The Pretty Delicious Cafe

by Danielle Hawkins

  * * *

  It was a trying day, involving a vaguely threatening letter from the Ministry for Primary Industries regarding our upcoming Food Safety Programme audit, me dropping a chocolate cake on the floor icing-side down and Anna spending an hour and a half on the phone with her mother, debating the merits of calla lilies versus rosebuds for the bridal bouquet.

  ‘I need a drink,’ she said at ten to six. ‘Let’s go to the surf club.’

  ‘We’re too poor,’ I said, scrubbing the food processor blade with a dish brush. I was tired and my bad knee hurt, and letters from government departments tend to spoil my day.

  ‘For one beer? Bloody hell, that’s grim.’

  I rinsed the blade and put it down on the bench. ‘Do you know how close we are to the overdraft limit?’

  ‘Stop it,’ said Anna. ‘We knew this year was going to be tight. It’s nearly holiday season, it’ll be fine.’

  I made an effort to pull myself together. ‘Yeah, okay. Can you settle up the EFTPOS machine?’

  * * *

  The surf club was a long, low building with an enormous porch roofed in clear PVC, perched above the mouth of the estuary. It was open between five and eight-ish in the evenings and sold beer, cheap wine and prawn crackers, although the casual passer-by would never have known it. Unlike in the Ratai Hotel at the other end of the main street, there was no music, live sports coverage or Guinness on tap – but you got a nicer view and a superior, backstage-pass sort of feeling from drinking where the tourists weren’t.

  ‘Did you sort out the flower crisis?’ I asked as we crossed the car park. The tide was right in and little waves slapped lazily against the side of the boat ramp.

  ‘Chocolate-coloured calla lilies for me and lemon for you,’ said Anna. ‘With ribbons to match our dresses.’

  ‘Classy.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  There were a dozen or so people sitting around the plastic picnic tables inside. The bar manager, a weathered little woman in a hot pink singlet and a denim miniskirt, was on the phone, and she gestured for us to get our own drinks. We took a bottle of beer apiece from the fridge behind the bar and went out onto the deck, where Hugh from the deli was leaning against the balcony. Hugh was American, tall and thin with a greying ponytail and very bright blue eyes, and he was one of my favourite people.

  ‘Evening, girls,’ he said. ‘How’s business?’

  ‘Slow,’ I said. I put my beer down on the balcony railing and jumped up to sit beside it. ‘You?’

  ‘Same. I’ve been playing around with some new sausage recipes; you’ll have to come and test them.’

  ‘Good,’ said Anna. ‘There’s a sausage tart recipe I want to try.’

  Hugh fixed her with a stern blue gaze. ‘My sausages, young lady, are carefully crafted taste sensations. I don’t make them for you to add curry powder and minced cucumber and whatever the hell else you add in the name of fine dining.’

  ‘I promise this tart is all about the sausage,’ said Anna. ‘It showcases the sausage, if you will.’

  ‘The tart is really just a vehicle for the sausage,’ I added.

  ‘Is that so?’ said Hugh dryly. ‘How did you like that book, Lia?’

  ‘It scared me stiff,’ I said. ‘Did you get it back alright?’

  He nodded. ‘I’ve got a couple more of that series, if you want them.’

  ‘God, no! I’m still not over that one.’

  ‘What puzzles me is why you tried it in the first place,’ Anna said. To Hugh she added, ‘She usually reads the ends of books first to make sure they finish happily.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I? Life’s miserable enough without adding more unhappiness on purpose.’

  ‘What do you know about life’s miseries?’ said Hugh. ‘How’s your mother, by the way?’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘Delightful woman. I’ve got some geranium cuttings potted up for her. I must drop them around. Who’s that fella over there who’s just about to burst into tears?’

  I looked, saw Isaac watching me through a window with the wistful patience of a kicked spaniel, and inhaled a mouthful of beer.

  ‘Friend of yours?’ Hugh asked.

  Anna giggled. ‘No,’ she said. ‘One of life’s miseries.’

  Spluttering, I put down my beer bottle and slid to my feet. ‘Right, that’s it.’

