Inconsolable

by Ainslie Paton

  He was a risk and she was taking him.

  She turned and took off, pounding back the way they’d come and he was on her, the sound of him louder than the sea in her ears, then beside her and she settled the pace, no longer trying to outrun him, or wind herself, just trying to be free and complete in the experience. He was right, running could be a meditation and this, now, was the clarity she needed after the confusion of the day, it was lime and ginger and green tea, the thrill of a something familiar yet tasting so very different.

  They did two more laps, not talking, stopping only once more when Foley saw an old neighbour and stopped to say hello briefly. Drum moved ahead but kept her in earshot. He didn’t want to be in her conversation, but he wasn’t leaving her either.

  She suggested they sit. He suggested she talk. So she told him about Gabriella and the strange moment with Roger, about Adro and how she’d let her own team down, about the Beeton house and her failure to find a solution for the deadlock, about whether it was time for her to move on.

  “You love this job.” It was the first thing he said and it felt out of sync with everything she’d been saying.

  “I did love it, but now I don’t think. It’s not. Oh.” How annoying. He was right. And it’s what Nat would’ve said too, but she’d have listened for half the time it’d taken for Foley to rave.

  “You love it, or this decision wouldn’t be so hard. You’d have made it already, wouldn’t be agonising about it.”

  “Maybe.” She wasn’t going to concede so quickly. “What makes you so sure?”

  “I haven’t always lived in a cave.”

  “You had a job you cared about?”

  He shook his head, whatever memories stirring making him frown. “Obsessively.”

  “What happened?” He unfolded and stood up, withdrawing from the question and from her. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “Hah!”

  She looked up at him, surprised by the lack of irritation in the sound, and the hand held out to her. She took it. “I did mean to pry. Everything about you fascinates me.”

  He gave her hand a tug. “That’s not a good thing.”

  She stood and kept his hand, dry, slightly sandy, in hers. “It’s the truth.”

  “A variable concept.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  He stared out towards the murky mass of sea and sky. “People use truth as a weapon all the time.” He was so close physically, but remote like a castaway on a deserted island, shipwrecked and alone, a survivor so adjusted to his constrained existence, he feared being rescued. She ached to give him back his freedom, to bring him home.

  “What happened to you, Drum?”

  He squeezed her hand, then released it. “You ask the wrong question.”

  She sighed. This was old ground. “You wouldn’t answer me if I found the right one.”

  He said, “See you, Foley,” and moved off.

  She wanted to shout, when? Instead she called, “I’ll be here tomorrow,” then bit her tongue to stop more words, more desperate hope coming out of her mouth. If she wanted him rescued, it didn’t start with tying him in obligations.

  She drove home, had the same conversation about work with Nat and resolved to rescue that situation as well, with a different set of words, and she went to bed hugging the truth of a new friend.

  16: Yard Work

  The three women were beautiful in the way money and time can make a woman look airbrushed to perfection, to unreality. Drum didn’t want the invasion, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. He didn’t expect the conversation.

  When he mowed lawns and clipped hedges for Greenie, the homes were normally empty, the owners at work. It was get in, get it done, get out quickly, move on to the next one. The more yards tended to, the more money in his hand. A clean, straight, honest proposition. This work didn’t come up very often, only when one of Greenie’s regular boys was sick or on holiday, so Drum wanted to make the best of it.

  Except they came home and he wasn’t finished. He didn’t hear the car in the drive over the mower and the earmuffs. He didn’t realise they’d set themselves up on the deck and were watching him like he was a floorshow until they were well and truly settled with iced tea and plates of fruit. He was shirtless, hot and dirty and they were artfully amused.

  “You’re Dave Green’s man,” the blonde called when he’d shut off the mower and pulled the muffs off. Must be her home, her clone-like friends.

  “Do you do pools?” said the brunette, and the three of them laughed.

  “No pools.” He moved to the edge of the deck where he’d left the hedge clippers.

