by Kathryn Hind
Amelia veered down another wide street. A ditch ran beside the road; she stepped down into it and walked in the dirt and tufts of grass, looking for the shock of domestic white-and-grey-striped fluff of a dead pet cat. Lucy didn’t follow, stayed instead on higher ground, looking at Amelia as she called to the cat with kissing sounds.
It was mostly tyre scraps down there, the odd corpse of wild roadkill. Rubbish blew along the ditch, too, fast-food bags and chip packets; Amelia scooped up the litter, held it bundled to her chest. Lucy lay her ears flat against the wind. The sky was bright white; dark clouds converged over hills to her left. An old ute pottered past but otherwise the road was quiet. The ditch ended at the mouth of a large pipe. Amelia called once, twice, for the cat but heard only the echo of her own voice in reply.
Ahead, there was a building with a mural painted on a wall facing a car park; a river scene framed by eucalypts merged into a racing-car circuit. An A-frame blackboard perched at the car park entrance, stating:
Breakfast, lunch and dinner
Best oysters in town
Staff needed
Amelia shoved her armful of collected rubbish into a bin at the edge of the car park. She walked up wooden steps, past climbing plants working their way up the latticed walls beside her. She arrived on a deck, Lucy’s feet clicking on the boards, and there was a scrap of a river view between trees. Tables were set with wineglasses, and white serviettes rolled into holders, the edges of tablecloths flapping in the wind. There were no diners outside. Through the floor-to-ceiling glass panels she could see more tables laid out. She walked up and down the deck in search of a door, and, finding nothing, pushed on one of the glass panels. She tried again, leaving a handprint on the glass. Inside, a young man in tie and white shirt pointed her around the side of the building, where she’d come from, and other diners came into focus then, their eyes tracking her failure.
She found another entrance, told Lucy to wait, and pushed through the heavy door, sending a Christmas wreath swinging. A sign stating Please wait to be seated stood at the top of a red-carpeted staircase. There was a general hush in the restaurant, a few late-lunch diners leaning in to speak to each other, the occasional clang of cutlery on plates. Fluorescent lights shone in a display fridge that showed different ways the restaurant could do oysters. A long, dark hair was trapped under a silver platter.
The man behind the bar saw her and continued to polish a wineglass with vigour. He took his time, moving a cloth around the inside of the glass, pulling it out, holding the glass up to the light from the windows. Pans sizzled within the kitchen and there was a smell of onion and garlic; beneath that was the sticky, pissy smell of a bar. The jingle of poker machines came from behind frosted glass doors to her right, polluting the jazz that played in the restaurant.
The server finished working on the glass. He added it to the rack of wineglasses that dangled from their stems above him, which caused them all to wobble, setting off a soft series of chimes. As he approached, he picked up a bottle of something and tossed it over his fingers and wrists, as if he were some kind of cocktail master.
Her heart was fast, hands moistening. She scratched at the corners of her mouth, collecting gunk, and tried to capture her hair behind her ears.
‘Ma’am, how can I help you?’ he said. He wore a black nametag, ‘Roger’ written in golden script.
‘Yes, hi,’ she said, adjusting the weight of her pack on her shoulders. ‘I saw the sign out there, about the job.’
‘Right, okay,’ he said, and raised a dark, manicured eyebrow.
Always shake hands, her mother had told her before her first job interview at a local cafe. And be firm; no one likes a floppy fish.
Amelia stuck out her hand and Roger looked down at it. She firmed it up, moved it towards him. ‘I’m Amelia.’
Slowly, he reached for her hand, gave her just his fingers. ‘Hi Amelia.’
His fingers were soft, like something secret; the inside of a seashell, an earlobe. ‘That’s a soft hand,’ she said.
‘Thanks?’ he said, retracting his hand and wiping it on his trousers.
Amelia put her shoulders back, lifted her chin. ‘The sign outside … it said you need staff,’ she said.
Roger stepped back, widened his eyes in some kind of realisation. ‘Right, yes, I see. We’re looking for experienced applicants. As I’m sure you can understand, we can get very busy so we need someone who is trained in …’ his eyebrow rose again, ‘… high service. We have a three point nine average on TripAdvisor and we can’t have that slipping.’
