by PJ Vye
“I’ll take care of Junior for you, if I can have a few doses.”
“You’d risk your life for an experimental drug, just to lose a couple of kilos?”
Her hands tightened on the steering wheel. “What is wrong with you? Can’t you see this.” She pointed to the skin hanging over her pants. “And this.” She indicated the sag of skin under her arm. “And this.” She pointed to her neck. “A year’s worth of chicken twisties. And now your aunt’s cooking. Give me the damn medicine. Please.”
“Not happening. Hey, where are we going?”
Sunny parked the car at a row of shops on the street. “Wait there a minute,” and then ducked inside a fish and chip shop. Several minutes later she returned with a parcel wrapped in butcher’s paper that smelled like a hospital cafeteria. She tossed the parcel onto his lap and the heat warmed him.
A few minutes later they parked at the beach, overlooking the bay. The sun flittered in and out behind the occasional cloud and the ocean alternated between blue and grey. Mataio hadn’t been to the ocean in a very long time. Maybe even since before The Rules. He’d forgotten how his heart soured at the openness of it. The expanse of space that couldn’t be tamed. The freedom of a horizon that stretched beyond his perspective. He felt tension in his back release, and he turned to see Sunny smiling beside him.
“You like the ocean?”
“It’s in my blood.”
“You want to get out and eat over on that picnic table?”
Mataio looked at the greasy food in front of him and hesitated. His stomach flipped at the idea of fried fish, greasy and salty. He felt his mouth water and wondered how he could say no without insulting her.
She’d been concerned for him. But he only had three weeks to go. There were no grey areas. No fun. No enjoyment. No eating food for pleasure.
Technically, this wasn’t for pleasure. If he didn’t eat now, when would he eat next? Still, the view, the company, the takeaway—it was a breach. Why was he even thinking about it?
“You go ahead. I’ll wait here.”
He watched her confusion and then disappointment cross her face. She didn’t understand.
“You don’t like fish and chips? Who doesn’t like fish and chips?”
“I do. I’m just not hungry.”
“You had a single piece of toast for breakfast, no lunch and you’re a man the size of an oak tree. How do you survive on what you eat? Even if you don’t like fish, you should have something before you go to the lab.”
He didn’t answer her.
“Seriously. What is wrong with you?” She sighed, snatched the parcel from his lap and got out of the ute, slammed the door and sat on the table with her feet on the seat. She looked out over the ocean, her hair flailing behind her, and ate the chips, not turning to see if he watched.
He watched.
She ate slowly, taking two bites on each chip before placing the remainder in her teeth and picking up another. The wind whipped her hair in her mouth, and she had to keep holding it back when she opened it.
The seagulls arrived and started their monotonous high-pitched squawk. She stared them down but didn’t feed them. She just kept slowly and methodically nibbling away at each chip. With her back to him, sitting high on the bench, he could see the skin on her back just above her jeans where the jumper had pulled away as she leaned forward against the wind. A small line of white, flawless skin that curled around her waist and disappeared into the curve of her bottom.
Mataio turned his head, stared out the side window and took a long, drawn out breath. He needed some space from her right now. He stared at a lightpost by the car park without shifting his gaze for a long time until he heard the door beside him open and she climbed in the driver’s seat, the remains of the fish and chips the site of a food war with gulls swooping from every angle to catch their piece.
Sunny silently started the ute, reversed out of the park and drove away from the beach. Mataio glanced at it one final time, realising it would be one of the first things he would do when The Rules lifted. The sea was in his bones. He needed it. Sunny had known it and was angry with him now for not admitting she’d been right.
She drove the entire thirty minute ride without a word. Mataio didn’t try to cheer her up. That wasn’t his job. A few blocks from the laboratory and her old home, she turned down a dead-end road and switched off the engine, the ute facing a vacant block of land. She didn’t seem to be in a hurry to leave the area, which surprised him, all things considered.
“Thanks for the ride,” said Mataio, and waited for a response. He didn’t get one. He opened his side door, reached for his bag and she put out a hand to stop him.
