsa said. Would she have heard it, she wondered, with all the noise?

He inspected it carefully, his warm fingers moving over her skin lightly. She felt herself getting slightly flustered again as she inhaled, and the scent of him washed over her.

“What about your legs?” He asked, looking up. Ailsa was glad he couldn’t read her mind. She was all too aware of him, and her cheeks felt flushed.

“Erm,”

Andrei gently placed her hand back in her lap and his hand moved to her left ankle.

“Just a bit sore but I’m sure it’s fine,” she said.

“Which one? This one?” He tapped her skin.

“No,”

His hands moved to the other ankle.

“Why did you think I didn’t know First Aid?” He asked.

“I guess I hit my head too,”

Andrei suppressed a smile, but Ailsa could see it in his eyes when he glanced at her.

“I thought you were talking about those life-skills lesson all those years ago.”

“Oh. Yeah, I remember those. Those were-” he made a face. “Remember the sexual education class?”

“It scarred me for life.”

Andrei chuckled. And met her gaze again. “Well, it’s not swollen, I’m sure it’s fine but I think you may have sprained your wrist. We should go to a hospital just in case.”

“Oh. Okay. I could wait for Remy and go with her,” She said. He had risen as he spoke, and Ailsa was glad to have some respite from being so close to him. He made her feel... she could only describe it as a sense of restlessness.

On the one hand, she wondered why she was feeling this way around him. It was just Andrei. The same Andrei who had fallen, skinned his knee and cried during a three-legged race on sports day when they were 7.

On the other hand, how could she be feeling this way? She had always set herself aside from the “battery fan club” - as she thought of the many girls who had been feeble enough and delusional enough to have a crush on him. In being practical, somehow, she felt she was better than them. Ailsa had crushes on guys like Rhys. -Of course, nothing had ever happened with Rhys but it had been more realistic, and that was the whole point.

When she had boyfriends, they were nice sensible boys. Not boys who had been the subject of countless daydreams like Andrei had. And what was so attractive about him besides the way he radiated privilege? Blue eyes and golden hair?

“I could take you, Ailsa,” Andrei said.

“No. Please don’t feel like you have to,” she said quickly. “I’m sure I could drive myself, actually.”

“Ailsa, let me take you.” He said. Hesitantly, her eyes rose to his and, she nodded.

He was kind.

Andrei sunk to his hunches again. “It would be a lot better if we took these off,” He said, touching her shoes. They were black wedges, with a strap that wound around her ankles several times. Not very practical, but shoes were the one area of life that one could afford to be a little impractical at times.

“I don’t have a change of shoes,” Ailsa said. “I can’t walk out barefoot.”

There was all a manner of things one could step on in the dark. In fact, while exiting the kitchen courtyard, one of Remy’s old maids had stepped on snake. She was thought to have stepped on its head, and now Remy would warn people who walked around barefoot, “muponda mutu wa njoka!”

“Ailsa.”

“You could step on a snake’s head or something!” She stressed. Evidently, he had not been expecting such a wild justification, because he gave a surprised laugh. “It happened once to Remy’s old maid,” Ailsa explained, feeling sheepish.

“Okay, alright... I think I have some flip flops in my car,”

She accepted, and he left to go and retrieve them.

Shoes changed; Andrei helped Ailsa up. She pulled away from him and tested the weight on her ankle.

“If it hurts,” Andrei advised, watching Ailsa wince, “Lean on me and don’t put too much weight on it.”

She’d intended to brave it out and limp along behind him, but conceded and took the arm that was offered, although it made her pulse race slightly.

“Don’t be a hero about these things,” he teased.

“Yeah, okay, okay,”

They left Ailsa’s car keys with Mikhail for Remy, and gathered Ailsa’s belongings from under the podium where she normally kept them while she worked.

Her feet were not comically small in Andrei’s flip-flops. There were slight depressions shaped to the contours of his foot and it felt somewhat alien to her own feet in that way borrowed shoes do. She was literally walking in his shoes, even if it wasn’t a mile.

Cars, Ailsa felt, said a lot about a person. Hers was clean and still smelled ever-so-slightly of that new car smell, along with and ocean-breeze car freshener. She had a Bluetooth modulator that connected to her phone, tissues, hand sanitiser and sanitary pads in the glove box.

Andrei’s car was an electric blue, double cab 4x4 truck, and was a mess of papers, equipment and various paraphernalia Ailsa couldn’t quite identify in the dark.

