Charlie and Pearl (2 page)

In town it’s fairly empty, being a) off season, and b) Tuesday morning. A lot of the locals commute to a bigger town only thirty minutes away for work. That’s the beauty of New Zealand, everything is just a short drive away. 

The Four Square
in this town
is a little bit pricier than the supermarkets back
in the city
, but I guess the food has to travel further. I have a little bit of money saved up, and gran pressed another couple of hundred into my hand as I was leaving. It should last me awhile,
my needs are few.
I
have no clear idea on how long I will
end up staying here.
There’s nothing for me to go back to in a hurry but I can’t stay here forever
, tempting as the thought is
. Maybe just the winter, I think. That should be long enough.

I take my time buying the groceries, lingering in the aisles, studying the products available. I’ve always loved supermarkets. The possibilities of what I could cook and eat are wide open and endless. I pay then walk outside
and
then stop
.
Just stop, bang in the middle of the orange bricked pavement.
Once again I have neglected to think something through. The thought of walking back to the beach house carrying my purchases is daunting. I could kick myself for not bringing the car. My body obviously isn’t as recovered as I’d like to think and I’m exhausted. The only park bench in sight is in use by a group of teens, and I have no desire to ask them to move. I know what teenagers are like. I was one myself
in the not too distant past
. Their carefree laughter cuts across
me
, makes me wince. “Enjoy it while you can” I want to tell them.

Then I see Pete’s Books across the road and head there. I’ve spent time in there over the years and from memory they have a couch in a corner for customers. The owner brushes past me as I push open the door, whistling something tunelessly and wearing what looks l
ike a metal bowl on his head.

I’m left alone in the shop, the couch isn’t there anymore and I don’t think I can stand for a minute lon
ger. I’m dizzy and my heart is palpitating lightly in my chest.

So you see, with all that, I take the only option available to me and push through the swing door to the office, no one is there but there is a desk and a chair and nothing has ever looked so comforting or welcoming. I drop my bags and collapse gratefully, resting my head on the hard, deliciously cold wooden top.

I’ll just rest a few minutes.

Well. What an interesting afternoon.

First, I get a call from Julie telling me that Pete has wandered off down the street wearing the metal bowl again, the one I thought I got rid of after last time but which he obviously rescued from the wheelie bins out back. He’s back in wartime, and the bowl is his helmet.

Here’s the thing I forgot to tell you before. Pete never actually served in any war. He’s just read probably every book ever published about them. And seen every movie. Well, the old ones anyway, he doesn’t think the modern ones are ‘realistic’ and he can’t stand Ben Affleck. I’ve tried telling him that Armageddon is not actually a war movie but his mind is set.

Even though it was technically my day off I headed down there. No one else knows what to make of Pete’s illness, so they tend to look the other way. Don’t get me wrong, they care, but they don’t understand.

I went to Pete’s house, and sure enough he had barricaded himself into his bathroom, lobbing apples out the back window as grenades (he pulls the stick and hurls them at the enemy – his backyard is littered with rotten apple corpses and small sprouted trees). It took me about an hour to coax him out of the bathroom and then another to settle him into bed. I made him a cup of tea and
over boiled
some eggs which he ate sitting up, the blankets over his bony knees and
a
lumpy pillow jammed between his back and the wall. While he ate he watched a documentary on the tiny black and white TV in the corner of his room, slurping tea down his chin and onto his chest. Watching him like this is a heartbreaking reminder of age and the things I have to look forward to.

I left when he came back to the present, a little confused as to why I was there.
When he comes back, he’s left with a lingering fear, of what he doesn’t know. It’s hard to see it in his eyes and not be able to reassure him but I have no idea what to say.

Afterwards I went down to the shop. Julie told me she had checked to make sure there were no customers inside before flipping the lock on the door and shutting it behind her, but I wanted to turn the lights off and make sure he hadn’t left the heater plugged in. Pete’s so bony he feels the cold in 30 degree heat.

I didn’t see her at first. She was face down on the desk, her dark hair fanning out. There was a brief second when I thought she was dead, and I nearly crapped myself, then she moved slightly, whimpered in her sleep.

I didn’t know what to do. Stood awkwardly for a while, feeling like a weird pervert, then I cleared my throat.

I’m sorry, but I’m going to resort to the clichés I hate so much in the books that I sell to describe what happened next.

Time stopped…

…and my heart skipped a beat

She took my breath away
…

…
Sparks flew, or crackled, or whatever it is that sparks do

Ok, that’s more than enough of that. Look, all I can say is there aren’t many moments in my life to date that I can recall with absolute clarity, but when she lifted her head and her eyes met mine, I will never, ever forget how I felt in that moment.

PEARL

Shit. Once again I have made a spectacle of myself. My few minutes rest in the bookshop turned into deep sleep and the next thing I knew
a noise
startled me and I woke
to find a slightly chubby but friendly enough looking guy watching me.

I was so embarrassed. Especially because when I lifted my head up there was a small puddle of drool on the desk. I wiped it up with my sleeve and hoped he didn’t notice.

“God I’m so sorry” I said, “I promise I’m not a shoplifter or anything, I just....felt sick and I didn’t know where else to go and I saw this desk and.....” I trailed off.

