Inconsolable

by Ainslie Paton

  “I’m thirty-eight.” She’d turn thirty this year. Her age was part of what made her restless, her assumption she should’ve achieved more.

  She tugged his hair. “Old man.”

  No grey in his beard yet, but then, the mirrors he used weren’t the best. Her hand soothed where she’d pulled.

  “My mother was killed in a car accident when I was ten.” Foley’s hand came down on his shoulder. He heard her breath catch at the unexpected admission. “I remember her, but with a kid’s eyes. She was always happy. She was always teasing Dad, making him laugh. He forgot how to do that for a long time after she died. Poured himself into work. My grandparents and a neighbour, Benny, basically stood in and raised me.”

  Why had he started this? He didn’t want to talk about his father. Foley left him to his silence, but her fingertips played with the hair that fell over his coat collar. He liked the gentleness, the randomness of her touch. He lifted his chin to give her easier access.

  “My height, my shape, that comes from my grandfather, Mum’s dad.” His brain, his intelligence, came from his father, but morphed, twisted into a capacity to do harm.

  “Is your dad still alive?”

  Probably. He shrugged.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  “No.” He never wanted to see his father again, knowing the horror they’d both unlocked was still in the world, still doing harm.

  “I’m sure he must worry about you.”

  “He wanted me gone.”

  Foley’s fingers stilled. “Gone?”

  “I don’t want to talk about him.”

  Foley’s breath snagged. “Tell me something else. Tell me your favourite childhood memory.”

  He brought his knees up, feet flat to the rock ledge. She asked because she thought he’d been abused. “I can’t name one. I had a good childhood. I had two sets of grandparents. I was well looked after, wanted for nothing.”

  “What were you like as a boy?”

  “Loud, argumentative. No stop button. I liked building things, experiments. My childhood has nothing to do with why I’m here. No one hurt me.” He hadn’t learned the capacity for inflicting pain from anyone else, no excuses.

  She sat up, her booted feet coming down beside him. “You can’t blame me for wondering.”

  He put a hand over her instep. There was no one to blame.

  She bent forward so her face was close to his. “Where are the people who loved you, who miss you?”

  He knew her eyes were amber, this close he’d see the flecks of black and gold. Her voice was bell clear and close to his ear. The rolled woolly brim of her beanie bumped against his temple. She smelled of mothballs and smoke. He squeezed her foot to stop from wrapping his arm around her leg and turning his face to hers, feeling smooth skin instead of scratchy yarn.

  She ruffled his hair. “Why are you so alone?”

  Because alone was safest. Because the people who loved him betrayed him and he’d had to be his own judge and jury and jailor. “It’s better this way.”

  She took a good handful of his hair and gripped and he pressed his other fist into the rock at his side, knuckles grinding in the hard packed rock.

  “I don’t know if you noticed, but you are not an unattractive man. There is no way you’ve been alone all your life. You have heartbreaker stamped all over you.”

  Her voice was full of humour but heartbreaker was too mild a description for what he’d done. “I wasn’t always alone.”

  “Were you, are you married? Did you have—”

  “No.” Foley’s intake of breath was a hard little gasp and she let go his hair, so he gave her more of what she wanted, more of the truth of him. “I was engaged once, briefly. It was a whim. Her name was Anna. She preferred me to be serious. I preferred to play the field.”

  “Oh.”

  There was surprise and disapproval in the sound she made but she was still curled close. He sighed. “You keep expecting me to be a better man. I keep disappointing you.” He would do it again. “I was a player. Deep pockets, fast women, lots of amusements. Believe me, alone is better.”

  She should’ve recoiled. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you enjoy being alone—with me.”

  He turned his head, his nose grazing her jaw, his lungs squeezing. If it was physically possible to split into two people he’d do that now. One of him would get as far away from Foley as he was capable of being and still know she was alive and thriving; the other would press himself to her as close as breath would allow, feel her lithe body in his hands and her pulse under his lips. But all he was able to do was lower his forehead to her knee and wrap his arm around her denim-clad leg.

