by Jane Rawson
‘Maybe tomorrow. Maybe a few more days. Soon.’
‘I see.’
Was there really any point to this? Should she ask him where he was going next, make conversation?
‘So, where to …’
‘Caddy,’ he cut her off. ‘I came looking for you because there was something I wanted to ask you.’ He was tapping the straw again.
She waited, stopped herself making any smartarse comments.
‘What happened to Sarah?’ He wasn’t tapping anymore, he was just sitting there, not quite looking at her.
‘To Sarah? I’m not … oh. To Sarah?’
‘My sister. My not-quite sister. Sarah.’
‘Your not-quite-sister Sarah? You’re … You’re not, right? Hang on.’ Caddy leaned forward. ‘Oh shit.’
‘Caddy, you look exactly the same. I’d really like you to tell me you have no idea what I’m talking about and then I’ll just go up there and pay the bill and get out of here, and they can throw you out whenever they feel like it. But it’s you. I don’t want it to be, but it is. You’re not your daughter or your niece or someone who looks strangely like you and even more strangely has the same name. You’re you. You are, aren’t you?’
‘Yeah. I’m me. Fuck. Oh: fuck.’
‘So what happened to her?’
‘I don’t know Simon. I don’t know. I told you last time I saw you that you’d already lived everything I imagined. I don’t know anything else about you.’
‘God damn it. So why’d you come back in here? What are you doing here?’
‘In the Rose?’
‘In the world.’
‘Doing here in the world? I live here.’
‘You don’t live here. This world is imaginary right, that’s what you kept telling us.’
‘This isn’t the imaginary world. This is the real world Simon, this is where I live. You’re in the real world.’
‘I always was.’
‘OK, sure.’
‘Don’t mess me around, Caddy.’
A tray appeared behind Caddy’s shoulder and a tall, beaded glass was placed on the table in front of her. ‘Gin and tonic, miss.’
‘Thank you. Thanks.’
Hadn’t Ray said that Simon was gay? Awesome. She’d been trying to pick up a gay imaginary guy. OK, she really needed to concentrate now and not think about that.
‘I’m sorry. Sorry. Look, can we start again?’
‘Like, we go back to 1999 or whenever it was? You don’t pretend I’m imaginary?’
‘1997.’
He stared at her.
‘Sorry. Can we start again, again?’
‘Go for it.’
‘OK. OK.’ She had no idea what to say. ‘OK.’
‘You said that.’
‘Yes. OK. Sarah. What happened to Sarah?’
‘That’s what I’m asking you.’
‘Yes. And I don’t know. Which is making you think that it was never true that I imagined you. Right. And fair enough, it’s a ridiculous story.’
‘Did I say already how I’d like you not to mess me around?’
‘Yes. Sorry. Last time I saw you was about three weeks ago, and you were seventeen.’
‘Except it wasn’t. Last time I saw you it was nearly forty years ago. You seemed older then. Not much though.’
‘Yeah, I guess thirty-three looks older to a seventeen-year-old than a fifty-three-year-old. But hey, that’s right!’ Caddy looked triumphant for a second, then thought better of it. ‘I’m no older. I’m no older. So that must prove it.’
‘Prove what?’
‘Shit. I don’t even know. Look. Maybe it’s just some kind of coincidence, that some part of your life was exactly the same as a story I wrote. Which is pretty weird, but not as weird as you being someone I imagined. Except there was that whole howling void thing …’
Maybe Ray had drugged her. That wasn’t far-fetched at all, actually. It’s just the kind of thing Ray might do. Maybe she dreamed the whole thing. Maybe she needed to find Ray.
‘Maybe Ray would know.’
‘The future Aboriginal?’ Simon looked beyond skeptical. ‘Yeah, that guy was really on top of stuff.’
‘How come you’re suddenly fifty-three?’
‘It’s not sudden. It’s not sudden at all. This shit has been dragging on for years.’ He rolled the straw on the table, back and forward, back and forward. ‘So you don’t know where Sarah is?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘No.’
‘Oh.’
Caddy picked up her drink and took a long, slow sip. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I thought you came looking for me cause you thought I was cute.’
‘Yeah, I know.’
