Desert Fish Read Free

on the bodice of my dress. ‘You can’t tell your body what to do,’ one of the nurses said to me. ‘Give it a week or two and you’ll feel like yourself again.’ There are two patches, like saucers, one on each breast, difficult to see, because they’re camouflaged by the busy print and the ruching. But I can’t stop myself from gagging.
    â€˜Stop. Pete, stop,’ I say.
    He doesn’t get off the road in time. I’m sick all over myself before I open the door. Then I forget to undo my seatbelt and vomit on the seat before I can get out of the car. I lose the last of my breakfast on the dirt at the side of the road.
    Pete doesn’t say anything.
    â€˜God, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, Pete.’ I wipe my face with a napkin from the bag and dab uselessly at the mess on the seat.
    He winds his window right down and looks away.
    â€˜We’ll stop for today,’ he says. ‘I’ll find a motel. You can clean it up there.’

three
    Pete is the sort of man who can belong to wherever he is. The first place I saw him was by the weir. This wasn’t even a year ago but I was just a girl then, and I had never lived anywhere except my small town with its slow, familiar river. On the hottest days you had to glide out into the deep water to get cool. The shallows smelled of moss and mud and the sand on the bottom stayed warm until you pushed your feet down where the sun hadn’t been.
    On the day he came, I was the only one there. There’d been no rain and the rocks along the banks were baked a pale thirsty colour. The rapids downstream moved sluggishly and the weir was more like a dam. In places the water just lapped at the top of the concrete bulkhead. When the river got like that people stayed away, cooling off at the swimming baths or in front of a fan. But I felt drawn to it. It was like a dying creature. It had aged in a matter of weeks, shrinking into itself. It gave off a heavy greenish scent.
    I turned on my back and moved my arms through the brackish water, closing my eyes against the glare of the sun. When I opened them I saw him cutting his way down the steep track that was scored into the bank. He had a look of someone not from anywhere in particular. His hair was cropped close and the fuzz of it was sun-bleached. His arms were bare and brown. I moved closer to the shore where the tall reeds were, hovering so I could observe him without being seen. You could tell he liked to travel light. He had no bag with him and carried a small lunch in his hands – a tomato and a bread roll. He produced a tin from his back pocket, one that you could wind open with a key. Smoked oysters I guessed, from the colours on the outside. He sat down on a rock and began to eat, biting into the tomato whole and hooking the oysters out with his hands. When he was done he ate the roll, dipping it into the tin and soaking up the oil there. Then he sucked his fingers clean and walked back up the track, leaving the tin on the rock where he’d sat. It was the hottest part of the day but he seemed unaffected. There were no damp patches under the arms of his T-shirt, and as he made his way up the steep bank I saw no wet slick on his back either. He looked like someone who could go anywhere.
    After he was gone I came out of the water and pulled my clothes on over my bathers. When I got to the top of the track I looked along the road for him, but there was nobody there. You could see the air ripple above the surface of the road. Tar collapsed into puddles wherethe potholes had been filled. It was the middle of the summer and my town was an empty, sullen place. Mostly, people went to the beach during the holiday, renting houses or towing caravans, pitching tents. Swimming in the ocean, and picnicking beneath casuarina trees. It was too hot and stifling to be anywhere but by the sea.
    I sighed and trudged back down the track to the river. The tin he’d left behind was