Me Without You (12 page)

We didn’t talk about it—and we talked
a lot.
In those beautiful early weeks, we talked often until the small hours—but never again to try to name or analyse what was happening between us.

Instead, we kept things safe. I was courting a new client, a large-scale car manufacturer whose account alone would meet my revenue goals for the quarter. Lilah was initially dealing with the aftermath of the Hemway case. As soon as she seemed to finish with that, she ramped up in preparing to go to court on behalf of a group of residents concerned about a new shopping centre. There was talk about the centre necessitating the removal of what may have been an indigenous scarred tree, and Lilah was up in arms. I told her about the ad campaign we were going to pitch to the car company; she told me about the heritage studies she was commissioning into the origin of the mark on the tree. Somehow the conversation would wind its way around to her travels or my schooling or the hamburger I had for lunch or her thoughts on the stupidity of reality TV.

And the force of nature that was Lilah became a way of life for me, sooner than I’d have believed was possible.

‘Let’s go for ice cream,’ she’d suggest when I was just about ready to crawl into bed.

‘But… I just cleaned my teeth.’

‘I’ll shout you a tube of toothpaste to make up for the inconvenience.’

So, off we’d go for a walk around the suburb, inevitably finding our way to the one ice cream shop on the Corso that stocked a coconut soy blend she enjoyed. I may have taken some convincing the first few times, but I soon learned that there would be no early-to-bed when we were together, and I actually started to look forward to those late-night expeditions, especially when I discovered the waffle cones.

The ice cream bar had a high table and a set of stools at its front window. We’d sit there to eat, and watch and commentate on the human traffic that passed by on the Corso.

‘This reminds me of a holiday I took with my family once,’ I said to her one night. ‘We went to Cairns and every single night my brothers and I snuck out and went for ice cream.’

‘See, you weren’t such a good boy,’ she winked at me.

‘The twins instigated it, and I’m pretty sure they only dragged me along so if they got caught they could argue that I was supervising them,’ I said wryly. ‘But it was still great fun. Doing this lately almost makes me feel like I’m on a permanent holiday here.’

I was still working long days, and my job was still full on. The difference was, when I came home now, I had something else to occupy my time and my thoughts, other than still more work. As for Lilah, every night after the ice cream expedition, whether we were at my place or hers, she’d set up her laptop and work while I either fell asleep on the lounge or just went off to bed. The woman was a machine.

During the week, she’d often suggest a midday rendezvous. Several times I arrived at lunch to find she’d picked up a homeless guy or pair of random tourists on the walk from her office, and they were now joining us for the meal. After one such incident, I asked her if she realised how dangerous that was, and she laughed as if I’d made a hilarious joke.

‘I walk past that guy every single day. So do you—he lives at Circular Quay. If he was going to mug and murder me, he’d do it one night when I’m rushing for the late ferry alone, not in a crowded café at lunchtime.’

As for the tourists, apparently she’d been walking behind them as they discussed in Spanish where they might find a train station, and after spending so many months in Mexico on her world trip, she understood the chat and couldn’t help but offer directions. From there she realised that they’d only flown in that day and she offered to take them out for lunch.

And given the way she smiled at me expectantly after she finished telling me that, apparently that explanation was supposed to be enough for the random lunch guests to now make perfect sense.

It was impossible to argue with that kind of logic, because that was born of someone who genuinely wanted to engage with the world. And they weren’t stupid risks; there was no bringing the homeless guy back to sleep on her couch or giving the tourists her address in case they needed anything else—but given that I’d never even
registered
the homeless guy until he turned up on my lunch date, even these small gestures had a way of blowing my mind.

It was on the weekends when Lilah really let loose. I’d always loved to sleep in, but lazy days in bed became a distant memory. I suggested, almost every Friday night, that we just turn off the alarm clocks and close the curtains and sleep. Lilah would stare at me as if she’d never heard such nonsense before, and bombard me with ideas for how we could maximise the hours before we found ourselves back in our respective offices.