  “Shame.” She dangled a strawberry over her mouth. “I’d put a pool in,” she kissed it, “just to have you come and do it.”

  That got a roar of approval. He took the clippers to the hedge. Knew he’d be putting on more of a show as he reshaped it; nothing he could do about it, except work quickly.

  “Don’t mind Madison. Please come and have a cold drink.” The blonde again. Definitely her house.

  He looked at her, holding out a glass of something sweaty with cold. He could hear ice cubes clink. His lip lick was involuntary. He took two strides back to the deck and the glass from her hand. “Thank you.”

  “Please come and sit down with us.”

  He ignored that, gulped the drink down and put the glass down on the deck. The third woman, another blonde, painfully thin, said, “Good Lord. When do you get off work?” More cackling, which he ignored to start on the hedge.

  “No, seriously. You’re gorgeous. I want to take you out for a real drink.”

  “She is serious,” said the homeowner.

  “I’m serious. My name is Sienna and I’ll buy.”

  “She’s deadly serious. And she’s picky. Plus she puts out on the first date.”

  Laughter, then, “Maddy! You’ll scare him off.”

  He clipped the hedge. He could scare them off with one sentence, with one word. He knew women like this: confident, predatory, competitive, a lot tougher than they appeared. They looked like pictures from a magazine, slender and serene, but they’d worked to be that proud, they weren’t trembling flowers, they could be softly, persuasively aggressive.

  They used to be his playtime, his fun hard after work hard, his distraction so he could focus again. He clipped the hedge and squinted at Sienna. It was tempting. It’d been a very long time and it might not take much. If she wanted an uncomplicated fuck there was nothing stopping him, unless there was a husband, a steady someone. He wasn’t getting in the middle of that.

  Sienna brought him another glass of the sweet tea. Up close she was all bird bones, reminded him of tinier, sharper version of his Anna. He hadn’t thought about Anna in years. She’d likely have two point five kids with that banker now, the mansion house, the private schools, the skiing holidays in Vale, and yachting around the Greek Islands. And she deserved it.

  He took the glass from the Anna pretender. “What do you drink?” He gulped the tea, taking an ice cube into his mouth as she eyed him over.

  “Cocktails, darling.”

  “Ah-huh. Do you really want to buy me a drink?” They still had an audience. Rapt.

  “What would it take to get you to come out with me?”

  “You don’t really want to go out, do you?”

  She grinned. “Not really. I’d rather stay in.”

  This was too easy. He could break this one between his teeth like the ice cube he’d just crunched. He hadn’t thought about sex since he’d walked away, thought that part of him was in deep hibernation until Foley arrived. Now his body was tuned back in. He could have Sienna and use her and forget about Foley, like Sienna was using him for whatever the fuck reason made her come on to him in her girlfriend’s backyard with an audience.

  “How about we skip the prelims and go straight to the main event?” He couldn’t keep meeting Foley if he kept burning for her, this might help.

  Sienna took
the glass out of his hand, then pressed it against his chest, running its wet, cool surface down his abdomen till it bumped the waistband of his shorts.

  “I could do that.” Her eyes went from his attentive dick to his face. “Your place or mine?”

  He laughed, stepping away from her hand. “Mine is a mess.”

  “I don’t care. Yours would be better, easier.”

  So there was a man, or it was her way of staying safe, having an exit plan. It was his as well. There was no way this woman, even if she’d invented the blowjob, could make him forget Foley.

  “I’m homeless, honey. I live in a cave at the beach.”

  Sienna’s mouth opened, her eyes bulged. He heard, “What?” and, “No,” from the deck.

  Sienna laughed. “Hunky and hilarious.”

  “No joke, babe.”

  Her hand to his arm. “No, really?” She still thought he was joking.

  From the deck, “Are you that man from the paper?” Homeowner clicked on and she was worried. A homeless guy was drinking her iced tea, cluttering up her designer backyard.

  “Yup.”

  “Actually, you know what, it’s too hot. You can leave the hedge for another day.”

