ALL OF SPACE HAD GOT CAUGHT IN OUR KITCHEN

By the time Caddy got back to Lanh’s, the smoke was making her eyes water and her nose run.

‘Some guy came by for you.’ Lanh pushed his cap back and put the bookmark in his four-fifths-read book.

‘Some guy?’

‘Older guy.’

‘Older?’

‘Yeah, older.’ He pulled his cap back down, then changed his mind and pushed it back up. ‘Customer?’

‘What?’

‘Is he a customer of yours?’

‘Lanh!’ she fidgeted a bit. ‘Well, yeah! Probably! I mean …’

He cut her off. ‘Don’t worry about it. I mean, sorry. I’m sorry I said it. It doesn’t matter. We all got to make money, hey?’ He gave her a half smile.

‘Yeah.’ She scratched behind her ear. ‘How’s business, anyway?’

‘Good! Great. Almost no time to read.’ A full smile this time.

‘Is it weird for you. You know. Me here. And, you know, customers?’ she asked.

‘Nah. I mean, well, it would be. You know, if you, um, entertained here.’

‘Entertained?’

‘You know what I mean! Don’t make me say it!’

‘I know what you mean. I wouldn’t do that. Not on your chair, anyway. If you’d let me have the bed now and then …’

‘No way!’

She stuck her tongue out at him. ‘You’re right though, it is kind of weird. I should find somewhere to live. Besides, sleeping in your chair is massively uncomfortable.’

‘Well, you could sleep in the bed with me you know.’

‘You say that, but I don’t really believe you mean it.’

‘Whatever. Offer’s there.’ He picked the book up.

‘Are you going to tell me about this guy?’

‘He said his name was Fisk.’

‘Fisk?’

‘Lord in heaven, woman, have you gone deaf? I said Fisk!’

Lanh opened the book and pulled his cap way down.

‘Sorry. Ha ha. Is he coming back?’ Caddy asked. ‘Did he leave a message?’

‘Just to say he came by,’ Lanh muttered.

‘Nothing else?’

Lanh kept reading. She stood for a while, watching him.

‘What’re you doing today?’

Lanh didn’t look up: ‘This.’

‘No shipments?’

‘Nope. Ray’s back in town.’

She sat on the floor, cross-legged. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

‘Why don’t you go find this Fisk bloke? Or look for somewhere to live or something, if you’re really moving out.’

‘It’s too hot.’

‘It’s always too hot, Cad. You waiting for the cool change?’

‘Kinda.’

‘It’s not coming.’

‘Yeah, I know.’ She slumped backwards on to the floor, threw her arms out like a crucifix. ‘I’m so fucking bored!’

‘You want a book?’

‘No, I don’t want a book! I want a job and an air conditioner! I want a rich husband!’

‘That Fisk bloke’s UN.’

‘Yeah. Lanh, looking for a rich husband is gross. I don’t want to be the kind of woman who’s looking for a rich husband.’

‘You want to be the kind of girl who shacks up with me?’

‘That’s exactly the kind of girl I want to be. But goddamit, Lanh,’ she sat up again, ‘you know I can’t be. I don’t want to die of dehydration when I’m 62 years old cause it’s so fricking hot and I’m too sick to go out and look for water.’

‘Jeez, Cad, way to look on the bright side. Maybe we could figure something out. I mean, this contraband thing is going good, yeah? I’m doing OK.’

Caddy rolled over on her stomach and rested her head on her arms.

‘What? Are you going to sleep now?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Fine.’ Lanh picked his book up again.

‘OK.’ Caddy stood up and brushed herself off. ‘I’m going to look for Sergeant Fisk.’

He didn’t look up.

‘Look. I mean, if things weren’t like this, we could …’

‘If things weren’t like this, you’d still be married and have a nice little house and cat. Don’t worry about it. You’re right. It’s fine. Pick me up a UN cutie while you’re out, will you?’

‘Yeah, I’ll see what I can do.’

Out on the street, Caddy thought she’d probably made the wrong decision, if she’d even made a decision. Seriously, she hadn’t thought at all about listening to what Lanh was suggesting. It wasn’t right. She just knew it wasn’t right. For a minute she thought about shaking her fist at the sky and proclaiming ‘As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again!’ Instead, she started walking towards the river.

‘Hey,’ she called out to a soldier dismantling one of the riverside tents. ‘Do you know a guy called Fisk?’

‘Nope.’

‘You guys leaving?’

‘Yep.’

‘Yeah great. Thanks.’

She headed to where the cluster of tents was thickest and kept walking until someone stopped her.

‘Sorry miss, you can’t be in here.’

‘Do you know a Sergeant Fisk?’

‘Yes ma’am. But you can’t be in here.’