Having lived in Sydney for my entire life, and rather enjoying my lazy weekends doing not much at all around my home, I’d never really seen the city as a teeming hotbed of things to do and see. Lilah, on the other hand, seemed to know of every cultural and recreational pursuit happening across the broader city space. I was like a tourist in my own home, discovering all of the ways and means a person might explore a city. My camera, neglected in its case literally for years, was once again getting a workout, and I quickly invested in some new equipment to better capture our adventures together—new lenses and storage cards and filters. At night, I started to play around manipulating some of the images we’d taken together, instead of working. And it was
fun
.

‘Have you ever parasailed?’ she asked me innocently enough one Friday evening, and twenty-four hours later I was at the end of a rope behind a boat on Sydney Harbour, 100 metres in the air with Lilah in the tandem seat next to me. The nerves I felt as we rose disappeared as soon as we were at full height, with the twinkling depths of the harbour below us and the golden sunset behind us. It was utterly peaceful, except for the sound of the wind in our faces. I wondered if Lilah was onto something after all with her continued insistence that it was possible to be busy and relaxed.

The following day she suggested we head to the city for breakfast, and after we ate, casually mentioned that the Harbour Bridge rock climb was just behind us and had I ever done it?

And so, up we went, and again I saw a whole new side to the city I’d professed to love. From the top of the bridge, Sydney looked bigger and bolder than I’d ever known it to be. In the obligatory climb photo that the tour guide insisted we have, my arms are around Lilah and I look somewhat shell-shocked, as if I’m holding on to her out of fear from the height. I wasn’t scared, though—I was astounded and amazed.

Over the next few weekends, the bombardment continued, until my weekends plateaued at that same exhausted exhilaration I’d felt for the first time at the top of the valley in Katoomba. I was loving every second of it, but also longing for at least a
day
when I could convince her to just
stop
and lounge around in house clothes while we watched mind-numbing television.

One such Sunday, we drove to a community day at Camperdown before an afternoon wandering around a photography exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art. As dusk fell, Lilah had another sudden idea and we headed over the bridge to the Luna Park. Having never been one for theme-park rides, she almost had to drag me onto the rollercoaster, and when we stepped off I suggested it be renamed
Lilah’s Ride
.

‘And why,’ she asked pointedly, ‘would you name this rickety old thing after me?’

‘You misunderstand me,’ I grinned. ‘It’s not the age of the thing that reminds me of you—it’s the way that it gets to speed in the blink of an eye and turns this way and that without warning. It’s the thrill of the ride, even while you’re holding on for grim death.’

‘Is that supposed to be a compliment?’

‘Take it as you will.’

‘You’re trying to tease me, but I saw how much fun you were having. Even though you did scream like a baby for most of the ride.’

And there behind the macabre grin of the Luna Park entrance gate, she kissed me quickly and moved to skip ahead to the next ride.

I
called
Lilah as I walked from my office the following Friday.

‘Hey, you.’ There was a smile in her greeting. She was pleased to hear from me. I smiled to myself.

‘Hi, Ly. What are you up to?’

‘I’m at the wharf waiting for the five fifteen. How about you?’

‘I’ll see you in a minute; I’m just walking down now. Do you have dinner plans?’

‘I don’t know—do I?’

‘I was hoping you’d want to eat with me. I promise not to cook.’

I passed through the turnstiles and saw her, sitting at the edge of the wharf in a chair by herself. She was staring out at the Opera House, her phone on her lap and her headset in her ear. I walked slower as I approached, soaking in the expression on her face. If I could forget for a moment that I was on the other end of her call, I could have been absolutely certain that she was speaking with someone she cared for deeply. There was a soft, satisfied smile on her face, and twice as I watched, she reached up to twirl at a lock of the hair that lay over her shoulders.

‘You’ve gone all quiet,’ she said suddenly. ‘Are you still there?’

I hung up and slipped the phone back into my pocket, and she realised I was right beside her and rose.

‘How was your day?’

‘Productive.’ She brushed a kiss over my cheek. ‘Yours?’

‘Same old. So, dinner? How about we eat in tonight?

