Chapter 22 #2
And so far, so sentimental, right? That’s not the strange (Spooky?
Good) thing. That happened this afternoon.
We were at the site trying to figure out this week’s fuck-up, when I went on a smoke break with Rahul (sorry bad habits proliferate when you’re not around, you know that).
And there was a family sitting in the sun outside their house and the woman was playing with some puppies her dog had had a couple of months ago.
We got to talking and she said how sad it made her that there were no children to play with them, because when she was young there were always children and puppies, because they just went together like each was made for the other.
And I looked at the mother dog, and I swear, I stopped breathing for a moment.
I’ve attached a picture. You’ll see why.
Doesn’t look like any other dog I’ve ever seen out here.
Does look like you know who, right? Anyway.
After dreaming about him the night before, and seeing there were these puppies going begging…
If I can get him his shots and certificate – if anyone still worries about that stuff – I’m bringing him home.
For you. Keep you company if I have to go away again for a time.
But I don’t want to. I think I’m done fixing things other than us for a bit.
I think that’s why the universe sent me the dream and gave us the dog.
I’m getting superstitious in my old age, right?
Dog’s almost offensively charming btw. A lovely ball of fur sleeping in my lap as I type this.
I love you. xxx
There are two pictures on the bottom of the email.
One is a dog that is, despite its background – sun-bleached and sand-blasted – the spitting image of the dog jumping with them on that beach, back on the day the world began its long countdown to genetic oblivion.
The other is a picture of a small ball of black and tan fur, sitting alert on the passenger seat of a 4WD, peering out at her, head cocked, one ear up, one ear down, looking, as advertised, almost offensively disarming.
It would have been ridiculously heart-warming had she not been chilled beyond measure by the nurse’s warning. She just stared at the dog, and reread the message a couple of times, until his actual reply to her email pinged in.
So glad you’re feeling more chipper. Know you were a little low earlier in the week, but that’s just when it’s time to dig deep and take hope. I’ll be with you soon and can’t wait.
Dog sends love too.
Xxx
So by the time the rattling procession had arrived at her door, she’d done exactly that, left in the dark in GJ’s distinctive Dri-Robe with the hood up to hide her face, made her way to the sea, taken Hope, slipped its moorings and headed south.
GJ had insisted she use her Dri-Robe. She’d enjoyed the conspiracy, and had waved off the Girl’s worries about getting her into trouble.
“What are they going to do to me?” GJ said.
“I’m up the duff! I’m the goose that lays the bloody golden eggs!
They’re not going to slice me up and stick my bits in RoboWomb are they?
You just bugger off sharpish. And don’t tell me where you’re going.
I’m not strong like you. I’d buckle under questioning. ”
“Hell you would,” said the Girl, hugging her with a fierceness that surprised both of them. “You’re a tosser, just like me.”
The Girl continued heading south until she was out of sight of land and all the watching eyes, concentrating on just sailing the boat, finding a kind of mental calm in the physical demands of balancing the wind on the sails above her head against the cut and tug of the rudder against the sea beneath her feet.
After three hours, when she judged the tide had turned and was heading back out into the Atlantic – and the light was coming back into the sky enough that she trusted her eyes to see any potential collisions ahead of her – she turned off the running lights and prepared to say goodbye to her phone.
This was something they’d talked about when joking about planning the escape that was now not a joke but an increasingly chilly reality.
She checked the horizon, took a GPS fix from the phone, and ducked below deck to pull on a second musty smelling wool sweater and retrieve the jar.
The jar was a big plastic one that had once held peanut butter.
She put her phone inside, and screwed the lid shut as tightly as she could.
She then pulled self-fusing black silicon tape around the rim, stretching it tight and cinching it against itself so that it melded into a waterproof seal.
She looked at the phone one last time, feeling oddly sentimental, as if saying farewell to an old friend, and then dropped it into the water.
Despite herself she felt a reflexive twinge of guilt about littering the sea with more garbage.
She watched the wind and tide carry the jar away from the boat, heading more or less in a south-westerly direction towards the open ocean.
Then the screen blipped out as the phone went to sleep to conserve what would be its final charge, and she checked the compass, adjusted her canvas and turned about, heading north, racing aslant the tide, sails tipped like a fugitive keeping low as she made her run for freedom.
She hadn’t really believed anyone would track her phone, not until the severe nurse had spoken to her, but now she hoped that, if they did, they’d think she was heading out into the deep Atlantic.
The phone-in-a-jar idea was one they’d come up with as they planned the imaginary escape as if they were writing the script to a spy thriller.
She hadn’t realised how seriously he had taken her fears until she discovered the jar he’d left in the galley sink, with the silicon tape placed inside it, ready for action.
She’d been touched to find it, enough to make tears spike in her eyes for a moment.
It had made her feel not alone, even though she was by herself in the dark, heading out into uncharted waters.
It had made him a hidden but present accomplice, in just the same way that pulling on his old oiled-wool sweater and putting her thumbs through the reinforced thumb-holes on the cuffs did.
It was like he was here too, holding her hands and keeping her warm.
“Sentimental bullshit,” she told the empty sea flying past her. “Just sentimental bullshit.”
She adjusted the sails to catch more wind, hunkered down against the chill, and headed north.