Page 84 of Catch a Kiwi
“The underwear modeling,” I said. “I have a few pairs of that Wallaby stuff, with the pouch. Pretty sure that was your body on the package.”
“Not so much now,” he said, “on the money or anything else. I’m not as pretty as I was. Not as stupid, either, fortunately.” He looked at me for a second, then took a pull at his beer and said, “Not always easy, being given too much. Look at you. Look at Hemi. Didn’t have anything handed to you, did it all yourselves, the hard way. That’s something to be proud of. Something to count on. I only became a man worth anybody’s time when I stripped it down and lost the easy stuff.”
“When you quit the modeling,” I said, “and joined the services.”
“Talk about a shock to the system,” he said. “And then, of course, I lost the leg. And the face. People used to stare at me, walking down the street. They still do. Different reason, of course. I hated both things, but I hate it less now. Oddly.”
“Not earning your living with your face anymore, that’s probably why,” I said. “Or with your body, at least not in the same way. It felt like cheating before, I’m thinking. Too easy.”
Jax said, “Oddly sensitive of you. Who knew?”
I hesitated, but then I said it. The threads of the idea had been there all day, swimming around at random in my brain. “Summer,” I said. “Summer knows.”
“Ah.” It was nothing but a sigh. “That’s a beautiful face. Beautiful everything. Was she a model, then?”
“No,” I said. “WAG. Trophy wife.” I explained in a few sentences. “Embarrassed as hell by the whole thing, and tiredof it. Know what she did for work before she came here, though? Software engineer.”
“Reckon everybody needs to feel like they’ve got something to offer the world,” Jax said. “It’s not very satisfying to be told that your beautiful self is enough. Even if you’ve stood about under lights all day until you’re stiff and sweating and you’d say you’ve earned it. That doesn’t look like much when seen from, say, Afghanistan.”
“Dunno,” I said. “I’ve never been a beautiful person.”
“Not exactly an ugly one, mate,” Jax said with a crooked grin.
“I’m thinking it’s different, though,” I said.
“It is. Not that I cared much as a young fella. More than happy to take all the sex and money and substances that came my way, if we’re being frank here. Could be different for a girl, though. I don’t know. You could ask her, I guess. That could be a thought.”
I picked at the label on the beer bottle. “It’s that obvious?”
“That you’ve barely started? That you don’t know where you stand with each other? It is to me. One way to find out.”
“What’s that?”
“Tell,” he said. “And then ask. And …” He hesitated.
“Yeh?” I asked. “I’m open to suggestion here. Embarrassing to say, but …”
“Mate,” Jax said, “we’ve all been there. Maybe do some courting.”
It was such an incongruous word coming from him, I laughed. “Courting?”
Jax waved his beer bottle. “Love and affection and sex and romance. All that. Courting. Let her know—makeher know—that you see her, and you know her, and you like what you see. Inside, not just outside. Romance her. Sweep her off her feet.” He grinned, took a final swallow of beer, and hopped off the wall, landing on both feet, the real one and the substitute.Jax may have been put down, but he was walking on. “If you get the chance?” he told me. “Give her the best sex she’s ever had. If you want her, show her why and show her how, and do it with everything you’ve got. There you go. My advice.”
I wasready to leave and get started on that. More than ready. The old man had wanted me to meet people? I’d done it, and if that made him feel better, I was glad of it. It was a fine family. A fine whanau. It just wasn’tmywhanau, and no accident of DNA was going to change that. If I didn’t want to be that kid with his nose pressed against the glass, I needed to leave before anybody thought of me that way. Correction. Before I thought ofmyselfthat way. Before I started wanting a family.
And then there was Summer. I had exactly one day to spend with her before I had to be off again, and I needed to sort out how to work that.
I can’t be casual about sex.She’d said that just this morning.
I didn’t know the answer, so I told myself,Act without expectation,and went to find her. She wasn’t on the patio, though, or in the grass, or with the kids playing cricket. That left the house, or possibly the house next door.
Right. The house first. Not my house, but that was OK. I was just looking for Summer.
35
FLOWERS
Summer
