Oh, bloody hell. Another thing that never happens to seductive sirens on the beach: involuntary release of fountains of breast milk.
I stopped walking and started to button my ancient sludge-colored cardigan. The buttons didn’t go all the way up, because the top two had come off sometime or other.
This was brilliant. I actually looked homeless.
Isobel began to whimper, the dairy farm started production again, and I tugged the sides of the cardigan together in a fruitless effort. Matiu asked, “Cold? Need my hoodie?”
“Ah ... no. Thanks.” I abandoned the whole cardigan idea and started walking again, faster this time, knowing he was too well-mannered to stare at my breasts and self-conscious anyway. “I don’t think your girlfriend’s going to be impressed, by the way, at the way you abandoned her back there. If you go back to have that cup of coffee with her, she’s going to poison it. Just saying.” Which was either breezy and amusing, or cynical and bitter. One or the other. I was a little tired. My skills were probably off.
“Not my girlfriend,” he said. “A nurse at the hospital who runs better than I do, to tell the truth. She’s a triathlete. My legs could be cramping.” He smiled, showing his extra-white teeth, charming again.
“Uh ... Matiu. Your car’s at her house at nine o’clock in the morning. She asked you to come back for coffee. I have ears. Also a brain.”
He smiled some more. “We both have the evening shift at the moment, and we decided to blow out the cobwebs together this morning. I’m oddly happy you care, though.” He sounded so calm. Not trying too hard to convince me.
I so didn’t want to believe that every man lied. Losing your faith was like cracking a mirror. There was no putting it right. You had to replace the entire mirror, but how did you do that? His personal life wasn’t my business, but if he was telling me something that might not be true, wasn’t that my business? Although—why was I thinking he was here for me?
He asked, “What?”
Olivia piped up with, “Can you come to my house and play with me? We could build a zoo and put the animals in. Hamish likes to play, but Hamish can’t play today, because he is at school. And the baby is too little to play, but you could come and play animals.” Olivia clearly wasn’t jaded yet. The smile worked for her.
Matiu told her, “Not today. Maybe I could come another time, how’s that? I’m going to talk to Mummy for a minute, though. Can you be very quiet, like a bunny?”
She said, “Yes.”
I said, “That’ll be new,” and Matiu grinned. He did look tired around the eyes, though, I realized.
He set Olivia down and asked, “Can you hop like a bunny to your grandad? Can you show me?”
“Yes,” she said, and did. Hop, hop, hop. Concentrating.
I said, “That’s a gift. Deflection.”
“No,” he said. “That’s practice.” He was still tall. Still dark. Still impossibly handsome, all white teeth, gold-brown eyes, golden-brown skin, like he was made of precious metals, and perfect symmetry of feature. Right now, he looked like an advert for athletic wear in his rugby shorts, gray hoodie, and trainers. His chest was broader than I’d realized when he was wearing the loose scrubs, his hips were narrower, his abs were absolutely flat, and his thighs were ... very, very nice. He wasn’t really Maori-broad, being fashioned of leaner muscle instead, but there was some very satisfactory bulk to those thighs and arms all the same. He’d also had some Maori tattoo peeking out below the sleeve of his T-shirt, I’d noticed before he’d pulled on the hoodie.
I may have had a thing for a Maori tattoo on a muscular arm, the same way some women had a thing for men who rode motorcycles. We all have fantasies, and he was nice to look at, that was all.
“I don’t know which question to ask first,” he said. “I’m a bit at a loss here, so I’ll start with the one that seems most important. Max was meant to turn up, but he didn’t?”
“Yes.” I’d so much rather have thought about Maori tattoos, but there you were. That was life. “I got a text from him, back when I was taking photos. He said there was a crisis at work.”
“Ah,” Matiu said. “I take it he’s said that before.”
“Well, yeh. He has.”
“So. He’s moved out? Not seen the kids?”
“No, he’s seen them. He’s ... he’ll be ...” I trailed off. I should bring up something more pleasant. The upcoming cyclone season. Crop failure. The dangers of flystrike in sheep.
My grandparents caught up with us, and Grandad said, “We’ll go on, Poppy, and take Olivia home.” Olivia was still hopping. Matiu was quite possibly a genius. “Why don’t you take your chance and take a wee walk over to Tuppence, have a coffee? Celebrate Hamish’s big day, eh, as you have company.”
