Maureen looked at her watch and saw that it was gone 4.00 pm. The sun was still high in the sky and she’d been in and out of every shop in the main tourist zone. She’d succumbed to a few bargains while doing so and was now carrying three shopping bags. Her feet were killing her and she had an overpowering urge for a cigarette even though she’d quit a year ago. Her limp was caused by bone growth on the spur of her heel and the longer she was on her feet the more painful it got. The flip flops delivered none of the pain relief that her custom made heel supported normal shoes delivered.
She climbed the wooden steps and collapsed in a heap inside a seaside Irish Bar which fronted onto the beach walk and ordered a coffee. It arrived with a small brown biscuit and she bit hard into it and enjoyed the cool air from the enormous fan to her right. In the bar the television only showed pictures with the sound supplied by local radio.
She pulled out her street map of the area and using her yellow highlighter shaded in another part of the map that she’d completed. She’d only two sections left to visit. Where were Matt and Louise? Maureen had started the day filled with confidence but this had ebbed away as the day went on. Several times she thought, across a shop floor, she’d spotted Louise’s long wavy hair but she had been wrong. What if Louise had changed hair colour or length? As for Matt she’d met only him once before. The picture the gang had messaged her only slightly matched her recollection of him. She was pinning all her hopes on spotting Louise but the number of tourists in town were a lot more than she had remembered. Either midterm school breaks in Europe had coincided with this week or Maspalomas had simply grown in popularity while she had been away. One way or another she faced into a sea of humanity everywhere she turned. Maybe she would have more luck in the quieter hotel areas she’d yet to hit.
On the television, Gaelic football from Ireland was showing but it meant nothing to her. She hated sport with a passion, however, the ticker tape of news at the foot of the screen caught her eye. She watched as it scrolled across from right to left. The Irish president had fallen down the stairs of the Aras and was hospitalised, the secondary school teachers are going on strike over pay, again, a car crash killed three teenagers overnight and by the way world war three is about to start between the USA and North Korea. Nothing to worry about then she concluded. She was about to look away from the screen when the sport was interrupted by a news flash. She saw a face she recognised appear on the screen, it was that lad she met in the apartment lift the other day. Not Anto, the other one with the nice face. Why was he on the news? Not being a lip reader she left none the wiser.
Her break over she gathered up her bags and limped down the steps and back onto the boardwalk. The last two areas covered hotels along the path next to the dried up river bed and if she was quick she’d catch the free bus back to the Prince Hotel at 5.00.
Frisby was in his element. He’d spent Anto’s twenty on a new watch in one of the many electrical shops that sold duty-free goods on the island. It was big and bejewelled and that was good enough for him. Bling rules OK. As for the sun hat and lotion he’d been ordered to buy sure he’d stolen them easy and was now sporting a Dallas Cowboys baseball hat worn back to front. His area was up the coast beyond Maspalomas along a wide concrete promenade which eventually led to another beach and a complex of restaurants called Melonarus.
This trip was proving to be a real eye opener for Frisby as he’d never been abroad before. The whole experience blew him away. The beautiful women, the plush cars, the fancy shops, the money, everywhere reeked of money. He stared hard at the girls. Great tans, asses and tits. When they caught him staring they glared back but he didn’t care. Women didn’t like him back home either. He was used to it. The local guys his age seemed pretty boys and carried no threat to him. The cops he’d seen looked mean though. Their blue uniforms seemed to border on military and the rifles and truncheons they carried demanded respect. They stood silently on street corners or sat in cars near the taxi ranks, watching, just watching.
His walk along the promenade took him far away from them. On the sea wall which bordered the promenade and came up to his waist, silent human statues held various poses with a collection boxes on the path in front of them. Frisby was taken by the guy covered in silver who appeared to be frozen in a fall from a motorbike. His silver scarf was permanently blowing back behind him as the bike reared up on its back wheel. He threw a few Euro in his box and the cyclist raised, ever so slightly, a silver thumb in thanks.
