“And stay for dinner,” Ana added. “We’re just having salad and ham steaks with pineapple, but I brought extra, just in case. I mean, unless you have anything better to do?”
“Yes, I’ll take that action. Yes, I’d love to stay for dinner, and no, I don’t have anything better to do. Thanks.”
Unlike last Friday night, I find myself happy with these dinner plans. It’s a chance to repay him for yesterday. It might not be with mugs or tea-towels or pillow-cases, but it’s all I have to offer right now.
Luke and I sit side by side on the deck chairs, while Ana dozes on the couch inside. I think she’s coming down with something because it’s not like her to have a nap after dinner. Our plan of simple salad and ham steaks with pineapple turned into much more, including dessert, and now I’m full and content. More content than I’ve felt in a long time.
“It’s just common sense,” Luke says, staring up at the stars.
“How do you mean?”
“Well, just look at it.”
He points up at the stars and I lean my head against the back of the chair to take in the black and deep purple of the night sky. It feels like we’re under a huge, black bowl, and the stars are holes, letting the light in. It’s quiet out here, and the longer I look up, the more I get this strange feeling that someone is out there, somewhere, looking back at me.
“How can something as large as that, as dense and as endless, have just one planet with intelligent lifeforms? There has to be more. There just has to be.”
He has a point. We sit in contemplative silence for several long moments.
“The stars are the one true thing we can count on,” he says eventually, his voice low. “They can help us navigate, find our way home, no matter where we are. You just have to know what to look for.”
I stare skyward, making a thousand wishes on a thousand stars.
“Just think,” he murmurs. “There are satellites flying around up there, clocking our every move. Big brother is watching. While we sit here staring up at them, they’re up there, staring down at us.”
It was as if he could read my mind, and I turn to find him looking back at me.
“That’s kinda creepy,” I say.
He starts to object, then squints, thinking.
“I don’t know. Is it?”
“Don’t get all philosophical on me. It’s far too late in the evening for that kind of thing.”
“You’re safe. I can’t even spell philosophical.”
I can’t help smiling. It’s been so long between genuine smiles it feels really good. I actually feel lighter. His teeth flash in the dim light borrowed from the living room behind us as he smiles back at me.
“You have a really nice smile,” he says. “You should try to do it more often.”
I duck my head, embarrassed. I don’t know what to do with compliments anymore.
“What do you mean? I smile all the time.”
“Not like that.”
It must be as obvious as it feels.
Although I feel like I’ve repaid him for yesterday’s kindness, I’m still far from capable of letting him get any closer. I’m grateful for his company, though. In some strange way it helps. Maybe it’s the distraction. Silence falls over us once more, and out of the corner of my eye I see him taking a sip of beer out of his new mug.
“I spent some time in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he says, out of the blue.
I look over at him, because he sounds different. Pensive, guarded. He’s looking up at the stars again.
“And knowing that there were satellites up there, keeping watch over me, made me feel… I don’t know. Not safer, exactly, just… not so isolated, I guess. It was like a connection to home, in a weird way. I can’t really explain it. You’d think the sky is pretty much the sky, wherever you go, but the sky over there is different.”
He’s not looking at me, but I can’t drag my eyes away from him. I want to ask what he was doing in that part of the world, but I’m not sure I want to know.
“Different how?” I ask instead, testing the water.
He sighs, so quietly I barely catch it. For several long moments he stares skyward, and I give him time because it seems like he needs it. I know that feeling. Organising your thoughts is never an easy process, much less a quick one.
“I’ve never quite been able to figure that out,” he says finally, glancing over at me. “The landscape, the situation, knowing how far away from home I was. Maybe it was all of those things, maybe it was none of them.”
Once again I want to look away, but I don’t. It feels like he’s holding me down. His eyes, dark blue in this light, burn into mine and I swear I can see myself reflected in them. It makes my stomach sink, then rise up to meet my racing heart.
He looks lost. Or maybe I’m the one who’s lost. It’s almost impossible to tell.
“I should get going,” he says, sitting forward and running his hand through his hair with a sigh. “Thank you for dinner. I really enjoyed myself.”
