Susi had tears rolling down her face. She looked so miserable that Willa went to her and wrapped her arms around the woman who just cried and cried. Over her shoulder Willa saw Louie, lying peacefully, a plastered leg in traction and bandages round her shoulder and one arm. Susi let go and Willa walked over to the bedside.
“They’ve given her something to make her sleep,” said Tony. “She was asking for you, but…”
Willa leaned down and touched Louies hair, the black curls that sprang back into her hand, teasing. One eye was bruised and swollen, puffed up as if some red and purple creature was growing underneath it, and there was a row of neat black stitches like a zip down one cheek. Willa examined the nick in her other cheek where she’d removed the tiny spear of glass, and marvelled at the tracery of veins in her throat, her pale shell-like ear and the tiny moving pulse below it. She was alive.
Willa sat there for a long time, thinking. How she’d nearly lost Louie. How hard she’d been on her. She remembered the priest and wondered how much Louie had said to him. And who else? If only Louie’d been able to talk to her.
She cried then, dropped her head onto the bedclothes and felt the hot, wet tears soak into the sheet. There were arms around her shoulders, and someone rubbed her back, but Willa could only think of all the tears she’d cried, Louie had cried. Eventually, she raised her head again and wiped her face with a velvet sleeve.
“It was too hard,” she whispered. Tony Angelo had tears in his eyes, too. “Too hard.”
It rained for two weeks. The drops bounced off the ground on the road outside Kevins flat, and bounced off the beer cans still lying in the front yard. Rivulets gathered and flowed off the gravel road and down the bank where Louie had crashed the car, forming a muddy pool in the dent left in the bush. In town it drained into the softening earth and fed the roots of trees that were beginning to sprout red tips on their branches and it collected in the grey-green cones of tulips and daffodils that were budging through the soil.
The ram worked its way through the iron roof of Burger Giant, ran down a wall stud and filled up the powerboard until it short-circuited, plunging the shop into darkness. Deirdre took it upon herself to shut the doors, turn the main and tell the electrician to wait till morning. It dripped all night onto Kevins desk.
At the Duke, Jolene put buckets and pots under the leaks in her bedroom and the kitchen. The water ran over the edge of the spouting just above the lounge bar door and the customers complained so much that she sent Sid onto the roof in the pouring ram to fix it. Willa cooked flat out in the kitchen to keep up with the demand for hot meals and Judas flopped in corners yawning and sighing at the boredom of it all.
From the Metal Petal Susi enquired about the cost of installing a free-standing designer fireplace and ordered long woollen curtains for the living room. Periodically she leaned in the doorway of Louie’s empty bedroom and stood there thinking.
And at the hospital, Louie hobbled across the ward on her crutches, cracked a joke with the nurse and followed her father down the lift, across the foyer and out the main entrance doors. At the feel of the rain on her shoulders Louie smiled, lifted her head and closed her eyes, letting it patter over her face. Then she swung forward into the rocking gait that was becoming so familiar, and headed for the taxi.
p.
That first day Louie spent re-orienting herself, resting, and discovering that crutches slip on polished wood floors. She listened hard to the speech her mother so painfully delivered and looked dutifully at the school work she had to catch up on. She even ate the whole helping of roast chicken and salad her mother gave her for lunch, although she’d lost so much weight in hospital, it was hard to ht it in. When Willa finally arrived, the rain had stopped and the world seemed washed clean. The sun shone in a clear blue sky, the hills tingled with green, birds darted amongst the trees. The flax outside Louie’s door was shiny and sharp-edged in the sun and she watched a tui dip into a pottle of honey water.
They had spent plenty of time talking at the hospital since Louie’s accident, but they hadn’t been properly alone together since the night Susi had discovered them. Willa was more shy than Louie.
“I feel like we’re back to square one,” she said.
“Weird, eh.”
“I’m scared to touch you in case it hurts.”
Louie didn’t answer for a while. She stared into the distance and then said, “
A coward dies an inch a day, a hero is quick dead.
” She smiled at Willa. “It’s a poem.”
“Really.”
“I read it in hospital.”
“You certainly tried your best to be a hero, then.”
“You were the hero.” They looked at each other for a moment. Louie picked the carpet. “I was cowardly, Willa. I know that.”
“Don’t.”
Willa noticed the dark circles under Louie’s eyes when she looked down. She was so thin it scared Willa, but she knew better than to start in about the eating now. Give her time, she thought, time
to like herself again.
“I memorised something else, listen,” said Louie. “
What need have you of the black tents of your tribe, who has the red pavilion of my heart?
”
“It’s beautiful.”
“Tribal. That’s what’s been happening. I have to give up the black tents.”
They sat for a while, silent. The tui ducked, listened, piped a green song into the air and flew off.
“Dare truth or promise,” said Willa.
Louie grinned. “Dare.”
“Come out to dinner with me.”
“Dinner?”
“You, me and a restaurant.” Willa paused. “A date.”
Louie twiddled the bare toes that stuck out the end of her plaster, smiling to herself. Then she turned to Willa. “You’re on.”
p.
