Inconsolable (20 page)

She could do nothing for random homeless people, the ones in her council or across the city, beyond simple compassion, beyond supporting their rights, but she could do something for Drum. Never let him forget he had a future.

“I'm saying friends can be more than casual.”

“And what does that mean?”

She threw her hands open, exasperated. She didn't understand herself enough to explain it to him, but they'd moved beyond careless and spontaneous. “This, being in each other's lives.”

He looked around and she braced for him to deflect with another clever comeback, a semantic argument. He smiled in his slow, shy way. “This is good.”

It was Maccas on a Saturday night, on the way to an event she wanted to check out for work purposes, but it was progress.

It was progress when he held her hand on the street, when he used his size to make sure she wasn't jostled in the crowd at the dance event, when he allowed her to pay his bus fare back to the beach and listened as she raved on about what was good and what was within her own scope to do better with a similar event of her own next year.

And when she next saw him and it wasn't for a run, he wore jeans that fit him, old and wash-faded, but at least long enough to reach his shoes, and that was progress too.

18: Meteor

It'd been a long time since Drum had to plan on pleasing another person. Not that Foley was hard to please. She was easy to please. Now. That'd happened somewhere after she'd given up trying to evict him and before they'd worked out their version of friendship.

Being friends meant he took on extra labouring work and hunted out clothes from Vinnies that fit better. It meant he was prepared to leave the area, be around her in front of other people with less fear he'd dirty her reputation. It was simple things like strolling past the old Beeton house she loved to check it wasn't more tumbledown, catching the bus together, riding in her car, lying in the park in the sun with a book each.

It meant they touched. A definition of friendship he knew they'd stretched but was unwilling to think too much about, because having Foley near, being able to lay his hands on her, was worth more to him than he was prepared to admit to. It was a fresh kind of sanity, a new way of balancing himself in the world. As long as Foley, his bright star, his fixed point, thought he was tolerable, he could tolerate himself.

She'd changed too. She'd stopped trying so hard to get under his skin, into his head. She quit pushing him to create a different future. She let it go. Like a meditation, she let the biggest of the questions she wouldn't ask, he wouldn't answer, rest. He knew they weren't going away, they were in a kind of suspended animation, not real, not present, without meaning or influence.

Some mornings when they ran together, he remembered that was simply another form of lying to himself, to her, but the necessity of seeing her, having her presence, overrode all his usual survival instincts and rules for living.

She lay on his couch with a book, reading by the light of a kerosene lamp while he cooked. It was a cold night, but with the fire blazing it wasn't too terrible and they were both rugged up. Foley in a scarf and beanie that deserved ski fields and mountain vistas, her own snowman with a carrot nose and pebble eyes. He was going to give her barbequed snapper fillets, did them wrapped in foil with lemon, following Paul's instructions, along with baked potato and steamed vegetables. He had milk and cocoa powder. He had marshmallows.

The irony of the fact he'd never cooked for a woman before amused him more than the fact she'd wiped the floor with him shooting hoops with a borrowed basketball. She was a bloody little hustler, telling him she hadn't shot goals since she was a kid. He needed to roust up a deck of cards and tempt her into a hand of poker soon to see if she had game there as well.

“What's amusing you?” She'd put the book down, rolled onto her side and propped her head on her hand.

“This.” He waved a fork. He'd acquired two and they were metal. He meant the simplicity, but it was more than that, it was the lightness. What he felt when he was with her was an absence of the weight of remorse and culpability. Foley was the holiday he didn't deserve, taking him away from the consequences his ambition had wrought. What he felt was joy and it was alien and compromising.

“Drum, you okay?”

He shook his head and moved a tinfoil parcel out of the flame. He'd thought denial, restraint, removing himself from the world would be enough to calm the temper, the restlessness inside him, allow him to go on when it seemed an impossible ask. Joy, happiness, comfort, security, companionship, all of those emotions belonged to worthy men. He was not worthy.