  The game was over, but for the final moments. “It’ll only take me a few minutes.”

  “No, no, seriously,” flapping hands with those manicured fingers, leopard spot nails, “it’s too hot, really.”

  He gave her a confused look to soften his words. “So now you know I’m homeless, I’m not good enough to clip your hedge?”

  “It’s not that, I quite like the shape it has now, more natural, leave it.” And get out, get out, get out of my backyard because you make me feel unsafe. He could see that in her big eyes.

  He looked from the homeowner, what was possibly a frown on her flawless face, to Sienna shocked rigid at his side. He should’ve let it go, but it pleased him to screw with them. “So where do you live, babe?”

  She came to life and backed away, covering with a laugh. “You thought I was for real. Oh, darling, I was just having fun.” She flushed a tropical pink, hand to her throat. “I’m sooo sorry. I’ve got a man at home. I was just fooling with you.”

  “You should go.” Homeowner had a phone in her hand.

  This was the last job he’d get from Greenie. He packed up and left by the side gate. None of the women looked at him again, it pissed him off. He should’ve fucking flirted with them, strung the little bird girl along and drunk their tea, made them feel good. What would it have mattered? He’d have finished the hedge and kept working for the rest of the day. Now he had hours to fill before he could see Foley, all the aggravation, and half the money he’d wanted to make.

  He’d tried to stay away from Foley. He’d lasted two nights. She was whatever an obsession hardened into after it stopped consuming you and it simply was you. He was a fool to think a quick fuck with bird girl would’ve changed that. Foley wanted friendship, but he couldn’t give her that; even that comfort, that softening towards her might destroy him.

  And yet he couldn’t stop thinking about her, counting off the hours till he could see her again.

  He’d met her every night after the night she told him about Gabriella and Adro, Roger and Hugh and Megan, and the house she wanted to save. He knew the house; it was doomed. It would rot until it had to be pulled down and something imposing and new would take its place. It would end up like he’d begun.

  Every night they pounded along the beach, racing the dying light and each other’s fascination. Every night they sat in the cool sand and tried to meditate.

  Sometimes she talked about work. Sometimes he told her about whatever odd job he’d done that day. Sometimes they simply breathed, inhales and exhales syncing together. It was addictive, this connection with her, the gravity of it called to him, made him strain towards her against everything he’d made his life into, the deliberate, necessary isolation and denial.

  He told himself it was good for her to have someone to talk to, constructed a truth where he was an asset to her existence.

  He was conniving scum. And the truth was fiction. Last thing Foley needed was the complication of him in her life and nothing proved it more than what just went down. He could play at being normal, at being wanted all he liked, he was a homeless guy for a reason, someone to fear, and nothing was going to change that.

  He took the truck and the gear back to Greenie’s and collected what money he’d made. Greenie was sorry, but not that sorry, and both men knew Drum had mowed his last lawn. He walked back to the beach and showered off the day, dressed again and went to the shore to wait for Foley.

  The only strain between them now was remembering not to touch her. She wasn’t so careful with him. She bumped him, shoved him, leaned against him and he pretended to be made of stone, of rock so impermeable the wonder of her body, the softness and scent of her, had no impact on him.

  Tonight, instead of running, she wanted to see a movie and he had no excuse not to agree, given the theatre was set up on the beach. Cinema in the Sand, another of Foley’s council’s events.

  Tonight they were playing a Mad Max marathon. He’d seen the first three before, but in all likelihood, even without Foley, he’d have come to watch them again because he could sit alone in the dark.

  She insisted on getting fish and chips. He insisted on paying his way. They sat at the back away from the family groups, the dating couples and the die-hard movie fans. This was the tail end of autumn, the days were warm but the nights were cold. She was bundled up in track pants and a zippered fleece jacket. He hadn’t yet replaced the winter clothing he’d lost, but he’d need to soon. He’d scavenged one long-sleeved t-shirt and a pair of ill-fitting jeans, but they were enough for now.

