Just Say [Hell] No

by Rosalind James

  “Oh,” Ella said. “You mean because Nyree took off her clothes? That’s even worse, when you just gave me that whole lecture about thinking ahead and not getting carried away. Like you’d never done it. I told you,” she said again to Nyree, “he’s perfect. This is great.”

  “Consider me humbled,” he said. “And if we’re all done battering my ego, maybe Nyree could get that shower and let me see if my plastic still works to buy her breakfast, so my world could go right side up again.”

  There was a bubble of laughter in Nyree’s chest, trying to get out. She said, “Why is it that before, I was nervous about it, and now, I suddenly want to go to breakfast with you fairly desperately?”

  He started to smile. Slowly. “I don’t know,” he said, “but I’ll take it.”

  “Did you think Marko was, like, bad or something?” Ella asked. “Just because he looks like that? He’s boring. I’m telling you. He’s responsible. All he does is train and eat.”

  The laughter bubbled over. “I believe she’s your cousin,” Nyree told Marko. “I’ll go take a shower, and I’ll take that coffee, too.”

  “Maybe you could tell me why,” Marko said to Nyree when they were seated outside the Mission Bay Café with the dog’s leash around her chair leg and the kitten on his lap, “my spectacular failure at being the King of Swords worked for you.”

  She’d taken her shower, and her mass of black hair was more tumbled than ever, blown about by exertion, wind, and water. The pale-blue cotton dress had tiny sleeves, showed some very nicely rounded upper arms and a swell of pale breast if you happened to look down the front, and reached only halfway to her knee when she sat down. Which she was doing now, her bare thigh centimeters from his.

  Not a hardbody, no.

  He was carefully not looking at any of it except the hair and the face. It wasn’t easy. When she’d laughed, before… that had been a midnight laugh. A little bit sweet and a little bit dirty. He wanted to hear it again.

  “Taking notes, are you?” she asked, a saucy smile hovering at the edges of her mouth. Her emotions moved across her square face like the Auckland weather. “For your romantic career?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe taking notes on you. Tell me what I did right, and I’ll do it again.”

  She drew in a breath, and he thought, Oh, yeh. I’ll do it again, and then I’ll do it some more. I’ll do it until I get it right.

  Ella sighed from across the table. “Guys.”

  Marko said, “Can’t be helped. I bought your breakfast. Reckon that’s the price.”

  “You buy everything, though,” Ella said, “so that isn’t saying much. It doesn’t mean I want to be in the middle of your love life.”

  Marko ignored her. “So why?” he asked Nyree.

  She was spinning her coffee cup on the table with one hand. Not a big hand, but not the slim, graceful one you might have imagined. Capable and square, the nails short and unpainted. “It wasn’t that you did something awkward,” she said after a moment. “It was what you did afterwards. That you didn’t try to blame anybody. Didn’t lose your temper.”

  “Well, you see,” he said, “I try not to do that. Sounds like you’ve known some blokes like that, though. So have I. Sign of weakness.”

  “Like my dad,” Ella said. “He used to hit my mum,” she told Nyree. “Like you said. Off his nut about whatever else it was and taking it out on her. At least that’s what my mum says. He was pretty scary. He must have been, because I still remember, and I was little.”

  “Oh,” Nyree said. “Good job he’s gone, then.”

  “Nah.” Ella was working her way through a breakfast as big as Marko’s. His food bill was going to double, that was for sure. “We left. Marko and my Uncle Ander came and got us. And I think Marko gave him a hiding once, when he came back. He didn’t come back again.”

  Marko wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything. Ella wasn’t meant to know about that. Nyree asked him, “Did you?”

  “Could be,” he said. “It was a long time ago.”

  “How old were you?’

  “Twenty-one.”

  “Ah.” It was a sigh. “Well, yeh. See?”

  “I see,” he said, “no, I know that fellas who can’t look honestly at what they did wrong, fellas who blame the ref or their teammate instead, don’t get very far.”

  “Not the same thing.”

  “Oh,” he said, “I think it is. Self-discipline. Self-control.”

  “I told you,” Ella said. “Boring.”

  “Mm.” Nyree lifted her cup to her lips, but slid her eyes on over to him. It was a sexy little look. “Taking in your cousin and all, too.”