“I think of you as a friend,” she said quietly to the windscreen, then turned to face him. “You know that right?”
Mataio felt blood run to his head. He kept his hand on the door handle, not sure how to answer.
“So, as your friend, I’ve gotta tell you—you’re royally messed up.”
Mataio hadn’t expected it and opened his mouth to protest. “That’s not—”
“Don’t try and tell me you’re not. You’re as messed up as they come.”
She stared him down with one crooked eyebrow and he lost the will to protest. To her, yes, he probably looked messed up. He sensed a conversation coming he didn’t want to have and looked out the side window longingly. Something made him stay seated. Did he want to hear her ideas on the matter? Could she guess? Could she see right through him?
“The less you tell me about yourself the more I want to know.”
He closed the car door softly and stared at the backpack in his lap.
She continued, buoyed by his lack of withdrawal, her hands taping out the questions on the steering wheel.
“I want to know why you don’t eat, when you clearly want to? Why you pretend you don’t care about people when you’d risk everything you’ve worked for to help just one? Why you stay silent when you’ve got things to say? Why your eyes say one thing and your actions says another? Why you won’t dare look at me in the eye, as if there’s some kind of invisible screen keeping you apart from the rest of the world?”
Sunny turned further in her seat and lowered her head towards him, attempting to get him to lift his gaze. He kept his focus on his backpack, lengthening and tightening the straps so they made a whirring sound against the stillness of the ute cabin.
“Mataio, I want to know why nothing I say seems to bother you. And yet everything seems to bother you. I want to know how you stay separate from everything. From everyone.”
She called him Mataio. Not Mat. Mataio. Had she been practicing? Or had she heard his aunt say it so many times she’d learnt to say it properly. He liked her saying his full name.
Sunny turned her head forward, her blonde hair falling over her shoulder, her body still facing him. “I don’t want you to be separate with me. I want you to tell me things you can’t tell anyone else. I’ll protect you. I’ll keep your secrets safe.”
Mataio didn’t dare look at her, because if he did he wouldn’t be able to stop the avalanche of words from falling out of his mouth. He knew if he looked at her now, he’d tell her everything.
He felt a cool hand on his cheek, and she lifted his face to hers. She leaned closer, now both hands either side of his face. He kept his eyes down but didn’t move away from her grasp.
He couldn’t move.
He knew he should, but there was nothing in him that would obey. His eyes closed without permission and he smelt her closeness, felt her breath on his face, and then the softness of her lips on his lips. A foreign and delightful sensation he’d long forgotten. His mind blanked and he heard the sound of a single peck, like it’d happened to someone else.
He didn’t open his eyes until he’d turned and floundered with the door handle. He climbed out and shut the door and walked away as quickly as his legs would work. As she drove past him, he didn’t dare look up. When the ute turned at the end of the street, he clo
sed his eyes to escape the burn he felt on his face and in his chest. When he trusted his legs would work again, he continued the short walk to the laboratory.
Twenty-Seven
MATAIO
18 days to go
Mataio woke to the sound of a smoke alarm and an angry fist pounding on the roller door. He stood dazed and tried to get make sense of it—the compound dryer hummed normally but smoke poured from a small saucepan on a hotplate and a repetitive three figure beep chirped annoyingly from the smoke alarm. He looked up and realised it was too high on the roof for him to reach. And someone was at the door.
He must have fallen asleep. Days of work, hunger and exhaustion had taken its toll. He remembered peeling old, wrinkled potatoes he’d found in the cupboard. It was the only thing left edible in the place. He’d peeled them thickly to avoid the green, growing eyes on the skin and placed them in a pan to boil. While he waited, he’d leaned against the wooden bearing holding up the roof and must have dozed off.
The door pounded again and he recognised the voice calling out. “Hello? Can you open up?”
Mataio lifted the boiled dry potatoes and turned off the hotplate, checked the timer on the serum and threw a plastic cup at the smoke detector on the ceiling. It was a direct hit and smashed the unit off the overhead beam. The noise encouraged the man at the door.
