THE INTERIOR

A few raindrops spray across the windscreen, but it’s not quite raining. I open my door and step outside. Port Phillip Bay is very near and the wind off the water races over the bitumen of the car park, gusting a chill upwards.

She sits within the interior warmth of her car. She’s on her mobile, talking, and smiles at me. We have been friends for so many years, the world has changed popes, presidents and prime ministers. We remember the last days of revolution and together we watched global warfare gathering on the horizon— catastrophic storms imminent for over a decade. The oceans were full of fish and everything seemed limitless and possible. We saw babies born and talked about first words and steps and consulted each other on how to impart the knowledge of death, so it wouldn’t be bitter or fearful. We watched movies with film stars now dead or grown old and living in obscurity somewhere in the hills of California. There was music and bands in bars—and there were mistakes we made that we daydreamed about with hangovers for hours afterwards some Sunday mornings. There were books we forced upon each other because they would change our hearts and minds in integral, utterly necessary ways. She is looking at me with our histories written on the same pages, sitting in her driver’s seat with her seatbelt still on, talking into her phone, and smiling at me with that long, loving friendship. But we don’t know each other. We have never met.

I close my car door and walk across the bitumen to get my ticket. I return to my car and place my ticket on the dashboard. There’s another spatter of raindrops and soon it will come down in a torrent of ice-cold Melbourne rain. When I pass the car window beside me, I don’t look over at her again, sitting within the warmth of the interior.