Close to eight o’clock.
“Like old times,” Henry said, and they were happy in the moment, if feeling their various bruisings. He also said, “That was a great run.” He’d been referring to Carey.
Clay stared, diagonally. Number 11.
“It was.”
“She should have won. A protest, bloody hell.”
* * *
—
Later, he waited.
The Surrounds, and the steady sound of her; the quiet rustle of feet.
When she arrived, they didn’t lie down till they’d been there a long time.
They’d sat on the edge of the mattress.
They talked and he wanted to kiss her.
He wanted to touch her hair.
Even if just two fingers, in the falling of it by her face.
In the light that night it looked sometimes gold, sometimes red, and there was no telling where it ended.
He didn’t, though.
Of course he didn’t:
They’d made rules, somehow, and followed them, to not break or risk what they had. It was enough that they were here, alone, together, and there were plenty more ways to be grateful.
He took out the small heavy lighter, and Matador in the fifth.
“It’s the best thing anyone’s ever given me,” he said, and he lit it a moment, then closed it. “You rode so well today.”
She gave him back The Quarryman.
She smiled, she said, “I did.”
* * *
—
Earlier, it was one of those good nights, too, because Mrs. Chilman opened her window. She called out to them, and up.
“Hey, Dunbar boys.”
Henry had called back first. “Mrs. Chilman! Thanks for patching us up the other night.” Then he went to work. “Hey, I like your curlers there.”
“Shut up, Henry,” but she was smiling, those wrinkles at work as well.
Both boys now stood and walked closer.
They crouched at the side of the house.
“Hey, Henry?” Mrs. Chilman asked, and it was all a bit of fun. Henry knew what was coming. Whenever Mrs. Chilman looked up like this, it was to ask for a book, from his collections every weekend. She loved romance, crime, and horror—the lower the brow, the better. “You got something for me?”
He mocked. “Do I have something for you? What-a-y’ think? How does The Corpse of Jack the Ripper sound?”
“Got it already.”
“The Man She Hid Downstairs?”
“That was my husband—they never found the body.”
(Both boys laughed—she’d been a widow since before they knew her; she joked about it now.) “All right, Mrs. Chilman, shit, you’re a tough customer! How about The Soul Snatcher? That one’s a bloody beauty.”
“Done.” She smiled. “How much?”
“Oh, come on, Mrs. Chilman, let’s not play that game. How about we do the usual?” He gave Clay a quick flick of the eyes. “Let’s just say I give it to you gratis.”
“Gratis?” She was peering up now, contemplating. “What’s that, German, is it?”
Henry roared.
* * *
—
When they did lie down, she recalled the race.
“But I lost,” she said, “I blew it.”
Race Three.
The Lantern Winery Stakes.
1,200-meters and her mount was called The Gunslinger, and they missed the start terribly, and Carey brought him back. She weaved her way through the traffic and took him home—and Clay watched in perfect silence when the field had hit the straight; a riot of passing hoofbeats, and the eyes and the color and the blood. And the thought of Carey amongst it.
The only problem came in the last furlong when she veered too close to the second-placegetter, Pump Up the Jam—seriously, what a name—and the win was taken off her.
“My first time in front of the stewards,” she said.
Her voice against his neck.
* * *
—
On the roof, when the transaction was approved (Mrs. Chilman insisted on paying ten dollars), she said, “And how are you, Mr. Clay? You looking after yourself these days?”
“Mostly.”
“Mostly?” She came out a little further. “Try to make it always.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, lovely boy.”
She was about to close the window again, when Henry tried for more. “Hey, how come he gets to be lovely?”
Mrs. Chilman returned. “You’ve got a lovely mouth, Henry, but he’s the lovely boy,” and she gave them a final wave.
Henry turned to Clay.
“You’re not lovely,” he said. “Actually, you’re pretty ugly.”
“Ugly?”
“Yeah, ugly as Starkey’s arse.”
“You’ve looked at it lately, have you?”
This time he gave Clay a shove, and a friendly slap to the ear.
It’s a mystery, even to me sometimes, how boys and brothers love.
* * *
—
Near the end he started telling her.
“It’s pretty quiet out there.”
“I bet.”
“The river’s completely dry, though.”
“And your dad?”
“He’s pretty dry, too.”
She laughed and he felt her breath, and he thought about that warmness, how people were warm like that, from inside to out; how it could hit you and disappear, then back again, and nothing was ever permanent— Yes, she’d laughed and said, “Don’t be an idiot.”
Clay said only “Okay,” and his heart was beating too big for him; he was sure the world could hear it. He looked at the girl beside him, and the leg slung loosely over. He looked at her highest buttonhole, the fabric of her shirt: The checks there.
The blue turned sky blue.
The red all faded to pink.
The long ridges of collarbone, and the pool of shadow beneath.
The faintest scent of her sweat.
How could he love someone this hard and be so disciplined, and stay silent and still so long?
Maybe if he’d done it then: if he’d found the nerve earlier, it wouldn’t have gone the way it did. But how could he ever predict such things? How could he know that Carey—this girl who lay across him, and whose breath drew in and out on him, who’d had a life, who was a life—would make up his trifecta, or triumvirate, of love and loss?
He couldn’t, of course.
He couldn’t.
It was all in what was to come.
Back then, for Penny Dunbar, she packed her bags for the hospital, and the world that waited within it.
They would push, they’d prod and cut bits.
They would poison her with kindness.
When they first talked radiation, I saw her standing alone in the desert, then boom—a little bit like the Hulk.
We’d become our own cartoon.
* * *
—
From the outset there was the hospital building, and all the infernal whiteness, and the spotless shopping mall doors; I hated how they parted.
It felt like we were browsing.
Heart disease to the left.
Orthopedics to the right.
I also remember how the six of us walked the corridors, through the pleasant terror inside. I remember our dad and his hard-clean hands, and Henry and Rory not fighting; these places were clearly unnatural. There was Tommy, who looked so tiny, and always in short Hawaiian shorts—and me still bruised-but-healing.
At the very back, though, long behind us, was Clay, who was scaredest, it seemed, to see her. Her voice fought out from the nose cord: “Where’s my boy, where’s my boy? I’ve got a story, it’s a good one.”
Only then did he come between us.
It took all of everything in him.
“Hey, Mum—can you tell me about the houses?”
Her hand stretched out to touch him.
* * *
—
She came in and out of the hospital twice more that year.
She was opened, closed up, and pinkened.
She was sewn and raw-and-shiny.
Sometimes, even when she was tired, we’d ask if we could see them: “Can you show us that longest scar again, Mum? That one’s a bloody beauty.”
“Hey!”
“What—bloody? That’s not even proper swearing!”
She was usually home by then, back in her own bed, being read to, or lying with our dad. There was something about their angles; her knees curled up and sideways, at forty-five degrees. Her face lay down on his chest.