Where Sea Meets Sky (24 page)

I don’t tell them that, of course.

The next morning there’s dew covering the tarp above my head and everything feels slightly damp, but it’s warm compared to the last few nights out in the bush. I wake up before the girls and try to land in the bus below without waking them. I make good long use of the showers at the campsite. It’s the first shower for days—and it’s a hot one—and I stay in it as long as possible, even though it means pumping more twenty-cent coins into the machine.

By the time I emerge, my skin is pink and red like a newborn but I don’t care. I feel like I’ve washed all the grime and controversy of the last few days off of me.

Thankfully, all the beauty stays with me. The sunset and sunrise over Key Summit. Gemma’s honest words. The look on her face while she took in the world, so new to her. The feel of her between my arms.

I want her so badly and it’s more than I can bear. Her sudden frost keeps me back and I’m constantly misreading her looks and her words, wanting to believe that she feels something for me but so afraid that it’s all in my imagination. It was almost like she flirted more with me when she was with Nick, and now that she’s not, I’m nothing more than some guy paying for petrol.

After a quick breakfast, we work our way out of tiny, quaint Arrowtown and onto a narrow winding road that’s supposed to lead us from here to Christchurch. Before the Routeburn Track, I’d contacted Tibald to see where he was and it seemed like Christchurch was the only place where our paths would intersect.

In our original plans, we were supposed to stop overnight at a bed and breakfast in a town called Twizel and go on a Lord of the Rings Tour, which my inner geek was flipping out over, but now with Nick gone, Gemma seems hellbent on getting us to decent civilization.

She drives Mr. Orange as if her life depends on it, and even when we stop at Lindis Pass to take pictures of the yellow flowers dotted on rolling suede brown hills, she seems like a woman on a mission. None of what we’re witnessing seems to be sinking into her brain, and her face remains impassive and dull, as if she’s not really here.

The ache she was talking about, well, I’m starting to feel it now. I look at Amber and she doesn’t seem to notice that Gemma has gone into auto-pilot, her own attention focused out the window at the rolling hills of tussock under a saturated blue sky, not on our driver. But mine is, and I just want to beg her to stop driving, to just take a moment and breathe.

Luckily—or unluckily—Mr. Orange decides to do that for us, and it’s all thanks to me. Outside of Twizel there’s a turnoff for Mount Cook, the tallest mountain in New Zealand. I get Gemma to turn onto what looks to be a private drive. From where the main road is, it looks like it climbs and snakes its way up a hill, providing spectacular views of the brilliantly blue Lake Pukaki and Mount Cook. I want a view that will knock Gemma’s socks off. I want her to feel.

Mr. Orange has gone through a lot and I assume the Shaggin’ Wagon can take some more. We’re about three minutes up this rough, steep, drive when the bus starts to cough and shake and then comes to a stop.

Then it starts rolling backward.

“Put on the hand brake!” I manage to yell before the back wheels go over the side of the hill and the bus slumps to a stop amid a cloud of dust. Wind whistles in through the open back window.

Gemma slowly turns around and eyes me, her face pinched and panicked. I hate being the voice of reason. I want to flap my arms and panic, too.

“We’re good,” I manage to say. “Let’s take a look at her.”

I get out of the bus and come over to Gemma, opening her door. Once again she’s clad in shorts and I have a hard time concentrating on the bus instead of her smooth, fine legs, but I manage. Either Mr. Orange has run out of gas way before his time or he’s overheating.

One look at the engine tells me that it’s not the problem.

We’ve run out of gas and in the worst place possible.

Gemma looks absolutely embarrassed, and though she should be, I also can’t blame her. Considering everything that’s been going on with her, I should have been the one driving, not her. She needed to sit back and pull herself together. Or let herself unravel. I would be fine with either one.

“I’m such an idiot,” she moans, her head pressed against the steering wheel.

I place my hand on her back and rub. She flinches at first but I try not to take offence. I keep doing it, persistently, and eventually she relaxes into me. She’s saying more than she realizes, I just wish she’d let her body call all the shots.

