Rain and sweat puddle the floor at my feet. It's getting hot. The music goes on in its slow, gorgeous, devastating burn. When I lean over for a better view my neighbor recoils, initiating a long sequence of public sighing. Now I see her, my Elise. Her head remains stilclass="underline" her bowing neat, precise. Her hair gleams burn-white and black under the spotlight — she's floating out there on a skiff of light — my daughter, my baby girl. A severe beauty all the way through her. My heart hitches underneath its tight cummerbund. I see her. She has everything she needs. She has wrung all my weaknesses out of her strong, straight body.
Get up. I get up. Light in myself, brittle — unable to hear, hold, any more — I breast, woozily, the row of half-risen knees. On the hallway stairs the applause starts up. It sounds like rain. Then, amazingly, there are shouts, stamping feet. I leave the building and go outside-into the brindled rain, the rain become iridescent — into the steel-lamp night. Above the world's dead weight. It's raining outside. I catch my breath and watch as the crowd comes out. She's coming out. She'll be out any second now.
Then I see her — in the walk of a young boy, in the languor of a twenty-year-old — uncommon economy for someone so young — no, there — at fifty, on a billboard, heartbreakingly beautiful and advertising the power of business solutions. Eyes gray, smile gas-blue. A deeper run of colors in her cheekbones. No, no-the darkness, through rain, is deceptive. The crowd empties out of the theater like a last exhalation. I count her as she passes.
It's raining. There she is. Stooped and somehow swanlike, waiting under the corner streetlight. The light drawn into her skin, soaking it, making it refulgent in the black mine of city. A serious young girl. Wind splaying her dark hair. No, I never had a shot-not really. Move, out of breath, toward that shore of light. Catch her and she'll smile, teeth showing-draw it for me-this matter of memory, word by word. Dirty old man. Wait up, Olivia, I'm coming. I see you now! Are you ready? Wait up for me!
Halflead Bay
IT WAS SHAPING UP TO BE A good summer for Jamie. Exams were over. School was out in a couple of weeks — the holidays stretching before him, wide and flat and blue. On top of that he was a hero. Sort of. At assembly that morning, the principal had paused after his name and the school had broken into spontaneous cheering and clapping. Jamie was onstage with the rest of the first eighteen. He could barely make out the faces beneath him — the lights turned off on account of the heat-but what he remembered were voices swelling out of the large, dim hall as though out from one of his daydreams. You couldn't buy that feeling. Still, his dad. Seated in the front row with the other guests of honor — unimpressed as ever. His smile as stiff as his suit.
"C’arn, Halfies!" the principal called out. He opened his arms. From the back of the hall students started stomping their feet.
Jamie had scored the winning goal in last week's semifinal. For the first time in five years, Halflead Bay High had a real crack at reclaiming the pennant. All his school years Jamie couldn't recall even having a conversation with Alan Leyland, the principal, but now Leyland turned around from the podium and half bowed to him. Everyone looked at the two of them. Then the cry was taken up — Halfies! C’arn, Halfies! — even teachers, parents, joining in — Jamie still and rapt in the hot roar until he arrived, again, at his dad's face. The uneasy grin. Of course. The stomping, chanting, Leyland's theatrical attitude: a faint film of mockery slid over it all. Jamie pushed it aside. His dad was wrong, he thought. He was wrong, and anything was possible.
***
ALISON FISCHER APPROACHED HIM AT RECESS.
"Leyland was licking your arse," she said.
He clutched up from the drinking fountain, mouth brimming water, swallowed. "Hi," he said. The word came out in a burp and left a wet trail down his chest.
"Hi yourself."
She stood with her head cocked to one side, hip to the other. Her school dress was stretched so tight it bit into her thigh. He wiped his mouth, looked around. Alison Fischer. It was a morning of firsts.
"Leyland couldn't be stuffed about footy."
"What?"
"He's thinking about enrollments," Jamie said. He tried to remember how his mum had put it. "He just wants the pennant to sucker new parents."
"Shove over," Alison ordered. She bent down to the nozzle and pursed her mouth in a glossy O. Her top button was undone — sprung open as though by heat — and he could see the inside line of her breasts. The stripe of sweat gleaming between them.
She said, "I've seen you down at the wharf." Her lips bright wet.
"I'm working there these holidays."
"Nah, the jetty, I mean. Fishing. With that surfie mate of yours."
"Cale?"
He looked around again. Most of the kids had stayed indoors for recess; others were lying in shade, as still as snakes, under the casuarinas. It was too hot for sport. Off in the paddocks a knot of boys poked at something on the ground. Alison switched hips and smiled patiently at him.
"That was your dad in there, right?"
"My dad?" He laughed weakly.
"With the tie."
This was how it happened: these girls, they did it for kicks, daring each other to go up to random blokes and act interested. He'd seen it before. A gaggle of them — Alison their leader — sitting apart from everyone else, watching on; they sealed off even their amusement, coughing it around their circle like a wet scrap. Tammie, Kate, Laura-all the rest of them, faces mocked up-they were bored with everything and totally up themselves and every boy at Halflead wanted them.
"He didn't even come to the game."
"My parents," she said, "after that game." Her smile went lopsided. "I reckon they'd adopt you."
He pretended to wave away a fly, looked around again. None of them were in sight. No Dory either. The sound of a piano started up from somewhere — each note hung-tin-fiat, percussive — then evaporated in the heat. So she wanted to talk about the game. No way they'd mess with him, not after last weekend. That assembly. She was alone. She was smiling at him as though she didn't belong to somebody else.,
"That'd make you my sister."
"We couldn't have that, right?"
Whoever was at the piano was a beginner, trying out a new scale: slow, stop-start. Jamie felt himself trapped between the notes, inside the heavy spaces where nothing moved. He realized his whole body was sweating. So she'd talk about his dad — himself sweating in that funereal suit, several sizes too small for him, cuffs up past his wrists — and he'd let her. Applause in his ears. That wry, skeptical smirk.
"So you reckon we can beat Maroomba?"
"I'm there heaps," he said. His voice came out rougher than he'd intended. "The jetty, I mean."
"What?"
"Don't be such a bloody snob. Say hi next time."
"And then what?"
"What are you after?"
"Alison!" a voice called from the school building. Everyone started moving back inside. The sound of the piano petered out, blaring moments later as passing hands bashed its keys.
She leaned toward him. That band of sweat between her breasts — he wanted to bring his mouth to it and lick it up. He wanted her to giggle, push him away, tell him it tickled. Her smile seemed different now.
"I can teach you how to squid," he said.
"Fuck," she said in a low voice, "you're a fast worker, aren't you?"
He didn't say anything.
"Who would've guessed it. Loose Ball Jamie — that's what they call you, right?"
His face flushed. Someone shouted her name again. The school grounds were almost empty now but he had the overwhelming feeling of being watched. Every window in the building blazed with reflected light.