by Rosie Rowell
Spook appears with two more beers, hands me one and sits down. I sip at it, determined not to think about bread. Or Rory. Worried that Spook will notice my mood, I start talking. ‘My god, these milkwoods smell awful.’
‘I don’t mind the smell.’
‘Oh please.’
‘Seriously.’ He has a deep sip of beer. ‘Do you know about the Post Office Tree in Mossel Bay?’
‘I do not,’ I reply.
‘Way back –’
‘When?’
Spook hooks his arm around my neck and rubs the top of my head. ‘Stop being so punchy! A very long time ago.’ He pauses, furrows his brow and looks up at the sky in mock concentration. ‘Five hundred years ago, for argument’s sake, Portuguese sailors who had stopped at Mossel Bay tied a shoe to a milkwood tree. In it was a letter saying that Bartholomew Dias had drowned. A year later the guy to whom it was addressed picked it up, out of the shoe.’
‘Great historical factoid. Well done.’
Spook laughs, leans his head back and closes his eyes. I pick at the label on the beer bottle, wondering why it is that when Spook’s around the thoughts that normally pinch so hard seem to lose their grip. I feel closer to the person I’d like to be.
‘Why don’t you eat?’ he asks.
I sit up in surprise. He hasn’t moved. There is no soft concern in his voice, he sounds curious. ‘Depends who you ask. Louisa thinks it’s attention-seeking. My mum thinks I’m punishing her. Rory has a bullshit theory about delaying womanhood.’
‘What do you think?’
No one has ever asked me that question before. They’ve told me to eat; they’ve threatened me with hospital and end of friendships and death. I take so long thinking about it that I suspect Spook may be asleep. I hope so. ‘It makes me feel sloppy and needy,’ I say. ‘I know that sounds weird.’
Spook shrugs and yawns. ‘Everyone’s weird.’
I get the feeling he’s studying me. ‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘No, really.’
‘I haven’t met anyone quite like you for a very long time.’
‘I find that alarming because I get the feeling you know a fair number of oddballs.’
Spook laughs and strokes the back of my head. ‘You’re an original, not an oddball.’
Inside the telephone rings. After a moment a man yells, ‘Sherreeee!’ Sherry yells a muffled reply but the meaning is clear.
‘That day my mom left, when I was seven …’ Spook starts talking, then lapses into silence. I’m confused by this disjointed conversation. Perhaps he smoked something while he was inside?
‘From then on it was as if me and my dad kept our ears pricked, waiting for her to open the door, dump her keys, yell at the dog.’
‘My dad and I,’ I say. His confusion makes me laugh.
After a moment he joins me. ‘Right, your turn.’
‘What?’
‘Tell me something you’ve never told anyone.’
I focus on the seagull scrounging around under the tables, trying to sort out my thoughts. Is he playing with me? But why would he? Suddenly a desire to talk overwhelms me and the words start spilling out. ‘For a long time I used to bug my mum about who my dad was, why she didn’t tell him she was pregnant. Lots of kids at school had divorced parents, and just because he and my mum weren’t together didn’t mean I shouldn’t have a dad. Her reason was always the same. “There wasn’t enough between us, Gracie. There wasn’t enough there; it would never have worked.” There wasn’t enough for a relationship, but there was enough for a baby. Almost.’ I breathe. The words are coming out in a jumble. They sound illogical. ‘I think I’m incomplete. There isn’t enough of me. You know how foetuses spontaneously abort if there is something wrong with them, I think I was never meant to happen.’
The words, so heavy inside, finally spoken, are weightless. I try to grab them back but they are gone. Spook doesn’t say anything. Poor guy, what is there to say? ‘That doesn’t make any sense, forget it.’ I mumble, embarrassed.
‘You are complete, Grace.’
‘Spare me.’
‘There is so much of you to go around. Bucketloads!’
‘Please shut up.’
‘Great big spoonfuls of Grace, slopping over the side, impossible to contain!’ he shouts.
