They all run from the stinging spray—what is it? what’s—oh! the sprinklers have started, all over the park. Horrifying at first, an attack of freezing bees, but then it’s—well, you can’t help laughing, it’s pretty funny, all the drama doused and drenched, all the faces gaping. Ivy gets a bad case of laughter, the helpless kind that makes her snort—so humiliating, older-ladyish, snort—she stops behind a tree, which blocks some of the water coming at her, and bends to try to release her diaphragm. Snort! Oh dear.
The others find her, and the sanctuary of the big tree’s girth, all huddling there as the water changes to a regular cyclic spat, spat, spat, spat, calming from the first fervour.
“They must be blowing the lines,” Jason says. “Like they do with our underground sprinklers in the fall, before it freezes. There’s just way more water to clear out.”
Looking around the tree again, Ivy sees Newell coming through the park, dodging the spray. Shit, it’s cold, being wet on a windy night. She pulls back into the lee of their tree. L and Jason are huddled together; Orion holds Savaya close to him, trying to warm her up. Doesn’t anybody wear a jacket anymore? It’s almost winter.
Fury bristles off Orion like a charge; he is still accusing L and Jason of prejudice. He’s practically split himself in two, one half still comforting Savaya, the other spitting at L like a sprinkler: “I know, Burton, other people, you name it. It doesn’t—it doesn’t take away from, from love.”
Ivy ought to intervene, re: people are just worried about you, power dynamics, position of influence, etc. “Everybody has just heard too many bad stories,” she forces out, being careful, aware of Newell coming closer, listening.
Orion is too busy ranting to notice. He shouts, “It is not the same thing! I’m the one who wants—in the old days things were different. Now it’s—different. My mother kept me safe, even though she was such a wack job, hovering around the dressing rooms at dance class, never fucking leaving me alone for a minute.”
“Well, we worry,” Ivy says. Taking the blame for all the mothers, though she is none. Newell gives her a thumbs-up, quietly coming closer.
The water eases again, the stinging spray subsiding.
Orion, calmer, says, “I’ve been perfectly well aware of myself, who I am, all my life. I tried out the other just in case I was bi because that would be so handy, but I’m not.”
“I vouch for that!” Savaya lifts her drowned face to laugh.
From Jason’s coat, L says, “Sorry, Orion, sorry, I didn’t mean that at all, I was being mean about Savaya, not you. I meant another, um, like another Pink, I think—I hate my saying that, it’s just what came up from my—”
Everybody has a flooded basement in their mind, Ivy thinks.
“It’s okay,” Orion says. He’s tired, his voice is cracking. Ivy has to get them all home somehow.
Newell appears around their tree, a jacket in his hand.
A rippling shift of dissipating tension. Orion says, reaching out, “Hey, that’s my jacket. It’s got our phones in it.”
Newell hands it over. “How I found you. That and the shouting.”
Orion laughs, what a good sound to hear.
Perfect, but how will they all cope now? Ivy says, “We can’t get in Gerald’s car like this, we’ll ruin it.”
“I’ll get him another one.” The sweetness of Newell’s smile is a little weird—Ivy often finds it so. Lots of money makes a person strange.
“We can’t drive back to Peterborough all wet. My apartment isn’t far—we can dry out and then go home. How about I take these guys in Gerald’s Saab—I don’t dare drive yours—and you two follow along?” Ivy appropriates Savaya’s freezing hand. Leaving Newell to take Orion. As seems right to her, never mind the rules.
Newell nods, and lopes off between the trees, Orion running after, swinging around a lamppost and hurdling benches in joyful, elastic, springing leaps over the damp grass. Love made visible. No wonder, no wonder. She and Hugh struggle along earthbound making love, bodies held by gravity. How these two in the glory of their strength must spree.