as if to say, See?
And I get it, and get that Ryan somehow gets it too, because there can be no dogs with me standing here, large as life, the stiff breeze carrying my scent into the house. The only sound I can remotely discern is the faint tick of a clock somewhere in the hallway. If there were ever any dogs, they must’ve gone the way of the machines in the front yard a long time ago, the lie outliving them.
‘We’re here to see Richard,’ Ryan says pleasantly into the beery miasma that surrounds the older man.
‘Down the shops,’ the guy says curtly. ‘Wait for him, if you like.’ Then he shuts the door, hard, in our faces.
We wander through the graveyard of dead and dismembered motorbikes, mostly Japanese, some bearing fancy European tags I can barely pronounce.
Forty minutes later, just as we’re about to give up and turn back the way we came, a red two-door truck pulls up the drive, a mud-splattered bike anchored to its open tray with cables. There is a slight delay, a detectable pause, before the driver jumps out and walks towards us; a young man with dark blond hair, shaved close to his skull at back and sides but forming a Mohawk or quiff at the top so a long fringe falls half over his face and his extraordinarily pale, ice blue eyes. He’s in layered, motto-covered skater tees — the sleeves pushed high up both arms to reveal forearms crawling with tatts — and cargo pants with more pockets than I can begin to count.
Some of the pockets jangle and hang a little low and I imagine more bike parts secreted in them, the boy half-made of metal.
He is much smaller and slighter than I’d anticipated, and he looks very young to me, almost as young as Carmen does. Lauren and he would’ve made a cute couple, I decide. Like two dolls. A matched set. He couldn’t look less like his old man, and I wonder if every day, the old guy hates the very sight of him because he resembles his runaway wife.
Richard’s ‘Ryan Daley?’ is surprisingly tentative for an allegedly freaky daredevil of shit-your-pants proportions.
‘Rich,’ Ryan replies sombrely, holding out his right hand.
The two young men — so different in every way — shake and hold firm for a moment, and I wonder whose grip is stronger. Neither looks away and their grins are momentarily fixed and glassy. Unspoken guy rituals are still mostly beyond my understanding and I watch, fascinated.
‘And this is?’ Richard Coates says warily after they let go of each other almost simultaneously, like a secret signal has been imparted, both flexing their palms and fingers a little.
‘Carmen Zappacosta,’ Ryan replies. ‘A friend of Lauren’s from way back, from when we lived in the city.
We just wanted to talk.’ Richard’s brow pleats as he inputs my name. ‘Lauren never mentioned you, Carmen, but I’m always happy to talk. You sure, uh, chose the day though.’
‘Didn’t we?’ Ryan murmurs, looking down momentarily before meeting Richard’s eyes once more.
‘But Carmen kind of timed her visit to us for a reason…’ I shoot a surprised glance at Ryan’s profile, but it gives nothing away. Probably just a figure of speech. The guy’s a good liar, convincing. I almost believe him.
He continues smoothly. ‘She just wanted to hear about Lauren from you. How you spent your last day together. It would kind of be, um, sort of … a closure
… from Carmen’s perspective. She’s come a long way to hear what you have to say.’ Again, I glance at him. He has no idea. Does he? I’m the one who’s supposed to be preternaturally good at reading people.
Richard waves us towards a reclaimed park bench that’s set up under a giant street lamp fixed into the middle of the yard on a concrete block. The lamp wouldn’t look out of place in a park, or out the front of a government building. But it’s evidently been placed here — with little regard for home decor — and jerry-rigged up with electrical wiring, so it can be turned on at night to allow Richard to work on his machines.
I sit down on the bench while the two men remain standing. Ryan’s body language isn’t exactly relaxed, and neither is Richard’s, but they’re not hostile either.
Perhaps they’d be best described as watchful, because it’s evident — even after all this time — that each still doesn’t know what to make of the other. If Lauren hadn’t brought them together, I’m not sure Richard and Ryan would have even been in the same orbit.
‘We cut the last period of class that day to, um, hang out at Coronado Beach,’ Richard begins tentatively, his eyes flicking away from the taller boy’s briefly.
‘Near that turn-off to the refinery,’ Ryan interrupts for my benefit, his own dark eyes unreadable, ‘but the next crossroads along, heading in the opposite direction.
It’s not a popular hangout because there’s a vicious reef just out past the shallows that gives the beach its name — the Crowned One. Plus, the rip’s killed plenty over the years, and it’s a little too far from town. It’s probably polluted as well, given what goes on around there.’ I nod. Nice and isolated, then. I notice Richard doesn’t elaborate about what hanging out entails and we don’t ask.
‘And then we had a stupid argument about Corey’s party,’ Richard continues, looking down at his scuffed, old-school high-tops. ‘Things kind of snowballed. About my friends, what we were going to do with our lives, where we were going to be in a few years, and by the time I dropped her home — around five forty, the sun hadn’t quite set yet, I remember — we weren’t talking any more. She just stormed off into the house, and I went and got off my face at Corey’s with a bunch of mates, like I always did whenever Lauren and I argued, and by the morning … it was too late. To say anything.
To change … anything.’ There’s a funny note in Richard’s voice, like a rising sob quickly tamped down, and I look up from my seat on the bench and look away again as I clock the wet sheen in the guy’s eyes. Seems genuine enough.
Ryan’s gaze meets mine. His look saying, You believe it?
It’s hard to say. Though, being me, there is one foolproof way to know for sure. A way Ryan neither knows about nor has any access to.
I steel myself, because, as I’ve indicated, what I’m about to do invites in the unwanted.
I look up into Richard Coates’ face and raise Carmen’s left hand reluctantly, taking hold of his wrist.
It’s surprisingly wiry and thin for someone capable of throwing himself and a quarter-tonne machine through complicated loops and arcs in the air.
My left hand begins to burn with that strange phantom pain, and I feel that building pressure behind my eyes. The boy doesn’t flinch, he doesn’t even react, his features as impassive as I know Carmen’s are. He just looks at where my fingers meet his skin, an unfathomable expression in his pale eyes as we flame into contact.
And I see … everything. Feel … everything. As he told it. And more.
Like what hanging out on Coronado Beach really meant to Lauren and Richard. The sun moving quickly across the sky towards the waterline, the waves racing in towards the land, as the hours pass through my mind’s eye in a blur, the wind rising steadily, whipping harsh sand through her hair, his, as they touched, then talked, then began to fight in earnest, voices rising, body language hardening, growing ugly. The last hours they spent together played out for my benefit. The whole shoreline empty of life, as if the two of them were the only people in the world, the first two people in creation.
It’s clear to me that although they hadn’t seen eye to eye on about ten thousand things, they’d had a love so deep it was almost incendiary. Something truly enviable.
Though Lauren wanted more from Richard than he was prepared to give. He could have let things continue the way they were forever, mainly because he — like me — doesn’t do normal either.
There’s a part of Richard Coates that isn’t earthbound, and Lauren had refused to acknowledge it.
I recognise it in him, because it’s in me, too.
Ryan doesn’t even know half the story.
When I finally let go of Richard’s wrist — for all I know, it might have been a single heartbeat or an hour — all he does is tug the edge of his frayed cuff back over his tattooed arm. Unlike my contact with Ryan, or how I felt after his parents touched Carmen’s bare skin — burned, excoriated, as if by acid — the connection with Richard was somehow … different. He felt it, my mind in his, I’m sure of it. And it gives me pause.
We stare at each other momentarily before looking away from the incomprehensible.
While Richard’s gaze is elsewhere, Ryan raises an eyebrow in my direction.
I think he’s telling the truth, I mouth silently.
