Featured in Farrago Magazine Edition Three 2026 as part of the Beth and the Bear column
Design by Marc Lebon
Chapter Two
Beth stood in a pile of diamonds: her fourth broken glass of the night. She made no move to clean it up. One may have said she was in shock, if a broken glass in a busy pub was anything at all shocking. While she stood still and fully considered the resonant tone of the ringing in her ears, Sadie had fetched a dustpan and broom. It was poor form for Beth to let Sadie get on her hands and knees and clean up her mistake. Beth knew this, and Sadie knew this, and Beth knew that Sadie knew this. Oh no, Sadie, please don’t bother, I'll do it, Sadie, I will. Beth had meant to say this, but she was still thinking about how to go about the saying of it as Sadie stood up, disposed of the dusty glass and went back to her work. Thanks, Sadie, Beth managed. Sadie sharply exhaled in response.
It was a loud and jovial night. The patrons of the Sovereign Hotel were red-faced and many. Men sang loudly in one corner, a football song probably, but with a melody so mangled you couldn’t tell which one. Elsewhere, a hens party swapped lewd stories, with squeals hitting the kind of frequency that makes dogs howl. There were a hundred of these stories, all playing out at once. Everyone’s lives, everyone’s laughter, everyone’s end of the week subsumed into the cacophonous chorus of Friday, 8 pm.
Must thrive in a vibrant and busy atmosphere. Must have a good sense of urgency. Beth recalled quotes from the job description she read over a decade ago. She juggled the words in her mind. Sense. Of. Urgency. She pondered over them as she moved away from her crime scene and back onto the ever-urgent floor. Her coworkers fulfilled the brief flawlessly; they moved swiftly and with purpose, appropriately assigning life-and-death significance to the delivery of schnitzel. Beth was sensorily impaired in this regard. Far more motivating for her were the glares of Adam, middle-management and menace to Beth. He stared at her from the food pass. His gaze wound her up like a music-box-ballerina; she twirled into action, cleared a nearby table and hurried back to the pass. This is your table’s food Beth—pick up the pace—how long has this been here—how long? He asked Beth and the kitchen at once. Five, Chef said. Five minutes of cooling and congealing, Adam remarked. He was very pleased with his off-the-cuff alliteration. He’d put that one with his other quips about efficient service and Having-a-Good-Sense-of-Urgency.
Across the room, darts were thrown haphazardly at a board that seemed to be impossible to hit. Beth was far from any projectiles, but her body tensed regardless as she wove through the buzz, and she was still contemplating potential dart/waitress tragedies when she arrived at her table. The two-too-touchy-lovers didn’t acknowledge her in the slightest. A Chicken Parmigiana! She announced. The plate thudded down, and the chicken slid around. And here is your—oh—you—hey… Beth stumbled over her words as she recognised her customer.
Miranda had been a classmate of Beth’s. They had been friends of a strange and jealous sort. After school, Beth had upped her hours at the Sovereign and stayed put. Miranda had gone to university and cut her hair and got to be very smart and very pretty. They hadn’t kept in touch, but not because of any high-school-treachery-related hard feelings.
They clamoured for niceties, which a distracted Beth struggled to muster, because next to Miranda, very close next to her, was she and Beth’s high school biology teacher, Mr Echols.
He had been a solid pedagogue, but his real notoriety came from his A-lister status as a teenage-girl-and-gay heartthrob. There he sat, aged, of course. His hairline had receded accordingly, but he had maintained most of his good looks. This was an opinion certainly held by Miranda, whose hands were now above the table.
Well—enjoy—bye, said Beth.
Beth began her calculations as she walked back to the pass. How old he used to be + how many years since high school – Miranda’s age (probably 27) + the knew-her-underage ick factor… Beth didn’t know if there could be a sum that would sate the dull nausea the knowledge of this relationship was causing. It had been nine years since graduation, so if there were legal issues about dating your high-school biology student, then they had surely expired. She supposed it was fine, or rather tried to suppose. Fine fine fine. Her eyes glanced back to the couple and her stomach flipped.
In high school, Beth sat at the back of the room and drew spirals in her notebook. She thoroughly enjoyed his class, but you wouldn’t be able to tell from her middling grades and expressionless face. He walked over to her and she could feel her whole body warm up. She tucked her feet behind the legs of her chair to stop her knees from wobbling anxiously. He said, Elizabeth, and her stomach flipped. Samuel, she replied. Any other student would have been reprimanded for using his first name, but Beth was his favourite. They both knew it. She was quite aware of the leeway that her big-eyed-always-about-to-cry look awarded her. No matter her being a somewhat socially stunted kind of child, she was still a teenager with a crush. There are few forces quite as permeating and intense. She knew her role here: woman, girl, whatever. She leaned over the desk and blinked slowly like a confused animal. Each fluttering eyelash stroked Samuel Echols’ ego. He just wanted to make her sweet young heart feel good, too.
Beth breathed, blinked slowly and tried to settle her writhing insides. She still sometimes thought about Mr Echols and dreamt of him regularly. Usually, they would be in a classroom or an office, and he would move close to her, and she would lean in, and then he would say something catty and devastating, like her hair looks terrible, or that she’s gained weight. Now he, the man of her literal dreams, was there with her, in the same building.
She had gone behind the bar to stack glassware, as it was the quietest task she could think of. She moved fine, but her mind had nothing to do with her hands. Those things were not her hands. Beth felt as if she were wearing someone else’s prescription glasses—the world wobbled and moved in and out of focus. She thought maybe Mr Echols would get up from his date and come tell her that her breath was awful. If he would just get up and tell her something confusing and mean, then maybe the world would stop pulsing in this strange way.