  “Could be. You can think it was my noble nature. Instead of that she turned up.”

  Nyree asked Ella, “Where were you before?”

  “Tekapo,” she said. “Same as Marko. I didn’t want to turn up without telling him. I was afraid he’d say no, though.”

  “Ah,” Nyree said. “But Marko said you’re here to go to school. So… sudden decision?”

  “No,” Ella said. “Yes. I guess. I had to a bit, you know. Change. Schools. I thought I had to. So I came up to Marko, because he’s responsible.”

  “Oh.” The weather chasing over Nyree’s face now was of the “clouds” variety. “For what?”

  “Because I’m pregnant.” She took a deep breath. “Whoa. Hard. I’m practicing saying it for later.”

  It took Nyree a moment to work through that, but after she did, she wanted to smile again at the expression on Marko’s face. Gobsmacked, she’d call it. She couldn’t smile, though, because of Ella, whose own face was slowly flushing dark. She put a hand over the girl’s for an instant. Her blue nail varnish was chipped, and the nails looked chewed. “Not easy,” she told her.

  “Yeh,” Ella said. “Not so much.” And took a deep breath. Better. Calmer.

  “The look on your face, though,” Nyree told Marko, letting the moment pass. “The King of Swords? Yeh, right.”

  He smiled himself. Reluctantly. “Didn’t sound good, eh.”

  “What?” Ella asked.

  “It sounded,” Marko told her, “like you were saying that I was responsible for your pregnancy. You may want to be careful with that.”

  “Oh. You mean— Oh. Whoa. No. I told you,” she said to Nyree.

  “That he’s old,” Nyree said. “And dull. And your cousin. Yes. You did. So tell me when you came.”

  “Thursday.”

  “This Thursday? The day I photographed you?” Nyree asked Marko. “You got a cat and a cousin on the same day?”

  “It’s been quite a week,” he said. “Played a rugby match as well. I’m throwing that out there in desperation. I feel I could be coming off as more of a hard man here.”

  “Why?” Ella asked. “She has to know you’re an All Black. Everybody knows you’re an All Black. That’s why everybody’s been taking photos of you since we sat down. And it’s all good,” she told Nyree, “except that he doesn’t have any furniture. I came with him because we were meant to be going to Sylvia Park after. Can’t go straight away anymore, I guess, because of the car keys.”

  “I could take you,” Nyree said. “As long as I drop off the dog at home first. I live quite close to Sylvia Park, and I don’t have to be at work until four. I can spare an hour or two. Shop, then take you home, as long as you don’t live up the North Shore or on the dark side of the moon.”

  Ella opened her mouth, but Marko said quickly, “That’d be brilliant.” He finished his last bite of sausage and egg and said, “Whenever you’re ready.”

  “Oh,” Ella said, then, to Nyree, “Really? You’d come shopping? That would be so much better than going alone with Marko. He’s hopeless as.”

  “Oi,” the man himself objected.

  “You are,” Ella insisted. “You know you are.” Sounding a little giddy now that her secret was out there, and who could blame her?

  Marko sighed. “Because
I pointed out one duvet cover. As a suggestion.”

  “But the one you wanted was brown,” Ella said. “I know it’s your money. I know I should be grateful and all that. I am grateful. I just said maybe it could not be ugly.”

  “Brown’s not ugly,” he said. “It’s neutral. Goes with everything. Doesn’t show the dirt.”

  “See?” Ella asked Nyree.

  “Well, yeh,” she said. “I do. Life’s too short for brown.” She finished her own coffee, which she may have been nursing a tiny bit, because she also may have been looking at Marko. “Let’s go.”

  Nyree didn’t walk any faster than she ran, Marko found. They were meant to be going to her car, but she stopped to look at the notices in the realtors’ window and pointed out a pretty house. When they walked past the ice-cream shop, she asked Ella which flavor was her favorite. When a couple who had to be in their eighties passed them, because, yes, they were walking faster, she said, “I need a big hat like that. Good for sun.” When she stopped to let the dog sniff around the curb, Marko said, “Are we going to get there anytime soon, d’you think, or should I duck into a café for extra supplies?”

