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He shook his head, whatever memories stirring making him frown. “Obsessively.”
“What happened?” He unfolded and stood up, withdrawing from the question and from her. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”
“Hah!”
She looked up at him, surprised by the lack of irritation in the sound, and the hand held out to her. She took it. “I did mean to pry. Everything about you fascinates me.”
He gave her hand a tug. “That’s not a good thing.”
She stood and kept his hand, dry, slightly sandy, in hers. “It’s the truth.”
“A variable concept.”
“Why do you say that?”
He stared out towards the murky mass of sea and sky. “People use truth as a weapon all the time.” He was so close physically, but remote like a castaway on a deserted island, shipwrecked and alone, a survivor so adjusted to his constrained existence, he feared being rescued. She ached to give him back his freedom, to bring him home.
“What happened to you, Drum?”
He squeezed her hand, then released it. “You ask the wrong question.”
She sighed. This was old ground. “You wouldn’t answer me if I found the right one.”
He said, “See you, Foley,” and moved off.
She wanted to shout, when? Instead she called, “I’ll be here tomorrow,” then bit her tongue to stop more words, more desperate hope coming out of her mouth. If she wanted him rescued, it didn’t start with tying him in obligations.
She drove home, had the same conversation about work with Nat and resolved to rescue that situation as well, with a different set of words, and she went to bed hugging the truth of a new friend.
16: Yard Work
The three women were beautiful in the way money and time can make a woman look airbrushed to perfection, to unreality. Drum didn’t want the invasion, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. He didn’t expect the conversation.
When he mowed lawns and clipped hedges for Greenie, the homes were normally empty, the owners at work. It was get in, get it done, get out quickly, move on to the next one. The more yards tended to, the more money in his hand. A clean, straight, honest proposition. This work didn’t come up very often, only when one of Greenie’s regular boys was sick or on holiday, so Drum wanted to make the best of it.
Except they came home and he wasn’t finished. He didn’t hear the car in the drive over the mower and the earmuffs. He didn’t realise they’d set themselves up on the deck and were watching him like he was a floorshow until they were well and truly settled with iced tea and plates of fruit. He was shirtless, hot and dirty and they were artfully amused.
“You’re Dave Green’s man,” the blonde called when he’d shut off the mower and pulled the muffs off. Must be her home, her clone-like friends.
“Do you do pools?” said the brunette, and the three of them laughed.
“No pools.” He moved to the edge of the deck where he’d left the hedge clippers.
“Shame.” She dangled a strawberry over her mouth. “I’d put a pool in,” she kissed it, “just to have you come and do it.”
That got a roar of approval. He took the clippers to the hedge. Knew he’d be putting on more of a show as he reshaped it; nothing he could do about it, except work quickly.
“Don’t mind Madison. Please come and have a cold drink.” The blonde again. Definitely her house.
He looked at her, holding out a glass of something sweaty with cold. He could hear ice cubes clink. His lip lick was involuntary. He took two strides back to the deck and the glass from her hand. “Thank you.”
“Please come and sit down with us.”
He ignored that, gulped the drink down and put the glass down on the deck. The third woman, another blonde, painfully thin, said, “Good Lord. When do you get off work?” More cackling, which he ignored to start on the hedge.
“No, seriously. You’re gorgeous. I want to take you out for a real drink.”
“She is serious,” said the homeowner.