Well there you go, Ailsa thought cheerfully. I’ve never been one for messy people! She watched gleefully as Andrei swept up the papers on the passenger side and moved them to the back seat, before helping her up into the car.

“Sorry for the mess,” He said. Ailsa brushed his apology away, but untidiness had long been what she considered a turn off. Soon, she believed, her restlessness would fade and all would be well. “All set?” He asked. She nodded and he closed the door for her.

As he circled the car to the driver’s side, Ailsa inconspicuously looked around. Despite the mess, it seemed clean, so at least there was that. And he had the same car freshener as she did. Ocean breeze.

“Seatbelt,” Andrei said. Ailsa lifted a hand to reach for hers but was distracted by Andrei, who leaned over and strapped her in. She felt all aflutter with his unexpected proximity.

“I could’ve done it myself,” Ailsa said, when he had pulled away.

“Well,” Andrei said simply.

She couldn’t read his tone.

“I mean, thank you,”

He started the car, and there was an overwhelmingly familiar thrum of a guitar from the car stereo. Ailsa immediately turned to Andrei with a startled laugh.

“Is this Wasakara?”

“Yeah. I wasn’t kidding about Oliver Mtukudzi that other time.”

Ailsa laughed again. It was so unexpected of him! If she told one of her high school friends, any one of them, or even Remy, that she was now sitting in a car with Andrei Antonopoulos listening to Wasakara of all things. Well!

“What?”

“Nothing! Its... wow. It’s just surprising, you know. You don’t seem the typical Mtukudzi fan.”

“What’s the typical fan like?” He challenged. Ailsa had her answer at the ready.

“Middle aged people! My dad and my aunt and their generation, you know? I only know about him because of them. How on earth did you come to know about Oliver Mtukudzi?”

“Believe it or not, my dad introduced me too,” Andrei said.

“And how did he come across Oliver Mtukudzi?”

“I don’t know actually,” Andrei admitted. Ailsa could hear the smile in his voice. “I guess I have to ask. When I find out, you’ll be the first to know.”

They fell silent for a few seconds, but it was a somewhat companionable silence. There was something about driving around in the dark, with the dashboard controls glowing softly and only the road ahead of them illuminated that seemed to put Ailsa at ease. She felt less guarded.

“Could we go to the Adventist hospital please?” Ailsa said. Her wrist was throbbing, as if to remind her they weren’t just on a nice night-time drive.

“Sure.”

“My aunt really loved Oliver Mtukudzi,” Ailsa said. “When I was little, I used to think he would come to our house of something. She talked about him all the time.”

“The same aunt who baked those cupcakes you used to bring on your birthdays at school?” Andrei asked. Ailsa was surprised he remembered this. Every birthday, without fail, her Aunt would bake her cupcakes to take to school. They were always vanilla flavoured, but the flavour of the icing varied from year to year. There would be caked iced with single letters, to spell out the message “HAPPY BIRTHDAY AILSA”, with one other cupcake having her age, and the rest having stars, hearts, vermicelli sprinkles, silver balls or whatever else Aunt Vi could come up with.

Her teachers always seemed grateful to not have to cut equal sized slices for every student, and manage who got more or less icing (Although there was the occasional argument over who got what letter). Everybody had cupcakes. In another life, Aunt Vi liked to say, I was a baker. In this life she had been secretary all her life.

“Yes,” Ailsa said.

“How is she?”

“She passed away last year.”

She could feel Andrei looking at her, but she kept her eyes on the road. It was easier to just act nonchalant or matter of fact in moments like this, so that is what she did.

“I’m really sorry Ailsa.”

She wanted to say it was alright, but stopped herself, because it wasn’t. It was never alright to lose someone, she thought, looking down into her lap.

Her phone was sticking out of her bag, and she pressed it further into the interior, remembering their text conversation.

“So um, what happened?” She asked. “I thought you wouldn’t make it tonight.”

“I made it,” Andrei said. “Well, to be candid I just wanted to seem busy. I had no plans.”

“What? Why?”

Andrei hummed concomitantly. “You were great by the way.”

She warmed at the compliment. “-Until the fall,”

They both laughed. “Until the fall, yeah. You were really great until then.”

“Thank you.”

Traffic was always scarce at night, and Ailsa watched as he turned into the gate that lead off into the short winding drive up to the hospital lot.