‘Yeah, right oh. Look, I’ll go be over there instead, but could you tell Sergeant Fisk I’m looking for him? He’s expecting me. Caddy.’

Caddy perched herself on a low retaining wall the UN soldiers had thrown up. What Lanh has said was still nagging at her, but she was here now. She might as well at least find out this guy’s first name. She wondered what Ray was up to. Maybe he was already back in San Francisco, drinking a big delicious beer.

‘Caddy?’

Dammit, he’d snuck up behind her.

‘Oh, hey!’ She exclaimed brightly, wondering if she’d been doing something ugly with her face.

‘Hi. Thanks for coming down here.’

‘Oh, hectic schedule and all, but I thought you were probably worth making time for ….’ she trailed off. That joke hadn’t worked out at all like she’d hoped. ‘Um. Yeah.’

‘Do you want to go somewhere cooler and have a drink?’

‘Can you do that?’ she asked. ‘Just skive off?’

‘Just what?’

‘Wag. You know.’ Fisk stared vacantly. ‘Oh yeah: play hookey.’

‘Oh! Yeah. Yeah. Nothing much going on around here; we’ll probably ship out in a few days.’

‘Oh. Oh really?’ She was about to say that was a pity, but then she realized she didn’t know if it was a pity. There was every chance this old UN guy would turn out to be a complete waste of her time.

Man, when did she get so mercenary?

‘So do you?’

‘Oh! Oh yes. Please. That would be great.’

‘There’s a place just up on Epsom.’

‘The Rose?’

‘Yeah.’

Caddy had never been in the Rose. They didn’t let people like her in places like that.

‘Um, will I be OK? I mean,’ she gestured feebly at her clothes. ‘It’s not the kind of place I’d usually go to. I don’t really have the outfits.’

‘Really? It’s seems perfect for you. Come on, if they give you any trouble I’ll show them my gun.’

Caddy wasn’t sure whether he was joking, so she started walking.

‘So Caddy, you from around here?’

‘Born and bred. I lived down in Altona for a while when I was little. You know Altona?’

He shook his head.

‘Out west a bit, on the bay. My parents moved down here from Canberra in the 90s, bought a house in Altona. There was an industrial accident down there ten years or so ago though, and they lost the place. So yeah, y’know, I’ve lived in the west most of my life. You?’

‘First time here.’ He opened the door of the bar for her, but she gestured for him to go in first. She didn’t want to get kicked out before he’d even stepped inside. Cold air spilled out onto the footpath and she shivered a little.

He sat her down at a table near the bar. ‘What can I get you?’

‘Oh, um, just a Coke I guess.’

‘No seriously. It’s my, uh, whaddya say? It’s my shout.’

‘I could murder a gin and tonic, if you really want to know.’

‘I really want to know. Back in a minute.’

It was so dark and cool in here. Their power bill would have to be out of control. Maybe they had their own panels or something. Man, it made her want to just curl up and sleep. Or put on a jumper, one or the other.

Oh, that was a big glass of gin and tonic. Oh, Caddy felt happy right now. She gave Sergeant Fisk her prettiest smile, and wished she knew what to call him.

‘So do I just call you Fisk? Like, “thank you so much for the drink, Fisk”?’

‘How about, “Thank you so much for the drink, Simon”?’

‘Sounds good. Thank you so much for the drink, Simon.’

‘It’s my pleasure, Caddy.’

Caddy suddenly had an urge to freak out, run out of there and go back to Lanh’s place. This was all a bit too surreal. Instead, she asked, ‘So. Simon. Why don’t you tell me a bit about yourself?’

‘Uh, well, not that much to tell, I’m afraid. I was born in Tulsa, in Oklahoma. Kind of a weird childhood, dad dragged me round the country for most of it. He died while I was still pretty young.’ Caddy made an appropriately sympathetic face ‘And I was kind of wild for a while. I pretty much just traveled for a few years until I was about seventeen. Wound up in Oakland, California and settled down there for a while, got a job. It didn’t really take. I ended up back in Tulsa, wanted to see if I could find a few old friends, family, y’know. But there wasn’t much going on and the place was starting to fall apart, running out of water and power and so on. City Hall was even starting to give up on us, telling people to move out if they had somewhere else to go. I figured I’d sign up for the UN, see the world.’

‘And how is it?’

‘Sort of like this. Sometimes better, sometimes worse. Wherever we go, though, there’s always somewhere’ll make us a cool drink and turn the A/C up. So it has its benefits.’

‘Yeah. That’s pretty sweet, I guess. Especially if you’re spending your days pulling bodies out of flooded rivers.’

‘Yes. That and a million other things.’ He did a wry smile, showed off his dimples for a second or two. ‘So how about you?’

‘Oh, you know most of it already. I mean, you must have seen some changes, right? You’re like … how old are you?’