I’m laughing at the odd looks he is getting from the few other customers so much that I don’t hear the man approaching or notice that Spook has stopped short and is sitting up. It is only when the man is standing in front of us that I realise that Spook’s whole manner has changed. Although the man is standing with his hands in his shorts pockets, the rest of his body seems alert and tight. He is wearing thick-soled hiking boots.
‘The old man of the sea!’ Spook says. ‘Pull up a pew.’
‘Aphrodite inside says you’re looking for me,’ the man says as he sits down opposite us, straddling the bench. His grey hair is pulled back into a ponytail.
‘Aphrodite!’ laughs Spook. ‘That’s a good one. What’s going on?’
‘Same shit, different day,’ he says. He jiggles a bunch of keys on the table. He glances at me, nods and says ‘Marvin’ by way of greeting.
‘I’m Grace, Aphrodite’s sister,’ I say and laugh.
The man looks confused.
Spook frowns at me. ‘What?’
It sounded clever in my head. It must be the beer.
‘Hey listen, I spoke to Gary,’ says Spook.
Marvin is lighting a cigarette as Spook speaks. His hand freezes. He takes the unlit cigarette out of his mouth and looks at Spook. ‘And?’ He glances pointedly at me.
‘Let me buy you a beer,’ says Spook and gets up, following the man inside.
When Spook returns he is alone. He sits down next to me, drums out a rhythm on his thighs.
‘How is Marvin?’ I ask.
‘Hmm?’ his says. He stands up. ‘Ready?’
Ready for what? I’m becoming tired of not knowing what’s going on. ‘Sure,’ I say, but he’s already walking towards the stairs. His pace is too quick for me. ‘Let’s walk along the beach,’ he says when he stops for me to catch up. ‘Do you want a lift?’ He is impatient, as if he’d prefer to leave me behind.
‘No.’
Spook takes the stairs two at a time and disappears into the house. I stay on the grass, unable to gather the energy to climb up to the deck. He’s going to leave. In fact, he has already left – his body is simply here collecting his stuff.
‘Grace?’ I hear Louisa calling.
I’m annoyed and confused. What happened to make him want to leave so abruptly? I scan back over the afternoon, trying to find a clue. Suck it up, I tell myself, it was a one night stand that dragged on too long.
‘Grace, your mum phoned.’ Louisa is leaning over the railing, looking down at me.
I squint up at her. ‘Not now.’ I turn towards the beach. The soles of my feet flinch away from the debris of tiny twigs and stones and dried-out succulents that litter the path. Maybe Spook has a girlfriend whom he’s been hanging around for and Marvin came to tell him she’s back in town. Or perhaps Spook is married and has been skiving off here for a few days while his wife and young children are out of their minds with worry. But Spook went looking for Marvin – he wouldn’t do that if he didn’t want to be found.
The tide is out. I follow it across the cold sand until I’m ankle-deep, relishing the freezing sting. The queue of tankers has disappeared from the horizon. They’ve got what they came for and are already on their way. I think back to Spook’s description of the train line running down the side of this coast. If each train is three hundred and forty-two wagons long and each wagon carries one hundred tonnes of iron ore, how long will it be before all that ore has been mined? It sounds like a maths problem. But what is never calculated is the impact on what is left behind – the gaping wound in the earth’s crust. The train line will lie silent; weeds will soon creep between the tracks. The tankers will have somewhere else
to go.
Spook meets me halfway up the path, car keys in hand. ‘I’ve got to get going.’
‘Sure. OK.’ I offer him a big smile and turn to look down the beach towards the crayfish factory so he doesn’t see behind it. An afternoon haze is forming around the point so that I can’t quite see the buildings, but I know they’re there.
He reaches out and brushes my cheek, forcing me to look back at him. ‘Something’s come up.’
