Page 99 of Catch a Kiwi
So, yeh, that was what I’d been trying to do there. I hadn’t counted on being affected so much by her reaction. Like this was a stolen moment, and a journey she could only take with my hand around hers, telling her it was safe to show herself to me. That golden bird of hope was buried pretty deeply in the box, that was all I’d say.
So I took her to dinner. To the Bistro at the Clarence Hotel in Tauranga, to be exact. On its garden patio, because by the time we got there, the light was fading fast, and Summer felt freer in the dark. Watching her sip that extra glass of wine, taking tiny bites of wild surf clams harvested that day, nibbling at a slice of the prawn and courgette pizza I’d insisted on ordering, rich with mascarpone cheese. Talking about those paintings, wondering how anybody could see in that much color, smiling at her in the light of candles and fairy lights and stars, savoring my own tender bites of bavette steak with rocket pesto, sipping on a peppery, plummy Hawke’s Bay shiraz, and looking at that face. The face that wasn’t her, and was, because the sweetness and gentleness she couldn’t help shone from it like that golden bird.
Her mind might be ruthlessly logical, like mine. Her soul, though, was made of finer stuff.
I knew this line of thought was dangerous. Fortunately, she was leaving the country in a couple of months, and if she could indulge herself, so could I. I needed something good after today, and if she did, too, why couldn’t we find that thing together?
That was the moment when she said, “You’re never supposed to ask a man what he’s thinking. I don’t always like it when anybody asks me, because so often, it’s nothing very edifying.”
“Like what?” I stretched my legs out before me, because sadly, my steak was gone, took another sip of deep, darkcherry and spice, and thought about how her scent smelled like that, too. She’d reapplied it tonight after her shower, and smelling that boozy cherry-and-almond scent while she’d sat beside me in her thin dressing gown with her pale hair curling around her shoulders … I didn’t much remember what we’d been talking about then, either.
“Oh, like …” Her finger traced around the edge of her wine glass, and then she snatched it away as if somebody’d told her that wasn’t refined.
I took her hand, put it back on the glass, and said, “You can touch it. I like watching you enjoy things.”
Her eyes widened, and I’d swear they darkened, too. Her pupils, or something like that. “You do?”
“Yeh.” I was smiling, which probably wasn’t my best move, dark-and-dangerously-sexy-wise, but I didn’t care. “Watching you look at those pictures today. Swimming with you. Seeing you enjoy those clams. Every time. It’s becoming my favorite thing.”
“Oh.” She didn’t go on for a minute, but her finger was tracing the edge of the wine glass again. “What were we talking about?”
It wasn’t easy to remember. My attention was pretty divided. “About what you tend to be thinking.”
“Oh. Right. Well, usually it’s some version of a to-do list. Nobody wants to hear that.” She smiled herself now, in that deep, sweet way she did that lit her face all the way to the eyes. “Especially not you.”
“That what you’re thinking now, then?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “I told you, my thoughts are all over the place, or maybe they’re not formed at all. They’re like clouds, drifting by. Swimming in the sea, how you can smell and taste the salt, and the way the swells take you so you’re rising and falling with no effort at all, and how relaxed it made me to have been so cold and then take that shivery shower and getwarm again, and how rough and abrasive the towel felt afterwards, because it was dried on a washing line. The way you smell, too, like rain in an evergreen forest. The party today, and that old man. There’s a kind of purity in being really old, like you’re distilled.” She took another sip of her Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, a much more ethereal bottling than mine. “If he’s an essence, it’s an essence of something good. Like … love.”
“Aroha,” I said.
“Except that you’re not Maori.”
“I don’t have to be Maori to know that. Aroha isn’t just romantic love. It’s compassion, sympathy, connection, like that. Even grief. Murimuri aroha—that’s yearning. Like the deepest kind of love, and like grief, too. Feeling too much. Feeling all the way to your heart. The scary way.” I lifted my glass. “That’s the idea, anyway. I don’t know much about it, myself.”
“Murimuri aroha,” she said. “Like … bittersweet. When it’s so good, you’re afraid of losing it even while you have it, but you still want to just … bathe in it.”
“Yeh. Like that, I reckon.”
“I’ve never felt that, either,” she said. “Not romantically. Scary love? Not if I’m honest. Maybe we’re both shallow. But on another level—that’s it. That’s how Koro felt to me, like he knows that. Like heisthat. Full of love, and still knowing that everything passes, that his life is like those clouds drifting by. I’ve thought about Hemi, too. His sweetness with his daughter and his toughness with his dad. How much he reminds me of you.” I probably made a face, because she laughed and put her hand on mine. “Roman. That’s a good thing. I’m not saying I’d want to do a deal with him, but I liked him anyway. Weirdly, because I don’t like rich, powerful men who expect to get their way.”
“You mentioned that,” I said, but I didn’t let it worry me,or let it linger, either. It drifted past like, yes, a cloud. “And yet this rich man wants to buy you a sweet. There’s a chocolate thing on here. Sounds decadent. A poached pear, too, with, ah”—I consulted the menu—“house-made pear ice cream and crumble. What d’you reckon? Ready to let me indulge you a little more?”
Some more smile. “No. I’m at that perfect point where you’ve eaten and drunk all these beautiful things, and your mouth still remembers them. But if you want it, I’m happy to wait.”
“Nah,” I said. “Just want you to know you can.”
“Mm.” She took what was nearly her final sip of wine. I wanted to pay the check and leave here, yeh. I wanted to walk through the restaurant with my hand at the small of her back. I wanted to hold the door for her, and to watch her slide gracefully into my car and settle her pretty dress around her. Most of all, I wanted to take her home, but I wasn’t sure how long I could keep her floating in this bubble. The one where she forgot she didn’t quite like me, or didn’t quite trust me, or didn’t quite trust herself, or whatever it was.
That was when she looked up and said, “You know what just happened? You shifted the conversation to me again. This was supposed to be about you. What you’re thinking, that is.”
“Not thinking much,” I said, only partially lying. “Mostly feeling.”
“Feeling what?” she asked. And when I looked at her, not smiling anymore, she … shivered. Or shuddered, maybe. It went from her shoulders all the way down, and I watched it happen.
“Maybe I shouldn’t ask,” she said, and tried to laugh.
My hand on hers again. She turned hers under mine so I was holding it, and the trust in that gesture … it felt good. “You can ask,” I said. “And I’ll tell you. Feeling myself kissing you, is what I’m doing. It’s pretty bad, like it’s happening right now. Like I’m laying you down and unbuttoning that dress, slow as I can, while I kiss your mouth. Smelling that scent you’re wearing. I know you’re more than your body and your face, but I want your body and your face, and I want the rest of you, too. Greedy, that’s how I’m feeling. I want to touch your skin. I want to take my time and know you know exactly who you’re with, and that you want him. And, yeh, because I’m a competitive bastard, and probably those other things you said, too—possessive and all—I want to know I’m doing it better than anybody else ever has. I want to know you’re feeling me inside you all the way to your spine. All the way to your toes.”
