IV.

Eighteen

On the night of Markus’s eighteenth birthday, Grayson rolls his eyes when Buff arrives. It’s nine o’clock and hot, and Buff’s only wearing a pair of yellow shorts. He says he’s meant to be a lifeguard. The shorts are tight and stick to his thighs: he looks more like Rocky Horror. It was Elmyra’s idea to have it dress up, because her party’s out on a farm tomorrow night, and they can’t wear costumes then because they’ll get dirty. She’s Marilyn from when she sang (i.e., the real Marilyn) ‘Happy Birthday’ to Mr President. Markus takes her white-fur coat and hangs it up for her. Grayson’s a Greek god. He says, It was my mother’s idea, I forget who the god is. The toga he’s wearing seems breezy. He has what Markus guesses is a wreath of leaves on his head, which is made of mistletoe he’s probably stripped out of a eucalypt tree. Mistletoe — a parasitic plant — spreads when a bird eats its seeds and shits them out on the branches of other trees. It looks more like a thorny tangle of weeds.

Rene comes over with a cake. Markus laughs out his nose and snuffs the candles prematurely. Markus sees Gray’s face across the table, somewhat more distant than he’d like him to be. Distant and dramatic in the dim light that the now re-lit candles are casting. They’re singing happy birthday. Elmyra uses a stubby in place of a microphone. Grayson breaks the tune when he sneezes.

After, everyone starts the piss-up.

Markus is standing around the side of the house, taking a leak.

Grayson slaps him on his shoulder.

Markus pisses on his own feet and feels it, because he’s dressed as Aquaman and wearing green thongs.

Carn, Gray says.

They slip further around the corner of the house toward the front. There are no obvious party-ers. Grayson pulls him down behind the bonnet of someone’s car. Points across it. Underneath the orange geraniums Rene’s bordered with red bricks, there are two figures. Markus turns to Gray, who, with a rounded and warm palm, turns Markus’s head back to the figures. The moon’s light is broken by the trees overhead. Maybe one of the figures is a shirtless man, maybe the other a blonde-haired woman.

What are they doing? Markus whispers.

Grayson flicks his hand against Markus’s shoulder and says, Gardening. He laughs quietly. Carn. He ducks and weaves between the cars and Markus follows, trying to keep up.

Markus wants to say, Slow down so I can follow. Out on the road into town, the sky is unimpeded by the leaves of trees. The moonlight sprinkles. Grayson’s marble-white toga is bold as he walks. Markus ditches his thongs in a table drain because they’re giving him blisters between his toes. Cool dirt on his bare feet. Markus pulls up the Aquaman mask he made and lets it rest against the top of his head.

Gray.

Yair?

But Markus kinda doesn’t wanna ask where they’re going. He says instead, How many stars d’you think there are?

Grayson doesn’t answer for a bit. We’ve had this conversation, he says.

Yair, well, I wanna know what you think now.

Nothin’ different.

Truth is, Markus can’t remember what mi compañero had said all those years ago.

Their feet on the sandy track crunch out of time. Up ahead, a dim glow from the lights in town.

Markus quickens to catch up. He’s a little disappointed. Where are we going?

But Grayson shushes him.

The boys head by the road through the drying-out land toward Narioka. In the dark, the cliffs are indiscernible, and they could very well be on a vast plain that stretches forever without any borders. The hydrophobic-red dirt gathers from a crumble into pavement and then to bitumen. The main road. And the spiny strands of grasses and weeds, dead or dying and yellowish-grey, bind around each other to form the faux gold-rush buildings. Down Melville Street, past the newsagents, chemist, and past where, in the bright daylight, the young vagrants will smoke rolled cigarettes, drink Red Bull, and whack their children out front of the Chicken Ranch. Tonight, the footpaths are caverns of emptiness. The boys come to the public swimming pool.

Near the back of the complex, Grayson lifts a corner of the cyclone-wire fence. Big enough for a superhero, he says as Markus crawls underneath.

And a Greek god, Markus replies.

Grayson enters unaided, and as he stands up, he says, You told me there’s no such thing as gods or goddesses. He de-togas. He’s in his underwear and sprints toward the water, leaps and dives into the pool. He’s standing in its mid-section, where he turns and yells back to Markus, You comin’ in?