Page 87 of Just One Look
“Omelets and potatoes,” he told her, pulling two plates from the bottom oven, where he’d set them to keep warm. “Wine, too.” He cocked his head toward the two glasses of pinot noir he’d poured, and she picked one up and sipped at it without looking at him as he slid the warmed plates onto the kitchen bench and added some cutlery and napkins, a couple of glasses, and the bottle of chilled water from the fridge. “It’s not flash,” he told her, “but it’s warm, and I reckon you’ll feel better when you’ve eaten it.”
“It looks great,” she said. “Ham and mushrooms. And you want to know what that was about.”
“Eat first,” he said. “Then tell me.”
She took a bite, then another sip of wine, and said, “This is so good. I have surgery tomorrow, though, so don’t let me drink more than one glass. I normally wouldn’t have to say that, because I’m in control. That’s the one thing I am. I am in control. Except maybe not tonight.”
“It’s barely five-thirty,” he said. “Hours and hours to go before tomorrow.”
“Mm. This is an amazing house.” She swiveled on her stool to look out the wall of windows. “Industrial, with the black metal and the brick, but … not. Old industrial, maybe.”
“You’re right,” he said. “It was a stables, a hundred fifty years back. Some sort of industrial building after that. Artist’s workspace in the 70s, or more likely a commune, because Ponsonby was pretty dodgy back then. Somebody came along ten or twelve years ago, though, and did it up like this, and when I moved up here and decided to buy a house at last, I walked in the door and bought it. It’s got a guest room and bath and what they told me was a ‘family room’ downstairs, but I live up here, or in the garden. Courtyard, really. More brick, with a sort of ring of green. It’s a pretty good place to live. Private, too.” Easier to talk about houses, probably. Easier to talk about anything else.
“It’s wonderful,” she said. “But then, I love brick. The house I grew up in was brick.”
“In Savannah.”
Her throat worked as she swallowed, and then she took a sip of wine as if she were moving past it. “In Savannah. It’s about that age, too. I bought my townhouse because it was brick outside and modern inside. It was simple, like this, which I like, but I could never get it to look …” She paused, then said, “Warm. I could never get it to look warm, like this. I didn’t know how.”
That was desolation. His hand covered hers in her lap, and he said, “I wouldn’t know, either. Bought the house this way, like I said.”
“You have shells, though,” she said. “In your bedroom. I wouldn’t even have thought of shells, but shells are perfect. Organic, but … simple. Beautiful in the way math is beautiful, or the way anatomy is. Symmetry.”
“Dunno,” he said. “I like them, that’s all.”
Her gaze sharpened on his face. “You took the pictures.”
“Well, yeh. Doesn’t take much talent to photograph a shell on the beach, especially the way I do it. Have to get the focus right, and that’s about it. I do like them, though. Like you say, they’re made well. Satisfying, eh, the same way brick and wood are. Reckon I like materials more than decoration.”
“How long have you had them up?” she asked. “Always, or just recently?”
“I did them when I was in Hamilton, playing for the Chiefs. Farthest I’d ever lived from the sea, so I framed them and put them up. Sometimes you have to leave a place to know what you miss about it.”
“It’s beautiful, though,” she said, “where you grew up. One of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. That day we met you, I’d gone scuba diving for the first time. The only time, as it turned out. The Poor Knights Islands. It was an amazing place, all that ruggedness, all that green. All that water, too, and what’s under it. A little bit wild, like you were the first person to see it, even though you obviously weren’t, and just … just astonishingly beautiful. At least, that’s how I remember it.”
“The Tutukaka Coast,” he said. “Nice.”
“Not many jobs, though, I’m guessing,” she said. “Unless you want to be an avocado farmer, and we know that’s off the table.”
“It is,” he said, but the thought didn’t come with its usual spiky edges. “Never mind. I’m well suited. You know how I became a rugby player—fell into it, basically, started in school and just went on—but how did you become a surgeon? Your dad’s one, that’s all I know.”
“That’s about what you need to know, too,” she said, “except that I love it. Like you and rugby. Maybe it happened partly for reasons that aren’t … the best, but it was good anyway.”
“You wanted to please your dad,” he said.
“Yes. No. I don’t know. No choice. My life was always mapped out, that’s all.” She finished off her wine and asked, “Is it really five-thirty?”
He smiled, just a bit. “Barely. Want another?”
“Yes.” He poured it for her, and she said, “I never spent much time at the bar after work. Not nearly as much time as the others, during my residency and so forth. Lots of residents hung out at this dive bar a few blocks away from the hospital. Unwinding, I guess, but it could be a whole lot more than that. I could never believe they were that undisciplined, willing to take that much risk after everything they’d sacrificed to get there. Again, I’m not sorry, but … maybe tonight could be different.”
“Discipline’s not a bad thing,” he said. “Necessary, definitely. But sometimes, it feels good to lay it down.”
She turned the glass in her hand, studying the cherry-red liquid, then said, “I don’t lay it down.”
He said, “Come sit on the couch with me.”
“Dishes,” she said.
“No dishes,” he said. “Not just now. Come sit with me.”
They sat on the couch. Webster came too, of course, and lay down just as close as he could get to Elizabeth. Luka went to put his arm around her, and stopped. She said, “That hurts.”
“Yeh. Problem for tomorrow.” She was warm against his side, because she’d sat close, maybe needing the contact. He took her hand in his, threaded his fingers through hers, and said, “So.”
“So.” She sighed. “It’s nothing mysterious, not really, and it doesn’t require a psychology degree. Why did I grow up desperate to please my father? Why did I freak out today? My mom drowned in a flash flood when I was four. But she saved me first.”