Frisby stopped at each hotel & restaurant that fronted onto the promenade. He asked in English at the reception desk if anyone had seen his parents and he produced the photo of Matt and Louise. He explained that he’d followed them over from Ireland but had lost their address. The staff seemed to swallow the story and he reckoned they were truthful in their answers, which was always “No Senor”.
By 5.00 pm he reached the Melonarus beach and the end of the promenade. He plonked himself down at a table and ordered a beer. He took his cap off and wiped his face with it, drying off the sweat that pumped out of him. He put his feet up on the chair opposite him and loosened the laces of his Nike runners. A load of sand fell from inside his runners when he took them off and he gave them a shake. His socks were probably no better so he slipped them off too and spun them around for a bit creating a mini sand storm. God it was great to let the feet breath again. A strong breeze rattled through the umbrella over his head and the wind dried his sweaty feet.
This is heaven he thought. In front of him the clean white sand was filled with holiday makers spread out on loungers and under umbrellas. Beyond them, in the sea, people were swimming and surfboarding. One guy was being blown along with a sail attached to his board. Frisby vowed he’d be back here for a holiday for sure. Dammit he’d even live here. He had nobody special keeping him in Dublin and that’s for sure. The beer arrived and he drank from the bottle swallowing half its contents in a single deep gulp.
“Hey amigo” he shouted to the retreating waiter while waving the bottle “more – OK?”
He could feel the beginning of a session and he still had a few hours to kill. He’d done his walking for today. He finished the bottle with a second gulp and rolled the beer in his mouth, savouring its malty cold taste before swallowing.
He’d just taken ownership of a second bottle when someone caught his eye. He wasn’t sure so he stayed where he was and looked harder again at the runner. The guy wore sunglasses and a running cap but it was his whiteness that stood out in a world of tanned people. That and the fact that he was wearing of a charity t-shirt, from a race in Dublin in 2015!
Frisby leapt to his feet knocking the full bottle of beer off the table. It shattered on impact with the stone floor spreading sharp shards of glass and sticky beer far and wide. But Frisby only had eyes for the runner and started to move towards him, who by now was only feet away. Only then did he feel the pain as the glass cut open the pink soles of both feet. The pain was made worse by his sliding in the beer and the glass cutting like a razor along his soft skin of his soles as he slid. In seconds blood started pumping from his wounds and he cried out loud. Everyone looked around including the runner. Frisby knew he had to get off his feet and he collapsed on the pavement in agony as the runner turned away and jogged out of sight.
The restaurant ordered an ambulance for him and cleaned up the mess of glass, beer, blood and bits of skin from around him while they waited. The hospital was nearby and there was no one in casualty so he was lucky. They got him there in ten minutes and he was being treated within the hour. The doctor gave him a local anaesthetic before starting to clean the wounds and remove the glass from both feet. He would be held in overnight and may need further surgery to save two of his toes.
“We won’t know until tomorrow” said the doctor and left him to settle into his own room. It was gone 6 pm when he rang Anto and gave him the news. It was good and bad so Anto was more forgiving than Frisby expected. Anto grilled Frisby about the runner and felt confident by the time he’d finished that Frisby had spotted Matt, the t-shirt clinched it.
“Look sleep on it Frisby. Give me a bell tomorrow after you see the doc. If they are looking for money from you just say you are on the dole, unemployed, no money, right?”
“Trust you to find and lose him eh?”
Anto put down the phone.
“Dickhead” he uttered. “I need this like a hole in the head” Anto reached for his medication and stuffed two white tablets down his throat. He felt a migraine coming on.
He opened his map and looked at the Sonnerland district and in particular the beach front and restaurants of Melonarus. Daylight was fading fast. It would be dark in 20 minutes. He hurriedly ran his finger across the route the runner must have taken to reach the beach front from the side he did. It may be easier to find where he came from than to speculate where he was going to. The land beyond the beach on that far side was rugged and hadn’t any roads so Anto guessed, correctly, that Matt had run out to the beach from a spot inland, perhaps a kilometre or two inland. There was just the one road that took him there and it traversed largely open land. If he discounted several housing estates then there were only three hotels and four holiday complexes to explore. In fact this hotel he was staying in was one of them. He circled in red the target sites and contacted the rest of the team ordering them to drop everything and meet him at the hotel reception.
