Our Magic Hour (7 page)

She walked to the beach at Fairhaven. There were five or six surfers out. She couldn't
tell which was Nick. His old car was parked by the foreshore, and she sat in the
driver's seat to wait for him. After a while he came loping up from the beach, elated,
dripping from his hair and earlobes.

‘Oi, Spence, are you aroused by my neoprene?'

‘You look like a tadpole. Or a sperm.'

‘I don't know what your mother told you,' Nick said, peeling off his wetsuit, ‘but
I covered the reproductive system a bunch of times at uni, and sperms do not look
like this.'

‘I know. I read
Where Do We Come From?
They've got top hats.'

Nick spread his towel on the car seat. Audrey could smell the sea on him. ‘How'd
you go?' she asked.

‘I'm pretty rubbish at it,' he said. ‘It just feels really good. You forget how good.
Me and Will learned at Breamlea, but this is still my favourite beach. I wish I got
to do it more.' Audrey thought of the photos in the hall, the boys on the sand, joyful
faces, that insane physical energy. She'd heard Nick and his family talk about those
holidays so many times that the memories had almost become hers.

‘Want to drive round to Apollo Bay?' he asked.

They stopped at every lookout along the way. It was a thick steel sky; a mean ocean.

‘I reckon you did well to get out there this morning,' Audrey said, ‘before the change
hit.'

On the beach their figures were reflected in the wet sand. They stood over the rockpools
with their shoes in their hands. The wind
had picked up. Audrey kept pushing her
hair from her face. Her jeans were wet at the ankles.

‘You all right, Spence?' Nick said. ‘You've gone quiet.'

She felt suddenly deflated. ‘I don't want to go home.' She looked up to the foreshore.
The soft sand was flying in a grey haze. She thought of deserts.

The flowers were delivered to Audrey at work, an overflowing bouquet of orchids,
lilies,
sunset-coloured
roses.

‘Nick in trouble?' Penny asked.

‘Not last time I checked,' Audrey said. The other workers leaned over her cubicle
to admire the extravagance, jiggling tea bags in their mugs.

‘Remember being a sweet young thing and getting flowers?'

‘Pete only buys me flowers when he's really in the shit—once, he got me a vacuum
cleaner for my birthday—'

Audrey fumbled with the card.

‘Hey baby, happy Tuesday, you'd better do my favourite thing tonight, love Nick?'
Josie said.

Audrey shook her head. ‘They're just from a friend.'

‘Thought it was too good to be true.'

There was a larger envelope tucked inside the arrangement. Audrey tore it open when
she was alone. Half a foolscap page fell out, lined with Adam's ragged capitals.

Nick was at work. Audrey left the flowers on the sideboard and went to contemplate
the fridge. There was a thumping at the door: Adam.

‘I was thinking of moving back over the north side, seeing how much I'm round here,'
he said, ‘but now I have a grief counsellor in Prahran so I might just stay where
I am.' The clouds moved fast behind his head. The sky was bruised.

‘Adam.'

‘I'm sorry. I feel like I've been an arsehole. Or hard work, or something.'

‘Don't say that. I wasn't trying to palm you off. I just think you might need someone
more than me. For this.'

‘I know.'

Audrey stood aside and he moved past her into the house.

He was talking—theatrically, extravagantly—like he used to. ‘I had my first appointment
last night,' he said. ‘I had this idea it would be lying on a daybed surrounded by
pot plants or something. But she's nice. Pretty conversational. Her name's Olivia.
She's funny, which is good. I just feel better already, having talked about it with
someone who didn't—someone
outside
of what happened. Mum and Dad have been trying,
but I just couldn't,' he said. ‘I went round for dinner last weekend, when you and
Nick were away, and Mum was asking me about placement this semester. I said I hadn't
been to uni since week two, and she started crying. And then everything was just
horrible. And I'm not fair to them. I forget they loved Katy, too.'

