by Penni Russon
Trout was not alone in the dark.
The girl stood at a distance and watched. He was the one; she was sure of it now. But she couldn’t rush things. She had been waiting for too long to mess it up now.
As she watched, she suddenly wondered if he was going to step into the water. Would he sink like a stone, slip away from her? Afraid for him, she stepped forward involuntarily, just as he stepped back. Her movement seemed to have caught his eye; he turned his head and stared straight at her, like he was reading the dark. Her heart leaped, and for a moment she was afraid of him.
When his gaze averted, she turned softly, quickly, and walked away. Her heart still drummed inside her. Soon, she promised herself, and excitement coursed through her. Soon, his secrets would be hers.
Trout thought he saw something at the corner of his eye. That was happening to him a lot lately, but usually in the daytime. It was a side effect, he knew, of sleep deprivation. A cogent internal voice told him he needed sleep. But his nighttime wanderings were part of his survival now. He felt it, in a blind, animal way.
Walking home, he felt for the second time that night the creeping sensation at the back of his neck that he was being watched. He whirled around, his coat flapping uselessly at his sides like the broken wings of a bird. Nothing. No one.
A sudden vision of Jasper’s narrow, wolfish eyes pressed against his temples. “Big, bigger, biggest, and I will follow you.” But it was ridiculous.
Trout laughed out loud. The sound of his laughter echoed in the street, and Trout was surprised to hear how crazy he sounded, even to himself.
He hurried toward home. Maybe when Undine was gone, propelled across hemispheres, he would be able to sleep without dreaming. Maybe he could find a way to reconcile his life—his death—and be whole again, breathe the sunlight and sleep. Sleep. Sleep. When he closed his eyes, his head swam with sleep. He was exhausted. But as soon as he felt it overtake him, he would force himself awake.
He stopped at his front door and looked up at Undine’s house. She’s in there, he thought. Sleeping, dreaming, breathing. Suddenly he wanted to slam his fists against her door, to drag her out of bed, to shake the sleep from her. It was an urge so powerful and so violent that it literally rocked him; he staggered and almost fell.
He pushed the feeling away, pushed it deep, strangled and squeezed it, and hid it inside himself. But as he reached his key to the door, he saw that his hand was shaking, and he had to clasp it in his other hand to hold it still.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
For someone who was only going away for four weeks, there seemed to be a lot of good-byes. Fran said it seemed like extra good-bye because Undine was going to a whole other country.
“Will you write to me?” she said on the last day of term as they walked up to the school buses. “Will you pack up Greece and send it by international courier? Will you take me with you? Will you find me a Grecian god?”
Dominic was predictable enough. “Don’t find any Grecian gods,” he said with mock alarm.
“I won’t be looking,” Undine assured him. The last thing she needed in her life was more boys, even of the god variety. Especially of the god variety. The straightforwardness of Dominic was his most desirable quality. She kissed Dominic good-bye, but the image of Grunt flashed into her mind as their lips touched. Imperceptibly she shook Grunt—and poor unfortunate Dominic—away.
She hugged Fran.
“It’s not fair,” Fran wailed. “In two weeks we’ll be back at boring old school and you’ll still be in Greece.”
Dominic held on to her fingers. “Don’t stay away too long,” he said. Undine smiled, already a million miles away.
Trout was the hardest. He had arranged to come to the house the morning of the flight to collect the keys and say good-bye. He was late.
Jasper, persuaded that being dressed was a requirement for international travel only with the judicious application of chocolate, careered around the house with his arms out.
“Zzzoooom,” he said.
“Bugger,” Lou said to Undine. “I’ve used up half the plane chocolate. Remind me again why I am taking a three-year-old across the globe?”
“Because you love me.”
“Do I really love you that much?”
“Who wouldn’t?” And Undine twirled, showing off all sides of her lovableness. She was excited. She wanted to put on her backpack and sit at the front step ready to go, like a little kid on the first day of school.
Finally Trout arrived. He still looked like he needed serious mending. Undine sighed and her bubble deflated, just a little.
Lou swept him around the house, talking a mile a minute. She showed him all the idiosyncratic bits, like the leaky roof in the laundry, the temperamental laptop that Trout was welcome to use, the heater that had to be turned on twice in order to work, the television that made a high-pitched squeal if the color contrast was too high, and the extractor fan that had a habit of turning itself on mysteriously and noisily in the middle of the night.
“You can’t actually turn it off,” Lou said apologetically. “It just…decides. Though randomly hitting the buttons sometimes helps.” Suddenly doubtful, she said, “You will be all right, won’t you?”
“I think I can live with a possessed extractor fan,” Trout answered dryly.
“Lou! It’s Trout! Besides, his mother is hollering distance away.”
“I’ll be fine.”
Jasper said, “I’m going in a plane.” His arms were still outstretched.
“Lucky you.”
Jasper stared at Trout and added, as though it were crucial to the moment, “I know how babies are born. The mum goes like this”—he screwed up his face with effort and pain—“and then it comes out.”
Trout smiled weakly.
Later, when they were alone, Undine suddenly worried, “Will you be all right?”
