At dusk the next evening, Lulu was in the kitchen grinding up chilli and cocoa beans when a passing figure caught her eye through the window. She waited until the gloaming before she slid out into the shadows of her garden. Again Dylan sat in the red sand, drawn by the open, lit windows in Alice’s house. Alice was dancing in her kitchen, cooking, her wet hair hanging down her back. Blues music wafted on the thin, violet air. She shook her body around the stove, set out two plates and served dinner. Some for her, and some for her dog. Dylan stayed until she went to bed, then retraced his steps home.
Night after night, Lulu couldn’t stop herself watching Dylan as he was drawn across the sand dunes by the light falling from Alice’s windows, yet hated herself for it all the same. She began to wait for the hour when the shadows were long enough to look for him creeping among the trees. Protected by the darkness, he sat outside while Alice drank tea and read a book, or watched a movie on the couch with her dog. Or tended her pot plants and books, once she began decorating her house. He mostly kept his distance, until the night before Alice’s birthday. Alice had returned from a walk, when Lulu saw Dylan move from the shadows to slip noiselessly through the gate in Alice’s back fence. He wound through the thryptomene bushes, daringly close, nearly in the glow of her fairy lights. Watching. Seemingly waiting for something that was out of Lulu’s view.
She didn’t bother trying to resist following him: Lulu left her yard and took a wide arc around the dune behind Alice’s house. Hid behind the thick trunk of a desert oak where she could see Dylan in the bushes watching Alice inside at her desk, emptying flowers from her pockets. She pressed them into her notebook, which she handled as gently as if it were a bird’s egg. She started writing, then paused. Looked blindly into the darkness. And that’s when it happened, when Lulu heard Dylan catch his breath, as though Alice was looking straight at him with her big, green eyes; as if he was what caused her face to fill with hope. Lulu had sprinted home hard and fast. Told herself that was why she retched stinging, hot bile in the sink.
At the end of the surprise party, Lulu had pretended to be asleep when Dylan and Alice left together. Would Dylan’s first move on Alice be to share a sunrise with her too, like he had with Lulu?
Lulu stood at her back door watching and waiting until, sure enough, they came stumbling over the dunes. He walked Alice home, lingering long after she’d gone inside. The sun burned high into the sky before he turned to leave, a besotted, drunken smile on his face. She couldn’t stop herself staring, long after he’d disappeared behind his front door.
The evening after her surprise party, Alice curled up on her couch, gazing across her yard to the gate in her back fence. Silhouetted birds tumbled through the air, a constellation of inverse stars returning to their nests. On the blackened dead tree just outside her door, the evening light illuminated a rope of silk trails left by the winter procession of caterpillars. Alice had read about them in the park’s annual flora and fauna guide: they followed each other by the trails of silk they left behind, which were invisible except when they caught the light.
Her house was quiet, except for the occasional click of the electric heater, Pip’s snores and the bubbling pot on the stove. Hints of fresh lemongrass, coriander and coconut made her stomach growl. She watched the gate. She waited. The light changed from gold to cinnamon. Dylan’s voice rang in her ears. I’ll go home for a shower and come over. Back gate way.
She’d been on her way home from town when she’d spotted his ute on the side of the ring road and his figure at the nearby radio repeater stations. He saw her coming and waved. She pulled over and hopped out of her car. Her body grew feverish at the sight of him.
‘Pinta-Pinta.’ He’d beamed, tapping his hat brim to greet her.
‘G’day.’ She’d grinned.
‘Not too hung over?’
She shook her head. ‘No, weirdly. More just sleep deprived, I think.’
‘Me too.’
The air was heavy with the sweet scent of winter wattle.
‘How was your first day of being twenty-seven?’ he asked.
‘Truck delivery day. I went food shopping.’ She laughed.
‘Ah.’ He nodded knowingly, laughing along. ‘It was a great day.’
‘It was. But it’s not over yet.’ She paused. ‘What are you doing tonight?’ she blurted, looking up at him.
His eyes searched hers. ‘Not much.’
‘I’m making fresh Thai green curry soup. From scratch?’ she offered.
‘Yum.’
‘So,’ she said, trying to keep her voice even. ‘Join me?’
‘Love to.’ He smiled.
‘Six?’
He nodded. ‘I’ll go home for a shower and come over. Back gate way?’
‘Sure,’ she’d said, breezily.
And there it was, the beam of his torch, cutting through the spinifex, lighting his way to her. She got up and scurried into her bedroom. Stood in the shadows by her window, watching, waiting.
He came to the back gate, slid open the latch and closed it behind him. The pale light of the stars fell on his shoulders. He flicked the torch off and wound his way through the thryptomene to the patio under her fairy lights.
‘Pinta-Pinta?’ he called from the door.
‘Hey,’ she said, giving him an easy smile as she crossed the room and opened the back door. He scuffed his feet across the mat and walked inside. She inhaled the invisible curlicues of his cologne, briefly closing her eyes. He took his Akubra off and cast an appreciative glance around her house: her pot plants, her paintings, her books, her rugs, her cooking, her desk. She’d pretended it was for herself, but it had all been in hope of this moment.
‘Hungry?’
‘Oh yeah,’ he replied, plonking down on the sofa.
‘Hair of the dog?’ she asked.
‘Always,’ he said. She opened the fridge and reached to the back for two beer bottles. The effervescence when she cracked the tops brought her such relief she wished she could open a dozen at once.
‘Cheers,’ she said, handing him one.
‘Cheers,’ he said with a nod. As they clinked bottles, a Catherine wheel of nerves spun through her body.
After soup and more beer, they slouched on her couch. Their faces were flushed, from the heating, the beers, the chilli, and something else besides. They’d been telling stories, about where they’d grown up. They knew how to do this, how to reveal certain parts of themselves and not others. They’d been doing it for weeks. But now their stories dried up like a salt flat in the sun.
‘Those bloody fairy lights,’ he mumbled after a while.
The heater ticked and hummed.
‘What about them?’ she asked quietly.
‘They’re all I can see from every window in my house. They’ve been distracting me for months.’
A thrill shot through her. ‘They have?’ she asked.
He turned to her. She didn’t look away.
His mouth was on hers, suddenly, softly. Urgently. Alice kissed him back, deeply, unwilling to close her eyes. It wasn’t a daydream; he was there.