Jesus, Pauline thought as she realized the person she was looking at really was Jake. He's gotten fat!
Fat was perhaps not the best word to describe him. He was not obese or in danger of breaking any furniture just yet. He was, however, noticeably larger than when she'd seen him last. His stomach was sporting a decent-sized spare tire. His face, arms, and legs had gotten flabbier as well. He didn't look like he was at death's door by any means, but he didn't look exactly healthy either.
"Jake," she called, waving her hand to catch his attention.
He spotted her and slowly, almost reluctantly, his mouth formed a smile. He drained the last of his beer, stood, and made his way over to their position. They hugged. Though he was clean-shaven and freshly showered, Jake smelled of cigarettes and alcohol.
"It's good to see you, sis," he said. "Welcome to Christchurch."
"Thanks, Jake," she said. "It's good to see you too."
He turned to Jill, who had stood silently by during the reunion. "Hi, Jill," he told her. "Welcome back to Christchurch. Couldn't stay away, huh?"
"Nope," Jill said, perhaps a might sourly. "You know how much I love traveling to this far corner of the Earth."
Jake let the sourness roll off his back. He gave her a hug as well. She returned it with genuine affection.
"We were kind of afraid you weren't going to be here," Pauline said as Jake took their suitcases and led them toward the terminal exit door. This was, in fact, the first direct communication she'd had with her brother since the day before he'd left the United States. He had no telephone in his house and employed no answering service. He had answered none of the many letters sent to him. In order to let him know that she and Jill were arriving today, Jill had to contact Zachary Fields, the man who was leasing Jake's plane at some bum-fuck Egypt airport in the backwoods of Canterbury, in order to pass on the message.
"Of course I had to be here," Jake said. "Jill knows where I live. You would've just found me anyway."
Pauline wasn't sure if he was joking or not. She decided to assume that he was. "Well, thankfully that pilot friend of yours got the message to you."
"Yes," Jake said. "He stopped by my house day before yesterday... I think." He shrugged. "I told him to leave you a message that I'd be here. I guess he never got around to it. Zach's that way sometimes, you know."
"It would've been much easier to communicate with you," Pauline said, "if you had a damn telephone in your house. Perhaps you've heard of the phone? It's this nifty new device they came out with a few years back."
"Ahh, but you fail to see the methodology of my thinking," Jake told her. "If you have a phone, people can call you. When your goal is to remain incommunicado, putting in a phone tends to be counterproductive to that goal. You two should try living without a phone sometime. It's very liberating."
Neither of the women knew what to say to that. The idea of living without a basic phone — let alone a cellular phone and a pager — was starkly terrifying to contemplate.
They left the terminal and went outside. It was a beautiful spring day here in Christchurch, Pauline couldn't help but notice. About sixty-five degrees or so, a few wispy clouds drifting overhead, a slight breeze stirring the sycamore trees in the decorative planters that lined the terminal road.
No, she remembered, it's a beautiful autumn day here. This place is heading into winter, not summer. It was yet another reminder of just how far from home her brother had fled.
They went into a parking lot that was mostly empty. Near the back of it, they came to a red Toyota pick-up truck sitting by itself. The truck appeared pretty new although the wheel wells were coated with road grime and the body had a fairly thick layer of dirt and dust on it.
"Let me just throw your luggage in the back," Jake said. He then did just that, having to strain a little to get Pauline's bag up and over. "Go ahead and climb in. Someone is going to have to sit in the middle though. They didn't have any extended cabs at the Christchurch Toyota dealer and I didn't want to go all the way to Wellington to get one."
They squeezed in. Pauline took the middle position, figuring she would be less uncomfortable with Jake having to reach between her knees to shift gears. Jake started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot. They passed no kiosk on the way out.
"Don't you have to pay for parking?" Pauline asked.
"Nope," Jake said. "They don't do that sort of thing here."
"They don't?" Pauline said, appalled at the thought of not gouging people for parking fees when you had a clear monopoly on the privilege. "What is this place? A communist country?"
Jake chuckled and started heading for home. They left the airport grounds and started down the main thoroughfare that led back to the city. Pauline looked at the sights as they went, taking everything in. She watched the people, the cars, the houses and businesses, comparing and contrasting what she saw to what she was familiar with. Occasionally she would catch glimpses of the Southern Alps in the distance. She found that this really was a clean and beautiful place. She could understand why Jake liked it here. But it was so far away from everything! Including the layover in Auckland, they just spent nearly eighteen hours traveling just to get here. Eighteen hours by modern jet aircraft! This really was the far corner of the Earth, as Jill like to call it.
"So how is everyone back home?" Jake asked once they entered Christchurch proper. He seemed to ask this more out of a sense of obligation than anything else.
"Haven't you been reading our letters?" Pauline asked. "I know you haven't answered any of them, but you have been reading them, right?"
Jake smiled guiltily. "I haven't gotten around to it yet," he said.
She gave him a stern look. "You haven't read any of them? Not even Mom and Dad's?"
He shrugged. "What can I say?"
"Jesus, Jake," Pauline said. "What are you trying to do here?"
"Nothing," Jake told her. "I'm trying to do nothing and I've accomplished that goal very nicely."
"That's kind of why we're here, Jake," Jill said. "There are some financial matters that we need to discuss. Some things that you just can't ignore."
"How about we do that later?" Jake said. "I'll get you two home, show you around my place, we'll have a few drinks, and then we'll talk about whatever you want. In the meantime, why don't we start with something easier?"
"Like what?" Pauline asked.
"Mom and Dad," Jake said. "How are they doing? I noticed the last couple of letters had the Cypress return address on them. I take it they moved into the new place?"
Pauline shook her head in consternation. How could he have not read a single letter sent to him? How could he not know what his own parents were doing at a major crossroads in their lives? "They've been living in their Cypress Hills house for the past three months," she said. "Stan and Cindy are living in their new house on the property too. The houses turned out quite nice. You should see Mom and Dad's — especially since you paid for half of it."
"So they're happy?" he asked.
"They're content," Pauline said. "They love their new house and Dad is finding retirement to be everything he wanted. He hasn't looked at a legal brief since he put in his papers. He's gotten into fly fishing, if you can believe that."
"Fly fishing? Dad? You're putting me on."
"Nope," she said. "Him and Stan both. Of course they're strictly catch and release. They wouldn't dream of depriving a rainbow trout of its right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."