Sometimes it seems to Bastian that Rebecca views their relationship as a sound investment. They are from similarly wealthy backgrounds; they are likely to have similarly successful careers. They are both good-looking and intelligent.
He knows she likes being in a relationship with him, but he doesn’t know if she likes spending time with him.
He likes spending time with her. He likes seeing her holding forth in front of company, or making people laugh, even when she’s mean. He likes going out to restaurants with her and eating new and exciting food. He likes it when she tells him stories about her day at work, and he especially likes it when she tells him about the ceramics she has been working with. Bastian knows nothing about ceramics, or art more generally, or indeed East Asia, but it seems to be a subject Rebecca is genuinely enthusiastic about. It is her passion, something she actually likes, not just something she thinks she should like.
Bastian stands outside the door of the en suite bathroom and knocks. She tells him to come in. Her voice sounds formal and distant through the door, as if she’s making a service announcement on a train.
The bathroom is filled with steam. The clear glass shower screen is thick with condensation and Bastian can see the shapes of Rebecca but none of her details. She looks like a template of herself. He moves towards the screen, reaches out, and places his palm on the glass.
“I’m not going to have sex with you.”
Bastian reels. “That’s not why I came in here.”
“Well, I’m just letting you know.”
“That’s not why I’m fucking here. For fuck’s sake. I just came in to see if you were okay. I wanted to, I don’t know, stand here and have a fucking chat with you.”
“There’s no need to lose your temper.”
“I’m not losing my temper,” he insists. He steadies himself, and takes a couple of deep breaths. “I’m sorry for losing my temper. It’s just, I hadn’t come in here to make a move on you, I just wanted to say hi.”
“Hi,” she says.
Bastian allows his hand to fall, painting the gesture in the condensation like a cockerel’s plume. He goes back to the living room. He assumes that Rebecca gets out of the shower and goes to bed. He wouldn’t know. He falls asleep on the sofa.
Archaeology
The group spreads out across the building site like a dropped handful of sand. Each finds a dark corner with its own heap of detritus. “You never know what you might find,” the Archbishop reminds them, frequently. They look for discarded metals, power tools, wood that can be salvaged and repurposed, anything to turn a profit.
Paul Daniels finds a stack of wooden crates and begins to sort through them. Somebody else makes his way towards the skip, piled high with discarded timber, building rubble, wooden planks with rusted nails stuck through them, broken drill bits, snapped broom handles, chipped bricks, valuable masonry discarded because of minor imperfections.
The woman they call Debbie McGee wanders among her friends. She has not forgotten the tremors. She walks among the rubble, taking care to step gently, allowing the soles of her feet to move over the ground and feel any vibrations that the earth might throw up. She moves like a metal detectorist over an ancient battlefield, working as methodically as her patchy short-term memory will allow, treating the building site as a grid, walking in the straightest lines she can, turning at right angles.
She walks to the furthest corner of the building site. She steps with her left foot then her right. When she tries to step again with her left foot, she trips. She hits the dirt, putting hands out in front of her body to break her fall, grazing her left elbow.
Winded, she tries to pull her foot loose but she is snagged. She twists her body around to see what has caught her. Reaching out, she grabs what appears to be a thick, metal hoop. It is cold to the touch and covered with clods of mud. It is half-wedged in the ground. It must have been exposed when the builders removed the topsoil. Once she has freed her foot, she stands and takes hold of the thick metal hoop with both hands. She pulls and pulls and jiggles the hoop and slowly the earth relinquishes its tight grip on the object. She stumbles backwards, clutching the treasure.
The commotion attracts attention. A couple of the others start trotting towards her. After they see the object she is holding, they beckon others over too. The arrivals peer at the shiny hoop. They are amazed.
Some of them reach out to touch it. Debbie McGee moves the object towards a beam of light shining from high up on a crane, and the object begins to sparkle through the layers of dirt. There is a glint of gold, and other colors too, translucent and opaque, flickering, catching the light then falling back into shadow.
The man they call the Archbishop and the man they call Paul Daniels are the last to arrive, but they do so with the most audacity. Paul Daniels pushes through the crowd, shoving others aside. He sees his woman at the center of the circle. He looks first at her face, captivated by something she is holding. He sees that she is gazing at the thing with more wonder and awe than she has ever expressed in his direction, and he reaches out and snatches the metal hoop easily from her hands.
Debbie McGee does not resist. As soon as the treasure has been removed from her grip, she recoils, drawing her arms into her body like a flower retracting its petals when the sun disappears. She steps back. She herself is no longer illuminated by the bright white light from the
