5.

Hannah hadn’t asked for a cent except to help cover groceries. She knew I was from Australia and knew I’d been moving around, but didn’t know why I was in Charleston with a beat-up car and no real plan. She asked nothing and I told even less. There was an unspoken understanding that any conversation like that would only hinder the comfort we had found in not knowing.

We spent our days together walking and talking, and our nights drinking and fucking. I could’ve repeated the cycle indefinitely. Being around her didn’t bring some immense, overpowering joy, but the thought of being without her made me feel unwell. I wondered if that’s what it was to truly make it with someone. My money was lasting, but I didn’t have enough of it to trace the letters anymore and soon wouldn’t have enough to live, even with Hannah’s seemingly endless hospitality and patience.

One evening, she drove us to a bar at the far reaches of the next and final island between us and the Atlantic: Kiawah Island. I watched as the private land’s manicured golf courses and colossal, exquisite homes passed by my window. After a drink at the clubhouse bar, we wandered the green of the final hole down to a beach. The tide had receded enough to expose a small sandbank about forty feet out – a thin walkway of exposed dune leading to it with silty water either side. We stood in the middle of our tiny island and I moved in close, looking into her squinting eyes, and kissed her. The sun was setting behind me. I was a silhouette to her – whoever or whatever she wanted me to be in that moment.

I smoked a cigarette out the front of the clubhouse and waited while she used the bathroom. It was a beautiful corner of the earth and there were worse places a man could find the end. I perused a noticeboard next to me and saw a posting: SUMMER WORK AVAILABLE: CONTACT PAMELA IN LAND MAINTENANCE.

The following day, after Hannah went for groceries, I drove back to Kiawah. The road leading towards it was magnificent, with oaks either side forming a tunnel disappearing into the distance; trunks so close they’d take your side mirror off if you weren’t paying attention. Even the brightest daylight only just worked through their branches to illuminate the road in small spits of light.

I arrived at the island’s security checkpoint – the second of its two guards turning away from paperwork towards me when he heard the tone of the first. They looked over the Miata with scornful eyes, filled out and handed me a guest pass, and waved me through. I thanked them and pulled away with a clunk and a bang.

‘It’s hard work, but it’s a job,’ Pamela told me, leaving her sunglasses on as we spoke in the lobby of the office. She looked like a tough woman, with skin so tanned it had become the same sandy-brown as her hair. ‘Monday through Friday. Start at seven, clock off at three-thirty. Half-hour break in there for lunch. Shirt, hat and safety equipment is provided but you need your own pants and shoes. That’s really all there is to say.’

‘Not an issue at all. I’m willing to work.’

‘That’s good, but you need to understand the line is long in this town for people looking for work. There’s no sense in me bothering with all that paperwork if it turns out you’re not fit and able.’

‘Yes, I understand. I am, I promise.’

‘We need more than your word.’

She paused and waited. I looked around then dropped onto my hands and began pressing out push-ups with moderate difficulty in the middle of the lobby. The receptionist peered over her desk.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ Pamela asked.

‘Showing you I’m fit and able,’ I answered, masking my exertion.

‘Get up, Mark. A drug test. Are you going to pass a drug test?’

‘Oh. Yeah, I could do that.’

I followed Pamela’s directions to the island’s medical centre. ‘Hi there, I’m here to pee in a cup,’ I said to its receptionist.

‘Oh, you must be the boy Pam called about,’ she announced with delight. A room became free and I was sent to it. The doctor was a stumpy Black woman with breasts so large they swallowed her neck.

‘Do these take very long?’ I asked.

‘Few minutes,’ she mumbled back, writing my details onto a sticker.

‘That’s pretty quick.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘You do a lot of these?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Pretty amazing we have this kind of technology.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Be honest, did you dream about this moment in medical school?’

‘Uh-huh.’

She laid the sticker around a jar and handed it over. I went into the bathroom, filled, and gave it back. She pulled opened the machine on her desk’s tray, retrieved a dropper resembling a turkey baster, sucked up a portion of my sample and squirted it in. Closing the tray with a click, she pressed a button labelled BEGIN. The machine whirred to life, producing a hum that kept growing. Then the room went dark – the sound of fluorescent globes ticking off throughout the building echoing around. A blackout.

‘Shit. That bad, huh?’ I asked into the pitch black.

A sigh returned.

‘Uh-huh.’