  She stroked his hair and they stayed that way and he knew he was contaminating her, bleeding greed on her, but the will to move away deserted him.

  This jail he’d created for himself was hard and remote, this sentence, harsh and endless. With her wit and sense of fun, her stubborn insistence on his innate goodness, she’d cracked his resolve. Her sunny face was his reprieve, her raw energy his salvation. He felt sick at his own deceit, but still he rested against her and accepted her gentle touch.

  Her fingers traced behind his ear. “Tell me something else about you.”

  He sat upright, then stood. If he told her his sins he’d never see her again and he wasn’t ready to face that. “I’m going to make you a hot drink.”

  “You’re going to make me something.” She stood too, so close she was an explosion of rich possibilities. “You frustrating man.” She slapped her hands at her sides, but she was smiling. “Why do I bother with you?”

  Her smile was misplaced, he turned away, but her hand stole up his back to his shoulder. “What is this thing between us? You don’t want me to know you, but you’ve stopped pushing me away. I should know better than to put myself in a situation with a complex man like you, but I do it over and over again.”

  It was a cloudless night and the stars were backlit pinpricks of brilliance. “We’re just friends.” Her way of styling them. “Two stars amongst billions, trillions. Insignificant.” He would remember that when the time came.

  “Look.” She stepped around him, pointing. He followed her arm. The hot white streak of a meteor. “A shooting star.”

  “It’s space dust. It’ll burn up to nothing.” Like them, no matter how easy, how miraculous they seemed, this would end, the joy incinerate, and with it a part of him he’d forgotten existed—his humanity.

  19: Edge

  Nat tossed a salad: tomatoes, mushrooms, lettuce, chickpeas, half an avocado. She’d dumped dried cranberries in there too. “You’re seeing someone.”

  Foley picked up a renegade cranberry that’d missed the bowl and ate it. “Nope.”

  “So you’re staying home tonight?”

  She picked a cranberry from the top of a lettuce leaf and earned a slap on the hand from Nat. “Nope.”

  “You’re definitely seeing someone. And since you won’t tell me I can only deduce he’s in your usual mode, wildly inappropriate.” Nat pulled the grill shelf out and used tongs to plate two small pieces of steak. “Married or in jail.”

  Foley picked up both the plates. “Yeah, I’m dating a married jailbird.” She put them on the table where she’d poured two classes of wine. “Geez, Nat.”

  They sat and Foley dished salad on both their plates. Of course Drum could’ve been married. He could’ve been anything. She’d asked. He’d answered without hesitation. No, not married. He’d preferred being a man-whore, according to what he said. Of course he’d been a player; even in his charity bin clothes and badly in need of a haircut and shave, look at him. But not married. He had no reason to lie to her about that and she already knew he had no obvious police record.

  Nat put her knife and folk down. “Please tell me you’re not doing Hugh again.”

  Foley’s, “Shit no,” came with a spray of food particles. She used a napkin to wipe them up. “Sorry, but what would make you say t
hat?”

  Nat shrugged. “You’re happy.”

  “And you’ve been wearing one earring for weeks. Don’t you ever look at yourself in the mirror?” Nat grinned. She knew? “Why would you only wear one earring?”

  Nat cut her steak. “Pirates do. Punk rockers. Men.”

  “It’s not a fashion statement, or a historical,” Foley rapped the table with her knife end, “geopolitical or gender one, anymore than you being constantly untucked.”

  “We’re talking about you being happy, not me wearing one earring.”

  Foley pointed her fork. “No, we’re not. This one earring thing has been driving me insane.”

  “So why didn’t you say anything?”

  “I figured you’d work it out. And now I know you knew the whole time and did it deliberately. Who’d do that?” She twirled her fork. “What is that all about?”

  Nat chewed, took her time about it. “I’m having a fling.”

  A piece of avocado clogged momentarily in Foley’s throat and when she’d swallowed it, the slimy feeling remained. No way. “When, who?”

  “You forgot how, why and what. I’ll make a copygirl of you yet.”

