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“I’m not too good for a van, or a camp site.”
“You fuckin’ should be,” Scully said with such vehemence Mully whined. “Not a fuckin’ drunk, not a druggie, not off your fuckin’ scone. You’re taking up space other men could fuckin’ use.” He waved an arm. “Yeah, yeah I know you don’t fuckin’ condescend to take the government’s money and you won’t take a bed in a shelter, but you’re wrong, man. All wrong.”
Drum looked away, caught Noddy’s eye. “Scully ain’t polite, but you’ve got a chance at a proper life, kid. We’ve said it before ‘n’ you know it.”
“Don’t want to be hungry like us,” said Clint.
Drum stood. He’d never been a real part of this group, knew he didn’t fit. He could look the part in his op shop clothes, but his diction was wrong, even when he tried to modify it, he was too healthy, too active, too young and sober. And whatever advice they had for him was ultimately the same as his father’s. Straighten up. Get your life back. Move on. Stop pretending to be something you’re fuckin’ well not.
Well, he wasn’t pretending anymore and he was fucking off. He reached under the table to pat Mully a last time. “Take care, boys.”
He had one final stop to make. And he did it cautiously. The house was dark. Assuming Foley had closed the door and gate, or the garage entrance behind herself, she couldn’t get back in, but she could sit in her car and wait, and so could his father. It was a blunt argument about who he wanted to see less. But the street was quiet. No sign of Foley and no sign of a car that could be Alan’s. He used the garage entryway and left the lights off.
He didn’t pause on the stairs. It no longer mattered that he was going to the second floor. He started in the office. He created a free email account and wrote to his real estate manager. It no longer mattered if this was a good market or a bad one. The house had become an easy crutch. It had to go. He wrote his sale instructions, which pretty much came down to sell it any way the agent thought best. The money was to be placed in the Benny Browning Trust in the usual way. He signed off Trick Drummond and stared at that alien string of letters for a moment, unsure what he felt at using their authority again.
He logged off and shut down. He rummaged for a bag. He didn’t have much to put in it, some stuff he’d brought from the cave, a couple of books, a scattering of clothes. He opened the safe and emptied it. He kept his mother’s engagement ring. He kept the cash. It would get him resettled. He’d need help otherwise and in that Scully was right. He didn’t deserve any handouts. He held the small tablet PC in his hand for a moment. It would make life easier to have it, so that made the decision, he had to put it down, like he’d put Foley down, because life would be too easy with her too. He zipped the bag and left the room.
He avoided the bedroom. It would smell of them, fill him with the sense of what he was leaving and it was difficult enough.
He stopped on the landing. The groceries were where he’d left them. He backtracked to the kitchen and shoved the bag in the fridge. The agent could deal with them. He avoided the bedroom for the second time and got halfway down the stairs before he remembered the ill-fitting track pants and sweatshirt. They’d do to sleep in. He went to the bedroom to find them and everything in his body went tight to be in that room again.
The sense of Foley was overwhelming. He’d rarely slept in this room before the cave, the whole house bought as an investment rather than a home, and he’d never had a woman stay over. He could smell her, see her under his closed eyelids, almost taste her. He sat on the end of the bed and his face throbbed, his throat choked.
She was the passion of that red scarf snatched by the wind. She was the discrepancy of the shiny jewellery in her nose and breast and belly. She was the bold colours of her puzzle piece and the intention behind it. She was stubborn and clever and funny and brave and frustrated with what she couldn’t make her own. She made him want so badly to fit her. But he didn’t fit anywhere and he didn’t think he had it in him to try. The sooner he got away from sights and sounds that tricked his memory, he’d feel more in control.
He’d had no control with Foley in this room last night and hadn’t wanted for it. She’d reduced him to sensation, to his lizard brain, beyond thoughts of worth or guarded actions. She made him pure somehow just by wanting him so furiously.
What he felt, that churning in his gut, was mourning. It was grief when he didn’t think he had any more room for that emotion. He needed to calm himself. He took a breath, lay his hands over his knees. He couldn’t hear the sea and his own breathing was off balance.
He started on the names. Colleen Adderton, Harold Ameden, Swen Aslog. He made it to the G’s and forgot Niles Graham, such an easy name to lose, and then the M’s and he skipped over Dai Ming. It was a testament to how out of control he felt. He didn’t think he’d ever forget these people. The order of their names was as solid, as present to him as his own arms. In the beginning he’d done this often, until it stopped being a memory test and simply was a part of his consciousness. He hadn’t done it since the day Foley arrived and it wasn’t calming him now. He was at the T’s and couldn’t remember who came after Anchalee Thalingthisong.
He could go down the hall to the office and check, but he couldn’t take the office with him. Everything made sense before Foley, all the names had a place, now nothing did. Maybe it didn’t matter anymore. This was an incomplete prayer. There could be more names and he’d not kept up, and remembering didn’t honour anyone, didn’t bring anyone back.
He felt oddly broken when there was nothing left to break; grimly determined when there was nothing left to decide. He’d spent two years trying to empty himself of the guilt and horror and the weight of responsibility, and now that he no longer felt the urgency of it he should’ve felt free.
His cheek was bleeding again. He put his hand up to it and touched the wetness, but what came away on his fingertips wasn’t blood.
He dried his face with the sheet and went downstairs, took his gear from the bathroom and left the house through the garage. He caught a bus, then a train to Central, then waited on the platform for a country train. In the morning he’d be long gone and Foley would finally be safe.
31: Haystack
The work crew said the cave was empty when they went to board it up. Only the couch, an oil drum, the remnants of a steel outdoor setting and a garbage bag full of bits and bobs to cart away.
Foley waited another day, to make it five days since Drum had kissed her forehead and left her on the rock ledge, before she went to the house. She ate a lot of ice-cream, a lot of Tim Tams, a lot of potato chips over those five days. There wasn’t a carrot or anything that might’ve masqueraded as protein or an official food group in her diet. It was proof you could live on stupidity alone.
As if she needed more of that.
Nat was kind. She didn’t comment on the non-food, or the twenty-four straight hours of TV Foley watched while she was pretending to be sick. She didn’t lecture, or boss or put anything like an I told you so expression on her face. She also pretended not to hear the tears, or see the permanent crumple in Foley’s chin. Nor did she interfere in the wallowing by attempting a cheer up or offering a shoulder. Nat more or less ghosted around the edges of Foley’s semi-catatonic state with half an eye on the fact Fole
y hadn’t showered or gone to bed. And when Foley pulled herself together and went to work, Nat must have been relieved because Foley was.
Now things would be normal.
And normal was what she wanted. A normal day at work with normal Gabriella annoyances, normal opportunities to run into Hugh, and have coffee with Adro. A normal sandwich for lunch, a normal attempt to get through her email and quotient of meetings before the day ran out. Maybe a normal amount of exercise in the evening and a normal piece of meat with veg for dinner, a normal bedtime with a normal attempt to sleep.
Do over till it felt natural. Do over till it made sense.
Normal was the new black and black was Foley’s new colour. She thought about having the puzzle piece blacked out and turned into a more conventional puzzle shape. It was cheaper than having the whole thing lasered off and would be one stage less ridiculous.