‘I’ve worked in a cafe, and I’ve done other stuff too. I’m a fast learner.’
‘Right …’ His eyes flashed to her pack. ‘Do you live locally? We need someone who lives nearby, who can come in at short notice,’ he said. He turned his head to check on the diners behind him; a customer raised their hand, beckoned to him. Roger went without a word and she cringed on his behalf when she saw the lint gathered on the back of his waistcoat.
His attentiveness was extreme; he placed his hand on the diner, near her shoulder. He swanned behind the bar, removed a wineglass with a flick, then poured wine into it from a great height. He placed the singular drink on a tray and strutted back to the table, one hand resting behind his back.
Roger was serious about this job, and Amelia remembered trying to get things just right when she worked at the cafe. She liked receiving her shifts because they punctuated her week. And there were procedures for everything: how to clean the coffee machine, how to move the oldest stock from the back to the front of the drinks fridge, how to greet people and ask what kind of bread they wanted. She yearned for these systems now, for someone to be expecting her, someone telling her what to do.
Roger had delivered the drink, bowed and reversed. He made his quiet, carpeted way back to Amelia.
‘So,’ Roger said, ‘is there something else?’
‘I just wanted to let you know that I’ll be getting a place to live, a room or something here,’ she said.
‘Right, good luck with that,’ he said.
‘Because you said you needed someone local …’
Roger looked again to the restaurant floor; angry, red pimples climbed up his neck. ‘You’ll need a CV in order to be considered.’
‘Yep, I think I have one of those.’ She swung her pack off her shoulder, and as it landed there was a draught of dog food and damp clothes. She unclipped it, aware of Roger fidgeting, peering down at her, and buried her hand deep inside. There were some CVs in there at some stage; she’d printed them off at the library in the town with the white room. She was going to apply for a job there, at the art shop below her room.
Her hand touched on something that could have been it, the right size, the right texture; she grabbed hold of it and yanked. A pair of undies was flung out of the pack too and landed on the floor. They were dirty ones; she’d worn them on both sides. Her face was hot as she snatched up the underwear and shoved it back down in her pack, deep down, telling herself he’d only have seen the damage if he was really looking for it.
The CV was crumpled – she kept it in a plastic sleeve she’d found blowing around outside the library, but even that was crushed. Something brown had got to the corner of the document and had seeped in, making it as far as the To whom it may concern on the covering letter.
‘You can get an idea from this,’ she said. She held it out, and when he didn’t move to take it she let it hang down beside her leg. ‘I could always write up another one and bring it back.’
‘Look, to be honest, my manager is … quite particular,’ Roger said. ‘We’ve had a lot of interest, you see, for the position.’
‘Oh, okay,’ she said.
‘Thanks for coming in,’ Roger said. He caught the eye of a customer over in a window seat. As he turned, she saw the transformation of his face, the transition into At your service, reserved for paying customers.
Amelia stood, stared at the rows of hanging wineglasses un
til they blurred. She longed to return to them every day, to grasp each one, to turn them delicately in her hands as she polished, clearing them of each smudge and dust particle. Her feet sank into the soft carpet.
A chef broke her trance, pushing out of double swing doors. He crouched at a fridge, revealing the divot at the beginning of his bum.
People at the tables were watching her while trying to appear as if they weren’t: forks hovered over plates, as if the sight of her was putting them off their meals. Some of those faces, the closest woman in particular, biting a purplish lip, had pity in them.
She shoved the CV back into her bag, buckled the thing up and swung it to her knee, then to her back. The straps settled into the ridges they’d dug out on her shoulders. There was a gnawing deep in her stomach, the same gnawing she’d had when she failed her driving test. It was just after her mother’s first diagnosis, and they realised Amelia would need to drive her to and from appointments. But at first they had to manage on the bus even though the bouncing of it made her mother ill, all because Amelia forgot a head check, failed, then didn’t slow down in a school zone, and failed again.
And now, again.