‘Okay.’ She flashed me a brilliant smile, but it only lasted a second. I almost knew what she was going to say because of the shadow that passed over the sunshine in her eyes. Already I recognised these moments when she tried to pull away from me; they still came with astonishing regularity even though we’d been spending much of our spare time together for nearly a month. ‘This isn’t a girlfriend duty though, is it?’

‘Girlfriend duty?’ I repeated the words as if I was surprised. ‘How presumptuous of you to assume so. I’m just hungry.’

‘I just… I know we’re spending a lot of time together, but you do still realise I’m not your girlfriend, don’t you?’

‘Lilah, even if you
wanted
to be my girlfriend, which I am well aware that you don’t, we are
far
too old to define a relationship with terms like that.’

The ferry was docking beside us. We automatically joined the crowd and watched the passengers arriving from Manly as they disembarked.

‘What are we, then?’ she asked.

‘Is that a trick question?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘We are two grown adults who enjoy each other’s company. Do we have to be more or less than that?’

She thought about this for a minute.

‘You do realise that’s the perfect answer, right?’

‘Has anyone ever told you that you
way
overthink things?’

‘I just want to do the right thing by you.’

‘Then let’s get a seat on the ferry, have some dinner, and you can do the right thing by me all night long.’

‘Eww, Callum.’

‘I’d like to remind you that I said the perfect answer less than sixty seconds ago.’

She was laughing. Lilah pushed me playfully towards the ramps.

‘Get on the ferry, Callum.’

W
e stopped
in at the supermarket off the Corso. I carried a grocery basket while Lilah picked supplies from the shelves, and then I steered her via the deli where I picked up a pre-cooked BBQ chicken.

‘Not going to comment on the chicken?’ I remarked as we continued our journey around the aisles.

‘I wouldn’t even know where to start,’ she rolled her eyes at me. ‘Besides which, after what that piece of supposed food has been through between conception and now, you can hardly call it ‘chicken’. Maybe antibiotic-modified, artificial-hormone-laden, fat-injected, salmonella-riddled, protein-food-like
stuff
would be more accurate.

‘Hmm, you’re making me hungry,’ I winked at her. ‘I hope it’s got extra artificial hormones—they’re my favourite.’

The supermarket was busy, teeming with people as it always was of an evening. We joined a line for the self-service checkouts behind a grey-haired woman pushing an almost-empty trolley. After a few minutes, her equally grey-haired partner joined her, arms laden with bread and biscuits and cleaning supplies. He dumped it all into the trolley.

‘Where’s the toilet paper?’ the woman said suddenly.

‘Sorry, love, I forgot.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ the woman snapped, and the tension in the words suggested that this might just be the final straw in a long list of failures. ‘Would you get it then?’

Lilah and I watched silently as the man disappeared back into the market. When he returned with a packet of toilet paper, his wife snatched it from him and tossed it into the trolley. The man leant over to kiss the woman playfully and she swiped at him with a frown.

I grimaced at Lilah, and she gave me a wide-eyed glance that told me she’d overheard the interchange too, but it was well after we’d exited the checkout ourselves that I commented on it.

‘That’s exactly what I don’t want, you know.’

‘What, a grumpy old bitch for a wife?’

‘No, the whole “death by commitment” thing. Why the hell would you stay with someone like that? Let’s say they’ve been married for forty years—maybe they should have been divorced for thirty-nine of them.’

We walked a few steps in silence again until Lilah looked over to me. ‘Maybe it was just a bad night for them. Everyone has them. He might be blissfully happy most of the time.’

‘What on earth about that exchange makes you think either one of them could possibly be happy?’

‘There’s a reason most cultures have some version of marriage, some kind of lifelong commitment. People need the security of knowing their partner will stick with them regardless of what kind of uptight ogre they turn into in old age.’

I thought about this as we continued the walk home. It wasn’t the first time Lilah had made me feel like my skull might cave in with the way my brain shifted into overdrive at some of her ideas. I couldn’t quite grasp her point this time though.