  They ate through Mad Max. She shuffled closer during Road Warrior, her hand in the sand close to his thigh. Too close. He shifted so he wasn’t tempted to take it in his. In Beyond Thunderdome she leaned against his side. Every muscle group went on red alert, tensing, skin cells buzzing. She seemed oblivious to anything except the fact he made a good wall to lean on. He ground his fist into the sand to stop from wrapping his arm around her and looked down at the top of her head. “Tired?”

  “Nope.”

  But he’d seen her eyes closing. “You don’t have to stay for me.”

  “I’m not staying for you.” She sat upright. “And I’m not here for work either. The event team is running this.” She was annoyed.

  “Okay.” He didn’t know what he was supposed to do with that.

  “You could loosen up. You’re cold. I’m warm. If you put your arm around me, we’d both be more comfortable.”

  “That’s not—”

  “Not what friends do? Seriously, Drum. Grow a brain.”

  She turned back to the screen, crossing her legs and hunching forward. Shit. On screen Max Rockatansky was about to enter the Thunderdome. Tina Turner’s Aunty Entity was laying down the law.

  He leaned a little towards her and kept his voice low, though they were well back from the crowd and it wasn’t a silent one. “Are we having a fight?”

  She shifted a little further away. “We’d have to mean something to each other for it to be a fight.”

  That was that then. He looked out across the sea of bodies sprawled in the sand, on towels, on picnic rugs, on each other. He moved so he was behind her, put his legs either side of her hips and leaned forward so his chest grazed against her back. She was warm. She was also still pissed off. He put a hand to her shoulders to ease her against him and got a gruff, “That’s better.”

  It took most of the Thunderdome battle for her to soften and relax into him. It took all of his willpower not to force more of his touch on her. His thighs, his hips, his chest, all had contact with her. He braced his hands behind him so he could take her lush weight, so he could contain the want to wrap himself around her, bury his face in her neck and fill his nose with the scent of her.

  She fell asleep during Fury Road.
She curled sideways, bringing her knees around, tucking her face into his chest. He froze, her breath on his neck, the blood long gone from his hands, the pins and needles were a memory and they were lumps of flesh and gristle. He had to move so he brought his arms around her, rested them across her waist and hip. That adjustment must’ve woken her, but she was content to snuggle and he was at a loss what else to do other than wake her and go home, and to his own unease he didn’t want that. He wanted this, Foley in his arms, in his life.

  This was the tenth day in a row he’d spent time with her. This was the first time he’d willingly, deliberately, touched her with intent, since their handshakes, since helping her over rocks, or to her feet from the sand, since he’d let her pound his chest with her stinging fists for scaring her.

  It was dark, no one could see them. Anyone who could didn’t care. He wrapped his arms around her and held her fast.

  This was the tenth day he’d stood on the cliff edge and hadn’t needed its power to remind him not to jump.

  17: Juggling Chainsaw

  He’d insisted on paying his own bus fare and now Drum was emptying his pockets into the upturned cap of the man begging outside Town Hall train station.

  Foley had lost him in the Saturday night crowd, only realising she’d crossed the road alone when she pointed out a busker on a unicycle juggling machetes and the person beside her who said, “Rad,” wasn’t Drum.

  She went back the way she’d come, crossed the road again. Drum was on his haunches talking to the older man. As she approached, they both stood and shook hands and Drum tipped his chin at her in a way that indicated he knew she was waiting.

  She flushed with embarrassment. She’d seen the man, sitting cross-legged on the pavement, a nuisance, a hazard. She’d ploughed straight past him without a thought as to why he was there, other than a vague concern about stepping on his hat.

  She went for her wallet, tipped change and two five dollar notes into her hand and bent to put them in the man’s hat. Was it enough, too much? It was guilt rather than any specific currency. It was a busy corner and people had to dodge around her, a woman saying loudly, “Watch out,” another person’s shopping bag slapping against her legs.