She climbed the wooden steps and collapsed in a heap inside a seaside Irish Bar which fronted onto the beach walk and ordered a coffee. It arrived with a small brown biscuit and she bit hard into it and enjoyed the cool air from the enormous fan to her right. In the bar the television only showed pictures with the sound supplied by local radio.
She pulled out her street map of the area and using her yellow highlighter shaded in another part of the map that she’d completed. She’d only two sections left to visit. Where were Matt and Louise? Maureen had started the day filled with confidence but this had ebbed away as the day went on. Several times she thought, across a shop floor, she’d spotted Louise’s long wavy hair but she had been wrong. What if Louise had changed hair colour or length? As for Matt she’d met only him once before. The picture the gang had messaged her only slightly matched her recollection of him. She was pinning all her hopes on spotting Louise but the number of tourists in town were a lot more than she had remembered. Either midterm school breaks in Europe had coincided with this week or Maspalomas had simply grown in popularity while she had been away. One way or another she faced into a sea of humanity everywhere she turned. Maybe she would have more luck in the quieter hotel areas she’d yet to hit.
On the television, Gaelic football from Ireland was showing but it meant nothing to her. She hated sport with a passion, however, the ticker tape of news at the foot of the screen caught her eye. She watched as it scrolled across from right to left. The Irish president had fallen down the stairs of the Aras and was hospitalised, the secondary school teachers are going on strike over pay, again, a car crash killed three teenagers overnight and by the way world war three is about to start between the USA and North Korea. Nothing to worry about then she concluded. She was about to look away from the screen when the sport was interrupted by a news flash. She saw a face she recognised appear on the screen, it was that lad she met in the apartment lift the other day. Not Anto, the other one with the nice face. Why was he on the news? Not being a lip reader she left none the wiser.
Her break over she gathered up her bags and limped down the steps and back onto the boardwalk. The last two areas covered hotels along the path next to the dried up river bed and if she was quick she’d catch the free bus back to the Prince Hotel at 5.00.
Frisby was in his element. He’d spent Anto’s twenty on a new watch in one of the many electrical shops that sold duty-free goods on the island. It was big and bejewelled and that was good enough for him. Bling rules OK. As for the sun hat and lotion he’d been ordered to buy sure he’d stolen them easy and was now sporting a Dallas Cowboys baseball hat worn back to front. His area was up the coast beyond Maspalomas along a wide concrete promenade which eventually led to another beach and a complex of restaurants called Melonarus.
This trip was proving to be a real eye opener for Frisby as he’d never been abroad before. The whole experience blew him away. The beautiful women, the plush cars, the fancy shops, the money, everywhere reeked of money. He stared hard at the girls. Great tans, asses and tits. When they caught him staring they glared back but he didn’t care. Women didn’t like him back home either. He was used to it. The local guys his age seemed pretty boys and carried no threat to him. The cops he’d seen looked mean though. Their blue uniforms seemed to border on military and the rifles and truncheons they carried demanded respect. They stood silently on street corners or sat in cars near the taxi ranks, watching, just watching.
His walk along the promenade took him far away from them. On the sea wall which bordered the promenade and came up to his waist, silent human statues held various poses with a collection boxes on the path in front of them. Frisby was taken by the guy covered in silver who appeared to be frozen in a fall from a motorbike. His silver scarf was permanently blowing back behind him as the bike reared up on its back wheel. He threw a few Euro in his box and the cyclist raised, ever so slightly, a silver thumb in thanks.
Frisby stopped at each hotel & restaurant that fronted onto the promenade. He asked in English at the reception desk if anyone had seen his parents and he produced the photo of Matt and Louise. He explained that he’d followed them over from Ireland but had lost their address. The staff seemed to swallow the story and he reckoned they were truthful in their answers, which was always “No Senor”.