‘I didn’t recognize you at all.’
‘Not at all?’
‘No. I mean … no. I didn’t. I liked the look of you, but I really don’t think I recognized you.’
‘But I’m your child, Caddy! Ha ha ha.’
He wasn’t laughing.
Caddy really didn’t like herself a lot right now.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘perhaps you could write a story about where Sarah is.’
‘Do you want a hug?’
‘Do I what? A hug? No, I don’t want a hug.’
They both stared at the table for a while, drinking.
‘So what did happen to Sarah?’ she asked, eventually.
‘She disappeared.’
Caddy sat quietly, just looking at him. And after a while, like she’d hoped, he kept talking.
‘She went to New Orleans. She had some idea that she’d fit in there. She saw some documentary and she liked the way the place looked. She said it looked like her. So she went.’
Caddy kept just sitting quietly.
‘And when she’d been there about a year, there was the hurricane. Katrina. Do you remember that? Hurricane Katrina?’
‘Kind of. I was, what, eight? Nine?’
‘Yeah, I guess. And I don’t know if she left or stayed or anything, I never heard. I just didn’t hear anything about her any more after that.’
‘Before then, did she call you all the time? Or email or something?’
‘Not so much.’
‘Oh.’
‘Yeah, “oh”. Look, you know how it was with us, right? You invented us.’ He put his glass down, looked her in the eye and raised an eyebrow. For a second she just thought about how grey his eyes were, and then she remembered. Simon. Sarah.
‘I’m sorry, Simon.’
‘You know, when it’s God who’s imagined you, you can ask for stuff. Mercy. Help. Guidance. You know: stuff.’
‘Mostly you don’t get it, though.’
‘Yeah, mostly. What’s going to happen to me when I die, Caddy?’
‘I’m not God!’
‘You’re mine. Tell me what to expect. I’ve been reasonably good.’
‘Shit, I don’t know!’
‘Make something up.’
‘Um, you’ll go somewhere you can have a long bath any time you want, and roast chicken with stuffing.’
‘That’ll do me. I guess that’s incentive enough not to murder the next motherfucker I see.’
‘That’d be me.’
‘It would, yes. Do you want another drink, Caddy?’
‘I should really …’
‘Miss! A gin and tonic please, and I’ll have a scotch.’
Caddy thought the sun was setting, over the next few hours they were there. She was pretty sure she could feel it, though she couldn’t see a thing of the outside. She just felt like it was getting darker. Streamers – pastel-coloured plastic – fluttered in front of the air-conditioning vent, and a bowl on the carpet below caught water that dripped from the unit’s casing. Caddy watched it drip.
‘You want something to eat?’ Simon still wasn’t slurring.
Caddy didn’t even think she could answer. She let her head rock side-to-side on her neck, something like shaking ‘No’. She poked her finger into her mouth to se
e if she could feel her tongue, but she couldn’t.
One of the waitresses appeared from behind the bar, leaned over and whispered into Simon’s ear, then disappeared back into the gloom.
‘OK, the lady seems to think it’s time we left.’ Simon stood up, then sat back down. He picked up a bowl of nuts, stood up again and poured half of it into his pocket. He put the bowl back on the table. ‘You ready?’
Caddy gripped the side of the table and levered herself up. Things felt grim, but she could see the door so she pushed her legs in that direction. A waitress opened it just as she was trying to understand the door handle, and they stepped out into the dim soggy warmth.
The gutter looked tempting. Maybe she could start with sitting there and see how that went. Vomiting; sleeping: it would be good for both. Maybe not both. Maybe she meant either. She’d see how she went.
‘What are you doing?’ Simon was bending over, his hand around her arm. He seemed to think she should be getting onto a moto.
‘Are you taking me somewhere to kill me?’
‘That’s right. Get on.’
She couldn’t easily, but Simon kind of pushed her into place then got on behind, so she was wedged between him and the driver, Simon’s arms around her stopping her from sliding sideways. How come he was so with it?
‘How come you’re so with it?’
‘What?’
‘How come?’
‘You’re not making any sense.’
She let her head drop onto the driver’s back and closed her eyes. Pretty soon that seemed like a recipe for vomit, so she opened them again, but it wasn’t much help.
