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I knew. It was over. At least, I knew.

I got some cans and two mostly whole bottles and put them on top of a mound of dirt at the top of one of the little mine shafts. Then I went back about twenty metres to another mound of dirt and I lay down behind that, resting the rifle on my arm so I could sight easily at the line of cans and bottles. I proceeded to fire and to miss.

I should have held up the petrol guy as it had crossed my mind to do. So that when the family car drove off and he looked over, it would have been to see me by the open boot of the Valiant, holding the rifle. ‘Okay, man. Wipe that stupid look off your face. Robin, start the car.' I'd be inside the petrol station shop. ‘Okay, all the money in the till, thank you, fatso.' He would be blubbering a bit of course. ‘Please don't hurt me. Please don't hurt me.' Yeah, yeah. ‘And a carton of B&H.' No. ‘Oh, look you've been hiding the Winnie Blues.' Two cartons of Winfield Blue. And I'd grab the box of Snickers. He's crying now. ‘Please don't kill me.' Wrench out the phone. Take his mobile. Does he have a mobile? And I walk toward the car. She's behind the wheel waiting for me. I push the cash into my jeans and step into the back seat and over into the front. Step, step, sit. And she guns it, fishtailing the car in a spray of gravel onto the highway and into the sunset. Yaoow.

I lay on my back in the dirt where I really was and I aimed the rifle straight up in the air. If you could aim directly up at ninety degrees and you fired, the bullet would drop right back down on you and kill you.

She had never wanted me. Never. The night we met, she was not interested. The other girls were. It was a game tables of girls would sometimes play. Flirt with the cute waiter. See who can bag him. I have never minded. Fringe benefit with the tips and free food. I'd go home with the cuter ones, but it never really amounted to much except occasionally great sex, but mostly average sex and tears and all the girl's problems and past relationships and nothing else. I know. It's true. I was a bit of a tart before Robin.

Anyway, the night I met Robin, she was the only one at their table who wasn't hitting on me. She was quiet and a bit glum. She'd broken up with someone. I forget who. I forget why. I believe her friends were
helping her cleanse herself of him and she had decided it was all men who were evil and she drank a lot of wine, which does not go with too many tacos, if I may say. And she argued with her friends. Loud and raucous is Gringos' kind of crowd, but they became loud and angry, Robin against the world.

They left late, and they left Robin. I found her in the back parking lot, puking up her guts near the Valiant. Small world if you look backwards. I couldn't get her to make sense. She was nearly unconscious. I opened her purse and found her mobile. I didn't find many numbers in it. I was going to try a few. Get one of her friends to come and get her. But I found her student card and an address. It was one of those university residential colleges on Stirling Highway near the river. There was a key with a room number. Her blouse was covered in vomit and I took it off and I put my jacket on her and buttoned it up, then I put her in the back of my car, with a windcheater under her head in case she was going to puke again. I put her over my shoulder when I got there and carried her up a flight of stairs. Two guys were in a small kitchen. ‘Ah, you got her. Good one, dude.' The other one said, ‘Can we have a go when you're finished?'

The room was small, like in the nurses' quarters but with a desk and books and a single bed. I laid her down. That's when I saw her movie posters. One was
Breathless
and the other was
To Kill a Mockingbird.
Gregory Peck. ‘Ah, you like old movies,' I said.

There were three rag dolls on her windowsill and a Harry Potter wand. A big casserole dish was up on her bookshelf. The rest was books and papers and quite a few piles of clothes on the floor.

I took off her shoes. She had good legs and a beautiful face. I spread her top blanket over her and put her purse on the desk and her key next to that. I moved a litter bin to the floor next to her face. I clicked the lock in the door when I left, which I think was a good thing, because the arseholes were lurking. ‘That was quick, man,' said one. ‘Did you get any pictures?'

It was suddenly cold outside and when I got back to the car and smelled the bad smell and saw her blouse, I realised I'd lost a good coat. And that would have been it. Done, dusted and no Robin and Zac to break my heart.

Except that Robin came to Gringos the next night. I saw her come in with my coat.

