A DRINK FROM THE TAP

‘Wait, Ray. Wait. Just a second.’ Caddy held on to the railing of the Flagstaff station entrance and closed her eyes. Ray watched her.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’m ready now.’

He pulled his backpack straps tighter. ‘Having second thoughts?’

‘Second thoughts? Nah. I am SO over this place. Let’s go.’

Like always, Ray had put Dromana on the back of the map, just in case things didn’t go wrong and the maps worked. But things always seemed to go wrong lately – it was probably lucky he’d ditched the whole thing with Farren, the maps were turning out next to useless for actual cross-city travel.

As they tumbled once more into The Gap, Caddy had a momentary twinge for Lanh. Maybe she could find a post office in San Francisco somewhere, send him a postcard. Australia Post was working really well these days. Maybe an email. She’d like to send him one of those snowdomes, maybe with the Golden Gate Bridge inside. That’d be nice. Oh! And some champagne!

They were getting to the front of Shadow Storage & Retrieval. Caddy pulled Harry’s rolled-up shadow from under her shirt. She’d had it tucked into her waistband, next to her skin.

‘You again?’ The coat-check girl seemed unexcited to see them.

‘You bet! We’d like to store a shadow please,’ Ray said.

‘We’re closed.’ The coat-check girl shut the book she’d been reading and put it in her red patent handbag.

‘Closed?’

‘Yep. Closed.’

‘It’s just one shadow.’

‘No.’

‘Well, when do you open up again?’

‘We don’t. We’re closed. They’ve closed us.’

‘Closed?’

‘You do have a hearing problem, doncha buddy?’

‘It doesn’t matter, Ray,’ Caddy said. She took the shadow from him and tucked it back into her waistband. ‘Maybe I’ll make a pillow out of him or something. Would that be morbid? That’d be morbid, wouldn’t it? I’ll find something to do with him.’

‘What do you mean, they’re closing you?’ Ray asked the girl.

‘I don’t know what else I can tell you. Which bit of closed don’t you understand?’

‘So you’re out of a job?’

‘I guess so.’

‘What will you do?’

‘What do you care?’

‘You’re pretty feisty, you know.’

The girl was looking in her bag for something. She pulled out an emery board and started filing her nails. Once she was happy with them, she put the emery board away and got up from her chair.

‘You still here?’

Ray nodded.

‘Look, buddy,’ she came out from behind the counter, slid the bolt shut behind her.

‘Nice pins!’ Ray thought to himself.

‘Look, buddy, I don’t know what I’m going to do. This is what I do. I don’t do anything else. But it’s gone now. So I guess I’ll just, y’know, wander the earth or something. Know anywhere a gal can get a good Manhattan and a coat-check job?’

‘Funny you should mention that,’ Ray said.

‘Not that funny really. I don’t hear laughing.’

‘We’re going to imaginary San Francisco, circa 1997.’

‘Well, don’t forget to send me a postcard.’

So you could send postcards from San Francisco! Caddy made a mental note, which Ray interrupted partway through by saying, ‘You’re a real piece of work. Here’s the deal: we’re going to San Francisco. It’s a short journey, should take us about ten minutes. They have cocktails galore, and I hear they love a coat-check girl. So whaddya say? If you don’t like it, you can come back here and hang out in the internet café for the rest of your life, I guess.’

‘It’s closed.’

‘Closed?’

‘Do they sell hearing aids in San Francisco? Consider it an investment.’

‘Yeah, alright.’

‘The Gap is closed. Don’t ask again, alright? Your disability is beginning to embarrass me. We all got a memo, services no longer needed, change in the business environment etc, all the best for the future. Closed.’ She checked her reflection in a mirror she took from her handbag. ‘OK then. Let’s go. Suspended Imaginums, I presume?’

She led the way.

‘Hey Ray,’ Caddy was signaling for him to drop back a bit and talk to her. ‘If The Gap is closed, does that mean we’ll be stuck in San Francisco forever?’

‘I guess it might mean that. Is that OK?’

She thought about Skerrick, sleeping on a chair in the sun in Peira’s bar. Thought about Peira. Thought about Lanh again for a second, and then about Simon. She thought about Harry’s imaginary body, what was left of it, scattered in an oily crater in the ruins of Yarraville, an empty longneck sunk in the sludge beside him.