‘Will this take long?’
‘Murdering you?’
‘I guess.’
‘I doubt it.’
‘Cause I might spew.’
‘Why am I not surprised? Look. We’re going down to Docklands. There’s a hotel down there does cheap rates for us. We can’t sleep outside tonight. We wake up tomorrow with the sun shining on our heads, and we’ll be dead before we open our eyes.’
‘Hotel?’
‘Well grasped.’
‘I have …’ Caddy tried to look in her pocket and almost slipped sideways onto the ground. ‘Woops!’
‘Are you looking for something?’
‘Money. I don’t think I have any.’
‘Again, not surprised. It’s on me. Don’t get any ideas.’
‘Ray says you’re gay.’
‘Good old Ray. I really love that guy, you know?’
Caddy thought maybe he didn’t.
‘Gayness is not the issue here. There are so many issues here I don’t even know where to start. But added up they all mean we won’t be having any kind of sex, especially not the sort I pay you for or swap you for a night in a hotel.’
‘Roger.’ Caddy meant it when she said it, but then she laughed. ‘Roger!’
Why was he being nice to her? Why was he taking her to a hotel? She closed her eyes again, then remembered the whole vomit thing.
‘How come?’
‘How come what, Caddy?’
‘You don’t have to be nice to me.’
‘I know.’
Caddy let her head drop back on his shoulder and watched the sparse and broken clouds slide by. Things weren’t as bad as usual, she thought.
The moto was pulling up outside a five storey building, the yellow awning out the front all in one piece, a sign by the front door promising clean, air-conditioned rooms at reasonable rates. Simon paid the driver and helped her climb off.
‘OK,’ he said, leading her to a bench a few doors up the street. ‘Sit here. Wait. Don’t vomit. I’ll get us a room and I’ll be back in a minute.’
‘Why are you so sober?’
‘I’m not. I’m really not.’
He walked off and she let her head drop back again. It was quiet here. There were people on the pavement, but they were all asleep. She thought she could see a star. She squinted. Maybe it was a star.
There had been footsteps. She remembered, all of a sudden. There were footsteps, and they should be gone by now, but they had stopped. Perhaps in front of her. Probably Simon. She pulled herself a bit more upright to have a look.
‘Caddy? Where have you been? I’ve been walking round here for hours. You don’t look so good. Why didn’t you come home, baby?’
She squinted again, but all the things in front of her still looked the same. It still looked like Harry, and it still looked like he was holding a cat in a pillowcase.
He squatted down in front of her.
‘Cad? You OK?’
‘What’s in the pillowcase, Harry?’
‘It’s Skerrick. Are you OK?’
‘Why is Skerrick in a pillowcase?’
‘I couldn’t find her cage. Things at the house were, I don’t know … it’s a bit weird. I can’t remember.’ He opened the pillowcase and looked inside. ‘It’s Skerrick though. It is.’
‘Let me see.’
He leaned forward and opened the pillowcase. Inside big green eyes stared up at her from a head half grey, half orange. Caddy reached out a finger to touch the little pink nose.
‘Skerrick.’
The cat licked her finger.
Caddy shut one eye and stared at Harry again.
‘Harry,’ she said. ‘You’re dead. I’m drunk and you’re dead. Let’s go to sleep.’
‘Don’t you want to come home?’
‘I think we don’t have a home. Do we have a home again?’
Harry sat down next to her on the bench with the pillowcase in his lap and put his arm around her, pulled her up close to him.
‘I’m not really sure,’ he said, so she put her head down on his shoulder and closed her eyes. She was glad she’d got this drunk. It was nice to have a visit from Harry and Skerrick.
‘You smell different,’ she said.
‘I do?’
‘Maybe it was the fire.’
‘Probably.’
‘Where have you been, Harry?’
‘Looking for you.’
‘For two years and ….’ Caddy squinted up at the moon for a while ‘… four months?’
‘You are drunk, aren’t you? And you just want to sit here for a while?’
‘Yes please, Harry. Harry?’
‘Yes.’
‘I missed you so much.’
He kissed the top of her head.
