Our Magic Hour (21 page)

She called Nick. Her own voice answered.

‘This is Audrey and Nick.'

‘And you have really bad timing, because we're not here—' His voice, laughter. She
remembered recording that message sitting on the floorboards by the bed. ‘…Or maybe
we are here but we don't want to talk to you…'

‘It's your turn to talk now,' she heard herself say. ‘Leave a message.'

Lying in bed, she was sure she could turn to iron, to something harder. She practised
being very still. MON-U-MEN-TALME-MOR-I-ALS.

Nick wrote once, after Audrey sent him her new address.
Everything's the sameish
here
, he said
.

He'd seen Bernie once, riding his bike down Johnston Street. Nick was wasted, too
wasted to be driving, and when he'd stopped at the lights he'd seen Bern's pale face
bobbing outside the car window. Nick's mother asked after Audrey. How was her new
job?
Take care
, he said.

They knew how to write to each other. Audrey had always left little notes and drawings
for him. It started because they sometimes slept in shifts, and continued out of
habit.

Five degrees overnight, no wonder we were cold.

Dinner
, pinned down by two pears and a thick sandwich.

Your dad called round today, seemed surprised you weren't here. We had coffee. Told
him you finish at 6. He asked if you'd call him. Said it's not urgent. (I think he
just wants to know what to buy your mum for mother's day.) Love love love
, with a
little drawing of a middle-aged man, stooping, as very tall people often do. It was
a picture of his father. It was a picture of an older Nick.

Audrey's family wrote, her friends wrote, Katy's parents wrote. Nick sent just the
one letter, a gentle turning away.

After work Audrey and Pip sat in the kitchen. Audrey was cutting a pear.

‘Such a nonna way of doing it,' Pip said.

‘What do you mean?'

‘That's how my nonna cuts up fruit.'

Audrey looked at her hands. Fruit in her left palm, knife blade coming in towards
her, pear flesh falling away in pretty cheeks. She
had never thought there was another
way to do it.

Julian arrived home talking about snow chains. He and Pip had weekend plans. Audrey
rinsed her plate and knife. The other two argued about which car to take, whether
they could knock off work early on the Friday afternoon. Audrey was only half-listening.
Pip said
It's only half an hour on to Perisher anyway
. Her phone rang and she left
the room. Julian looked to Audrey.

‘Do you want to come? Jindabyne. Pip's parents live up there, but they're in Tassie
this week. We usually go earlier in the season, but there's still snow.'

‘I can't ski,' Audrey said.

‘What, you never went as a kid?'

‘I've never seen snow.'

Julian shrugged. ‘You can learn. Come if you want.'

‘Come!' Pip said from the doorway, phone cradled between her ear and shoulder.

There was kindness in the offer, and Audrey was love-hungry. She packed a bag.

They stopped in Cooma for petrol. Julian went to piss. Pip walked half a block with
her pack of cigarettes. Audrey could smell it on her when she got back into the car,
and she could only think of her mother then, and of Katy, and Adam, and home.

Audrey sat wedged beside Julian's pack and a slab of beer. The other two chattered
on pleasantly in the front. She put her face to the window. Cows with steam puffing
from their nostrils in the cold afternoon. Three jet trails in the darkening sky,
like a snail's gluey track. There was no air in the grass, no wind in the trees.
They sped on through the small towns, bakeries, Chinese restaurants, rest stops,
motel rooms with a security light above every door. The paddocks began to look ashy.
Ahead, twin red tail-lights winked and disappeared between bends. The first snow
was dirty, clinging to the sides
of the hills. Audrey fell asleep with her head on
Julian's pack. When she woke she saw water through the windscreen, pinpricks of light
around the lake.

