Charlie and Pearl (13 page)

Finally I caved, and
sent him a text about 2
.00p
m. Just a casual one, ‘hey, how ya doing,’. When I hadn’t heard back an hour later I got shitty and turned the phone off (the
y
say a watched pot never boils) and went for a wade in the ocean
, kicking the foam from the waves about furiously, only the wind was in a playful mood and threw most of it back my way
.
I had so much frustrated energy I walked further than I had
the whole stay
, right to the end of the beach where it meets the river and the water has formed a natural swimming area,
the palest green and beautifully transparent,
albeit cold.
Beautiful, creamy yellow freesias were growing in abundance and I picked handfuls to take back with me, their scent pervasive and transporting me back to summers gone by.

The long walk back and the flowers calmed me and
I deliberately left the phone off afterwards, while I showered, fried a couple of eggs, watched some crap TV, stuck a few more pictures in my new dream book. When I turned my phone on again at 10pm I expected there to be a message
from him and when there wasn’t I got angry again
. So even though I am fully aware
that
a girl should never drink and text/facebook, I opened a bottle of wine and I got
slightly
drunk and
I sent him another
text. Something along the lines of, ‘Hey, you’re obviously too busy to bother remembering me, so have a nice life!’

I know, cringe. Double cringe.

He called straight away.

“Woah!” he said, “What’s with the shitty text?”

“You didn’t text me back”

“Back? You didn’t text me”

“Yes I did, this afternoon”

“I never got it”

“Well I sent it”

“Pearl, I promise you, if I had got your text I would have text you back. You know I would.”

And
I knew he would.

“You want me come over?” he asked, tentatively.

“I guess so. If you want” I said, grudgingly.

So even though it was late at night and he had probably been in bed when he got my text he drove to see me, and as soon as I saw his face, his smile, I
knew
I had missed him
terribly but just
stubbornly wouldn’t let myself admit it
. We went for a
late night
swim (yes, naked, and yes, it was
rather
bracing) and then we showered
together and made love
in the outside shower
, with a million stars our
only
witnesses
.

Mmm.

Oh, and when I checked my phone
the next morning,
sure enough, the message I had sent him was
there,
still sitting in
the
outbox. How many times had I done that? Closed the phone be
fore the text had been sent properly?
Too many times not to know better, is the answer.

CHARLIE

I’ve decided I have to hire someone in, just casually, a few hours a day. Just to give me a chance to do the things I need to do out the back plus implement a few of my new ideas. A lunch break would be a good thing too.
As it was I was lucky enough to grab a bite to eat while
behind the counter, stuffing sandwiches into my mouth in between customers. It’s
can’t be
good for
my
digestion.

I mentioned it
causally
over dinner that night with mum and Pearl. Pearl dropped her cutlery with a clatter and threw up her hands.

“Well duh, hello!” she
said.

“What?”

“Me! Hire me!”

My initial reaction was
confus
ion
, she hadn’t mentioned wanting a job
in the bay
before now.

“You want a job?”

“I wouldn’t mind one. It’s a bit boring doing nothing every day. And the money would mean I could stay longer” she added
, knowing it was all the incentive I could ever need
.

How did I feel about the idea? Happy of course,
ecstatic even. I
t
m
ean
t
I would get to see her even more.
Slightly c
autious though, remembering what
had
happened
the
last time we spent too much time together. What if she got sick of me again in a week and threw a tantrum and stormed out
of the shop
? Oh who
was
I kidding, I didn’t care if she threw a tantrum every day on the hour.

“You’re hired” I told her happily.

“Just like that? You don’t need to run it past anyone else?”

“Nope,
totally
my call”
I said powerfully, feeling more important than I’d ever felt before.

“Oh
that’s fantastic
!” she beamed and ran round the table to climb on my lap and squeeze her arms
tightly
around my neck, planting
lasagne scented
kisses all over my face.

So
from then
she came into work with me. It felt
terribly
grown up to be going to work together. Getting up and taking turns in the shower, her making the coffee while I buttered the toast. Driving in together, arguing over which radio station to listen to
, she favouring pop, myself something a little older and heavier, which she made fun of scornfully.

“Stuck in the nineties much?” she’d scoff when I turned up the volume on a Gun’s and Roses song.

It was like we’d
hit the fast forward button to
ten
,
twenty
years
in the future
and were
watching ourselves in one
of those alternate parallel universes.

Once there she looked around the shop and got a glint in her eye that I recognised from my own.

“Can I...?”

“Go for it”

All morning I watched as she studied the layout of the shop,
biting her lower lip as she concentrated on
drawing pictures on a pad then furiously crossing
them out and drawing new ones.

All afternoon I did as I was told and dragged shelves and displays to where she pointed. At the end of it I was stuffed
and perspiring unattractively
but I had to admit the shop looked amazing. A different place. Newer
and
more spacious. Brighter,
classy
.

“So?” she asked, triumphantly when she was satisfied with what we’d done.

“It looks...”

“Yeah?”

“Well, it looks a bit, I don’t know, like...” I was winding her up.

“You hate it don’t you” and she drooped.

“No, if you let me finish I was going to say that it looks...
” her downtrodden look meant I couldn’t drag the joke out any longer, “
it looks
bloody awesome
!”

“Really?” she brightened, “You really like it?” and she started jumping up
and down like a five year old on her first day at school.

I
laughed and watched her and
wished I could make her happy like that all the time.

“There’s just one thing missing,” she frowned, biting her lip
again
.

“What?”

“A couch. We need to set up an area...there” she pointed
to a corner
, “where people
can
pause in their day, have a little
rest and
a
read
and a relax
”.

“You think?”

“Absolutely” she nodded firmly.

PEARL

Going to work with Charlie every day was more fun that I thought it would be
. Sleeping with the boss ha
s
its benefits. He let me read when
ever
I
wanted;
take long lunch
es
if I
felt the need for a revitalising
walk on the beach. Not that I would ever take him for granted. We work
ed
hard, believe me. I rearranged the shop. Well, I planned it and Charlie did the
actual
hard physical part. I also went online and bought
a second-hand couch off Trademe and we spent a weekend in Napier collecting it
,
staying
at a small little
B & B
by the beach. A
jaunty little
blue
and white striped affair, with shuttered windows and a barnacled old dinghy in the front yard.

We’d borrowed a trailer from a friend of Charlie’s and tied the couch on with ropes. I was happy with our purchase, it may have been pre-loved but it was a tidy condition, black with a silver trim around the cushions.
I wanted to set up a little area
in the shop
where people could relax. The memory of how I felt that day I stumbled in here inspired me.

We ordered in a huge range of magazines so that we knew would have something to appeal to everyone. Hunting and fishing magazines, car magazines, House and Garden, Cooking, even Teenage heart throb magazines (which always seemed to have either Robert Pattinson or Justin Bieber on the cover).

We had fun too though. Goofing off together, silly stuff that other people would probably think was stupid and juvenile but which we find hilarious.

“Remind me to send that order in tomorrow ok, or we’ll miss out on the discount” he’ll say to me.

“Ok” I’d say, then, 30 seconds later, mischievously, “Hey Charlie,”

“Yeah?”

“Remember to send the order in tomorrow or you’ll miss out on the discount”

“Oh ha ha” he said, “Remind me
tomorrow
I meant”

“Ok”

...”Hey Charlie”

“What?”

“Remind
me
tomorrow to remind
you
tomorrow to send the order in ok?”

The
n
he’d say, “Ok, but only if
you
remind
me
to remind
you
to remind
me
to send the order in tomorrow”