Luke and I sit at separate tables outside the shop. He turned up for lunch a couple of hours ago and never left. He’s turned up most days this week and sat staring at the hills. “What are you writing?” he asks today.
“Some lyrics for a song about this place.” It’s not the one I’m singing for the show; it’s about him and Rose, but I don’t say that.
“Must be a pretty quick song,” he says. “About this place.”
I give him a laugh because he looks like he needs it. “Have you seen Dave today?”
“This morning. That scary nurse with the mustache kicked me out.”
“I’m visiting this afternoon if you want to go together. Two against one scary nurse with a mustache.”
“Yeah, okay. Not sure two’ll be enough. It’s a big mustache.” He keeps staring at the hills. “Dave’ll be unbearable when you leave. He goes on and on about you. It’s like being hit by a cricket bat. No offense.”
“None taken.”
His eyes stay on those hills, even though he can’t see Rose from here. “You’re not taking her with you?”
I shake my head. “She’s staying.”
“She’s not staying,” he says, kicking at the dirt. “Even if she stays, she’s not staying. Her mum and dad did it in the back of a car, you know? Had her when they were young.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“A Holden. Good car. I think maybe that’s why she wouldn’t do it with me. Didn’t want that to happen to her. I wouldn’t care about not doing it with her, if she’d get back together with me,” he says.
A yellow car drives past the shop, and I watch it go. The day’s a hazy blue. “That’s where Rose used to sit,” Luke says. “Right where you’re sitting.” A fly lands on the table and doesn’t move. “I know,” I say, staring at it. I imagine day after day of sitting here.
“I’m bored to death,” Luke says, and I nod. Like Gus told me, you don’t always understand people, so you gotta understand yourself. Then maybe you take what you worked out about yourself and use it to figure out other people.
“I want things, too,” Luke says.
“Like what?” I ask, even though I get the feeling he’s not talking to me.
“I don’t know what. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want them.”
Antony rides over and stands in front of us. “Shit, things must be quiet.”
“Shut up, Antony,” Luke says. “I’m talking to Charlie.”
There is something kind of likable about him. “You want some free chips?”
He grins. “Yeah. Thanks.”
“What about me?” Antony asks.
“She doesn’t give everyone their chips for free,” Luke says.
I ride on Luke’s handlebars to get to the hospital. “You should bring your bike down next Christmas,” he says.
“I’m asking Dad to buy me one for my birthday,” I tell him, and he goes through what I should buy and how much I should pay.
He’s still going on about it when we walk into Dave’s room. “Charlie’s getting a bike for her birthday. I said a hybrid’s better because she can ride in the city and country.”
“No more riding on people’s handlebars?” Dave asks.
“Nope. I’m taking to the road.”
“Better wear a helmet.”
“This jelly is shit,” Luke says.
Dave throws a magazine at him. “I was saving that.”
Luke throws it back, and the nurse walks in and tells us to be quiet. “She’s why women should shave,” Luke says. “Close shave.”
“It’s the new millennium,” Dave says. “They don’t have to shave.”
“I think the venom went to your brain,” Luke answers. “It’s making you hallucinate and think that you’re Rose. You’ll be trying to kiss me next and then calling me a dickhead after you’re done.”
“The venom of fifty snakes could not make me hallucinate enough to kiss you. But you are a dickhead.”
Luke turns on the TV.
“So I’ll be well enough to go to the talent quest Saturday,” Dave says. “You’re going, right, Charlie? We should all go together.”
“I’ll meet you there. I’m going with Grandpa. With Dad, too, if he’s back in time.”
“Something special you’re doing before you leave?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “Something special.”
Luke goes, but I stay awhile longer. I watch Dave sleep and do a little writing and thinking. Hospitals used to remind me of Mum. Not because I’d ever seen her in one. I imagined her there, though. I imagined her being rushed in and saved. I imagined that over and over in the month after she’d gone. I didn’t play music. I imagined that moment.
And then Mum’s friend Celia mailed me that Stones album we danced to. I remember that summer Dave talked about, the one when I started wearing my Walkman. I remember because I’d worked out how good it felt to block the world. I even wore it sometimes at dinner with Dad. He made a little sign when he wanted me to pass the salt.
“What are you doing?” Dave asks, opening his eyes.
“I’m sitting here thinking about dead people.”
“I like how you come in here to cheer me up.”
“I like it, too.” I pass him some water.
“I keep having this dream about snakes,” he says.
“That’s normal.”
“The snakes are wearing little hats.”
“Okay, that’s not so normal.”
He takes a sip and thinks for a bit. “What’s normal?” The snakebite victim high on painkillers makes a really good point. “Stop thinking about dead people,” he says, and drifts back to sleep.
I take the advice of the snakebite victim high on painkillers, since he seems to be making sense. I make a New Year’s resolution list. It’s not one of those I’ll-be-good lists. It’s a list of killer things coming up this year. I don’t have to think all that hard to write it. I let the good stuff fall on out of me.
Finishing my song for Saturday, standing up there and letting it roll out and hit the audience, hit them and vibrate on their skin. Giving Dave his CD before I go home. Kissing him and having the stars go harmonic. Heading back to the city in the early morning, sun raining pink. Stopping at the gas station and stocking up on candy for the trip home. Sharing some with Dad and playing him some tunes I think he might like. Telling Dahlia about the summer and not telling Louise to get stuffed because, really, who cares about her? Calling Andrew and asking him to meet me out the front of school on the first day of Year 11. Lying in the sun in the quad on the last days of summer. Studying music. Getting a band together. Paying Beth to give me real singing lessons. Working and waiting for new releases that can be mine before anyone else’s. Sitting with Gus and talking about musicians who are the biz. Seeing bands. Singing.
I stop writing when the nurse comes in. “He goes home Saturday morning,” she says. I make “keeping out of hospitals” the last thing on my list.
I pass Rose on my way out. She’s locking up her bike, so she doesn’t see me. I don’t call to her. I walk across the grass, over the spot where we talked the day I saved Dave. I get this feeling, an instinct. She wasn’t lying to me then. I think a few good thoughts about her and keep on my way.
She’s sitting on the hill
Hoping for a day
When her dreams don’t hit the road
She’s throwing rocks and yelling
At the sky and at the weather
She’s yelling at forever
That’s been breathing on her neck
She can’t start with him again
He’s got the end of her
He can’t give her ocean
And he can’t give her her
He’s staring where she sat
It’s the plastic that reminds him
Of something that they had
He says, “I’d give up sex forever
If she’d say we’re back together”
But he’s making promises he knows
It’d kill them both to keep
She can’t start with him again
He’s got the end of her
He can’t give her ocean
And he can’t give her her