‘Yeah, that’s OK.’

The Office of Unmade Lists was unmanned. Ray was a bit disappointed, but it certainly sped things up. In Suspended Ims, the tape recorder was switched off and unplugged.

‘You ready, Cad?’ Ray asked her. Caddy nodded. ‘And you? Are you ready?’

‘I have a name.’

‘I’m sure you do.’

‘It’s Ingrid.’

‘You ready, Ingrid?’

‘Yes, human, I am ready.’

‘I’m Ray. This is Caddy.’ This was ridiculous. ‘Let’s go.’

Ray walked around a bit, getting his bearings, then stepped forward into the yawning blackness. ‘Close!’ he said. He tried again, then stepped back out. ‘It’s this one. After you, Ingrid. Don’t be afraid.’

She raised one eyebrow, which impressed Ray immensely, and stepped through.

‘Hey Caddy,’ Ray whispered. ‘If I imagined having sex with her in San Francisco, will that be happening in this San Francisco?’

‘No Ray. Get in there, will you?’

‘You want to go first?’

‘I’ve just got a little something I have to do first, OK?’

‘Um, yeah, I guess. You are coming, right?’

‘Yeah. Oh, can you take this?’ She handed him Harry’s shadow. ‘So round here is all things I imagined, right?’

‘I think so. Are you going to look for Harry again?’

‘No. I’ll leave Harry in peace.’

‘OK,’ Ray looked to see if Ingrid was still gone. She was. ‘You’re sure?’

Caddy nodded.

‘So I’ll see you soon, OK?’

‘Ray, stop worrying. I’m not disappearing. We’re going to live in San Francisco, remember? Meet me at that bar you like. The Pilsner?’

‘The Pilsner. An hour?’

‘An hour. Max. See you then.’ She kissed him on the cheek. ‘Go find that girl before she hooks up with some rockabilly, will you?’

Ray stepped through.

Caddy sat on the grey carpet and considered. It was a brand new imaginum. It should be near the front, right? She could see the guy from Unmade Lists coming back from lunch break, so she hopped up, chose a spot and stepped through.

She could smell eucalyptus.

She’d been here when she was just a kid. She remembered her brother, swinging on a rope from that tree: she almost never thought of him anymore. The billabong was milky aquamarine, smooth, salmon-trunked gums with their branches grazing the water’s surface, roots clinging to the clefts in granite boulders.

This wasn’t what she’d imagined, gripping the fence at Flagstaff station. This was much better.

She scrabbled her way down to the edge of the water, sliding part of the way on her arse, jumped up on to a boulder and scuffed her thongs from her feet. The crispy lichen scratched her soles. One hour; she had one hour. She pulled off her T-shirt and jeans, looked around, and took off her undies and bra too. And then she dived.

Oh, the water. Bubbles tickled over her skin and she wriggled through them. She’d forgotten the feeling of water. How had she forgotten this? How? She broke the surface and shrieked with happiness. She dived to the bottom again and felt her fingers brush the whispering mud of the billabong floor. She shimmied through the water like a seal, filled her mouth with water and blew a brown fountain into the air. She lay on her back, floated.

There would be more of this where she was going, wouldn’t there? She’d imagined about a third of a country − Simon and Sarah had travelled all through the southwest of the US, to Los Angeles, to the Rio Grande. There were rivers, weren’t there? The Rio Grande was a river, right? Dammit, even if there were no rivers, there were a hell of a lot of swimming pools. Sparkling blue, so bright they hurt your eyes, shining tiles and super model look-a-likes on poolside lounges. Bikinis with metal trim.

She floated on her back, stared at the achingly blue sky through the grey-green leaves. There would never be this again, or anything quite like it.

She dived under.

Nothing in her life would ever be real again.

Ah, fuck it. She pushed herself up to the surface and hauled herself out onto the rock. She lay naked and cool on the warm rock and wished she had a bucket of hot chips, and knew that where she was going, she could have all the hot chips in the world. She could lie dripping wet on hot concrete by a swimming pool, eating chips from a bucket. If she got too thirsty, she could have a drink from the tap. And a bit later, she could lie on her towel on the grass under a tree and read a book until she fell asleep.

This was going to be great. No, seriously, she thought, and pulled on her T-shirt: this was going to be great.