‘Fifty three.’

‘Serious? You don’t look it.’

‘Serious. Thanks.’

‘Anyway, so yeah. You must have seen some changes. I mean, when you were a kid, like in the nineties and stuff, things were going along OK, yeah?’

‘Yeah, it wasn’t so bad. But y’know, I didn’t really notice. I was kind of all caught up in my own stuff.’

‘Yeah, I guess. Some day someone will be telling me, “Oh, 2030, that was a high old time!” and I’ll be all, “Yeah, I don’t know. I was kind of hot and thirsty for a lot of it, didn’t really notice”. So, yeah … What was my point again? Oh yeah. Things have been kind of like this for me most of the time. There was a pretty good patch for a bit, I had some work, got married and got a house and stuff. But then he died and the house went and so mostly it’s kind of like this. Just getting by, y’know? Hanging around Melbourne, doing a bit of this and that to make money. Oh, I do do some writing sometimes! I’m not totally boring. Except it’s not that good.’

I’m really selling myself here, she thought.

‘You write?’ he asked her. ‘Well, that’s interesting. What sort of stuff?’

‘Fiction mostly. Short stories. Nothing ever published or anything. It’s just a little something to pass the time.’

Simon picked up a straw and tapped its end against the table, staring at the bubbles it left behind.

Caddy could feel goosebumps pricking up on her forearms. A narrow, angular African woman came past the table and cleared her glass away. Simon’s was still half full, she noticed. ‘You want another?’ he asked, and for a second she was about to laugh knowingly and say something like, I don’t want you taking advantage of me, but then she grossed herself out. She just wasn’t feeling like flirting. She was sick of the whole thing.

‘I’d love one. If you’re sure you don’t mind.’

‘Not at all. Another gin and tonic, miss, if you don’t mind.’

‘So you’re leaving tomorrow?’ Caddy tried to look him in the eye as she asked, nothing suggestive or coy about the question.

‘Maybe tomorrow. Maybe a few more days. Soon.’

‘I see.’

Was there really any point to this? Should she ask him where he was going next, make conversation?

‘So, where to …’

‘Caddy,’ he cut her off. ‘I came looking for you because there was something I wanted to ask you.’ He was tapping the straw again.

She waited, stopped herself making any smartarse comments.

‘What happened to Sarah?’ He wasn’t tapping anymore, he was just sitting there, not quite looking at her.

‘To Sarah? I’m not … oh. To Sarah?’

‘My sister. My not-quite sister. Sarah.’

‘Your not-quite-sister Sarah? You’re … You’re not, right? Hang on.’ Caddy leaned forward. ‘Oh shit.’

‘Caddy, you look exactly the same. I’d really like you to tell me you have no idea what I’m talking about and then I’ll just go up there and pay the bill and get out of here, and they can throw you out whenever they feel like it. But it’s you. I don’t want it to be, but it is. You’re not your daughter or your niece or someone who looks strangely like you and even more strangely has the same name. You’re you. You are, aren’t you?’

‘Yeah. I’m me. Fuck. Oh: fuck.’

‘So what happened to her?’

‘I don’t know Simon. I don’t know. I told you last time I saw you that you’d already lived everything I imagined. I don’t know anything else about you.’

‘God damn it. So why’d you come back in here? What are you doing here?’

‘In the Rose?’

‘In the world.’

‘Doing here in the world? I live here.’

‘You don’t live here. This world is imaginary right, that’s what you kept telling us.’

‘This isn’t the imaginary world. This is the real world Simon, this is where I live. You’re in the real world.’

‘I always was.’

‘OK, sure.’

‘Don’t mess me around, Caddy.’

A tray appeared behind Caddy’s shoulder and a tall, beaded glass was placed on the table in front of her. ‘Gin and tonic, miss.’

‘Thank you. Thanks.’

Hadn’t Ray said that Simon was gay? Awesome. She’d been trying to pick up a gay imaginary guy. OK, she really needed to concentrate now and not think about that.

‘I’m sorry. Sorry. Look, can we start again?’

‘Like, we go back to 1999 or whenever it was? You don’t pretend I’m imaginary?’

‘1997.’

He stared at her.

‘Sorry. Can we start again, again?’

‘Go for it.’

‘OK. OK.’ She had no idea what to say. ‘OK.’

‘You said that.’

‘Yes. OK. Sarah. What happened to Sarah?’

‘That’s what I’m asking you.’

‘Yes. And I don’t know. Which is making you think that it was never true that I imagined you. Right. And fair enough, it’s a ridiculous story.’

‘Did I say already how I’d like you not to mess me around?’

‘Yes. Sorry. Last time I saw you was about three weeks ago, and you were seventeen.’