“Let me in. I need to talk.”
Mataio considered ignoring him, but the voice sounded determined and he didn’t want the man breaking his door.
“Hang on a minute.” Mataio went through the story in his head. The one where he knew nothing about the woman who lived upstairs. He hadn’t seen her go. He’d not paid any attention to the coming and goings of the residential flat upstairs.
The man wouldn’t know he’d heard every shouting match they’d had in the twelve months he’d lived below them.
Confident he had nothing to worry about, Mataio unlocked and lifted the roller door.
It was still night, Mataio had no idea of the time, but he assumed close to dawn as a slight colour appeared on the horizon behind him. The man’s face was vaguely lit by the lights inside the laboratory, but he could see enough to know this man looked nothing like he sounded. Mataio had imagined someone bigger, meaner looking. The man before him wasn’t tall, or scarred, or angry. He looked genuinely sad and worried.
“Are you okay? I didn’t know there was anyone here. I tried knocking a few times this week, but no-one answered.”
“I just got here, yesterday.” Mataio decided it must have been yesterday, although he couldn’t be sure. He put out his hand to shake. “My name’s Mat.”
“Yeah, I’m Judd. I live upstairs, mate. I’ve seen yuz around.” He peered behind Mataio and stepped forward. “What you been up to in ‘ere then?”
Mataio stood motionless. “Sorry about the alarm. Had a cooking accident. All good now. Thanks for your concern.” He moved his arm up as if to pull down the roller door again, but Judd took a stepped around him and into the room.
“Glad everything’s okay. I was a bit worried when I heard yuz alarm.” Judd searched the room, his eyes resting on Mataio’s makeshift bed. “Look, sorry to interrupt mate, but have yuz a minute for a chat?”
“Not really. I’m actually working on a project that needs to be checked at regular intervals.”
“I’ll be quick. I just wanted to know if you’d seen or spoken to Sunny at all, before she left?”
“Who?” Mataio asked, creasing his forehead with the name.
“Sunny. My partner. Did you speak to her at all, in the last few weeks? She’s gone and I’z a bit worried ‘bout her.”
The memory of Sunny’s hands on his face, her lips on his flashed into his mind, but Mataio knew how to lie. He’d practiced it and mastered it over the past twenty years. He didn’t doubt he sounded convincing when he said, “Sorry mate. Haven’t seen her. I don’t really get out of here much.”
Judd looked past him again and Mataio thought he might ask why but he didn’t.
“I’m not sure what else to do.”
Mataio looked back at the man in front of him, his head lowered, his eyes bloodshot, his arms crossed. It was a good routine, but Mataio had heard this man in action and didn’t buy the tragic vibe he projected now. “You tried to call her?”
“She’s not answering.”
“Oh.” Mataio said simply. He couldn’t commit any more than that without sounding like he had an opinion.
“You want me to make you some breakfast,” asked Judd. “Seein’ as yuz breakfast turned to smoke?”
Mataio hadn’t eaten in twenty-four hours. He had no food in the place and couldn’t leave the laboratory for longer than an hour to get some. He looked over at the red flashing timer on the rotary evaporator and saw he had fifty-three minutes before he’d need to transfer it. He could eat. But could he spend an hour with the man in front of him without giving away any hints about his knowledge of Sunny? And could he bear to be around the man who’d made her life so miserable?
His stomach growled as if it knew there might be food coming. If he saw Sunny’s passport, he might get an opportunity to snatch it, and then she’d be able to leave immediately, reducing his list of potential disasters by one.
His stomach growled again.
Mataio grabbed his keys and said, “Alright. Why not.”
Judd stood still a moment in the doorway and Mataio waited for him to move so he could pull down the door. Perhaps he’d been surprised Mataio had said yes. After all, Mataio had ignored the man ever since he’d moved in— the friendly waves and ‘hellos’—all snubbed. Judd himself probably had been reticent to make friends with the man downstairs who may or may not be aware of the dysfunction of his relationship with his girlfriend. Yet here Mataio was, accepting an invitation to eat.
