Crossing Paths

by Dianne Blacklock

  She pulled a face. ‘We don’t have to actually bet, do we?’

  ‘I think it makes it more interesting,’ said Joe. ‘How about if you guess I have to buy you a drink when we get out of here?’

  ‘This time of the morning?’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be as soon as we get out,’ he said. ‘I’ll take a raincheck.’

  ‘What if I don’t guess?’ Jo asked.

  ‘Then you have to buy me a drink.’

  That sounded like he was winning either way. What did it matter, no names, no pack drill. She was never going to see him again anyway. But that didn’t mean she didn’t want to win.

  ‘Deal,’ said Jo, offering her hand to shake on it. He smiled, gazing at her with those very blue eyes in a slightly unsettling way, as he took her hand in his and held it just a moment longer than was altogether necessary. Jo turned her head to look back up the shaft, slipping her hand out of his at the same time.

  ‘Private investigator?’ she began, starting with the uncommon but not exactly weird.

  He shook his head.

  ‘Undertaker?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Greeting card writer?’

  A faint chuckle, followed by another ‘No’.

  ‘Department-store Santa Claus?’

  He slapped his stomach. ‘I could be offended, but the answer’s no.’

  ‘Condom tester?’

  ‘I certainly hope not. No one told me if that’s what I was supposed to be doing.’

  Jo rolled her eyes. ‘Stand-up comedian?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Circus performer?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Chicken sexer?’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘I’ll take that as a no.’

  ‘At the rate you’re going you might as well assume no unless I say otherwise,’ Joe said dryly.

  ‘Okay . . .’ Jo ran through the list. ‘Beekeeper . . . bull inseminator . . . snake-venom milker . . .’

  He rolled onto his side, propping his head on his hand so he could look down at her. ‘You’re a journalist and this is how you go about it?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, you may as well go through the alphabet to find out what letter it starts with.’

  She hadn’t thought of that.

  ‘Where’s your investigative skills, woman?’

  ‘I’ve got investigative skills,’ Jo defended. ‘In fact, I did an article on unusual occupations once –’

  ‘No kidding?’ he said drolly. ‘Look, just because I said you’d never guess, doesn’t mean my job has to be bizarre. You made a pretty huge assumption there.’

  Jo frowned. ‘So it’s not bizarre . . . or unusual?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Well, you could have said.’

  ‘I believe I just did.’

  Okay, this was a whole new ball game. ‘Are you here in the building for work?’ Jo asked.

  ‘That’s more like it,’ he said, lying flat on his back again. ‘I’m actually here to catch up with an old friend.’ He was still going to make her work for it.

  She sighed. Then she glanced sideways at him. ‘Would you dress like that for work?’

  ‘Like this?’ he said, looking down at himself. ‘Sure, maybe, it all depends. Sometimes I wear a suit, sometimes I work in my pyjamas. I’ve had to wear all kinds of get-ups in the line of duty. I’ve even worn a wetsuit.’

  ‘To work?’

  ‘For work might be a better way of putting it.’

  ‘You’re not a marine biologist or something?’

  ‘No, the wetsuit was a one-off.’

  Jo thought about it. ‘Are you an actor?’

  ‘No, not an actor,’ he smiled. ‘Funny you should say that, my brother’s an actor, or at least he wants to be.’

  ‘Aren’t they all wannabes?’ said Jo. ‘I did an article once on employment rates in the entertainment industry . . . or should I say, unemployment rates. It’s woeful, it’s like ninety-seven percent. Why would anyone go into it? All those poor sods paying a fortune to go through NIDA just to staff the hospitality industry. My best friend’s an actor. She’s been working in a sandwich shop for years, going to auditions, waiting for her big break, for any break. I can’t believe how blindly optimistic actors must be.’

  ‘I don’t know if my brother’s all that optimistic,’ said Joe. ‘Unrealistic, idealistic, nihilistic maybe. Definitely hedonistic.’

  ‘That’s a lot of tics,’ Jo remarked.

  ‘He’s all right, he’s just a little irresponsible. Youngest of five.’

  She nodded, watching him. ‘And you’re the eldest, right?’