They chose a small Greek restaurant above the city with open fires and small candlelit tables. “
Trés romantique,
” said Louie, stomping across the floor on her crutches, nervous, obnoxious. Willa handed a bottle of wine to the waiter.
“You’re not allowed to drink, you’re underage,” said Louie.
“Your father gave it to me.”
“What?”
Willa laughed. “Tony gave it to me as we got into the taxi. Try not to think about it.”
“Good grief. Any other secrets you have with my parents?”
Willa sat down and wondered what to say. It wasn’t really the right time, but…
“Well, your mum had a word with me,” said Willa.
“Worser and worser. What did she say?”
Willa looked at Louie straight. “Stuff about giving you time, exams, other interests … you know.”
“Oh god.”
“It was okay. She also said I was free to—how did she put it?—’form whatever relationship we decide upon together.’”
Louie spluttered and her neck flushed. “I think she practised that one. I got exactly the same phrase. Along with the sex one.”
“The sex?” Willa’s voice rose and they both cringed, glanced at other diners.
“She doesn’t want to know about it, basically,” whispered Louie.
“Thank god!”
They sat still for a bit, embarrassed, until the waiter brought the wine. “At least this’ll be good,” said Louie.
It was. They drank the wine and ate the food—Louie pretending she didn’t notice Willa watching her plate carefully—and talked about all the safe things: school, Mo, Julie, Vika, netball, music, Burger Giant, what to do when you get an itch under plaster. Louie played to the gallery, asking the waiter for a kebab skewer to scratch her leg with. He, no stranger to dinner comedy, presented her with a flaming skewer to the delight of the kitchen staff and other diners. The by play continued over a doggy bag for Judas, which was promised in return for a dance. Louie took up the challenge and said she would pose on the dance floor like a Greek statue, since she was plastered in both senses of the word, and the waiter danced around her to general applause.
She wasn’t drunk, as Willa knew. She just had to wind down. Willa waited, amused, enjoying the entertainment, enjoying Louie’s glances to make sure Willa was watching. Over coffee Louie relaxed, drew herself into the scope of their one table. They talked a little about Cathy.
“Trust Dad to think a free trip would fix everything,” snorted Louie.
“That wasn’t all he did. Cathy said he talked her parents into letting her go to a therapist. Mind you, I think she’s getting obsessed with her therapist now.”
“Poor Cathy.” Louie paused. “Was she always like that?”
“Like what?”
“You know—all pensive
thought and aspect pale, melancholy sweet and frail.
Sorry,” she added, awkward.
Willa shrugged. “It’s okay. I just still can’t believe you can do that. Find words for things.”
“Only some things.”
Willa thought about Cathy. “Yeah, I guess she was always intense—but I kind of liked that at first. Dumb, eh.”
“Did you love her?”
Willa sighed. “I thought so. I don’t know.” She looked up. “Not like you.”
Louie stared into Willa’s opal eyes and thought how she loved her so much it hurt. “You looked so beautiful at the ball,” she said, shaking her head. “I wanted to kill that guy.”
“I thought you were going to.”
“No. I realised in time who it was I wanted to kill.”
Willa swallowed. “Did you drive off the road deliberately?”
Louie tried to remember how it had happened. The wild drive, the wet, the desperation. “Sort of,” she said, not wanting to scare Willa. “It was a type of madness.”
Willa reached across the table and touched Louie’s face. “So,” she said, “dare truth or promise.”
Louie quickly glanced around the restaurant. She was going to have to get used to this. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “Promise.”
There was a long silence. Willa’s voice ran through her like warm wind. “Promise to love me, Louie Angelo.”
Louie’s lips spread in a slow smile. “I promise.”
Willa’s hand traced her neck and faded. Louie opened one eye and looked at Willa wickedly. “My father didn’t happen to slip some money into your pocket for a cheap hotel room by any chance did he?”
“Afraid not.”
“An expensive one?”
Willa shook her head. She was stroking Louie’s wrist now, a light, cool touch that was driving Louie mad.
“Then I’d have to say my mother is right on another thing.”
“Which is?”
“It’s not easy being gay.”
“She said that?”
Louie grinned. “I asked her if she was going to break into song.”
“What did she say?”
Louie raised her eyebrows coolly like her mother and mimicked her voice, “i wouldn’t go that far.’”
Upstairs at the Metal Petal Susi sat reading a magazine, trying not to think about what Louie and Willa were up to. In the garage, Tony inspected his newly repaired and painted Mercedes and patted the steering wheel in relief. At the Duke, Jolene was confiscating a plate of chips Sid had helped himself to. Cathy was writing a long letter to her therapist; Keith was sitting in a cafe watching a small red-headed girl wipe the tables. Kevin was trying to find an important memo from head office in the piles of papers drying on his office floor; Joan was laughing like a drain at Kelly’s joke. And if anyone had been looking, they would even have seen Deirdre smile at the picture of herself as the Burger Giant’s Employee of the Week.