The Ottoman Motel (28 page)

By the afternoon, the sun had swung around behind the grandstand, pulsing strips of light through the wooden seats. The warmth of late-day softened the harshness of corners and edges, lent an elegance to the shapes the concrete took. Simon couldn't see Pony anywhere. He had hoped he'd find him lying in the grandstand, sleeping perhaps under his felt hat. Or doing a safety test on the seats, pulling on a rope, weighing stones in his hand, peeling band-aids apart, letting the plastic strips flutter to the ground.

Simon wandered past the ticket booth, peering inside. Still nothing there but glittering pieces of glass. Monster's eyes in their artificial darkness. The pool cover, too, was still unmoved from when he'd seen it last. As he got closer, he noticed a new shape at the far end of the pool. Pony was in the deep end, sitting on a chair he'd dragged in from God knows where. He had pulled it up to the broken card table, now fixed with gaffer tape and string so it stood up by itself. He rested his elbows on it carefully, hands bunched under his chin.

Simon called his name and Pony looked up.

‘Simon,' he said. ‘Simon Sawyer. I was just thinking.'

‘Okay.'

‘What's that?'

‘What?'

‘That bag.'

Simon had been carrying it with him all day—he hadn't put it down since it was given to him—and almost forgot he had it. ‘It's a camera,' he said. ‘It's my parents' camera.'

‘Oh,' said Pony. ‘Right. Well.'

‘I haven't seen you in a while, Pony. I was worried something had happened.'

‘Happened? No, I'm fine. Not going anywhere, me. You want to sit down here too?'

‘Okay.' Simon climbed down into the pool. The handles on the ladder were rough with rust, but his feet found easy purchase on the rungs. It felt kind of good to walk on the bottom of an empty pool. It was something not many people got to do, he supposed. Little segments of the surface view disappeared the further down he walked, until all he could see was the top tiers of the grandstand, the tips of trees and the sky. The sun receded too, the temperature dropping as the pool fell into shadow. Simon hadn't noticed it before, but a set of tiles ran in a thin stripe around the inner edge of the pool. They were covered in an intricate design, a complicated pattern of deep blue and ivory that reminded Simon of the surface of rippling water.

Pony saw him looking. ‘Byzantine,' he said.

‘What?'

‘Byzantine. That's the design of the tiles. They're amazing, aren't they. That colour is Byzantine blue. I want to find more tiles like that and cover the walls completely.' He got up and ran both arms through the air with his imaginary tiles. ‘Here,' he said, pulling out the chair. ‘Try the seat.'

Simon put the camera bag on the table and sat down. He pictured the whole pool covered in the tiles. He imagined them lit by rows of soft blue lights, the feeling of being inside all that colour. Enjoying a meal. It would feel like eating underwater.

Pony stood beside Simon. ‘Why are you carrying that camera?'

Simon zipped open the bag and peered inside. ‘There's pictures of us there. Together. I'll show you.' He took the camera out and turned it on. It was surprisingly small, covered in buttons and switches.

He found the pictures he wanted. In the first photo, Simon and his mother were sitting at a wooden picnic bench. She had her arm around him, squashing him into her shoulder. He was making a face. It was the place they'd stopped for morning tea. The next photo was Simon and his dad, standing by the car, ready to set off again. Simon's dad had his hands on his hips, one leg on the car's running board, like a noble explorer. Simon copied him, aping his pose, smiling. All three of them in the next picture; Simon's dad had asked a stranger to take their photograph. His parents each had an arm around Simon's shoulders. Simon remembered the weight of their arms.

‘Where's that?' said Pony, leaning over the chair.

‘On the drive down.'

‘Never understood why people take so many photos,' Pony straightened up, hands in his back like an old man. ‘People spend too much time trying to remember what was fun and don't have any fun.'

There was silence for a minute.

‘What was it like?' Simon said eventually.

‘What was what like?'

‘Losing your parents. To know they were gone. Does it stay…I mean—'

Pony shrugged. ‘I guess. It gets less bad I suppose, with time. But it never really goes away. There's always—' He tapped his fingers against his chin, at the place where acne ended its journey along his jaw. ‘Something, though,' he laid his hand across the middle of his chest. ‘You start to think it never actually happened.'

Simon thought about that. It made no difference really. Pony had landed here, that was all. They both had.

‘It's weird,' Pony went on, ‘you start to think
I could hug Mum with these arms
. You think
I could reach up, easily, and find Dad's hand
.' He shut his eyes, rubbed them with his fingers. ‘Are you going to stay?'

‘Maybe,' said Simon. ‘Depends.'

‘Yeah, well. Won't be the same without you here.'

Simon smiled, and wiped his hand across his nose.

‘You know what's great?' Pony stretched his arms.

‘What?'

Pony sat down on the bottom of the pool. ‘This.'

‘What?'

‘You lie down here.'

‘Then what?'

‘Jeez. You watch the stars come out, idiot.'

‘Really?'

‘Yeah. There's nothing else like it.' Pony lay down on the pool's floor, his head towards the ladder, his feet pointing to the deep end.

After a moment, Simon lay down next to him.

For those minutes, as the sky darkened, as they waited for the stars to show through, Simon pretended that there was no world outside the pool's walls, that all that existed was the sky. He closed his eyes and in his mind brought a beach to life. In the distance, he saw two figures walking. Side by side, hand in hand, the day's dying light falling across their shoulders. He let them walk on for as long as they wanted. Because he knew even in winter the horizon shimmered, made mirages from ordinary things, made the world real only for as far as you could see it.