“Do you have coffee?” Mataio asked as he locked the roller door.
“I have instant.”
“Perfect.”
Sunny’s ex-boyfriend gave him a strange look before Mataio followed him up the metal stairs to his apartment.
Twenty-Eight
MATAIO
16 days to go
“I spent some time with Judd.”
“What?”
Mataio arrived back at his aunt’s house with another three weeks supply of Junior’s medication. His machinery could only manage a small measure of ingredients and he’d done it in three batches. Judd had cooked for him twice in that time and Mataio had been forced to hear about Sunny’s relationship from the other side.
“He’s getting counselling, you know,” continued Mataio. “For his anger management.”
Sunny’s throat let out a strange sound somewhere between a hiccup and a snort. “Sure.”
“He showed me the receipts. He’s serious about getting you back. He knows he’s stuffed up. He knows he needs help.”
Sunny gave him a look he wasn’t sure he could read. Hurt—or maybe betrayal.
She didn’t answer him.
“Sunny, you have a history with this man. I guess I’m just asking, are you sure it’s over?” The words tasted bitter on his tongue, but he said them anyway. The thought of Sunny going back to him made his insides twist like cable ties, but he’d seen it all before. They always went back.
Sunny put her knife and fork down carefully on her half full plate, stuck her chin out at an angle he’d not seen before and said, “I just don’t understand where this is coming from, Mat? You said you heard the fights. You heard him. You heard him.”
Tears formed as she stood and took her dishes to the sink and dropped them loudly. A dinner plate broke and she picked up both pieces and put them in the bin, her shoulders drooping as she leaned over the sink.
Mataio grit his teeth. He had to say what he came to say.
“There must have been things about Judd that drew you to him in the first place.” A lump formed in his throat and he could barely say the words. “Do you think a man can change?”
Sunny sp
un around and faced him. “Really? You think a person can change that much?”
Mataio made an effort to keep his voice even. “What hope is there for any of us, if we can’t improve ourselves.”
“Firstly, you have to want to be better. And then you need to work at it. And even then, I’m not sure a person can change what is fundamentally wrong with them, deep down.”
Mataio tried to swallow and couldn’t. “I hope that’s not true.”
Sunny took a long look at Mataio’s face and shook her head slowly. “He got to you, didn’t he? Oh, he’s always been good at charming people. He’s a natural. I bet he told you he loved me, that he wanted to spend his life making me happy, that he would do anything, see anyone, do whatever it took to give me the life I wanted.”
The bastard said all those things. “Something like that,” nodded Mataio.
“Well, you be his boyfriend.”
Mataio smiled but Sunny didn’t.
“He lied to me Mat, over and over again. He told me so many times he’d get help. He’d ask me to make the appointment. He’d make me go with him and then when the counsellor gave him some steps to work towards managing his anger, he’d say to her he understood and would definitely work on it and then when we’d get home he’d tell me what an idiot the counsellor was, and how ridiculous the whole process was. He didn’t want to change, Mat. Believe me.”
“You’re absolutely sure you wouldn’t go back to him?”
Mataio had lost count the amount of times his mother had packed him up and left his father. Once, she’d even put the bond down on a rental. His father was always so sorry, always apologising and promising to get help, to get better—whatever it took to get his mother to change her mind. She always went back, him quietly and obediently in tow.
Sunny sat down beside Mataio now and made him look directly at her as she spoke.
“I’d been begging Judd for months to go away for a romantic weekend. He didn’t want to spend money on accommodation but eventually he conceded and booked a place. I was that excited, I bought a dress I adored. You know the kind of dress you put on and straight away you know you’ll buy it? I found a dress like that—soft pink and flowing, mid-thigh the way Judd liked it, fitted above the waist. I felt so beautiful in that dress and I hadn’t felt beautiful in a long time. I planned to wear it for dinner.
