"She lets herself imagine this trendy couple in bed. The woman was definitely an ‘on top type’, she could tell"
The mountain appears, and disappears. One minute shrouded in cloud, the next, it’s splendour almost touchable. Stella lifts her iPhone to the window, and the mountain vanishes. She winds the window right down and looks at it.
Later that evening, after checking in to the discount luxury accommodation, which includes an almost sea view and a king size bed, they head out for dinner. Gavin has the discount voucher book for local restaurants. Stella dislikes this, but keeps quiet. Gavin has twice accused her of whining. Once when they passed through Waverley and couldn’t find a decent coffee. He drinks long blacks and has no idea how a latte can vary from café to café, let alone city to rural town. She forgot to insist on a tulip cup. This, milky soup, was not a coffee she’d explained as Gavin tried to whip through the cryptic crossword left at their table. He’d been struggling with the clue He doesn’t succeed with changing roles. "Order another," he said, absent-mindedly, as if $5.50 was neither here nor there, and yet here he was clutching the discount restaurant booklet. Loser she’d told him, which was the answer to the clue he was stuck on. The other ‘whine’ had been him overtaking two large lumbering lorries on a steep curving piece of road, in the passing lane, but speeding, nevertheless. She’d closed her eyes and uttered a deep and she had thought quiet moan. But no, it seemed she had whined.
Gavin was almost two strides ahead now, thumbing the discount book, his steps all light and anticipatory. He loved a deal. He loved eating out. He loved her, he’d assured her after post-trip sex in a king size bed, when she hadn’t actually climaxed and he had offered to linger, but the discount voucher had been burning a hole.
They settled on a warm pub that had a Japanese Chef. The gorgeous incongruity of small-town New Zealand. Unthinkable just a few decades ago, that a 50’s style pub, with red velvet booths and a roaring log fire, would have a menu that involved shared plates. Pork belly and chicken teriyaki, not to mention spinach in miso and what looked like deep fried chickpeas. Sex was good Stella decided, but when you were both almost 70, there were choices to be made, and a warm fire, wine and a free shared plate if you purchased two… They were a few decades on from the lustful hunger that once kept them from food and wine for hours on end.
The waitress ushered them to a booth near the window, and next to a family of four. They were within touching distance. Gavin raised his eyebrows to indicate perhaps they should shift, but Stella was enchanted. Mum and Dad looked about 40ish and there were two young lads. They were brothers, possibly six and eight, or a little older. Angelic in that way that boys are pre-puberty. Eyes so big that you wonder when their faces will catch up symmetrically. Both impossibly blonde, the colour that vanishes with puberty. They wore matching Goat Crew Kyoto sweatshirts. She tried not to stare. Gavin did his ‘you’re staring’ thing, which was another version of his eyebrow lift, but she knew the subtle difference. After 45 years together she could read his eyebrows. She also noticed they needed taming.
They order two large plates to ensure their free smaller shared plate. The waitress says that even with the two large and one free, there won’t be enough food. Normally Gavin would dispute this and stick to his original order, but he’s in a light mood (post trip sex she assumes) and graciously orders another small plate. It’s bok choy, her favourite and Gavin doesn’t really care for bok choy so she gets that this is her anti-climax trade-off.
Beside them, the two Goat Crew lads are gazing up adoringly at their father and mother. The father is holding court and Stella hears ‘when we were in Japan’ but misses the rest of the conversation. The two lads are adept with chopsticks as are the parents. Stella senses, although she can’t say why, that the family is showcasing their chopstick skills for hers and Gavin’s benefit. To this end, Stella makes a great play of showcasing her own chopstick skills, plucking individual soya beans one at a time, from her bowl as if they are pearls, to pop them delicately and competently into her open mouth. Gavin senses what she’s up to and rolls his eyes and smirks. He grabs a piece of pork belly in his fingers and pops it in his mouth.
The couple close by, are now discussing same sex attraction with their two boys, either four and six, or six and eight. Stella watches the lads eating their calamari with chopsticks and nodding silently as their father negotiates sex education with the same aplomb as he negotiates chopsticks. Deftly, slightly showing off, almost as if he has an audience. For fucks sake, thinks, Stella, who tackles sex education at 7.30 in the evening beside a warm fire, eating shared plates seated next to, well, she had to admit it…elderly tourists. They are all within touching distance. Just across the room are two elderly women deep in conversation, who look like a married couple.
Stella delicately loops miso flavoured spinach onto her chopsticks, attempting nonchalance as she strains to hear more. Gavin is sniffing his wine and swirling it and checking his phone and luxuriating in the discount lavishness of the evening. Stella now has the two lads growing up before her eyes. They move from young boys to skateboarding teenagers, glue sniffing, dope smoking, rebellious, contemptuous, rule breaking. The blonde soft locks of the older boy are now dreads, his brother’s hair shaved up one side with a tattoo (she can’t decide what the tattoo will be) up the right side of his neck. Serves them right, she thinks.
She wants to rescue the parents from all of it. She wants them to stay like this forever, talking to their lads about same sex attraction, wielding their chopsticks all four of them, talking about the snow in Japan, the Shibuya crossing, their futures so bright and before them. Everything is possible, they are the future, bright shiny and post Covid. Anything is possible. Especially if Gavin doesn’t drink too much tonight and there’s that King size bed waiting. She lets herself imagine this trendy couple in bed. The woman was definitely an ‘on top type’, she could tell. Stella wanted to let her know, that all that being in control was fine for a while, but, eventually, there would be a symmetry side by side, facing one another, no layers left, expectations lowered enough to allow for surprise, a rhythm that youth couldn’t possibly emulate. But of course, she knew, the woman would first have to have an affair, be forgiven and maybe go grey.
Gavin was already at the bar paying the bill, and Stella reluctantly bid farewell in her imagination to the new-age trendy family by the fire. She’d left the electric blankets on in the discount luxury motel and this would mean less time wasted warming each other up, unless they fell asleep beforehand.
Next week's short story is by Danielle Heyhoe.
