Chapter Nineteen
Milo
A cabin, she said.
A cabin is . . . a slight reach?
Not that I’d dare complain. I am definitely not complaining.
I’m frozen to my very soul. I feel like I have walked the entire circumference of the globe with Allie today, my thighs are taut, my feet are aching.
But this is more a – shack? Yeah, a shack is what it is.
But right now, this shack is a slice of heaven. Heat. Shelter. Rest. Allie. Sign me up.
It’s also pretty beautiful in here too, in a kind of industrial, rustic way.
Like an immersive museum or something. I remember working in a place like this in New York when I was seventeen.
An interiors museum, where I got stationed in the 1950s room, had to dress as a 1950s businessman and stay in character.
The only thing Dad ever approved of. I still remember how he brightened, standing at the kitchen counter, looking up from the coffee percolator, in shirt and cargos and beard, at the sentence, ‘I have a job at a museum.’ Not exactly what he wanted but a real honest job, like his.
Then he scoffed at the low hours and the performance part of it.
But nothing is ever good enough for the man.
I tried. Made him the plus-one to all my premieres and events (he never came).
Luxury retirement homes. Paid off every dime of his debt.
Bought the old carpentry workshop so my cousin, Markus, never had to worry about rent and it would always be in the family like Dad wanted.
Drove him two hours to Uncle Tony’s every Wednesday when I was home last summer.
(He just whined about my driving.) There is no combination for his approval.
I know that now. It’s like my friend Julia said once, ‘Actors are seeking love from everyone because they didn’t get it from the people who mattered most.’ I have spent my life waiting for Dad’s I love you, looking for it, in those brightening coffee percolator moments, as if it might be written somewhere, in code.
Healing was realising it’s never coming.
‘There’re three beds,’ says Allie now, as we both creak across the shack’s floor, and the relief in her voice makes me smile.
‘Cool,’ I say.
‘What? What’s with the smile?’
‘Nothing. Just – three. Room for one more.’
Allie rolls her eyes, sits down gently on the end of one. It creaks. But she allows herself a smile.
It’s murky in here. Like the inside of a cartoon tool shed.
Dark wood. Dust. Everything slatted. A time capsule.
Just outside the window is a rusty track, a genuine, old miner’s wagon on it, and everything inside is made from wood and nails, with thick pencil markings still visible on home-made furniture, from people here before us.
I sit at the wonky, clunky wooden table, shrug off my bag. The surface is covered in papers weighed down with an old, rusty, but probably still sharp, axe.
‘You seen these old maps?’ I ask. ‘I feel like I’m a pirate or something. But the only treasure I’m interested in is ramen noodles. I’m starved.’
Allie smiles, shifts herself up the bed, lifts her bad ankle up onto the old mattress. She props herself against the wall behind her. No pillows or turn-down service here. ‘This area used to be all mines up until about sixty years ago. Something like that.’
‘Really?’
She nods, sleepily. ‘The miners lived here. And it’s open to whoever sort of, passes by, which is not very often, as you can probably imagine. But everyone keeps it how they found it. They’re maps of the area. All different ages.’
‘Wow. They’re sort of—’
‘Dusty?’ offers Allie. ‘Smelly?’
‘Beautiful,’ I say instead. ‘This one looks . . . I don’t know.
Hand etched? Man, I love maps. I have this old one of Hoboken on my wall at home.
Reminds me of my mom. Sometimes I run my finger along the streets, track the routes we used to take, pretend I’m planning another route for us . . .’ I pause. ‘Ah, it’s dumb, I know.’
‘No, it’s not. That’s nice,’ she smiles, her eyes heavy. ‘I sometimes do similar. Less these days, but sometimes I listen to Mum’s voice notes, pretend she’s just left them for me, close my eyes and . . .’ Her eyelids flutter closed. ‘It’s almost real.’
Something has shifted again, a little, since Allie hurt her ankle. Another pivot. I don’t know where this is headed, but it feels good, to have the pressure between us relieved just that little more. Another little pin in a balloon; the atmosphere, softer.
I leaf through the different pages. Rain hammers harder and harder, wind thunders, and the four walls containing us creak. Allie closes her eyes. It might not be getting dark, but it’s getting cold.
I stand up; the squeak of my chair makes her open her eyes. ‘Where’re you going?’
‘I’m going to start a fire,’ I say. ‘There’s a little stack of wood over there.’
She starts to get up. ‘D-do you know how?’
This woman . . . ‘You mean, don’t I have a Hollywood assistant who starts all my fires? Washes me in a bathtub with sponges like a dude from Bridgerton or something?’
‘Well. I . . . Yes,’ she says. ‘Yes, actually.’
‘Nah, I can fire up the shit out of this thing,’ I say.
‘Can you venture out and hunt and gather, too?’ she asks.
‘Sure thing.’
‘And dressed in a five hundred-dollar coat the whole of Instagram just loved doesn’t count.’
‘If you wanted to see me in bear skins, Allie,’ I laugh, ‘you just had to ask nicely.’