‘Yup,’ I nod. Suddenly I think of the swings in the park near our house, how free I’d feel as Mum pushed me. ‘Higher!’ I’d command. ‘But you’ll go over the top,’ she’d laugh. ‘I don’t care, I want to go higher!’
Spook smiles at me now, and kisses my nose.
I turn towards the sea. ‘Have a nice life!’ I call, determined not to watch him drive away. His car starts up. He hoots once and then he is gone.
‘You OK?’ Louisa is behind me.
I turn around. She is searching my face for a reaction. ‘Sure!’ To prove it I smile. ‘That must be the record for the longest one night stand.’
‘The longest, oldest one night stand,’ says Louisa. ‘Come. Helen and them have gone. We’re going to watch a movie.’
I nod and follow her back. As we reach the house Louisa turns back and hugs me, back to her old self. ‘We missed you this morning.’ I smile and nod and bite back an urge to cry. Stop it, Grace, he was always going to go.
Brett is slumped on the sofa, with his feet on the coffee table. He seems to take up more space without Spook here.
‘Any more weirdos you’d like to invite around?’ he asks.
‘I thought you were supposed to be getting drunk,’ I reply, sitting down next to him.
‘I’m not a machine, Gracie.’
Louisa hovers in front of the sofa with a large bowl of popcorn. It takes me a moment to realise what she wants. I shift up and she plonks herself between us. She passes me the popcorn. ‘It’s disgusting, there is no butter on it, so you’d better eat some.’
The movie channel is showing The Usual Suspects.
‘God, this is really old,’ says Louisa as she settles herself into the cushions, like a roosting hen.
‘Grace likes old,’ says Brett with a mouth full of popcorn.
‘Hilarious,’ I say.
It feels like we’re all OK again, sitting on the sofa, talking shit. This is how this week was supposed to be. I’m still holding my handful of popcorn. I put a kernel in my mouth. I swear I can taste butter. But I can sense Louisa watching, so I make myself swallow it.
Five guys shuffle onto the screen in front of a line-up. I remember from the last time I watched this that I had no idea what was going on for most of the movie. Each of them in turn reads a sentence off a card and passes the card along. The middle guy reads it in a completely deranged voice.
‘Oh, that’s awesome!’ laughs Brett. ‘He’s so cool!’
‘He’s so you,’ sighs Louisa.
When the advert break comes on, Brett mutes the sound. ‘Wouldn’t it be cooler if they had ancient ads to match the movie?’
‘Jeez, it’s not that old,’ I say.
‘Is that what he told you?’ Brett says and Louisa laughs. She gets up and lets the wooden roller blind down over the sliding doors, then disappears. A moment later the bathroom door shuts.
Brett and I sit in the golden-brown light, watching the silent TV.
‘You liked him,’ I say.
‘For an ageing hippy.’ Brett sits up and looks at me, serious for a change. ‘But there was something odd about him.’
I shrug. What was odd about him was how he made me feel. What was seriously odd about him was that he liked me. Or at least I’d thought so. But I’d been wrong about Rory too.
Brett is fiddling with the remote. ‘Louisa, it’s starting,’ he shouts. When she doesn’t appear he calls her again.
‘Jeez, relax,’ I say.
Brett launches himself on me. ‘Gimme the keys, you fuckin’ cocksucker muthafucka!’ he shouts in a crazed voice and bites my shoulder.
‘Ow! Get off me!’ I shout, laughing.
He sits back and makes a spitting sound. ‘Too bony.’
Louisa comes back and they settle back into the movie. I keep returning to the bar. What happened there? It was as if the Spook I knew and liked walked into the bar with Marvin and a new Spook walked back out.
‘Grace!’ Louisa and Brett are looking at me.
‘What?’
‘Your old man is in the movie,’ says Brett. ‘Watch – Redfoot just mentioned a guy called Spook Hollis.’
Two men are facing each other, talking.
‘See? They’ve just mentioned him again. Oh hang on, Keaton “shivved” him,’ says Brett. ‘Bastard.’ He shakes his head. Louisa giggles.