‘Except it wasn’t. Last time I saw you it was nearly forty years ago. You seemed older then. Not much though.’

‘Yeah, I guess thirty-three looks older to a seventeen-year-old than a fifty-three-year-old. But hey, that’s right!’ Caddy looked triumphant for a second, then thought better of it. ‘I’m no older. I’m no older. So that must prove it.’

‘Prove what?’

‘Shit. I don’t even know. Look. Maybe it’s just some kind of coincidence, that some part of your life was exactly the same as a story I wrote. Which is pretty weird, but not as weird as you being someone I imagined. Except there was that whole howling void thing …’

Maybe Ray had drugged her. That wasn’t far-fetched at all, actually. It’s just the kind of thing Ray might do. Maybe she dreamed the whole thing. Maybe she needed to find Ray.

‘Maybe Ray would know.’

‘The future Aboriginal?’ Simon looked beyond skeptical. ‘Yeah, that guy was really on top of stuff.’

‘How come you’re suddenly fifty-three?’

‘It’s not sudden. It’s not sudden at all. This shit has been dragging on for years.’ He rolled the straw on the table, back and forward, back and forward. ‘So you don’t know where Sarah is?’

‘Don’t you?’

‘No.’

‘Oh.’

Caddy picked up her drink and took a long, slow sip. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I thought you came looking for me cause you thought I was cute.’

‘Yeah, I know.’

‘I didn’t recognize you at all.’

‘Not at all?’

‘No. I mean … no. I didn’t. I liked the look of you, but I really don’t think I recognized you.’

‘But I’m your child, Caddy! Ha ha ha.’

He wasn’t laughing.

Caddy really didn’t like herself a lot right now.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘perhaps you could write a story about where Sarah is.’

‘Do you want a hug?’

‘Do I what? A hug? No, I don’t want a hug.’

They both stared at the table for a while, drinking.

‘So what did happen to Sarah?’ she asked, eventually.

‘She disappeared.’

Caddy sat quietly, just looking at him. And after a while, like she’d hoped, he kept talking.

‘She went to New Orleans. She had some idea that she’d fit in there. She saw some documentary and she liked the way the place looked. She said it looked like her. So she went.’

Caddy kept just sitting quietly.

‘And when she’d been there about a year, there was the hurricane. Katrina. Do you remember that? Hurricane Katrina?’

‘Kind of. I was, what, eight? Nine?’

‘Yeah, I guess. And I don’t know if she left or stayed or anything, I never heard. I just didn’t hear anything about her any more after that.’

‘Before then, did she call you all the time? Or email or something?’

‘Not so much.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yeah, “oh”. Look, you know how it was with us, right? You invented us.’ He put his glass down, looked her in the eye and raised an eyebrow. For a second she just thought about how grey his eyes were, and then she remembered. Simon. Sarah.

‘I’m sorry, Simon.’

‘You know, when it’s God who’s imagined you, you can ask for stuff. Mercy. Help. Guidance. You know: stuff.’

‘Mostly you don’t get it, though.’

‘Yeah, mostly. What’s going to happen to me when I die, Caddy?’

‘I’m not God!’

‘You’re mine. Tell me what to expect. I’ve been reasonably good.’

‘Shit, I don’t know!’

‘Make something up.’

‘Um, you’ll go somewhere you can have a long bath any time you want, and roast chicken with stuffing.’

‘That’ll do me. I guess that’s incentive enough not to murder the next motherfucker I see.’

‘That’d be me.’

‘It would, yes. Do you want another drink, Caddy?’

‘I should really …’

‘Miss! A gin and tonic please, and I’ll have a scotch.’

Caddy thought the sun was setting, over the next few hours they were there. She was pretty sure she could feel it, though she couldn’t see a thing of the outside. She just felt like it was getting darker. Streamers – pastel-coloured plastic – fluttered in front of the air-conditioning vent, and a bowl on the carpet below caught water that dripped from the unit’s casing. Caddy watched it drip.

‘You want something to eat?’ Simon still wasn’t slurring.

Caddy didn’t even think she could answer. She let her head rock side-to-side on her neck, something like shaking ‘No’. She poked her finger into her mouth to see if she could feel her tongue, but she couldn’t.

One of the waitresses appeared from behind the bar, leaned over and whispered into Simon’s ear, then disappeared back into the gloom.

‘OK, the lady seems to think it’s time we left.’ Simon stood up, then sat back down. He picked up a bowl of nuts, stood up again and poured half of it into his pocket. He put the bowl back on the table. ‘You ready?’

Caddy gripped the side of the table and levered herself up. Things felt grim, but she could see the door so she pushed her legs in that direction. A waitress opened it just as she was trying to understand the door handle, and they stepped out into the dim soggy warmth.