She walked down the stairs, stopped for a moment to grip the banister, polished golden. Her face was there in distorted reflection: red skin, wild hair. Stupid girl.
An unattended desk sat at the exit, displaying a holder full of brochures for local businesses: boat hire, fishing, the not-so-big olive. A row in front of these held postcards that advertised the restaurant. They looked free enough, so she picked one up before pulling open the heavy glass door.
Lucy was stretched out on her side along the wall of the building, her legs straight. The air was filled with the smell of rain on hot cement; the sky spat wet smudges onto the ground. A gust of wind picked up dirt from the car park and swirled it around. Amelia bent down to Lucy and put a hand on her side. Lucy lifted her head, then returned it to the ground with sleepy blinks. Her fur was warm, her heart pulsing beneath her ribs.
‘Gotta keep moving,’ Amelia said. She rubbed Lucy’s tummy, then gave her a couple of firm pats. ‘Gotta go, girl.’ Lucy’s tags clinked as she got to her feet, and her steps fell into rhythm at Amelia’s heels.
The sky darkened, the rain growing thicker as they approached town. The water made grey rivulets down Amelia’s arm, the trickling down of it like affection. It made her hairs stand on end.
The main street was suffering from the downpour, water overflowing from roof gutters and pooling in the kerb beside the road. An elderly man drove a mobility scooter covered in clear plastic; he reached a puddle that blocked the pavement. She watched to see what he would do now that his plan had proven too difficult. He turned in an eight-point manoeuvre back in the direction he had come, and she admired his ability to surrender, to find another way. On the opposite side of the street, a woman tried to light a cigarette. She leaned against the glass of a hairdresser, rollers in her hair; a cascade of rain fell in front of her, arcing off the shop’s shutter.
A real-estate office dominated a corner block; descriptions of properties for sale and for rent hung from thin metal cables in the window. The office was warmly lit and had purple carpet, purple couches and purple desks inside. There was a purple mat at the entrance to the shop, and Amelia was vigilant in wiping the soles of her shoes, though mud had got up the sides of them and onto her calves. The door was suctioned into its frame, so she pushed all her weight against it. It gave way suddenly and she stumbled the first couple of steps into the office.
People in purple suit jackets and white shirts tapped away at their keyboards, did not look up from their computer screens. A woman clacked out of a side door in heels, her purple skirt rustling against her stockings.
‘We’re closing, I’m afraid,’ she said, reaching past Amelia to flip the sign on the door.
‘Oh, really?’ Amelia said. There was a purple clock on the wall, the silver hands indicating 4.55 pm. ‘I didn’t realise … the door was open, people are working … Do you think I could have a really quick word with someone?’
‘You’ve just missed us for today, sorry madam, but pop in tomorrow and we’ll be happy to help.’
The woman gave a tight, deep-red smile, and it said that she knew Amelia wouldn’t just pop in tomorrow. It said that their clients were people who spent their days popping in and out of places, weighing up their options, making informed and well-financed decisions.
‘Here,’ the woman said, ‘why don’t you take a card?’ She reached over to a circular table, pulled a business card from a holder.
‘Ah, no thanks,’ Amelia said. ‘Do you rent rooms at all?’
The woman breathed in sharply through her nose, rested a hand on her hip. ‘We have some rooms, yes,’ she said. ‘But all our properties are pet-free.’ Her eyes flashed to the window, where Lucy’s back was against the glass, her fur pressed out in a whorl.
‘She wouldn’t need to go inside,’ Amelia said.
‘No pets unfortunately. It’s an agency policy. Okay?’ The woman made her way to the door, giving Amelia and the puddle she’d made on the floor a wide berth. ‘Thank you,’ she said, holding the door open.
Amelia briefly tried to appeal to the other workers tapping away under spotlit desks, but none of them would save her.
The woman closed the door behind her and slid across a set of bolts. She leaned back against the glass like people did in films when they’d just been through something traumatic, or romantic. The other workers were suddenly animated, gave her a round of applause.
