Dinner at Rose's (4 page)

‘A little bit.’ I put down my bottle of beer and began to change over the next set of cups, the cow twitching indignantly at my unfamiliar hands. If I expanded on the subject I would probably cry, and that would just embarrass us both. ‘I’m not really being any help, here; you’d be quicker without me.’

‘Rubbish,’ he said. ‘Anyway, it’s kind of nice to have you around.’

Chapter 3

I
MET ONE
of Cheryl’s hypochondriacs on my first day at work, a pudgy fellow in his thirties who worked, he informed me, as caretaker at the high school – when the rod of fiery agony that was his spine allowed him to. He couldn’t
bear
doing nothing; he was one of those blokes who would go to work even if he was at death’s door rather than let people down.

On his way out he told Amber he would fix us up next week, that he was heading to the doctor’s for the ACC form and he would drop it off at his next visit without fail. She smiled at him with chinless charm and said that would be lovely; there would be no problem at
all
with refunding him and in the meantime that would be forty dollars, please. Eftpos or cash, Ron? Now, you have a
lovely
day and make sure you take
really
good care of yourself.

‘Plonker,’ she said dispassionately as the door closed behind him.

‘You have a gift,’ I said with some awe. ‘That was brilliant.’

‘Nah,’ she said. ‘He’s as thick as two short planks. Never done a day’s work in his life.’

‘I sort of gathered that.’

‘I heard you say that you could tell he was normally really active, and that it was lucky because it would be so much better for his back than sitting still,’ she said accusingly.

‘Do you reckon it’ll work?’ I asked.

‘Oh,’ said Amber with slow-dawning comprehension. ‘Were you doing that reverse psychology thing on him?’

‘That was the idea, anyway.’

I MOVED INTO
my new flat on the outskirts of town on Wednesday night, having purchased from Cheryl’s sister-in-law a bed that
didn’t
, unlike the one for sale at the Waimanu Second-Hand Palace, have suspicious dark patches in the middle of the mattress or a faint smell of urine. ‘But you’d be putting a sheet over it!’ the lady running the Palace had protested. ‘And it’s such a reasonable price, dear.’ I declined to purchase it anyway and reflected that perhaps big-city living had made me a bit precious.

Cheryl’s husband (his name is either Ian or Alan; I never can remember which) kindly brought my new bed around to the flat on the back of his ute and helped to manhandle it up the front steps and in through the sliding door to the sitting-room. ‘Where to now?’ he asked.

‘Right down the hall to the end and then left,’ I said.

‘I hope you haven’t bought any more furniture,’ he remarked, propping the mattress against the wall. ‘This isn’t a bedroom, it’s a cupboard.’

Sara, who was small and plump with a large bust only barely contained by her low-cut singlet, came and leant in the doorway as I dropped my two bags on the floor next to a little stack of towels and bedding lent to me by my mother. Everything else I owned was, hopefully, on its way between Australia and New Zealand by sea. Although according to my friend Stu, who had shipped his possessions from Britain to Melbourne a few years before, my belongings were more likely on a random wharf in Papua New Guinea, either uncovered in a tropical thunderstorm or being chewed by rats – or both.

‘Is this all your stuff?’ Sara asked, no doubt looking surreptitiously for tuba cases.

‘Yep,’ I said. ‘It’s a bit minimalist, isn’t it?’

‘I’m cooking tonight,’ Sara said. ‘Do you like chicken chow mein?’

Dinner turned out to be a stir fry made from bottled sauce, chicken pieces and frozen vegetables, served in a cereal bowl over boil-in-the-bag rice. There was nothing the matter with it, but it made me feel I had gone wrong somewhere. My ex-boyfriend, when he cooked, would whip up a squid-ink pasta and prawn dish and serve it with a glass of pinot gris on the deck. Yet here I was on someone’s shabby couch watching
Shortland Street
with my bowl on my knee, while outside the boy racers drove laps around Waimanu’s residential area.

Andy, the other flatmate, was in his early twenties and a stock agent. He said almost nothing over dinner and vanished into his room with the phone as soon as he had eaten, not to reappear for the rest of the evening. As Sara kept a firm grip on the remote, watched dire reality-TV shows and crunched boiled sweets steadily until she went to bed at ten, I completely saw his point.

AFTER THE FIRST
fortnight, I was starting to get used to the way things were done – or not done, in Amber’s case – at Waimanu Physiotherapy.

On Tuesday afternoon I was typing up the notes from my three-thirty appointment (a delicate blonde girl called Cilla who’d strained a muscle in her shoulder; she informed me proudly that she had fallen from the roof of a barn at a particularly good party) when someone put their head around the door and said, ‘Josie?’

I turned in my seat to see a round-faced girl with dimples and glossy dark brown hair cut in a long fringe over her eyes. She wore a Waimanu High School uniform and swung a battered leather satchel.