  Was she fussed? She was not. She smiled at him and said, “Why? Are you in a hurry? We’re at the beach. We’re relaxing.”

  “We’re walking to the car.”

  “Exactly. Which is a lovely moment on a lovely day. People travel from all over the world to walk along a pavement like this and look at a view like this. You’ve missed it all this time, living in Dunedin, but today, you have it. Isn’t that wonderful?”

  “Dunedin has beaches.”

  She made a sound somewhere between a cough and a snort. “Yeh. And the water’s ten degrees, too. You know what they call the day when you can wear shorts with your thick woolly jumper in Dunedin? Summer.”

  “Sounds like you know.”

  “Because I do. And look, here we are. We made it, see? Relaxing walk and all. You could’ve jogged instead. It would’ve saved you five minutes. How would you have used them instead of walking with Ella and Shadow and me looking at the sea?”

  She had a point. Maybe. She also had a VW Beetle. As he now remembered.

  “And I saw you wince,” she told Marko, giving a tug to the little car’s door to open it, because, naturally, it was sticky. “I happen to know that a man taller than you fits in this car, if he squashes up. But if it’s too small for you, feel free to ring for a taxi. Oh, wait. You can’t. Your phone’s in your car.”

  “I did not wince,” he said as she shoved his seat forward to get access to the back seat. She started to put the dog into her crate, which involved getting on one knee and climbing in, and if he wasn’t supposed to look at her… well, he failed. She fastened the latch, climbed back out again, and tugged her skirt down and her neckline up, and he watched her do both.

  Fortunately or unfortunately, she wasn’t looking at him. She told Ella, “You’ll have to squash up as well, I’m afraid.”

  “I don’t mind,” Ella said, and climbed into the back. “As long as Marko doesn’t shove his seat back.”

  “Marko,” he said, folding himself into the passenger seat with his kitten, “is all good.” Marko wanted to know how she knew that a man taller than him fit in this car, who he was, and how much she liked him. He failed as a modern man in so many ways.

  Nyree didn’t answer, just hopped into the driver’s seat, pulled out, and executed a screaming U-turn. The bus behind her hooted as she accelerated off, and she said, “People are so impatient.”

  “Bloody hell,” Marko said. “I think my life just flashed before my eyes.”

  “And other people,” Nyree said, “need to loosen up.” She made a quick right in front of a blue sedan onto Kohimarama Road and said, “You didn’t die that time, either.”

  He put his hand over his eyes. “Wake me when it’s over.”

  “Ha,” she said. “I’m not the one who gets bashed in the head for a living. So what did you name her?”

  “Pardon?” he said. “I couldn’t hear you over the pounding of my heart.”

  “The kitten. What’s her name?”

  She’d climbed his shirt again. “I’ve just been calling her ‘Cat.’ She seems to like it.”

  “You have to give her a name.”

  “I know,” Ella said from the back seat. “She’s going to get a complex.”

  “She is not going to get a complex,” Marko said. “She’s a cat. I’ll give her a surname, though. Cat Cat. Happy?”

  “You,” Nyree informed him, “need to learn to embrace the pleasures of life.”

  He considered telling her that he had a plan for that. He decided to work up to it.

  After only three or four more near-death experiences, she pulled, with a dramatic screech of tires, into the driveway of an absolutely unremarkable single-story brick house that didn’t have nearly enough personality to be hers. It must be, though, because she hopped out, repeated the performance with the dog crate and the dress and the thighs, and waited while Shadow took a wee on the grass. Marko let the kitten down to do the same, and she picked up her paws and leaped about as if the blades of grass were stabbing her.

  “She doesn’t like it,” Nyree said, and Marko said, “Got that, didn’t I,” took her over to the bare patch of earth near the fence, and said, “Cat box. Go.” And fortunately, she did.

  Nyree said, “Come inside a minute while I get Shadow settled. You may want to leave the kitten here while we shop. You could bring the crate in for me, Marko.”

  She didn’t go into the back door of the house. She went into the garage. And if her driving was an assault to the senses? This was more.

  It wasn’t that it was untidy, because it wasn’t. Quite. It was just… crowded.

  Ella said, “Do you live here? Seriously? Only here?”