The gutter looked tempting. Maybe she could start with sitting there and see how that went. Vomiting; sleeping: it would be good for both. Maybe not both. Maybe she meant either. She’d see how she went.

‘What are you doing?’ Simon was bending over, his hand around her arm. He seemed to think she should be getting onto a moto.

‘Are you taking me somewhere to kill me?’

‘That’s right. Get on.’

She couldn’t easily, but Simon kind of pushed her into place then got on behind, so she was wedged between him and the driver, Simon’s arms around her stopping her from sliding sideways. How come he was so with it?

‘How come you’re so with it?’

‘What?’

‘How come?’

‘You’re not making any sense.’

She let her head drop onto the driver’s back and closed her eyes. Pretty soon that seemed like a recipe for vomit, so she opened them again, but it wasn’t much help.

‘Will this take long?’

‘Murdering you?’

‘I guess.’

‘I doubt it.’

‘Cause I might spew.’

‘Why am I not surprised? Look. We’re going down to Docklands. There’s a hotel down there does cheap rates for us. We can’t sleep outside tonight. We wake up tomorrow with the sun shining on our heads, and we’ll be dead before we open our eyes.’

‘Hotel?’

‘Well grasped.’

‘I have …’ Caddy tried to look in her pocket and almost slipped sideways onto the ground. ‘Woops!’

‘Are you looking for something?’

‘Money. I don’t think I have any.’

‘Again, not surprised. It’s on me. Don’t get any ideas.’

‘Ray says you’re gay.’

‘Good old Ray. I really love that guy, you know?’

Caddy thought maybe he didn’t.

‘Gayness is not the issue here. There are so many issues here I don’t even know where to start. But added up they all mean we won’t be having any kind of sex, especially not the sort I pay you for or swap you for a night in a hotel.’

‘Roger.’ Caddy meant it when she said it, but then she laughed. ‘Roger!’

Why was he being nice to her? Why was he taking her to a hotel? She closed her eyes again, then remembered the whole vomit thing.

‘How come?’

‘How come what, Caddy?’

‘You don’t have to be nice to me.’

‘I know.’

Caddy let her head drop back on his shoulder and watched the sparse and broken clouds slide by. Things weren’t as bad as usual, she thought.

The moto was pulling up outside a five storey building, the yellow awning out the front all in one piece, a sign by the front door promising clean, air-conditioned rooms at reasonable rates. Simon paid the driver and helped her climb off.

‘OK,’ he said, leading her to a bench a few doors up the street. ‘Sit here. Wait. Don’t vomit. I’ll get us a room and I’ll be back in a minute.’

‘Why are you so sober?’

‘I’m not. I’m really not.’

He walked off and she let her head drop back again. It was quiet here. There were people on the pavement, but they were all asleep. She thought she could see a star. She squinted. Maybe it was a star.

There had been footsteps. She remembered, all of a sudden. There were footsteps, and they should be gone by now, but they had stopped. Perhaps in front of her. Probably Simon. She pulled herself a bit more upright to have a look.

‘Caddy? Where have you been? I’ve been walking round here for hours. You don’t look so good. Why didn’t you come home, baby?’

She squinted again, but all the things in front of her still looked the same. It still looked like Harry, and it still looked like he was holding a cat in a pillowcase.

He squatted down in front of her.

‘Cad? You OK?’

‘What’s in the pillowcase, Harry?’

‘It’s Skerrick. Are you OK?’

‘Why is Skerrick in a pillowcase?’

‘I couldn’t find her cage. Things at the house were, I don’t know … it’s a bit weird. I can’t remember.’ He opened the pillowcase and looked inside. ‘It’s Skerrick though. It is.’

‘Let me see.’

He leaned forward and opened the pillowcase. Inside big green eyes stared up at her from a head half grey, half orange. Caddy reached out a finger to touch the little pink nose.

‘Skerrick.’

The cat licked her finger.

Caddy shut one eye and stared at Harry again.

‘Harry,’ she said. ‘You’re dead. I’m drunk and you’re dead. Let’s go to sleep.’

‘Don’t you want to come home?’

‘I think we don’t have a home. Do we have a home again?’

Harry sat down next to her on the bench with the pillowcase in his lap and put his arm around her, pulled her up close to him.

‘I’m not really sure,’ he said, so she put her head down on his shoulder and closed her eyes. She was glad she’d got this drunk. It was nice to have a visit from Harry and Skerrick.

‘You smell different,’ she said.

‘I do?’

‘Maybe it was the fire.’

‘Probably.’

‘Where have you been, Harry?’

‘Looking for you.’

‘For two years and ….’ Caddy squinted up at the moon for a while ‘… four months?’

‘You are drunk, aren’t you? And you just want to sit here for a while?’

‘Yes please, Harry. Harry?’