“It’s just petrol,” I tell her, remembering to use the proper term. “I’m sure there’s someone just up the road who will give us some. People tend to understand this shit out in the country. I bet whoever lives here gets people like us once a week, dumbasses like me who think it’s a great idea to come up here and take pictures.”

Naturally, it’s up to the dumbass to journey up the rest of the steep, winding drive to find out if anyone actually lives up here. Gemma and Amber stay behind, keeping each other company, and I start the climb, hoping I don’t run into some backward sheep farmer.

Of course, that’s exactly who I run into.

I get to the top of the crest, my body covered in sweat, when I see a small, ramshackle farmhouse amid rolling fenced pastures as far as the eye can see.

There’s a man between it and me, holding a shotgun, a border collie at his side, staring up at him as if waiting directions.
Do I kill the punk or not, master?

“Uh, hi,” I say loudly, raising my arm in a wave. “We had a bit of car trouble down the road.”

The man stares at me. He’s wearing a leather coat over dirty jeans and a thick wool sweater, a cowboy hat on his head. His face is smudged with oil or something. He couldn’t look more stereotypical if he tried.

Somewhere in the distance, among the waving tussock, a sheep baahs.

I feel like I’ve wandered into an episode of
Flight of the Conchords
and someone is having a laugh at my expense.

I continue, slightly unnerved. “It’s nothing major, we just ran out of gas—sorry, petrol. We’re wondering if you have a jerry can and any petrol to spare, or maybe you could give us a ride into the nearest town?”

“Nearest town is Glentanner,” the man says, totally monotone. “Nearest petrol is Twizel. They’re both out of my way.”

“Okay,” I say, trying not to sound panicky. Guess I’ll be going back down to the bottom of the hill and trying to hitchhike or something. “Thanks anyway.”

I turn around and he calls out. “What will you give me?”

I stop and look at him. “Sorry, what?”

He just nods. “I said, what will you give me for the petrol. I have a jerry can in the shed if you’d like but petrol is expensive out here.”

“Oh, sure,” I say quickly and bring out my wallet from my jeans. “Um, I have some coins,” I say, rifling through it. The last cash I took out was in Wanaka, which reminds me that I owe Gemma a lot of money. “I have eighty cents,” I say pathetically. “But the girls probably have a load of cash.”

All right, now I’m just saying all the wrong stuff.

He raises his brow. “The girls?”

“My friends, they’re back at Mr. Orange, waiting for me.”

I can tell he wants to ask what Mr. Orange is but he only nods stiffly before turning and walking away. I wait there for at least five minutes as he disappears behind his house, debating whether to just give up and head back to the bus or stand there like an idiot and hope he comes back out.

My patience and/or stupidity pays off and he eventually emerges carrying a small red can of petrol. I do an inner whoop of joy in my head and then start walking back along the road just before he reaches me so I don’t have to do the awkward walk with a burly, silent sheep farmer.

The views are amazing on the way down, though, just as I thought, with the powder blue of Lake Pukaki stretching out to the bare suede hills of the east and up to the jagged white peaks of Mount Cook to the north. I want to stop and take a picture to paint later but I don’t dare with this man at my heels.

When we get back to Mr. Orange, Gemma and Amber are waiting, leaning against the side of the bus, facing the views and the sun. Once they see Mr. Friendly coming, they straighten to attention.

“Girls,” I say, “this kind gentleman has agreed to help us out with some petrol. Do either of you have some cash we can give him?”

The two of them start frantically digging. Amber pulls out a five-dollar bill and a bunch of lint and candy wrappers from her purse. Gemma frowns, flipping through her wallet.

“I just have my credit cards and my bank card,” Gemma says, her voice shaking slightly. “I spent my last bills this morning.”

I look at Mr. Friendly hopefully. “Will five bucks do?”

He gives me a level gaze. So does his dog. “It’s worth more than that. What else ya got?”