  “You forgot to mention this magical event.”

  “Hardly magical.”

  “We’re talking you here. Celibate since high school.”

  Nat spat out another, “Hardly,” then considered with an eye roll, “almost.”

  Foley abandoned eating. “Dish.”

  Head shake. “No.”

  “Nat.”

  “I can’t say.”

  “You’re having a fling with a person you can’t talk about. Holy fuck, it’s not Roger, is it?”

  Nat’s cutlery chinked on her plate. “Roger! What would make you say that?”

  “All those interviews about the homeless problem, about the plans for the hospital expansion, about beach erosion.” Foley folded her arms and glared across the table.

  “Work, that’s work. I wouldn’t touch Roger with one hundred ply rubber gloves on. Plus he has about twelve kids, doesn’t he?” Nat gulped her wine and poured another glass.

  “He has four and Roger wouldn’t touch you either. He likes people who can dress themselves properly.” Like maybe Gabriella. “I only said it to get back at you for the Hugh comment. Dish.”

  “I can’t. I can only tell you it’s not serious. It’s just a bit of fun. Happened when I least expected it and he’s not married.”

  Foley picked up her fork and stabbed the last piece of steak. Nat had an off the record romance and she felt cheated of knowing all its ins and outs. “He’s someone you met at work. You don’t do anything else. Tell me about the earring.”

  Nat’s face went bright red. “He likes to nibble my ear.”

  Foley almost laughed, but she was mad with Nat for holding out on her, and conscious she’d managed to turn the tables, but only just, she needed to keep the pressure on Nat. “Only the one?”

  Nat nodded. “It’s his favourite side.”

  “Oh my God.” Foley looked at the ceiling. “You didn’t think to take them both off.”

  Nat shrugged and touched the earring. “The other one is at work. It’s a signal we use. If I’m wearing both he can’t be familiar with me.”

  Nat looked so awkwardly proud, Foley couldn’t help but laugh. “That’s so weird. That’s so … wow. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Nat cut a piece of steak. “You’ve been so unhappy, so restless. I didn’t want to make you feel any more out of sorts.”

  “That’s pathetic.” Though that’s exactly what it would’ve done. Nat having her ear regularly nibbled by some guy whose tongue-lashings needed to be kept secret. Foley shuddered. “You could’ve told me.”

  Nat did a fork point. “Like you’re telling me now.”

  Table turned. Foley sighed and broke eye contact.

  “Oh no.” Nat flung herself into the back of her chair and it creaked ominously. “You’re not. Tell me you’re not. I thought he’d gone away.”

  Foley kept her eyes lowered. She rolled a paper napkin in her palms. “It’s not what you think.” She jumped when Nat slammed her hand on the table.

  “It’s exactly what I think, you’re seeing Drum.”

  “As a friend. We’re friends.”

  “Have you slept with him?”

  “Jesus, Nat. No. Friends, I said friends.”

  “So you don’t kiss, hold hands, touch each other up?”

  Foley interjected a no into the pause between each of those accusations, but Nat wasn’t won.

  “Foley.”

  “We don’t … kiss.”

  “But you manhandle him?”

  She closed her eyes. She did. It was a good expression for what she did. She could not stop herself from finding excuses to touch Drum. At first he flinched away, like it pained him, then he stopped tensing and accepted her hands on his arms or his chest. And better, every so often he’d forget himself, tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, untwist the strap of her gym top, brush the back of her hand with his fingers as they walked side by side.

  Until after that night at the movies where she’d looked around at all the snuggling couples and lost it with him for being so physically perfect and perfectly reticent, he’d taken to touching her more deliberately with these tortured, tenderised caresses and iron tight holds.

  She had no idea what she was doing. “I can’t help it. I’m so taken with him.”

  Nat was up and walking around. “What do you even know about him?”

  “He’s not married. He’s never been to jail.”

  “You trust a homeless man to tell you the truth?”

  “I trust him.”

  Nat’s expression cornered the market on d words: disgust, distress, disbelief. “Foley.” Determination. Disappointment.