Geezer stirs from his place at my feet, stretching and standing, reading his cue perfectly.
“You’re welcome.”
We both stand simultaneously, but I hang onto my wine glass so that I have something to do with my hands.
“Goodnight,” he says, reaching down to rub Geezer’s head, before standing up again and turning to me. “Sleep well.”
“You too.”
I watch them walk over the grass in the dark, the living room lamp casting long shadows across the lawn. A moment later, the treeline swallows them up and they’re gone.
I pick up his empty mug and take it inside with me, along with my wine glass. He forgot to take his gifts from Ana.
***
Ana has been quiet all morning. She didn’t drink much last night because she said she was tired. Today she looks worse, sniffling and mooching about.
“I must be coming down with something,” she says, swallowing another paracetamol tablet with a big slug of water. It’s her third glass this morning.
“Are you sure you’re not hungry?” I ask, putting the finishing touches on a cheese sandwich.
“Positive.”
She grabs one of Nanna’s floppy straw hats and puts on her sunglasses, then picks up her glass of water and heads out to the deck.
“Well, look at that,” I hear her mumble. “Hey, we’ve got a visitor.”
At first, I think she means Luke, but when I walk out onto the deck it’s Geezer who’s waiting patiently at the bottom of the steps.
“Hello there,” I say.
He takes that as an invitation, and bounds up the stairs to greet me. He’s rewarded with a decent head-rub, as I draw his silky ears through my fingers.
I settle down in the chair next to Ana and eat my sandwich, giving half of it to Geezer, who wolfs it down appreciatively before settling down on the deck beside me.
“His shoulder must be feeling better today,” Ana says, indicating Luke’s place with a wave of her hand.
He’d been hammering all morning.
“Yeah, I heard him start up when I was having my coffee earlier.”
“I bet he’s relieved. I can see how camping out might be fun in the summer, but winter’s gonna roll around soon enough and I wouldn’t want to be in a tent then.”
“Do you think he’ll be in the cottage before the weather packs up?”
“I don’t know. For his sake, I hope so, although he seems pretty resourceful. Something tells me nothing much would faze him.”
I scratch Geezer’s head absentmindedly, thinking about the cooler months to come. There’s no way I’d want to spend them in a tent either.
“He told me last night that he spent some time in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
This gets her attention.
“Really? So is he ex-military, then?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t say.”
“He must be. Why else would he be there?”
“I don’t know.” I think about our conversation about the galaxy, and satellites. “He could be. Maybe he’s a scientist. He could be a journalist or a photographer. Maybe he was just passing through. He could be a million things.”
“Didn’t you ask?”
“I didn’t feel comfortable.”
“What, asking him?”
“Yeah. I mean, he was… I don’t know. It felt too personal.”
“And you weren’t ready to play quid pro quo, Clarice?” she says, adjusting her sunglasses.
I bow my head, giving Geezer more attention than he probably wants.
“I don’t want to talk about that stuff with him,” I mumble. “So it’s not fair to ask him questions when I don’t want to answer any in return.”
I scratch Geezers head, and sink my fingers into the long fur on his neck.
“I get it,” she says.
I expect more, but it doesn’t come and I’m grateful. I don’t want to talk about that now.
“So, he’s a bit of a mystery man then,” she says, settling back into her chair and putting her feet up on the railing.
“I suppose so.”
“I kind of thought he might be hiding, living over here – and by that I mean both living here in New Zealand, and also living on this side of the lake.”
I bristle on his behalf. It could be nothing of the sort. He might just like solitude. But I know what she’s getting at. I’m hiding too, aren’t I? I can hardly deny it. I hope she doesn’t use this as an opening to ask me to move in with her again. As the silence stretches out I realise she’s not going to, and the relief is immense. I don’t want to talk about that again yet.
She’s so quiet, I wonder if she’s fallen asleep beneath her glasses. She doesn’t move when I stand up to take my plate back into the kitchen, rinsing it and putting it on the draining board to dry beside Luke’s mug.