Pip and Julian got up early to leave for Perisher. Audrey heard them in the kitchen,
quiet voices, running water, the front door opening and shutting as they carted their
gear from the house to the car. It was seven o'clock. Audrey pulled the sheet up
over her face. The light was still grey. The bed smelled different: of other people's
houses, of a room that wasn't often slept in. At home-home Nick was usually the first
one awake. He was cheerful in the mornings. He'd make the tea, bring it back to bed.
Sometimes he'd sing
Let's get up and brush our te-e-e-e-th!
Sometimes it was
Good
morning girl
. Audrey missed that body. It was a grief she hadn't expected: she missed
touching skin. Even when they hadn't fucked for weeks, and when she couldn't look
at him in bed at night, Nick would still roll over and hold her. They sought each
other out in their sleep.

Audrey went to the kitchen with the doona around her. She fiddled with the gas stove,
couldn't find matches, poked around Pip's room gingerly looking for a lighter. She
made coffee. In the portable CD player someone had left a Springsteen CD. She played
it while she drank her coffee and read a month-old copy of the local paper. She stood
by the window and watched two birds on the carport roof. She moved around the house
and tried to imagine Pip growing up in its rooms. There were photos of her and her
brother by the television, primary-school age, with missing teeth and straggly haircuts.
By the door to the laundry there was a strip of wall with names and heights and years
marked in pencil. In the toilet, a Leunig calendar; a framed cross-stitch by the
bath; a laminated poster that read
DID YOU KNOW??? About 1,800 L of blood passes
through the kidneys each day. No other organ gets as much blood as youre kidneys!
MICHAEL ALESSIO 3C
, illustrated with a light-faded texta drawing involving complicated
anatomy. Audrey thought of Katy. She would have
laughed.
YOUR KIDNEYS!
she would
have bellowed, trying for a nine-year-old boy's authority. It would have become a
joke or a catchphrase, somehow.

Audrey drew a bath. The steam fogged the mirror over the sink. She left the bathroom
door open so she could still hear the music. She held her breath to sink below the
surface. She watched her knees turn pink with heat.

She walked to town. She sat with her book in an Italian restaurant and ate a bowl
of salty mushroom linguine. It felt good and hot in her body. The only other customers
in the restaurant were two men arguing about a car. Audrey thought they might have
been brothers. There was a television mounted on the wall playing an old Harrison
Ford film.

At the newsagency she bought three postcards: one for her mother, one for her sister,
one for Adam. The sky was heavy and dull. There was an op-shop set up in the Uniting
Church. Audrey poked around the used books. They were mostly pulp romance novels,
but she found a biology book from the fifties. She opened it to the page on symbiosis.
Symbiosis occurs when two or more different organisms have a relationship in which
they depend on each other
.
There are different kinds of symbiotic relationships,
including mutualism, commensalism, amensalism, or parasitism.
There was a helpful
illustration of a hermit crab and an anemone. She read about parasites.

‘You right there, love?'

His smile was benign. Audrey dropped the book as if it were burning.

She walked down to the water. It all seemed very quiet. She sat on a rock and tried
to think about the lake being artificial, but she couldn't imagine what had been
there before.

She phoned Adam. He didn't answer. She watched an older woman struggle by with two
schoolchildren, all of them bundled into ski jackets. The woman huffed a greeting.
Audrey smiled at
them. Her nose was running. When she walked back up to the road,
all the cars had their headlights on.

Pip and Julian came back late in the day. They were tired and laughing.

‘What did you get up to?' Pip asked.

‘I read. Went for a big walk. It was nice.'

They went to the pub for dinner. Audrey borrowed an old parka that was hanging in
the wardrobe. It was enormously thick, lined with tartan fleece.

‘Nice eighties-soccer-mum aesthetic,' Julian snorted. ‘I reckon you might pick up
tonight.'

‘I thought it was more, you know, early Dana Scully,' said Audrey.

She was glad to have them back.

The pub was at the edge of the lake. It was a bright country sky. The moon on the
water reminded her of an ultrasound image.

‘I'm already sore,' Julian groaned.

‘Wait till tomorrow. Your body repairs itself overnight,' Pip said, ‘you'll be fucked.'

‘I won't be able to walk.'

The pub was crowded. Julian explained something to Audrey about it being a party
town in the snow season. The music was loud. Audrey wished she'd bought the biology
book.