‘Kim!’ I said. ‘Crikey, you’ve got pretty. But don’t you go to boarding school in Hamilton?’

‘Not anymore,’ said Matt’s little sister with satisfaction. ‘I told Mum that if she didn’t let me come home I’d drop out and work at Woolworths. So I transferred last week.’

I grinned. Even when Kim was little her mother was no match for her at all. Of course, neither was anyone else. I should know – I used to babysit her. ‘Does this decision have anything to do with Aaron Henderson?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s just that single-sex schools aren’t good for social development.’ She spoilt this speech somewhat by adding, ‘How did you know that?’

‘Matt mentioned you were seeing someone.’ His actual words had been, ‘The silly kid’s taken up with some pimply little git,’ but I am nothing if not tactful.

Kim came right into the room and closed the door behind her. ‘So,’ she whispered, ‘what did you think of the lovely Cilla?’

‘It would be unprofessional to discuss a client,’ I said primly. ‘How do you know her?’

‘She’s Matt’s girlfriend.’

‘Is she?’ I asked, startled. Somehow I wouldn’t have thought she was his type.

‘Yeah,’ said Kim. ‘Needs his head read, if you ask me. She thinks she’s the cat’s pyjamas – she’s all “I’m such a good keen farm chick and I can strain up a fence and I drive a wanky big ute”. I’m sure he’s only going out with her because he wanted to get laid.’

‘Kim,’ I demurred, ‘you shouldn’t say things like that. Matt’s a big boy – he can go out with whoever he likes.’

‘Hmm,’ she said darkly. ‘We’ll see about that. Hey, Josie, those are wicked shorts.’

‘Thank you.’

‘And I like your shoes. I wish
I
was all tall and blonde and athletic.’

I smiled at her, flattered, although perfectly well aware that I was being buttered up in case she needed something in the future – probably an alibi for spending time with the pimply git. Kim always was a charmingly manipulative little horror.

‘The correct description,’ I said, ‘is “strapping wench”. Great fat men come in with bad backs and say, “Cor,
you’ll
be able to straighten me out.” It’s very depressing.’

In moments of wild optimism I hope I achieve a sort of Junoesque elegance; at other times I console myself with the thought that if people piss me off I can wrestle them to the ground and stamp on them until they beg for mercy.

‘Matt thinks you’re pretty,’ Kim murmured, looking at me sideways through her lashes to see how I took this piece of news.

‘Is that right?’

‘But you only go out with doctors, don’t you?’

‘
What?

’ ‘That’s what he said when I wanted to know why he didn’t ask you out.’

‘He was probably trying to shut you up,’ I said. He’d better have been, anyway.

‘You
would
go out with him, though, wouldn’t you?’

‘Well, no.’

Kim looked affronted. ‘Why not?’

‘Bloody hell, Kim, give me a chance to get over the last one!’

‘But you’ve been best friends your whole lives,’ she argued. ‘It would be so perfect.’

‘I think you might be getting a bit carried away there,’ I said. ‘We used to fight like cats and dogs. And besides, the man’s got a perfectly good girlfriend already.’

‘You didn’t fight that much, did you?’

I began to list Matt’s many sins, counting them off on my fingers. ‘He spilt my nail polish, he pulled the insides out of my Kylie Minogue tape, he pinged my bra straps – and then to add insult to injury he said I didn’t even need a bra.’ Which was quite true, at age thirteen, but he didn’t need to
say
it. ‘He ignored me any time he had a boy over to play with . . .’

Kim giggled. ‘He said you nearly turned him into a eunuch once,’ she said.

‘Not on purpose,’ I protested.

‘How do you accidentally kick someone in the balls?’

‘It
was
an accident,’ I insisted. ‘That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. Anyway, he started it.’

Amber knocked on the door then opened it. ‘Your four o’clock’s here,’ she said.

‘Do you need a lift?’ I asked Kim.

‘No, I’ve got Mum’s car. Nice to have you home, Josie.’ She slung her satchel up onto her shoulder and sauntered out of the room.

I’m afraid that my next appointment and his stiff neck may not have received my complete and undivided professional attention. I was otherwise occupied with wondering just what on earth Matt King felt he had in common with that little blonde Barbie doll. Good luck to him, obviously, but shouldn’t he be going for someone a bit more like – like –

Me
, suggested a small internal voice.

No.
No!

Poor Ralph Godwin let a small hiss escape between his teeth, and I pulled my mind guiltily back to his trapezius muscle, which was being massaged with excessive vigour.

Chapter 4

‘H
OW’S WORK?’ ASKED
my mother as my first month drew to a close.

‘Fine,’ I said, tucking the phone between ear and shoulder so as to be able to file my nails while I talked. ‘It’s a bit of a change working by myself, but I can call the girls at the hospital if I want to talk shop.’