‘I'm going to get changed,' Audrey said when he drew breath at last. He followed
her into the bedroom and sat on the unmade bed.
It was exactly what Katy would have
done. Audrey felt a hot new ache bloom in her chest. ‘I realised,' Adam said, ‘I
am very afraid of forgetting her, or how it actually was. I've been sort of fixated
on commemorating her.'

Audrey thought of the photos spread on Adam's table, his ceaseless interrogation
of the past. He'd call her at work to tell stories, or confirm some obscure detail.

‘Have you eaten?' she asked. ‘I was going to make risotto.'

He sat on the bench while she made the preparations. The flowers quivered on the
sideboard.

Audrey did the right things: cut the tips off the stems; changed the water. On the
third day she wrapped them up again. The coloured paper was still near the top of
the recycling bin, just beneath the weekend newspapers. After Nick left for work
she drove to the hills. Up in Beaconsfield the side roads were unmade. She counted
three white crosses picketing the dusty shoulder. Everything was dry and grey and
green. She found the reservoir. The dam seemed enormous. There was a pebbly embankment
leading down to the water. Audrey parked under a gum. She walked down to the lower
carpark, hands in her pockets. It was warm enough if you stayed in the sun. She could
hear kids playing in the park below.

She walked back to the car, took the flowers from the back seat where they sat on
top of the street directory. In the last parking space there was a velvety feather,
full and black. She left the flowers there.

At home Nick asked
How was work
, and Audrey said
Fine
, and they did the quiz in the
newspaper.

The pub was humming with gentle weekday noise when Audrey arrived. Emy was not there.
She sat down at a table to wait. She watched the street outside darken through the
tall window.

Emy swept in: bought a drink, dropped her bag and squeezed Audrey's hand in a single
motion. ‘I just found out before I came here,' she said, ‘I've been offered a job
in Tokyo.'

‘Congratulations! What an opportunity!'

‘Do you think?'

‘What do you mean? Of course it is. How long for?'

‘The contract's for a year, with the firm. I haven't even thought about it properly.
I don't know what to do.'

‘Why wouldn't you?'

‘You know, with Ben.'

Audrey nudged her. ‘I didn't know it was so serious! Is it
lerve
?'

‘Sort of. I don't know. Yeah, it is, a bit. God, listen to me. I ought to be euthanised.'
She kicked her legs under the table and finished her drink. ‘I can't sit here, I'm
too wound up. Can we go for a walk?'

They walked up Brunswick Street all the way to the Edinburgh Gardens, Audrey wheeling
her bike, only stopping to buy a bottle of champagne, which they uncorked sitting
on the grass. A group of boys were running football drills on the oval. Their loud
calls cut through the traffic noise. Emy couldn't sit still: she sprang to her feet,
she paced, she rolled on the lawn in her expensive-looking jacket.

‘Mum and Dad'll love it. All those years of Saturday Japanese school.'

‘Tell me about Ben,' Audrey said.

‘You know there's a word for it? For someone who's a foreign-born descendant of a
Japanese immigrant? It's not as though I'm going
home
. I haven't been there since
I was twelve. I'll look like I fit, but I won't.'

‘Just do it. It's only a year.'

‘Is it?' Emy said, and thumped the empty bottle against the earth. ‘Is that all?'

Audrey rode her bicycle home and slept easily.

‘Beat this for a day at the office,' Nick said, climbing in beside
her at 2 a.m.
‘An eighty-two-year-old guy with dementia wanders into a closet and gets lost. Four
days later staff find him, and Tim and I get the job of pumping him full of saline
while he sobs for his wife. Who died ten years ago.'

Audrey opened one eye and rolled over to face him. ‘Ten-month-old baby who's been
sexually abused.'

‘How do you know?'

‘She has an STD.'

‘Fuck.' He flicked off the light and drew her to him. ‘You win.'

They made it through the front door blindly, laughing and clutching at each other.