  “Seriously,” Nyree said. “Put the crate by the couch, please, Marko.” She was at the sink in the tiniest kitchenette he’d ever seen, pouring water into two bowls, and setting them on the floor. In the only space there was. Both animals had a drink, and the dog went into her crate and snuggled down. The kitten took a leap up Marko’s leg, dug in, fell back, and meowed, and Marko picked her up again and said, “You’re meant to explore, Cat. Failure at being a wild animal.” In answer, she crawled up to sit on his shoulder.

  Ella said, “Is your couch a seat from a car?” It clearly was. Gray. It had a blue shawl flung over the back as if that would make it better.

  “Yeh,” Nyree said. “Rear seat from a Honda. Makes you wonder why people spend thousands at the furniture store when there Car Wreckers is, and they have them just lying around.”

  “Not as comfortable, though,” Marko said.

  “Oh?” She widened her changeling eyes at him. “No good? Never lain down on a car seat?”

  He was considering the wisest answer to that when Ella said, “Where do you sleep?”

  “Here.” Nyree took three steps to the back corner, beside a door that had to enclose the world’s smallest bathroom, and pushed aside a trifold screen. It had probably been meant to look Japanese, but only half the white paper inserts remained. The other half had been replaced with thin wood, painted white, covered with pressed flowers, ferns, and leaves, and lacquered over.

  “Oh, it’s gorgeous,” Ella said. “Did you make the screen? And the bed.”

  “The screen was in the rubbish,” Nyree said. “I rescued it. Why would you buy something in a shop when you could make it your own?”

  Her bed was a non-regulation mattress, laid across the corner of the room and barely raised off the floor. It didn’t look much like his own in that long-ago Dunedin flat. Hers was a… nest. Throw pillows in white fur, in deep blue velvet, in orange satin. More blue velvet on the coverlet, an orange throw that cascaded onto the floor, and swaths of orange gauze stapled across the corner of the wall. A piece of old wood nailed to the wall held a collection of antique doorknobs hung with necklaces and scarves. There were hooks on the other side a
s well. The same type? On the same level? Of course not. Scattered all over, and hung with lingerie.

  It was mad. It was the last thing from spare and simple. Color. Texture. Everything.

  Pinpricks ran down Marko’s arm, and then the kitten jumped onto the bed and was picking her dainty way across the velvet.

  “Sorry,” he said, and scooped her up.

  “No,” Nyree said, “leave her. This bed was made for a kitten to curl up in.”

  Marko could imagine that without any trouble at all. There were two nighties hanging from those hooks. They were silky, they were short, and the ice-blue one was edged with lace. There was a black silk dressing gown as well.

  “It’s all amazing,” Ella said. “You do painting, too.”

  “I do.”

  That would be hard to miss. It wasn’t that there were so many paintings on the walls. There wasn’t room, not when you considered all the hooks holding clothes hangers, the boxes nailed next to the tiny kitchenette crammed with mismatched dishes, cereal boxes, even vegetables. But there was a painting on an easel, and one hanging over the Honda seat. It was of mandarins, some in a bowl and others, still on the branch for some reason, in a shabby white enameled pitcher set against an orange wall. It wasn’t flowers or anything you’d normally see, but it was quite nice. Cheerful. At least it wasn’t random blobs of color, or scribbles. You knew what it was meant to be.

  He couldn’t decide if she’d done it or not, though, because the thing on the easel was so different. He was going to have to say something nice about it, too. You respected a woman’s ambitions.

  Bloody hell.

  Nyree took a look at Marko, then sighed and said, “You may want to cultivate your poker face.”

  “What?” He was still gazing at Pookie like he couldn’t tear himself away. Or like he was horrified. “It’s a dog. Dachshund, right?”

  “I think it’s adorable,” Ella said. “Funny, too.”

  Nyree took a good long look at Pookie. She’d painted his younger, better-natured self lying on his back, emerging halfway out of a studded motorcycle boot, with his tongue hanging out and a paw draped casually over the front edge like a boy racer hooning around with his elbow out the car window. His long ears flopped around him, and he had an “I’m too cool” expression on his face. “He’s meant to be a badass dog,” she said. “As he’s black. His owner and her husband have Harleys and think they’re badass, and he was cuter as a puppy. To say the least.”