  “I know, I know. I see your point. I’m in trouble here. I can completely forget he lives in a cave.”

  “How can you forget that?” Nat pulled at her hair, which was already a mess of sticking-up pieces, which when combined with the two safety pins acting as shirt buttons, her squint, and the one earring, gave her a mad look.

  “Because he’s perfectly normal the rest of the time.”

  “What do you do?” Nat came back to her seat. “Where do you go?”

  “We run; he’s so fit. He’s teaching me to meditate. We talk. He listens. Oh God, Nat, he’s a great listener.”

  Nat put her head in her hands, her, “This is so wrong in so many ways,” was muffled but Foley understood it perfectly and resented it completely.

  “How can you say that? Why can’t I have a friend who’s homeless? It’s not a disease. I can’t catch it. I’m not reduced somehow, less a person, because I have a friend who isn’t the same as everyone else.”

  Nat lifted her head. “Did you hear what you just said? It’s not like he’s a redhead, or has an extra finger or a harelip. He’s not different. He’s mentally ill.”

  “Everyone has mental problems. You can barely dress yourself. Gabriella is a psychopath. Hugh is scared of insects. You can’t tell me it’s entirely rational for him to stand on a chair if he sees a cockroach. And you told me you thought Walter Lam had a screw loose.”

  “I don’t care about clothes and this is not about Hugh or Walter or your psychopath boss. All of them are functioning human beings, with access to running water and a bank account. Drum lives in a cave. That’s a lot less rational than being scared of Louie the fly.”

  “Is it? I can have a conversation with Drum. All that comes out of Gabriella’s mouth is corporate speak.”

  “You don’t even know his full name, do you?”

  Stung, Foley looked at her hands. It was true; all this time, all their talk, and he still wouldn’t tell her the things she most wanted to know. He was just a nickname. And she was the one who’d become reticent to ask.

  “If you were really his friend you’d be getting him help. You know I’m right.”

  Foley no
dded, back teeth clenched so hard her jaw ached. Oh God, oh God. “This is worse than if I was porking Hugh again. I’ll get Drum help.” She pushed away from the table.

  “Where are you going?”

  She went to the hall table to pick up her keys. Nat followed. “We’re—” The rest of the sentence imploded when she looked at Nat’s face.

  “Oh Foley. You’re totally gone on him, aren’t you?”

  “No, it’s no, I’m just.” She covered her face with her hands. “Oh God, yes.”

  “Don’t go tonight.”

  She looked up. Nat leaned on the hallway wall. “He’s expecting me.”

  “If this was meant to be, the man would have a phone. You’d be able to call him and tell him there’s a change of plans. He’s a homeless man living in a cave. Your mother!” Nat slapped her forehead with the heel of her hand. “This would put your mother in the hospital. Your dad would chase Drum off with the sharp end of a garden implement. You need to end this, whatever it is.”

  “No.” She said it like Drum did. Hard, straight up, definitive. No room for compromise.

  “Does Hugh know?”

  “No.” Foley fisted her keys. “And you’re not going to tell him.”

  Nat shook her head.

  “Promise me you won’t tell Hugh.”

  “How can you say that and not know you need to break this off?” Nat pushed away from the wall. “If this was reasonable, this friendship, I’d have known, your parents, Hugh. You wouldn’t have kept it a secret.”

  “Like you’re not keeping your affair secret, huh? We’re not even swapping spit.”

  Nat sighed. “Don’t go to him tonight.”

  There were more words, more accusations chucked around with soapsuds while they washed up in the kitchen. There was no rule about who you could have for a friend. And right now, with Nat going all thought police on her, Drum was the best friend Foley had.

  She was late getting to Marks Park. But he was waiting, rugged up against the cold in a fleece and a long battered brown leather coat that made him look like a rock star, with his hair falling around his collar, his sexy beard and his worn through ripped jeans. If he’d had boots instead of falling apart runners and a belt instead of an old dressing gown cord, he’d have passed for a fashion shoot subject. She barrelled into his arms, making him stagger back a step.