  He glanced at her. ‘How did you know that?’

  Something about the way he snapped into responsible mode when she freaked out, Jo thought, but all she said was, ‘Takes one to know one.’

  Joe smiled. So that explained why she was so bossy. ‘How many siblings?’ he asked.

  ‘Just my sister.’

  ‘Tinkerbell.’

  ‘That’s the one. Though she prefers to be known as Belle these days.’

  ‘So is she an irresponsible youngest child?’

  Jo shook her head. ‘No, she’s married with three kids under three. She hasn’t got time to be irresponsible, so she keeps telling me, ad nauseam.’

  ‘Do I detect a little sibling friction?’

  ‘No, not really,’ said Jo. ‘I love her to death, I think she’s amazing. But she thinks I look down on her for being a stay-at-home mum, which is absolutely not the case. But for some reason, people think that if you make different choices to them that means you don’t approve of their choices.’

  Joe turned his head to look at her. ‘You don’t want kids?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she sighed. ‘That’s the sixty-four thousand dollar question, isn’t it? For women at least. I know I’m not ready right now, I still have things I want to do . . . I guess it depends if all the planets align at the right time.’

  ‘And if they don’t?’

  ‘Then c’est la vie.’

  ‘That’s an unusually healthy attitude for a woman.’

  Jo looked at him. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Only that most of the women I meet are obsessed by their biological clocks without ever thinking through their options.’

  She shrugged. ‘Maybe I’m just avoiding the decision. Sometimes I’m at my sister’s place and the kids are all jumping around and screaming and banging things, and I just want to scream back at them to shut up. But Belle and her husband seem oblivious. I don’t know if I could do it.’

  Truth be told, Jo was a little terrified of having babies. Newborns particularly freaked her out, she was not at all sure she wanted that kind of responsibility. She often wondered why hospitals didn’t keep babies till that hole in their heads closed up at least.

  But her real fear was that she wouldn’t be able to love a baby, wouldn’t know how to be a proper mum; she hadn’t exactly had the best role model.

  ‘You’re one of five, did you say?’ Jo asked him. ‘Your mother must have been a saint . . . or was she the one who put you onto those drugs?’

  He laughed. ‘No, she was great, my mum. We lived in a big rambling house on a big rambling block up in the Blue Mountains. My dad was away a lot for work, and she let us run free. But she could pull us into line with a single word. Sometimes she didn’t even have to say a word, we could tell by the look in her eye.’ Joe was smiling fondly, remembering her . . . missing her.

  ‘So if you’re the oldest, and the thespian’s the youngest, who’s in between?’ Jo asked.

  ‘Three sisters.’

  ‘Three sisters from the Blue Mountains? Are you making this up?’

  ‘No, I actually have three sisters,’ he assured her. ‘Hilary comes after me, she’s in the US, teaching at MIT in Boston. Corinne lives in Melbourne and works in publishing, and my baby sister, Mim – Miriam – she’s a poet.’

&n
bsp; ‘Wow, that’s an impressive line-up,’ Jo remarked. ‘So you’re the big disappointment of the family?’

  ‘Huge,’ he replied without missing a beat. ‘They don’t know where they went wrong with me.’

  ‘Maybe if they’d taught you how to iron your clothes . . .’

  Joe just smiled. He liked her sense of humour, even if he was the punchline most of the time. He decided he could have done a hell of a lot worse than be stuck in an elevator with Ms No-name-no-pack-drill.

  ‘So, are you married?’ he asked.

  ‘Pardon?’ said Jo. Where did that come from?

  ‘Are you married?’

  ‘What kind of a question is that?’

  ‘Just the regular kind. What’s the problem?’

  ‘It sounds like a pick-up line.’

  Joe laughed then. ‘Yeah, well, see, I couldn’t use “Do you come here often?”.’

  ‘I do, as a matter of fact,’ she replied archly. ‘Tuesday to Saturday, morning and afternoon, often in between as well.’

  ‘So you’re not going to answer my question?’

  She sighed. ‘No, I’m not married . . . any more.’

  ‘Oh, so you have been married?’