By 5.00 pm he reached the Melonarus beach and the end of the promenade. He plonked himself down at a table and ordered a beer. He took his cap off and wiped his face with it, drying off the sweat that pumped out of him. He put his feet up on the chair opposite him and loosened the laces of his Nike runners. A load of sand fell from inside his runners when he took them off and he gave them a shake. His socks were probably no better so he slipped them off too and spun them around for a bit creating a mini sand storm. God it was great to let the feet breath again. A strong breeze rattled through the umbrella over his head and the wind dried his sweaty feet.
This is heaven he thought. In front of him the clean white sand was filled with holiday makers spread out on loungers and under umbrellas. Beyond them, in the sea, people were swimming and surfboarding. One guy was being blown along with a sail attached to his board. Frisby vowed he’d be back here for a holiday for sure. Dammit he’d even live here. He had nobody special keeping him in Dublin and that’s for sure. The beer arrived and he drank from the bottle swallowing half its contents in a single deep gulp.
“Hey amigo” he shouted to the retreating waiter while waving the bottle “more – OK?”
He could feel the beginning of a session and he still had a few hours to kill. He’d done his walking for today. He finished the bottle with a second gulp and rolled the beer in his mouth, savouring its malty cold taste before swallowing.
He’d just taken ownership of a second bottle when someone caught his eye. He wasn’t sure so he stayed where he was and looked harder again at the runner. The guy wore sunglasses and a running cap but it was his whiteness that stood out in a world of tanned people. That and the fact that he was wearing of a charity t-shirt, from a race in Dublin in 2015!
Frisby leapt to his feet knocking the full bottle of beer off the table. It shattered on impact with the stone floor spreading sharp shards of glass and sticky beer far and wide. But Frisby only had eyes for the runner and started to move towards him, who by now was only feet away. Only then did he feel the pain as the glass cut open the pink soles of both feet. The pain was made worse by his sliding in the beer and the glass cutting like a razor along his soft skin of his soles as he slid. In seconds blood started pumping from his wounds and he cried out loud. Everyone looked around including the runner. Frisby knew he had to get off his feet and he collapsed on the pavement in agony as the runner turned away and jogged out of sight.
The restaurant ordered an ambulance for him and cleaned up the mess of glass, beer, blood and bits of skin from around him while they waited. The hospital was nearby and there was no one in casualty so he was lucky. They got him there in ten minutes and he was being treated within the hour. The doctor gave him a local anaesthetic before starting to clean the wounds and remove the glass from both feet. He would be held in overnight and may need further surgery to save two of his toes.
“We won’t know until tomorrow” said the doctor and left him to settle into his own room. It was gone 6 pm when he rang Anto and gave him the news. It was good and bad so Anto was more forgiving than Frisby expected. Anto grilled Frisby about the runner and felt confident by the time he’d finished that Frisby had spotted Matt, the t-shirt clinched it.
“Look sleep on it Frisby. Give me a bell tomorrow after you see the doc. If they are looking for money from you just say you are on the dole, unemployed, no money, right?”
“Trust you to find and lose him eh?”
Anto put down the phone.
“Dickhead” he uttered. “I need this like a hole in the head” Anto reached for his medication and stuffed two white tablets down his throat. He felt a migraine coming on.
He opened his map and looked at the Sonnerland district and in particular the beach front and restaurants of Melonarus. Daylight was fading fast. It would be dark in 20 minutes. He hurriedly ran his finger across the route the runner must have taken to reach the beach front from the side he did. It may be easier to find where he came from than to speculate where he was going to. The land beyond the beach on that far side was rugged and hadn’t any roads so Anto guessed, correctly, that Matt had run out to the beach from a spot inland, perhaps a kilometre or two inland. There was just the one road that took him there and it traversed largely open land. If he discounted several housing estates then there were only three hotels and four holiday complexes to explore. In fact this hotel he was staying in was one of them. He circled in red the target sites and contacted the rest of the team ordering them to drop everything and meet him at the hotel reception.