“You look like you've seen your own ghost.”

He wasn't conscious of turning away from his makeshift barbeque, but he was facing out towards the ocean and Foley was standing beside him. A woman worth more to him than his next meal, his next morning, the percussion of his heart and lungs.

He didn't know how he'd allowed that to happen, or how long it would last, but he knew he was powerless to stop it.

He turned to look at her. “I don't believe in ghosts.”

“I didn't think you did but if you told me a scary story here at night, I'd make you walk me back to my car.”

He did that every chance he got. She was prickly about it. Didn't want to inconvenience him, undisguised code for not wanting to be patronised. She could walk to her own car, thank you very much. He'd like to have gotten her a newer, more reliable car. He still could, but like entering the house, logging on again, there would be a cost beyond money, and her outrage. It would break the rules and leave a trail.

“I didn't say ghosts don't believe in me.” Less and less over time, they'd lost their ability to haunt him, but it took no effort at all to call them up, feel the cold fingered edge of their disdain and blame. So many of them, confused and angry.

She punched his arm. It did a better job of refocusing him on dinner than anything she might've chosen to say.

The fish was good, the potato a little soft, the vegetables a little crisp, but nothing was leftover and Foley complained of being full. She lay back on the couch and he sat in front of it, on a folded blanket, his back against it, legs kicked out in front.

“Are you going to tell me a ghost story or not?”

He shook his head. “I'll make you hot chocolate.”

“Story first.”

“Once upon a time.” He stopped. She thwacked the back of his head and he laughed. “You won't like my ghost stories.”

“I'll like them better than your non-ghost stories, because they suck.”

He half turned to face her. That was a not too gentle dig at the fact he didn't tell stories at all.

“Tell me something, Drum. Anything. I tell you everything. You know about Nat and Adro, Hugh, my parents, my stupid brother's pregnant girlfriend. You know how much I love a doomed house. You know what colour eyes Gabriella has.”

“Slow loris brown.”

“See. I know only the most superficial things about you.”

“The best things.”

“You think the best things about you are your dreadful wardrobe, mediocre cooking skills and fresh air accommodation?”

He nodded. “That about covers it.”

Her smile collapsed. “That makes me sad.”

It made him want to scoop her into his arms and hold her like he'd done while she slept and Mad Max rocked
Fury Road
. He didn't want her feeling sad on his account. He put his back to her again.

“How about this? How old are you?”

He smiled. She'd be an excellent chess player. That innocuous question was designed to put him at ease again.

“I'm thirty-eight.” She'd turn thirty this year. Her age was part of what made her restless, her assumption she should've achieved more.

She tugged his hair. “Old man.”

No grey in his beard yet, but then, the mirrors he used weren't the best. Her hand soothed where she'd pulled.

“My mother was killed in a car accident when I was ten.” Foley's hand came down on his shoulder. He heard her breath catch at the unexpected admission. “I remember her, but with a kid's eyes. She was always happy. She was always teasing Dad, making him laugh. He forgot how to do that for a long time after she died. Poured himself into work. My grandparents and a neighbour, Benny, basically stood in and raised me.”

Why had he started this? He didn't want to talk about his father. Foley left him to his silence, but her fingertips played with the hair that fell over his coat collar. He liked the gentleness, the randomness of her touch. He lifted his chin to give her easier access.

“My height, my shape, that comes from my grandfather, Mum's dad.” His brain, his intelligence, came from his father, but morphed, twisted into a capacity to do harm.

“Is your dad still alive?”

Probably. He shrugged.

“Wouldn't you like to know?”

“No.” He never wanted to see his father again, knowing the horror they'd both unlocked was still in the world, still doing harm.

“I'm sure he must worry about you.”

“He wanted me gone.”

Foley's fingers stilled. “Gone?”

“I don't want to talk about him.”