They clinked their glasses, shed their coats.

‘I can't have gin,' Pip said. ‘It makes me depressed and spewy.'

Audrey was laughing. ‘Whiskey makes me sin but I can't say how.'

‘Sin,'
Julian said. ‘What a word!' Audrey wasn't sure what had made her say it. They
started talking about funny things that had happened all day: the lift operator,
the woman at the petrol station, Julian falling over. They were saying it in a way
that involved Audrey.

By the bathroom, after dinner, someone offered Julian some speed. ‘It might have
been fun,' he said when he got back to the table. He and Pip tried to out-do each
other with stories. Audrey had a flash of Katy's face, eyes swimming, joyful and
dancing. It wasn't a story she could tell. It had no punchline. She stood to get
another round.

Someone started talking to her while she waited at the bar. He was a slow speaker,
nondescript. He wore a fleece sweater. Audrey was bored, but only in a dim way: she
was drunk, he was going on about snowboarding, it was bearable. She looked back at
their table. Pip and Julian were still talking. The guy in the f leece sweater wanted
to buy her a drink. They sat at the end of the bar. He touched her back, down low.
Audrey tried to remember what to do with her body. In the bath she'd touched her
own skin, pretending it was someone else's hands. Now the hands were here they meant
nothing. Audrey finished her drink. She smiled and made to thank him, to excuse herself,
and he leaned in. His mouth was soft. She wanted to want it.

‘I have to go,' Pip said over the music. She was leaning against Julian. ‘I'm spent.
This always happens when I'm tired and I drink.'

They were both grinning at her.

‘You guys go on,' Audrey said. ‘I can meet you at home.'

Pip raised her eyebrows.

Julian spoke close to her ear. ‘Be safe.' Audrey felt him squeeze her arm through
layers of clothing. He and Pip left, arms linked. Audrey watched them push through
the doors.

‘They friends of yours?' the guy asked.

‘My housemates,' Audrey said. He nodded, as though the topic were exhausted. He kissed
her again. She put her face to his neck. She wondered if the spasm would pass.

‘What are you doing?' he said. He scratched his head. ‘Do you want to come back to
mine?'

His motel room was cold. Audrey already knew it was a mistake. He handed her a can,
rum and cola, and they sat side by side on the edge of the bed.

‘You wanna take your jacket off?'

Audrey shook her head, put the drink on the bedside table. He began to, he began
to, he began—

‘Hey,' she said, but her voice sounded like someone else's. ‘Stop. I'm sorry. I don't
want to.' His face was too close for her to see it properly. She breathed in rum
and beer and that cold motel smell. And woodsmoke: it made her think of the fire
pit at Charles Street, of Nick, of that house. ‘Stop,' she said again. He went on
kissing her neck. ‘I'm serious.' She pushed his hands down, away from her face, but
he was finding his way under her shirt, one hand on her wrist. Audrey was suddenly
frightened, pinned up against the bedhead. All she could think was not to lie down.
His face swarmed over her. His lips were making soothing shapes, he was smiling,
his hair was hanging over his forehead. She wondered if she should just let him do
it, wait for it to be over. His eyes were yellow.

She swiped out. Her hand hit the brick wall. The bedside lamp crashed to the floor,
taking the phone with it.

‘The fuck are you doing?'

‘Fuck off. I said
stop
.' Audrey clambered to her feet. The phone cord was caught
around her wrist. There was a thudding at the door and then Julian was in the doorway.
He grabbed Audrey's wrist roughly, yanked her from the room.

‘Listen, mate—'

‘You stay away from her,' Julian said. He grabbed the other guy by the neck of his
shirt. The three of them stood there as if suspended. Audrey looked at the two men,
grunting and struggling in the freezing night.

‘For God's sake,' she said. She turned and walked away.

She'd left her scarf back in the room. Her chest was cold. Julian caught up with
her halfway across the carpark.

‘What's wrong with you?' he said.

‘I'm sorry.'

‘Your hand's bleeding.'