  Why the hell did she say that? Hadn’t she vowed no more personal disclosure? Okay, keep it brief and vague.

  ‘I was one of those young stupid people,’ she said, ‘but fortunately I didn’t bring a child onto the sinking ship, and I bailed out before the ink was dry on the marriage certificate. What about you?’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘Are you married?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Never?’

  He shook his head. ‘Does that make me sound like a hopeless loser or a commitment-phobe?’

  ‘You tell me,’ Jo returned.

  ‘I wouldn’t say I’m either, I think I’m just a victim of circumstance.’

  ‘Interesting way of putting it,’ she said. ‘Sounds much better than hopeless loser or commitment-phobe.’

  He grinned. ‘Honestly, I’m not afraid of commitment; in fact, I think I’d really like to commit to someone. It just has to be the right someone.’

  Jo wasn’t sure why he was giving her the sales pitch. And it was making her slightly uncomfortable. ‘It’s all a bit of a furphy though, don’t you think?’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Marriage,’ she said simply. ‘It started off as a commercial arrangement, but once women no longer needed a dowry to get a bloke, Hollywood had to invent another reason to be bothered. Thus the notion of falling in love and finding your soul mate and all that hooey.’

  ‘I think “all that hooey” was around long before Hollywood,’ Joe suggested. ‘What about Jane Austen, all the Romantic poets, Shakespeare . . .’

  ‘Shakespeare wasn’t romantic.’

  ‘What do you call Romeo and Juliet?’

  ‘A tragedy,’ Jo declared. ‘They’re both dead at the end, and for no good reason.’

  ‘You’re missing the point,’ he exclaimed. ‘Romeo and Juliet is all about love, the kind of blinding passion that will make you risk everything, even your life.’ He paused. ‘Have you read any of Shakespeare’s sonnets?’

  ‘Probably, under duress, at school.’

  ‘Well, I challenge you to read number twenty-nine and still believe that love is a fabrication of Hollywood.’

  ‘Are you an English teacher?’ she asked suspiciously.

  He smiled. ‘No.’

  Jo yawned loudly and stretched. She was suddenly feeling quite sleepy, but she wasn’t throwing in the towel yet.

  ‘Is your job your dream job?’ she asked, taking a different tack. ‘Is it what you always imagined you’d do?’

  ‘Yeah, pretty much. What about you?’

  ‘Hmm, pretty much as well,’ she mused. ‘Though I did always dream of becoming a foreign correspondent.’

  Joe turned his head sharply to look at her. ‘What?’

  ‘You don’t have to look so shocked,’ she returned. ‘It’s the blonde thing again, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, no, it’s not,’ he said. ‘Really. So why didn’t you become a foreign correspondent?’

  She sighed. ‘Long story. Belle and I moved down to Sydney when I was only about a year into my degree. I had to support her till she got a job, so it took me a lot longer to graduate, then I had to start to build my career . . .’

  And then she’d settled in at the Trib, and now she’d bought the apartment, and dreams of being a foreign correspondent had drifted into a dusty corner of her subconscious. Until something like an Iraq or a Hurricane Katrina made her wonder all over again what it would be like to be over there in the thick of it, where she couldn’t help but be regarded as a serious journalist.

  ‘So what’s stopping you now?’ he was asking.

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘I imagine your sister can probably look after herself at this stage, so what’s stopping you from becoming a foreign correspondent now?’

  ‘Well, I have a mortgage . . .’

  ‘I’ve got a mortgage and it’s never stopped me from travelling and working overseas.’

  ‘Ahah!’ said Jo. ‘Another clue.’

  ‘I already told you that I just got back from working overseas for a few years.’

  ‘So you did.’ She was beginning to have trouble keeping her eyes open. She gave her head a little shake. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘I’m thinking you must do something creative, coming out of that gene pool. Are you a musician?’

  ‘I can play a little guitar, but no one would pay to listen.’

  ‘What about an artist?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘A sculptor?’

  ‘Same diff, isn’t it? But no to both.’