‘Yes.’

‘I missed you so much.’

He kissed the top of her head.

Caddy felt like asking her dad why he’d gotten all funnyvoiced. ‘Dad!’ she was about to say, ‘stop talking so funny voice!’ But then she realized it wasn’t her dad it was some other man, and she had already started talking to him before she noticed she was asleep and just beginning to wake up.

‘… and your funny voice! Oh. Hello. Oh, hang on.’

But it didn’t really matter because he’d stopped paying attention to her and was talking to Harry instead. Oh look! It’s Harry! He was saying something to Harry like hello, I’m Simon. That was definitely a familiar name.

And Harry was saying he was Harry, which made her even more sure that he must be Harry, which didn’t make any sense at all.

Oh! Simon! Now she remembered.

‘Hello Simon,’ she said.

‘Hi Caddy. So this is your husband, hey?’

‘It really does look like him,’ was all she could think to say.

‘I didn’t think to get a room for three,’ Simon said, which Caddy thought was fair enough, but she could kind of feel Harry was a bit weirded out by the whole thing.

‘He didn’t know you were going to be here, Harry,’ she said.

‘I guess not,’ and Harry had a voice all kind of offended, she thought.

‘He would have got room for you too if he knew, really,’ she said.

‘You want me to leave you guys alone?’ Harry was standing up now, adjusting the pillowcase so he could hold it under his arm.

‘What are you talking about, Harry?’ Caddy thought the worst thing that could happen right now would be for Harry to go away. Not now, while she was still drunk. She knew he’d be gone when she woke up tomorrow, but not now! ‘Not now!’ she said.

‘Well, it looks like you already have company, Caddy,’ but the words came out a bit funny because he was busy trying to push Skerrick’s head back into the pillowcase.

‘Hang on,’ said Simon. ‘Maybe Caddy should shut up for a second. Harry, clearly you think I’m about to have sex with your wife. Please believe me when I say I couldn’t be less interested in having sex with your wife. Oh, don’t look all offended! I’m sure you think she’s very nice and all, but she really isn’t my type, for all kinds of reasons. I was just getting us a room because we are both rather drunk, and neither of us wanted to wake up outside with the kinds of hangovers we’re going to be having.’

‘Caddy,’ Harry said, ‘why didn’t you just come home? You don’t have to sleep outside.’

Caddy stood up. ‘Baby, we don’t have a home.’ She pushed the hair off his forehead and kissed his cheek. She breathed him in for a moment, then remembered he was just a dream and stood back. ‘You’re not real and we don’t have a home. Don’t be mad. You can’t be mad at me for sleeping inside with someone else when you’ve been gone so very, very long.’

‘He looks pretty real, Caddy. I mean, I don’t want to get involved in family matters, but he’s definitely real. So does she do this kind of thing often, buddy?’

Harry shrugged. ‘I don’t really know what she’s on about, bro.’

‘OK,’ said Simon, ‘well I don’t know about you two, but I’ve got a room in there with beds in it, and I want to sleep in one of them. You two can probably cram in the other one if you like. Your call, but you should probably come in with me or they won’t let you in.’

‘Caddy? You want to lie down baby?’

Caddy nodded. That sounded like a plan.

When Caddy woke up, Simon was gone but Harry was still there. That was exactly the opposite, she thought, of what I expected. She lay on her back and stared at the ceiling, holding Harry’s hand. Harry was dead, she knew that. Logically, he should be gone by now, what with the bright morning light and only the tiniest tail end of drunkenness. She shifted slightly, edged her way out of the bed, one foot on the floor then the other, sliding down until she was squatting beside the bed, still holding his hand. She sat cross-legged and looked at his sleeping face. Harry. Harry thought it was still the day of the fire. What was his deal? Had he been walking around, concussed, for more than two years, carrying Skerrick in a pillowcase? She flicked her eyes over the corners of the room, but Skerrick was still there, sleeping on the pillow left dented by Simon’s head. He couldn’t have been, could he? How had he eaten? How had he kept hold of the cat? None of it was possible. That’s not even the start of the impossible, she thought, considering she’d slept the night in a bed paid for by her imaginary friend. Enemy. Whatever. She rested her forehead against the edge of the bed and closed her eyes, then opened one and peered back up at Harry. Still there.

She turned his hand over in hers and ran her finger across his palm. How long will you live Harry? she thought, and ran her finger down his lifeline, only it wasn’t there. Head line? Nope. Heart? Nope. What a weirdly smooth palm. Maybe it had been burned in the fire she thought. Yeah, probably. Though it looked more like he’d just been born.

Where had Simon gone? Caddy didn’t really understand what her responsibilities to Simon were. Should they try to stay in touch? He’d be leaving today or tomorrow. She might never see him again. Was that what she wanted?