***
Ana doesn’t last much longer before she’s back in bed taking an afternoon nap, or as she refers to it, a ‘horizontal life pause’. I hope she feels better when she wakes up. Personally, I feel a little guilty but I’m grateful for the return of my solitude, even if it’s only for an hour or so. I could feel our conversation turning into a confrontation, and I’ll do almost anything to avoid that.
I sit at the table, contemplating what to do with my precious alone time. I wanted to write, but now that I’m here, with my notebook open in front of me, all I can think about is Luke. He’s an enigma, that’s for certain. Our conversation last night about the stars has me more curious than I should be, especially after Ana’s offhand remark earlier. Is he hiding something? Maybe he’s just like me, desperate for some time away from the world for a spell. Or forever. Whichever comes first.
But that’s not my business if I can’t handle him asking about mine.
I try to shake him loose from my thoughts and turn my attention to the notebook. Picking up my pen, I twirl it a couple of times as the memories do the same in my head, spinning in endless circles until I can reach out and catch one in my hand. I open my hand and look inside, and Days Bay stares back at me.
One afternoon, not long after we’d moved to Wellington, we went to a café in Days Bay, overlooking the harbour. It was a beautiful, warm day, and the infamous Wellington breeze was non-existent. “There’s nothing like Wellington on a good day,” James had said, and it was so true. The sky and the sea were almost exactly the same shade of blue, and we sat with our lattes and our brioche and salad, watching the boats out in the harbour. It was one of the most relaxing days we’d had, after the mad dash of moving from Rotorua, starting new jobs and finding rental accommodation. It was as if all the stress was behind us, and all that lay ahead was lazy days in the sunshine, soaking up the capital and all it had to offer. How naïve we were.
I was unceremoniously dragged back to the present by a soft knock on the open door.
“Anybody home?”
Luke.
I quickly close my notebook, leaving it on the table as I struggle to clear away the memories, trying desperately to pretend that I don’t wish I was back in Days Bay with James, drinking a latte and watching the boats sail by.
“Hey boy, where is everyone?”
Geezer has gone out to meet his master.
“In here,” I say. “Come in.”
I’m standing awkwardly at the table in the kitchen when he appears in the doorway.
“Hi,” he says, and I can tell he knows he’s interrupting something.
I can see it on his face. I paste on a smile, because that’s the polite thing to do. I can feel the past slipping away again, leaving me with a familiar sense of melancholy.
“Everything okay?” he asks, giving Geezer a good rub-down while keeping his eyes firmly on me.
“Fine.”
He nods, standing up straight again, his eyes flitting to the notebook on the table beside me.
“Ana still around? I didn’t see the boat go out today.”
“She’s having a nap. She’s still not feeling too great.”
“I wondered, after last night. She seemed to wither pretty quickly after dinner.”
“Yeah.” I turn to the kitchen, putting some space between us. He’s so tall, he fills the doorframe and it always makes the cottage so much smaller when he’s here. “Do you want something to drink? Coffee, or beer or something?”
“Coffee. Coffee would be great, thanks.”
I set about filling up the kettle and turning it on, rather than using the fancy coffee machine Ana gifted me a few months back. It’s too quick. I want to draw this out, give myself something to concentrate on.
I hear him behind me, pulling out a chair and sitting down at the table, as I take mugs, instant coffee and sugar out of the cupboard and milk from the fridge.
Then I spy his mug on the draining board.
“Would you rather have it in this? You left it behind last night, along with the other stuff,” I say, turning back to him.
His eyes are glued to my notebook, but he turns his attention back to me immediately. Thank God it’s closed.
“Oh yeah, I forgot all about that. Thanks. That’s what it’s for, right?”
He smiles, but it’s not his usual smile. This one is much more guarded.
I turn my back on him again, returning one of the now-extra mugs back to the cupboard.
“Listen, about last night,” he says. “I might’ve been a little out of line and I want to apologise. I’m sorry if I… “
He doesn’t finish, and I’m confused. He’s apologising for something, although I’ve no idea what. I turn around to face him, looking for clues.