27. A Star at Dawn
Summer
I pulled into the drive on Sunday night and didn’t think about this being our last night here. I’d never planned on more than a week or two, so what was the problem? Yes, it was a beautiful spot, and so peaceful, too. It had literally been shelter from the storm, and it kept feeling more like that, but it was a fantasy.
I came around the corner and there Roman was again, in his favorite spot facing the fountain with his back to the fireplace, his ankles crossed and propped on the seat of another chair and his laptop in his lap. I hesitated a second, then thought, You’ve decided. Do it, stepped forward, and asked him, “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
He looked up, a frown between his brows, then shut the lid of the laptop and said, “Of course.” Politely. Distantly.
I didn’t ask myself whether this was a good idea. I sat down, my hands in my lap, my back straight, and he raised his eyebrows at me. Not making it easy, but why should he?
“I may have overreacted,” I said.
“You’re not leaving,” he said. “Better for Delilah, eh. That donut and all.”
“Yes,” I said. “We’re leaving. We’re going to live at Daisy’s. The nurse.”
His dark brows went up again. “I hadn’t anticipated that one.”
“She has that caravan. We’ll be renting it for … for a while. Maybe even some months. The truth is …” I looked down at my hands, then up at him, and his face got even more still. I wished I could tell what he was thinking. “The truth is,” I went on, “I’m tired of running, and I’m tired of hiding. And I realized that I’ve learned something from you. The way you’re always yourself. The way you say what you think. How you were able to be so forthright, meeting your father, talking about him with Matiu. Not doing what I do, shutting down, going cold, and not worrying about what people think. I thought, I’d like to be like that, and then I thought—why can’t I? So this is me doing my best to be like that. I told Daisy who I was, and she rented the caravan to me anyway. I’m going to try to get a real job, see if there’s somebody who’ll take a chance on me. I’m good at writing code, and that’s what I need.”
“What’s what you need?” He actually looked like he wanted to know.
“To be writing code again. My code is … me, but separate from me,” I tried to explain. “It has nothing to do with celebrity and nothing to do with beauty. It speaks for itself, do you see? If it’s clear, if it’s economical, if it’s well commented so somebody else can follow it, there’s a kind of … of mathematical beauty in that, and it has everything to do with my mind and nothing to do with my outsides or my trashy background. And Dunedin could be …” I looked away from him, at the purpling sky and the glimmer of the distant sea under the setting sun. “I like the South Island. It feels simpler, and I think I need simpler now. And I want to live someplace where I can see the ocean sometimes. Taking a walk, driving to the beach … I want to be able to see it. Seattle is on the coast, but I never saw the ocean, with the waves and the shoreline and all, until I was in high school. I know that’s the world’s biggest cliché, taking long walks on the beach and hearing the waves, but I … I feel like I need it now. So I’m going to try to find a job. I’m going to try to live, not just survive. I’m going to try to feel again.”
“Sounds good,” he said, but he didn’t give me more than that. Why should he, though, after everything I’d said to him?
“And,” I said, “I’ll go to your party with you, if you still want me. I owe you that much. I owe you so much more.” I had to stop and take a breath. “That’s not a sacrifice. It’s an offering. From friendship. You’ve helped me when it was the last thing you wanted to do. You’ve been a true friend to me. This is something I can do to help you, and I’d like to do it.”
“It would help me believe you,” he said, “if you weren’t sitting there like Joan of Arc about to be burnt at the stake while you announce it.”
I laughed, it was so unexpected. He grinned, and just like that, it was so much better.
“Right,” I said. “I’ll go to observe, like an anthropologist, and offer you my impressions later, the way you asked me to do before. How’s that? You know now that I’m frank enough for that. As your pretend girlfriend, even, as long as we’re both clear that it’s not real. As long as it’s OK that I’m not glamorous.”
He said, “Or I could offer to buy you a dress and the makeup and all, and maybe to have something done to your hair as well, if you like. You’ve mentioned that twice now, so I think it matters to you, even though it doesn’t matter to me.”
“I don’t think—” I started, but he ignored that and said, “You do realize I’ll be paying for the plane tickets and the hotel and cafés and all, so what’s a little shopping? I won’t say that I can afford it, because that’s not the point.”
“You’re right. Unfortunately.” I looked down at my hands. I’d been scrubbing and polishing with them for much longer than the past weeks here, and they showed it. “I want to say that they can take me as I am. That you can take me as I am. But let’s face it—I don’t want to go to a party with a bunch of strangers without a manicure and better hair, in my shorts and T-shirt. I’m not sure that would do you any favors with your new sort-of family, and it would look disrespectful, so what the heck.” I gave him a rueful smile. “Dress and shoes, anyway. I can’t really afford them right now, but if I’m doing it for you … Of course, that could be rationalization. I’ll have to buy some clothes to get an office job, but not a sundress, right? So I really would be buying it for you. Partially.”
“Right,” he said. “Call it fair compensation for giving me your weekend, the same way you lived here in exchange for cleaning up my storm damage better than anybody else would’ve done.”
“And you won’t go for it,” I said.
“I won’t go for it.” He put out his right hand, and I took it with my left one, only realizing afterward that he’d meant me to shake it. I could have pulled it away, but the warmth was there between us the way it had been in the plunge pool, like a current drawing us together. He said, “But if you go for it, I won’t fight you off,” and smiled.
Something was happening in my chest, a sort of expanding I hadn’t felt in so long. Infatuation, I thought, but that wasn’t how it felt. It felt sweeter than that. Which was when he put two fingers between my brows and rubbed there. “I want to make this line go away,” he said.
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. My hand in his, his hand on my face, and the darkness falling softly around us.
“Your days pass like rainbows,” he said, his voice quiet and deep. “Like a flash of lightning, like a star at dawn. Your life is short. How can you quarrel? The Buddha. That’s what you remind me of.”
“Of the Buddha? I really have gained weight.” I was trying to rally, but I couldn’t do it.
“No,” he said. “Of a star at dawn. When I was bandaging you that first night, on my bed, that was how you were. You show me that every time you forget to be careful. You showed it to me yesterday, under that waterfall. And I want that for myself. Every time.”
I swallowed and could tell he noticed it. “So,” he said, his hand still on my face, “we’re on for Saturday.”
“Delilah too?” I asked.
“Delilah too. I’ll be in touch.” He took his hand away from my face, and I felt it go.
Asking for trouble, you’re thinking. You could be right.