Nam Le - The Boat

"Fucked," repeated Lester.

What should he say? He felt sickened by his words — hollow, soggy-sounding — before they even came out. He said, "Whatever, mate."

Lester laughed. "So fucked."

And it was true: each iteration struck Jamie with its truth, drained his body cold. The sick dread soaking and the worst was how familiar it felt. Too late to turn back. You'd think it was too much for one person but no, he'd already made room for it. He was rubbish.

Alison watched, then nodded. "Let's go, Jamie."

"See you Monday," Lester sang out. "Have a good weekend!"

She led him off.

For a while they walked without speaking. There was a shape to the silence between them: unfolding, contracting in the night. At the end of the street Alison reached out her hand. He held it desperately but there was no exhilaration in it. He wondered if she could feel that it wasn't his hand at all — that it wasn't he who was connected to it. They ducked under a fence and then his knees gave way beneath him.

"Sand," she said.

They skirted the edge of a caravan park. Light and music wafted over from the lots, carrying the day-old scent of sunscreen, charred barbecues. Early summer tourists. Finally they reached a shoulder of cliff. There was a steep drop-off behind it, and, behind that, the bay.

"You wanna keep walking?" she asked.

"Okay," he said. A strange formality had arisen between them.

"You know a spot? I'll follow you."

He continued on the same track. Along the headland, abstracted from any thought of direction, through the mulga scrub, and paddocks of wild grass, and fields stubbled up to burn marks delineated by dark trees. Maybe he could just keep walking. Just not stop. And what if he did? Would he want her to follow him? The wind was sharp, and salty, and then there was water on it.

"It's cold," said Alison. She hugged her bare arms. "Where are we going?"

He was dazed, for a moment, by the trespass of her voice. He looked out. In the high moon the water was sequined with light. Muted flashes from the freighters past the heads. Beyond that, stars. But directly beneath him — that, there, was the real shocker. The black stub in the black bay. He'd brought them right to the rock pier.

"You wanna go down there?" Her tone was a little impatient.

"It's gonna rain."

"C’arn," she said. "It'll rain up here too."

She swayed and shimmied down the dark slope. He followed her down and then onto the rocks, almost sprinting across them until they reached the tip of the pier. Water boiling over its edge. Vertigoed, he looked back — saw, across the long darkness, the foreshore thinly threaded with lights. Then, breathing hard, he turned around again and looked out into the deeper black, toward the heads where the water came in strong and deep and broke on the raised table of the reef.

"I haven't been here for ages," he said.

Alison found a curved rock on the lee side, long and canoe-narrow. The pier a heap of shadows in the night. "Lester's just a dickhead," she said. She drew her legs beneath her.

"Yeah."

"You should have seen him when he first met Dory. Talk about arse-licking."

He sat down opposite, shivering. It was like the wind was greased, he thought, it slid right against you, leaving your skin slippery where it touched. The mention of Dory triggered something inside him and he reached for her.

"Come here."

He heard himself say it. He saw his arm stippled by cold. The smell of kelp and metal dissolving on his tongue. She fended the hair from her face as he hauled her in, his hands up and down her body, claiming as much of her as he could. She responded at once, then drew herself upright.

"I just don't get why he hangs out with him," she commented.

"What?"

He rocked back, hugged his shins tight. Looked at her. Her hair silver in the pale spill of moonlight. Her makeup worn down and somehow, in this light, accidental — as though she'd been rehearsing on a friend's face. She looked like a complete stranger.

"I mean. He doesn't even like him."

"Will you shut up?" He realized, suddenly, that it pissed him off: that strange, settled face of hers. "Please? Fucking Dory this and Dory that." Words gushing up in him, frothy and cold, but he couldn't give body to them, not fast enough. "Why were you even with him? Don't you know what everyone says? What everyone thinks?"

Her expression was level. "Go on."

It occurred to him instantaneously that this was her real face, and that it was the same as Dory's — the same blankness of expression — and that that was what had been drawing him in. That was what he wanted to break himself against. As quickly as it came, the heady anger began to seep out of him.

She said, "So what does everyone think?" He didn 't answer.

"C’arn," she said. She leaned into him again, almost aggressively, urging his hand with her own, up over her shoulder blade. Her lips muzzling his neck.

"C’arn." "Just that you could do better than him." His voice came out as if by rote. "Like… he's slow or something."

She pulled back, teeth flashing, and then she was laughing, liquidly, into the night. He waited, watching her. Sensing, deeper and deeper, how profoundly her laughter excluded him. In the distance he heard metal rings clinking against masts. The creaking of stretched wood. He would stay quiet. He'd say nothing and maybe she'd say something — one thing — that would release him for good.

Alison's face remembered itself. "Sorry," she whispered. She crawled forward on all fours and put her hands on his knees.

"Hey." He was holding her shoulders. Vance Wilhelm had been hospitalized with internal injuries-whatever that meant. Had she crawled on her hands and knees for him? Had he afterward regretted letting her? The pier, buffeted by rising waves, felt as though it was beginning to list from side to side. She looked up.

"I'll go if you want." How she said it — the words running one way and the meaning another. After a while, her mouth opened disbelievingly. "You gotta be joking." She threw his hands off her. "But okay. If that's how it is. You're up for it and Lester Long shit-talks you and then you're going every which way."

The wind grieved louder. Cutting off his every tack of thought.

"All year you're up for it — "

"It's not fucking Lester," he spat, "and it's not fucking shit-talk."

She exhaled, her eyes shining.

"Anyway," he said, fetching in his voice with effort, "you're moving."

"What?"

"Next year. To the city."

Alison ignored him. "Stuff it," she said. "They were right about you."

"We're moving too — but just to Maroomba." He was flustered by her comment. Who ? he wanted to ask. Right about what ? He said, "It's my mum." Then he stopped himself. Just saying it felt like some sort of betrayal.

"Look," Alison said. Now he breathed in, primed himself for the inevitable questions. But once again she acted as though she hadn't heard him. She said, "You're scared of Dory — fair enough." Her brow knitted together. "I just thought…" She paused. "It's different with you."

He didn't say anything.

"I just thought it'd be different with you." She crouched up, onto her feet. He turned toward her and she was smiling, lips pressed tightly together. Something about that smile. "But I'll talk to him," she said. "He'll leave you alone. Promise." She made a half-choked sound like a chuckle. "Don't worry — Dory listens to me." She held still for a moment, then started across the rocks.

Jamie turned around to face the water. Years ago he'd swum out there heaps — out where the coral was. It was easy to forget, past the reef, that you were on the edge of the great continental shelf until a rip drifted you out and one of those cold currents snaked up from the depths and brushed its slightest fringe against your body. Then you remembered. She was almost out of sight when the recognition arrived. That smile — her smile — it wasn't one-way. There was a question in it.