‘Hey, you brought it back.'

‘So it is yours.'

I put a plate of refried beans down on the table next to me and reached for it.

‘You admit it.' Her eyes were flashing.

‘Sure. Do you want your top?'

‘You fucking bastard,' she yelled. It was early, but the people in the restaurant went quiet. ‘Do you see any reason why I shouldn't call the police on you, you fucking sleazebag.'

‘Huh?'

‘Hey, want to take it outside?' said Mike, the manager coming from the front.

‘Is that how you get your kicks, is it?'

‘I didn't get any kicks.' I included the customers. ‘Honest. I ... I washed your blouse.'

‘Exactly, and what are you doing with it and how did you get it off without my consent and what, arsehole, were you doing in my room for so long and why shouldn't I call the police?'

‘I wasn't in there very long,' I said.

‘In where!'

‘No, your room. You passed out. I took you home. Left straight away.'

‘You took my blouse off.'

‘It was covered in puke. There was cheese. Mince. Pickles. Red wine.'

‘Tequila,' she said, quiet, thinking fast.

‘No carrots. That I could see. Contrary to folklore.'

‘Some guys said...'

‘Not nice guys.'

She nodded, got it. She looked around the room. Someone laughed, but most had gone back to talking. She was embarrassed and blinking and blushing and she made me smile.

‘I'll get your blouse,' I said and went out into the kitchen. When I got back my coat was folded on the table and she was walking out the front door. I went after her.

Someone yelled, ‘Let her go, man. Too high maintenance.'

A girl yelled, ‘I won't yell at you after.'

Outside I yelled, ‘Hey. Your blouse.'

She turned. She was still embarrassed. She looked at her blouse in my hand and said, ‘It's clean.'

‘I washed it.'

‘You washed it?'

‘It was pretty pongy.'

‘You washed my blouse?'

She looked up at me and smiled. It was delicate and hopeful and maybe a little scared, like I'd saved her puppy from drowning and given it the kiss of life.

‘In the sink,' I said. ‘I mean I didn't soak it in lavender and dry it on the French Riviera and iron it atop the Himalayas or anything.'

She laughed. The lines went away from around her eyes.

‘Zac, if you don't leave your love-life at home and get in here and start serving the customers, I will fire your arse!' yelled Mike from the front door.

She stopped smiling.

‘He won't fire me.'

‘Anyway, sorry about the tirade.' Still not smiling.

‘Wanna go see a movie?'

‘I have to study.'

‘They play old movies during the day at the Cygnet for half price.'

She looked at me, wondering how I knew she liked old movies, but then got distrustful again.

I gave my smile. I raised my eyebrows. I turned the smile up a bit.

‘No. I don't want to be part of all your love-life, thank you.'

And she turned and walked away.

I like looking over at her at a party to find her looking back. I like hearing about her day. I like her jokes. The way she takes the piss out of me. I liked the way she made love. It had a concentrated intensity that became abandoned, like we were in a storm and she was the only one who could get us through, like she was the boat and the ocean both. Then we'd drown.

I lay on my back in the dirt and felt a chill. The sun was going down. The sky was turning orange and red, and the earth under that, from red to black, filling in with shades of grey. The deserted buildings were darkening too, into black lurking shapes.

It took me months of asking Robin to films before she said yes.
Doctor Zhivago
finally did it. I do not know why she suddenly said yes. I do not understand how Robin's brain works. And that, I suppose, is why it is over. I'm not up to it.

A fire was going at the house where Robin had gone. I went to the boot again before I went over to where she was sitting. She'd made a circle of rocks and stacked bits of wood. She was a good camper. Not always happy, but a first-rate woodsman.

I had the rifle in one hand and something hidden behind my back. She had changed into her jeans. When she looked up she said, ‘What did you get?'

I brought out the can of soup I'd packed. ‘Nothing out there. Just cans and bottles. And they all escaped.'

I put down the rifle and stood holding the can of soup.

‘Can opener?' she said.