Foley's breath snagged. “Tell me something else. Tell me your favourite childhood memory.”

He brought his knees up, feet flat to the rock ledge. She asked because she thought he'd been abused. “I can't name one. I had a good childhood. I had two sets of grandparents. I was well looked after, wanted for nothing.”

“What were you like as a boy?”

“Loud, argumentative. No stop button. I liked building things, experiments. My childhood has nothing to do with why I'm here. No one hurt me.” He hadn't learned the capacity for inflicting pain from anyone else, no excuses.

She sat up, her booted feet coming down beside him. “You can't blame me for wondering.”

He put a hand over her instep. There was no one to blame.

She bent forward so her face was close to his. “Where are the people who loved you, who miss you?”

He knew her eyes were amber, this close he'd see the flecks of black and gold. Her voice was bell clear and close to his ear. The rolled woolly brim of her beanie bumped against his temple. She smelled of mothballs and smoke. He squeezed her foot to stop from wrapping his arm around her leg and turning his face to hers, feeling smooth skin instead of scratchy yarn.

She ruffled his hair. “Why are you so alone?”

Because alone was safest. Because the people who loved him betrayed him and he'd had to be his own judge and jury and jailor. “It's better this way.”

She took a good handful of his hair and gripped and he pressed his other fist into the rock at his side, knuckles grinding in the hard packed rock.

“I don't know if you noticed, but you are not an unattractive man. There is no way you've been alone all your life. You have heartbreaker stamped all over you.”

Her voice was full of humour but heartbreaker was too mild a description for what he'd done. “I wasn't always alone.”

“Were you, are you married? Did you have—”

“No.” Foley's intake of breath was a hard little gasp and she let go his hair, so he gave her more of what she wanted, more of the truth of him. “I was engaged once, briefly. It was a whim. Her name was Anna. She preferred me to be serious. I preferred to play the field.”

“Oh.”

There was surprise and disapproval in the sound she made but she was still curled close. He sighed. “You keep expecting me to be a better man. I keep disappointing you.” He would do it again. “I was a player. Deep pockets, fast women, lots of amusements. Believe me, alone is better.”

She should've recoiled. “I don't know if you've noticed, but you enjoy being alone—with me.”

He turned his head, his nose grazing her jaw, his lungs squeezing. If it was physically possible to split into two people he'd do that now. One of him would get as far away from Foley as he was capable of being and still know she was alive and thriving; the other would press himself to her as close as breath would allow, feel her lithe body in his hands and her pulse under his lips. But all he was able to do was lower his forehead to her knee and wrap his arm around her denim-clad leg.

She stroked his hair and they stayed that way and he knew he was contaminating her, bleeding greed on her, but the will to move away deserted him.

This jail he'd created for himself was hard and remote, this sentence, harsh and endless. With her wit and sense of fun, her stubborn insistence on his innate goodness, she'd cracked his resolve. Her sunny face was his reprieve, her raw energy his salvation. He felt sick at his own deceit, but still he rested against her and accepted her gentle touch.

Her fingers traced behind his ear. “Tell me something else about you.”

He sat upright, then stood. If he told her his sins he'd never see her again and he wasn't ready to face that. “I'm going to make you a hot drink.”

“You're going to make me something.” She stood too, so close she was an explosion of rich possibilities. “You frustrating man.” She slapped her hands at her sides, but she was smiling. “Why do I bother with you?”

Her smile was misplaced, he turned away, but her hand stole up his back to his shoulder. “What is this thing between us? You don't want me to know you, but you've stopped pushing me away. I should know better than to put myself in a situation with a complex man like you, but I do it over and over again.”

It was a cloudless night and the stars were backlit pinpricks of brilliance. “We're just friends.” Her way of styling them. “Two stars amongst billions, trillions. Insignificant.” He would remember that when the time came.

“Look.” She stepped around him, pointing. He followed her arm. The hot white streak of a meteor. “A shooting star.”