She had no idea what she wanted. Surprise, surprise.

Actually, that wasn’t true. She wanted Ray. Ray would make some kind of sense of all this.

‘Harry?’ She was whispering, a little bit dreading the moment when he’d wake up. Why wasn’t she overjoyed? ‘Harry?’ She touched his forehead with her fingertips. Harry’s forehead, there, under her fingertips. Harry, dammit! She rested her forehead on the edge of the bed again.

‘Morning, gorgeous.’

She rolled her head to the side so she could see his face. ‘Harry.’

‘Has your mate gone?’

She nodded.

‘Want to get back in here then?’ He gave her the ghost of a wink, then a shamefaced smile. ‘Hop back in here, go on.’

She smiled too, and squirmed back under the acrylic blanket. She rested her palm flat on Harry’s belly, tucked her nose in under his ear and bit him gently on the neck.

‘Hello, Harry.’

‘Hi.’

‘Harry?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Where’ve you been?’

‘Is this that old “wheely bin” joke?’

‘What? Oh! No. I just … look … oh, never mind. Never mind.’ She kissed him under his ear, on his temple and beside his mouth. ‘I love you.’

‘I love you too, gorgeous.’

‘Did you burn your hands?’

‘I’m not the one who was in a fire.’

‘Yeah. Yeah …’

‘You OK, baby?’

‘Yeah. Do I look older to you?’

‘Older?’

Or like my hair’s different or something?’

‘Shit, did you get a haircut and I didn’t notice?’

‘Nah. I just wondered.’

‘You look perfect. Just like always.’

‘Sure I do, Harry. You have no idea how much I drank last night.’

‘Come here and let me taste, I’ll see if I can guess.’

She ran her hand around to the small of his back and pulled him towards her. ‘I hope I don’t spew on you, I’m pretty sure this is the worst hangover I …’

She was pretty sure that was how kissing Harry used to feel. Pretty sure. Was it always this good? She couldn’t quite remember.

‘Hey!’ Someone was knocking on the door. ‘Hey! Anyone in there?’

‘Just a sec!’ Caddy called out.

‘Time to check out,’ the voice called back. ‘Ten minutes.’

‘OK, thanks,’ Caddy pulled the blanket up a little just in case, but footsteps went off down the corridor and she could hear him banging on another door.

‘Want to get dressed? We gotta get out of here.’

Caddy shook her head. ‘He said ten minutes. Get back in here, Harry. Ten minutes is heaps.’

‘Caddy, I don’t want to rush things.’

That bit she definitely didn’t remember. ‘Yeah right!’

She threw his shirt at him and started looking for her bra. ‘Alright, let’s get out of here then.’

Simon had sorted everything out, which was lucky as neither Harry nor Caddy had more than a couple of bucks on them. Harry walked out the front, leaving Caddy to chat to the guy on the desk, who was asking whether they needed a moto to get home. Caddy was cracking jokes, because she realized the question of where home was was going to get messy. Should they go to Lanh’s? They couldn’t go to Lanh’s. They should find Ray.

Clearly Harry already had ideas. He’d flagged a moto and was waiting for her to get on.

‘Harry, we don’t have a home.’

‘I reckon after a bit of a lie down and maybe a beer or two, you’ll be right. Man, you must’ve been shitfaced!’

Fine. She got on the moto.

‘Down to Yarraville, mate,’ Harry told the driver.

‘You sure?’

‘Yeah, Yarraville. Near the corner of Francis and Hyde.’

‘Nah, serious mate, I don’t reckon there’s a way through to there.’

‘Just go straight down Whitehall, no worries.’

‘You from around here?’

‘Yeah, I’m from around here. I’m from Yarraville, bro. Can we get on?’

‘You sure?’

‘You want me to find someone else?’

‘Nah. Alright, I’ll take you as far as I can.’

Caddy’s guts started hurting. The hangover didn’t help, but it was mostly anxiety. Harry was going to freak. Then she might freak. Then this guy would see them both freak. She didn’t want that.

‘Hey mate,’ Caddy reached across Harry and tapped the driver on the shoulder. ‘Maybe just drop us near the old Yarraville Gardens, yeah?’ They could pay, he could go, and she could deal with Harry by herself.

‘Orright, no worries.’

‘I don’t know if you should be walking, love,’ Harry was half turned, looking at her all concerned. She really wasn’t sure this was the Harry she remembered.

‘I’m alright, really. Walk’ll do me good, sweat some of this booze out.’

The driver dropped them off on Whitehall, a couple of streets before the gardens, ignoring Harry’s suggestion they should just go all the way down to Francis. Harry, meanwhile, seemed to be ignoring the burned trees and blackened buildings which, for now, was fine by Caddy.