He helped her out of the car. Ailsa’s ankle already felt less painful, and she waved off his arm as they gradually made their way to the reception. Andrei filled in an insurance form for Ailsa, whose injured wrist made it difficult to write. His handwriting had always been scratchy, and Ailsa felt a little nostalgic for their school days at the sight of it.

They sat down in the waiting area. There was an old man, rail thin and swimming in clothes that were several times too large for him, and there was a small Asian child, nestled in his father’s lap as his mother looked on worriedly. The neon lighting was humming a little too audibly for Ailsa’s liking.

What an odd bunch they all were, Ailsa thought. If there should be a sudden, natural disaster that trapped them all in this waiting room, would they all become friends?

Ailsa turned to Andrei. “So, what else do you listen to, apart from Mtukudzi?”

As he told her, a nurse in green scrubs came and called the small family away. They disappeared down a corridor, leaving Ailsa with Andrei and the old man.

She learned that Andrei also knew of Yvonne Chaka Chaka, Wambali, Brenda Fassie and even of the Kalimba band, which Ailsa considered to be one of the criminally lesser known acts to come out of Malawi.

At this point, she was called up by the nurse, who took her vitals. They were directed to a smaller waiting room, and Ailsa thought of the old man in the oversized clothes, who had looked over at them from time to time, with tired watery eyes that had seen a thousand lifetimes.

“Perhaps he’s an employee or waiting for someone or something,” Andrei said, when she shared her thoughts with him. “His clothes were so big for him,” Andrei observed. “I kind of felt sorry for him for some reason.”

To Ailsa, this was the right reaction, if there was a reaction those clothes called for. Perhaps those clothes were the only clothes the man could afford. She believed that there were some things people could not help, and it fell to each of us to be cognizant in that. The problem was, other people were ignorant of things like that, and often ridiculed their counterparts.

But Andrei did not, and again, she thought to herself about how kind he seemed.

They resumed their discussion about music. She was further surprised to find that Andrei listened to artists she did not; although she had heard of them. But he listened to more mainstream music as well, particularly Coldplay. Like Ailsa, his taste was widely varied and arbitrary. He simply liked certain songs, certain albums or certain artists, but not others.

He walked Ailsa into the Doctor’s room. The Doctor, colleague of Ailsa’s mother, was a funny little man with thick round glasses. His wife - or so Ailsa had been told by her mother - was a woman twice his size in every respect.

“I think she takes up the whole bed,” her mother often said, “And this man just folds himself and sleeps in one corner.”

This statement was not in reference to the wife’s size, but rather, to the woman’s domineering personality.

The doctor himself, when not under his wife’s shadow, was meek but somewhat fatherly, despite having no children of his own.

“Well, Ailsa I think your... guardian here,” The doctor nodded at Andrei and paused to smile at his little joke. “Your guardian here was right. It’s probably a sprain, but let’s get an x-ray of your wrist, just in case.” He scribbled something in her file and handed Andrei a slip of paper.

*

They were in her driveway, with instructions to rest the injured arm, a prescription of painkillers and a securely bandaged wrist. Andrei had turned on the reading light overhead, as Ailsa scrutinised her injury.

“I hope it’s better in time for next weekend,” Ailsa said. “Remy and the band have booked a wedding or going away party or something in Salima. I’ve been asked to sing too!”

“Is it the Erikssons?” Andrei asked.

Ailsa thought for a moment, but did not know. She had repeated the news as Remy had delivered it at the beginning of the night. “I’m not sure,” Ailsa admitted. “I need to get the details from Remy. I just know it’s in Salima and that it’s next weekend.”

“If it’s the Erikssons, then maybe I’ll see you there,”

She felt excited at the prospect of seeing him soon; but the days simultaneously seemed to stretch before her, making the next weekend seem very far away indeed.

“Are you just trying to sound busy again?” She teased, pushing her emotions away.

Andrei grinned. “Maybe,”

“Mm.” She gave him a knowing look out of the corner of her eyes. Unintentionally and intentionally, it was slightly amorous. “Well. Thank you,” Ailsa said. “For the hospital and everything.”

“You’re welcome,” he paused. “Would it be weird to say I had fun?”

“Well,” Ailsa thought for a moment. “No one died, or got too seriously injured, so no.”

He smiled. “Your mind works in the strangest and simultaneously coolest way.”

It was this compliment that struck her. She felt it more than anything else he’d said to her, and anything else that had happened that night. His blue eyes held hers, perhaps a moment too long, and she knew she was doomed.

She liked him.

A lot.