“Heater on twice, color contrast down, and keep hitting buttons on the extractor fan until it stops or I go mad. I think I can manage that.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
Trout shrugged. “I’ll be okay. Anyway, you’ll be having the time of your life, no time to worry about me. And you’re only going for four weeks. Nothing much is going to change while you’re gone.”
“Come on!” shouted Lou from the bottom of the steps. “Taxi’s here.”
“Wagons roll,” said Trout, which was a dorky thing his dad said at the start of every long car journey.
“Wagons roll,” said Undine, and she touched his hand good-bye.
Trout watched Undine leave. He would miss her, of course he would: he would ache with missing. But mostly he was relieved to watch her go. For just four weeks, it would be a reprieve.
She reached the bottom of the stairs, and for a moment she paused, glancing behind her absently as if trying to remember something. She was looking not at Trout or at the house but just at midair, so her face tilted downward, giving the impression of an acute but fleeting sadness. Trout felt strangely compelled to take a mental photograph, summoning all his senses to capture that Undine: distracted, vulnerable, as if she were caught in the precise instant of departure. He had the inexplicable feeling that with their good-bye they would enter into something fixed and utterly binding, and that he might never see Undine again.
The doors to the taxi slammed shut. Undine leaned out the window.
“Good-bye!” she called, waving both hands.
Trout waved, and his smile was wide, generous and sincere. “Bye!”
When he went back inside the house on the steps, the air was already different, still and soundless as if the house had been unoccupied for years.
Prospero was waiting when they arrived at the airport.
“My daughter,” he greeted her, crusty but affectionate, and Undine hugged him. Years of disuse meant his body did not surrender itself easily to her hug, but eventually his old, skeletal frame yielded a little.
“Prospero,” said Lou. Her lips tigh
t, she added, “You look well.”
It was the kind of thing grown-ups always say to each other, but nonetheless, Undine found it odd, for in Prospero’s case it was not exactly true. He was looking older than when she had last seen him, frailer, his skin an imperfect fit on his bones.
“Louise.”
Prospero nodded his head gruffly at Jasper; he wasn’t used to young children. Jasper leaned closer into Lou but beamed the toothy grin they all called his “best smile.”
It was the first time Undine had seen Prospero in a public place, and it seemed to her that he was not quite real compared to the other travelers, almost as if he were a fictional character come to life.
When they took their seats on the plane, Prospero had trouble doing up his seat belt. Undine reached over him to help him, and Prospero sat back, compliant and helpless as a child. Or rather, more helpless and definitely more compliant: across the aisle Jasper fastened and unfastened his seat belt several times until Lou shoved what looked like the rest of the plane chocolate in his mouth. As the plane taxied down the runway, Undine noticed Prospero’s hands were shaking, almost imperceptibly.
“You okay?” Undine asked softly.
Prospero slipped his gnarled hand into hers without answering. His skin was not what she expected—she thought it would be dry and cool like peeling tree bark. But instead it was warm and alive, and the warmth traveled into her own skin and up her arm and into the core of her.
Suddenly the plane accelerated, speeding down the runway until it reached the velocity it needed to lift off. They rose into the air, the ground falling away from under them. They swung around and traveled over the dry interior of the island. As they left the sea behind them, Prospero’s grip tightened.
Undine watched the collage of fields, rivers, mountains, towns, and lakes pass beneath them. The plane was still climbing. They reached the first wisps of clouds and the land beneath began to dissolve. As they ascended into the thick stratum of cloud, Undine was struck by this thought: that the land was disappearing, vanishing altogether, and that when they descended it would be into nothing, into nowhere, and that the world she knew would be gone.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
At bedtime Trout realized that Undine no longer shared his hemisphere. But still he was surrounded by her. Her room looked as if it was still in the process of being left, with clothes scattered on the floor and the chair. He lay facedown on the bed and inhaled. The bedclothes were infused with her warm spicy smell. He smelled it in his dreams; he tasted it when her lips met his.
Lou had not told him which room to sleep in, and in the end he chose no room, or rather sleep did not choose him. As if married to his old patterns, when darkness came, he went out.
He went up the steps to Camelot Drive instead of past his own house. It was cold and clear. From the high point of the road he could see across the city, across the river to the Eastern Shore. Hobart was surrounded by hills, and coming down Camelot Drive into the city, he had the impression that he was descending into a hollow place, into the navel of the world.
Occasionally he would pass a house and a burst of noise or light would suddenly assault him: televisions and stereos, domestic disputes, a baby crying. But mostly the city was synchronized; it slept.
At the end of Camelot Drive, where it forked with another road that led into the town center, there was a pub with a rather seedy reputation. Trout never went inside pubs. He did not intend to go into this one, but something caught his eye: a glimpse of white-blond hair, a familiar angular feminine face.
He stood at the doorway, peering through the dim, smoky light. A lot of kids from school came here; they would serve anyone and never asked for ID. Tonight there was a band playing. The music was not the sort Trout normally listened to, but it was quite good, sort of smoky and grungy, with a strong melody and not much beat.