‘You sure you’re OK to walk?’ he was asking her. ‘Head OK?’

‘Harry, you notice anything different?’

‘Is this about your hair again?’

‘Not me. Round here.’

Harry put his hands on his hips and squinted at the surrounding buildings. ‘Nah, same old shithole. Chuck us your pack, it’s too heavy for you.’

She handed it over. ‘That way?’ she asked, pointing towards the burned out shell where the storage units used to be.

‘Sounds good to me.’

Maybe he needed glasses. She needed glasses. Beer glasses. God, she thought, that is not a good joke.

‘We could drop into The Commercial for a pot or two if you like,’ he said.

Alright, she nearly said, stop reading my mind. But, ‘sure,’ she said instead. He couldn’t ignore The Commercial. Right? Right.

‘Guess they’re closed,’ he said, five minutes later when they were standing in front of the pile of blackened timber and bricks that, three years ago, had been The Commercial Hotel.

‘Yeah, guess so. Harry,’ she turned and looked him in the eyes. ‘You know there’s no pub there, right?’

‘Yeah.’

This would be so much easier if she didn’t have the world’s worst hangover. God, a shower would be so good. Remember those? Maybe Harry was right. Maybe they should just go home. He could lie in the hammock and drink a beer, and she could have a long, long shower. Five full freakin minutes. Yeah.

‘Harry.’

‘Yes.’

‘What’s going on?’

‘I was thinking of asking you the same thing.’

‘Really, where’ve you been the past two years?’

‘Really, I’ve been having a beer.’

‘Nothing else? What else happened since I left.’

‘Australia lost a one-dayer against us. At least, they looked like they were going to.’

‘Nothing else?’

‘Oh, a guy came over to fix the fence. But it turned out he wasn’t the fence guy, he was just kind of lost.’

Caddy chewed the end of her thumbnail off, spat it on the ground. She squinted up at the sun.

‘Harry, our house is gone. I thought you were dead. I’ve been homeless for more than two years. I don’t have a job.’ It’s only a bit of a lie, she thought.

And Harry was thinking, ‘Who was that guy? What was he saying to me about being imaginary?

‘Yeah. The house was gone,’ he said to her. ‘The house was gone. I went in to get a beer and there wasn’t anything there. So I came to look for you. Like, I’d just been lying in the hammock drinking a beer and thinking I should come look for you, after the fire and all, to let you know I was OK. And I was lying there and this bloke just showed up, a Koori bloke. I thought he’d come to fix the fence, y’know?

Caddy nodded.

‘So I offered him a beer, but he said no. He asked me if I was imaginary. And then he left again, and I went to grab another beer before I came up to find you. But the house was gone on the inside.’

He looked at her like he thought maybe she could explain all this. She ran a finger over the tiny wrinkles by his eye, smoothed his eyebrow with her thumb.

‘Cad, I didn’t bring the dog.’

‘What dog, sweetheart?’

‘Our dog. Cad, do we have a dog?’

She shook her head.

‘Yeah, I didn’t think so. But there was one of those sausage dogs in the backyard and I thought it was ours, but now I’m not so sure.’

‘A dachshund?’

‘Is that what they call em?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Cad, it was like the universe had turned inside out. I went in to grab a beer and it was like all of space had got caught in our kitchen.’

‘I’ve been there,’ she said.

‘Yeah, you used to cook stuff in there.’

‘No, in that space, in the blackness. It’s called The Gap.’

‘Didn’t you just go to the market to get something for tea? Where’s everything gone, Cad? What’s this Gap stuff?’

‘It was the fire. It all burned.’

‘But they put it out, Cad. It was fine.’

‘Maybe in your world only the inside of our house got burned.’

‘My world?’

‘Yeah, I’ve got no idea Harry. Serious though, you want to go back into the city? We could go to a bar, have a vodka or a beer or something. Figure this out later. Yeah?’ She smiled at him, tried to get him to smile back.

‘Yeah,’ he said, frowning at the ground. ‘This shit is whack!’

‘You’re an idiot. Give me a kiss.’

‘Yeah, OK. This damn cat would also really like to pee, I reckon. Can she go for a run around before we go?’

They headed back to the park and let Skerrick out of the pillowcase, poured some water into a bowl they made from a plastic bag, and lay down in the dust under the remains of a tree. Caddy pushed Harry’s T-shirt sleeve up and kissed him on the curve of his shoulder.

‘I don’t feel imaginary,’ he said.

‘You don’t.’

‘Do I?’

‘I just said you don’t.’ She ran her hand over the curve of his bicep. ‘What happened to your tattoo?’

‘My what?’

‘Nothing, I think it was a dream I had.’ But he had had a tattoo there. It had said Amy, which was why she didn’t like it all that much.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’