“I want to go to Tuppence,” Olivia said. “I want to have hot chocolate. And a marshmallow.”
“Let’s go home and build with bricks,” Grandad suggested. “We’ll build a structure and show Mummy when she comes home. And I’ll make you my special hot chocolate.”
“We could build a zoo,” Olivia said, “and you could tell a story about animals in the zoo. A monkey could escape from his cage, and they couldn’t find the monkey, because he was hiding, and they had to look all over.”
“We can make up that story together,” Grandad said. “I can write it down for you, and you can draw the pictures.” The same way he’d done with me.
“Yes,” Olivia said.
Matiu said, “A coffee sounds good.” Like this was his dream date, or possibly like a man who’d taken a long run on a chilly morning and now wanted a coffee.
Grandad winked at me, not what you’d call subtly, and said, “Take as long as you like. It’s a good day. A happy day. Go enjoy it.”
I looked at Nan, and she said, “Oh, go on, darling. Take the baby. Have a treat.” She told Matiu, “Lovely to see you again.”
There you were. My eighty-plus-year-old grandparents, married over sixty years now, encouraging me to commit adultery. Or, since I wasn’t in shape for adultery, encouraging me to commit Coffee Dating Outside of the Marital Vows.
On the other hand, a coffee did sound good, and looking at Matiu wasn’t exactly punishment. They had a gas fire at the café. If we sat beside it, he might take off his hoodie, and I could see the tattoo. A woman could dream.
9
Cri de Coeur
Matiu
Isobel started fussing again on the way to the café. I had hold of her pushchair, because Poppy looked tired and the walk was seriously uphill. When the crying started, she said, “You have odd taste in entertainment.”
I laughed, feeling buoyant. The sky was absolutely clear, the breeze fresh as nine thousand kilometers of sea air blowing in all the way from Chile. I could probably have seen the hospital across the harbour from up here if I’d cared to look, but I didn’t. Work/life balance finally achieved, at least at this moment.
An errant strand of Poppy’s red-gold hair blew across her face, and she tucked it behind her ear with a hand that still bore a wedding band as well as a diamond engagement ring. Nothing artistic about that one, just an oversized stone set in a plain platinum band. Like the red roses: expensive, but all wrong. Meant to be romantic and failing, because somebody had gone for the most obvious gesture and never considered the person it was meant to please. I said, to the tune of newborn wails, a cross between a cat’s meow and a rusty screen door, “Maybe so. Or maybe I enjoy your company. Could be possible.”
“Mm?” She tugged her cardigan more closely around her, then, when I parked the pushchair outside the café, picked up the baby, adjusted her little hat, and made some of those mum-noises at her.
I said, “Never mind. I’ve got the bag,” and grabbed it. A nappy bag, which I handed to her outside the toilets as I asked, “What can I order for you?”
“Anything I don’t have to think about or cook,” she said, bouncing the baby a little. “I just realized that I’m starved. Pancakes? And a decaf flat whi
te, a big one. I’m not sure I can wait five minutes for any of it. I could become undignified here. Why am I so hungry?”
“Because you’re letting yourself be,” I said. She looked at me, startled, and headed into the toilet, and I went over to the counter and thought, Slow down, boy.
When she came out again, and I’d jumped up to take the bag from her, she said, “You do realize I need to feed her.” Determinedly not embarrassed.
“Yeh,” I said. “I think I got that. Never mind. Everybody has to eat, and I’m a doctor. I’m not fussed. Would you rather face the wall for that, though?” Normally, you had the woman sit facing out, but that was because you were supposed to make her comfortable.
“Thanks,” she said. “I would.” She slid into a chair, and Isobel’s wails got more insistent, like her meal was right there, and why wasn’t her mother giving it to her? A couple of business-casual fellas beside us looked over with a frown, then looked hastily away again as Poppy adjusted her shirt. The baby got what she needed and started in to work in the efficient, greedy way babies did, grabbing a fistful of Poppy’s shirt for extra leverage and giving some ladylike little snorts, and Poppy said, “She pulls the blanket straight off if I use it. No choice but to be immodest, sorry. You may also notice that I’ve been leaking. I’m saying it out loud, because I’ve been embarrassed by it for the past half hour, but there’s no disguising it now. I’m also wondering about putting breastfeeding into a book. Casually. What do you think? Go or no go?”