‘But why Good Friday? Why is that the day when everything's shut?'

‘It's because we're meant to be sad,' Audrey said.

‘It's because Jesus died on the Friday. Maybe we're supposed to play at being dead
by not being able to buy milk.'

Nick had her arms pinned above her head, but she felt the vibration of her phone
in her pocket. ‘Hang on a second.'

It had stopped buzzing. They looked at the screen. ‘It was only your sister,' Nick
said.

‘I know, but I had about six missed calls from Maman. Hang on.'

Nick leaned against the door. Audrey set the phone on the sideboard, dialled voicemail
on speaker. Irène's voice filled the hall.

‘Audrey, it's me. Have you spoken to Bernie? Maman and I can't reach him. He's not
answering the phone. I'd go around tonight but I've got to pick up Zoe's friend.
She's having a sleepover. Anyway, let me know.' Audrey reached out and batted at
the phone. Nick was kissing her neck.

‘How's the expectation,' he said, ‘that you'll just drop everything and go round
to Bern.'

‘Maybe I should.'

‘Come on. How many times has this happened? He's always fine.'

‘Yeah.' She shed her jacket. ‘I'll go tomorrow.'

All night Audrey woke again and again, and every so often Nick would be awake, too,
and their bodies would shift into new shapes, and once Nick reached for her as if
in a panic, and once Audrey thumped to the kitchen half-awake and stuck her head
under the tap to drink, and once she turned over to face Nick, who was open-eyed,
and they began to kiss in a dream, bodies just coming to, and she saw the dull shadows
from the streetlights passing over his face as he came, and he covered her body with
his and she felt his breath in her hair, and they held each other, and the whole
time they never said a thing.

Bernie was alone when Audrey went round the next day. ‘Your bell's not working,'
she said. ‘I brought you some frozens.'

‘Thanks.'

She followed him into the kitchen. ‘Have you been going to school?'

‘Yeah,' he said earnestly. She believed him. He was honest most of the time.

‘How's your art?'

‘Good,' he said. ‘Do you want to see my folio?'

Bernie painted in oils and sometimes took pictures. His sketchbook was three-quarters
full with digital photos he'd pasted in.

‘I've been using Dad's old camera, too. Film's so expensive.'

There was a series of prints from a party. Two boys passing a joint between them,
sitting on a tiled verandah. Light streaming through a bathroom window. A girl talking.
She was speaking with her hands, holding them up near her face: the fat fingers slightly
curved, as though she were holding a pair of binoculars.

‘These are really good,' Audrey said.

He looked embarrassed.

‘Bern, do you remember living in the Wellington Street flats?'

‘A bit. I would've been about seven,' he said. ‘I remember what it was like inside—the
lift and stuff. I don't really remember the school, but I know we used to walk. Sometimes
Maman took us.' He closed the folio. ‘Why
?
'

‘Nothing. I had a dream about it a while ago,' she said. ‘Do you want a coffee?'

Driving home she phoned her mother, then her sister. Later Nick laughed listening
to her re-enacting it all.

‘Maman said
Be patient, he's just being a teenager
. When I moved out I had to phone
her twice a day, sometimes more.' Nick handed her a mug. ‘Thanks. So then I call
Irène.
Thanks, Audrey, I know I never visit our brother and I have six hours of spare
time each day when my only child is at school, but somehow I just can't find the
fifteen minutes to drive to Bernie's house. You're a lifesaver
.'

‘It's weird when you get nasty. I think I'm getting turned on.'

‘Hang on, I haven't told you the best bit. At the end, Irène goes
You've never seen
Bernie high, have you?
'

‘Wow.'

‘I didn't tell her I accidentally paid for his pills the other day.'

‘What about when he was stoned at your dad's funeral?'

No one else but Nick would have found it funny.

Audrey's phone rang. He looked at her, daring her not to answer it.

‘Hello?'

‘It's me.'