He looked for the girl he thought he had seen, but there was no sign of her. He didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry. She had broken down the rules of the game; he had stopped behaving randomly: he had come looking for her twice now. It unsettled him.
He found himself at the bar. The bartender raised his eyebrows in question. Trout looked through his pockets. He had no money. He was about to leave when he heard a voice behind him.
“Hey, Trout, baby! Can I get you a beer?”
It was the chicken-bone girl, minus her bone. Her presence was alarming. It felt like a setup, like a joke, like a mean cosmic joke. He looked around him. He wasn’t sure how to act now, how to restore randomness. It was only in making random decisions that Trout felt he maintained some control over his own life.
The way to bring back randomness was to do the opposite of what he expected himself to do. So he let the chicken-bone girl buy him a beer. Now that she no longer had a bone in her hair, he realized he needed something else to call her, so he asked for her name.
She laughed. “Jeez, you were out of it the other night. Eliza.”
“Lize!” shouted a guy at the pool table. At first Trout thought that he was accusing Eliza of lying. “Lies!” But it was apparently Eliza’s—Lize’s—go.
“Come on, Trout. Be my lucky charm.”
Trout followed her as if he had no will of his own. Maybe he didn’t. He sipped his beer cagily.
Eliza circled the pool table looking for her shot; her eyes were sharp. With the long cue held up to her side, she looked like a hunter.
She made the shot. The balls ricocheted off the white ball and each other, several of them slipping down into the side pockets.
“What do you know?” she said. “Looks like you are my lucky charm.”
Trout didn’t want to be anyone’s lucky charm. He put his beer down and waited for Eliza to have her next shot before saying, “I might go.”
“Go?” Eliza said. “But you just got here.”
“Yeah, I wasn’t planning to stay. I was looking for someone.”
“Not me?” Eliza stuck her bottom lip out in an exaggerated pout. She was playing with him, Trout knew that, but he didn’t know how to play this game.
“You haven’t finished your beer. Dell, tell him he has to stay and finish his beer.”
Dell grunted.
“You better do what the lady tells you,” said the other guy. “She’s into voodoo, this one. She might turn you into a toad.”
“Into a fish,” said Eliza. “Isn’t that right, Trout?”
Trout’s heart started pulsing. “Why did you say that?”
Eliza looked at him. “Because of your name. That’s all. Chill out.”
He heard them laughing; he knew to them his behavior seemed bizarre. He tried to calm himself down. Nothing was going on. It was just coincidence. Synchronicity, said a voice inside his head. Magic.
“It’s not magic,” he said out loud. “It’s just chaos.” Patterns of order in apparently disordered systems. Science. It was a statistical probability that he would run into her; it was the law of averages. Hobart was a small place. There were rarely more than a few degrees of separation between any two individuals in Tasmania. You sat and you compared friends, relatives, music teachers, primary schools, and eventually you’d find a link. It was a parlor trick, a party game.
“What?” Eliza said, sniggering. “What did you say?”
Trout realized he was muttering. But as she spoke, she filled his head again. Magic, said his head. “Shut up,” he said. “Shut up. I can’t think.”
Suddenly he was convinced she was somehow responsible for the pattern that was emerging where before there had been simple chance. She had given him the drugs on the weekend. Some voodoo thing? Some magic? Had she poisoned him? Possessed him. He looked at his beer. Had she done it again?
His heart was racing. His breath choked in his throat.
“What have you done to me?” he gasped.
Eliza put her hands on her hips. “Listen, mate, I didn’t do anything. You’re weirding me out, all right?”
One of the guys came around t
he table with a pool cue in his hand. “I think you better step outside.”
Trout pushed past him, out into the clear night air. He pushed hard, he didn’t see the guy fall clumsily against the pool table. He inhaled rapidly. He forced himself to control his breathing, concentrating on each breath. What was happening to him? He leaned over, his hand on his knees. He didn’t see that he had been followed out of the pub.
From the dark back corner of the bar, the girl watched Trout. That boy really needs a good night’s sleep, she thought.
From where the girl sat, she could see Eliza bend to take her next shot and finish the game, pocketing the eight ball. By the time Eliza stood up, her male companions were gone. Eliza smiled slyly, and chalked her cue. She racked up the balls, and waited.
Despite the fact that he was being punched in the head, Trout smiled.
He fell to the ground. The stars seemed close; they moved, danced like fireflies in the black sheet of the sky. Now he was on the ground, they stopped using their fists. They kicked him for a while, Trout could not tell for how long or how hard. Then somehow they disappeared. Trout didn’t see them go: by then his eye had swollen and he could see little at all. But he was quite sure they had left, because they weren’t kicking him anymore. He lay there for a while, drifting in and out of consciousness. All his life he’d avoided being beaten up, and now he couldn’t see why. It was kind of magnificent, really, except for the excruciating pain.
A few minutes later when the boys returned, the girl at the bar rose. As she passed Eliza, she said in a pleasant, even voice, “You’re done. If I ever see you near him again, I’ll kill you.” Eliza’s sneer froze on her face and became the parody of a sneer, a cheap imitation.
When she walked past the boys, one of them whistled. She stopped. She struggled with herself and did nothing.