“Uh ... a book?” I wasn’t watching the actual feeding. First, because I’d seen it before, and second, because a woman feeding a baby wasn’t a sexual act, although in this case, it would be a too-pleasurable one to watch. Which was odd and perhaps alarming, but there the fact was. Poppy’s skin was redhead-pale, and she had some freckles across the tops of her cheeks, the bridge of her nose, and her upper chest. Below them, though, her skin was milky white and nearly transparent, with her veins showing blue just under the surface.
It was absolutely glorious skin, the kind that flushed too easily and couldn’t hide a thing, and I wanted to look at it some more.
Which I didn’t do.
“I write children’s books,” she said. “My job.” She took a sip of her coffee and sighed. “Oh, I’ve missed this. Sitting and having a coffee. Talking to an adult. This is good.”
I thought, You’ve been married, though. Shouldn’t you have had an adult to talk to? I let that go, because the answer was obvious. Max hadn’t been around much, clearly. “Tell me about the books,” I said instead.
She laughed. She had a little gap between her front teeth that was nothing but sweet, and her lips were naturally pink, like she was strawberry blonde all over. “Hazel the hippo. She’s blue, and she’s seven. She has a little brother, and a mum and dad, and she’s good at being responsible, but she worries, because kids do that.”
“Mm,” I said. “Was that you?”
“No. Not really. It’s much more Hamish, I’ve come to realize. Or rather—I was like that in a way, but the responsible part kept getting sidetracked by the dreamer. I meant to pay attention, I’d just think of something else instead and forget. Can’t you tell? Or maybe I paid attention, but to watching other people, not thinking about what I was supposed to be doing. Whereas you never seem to get sidetracked. You’ve got focus, boy.”
“Hope so,” I said. “It’s my gift, you could say. Also, I work at it. Especially when it matters.” I smiled at her. Slowly. How could I help it? Her eyes darkened to a deeper jade, I could swear she was breathing a little harder, and, yes, we were flirting. I couldn’t be wrong, because my body was responding in a way that was absolutely inappropriate under the circumstances.
I thought, What the hell do I do now? Normally, I knew exactly what. I’d keep flirting, and I’d touch her hand. Lightly, the way Tane had said. Looking for that green light, and when I got it, lingering in the moment, letting her feel it. Letting her enjoy it.
There’s nothing like a woman’s enjoyment. Nothing in the world.
Then the breakfast came, and it got better.
I’d ordered pancakes for her. Tiny, tender Dutch ones that required almost no cutting, so she could eat them with one hand, topped with freshly made chunky applesauce and blueberries, with a garnish of candied-lemon twists and a sprinkle of coconut-maple granola. She gave a little moan, and then she switched the baby to the other breast, adjusted her top, which I did not watch, and took a bite. Her eyes closed with pleasure, she smiled like she couldn’t help it, and I looked at all that absolutely delicious womanhood and thought, I want you bad. Which was hardly disconcerting at all, under the circumstances.
I didn’t touch her hand, even though it was right there. Slim, capable, unadorned fingers. Artist’s fingers. Short nails with no varnish, and a completely wrong engagement ring. I cleared my throat instead. “Hazel the hippo, eh. That’s new. I’ve never met anybody who wrote kids’ books. How long have you been doing that? How do you start doing that?”
“For fun,” she said. “When you love to draw, and putting a story to the pictures makes it even better, and makes you laugh. It’s your escape, and then somebody wants it, so you keep doing it, still for fun, until it’s all you want to do. At which point, you sell your real business to somebody’s uber-wealthy cousin, because you want to focus on the books. And then ...” She stopped.
“And then what?” I prompted, working on my own sesame-and-ginger-seasoned jackfruit, tender and meaty, which had been baked in halved kumara and served with Asian slaw. It sounds complicated, but it was actually just brilliantly flavored, colorful, and delicious.