I went to the wall of the house where she'd built the fire and found a nail sticking out of a window frame. I tried to hit the nail at the right angle to puncture the can, but it only dented. When I stopped banging I heard Robin say, ‘I'm sorry.'

I didn't say anything.

Robin said, ‘I...' and then after a while she said, ‘Sorry.'

‘Sorry about what? What are you sorry about?'

‘For being mean. For being – a mess. For all the...' She sighed and looked off into the dark. Then she said, ‘I used to live here. In this house. We're sitting in the garage.' She stood and looked in through the glassless window where I'd been hammering the can. ‘The kitchen was in here. Then our room. All three of us used to sleep there. Mum and Dad had the other bedroom. Us and nobody else. In 1899 there were six thousand people here. In 1907 there were fifteen. And then just us in the only viable house left. That's the history of this town.
Boom and bust. Mum wanted us to move out here to be closer to where – Dad was always out here. But we moved back into Coolgardie after a couple of years anyway. There wasn't any work here – for Mum.'

Then she turned her back on the house and walked to the other side of the fire and turned to face me, standing up straight, as though doing a speech at school assembly. ‘My belief is this. History starts with us. The only history I care about is what happens between us. That's when it starts. That's why I've never talked about other things, because they don't matter.'

‘Us?'

‘Listen to me crap on. Yabber yabber.' She looked down at the fire with a scared smile.

I fell in love with her again. I couldn't not. I stepped out from the wall. I was going to hug her.

But she looked up at me as though I'd only just arrived. ‘I'll get a flagon.'

‘Rob.'

‘I'll get the flagon of reds. Then we can talk. Okay?'

I nodded. I didn't want to frighten her off. She'd told me more in the last minute than she'd said in the last couple of months. Maybe more personal stuff than in all the time I'd known her. We had gone to a lot of parties and pubs and bands. We'd seen a lot of movies. We'd made a lot of love. But we had never talked that much about ourselves. It hadn't seemed necessary.

She was making the car light flash. I'd saved the interior light when I took the roof off. It was coiled on the back floor of the car and it still worked. Robin had found the point where the button in the door pops out enough to make the light come on. She was opening and closing the passenger door so the light winked on and off, showing her at the car and then gone. The shopfront behind would glow too and be gone. Town, no town; Robin, then no.

I heard a whine and turned to see a dusty blue heeler coming out of the desert behind the house. It stopped short of the fire and looked back. It was old with lots of nicks out of its grey coat.

‘Here boy,' I called, but it didn't move. ‘Yo, Rinnie? Lassie? Here Spot. Fang. Inspector Rex. Heel, Rex. Wolf?'

The dog wouldn't budge.

Robin said, ‘Dog.' She had brought the flagon back.

The dog went to her, sniffing and then started to wag its tail.

‘It likes you.'

Robin sat on a big rock by the fire, looking out at the desert, letting the dog lick her fingers.

‘Here, boy, here.'

‘Dog,' said Robin.

‘Dog?'

‘That's his name.'

The dog still wouldn't come to me. Robin took a big gulp of red wine as she kept looking into the darkness. She said, ‘Did you hear about the insomniac, agnostic dyslexic?'

‘The what?'

‘He kept waking up worried about whether there was such a thing as a dog.'

I understood the word dog.

The dog suddenly turned and ran off.

A man appeared and walked towards us out of the dark with the dog by his side. His clothes were dusty, as dusty as the dog. He had a beard and a weathered brown face that made it hard to tell his age or his fearsomeness.

‘Gidday. Saw your fire.'

He stepped into the light, looking at the fire and then the car and back to the rifle on the ground near Robin. He looked up at Robin and he smiled. ‘Hello.'

‘Hello,' she said.

The guy said, ‘What you doing all the way out here?'

‘Camping.'

He nodded and looked over to me.

‘Pull up a piece of house and sit down,' I said.

‘Bill,' he said, not offering his hand.

‘Zac. Want a drink?'

He opened his eyes a fraction which I took for yes. I looked over to Robin, but she hadn't made a move. I got up and got the flagon from her. ‘It's a red blend made to our own secret recipe.'