Amelia stepped around the corner, watched them from where she hoped they couldn’t see her. She adjusted her pack and walked away, following signs to the river foreshore. The ocean had helped, when she was in the white room, and perhaps the river would now. But the ocean hadn’t been enough to make her stay. She’d left the white room on a whim, mid-afternoon; it had seemed, suddenly, that she was too close to home. She locked the door, delivered the keys downstairs to the woman in the art shop. The woman had the same intricate eyeliner as always, curving out from her top lid, and she gave a look that said she thought Amelia was doing the wrong thing. Amelia almost asked her about it, but instead she just said ‘Thanks’ and walked out of the door, knocking over some blank canvasses in her hurry.
Stupid girl.
A patch of the landscape ahead shifted and glinted: water. After a few minutes, she was there, standing high over the broad, brown river. The wind was stronger at the river’s edge, hot and thick, as if it had spent days crossing the desert. Whitecaps turned their backs on her, pushed away by the wind.
She scanned the riverbank for the lost cat, trying to keep some semblance of a hold on that mission, though in leaving the road and coming to the water she felt she was giving up on it. There was no sign of the animal.
She rebalanced her pack, lifting it higher on her shoulders, tightening the strap around her waist. A houseboat drifted along near the opposite bank, spreading the beat of dance music. Someone waved in a big arc from the deck. Their persistence eventually made her lift her arm in the air, signalling back.
The rain had stopped but clouds made the evening prematurely grey. People were dotted along the bank, fishing, but she aimed for a secluded spot near the remnants of a pier. She moved down the steep, grassy slope towards the water. Her knees ached, the ligaments struggling to work as brakes; if they failed, her momentum might carry her into the river. Her backpack was heavy enough to drag her beneath the water to the riverbed and keep her there. Then her eyes would glisten like the scales of fish.
Her knees and muscles continued working, and she stood beside the pier, at the edge of the river. The water was clear enough to see the sand and weeds below. Something breached the surface nearby, catching the sun in a silver flash, and then was gone. Lucy stood, ears pricked, staring at the place the creature had jumped. She let out a low, private ‘ruff’, as if starting a conversation with the other animal. Amelia bent down and picked up a l
ight grey stone, warm and smooth, any rough edges licked away by the water, healed as if they were wounds.
During her stay in the white room, she could watch a patch of beach for hours. She and Lucy walked down to the sand and looked for pipis. The creatures were silent, their suckers busy filtering sand. On calmer days, there was a quiet to the ocean that promised future rage; the waves came in then pulled away, making a triangle in the receding water, with a pipi at its apex. She had wanted to reach her finger out to its suckers, to feel how hard the soft flesh worked, the strength of them against her skin, but she didn’t dare disturb it.
She returned the stone to the ground. There was movement on the opposite side of the riverbank and she caught a glimpse of a heron as it disappeared around the river bend. She missed her chance at an exact identification, and she imagined it standing poised and still, taking her measure. She wanted the moment back so she could notice, instead of going elsewhere as she stared downwards, her vision blurring the lapping river near her feet. Sid would elbow her, be ashamed of her for missing the opportunity, for not paying attention. Watching any heron was a majestic experience, he would have said, and it would have been, especially if he was there. His absence was thick and it grew as she stood there, taking over a part of her.
Amelia swung her pack off and to the ground. She pulled out her faithful Rage Against the Machine shirt, imagined pulling it over her head, losing herself in its excess of cotton. It held tight to the smell of Will. She unlaced her shoes, took them off using the toe of the opposite foot, then pulled off her damp socks. She stepped forward into soft water, mud worming up between her toes. She submerged the shirt then stepped onto it, stomped the material into the mud. She picked it up and rubbed it roughly against itself, but the smell remained. She repeated the process twice more, then gave up, walked out of the water.
The cotton did not rip; she pulled as hard as she could at the chest, the shoulders, with no result. Lucy wouldn’t help. Amelia had trained her out of clothing tug-of-war, out of running off with undies and pillowcases dropped from the washing basket and shredding them to bits. She stood with wrinkled forehead and pointed ears as Amelia held the material in front of her. She had been swimming and Amelia patted her wet head, the bone of her skull hard and close beneath the flattened fur.