Caddy felt like asking her dad why he’d gotten all funnyvoiced. ‘Dad!’ she was about to say, ‘stop talking so funny voice!’ But then she realized it wasn’t her dad it was some other man, and she had already started talking to him before she noticed she was asleep and just beginning to wake up.
‘… and your funny voice! Oh. Hello. Oh, hang on.’
But it didn’t really matter because he’d stopped paying attention to her and was talking to Harry instead. Oh look! It’s Harry! He was saying something to Harry like hello, I’m Simon. That was definitely a familiar name.
And Harry was saying he was Harry, which made her even more sure that he must be Harry, which didn’t make any sense at all.
Oh! Simon! Now she remembered.
‘Hello Simon,’ she said.
‘Hi Caddy. So this is your husband, hey?’
‘It really does look like him,’ was all she could think to say.
‘I didn’t think to get a room for three,’ Simon said, which Caddy thought was fair enough, but she could kind of feel Harry was a bit weirded out by the whole thing.
‘He didn’t know you were going to be here, Harry,’ she said.
‘I guess not,’ and Harry had a voice all kind of offended, she thought.
‘He would have got room for you too if he knew, really,’ she said.
‘You want me to leave you guys alone?’ Harry was standing up now, adjusting the pillowcase so he could hold it under his arm.
‘What are you talking about, Harry?’ Caddy thought the worst thing that could happen right now would be for Harry to go aw
ay. Not now, while she was still drunk. She knew he’d be gone when she woke up tomorrow, but not now! ‘Not now!’ she said.
‘Well, it looks like you already have company, Caddy,’ but the words came out a bit funny because he was busy trying to push Skerrick’s head back into the pillowcase.
‘Hang on,’ said Simon. ‘Maybe Caddy should shut up for a second. Harry, clearly you think I’m about to have sex with your wife. Please believe me when I say I couldn’t be less interested in having sex with your wife. Oh, don’t look all offended! I’m sure you think she’s very nice and all, but she really isn’t my type, for all kinds of reasons. I was just getting us a room because we are both rather drunk, and neither of us wanted to wake up outside with the kinds of hangovers we’re going to be having.’
‘Caddy,’ Harry said, ‘why didn’t you just come home? You don’t have to sleep outside.’
Caddy stood up. ‘Baby, we don’t have a home.’ She pushed the hair off his forehead and kissed his cheek. She breathed him in for a moment, then remembered he was just a dream and stood back. ‘You’re not real and we don’t have a home. Don’t be mad. You can’t be mad at me for sleeping inside with someone else when you’ve been gone so very, very long.’
‘He looks pretty real, Caddy. I mean, I don’t want to get involved in family matters, but he’s definitely real. So does she do this kind of thing often, buddy?’
Harry shrugged. ‘I don’t really know what she’s on about, bro.’
‘OK,’ said Simon, ‘well I don’t know about you two, but I’ve got a room in there with beds in it, and I want to sleep in one of them. You two can probably cram in the other one if you like. Your call, but you should probably come in with me or they won’t let you in.’
‘Caddy? You want to lie down baby?’
Caddy nodded. That sounded like a plan.
When Caddy woke up, Simon was gone but Harry was still there. That was exactly the opposite, she thought, of what I expected. She lay on her back and stared at the ceiling, holding Harry’s hand. Harry was dead, she knew that. Logically, he should be gone by now, what with the bright morning light and only the tiniest tail end of drunkenness. She shifted slightly, edged her way out of the bed, one foot on the floor then the other, sliding down until she was squatting beside the bed, still holding his hand. She sat cross-legged and looked at his sleeping face. Harry. Harry thought it was still the day of the fire. What was his deal? Had he been walking around, concussed, for more than two years, carrying Skerrick in a pillowcase? She flicked her eyes over the corners of the room, but Skerrick was still there, sleeping on the pillow left dented by Simon’s head. He couldn’t have been, could he? How had he eaten? How had he kept hold of the cat? None of it was possible. That’s not even the start of the impossible, she thought, considering she’d slept the night in a bed paid for by her imaginary friend. Enemy. Whatever. She rested her forehead against the edge of the bed and closed her eyes, then opened one and peered back up at Harry. Still there.