Louisa disappears to refill the popcorn during the next ad break.
Brett looks at me. ‘So you’re OK?’
‘I’m fine! Don’t be such a girl, Taylor.’
He laughs. ‘You remember how everyone used to ask if we were twins? We could be now with your crazy new haircut.’
‘Take a look in the mirror, buddy – you’re not half as manly as me.’
Brett laughs.
As the movie resumes Louisa walks up to the TV, without the bowl, and stands in front of it. ‘There’s something you need to see.’
‘Wait till the next break,’ replies Brett, gesturing her out of the way.
‘No, you need to see it now.’
Brett rolls his eyes. ‘Are we watching the movie or not?’
I raise an eyebrow. ‘I thought it was too old.’
I chuck a pillow at him. He’s about to hurl it back when Louisa yells at us. She puts a navy canvas rucksack down on the coffee table in front of us.
‘What?’ Brett says.
‘This is Spook’s bag.’ Behind her a man is trying to smash in the windscreen of a moving car. ‘He left it in Grace’s room.’
‘Awesome. Let’s watch the movie.’ Brett says.
I’ve never seen the bag before. It certainly wasn’t there when I was folding up his clothes. He must have brought it in this morning when I was running on the beach. If he’s left it here, it means he’ll have to come back. But why didn’t he mention it before he left?
‘I looked inside.’ At the tone of Louisa’s voice, Brett turns away from the screen. He sits up. Louisa is staring at the bag, her expression worried. ‘There’s a whole lot of money inside.’
‘What?’ Brett and I ask simultaneously.
Despite the noise of the TV, the room feels very quiet. Louisa returns to her seat between us.
The bag is old and scuffed with the flaking remains of an Adidas logo on the side.
Brett leans forward. ‘Why did you look inside?’
Louisa shrugs. ‘Curiosity.’ She leans forward and unzips it.
‘Wait!’ says Brett. He jumps up and a few seconds later returns with the kitchen gloves. Louisa raises an eyebrow but puts them on. She picks out a threadbare towel that yesterday had been lying on the back seat of Spook’s car. Then comes the money. The notes are stacked in piles of brown two hundreds, blue one hundreds and red fifties, bundled together with elastic bands. Some of the notes are new and crisp, others floppy and curled.
After counting a few stacks Louisa says, ‘So they’re in thousands.’ She lines the bundles up along the coffee table. When the last pile is out, she sits back. ‘How much?’ She looks at Brett.
‘Fifty grand.’
‘Rubbish!’ she laughs. ‘It looks like Monopoly money.’
I’m trying hard not to say anything in case I break the fragile calm in the room.
‘Fuck me,’ says Brett quietly. In the dappled afternoon light his face is blank. ‘Do you think it’s a joke?’ The thought that Spook is going to jump out any moment, laughing at our gullibility, makes us pause.
‘Maybe it doesn’t belong to Spook,’ I say. ‘Maybe we’re in the middle of some reality show social experiment: �
��You find fifty grand in your bedroom – what do you do?”’
‘And Spook is the show director, which is why he appeared and then disappeared so quickly …’ adds Louisa.
‘Oh my god, I’m going to be famous!’ squeals Brett.
We look at each other. ‘Nah, says Louisa, ‘that shit doesn’t really happen.’
‘So what do we do?’ I ask.
‘Throw a massive party,’ shouts Brett, throwing his arms open and his head back. When he sees the expression on Louisa’s face, he adds, ‘And give the rest to charity?’
‘Let’s finish watching the movie,’ says Louisa. Still wearing the kitchen gloves, she picks up the bag.
‘I like that look,’ I say, indicating the yellow gloves.
‘Kitchen chic,’ she replies and drops the bag on the floor. It lands with a hard thud.
Louisa frowns. She reaches in again and pulls out a grey hoodie. ‘It’s heavy,’ she says and shakes it. A gun falls to the floor.