  ‘You tell him,’ said Hugh, patting me encouragingly on the back. Then, to Anna, ‘Kind of like watching a little fluffy kitten go for the jugular, ain’t it?’

  I left them sniggering and marched through the club room, through the far door and down the steps to the car park. There I stopped and turned.

  ‘Hi,’ said Isaac with a small, tremulous smile, coming downstairs behind me.

  ‘What do you want?’ I asked.

  ‘To talk to you.’

  ‘Oh, for Pete’s sake.’

  ‘Look, it’s obvious that I’ve offended you in some way,’ he said in that measured, highly irritating voice people use for trying to reason with the unreasonable. ‘But if you’ll just talk to me and tell me what’s wrong, maybe we can fix things between us.’

  ‘You know what, Isaac?’ I said. ‘It’s really offensive having the same conversation over and over again with someone who doesn’t listen to a word you say.’

  He bit his lip. ‘Funny you should say that, because from where I’m standing it kind of feels like you’re the one who won’t listen.’

  I opened my mouth to reply, and then had a small epiphany and shut it again. Nothing I said was going to make any difference to this conversation, because its sole aim was to keep me talking for as long as possible. Presumably he felt that the more he nagged me the more likely I was to give in. Any attempt to reason with him or to defend my position would just prolong the whole miserable experience – the only way to make it stop was to refuse to engage with him in the first place.

  ‘You’re right, I won’t,’ I said. ‘Bye.’ I turned and started back across the gravel, feeling quite lightheaded with relief.

  He lunged after me and caught my arm. ‘Lia, wait!’

  ‘I am not doing this any more,’ I snapped, wrenching my arm free. ‘I don’t want to see you, I don’t want to talk to you, and if you don’t stop this crap I – I’ll get a restraining order!’

  ‘That was quick,’ said Anna when I returned, passing me my beer.

  ‘What did you do with the body?’ Hugh asked.

  ‘Left it in the car park,’ I said shortly.

  ‘Untidy,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘There’s probably a bylaw against that kind of thing.’

  I swallowed the remaining half of my beer in a single, medicinal gulp. ‘If he’s still there when we leave I’ll roll him off the end of the boat ramp.’

  * * *

  He wasn’t, to my great relief. I had come to town with Anna, as an incentive to walk back home, but instead of turning right up the hill I went left along the esplanade beneath a row of enormous palm trees that housed about four thousand sparrows apiece, and then left again down Green Street to Mum’s.

  Mum was sitting on the lawn with the phone to her ear when I rounded the corner of the house, pinching the growing tips off a daisy bush at the edge of the border to thicken it up. She blew me a kiss.

  ‘Sit him down and talk to him,’ she said into the phone. ‘Yes, alright, I know it never worked for me, but you’re older and wiser than I was . . .’ She laughed. ‘Never. Okay, then. Bye.’ She turned off the phone and tossed it down on the grass.

  ‘Who was that?’ I asked.

  ‘Mike,’ she said.

  ‘Mike Leslie?’

  ‘Yes. Why on earth not?’

  ‘No reason at all,’ I said. ‘I just didn’t realise you guys chatted on the phone.’ I sat down beside her and hugged my knees. ‘Is he having issues with Dad?’

  ‘Of course. The man’s impossible. How was your day?’

  ‘Average. At best. You?’

  ‘Oh, fine. D’you like m
y new nail polish?’ She held up a lavender-toenailed foot.

  I wrinkled my nose. ‘I think I preferred the peach. That one makes it look like you haven’t got very good circulation.’

  ‘That’s probably why it was in the bargain bin,’ said Mum. ‘What’s wrong, love?’

  ‘I just told Isaac that if he didn’t leave me alone I’d get a restraining order.’

  ‘Goodness. What brought that on?’

  ‘Just the usual. Following me around and telling me I don’t understand him.’

  She smiled at me and reached out to tuck an escaping curl behind my ear. ‘I’m not sure that’s quite enough for a restraining order.’

  ‘I know. I got a bit carried away. I’m just so sick of him.’

  ‘Oh well, maybe now he’ll finally get the message.’

  ‘Maybe. I never should have gone out with him in the first place.’