Oh boy. “Well, you see,” I say, scratching the back of my neck, “we were broken into the other day and they stole everything valuable.”

The farmer walks over to the bus and peers inside the window. “Sure is a nice specimen, though you should know better than to try and take her up roads like this.” Then he pauses. “What’s that?”

I join him by his side. He smells like strong cigarettes. I follow his gaze to the stack of seventies porn on the backseat. I had been rifling through it earlier, comparing the bushes of 1977 to 1979.

“Uh, really old
Penthouse
and such?”

He grunts. “All right. I’ll take it.”

“Say what?” I glance at Gemma and Amber huddling by the end of the bus.

“Petrol for the nudie mags. Fair trade. Keep your five dollars.”

“Really?” I ask, feeling momentarily torn up about it. “You sure you want those?”

“Oh, just give him my uncle’s porn stash, Josh,” Gemma hisses.

I do as she says, bringing them out of the bus and placing it in Mr. Friendly’s arms. “Do you want some Pink Floyd tapes to go with it?”

He scrunches up his face, the first emotion I’ve seen from him, and passes me the jerry can, before walking back up the hill, the dog trotting after him.

“Thank you!” I call after him. I look at Gemma who is shaking her head, her brows pinched in worry as she pushes past me to the driver’s side.

“Hey,” I say, touching her arm for her to stop. “I’ll drive. You just relax.”

“I’m fine,” she says, lying once again.

So I let her be, knowing if I insist, she’ll snap. She seems very close to losing it. I go and pour the can of petrol into the bus and Amber gets in the backseat, making sure I’m up in the front beside Gemma.

She starts the car and slides
The Wall
into the cassette player, as if to punish me for trying to sell the tapes to Mr. Friendly.

“Hey You” starts to play and my mind is focusing on the lyrics, applying them to Gemma. Is she feeling so desolate, alone, wanting to give in without a fight? It’s a tumultuous, heady song and it takes us down the steep dirt road, to the paved one that runs along Lake Pukaki. To my surprise she takes a right, heading back the way we came from Twizel.

“Aren’t we going to Mount Cook?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “Lake Tekapo.”

I shrug, but I’m actually relieved that we’re heading back toward civilization. The whole running out of petrol and trading porn with a sheep farmer has put me in a weird mood, and tensions in the bus are running high, crisscrossing like threads in danger of snapping.

“What’s in Lake Tekapo?” I ask, trying to get her to talk, to open up. She’s slipped her sunnies on her eyes so I can’t try and read them.

“A very blue, very cold lake,” is her simple answer.

I eye Amber in the rearview mirror and she gives me a worried look in exchange. We’re just along for the ride.

We motor away from the mountains and toward the cloud-filtered sunshine and rolling brown hills of the east. Lake Tekapo seems to be a popular stop, and as we get closer I can see why. The lake is even bluer than Pukaki was and the town along the banks is a pleasing slice of civilization.

But we don’t stop there like I thought we would. Gemma keeps driving until we come to a turnoff and then she’s gunning it toward the lake. On one side of us the road curves along pine trees and holiday homes; on the other there is a stream and a picturesque stone church surrounded by snap-happy tour bus groups.

At a gravel lot at the very end, not far from the shore, she angrily slams Mr. Orange into park and jumps out of the bus. Instinctively I do the same, jumping out after her.

As I stand there watching, I know the memory is being ingrained into my head. The van is still running and “Comfortably Numb” is blaring from the speakers as Gemma strips down to her underwear and runs to the edge of the lake. She’s barefoot and she doesn’t even slip on the rocks as she goes. She’s running from something, she’s running to something. The water will be ice cold.

It’s just what she wants. She wants to be numb.

I’ve listened to this album enough damn times now to know that “Run Like Hell” will play soon. So I do. I run like hell toward her. I leave Amber in the back of Mr. Orange, puttering on Lake Tekapo’s shore, and I’m sprinting toward the water, unwilling to let her out of my sight.