Deleted Scenes for Lovers
Page 22
The kid shakes his head, but the whole thing’s full of tears, loaded with them. Heavy, chocker tears, pulling down his eyeballs, sucking them back into his big wet baby skull. What colour are your eyes, Jeremy, sooka-bubba red? Tears go on crowding his mouth.
‘It … hurts,’ he manages.
‘So you wanna avoid it in the future then, eh? Genius.’
From the door, the nurse leans back for a second. ‘Doc’ll be in for the stitch-up in a bit. It will hurt. But I’ve got a good one for pain,’ she says. ‘You want to get your mate here to sit, and just tap your head. All it takes. Just a little tap. You wait. Make’s all the difference.’
‘Yeah, cheers. Good one. Tapping his head. Fuck me,’ blurts the mechanic, rubbing his own head, pop-eyed, cheeky. ‘You’re a legend.’
But when the doctor gloves up, gets busy, he sees the point to it, mounts a boot solid as he can on the wonky plastic chair, crouches up by the kid.
Jeremy feels the finger come down—drip, thud—into bony sweat. Rough-cut, soft, it drops, levers, drops. Into memory, somehow, too, like the clocking sound is in a backyard somewhere, kids snuck out into scraps of daylight saved up after chugging down dinner, You’ve got five minutes, and counting, before bed all you kids, chucking round a ball through the muffle of far-off traffic, sparrow and sitcom song, the sloppy soak and sink clack of dish-time, baths sloshing with bubbly toddlers, and Dad on his first beer-and-smoke maybe wandering out sometimes for a quick round of lazy perfect lobs, one-handed, the hefty curve of muscle on his forearm, hardly bothered but beautiful, beautiful, thick with promise, the pitch loose, tall, smoothly sloping through the air, thrown so gentle, familiar, strong, on target. At you.
The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Creative New Zealand for the award of the 2010 Louis Johnson New Writer’s Bursary. Thanks are also due to the editors of the journals and anthologies where some of these stories have previously appeared.
The novella The Longest Drink in Town was released by Pania Press in 2015; ‘scenes of a long-term nature’ won the international Bridport Short Story Prize 2014 and was published in The Bridport Anthology 2014; ‘.22’ appeared in JAAM 33 and ‘local sluts in your area’ in JAAM 32; ‘50 ways to meet your lover’ appeared in Sport 43; ‘7 images you can’t use’ was published in The Harlequin; ‘the wait’ was published in Landfall 227 and ‘leaving the body’ appeared in Landfall 226 after being shortlisted for the Sunday Star-Times Short Story Competition; ‘note left on a window’ was published in The Six Pack Two after winning a New Zealand Book Month Award, and was also selected for The Penguin Book of Contemporary New Zealand Short Stories; ‘the names in the garden’ appeared in takahē 81; ‘how to leave your family’ was published in the anthologies Orange Roughy and Milk & Ink; ‘consent’ was published in Landfall 214 and also selected for Some Other Country: New Zealand’s Best Short Stories; and ‘short for the sea’ was the featured fiction in takahē 69.