  Jo yawned again. Her eyes were starting to sting in this fluorescent light. She might close them, just for a moment, give them a rest. Where was she? ‘Mmm . . . web designer?’

  ‘No way,’ he said with a sudden hearty laugh.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ she said sleepily.

  ‘The idea of me being a web designer,’ said Joe, shaking his head. ‘I’m only as technologically proficient as I absolutely have to be to get by. Beyond that I haven’t got a clue. Computers, mobile phones, satellite phones even, all useful, essential in fact in my line of work, which by the way you haven’t guessed yet. That drink is looking like a sure thing.’

  She didn’t say anything.

  ‘And don’t think I’m going to let you get out of it,’ he went on. ‘A deal’s a deal, after all.’

  When she still hadn’t said anything for a moment, Joe looked across at her. Her face was turned away from him. He lifted himself on one elbow and looked down at her. Christ, she’d passed out.

  ‘Hey, hey . . .’ he said, giving her a gentle nudge. No response. ‘Hey . . . hey princess,’ he said, a little louder, with a slightly firmer nudge. But she didn’t stir, not so much as a peep. She was out cold. Joe sat upright and took hold of her wrist to check her pulse. He hoped she wasn’t having some kind of reaction to the drugs. He watched her breathing steadily, and after a minute was satisfied that her pulse was normal. He supposed he should just let her sleep it off. But this was certainly going to look interesting when someone eventually came to the rescue.

  ‘Hello in there.’

  Speak of the devil.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ It was Mick. ‘Technician’s arrived. We should have you out of there in no time.’

  5 pm

  ‘So did you bang her?’

  Joe was opening a bottle of beer and he looked up with a jerk. ‘What?’

  ‘You’re stuck in a lift with a cute blonde,’ said Will. ‘You’re both consenting adults with an hour and a half to kill and no chance of being caught . . .’

  Joe passed his brother the beer, speechless.

  ‘Never let an opportunity pass you by, old man,’ Will added with a wink.

  ‘Now I feel old,’ said Joe, shaking his head.

  �
��Don’t get so holier than thou, Joe. I still remember you, all the girls. You would have banged her ten years ago.’

  ‘No, Will, I wouldn’t have.’

  ‘Why not?

  ‘Because I’ve got class, little brother. Something you can only dream about.’

  Will grinned. ‘I think I know who’s dreaming.’

  They clinked their bottles together.

  ‘To coming home,’ said Joe.

  ‘Happy landings.’

  Joe had bought a slab on the way back to the flat because he knew if he didn’t show up with beer, Will would drag him out to some noisy pub, and he wasn’t up to it. Maybe he was getting old, but it had been a tiring day – surprising and unexpectedly pleasant in parts, at least the part inside the elevator – but tiring nonetheless. He wasn’t used to long lunches any more, and he was still jet-lagged. He had to get a good night’s sleep tonight. Because of the hiccup today, he was going to have to go back to the office again tomorrow to meet the staff, at least those he hadn’t met already, and be formally introduced. He was expected first thing, and then he’d finally head up to Leura. Joe glanced at his watch, he really should give Mim a call soon.

  ‘So how was Dad last time you saw him?’ he asked Will as they settled themselves on the couch.

  He shrugged. ‘The same.’

  Joe narrowed his eyes. ‘The same as what?’

  Will hesitated. ‘Oh, you know . . .’

  ‘No, I don’t know. I’ve been away for two years, remember.’

  ‘But you write to him, like, every day, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah but I haven’t seen him, Will. I want to be prepared.’

  Will sighed. ‘He’s the same, what can I tell you? He’s pretty thin, he can’t get around much. Stays on the computer all the time, seems to keep him happy.’

  Joe met his gaze directly. ‘When’s the last time you went to see him, Will?’

  ‘I dunno, a while, I’ve had a lot on . . .’

  Joe rubbed his forehead. He wasn’t going to start scolding Will like he was still a child. He just wished he didn’t so often act like one.

  ‘You haven’t been leaving everything to Mim, have you?’ he asked.

  ‘What else has she got to do anyway?’

  ‘She has her work.’

  ‘The world will go on if she doesn’t finish one of her poems, you know.’