Page 47 of Kiwi Gold
“If I have one glass, I won’t have a hangover tomorrow, right? Or get the whole …” She waved that same hand, as if she was determined to be airy about this. Or as if shewereairy about this, but I didn’t think so. I’d have sworn that with Laila, everything mattered, and I hadn’t seen one response from her so far that hadn’t seemed genuine. She went on, “The whole fuzzy thing. Carried-away thing, where I do the escaping, the palmistry, the waltzing. I see why alcohol’s frowned upon now, anyway.”
“The kissing,” I said, because it was right there.
“We didn’t kiss,” she said. “That was why I ran. So we wouldn’t.”
I had to laugh at that. “That’s right. I could’ve sworn I kissed you, someplace in there. Ifeltlike I kissed you. Huh. And you didn’t consider telling me that you didn’t want to kiss me?”
Startled, I’d call that expression. “No. It didn’t occur to me.”
“That you could ask, or that I wouldn’t do it if you asked me not to? You can, you know. Ask. In fact …” I hesitated. This was mad. Also, the waiterwasheaded our way now. “From now on, I won’t kiss you unless you ask me to. Or unless you kiss me first. Agreed?”
The waiter was here now, and I held up a hand, said, “Give us one moment,” and kept looking at Laila.
She was looking flustered at last, but she said, “I have to tell you—I’m pretty sure that means it will never happen.”
“My funeral,” I said. “I only have one rule. No running.”
21
TASTE OF THE SEA
Laila
The wine had gone straight to my head. Again. It was that, or it was the warmth in here. Not just the temperature. It was the gleam of polished copper, the pleasingly rough texture of old brick, the flickering light of cream-colored candles. The indescribable luxury, too, of helping Lachlan eat a whole plate of wild Bluff oysters, so briny and sweet on the tongue. Sucking them down, one after the other, with a man who matched me swallow for swallow, grinned at our gluttony when we’d emptied the plate, and offered me yet another sip of wine.
It wasn’t even my wine. It was Lachlan’s. He’d said, when I’d asked for the Black Chook, quaking a bit inside to know that I wasn’t just drinking alcohol, I wasorderingit, “If we’re having oysters, and I hope we’re having oysters, I’ll start with sparkling wine myself. Make it a dry one,” he told the waiter. “What d’you reckon?”
“Excellent,” the waiter said, and made a suggestion that Lachlan accepted. “And another glass of that for the lady as well?” the waiter asked. “You’re right that her wine will be too sweet to really do these Bluffs justice, and they require justice, choice as they are.”
Lachlan looked at me, amusement in his blue eyes, and asked, “Do I assume you’d rather share a few sips of mine?”
I wanted to say,You don’t want to share your drink. Men don’t like sharing.I settled for, “I think a second glass would be an exceptionally bad idea, yes. Again,” and laughing at the comical look on his face. “You don’t have to say anything,” I assured him. “We both remember why.”
Maybe he didn’t like sharing, but you wouldn’t have known it from the way he kept holding the graceful flute of sparkling wine out to me. It was dry, like the New Year’s Eve one, but so much more flavorful, or maybe that was the contrast with the oysters. It was all salt spray and fresh air and the intoxicating feeling of walking along with your toes in the cold, foamy sea, the sand firm under your feet. Where you felt so wild and free yourself, you had to run.
Lachlan asked, when the last oysters had slipped down our throat and we were waiting for the next course, in my case not touching my own wine, trying to come down from this high before I went up again, “Everything you’d hoped for?”
“What?” I asked. “How did you know what I hoped for?”
He looked startled, but said, “I didn’t. You could tell me, though.”
I shouldn’t start. How did I know I’d be able to stop? Something about sparkling wine, though, seemed to loosen the bonds that normally tied me so firmly to the earth, and I said, “When Kegan died, do you know what I wanted the most?”
“Uh … no.” Lachlan looked even more taken aback now.
“Oh,” I said, and had to laugh. “Fail on the dating, obviously. Dead husband and all. I’m taking a wee timeout from the dating, though, and saying this. Your fault, sharing your wine. I’d lie in bed in the morning, in those couple of minutes after the alarm goes, knowing I had to get up and get ready, get the girls up and off to school, get to work myself, and I’d just … I’d justlongto drive to the beach and walk for kilometers, hour after hour, with no need to come back. No bosses waiting for me to finish those photo shoots for washing-up liquid or scent or engagement rings, and nobody to hide my … my cynicism from. No little girls waiting for their tea, needing me to be strong, so they’d know we were going to be OK, that they were safe. I didn’t want those tame eastern beaches, either, up in Auckland. I needed … oh, maybe Ninety-Mile Beach, in the Far North, where you know you can walk for days and hardly see another soul. Or the west coast, with the waves roaring in, bashing against the rocks. But really, I needed the beaches here. At home. Where the water’s cold, and the wind’s blowing, and an albatross is soaring overhead, so strong and free, and you just …”
“Feel the troubles blowing away,” Lachlan said. “So did it help?”
“I don’t know, because I didn’t do it. Not once. I got up instead and got stuck in. No choice, really. Work. Money. The girls. So many things to see to. It was good that there was so much, because I had to stay busy, but maybe it wasn’t, too. I think back, and I wish I’d just said … I need this. I want it. I wish I’d gone ahead and done it. I think maybe I didn’t because …”
I could not believe I was talking about this. I couldnot.I might not know much about dating behavior, but I knew this wasn’t it. “Because,” I went on anyway, “I thought that if I stopped, if I jumped off that merry-go-round, I’d never get back on. A body in motion stays in motion, eh. And if it stops? Maybe it’s like a shark, metaphorically speaking. You stop moving, and you die. I couldn’t afford to stop, and I couldn’t afford to die. There you are. That’s why.”
He had a funny expression on his face, and I said, “Obviously not a good dating topic.”
“No,” he said, but I noticed that he gave himself a bit of a shake. “What’s dating but getting to know each other? You can’t maintain that persona forever. Better to be real from the start. Easier, surely.”
“Really,” I said. “Because to tell you the truth—you gave me an odd look there. There’s no way you’re enjoying hearing all that. But I’ve never been on a date like this, either. Never in my life. There’s no bar to clear here, so you’re all good, however you respond.” Somehow, I was laughing again. Blame that wine.