  ‘When you’re looking for a prince, my darling, you have to expect to kiss a few frogs,’ said Mum wisely.

  I gave a little snort of laughter.

  ‘People break off relationships all the time. You spend some time together, and you either grow fonder of each other or you decide you’re not compatible.’

  ‘It’s just a bugger that he went one way and I went the other.’

  ‘Well, that happens,’ she said. ‘It’s not much fun for the one who cares, but that’s life. I know you feel guilty, but you didn’t set out to make him miserable. And what can you do about it? Marry him to keep him happy?’

  ‘Now there’s a horrible thought,’ I said.

  ‘There you go, then. Are you staying for tea?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  We got up, and I retrieved the phone.

  ‘What’s Dad done?’ I asked.

  ‘Hmm?’ said Mum. ‘Oh, just throwing his weight around. You know how he does. Poached egg?’

  Chapter 6

  I was reclining, one lovely November evening, in the springy grass beside the cliff path, recovering from the run uphill from the beach and looking out to sea. The air was warm and golden and one small pink cloud hung motionless above the horizon. It didn’t, here, seem all that important that most of this month’s income had come from last month’s GST refund, or that some loathsome person had written a Trip Advisor review that described Pretty Delicious as having ‘tolerable food, served in pretentiously rustic surroundings’. There was a shining cuckoo somewhere in the bush above the path – and, less idyllically, something prickly digging into the side of my right breast.

  I peered down the front of my top and discovered a large praying mantis clinging to my bra strap, looking back at me with alien, wicked-looking black eyes. I flicked at it in mild panic and it vanished, biting me vindictively in the armpit as it went. Leaping up I whipped off my shirt, and of course it was then that Jed Dixon came around the corner of the path.

  That was bad, but to make it worse I squealed in shock. Squealing is only acceptable for those under eight, and even then it’s not all that cool.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he said hastily.

  I clutched my T-shirt to my chest like a frightened virgin, and the praying mantis, lurking in its folds, bit me again. ‘Shit!’ I shook my shirt vigorously, and it fell into the grass beside me. ‘Sorry. I’m sorry. Praying mantis down my shirt.’ I dragged the shirt back on, inevitably both inside out and back to front.

  ‘Your brother’s not going to turn up with a gun, is he?’ Jed asked.

  ‘What? No. No. Only for suspected serial killers, I promise.’

  ‘That’s a relief,’ he said.

  ‘Why is it,’ I said bitterly, ‘that every time you show up I manage to make a total fool of myself?’

  ‘That’s not true. Last time you just made me a cup of coffee. Good coffee, too.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘But you did see my mother sniffing the curtain rods.’

  He smiled. ‘Yeah, that explained a lot.’

  It’s nice when people assume you have enough of a sense of humour to be laughed at.

  ‘Hey, thanks for not telling anyone about Rob holding you up,’ I said, smiling back.

  ‘How do you know I didn’t?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, I don’t, but if you’d told anyone from around here I’d have heard by now.’

  ‘Do you and your brother always know when the other one’s in trouble?’

  I made a face. ‘Sometimes. Sort of. It’s pretty hit and miss.’

  ‘And you’d rather not talk about it,’ he said.

  ‘No, it’s just – you sound like such a prat if you go around telling people you have a mysterious psychic link to your twin.’

  Jed laughed. ‘This track goes to Stony Bay, doesn’t it?’ he asked.

  I nodded. ‘It’s about three-quarters of an hour’s walk from here, up over the headland. Or you can go around the rocks at low tide.’

  He looked at his watch, then at me. ‘Heaps of time before dark. Feel like a walk to Stony Bay?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, pleased and flattered. (It occurred to me that I’d have been less pleased and flattered if he’d been less good-looking – but only fleetingly, since I prefer to pretend I’m not that shallow.)

  The path led up and over a ridge through waist-high gorse and long grass, and then turned downhill through a little grove of nikau palms. ‘This hillside was only fenced off about five years ago,’ I said, assuming the role of tour guide. ‘It was always grazed before that – Gary Austin used to chuck thirty steers out here for the winter and round up the ones that hadn’t fallen into the sea in spring.’

  ‘Did many fall into the sea?’