The way he was looking at me was making me feel self conscious.  Did I have drool hanging off my mouth? I rubbed around my lips quickly with my fingers. Nope, seemed ok. Still he kept his dopey grin plastered across his face. Blue eyes, almost white eyelashes. A light dotting of acne on his chin. Hair was massively styled, with tons of product but there was something in the way he looked at me. It was both familiar and new at the same time. I felt my shoulders straighten up, my stomach suck in. Both the first moves my body makes when confronted with a guy it’s attracted to. Oh no you don’t, I told myself. Remember why you are here in the first place.

“I’ll just head off now” I said, getting to my feet and rescuing the bags from where I’d dropped them. One split as I lifted it and a bottle of wine fell out, luckily onto a carpeted surface where it bounced and rolled under the desk.

“Dammit”

“I’ll get it” he said, and practically threw himself on to the floor to rescue the bottle. “Red huh?” he said, fishing it out from under the desk and reading the label, “I don’t know much about wine, is it a good one?”

“It’s ok” I said. No way was I going to admit that my method of buying wine relied heavily on the price tag. $6.99 was ideal, $8.99 was tops. It’s not like I was a wine connoisseur or anything; growing up my father drank whiskey, no mixer, just a touch of water. My mother was a gin lady, tonic and a slice of lemon.  Until the divorce when she became an anything-that’s-available lady for awhile. She doesn’t drink at all now. Frowns at me when I do.

Wine was something I picked up from Adam. He drank red every night and I’d got into the habit too. My salary didn’t stretch to the labels he favoured though.

He didn’t seem in any hurry to pass the bottle back. I looked at him, and then looked at the bottle pointedly.

“Oh sorry, here you go” he grinned, handing it over.

I pushed open the door that led back out to the shop, could feel him following closely behind, and from the light change I realised I must have been asleep for several hours. The sun was lower in the sky, the shadows longer. I don’t want to walk home, I thought desperately, and I must have sighed, or shuddered or something like that because like he could read my mind he was there, beside me, offering me a ride, anywhere I needed to go.

I thought about all the warnings our mums give us growing up, the safety drills we get at school, every horror movie I have ever seen.

He di
dn’t look like a serial killer I mused.

Then he smiled, a broad, cheek stretching toothy smile.

Anyone who smiled a goofy smile like that had to be harmless, I decided.

So I accepted.

C
HARLIE

She thinks I’m an idiot. Either that or a serial killer. I could tell by the way she looked at me, warily
, prepared to flee at the first move on my part
.

I tried hard to look friendlier, less like a killer and more like the boy next door.

My friend Cushla
once told me that my eyes were my best feature, which was a
huge
surprise as I’d never even suspected I had a best feature, let alone one so prominent.  Since then I’ve tried to use them to my best advantage, practising in front of the mirror to find the look that shows them best. Half drooped
, heavy lidded
like Elvis, sultry slightly squinted like Johnny Depp, (unfortunately without those cheekbones and killer dimples it’s a hard one to pull off), playful open wide like Matt Damon. I caught an episode of America’s Next Top Model once, and Tyra Banks kept banging on about something called ‘smising’, the art of smiling with your eyes. I scoffed then but I’ve tried it, and it’s not that easy.

According to one of my mum’s magazines, the best way to ensure you are looking 100% your best before leaving the house is to take a digital snapshot.  The mirror, the article said, often lies or creates a false image. The camera does not. And you know what, it’s true. I tried it.
Once only, before a date.
In the mirror I looked, not handsome, but not bad either. Definitely passable. I’d styled my hair with gel for ages until it looked perfectly like I hadn’t bothered at all, you know, messy enough to look natural. I felt pretty confident. But the photo I took told a whole other story, one of some weird wide-eyed, crazy haired, half-baked looking
knobhead
, with an extra chin which I swear I had never seen before in my life. Lesson learnt, ditch the camera.
My confidence was shot to pieces which I compensated for by drinking one too many beers, (ok, probably more like four too many beers). Unsurprisingly, the girl wasn’t keen on another date, and after a few days of rejected calls and unreturned messages I got the hint. 

I realise these confessions are starting to give the complete wrong impression about me, but in my defence the magazine
that created the whole debacle
was lying on the bench when I was desperately looking for something to grab
on my way to the toilet
, so I did spend a respectable
and manly
30 minutes in having a dump
while
reading it
.

Anyway, so I kept smiling at her while she picked up
her
grocery bags. A bottle of wine fell out the bottom of one and I threw myself at the floor gabbling “I’ll get it!” like the village idiot. It was a bottle of red and immediately I pictured her, sitting at a table, sipping from an elegant blue stemmed glass with a platter of cheese and olives and fancy meats in front of her. I asked her if it was nice,
thinking perhaps
it
might
lead to an invitation. It didn’t. I held on to the bottle as long as I could, pretending to read the label, hoping she would ask me to join her. She didn’t.

I walked out to the front of the shop behind her, admiring the curve of her waist
and the way she filled out her jeans.

“What’s your name?” I asked her. But she didn’t hear me, she was staring out the window and her whole body sagged. She let out a small sigh.

“Let me help you,” I sai
d, taking the bags off her. She didn’t seem to notice. “Where are you staying? I can give you a ride if you like, anywhere you need to go”

She turned then, studied my face. I knew she was trying to make a decision, whether I was safe or not, so I smiled wider and gave her my best Matt Damon look,
playful but more importantly, exuding pure innocence
.

“Ok” she decided. “Let’s go”.