Poppy was still eating, too, like she couldn’t believe she’d finally got the chance. She must have lost four or five Kg’s since she’d delivered Isobel. I’d bet that wasn’t just breastfeeding, and that she wasn’t replacing the calories she was expending in any kind of adequate way. She was very good at managing one-handed, though. I was guessing she’d eaten hundreds of meals like that. Breastfeeding. Spooning cereal into an eager baby-bird mouth. Cutting up a kid’s dinner. Mopping up spills.
“What do you do,” she asked, looking down at her plate, at her baby, at anything but me, “when you do all that, when your new plan has started and there’s no going back, and then the story won’t come anymore? For almost two months? If you decide this is the track you’ll go down, so you turn onto it and close the gate, and then the track just ... ends, and you’re stuck? That’s what I’ve been wondering, and so far, the answer could be ...” She took another sip of her coffee, and set the cup down with a rattle, because her fingers were trembling, and this time, she was looking at me. “That you can’t find an answer, because you keep thinking of other things instead, and the other things are too scary. And you panic, because you can’t think at all anymore. What do you do then?”
Poppy
There was a long, long pause, and then Matiu said, “It could be that you’ve got too much happening in your life just now for inspiration to strike. Too busy, maybe.”
I felt pretty stupid. “I reveal my deepest fear,” I said, “offer up my cri de coeur, and that’s what you’ve got?” Possibly offensive, but the alternative was backpedaling like mad, or passing my awkward revelation off with an airy laugh, and either thing seemed to be beyond me.
He didn’t take offense, fortunately. Instead, he smiled a bit and said, “Not sure what that means. If you’re offering me something, you should probably tell me what it is. I may want to know.”
Was it hot in here, or was it just my ever-resetting hormones? Definitely my hormones, because anything else was ridiculous. “Cry from the heart,” I said, much too breathlessly. “French.”
“Ah,” he said, the absolutely satisfactory, full-grown-man lines around his eyes deepening with amusement. “French. Good to know. Well, then, there’s this. It could be the way you feel when you’re riding up a long, steep hill on a bike. How do you let your mind go when it’s focused on how hard this
is, on making your legs go around one more time, on the struggle? When you’ve got to the top at last and you’re coasting downhill, though, your mind frees up some, lets you think. Least that’s how it works for me. I’m not a big fan of the uphills.”
“Today, for example?” I asked. “When you were running?”
“Well, yeh.” I got another flash of smile. “The downhills were definitely better than the uphills today. There’s a reason I’m not a triathlete, possibly. I prefer my recreation to be recreational.” He got serious, then, his golden-brown eyes fixed on mine. “Could be you’re riding uphill now, and that hill’s too long and too steep. Wait for the downhill. It’s got to be coming sometime. When it does? You’re going to fly.”
He hadn’t looked at my breasts at all, I realized fuzzily. He’d looked into my eyes. Not that I wanted him to look at my breasts, because that would’ve been creepy, but I’d thought we’d had a moment before, unlikely as that idea was. I thought we might be having a moment now. Or maybe it was just that I kept having those moments, every time he looked at me. Every time he smiled like he couldn’t help it, or gave me all that focus.
Hormones, clearly. It had been months since I’d had sex—at least sex with another person—and the last time Max and I had done it, it hadn’t been what you’d call earth-shattering. I was overdue.
I lifted Isobel from my breast, adjusted my top, and began to pat her back, while Matiu kept his eyes on my face. “You didn’t ring me,” he said. “I was sorry about that.”
Isobel gave a choking cough and spat up chalky white milk all over my ancient cardigan, and I reached belatedly for a flannel blanket in the nappy bag, spread it over my shoulder, settled her in place again, and said, still patting her back, “I keep thinking I must be misreading this whole thing, given your running companion and her extremely fit appearance, not to mention the amount of breast milk I’m wearing at the moment, but just in case. You do realize that I wouldn’t be cleared to have sex even if I were looking for an affair, or revenge, or whatever it’s called once you’re separated, and you had an odd but convenient fetish for women with excess abdominal skin. You’d be brilliant revenge, of course, but I’m still married, technically. Also, I’m still bleeding like a stuck pig, and I’m still stitched up. And since you did the stitching, you have to know I’m not open for business.”
Stone Cold Kiwi (New Zealand Ever After Book 2) Page 7