  ‘Only one, actually, as far as I remember. I tend to exaggerate; it pays not to believe anything I say.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ said Jed.

  ‘How’s the new job going?’ I asked.

  ‘Really good.’

  ‘Monty’s nice, isn’t he?’

  ‘Very nice,’ he said – and then added cautiously, ‘not the most organised bloke in the world.’

  ‘No,’ I said, smiling.

  ‘How long have you had the café?’

  ‘Nearly two years.’

  ‘Monty was saying the place was in pretty bad shape when you girls bought it. You must have done a lot of work on it.’

  ‘We did,’ I said. ‘But luckily Rob was trying hard to impress Anna just then, so we had an excellent source of free labour.’

  ‘They’re engaged, aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes. They’re getting married in March.’

  ‘Good on them,’ he said.

  ‘Where were you before you moved here?’ I asked.

  ‘Thames,’ said Jed. ‘Look, dolphins!’ And he pointed out to sea, where in the distance a patch of apricot sky was alive with wheeling gulls, harrying a school of little fish from the air while the dolphins and bigger fish harried them from below.

  * * *

  The tide was on its way out when we got to Stony Bay, a narrow, grey-pebbled cleft in the headland. With the sun down behind the hills it was a dark and rather forbidding place, and we didn’t linger. We came back around the shore in the fading light, jumping from rock to rock, moving quickly and not talking much.

  Jed, twenty metres ahead of me, stopped at the mouth of a cave in the cliff face to let me catch up. ‘Cosy-looking spot,’ he said, peering in. It was pitch-dark inside, and the steady drip of water echoed hollowly off the wet stone walls.

  ‘If you wade into that cave for about ten metres and then dive under a ledge, you come out on the other side of these rocks, at the end of the surf beach.’

  ‘You might,’ he said, looking at the cave with distaste. ‘I don’t do small dark spaces.’

  ‘It’s pretty cool diving under the rocks, though.’

  ‘I’d rather – what’s something really bad?’

  ‘Red-hot needles in your eyes?’ I suggested. ‘Bamboo slivers under your fingernails?’

  ‘Going to Mariah Carey concerts . . . yeah, that
type of thing.’

  ‘I thought mechanics spent most of their time lurking in pits underneath cars.’

  ‘If I’m in a pit, it’s lit up like the sun,’ he said firmly.

  * * *

  It was seven thirty when we reached the north end of the surf beach and the car park was empty, apart from a battered white van with tinted windows.

  ‘Can I give you a lift home?’ he asked, starting up the wooden steps that led from the beach to the car park.

  ‘Is this your van?’ I asked, surprised. It was a particularly seedy-looking vehicle – the kind whose owner has tight black jeans and tattooed knuckles, and supplements his income by liberating things off the backs of trucks.

  ‘This van is an example of Japanese engineering at its finest.’ Pulling a set of keys out of his pocket he wrestled briefly and unsuccessfully with the passenger-side lock, while I maintained a tactful silence.

  ‘Be quiet, or you can walk,’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t say a word!’

  ‘I could hear you thinking.’ He went around to the driver’s door, opened it and leant across to unlock the passenger side.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, climbing in. There was a bare single foam mattress with an orange, floral-patterned cover in the back, along with a sleeping bag and pillow, a battered paperback copy of The Power of One, a big blue chilly bin and a gas camping stove in a box.

  ‘Mint, isn’t it?’ said Jed.

  ‘Charming. Absolutely charming. I love what you’ve done with it.’

  ‘Really impresses the ladies.’

  ‘I bet,’ I said.

  ‘It’s only temporary,’ he said, starting the van. ‘I’m moving into a place on Green Street at the end of the week. I’m just waiting for the guy who’s in there now to move out.’

  ‘Coles’ sleep-out?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘That’ll be cosy.’ I knew that sleep-out well – Toby Coles was friends with Rob at high school – and it was a tiny place: one room, with the toilet and shower in a lean-to cupboard outside the door.

  ‘Less cosy than this,’ said Jed. He sighed. ‘I’m not actually a bum. I do have a house.’

  ‘In Thames?’

  ‘Mm. My ex lives in it.’