The way he watches me eat, and asks for a blow-by-blow account, used to be very unsettling. Somewhere along the line it became fun. I wondered if he remembered the taste and texture of things, the sensation of heat or cold, the sting of spicy food, the salty satisfaction of hot chips.
He told me the main food he remembered was his mum's Lemon Delicious. She used to make it for him on his birthday because it was his favourite. I suspected I would have liked her.
Between flavour adventures with Gary and finally eating properly at home with Kate, I'd managed to put on a little weight, which accentuated my natural pear shape. That didn't bother me as much as it used to, when my ex-boyfriend had provided a daily critique on the things he didn't like about my figure, personality, habits and intelligence. I had long since concluded that being single was a significant step up from being with a jackass.
I fell asleep on the lounge during a 1950s musical featuring someone improbable as the love interest and a glorious amount of tap dancing.
CHAPTER 7
Gary must have carried me to bed at some point. I woke up briefly as the bedroom door closed, then promptly burrowed into the bedclothes and fell back to sleep. Having done me a courtesy, he didn't really deserve the incoherent abuse he got when he knocked on my bedroom door at about 6am. He had to knock three times before I dragged myself, cursing, out of bed.
I emerged, still wearing last night's clothes, and skulked past him into the kitchen. Kettle on. Coffee cup out. I didn't offer him one.
My distorted reflection in the stainless steel kettle was woeful. My hair was all over the place, like I'd stuck my tongue in a live socket. To be fair, it looks like that most of the time. I also had creases on my face from my pillow. Great. Not even the undead should have to see what I look like first thing in the morning. A refreshing shower was in order.
After a quick wash, I strategically squirted on a scented body spray, then dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. The shirt was dark red and had "Shhhhh!" written across it in big black letters, next to a picture of an index finger held in front of a pair of lips. A birthday present last March from my library colleagues.
Lastly, I grabbed my voluminous satchel and considered throwing it in the bin. The bag had taken on gross-factor 10, having recently contained receptacles that had harboured a severed hand.
On the other side of the scales, it was a fantastic bag. It had lots of compartments which nominally made it easier to find all the things I carried, like my wallet, headache tablets, lip balm, some old receipts, an MP3 player, my current reading matter, keys, pencils, notepad, unpaid bills and my mobile phone.
The gross factor was trumped by the useful factor, and I kept the bag.
I gulped down a glass of milk and a muesli bar while Gary waited quietly on the sofa, no doubt suppressing disappointment that I hadn't made something that looked or smelled more interesting for the morning meal.
Ready to face the world, I turned to him. "Northward ho, Gaz!"
Far from being energised, Gary simply began to put the teen-girl emo-romance back into his pocket. I held out my hand and he wordlessly passed it to me, along with his new DVD, so I could put them in my bag.
"Ahh… You've got milk…" Gary wiggled his fingers vaguely to demonstrate where. I dragged the back of my hand across my lips, feeling unkempt, then he sniffed and said: "You smell nice. Is that jasmine?"
"Yes." Both impressed and bemused.
"My mum liked jasmine."
Nice save, Gary. "Let's get to Ballarat."
Despite the hideous much-too-earliness of the hour, there were plenty of people around. I wondered if any of them were on errands as mysterious as ours. Gary seemed marginally more relaxed this morning, but as the tram deposited us at Southern Cross Railway Station, his tension returned.
The station is very spacious and the curved roof has a futuristic cathedral feel to it. Gary promptly got confused trying to find the ticket counter for rural destinations - the station had been totally rebuilt in recent years and he confessed he hadn't been near it since 1983.
I reassured him that mere mortals also got lost trying to find the ticket counters. Between us we managed to buy tickets and find the platform. I considered teasing him about getting lost inside a train station before remembering that he'd carried me to bed last night, without banging my head on a cupboard or dropping me, and I gave him a break.
As the train pulled out, I worked on my powers of effective harassment again. "This guy in Ballarat - what on earth could he want from you?"
I shouldn't have asked. No lies came forth, but no answer either. Instead, he settled down with the curtain positioned to shield his eyes from the light. I was glad the myths were wrong about the effect of sunlight. Gary didn't know what it was about the sun that made him itchy and squinty, but it didn't burn him up like a magnesium flash, thank goodness. He had little enough of a social life as it was.
"Hey," I said, "I've got some new songs for us to listen to." Gary collected songs the way he collected books and movies. He had bought whole albums on the strength of one song, or the group's name. It was fun trying to dig up things he hadn't heard before.
For the rest of the trip, we shared ear buds on my MP3 player. After a while, I left Gary to study the player and shift randomly through song lists while I read his hilarious/dreadful novel.
The train pulled into Ballarat and we emerged into a bright summer day. Gary, peering at signs on posts and bus windows, finally found the right stop. We reached Sovereign Hill with no further difficulty.
"Thanks. I'll meet you back in town," he said, inspecting the fence with a view, I assumed, to jumping it and avoiding the entry fee.
"I'm going in to pan for gold, remember?"
He decided not to make a fuss. "At the entrance then, at the end of the day. Or. Or I'll come find you when I'm done."
"Sounds like a plan," I smiled encouragingly. It didn't chase away the vaguely worried crease that had returned to his brow.
I paid for both of us, so he wouldn't have to sneak in. I am aware he has a finite income from the investments his parents left for him, and a mindset still bogged down in how much things used to cost in the sixties.
A few people in period costume were there for the meet-and-greet. The usual shop was there, filled with ceramics, tea-towels and, as this was a gold rush re-enactment town, vials of gold flakes and items of gold jewellery. Ballarat's place in history was also heralded by all the forms in which one could buy the Eureka flag - the standard flown by the miners striking and later dying for their rights. Gary seized upon the pictorial map of the place and found his destination.
"Right. See you later." He didn't move.
"You sure you don't want me to…?"
That got him going. "No. No, it's fine."
I watched him go, then walked out into the re-enacted past.
The dirt road forked in front of me. To my left the street dropped away to a miniature diggings, with a creek running through the middle of it and a handful of people already crouched by the water's edge, panning inexpertly for gold flakes. On either side of the dusty road were timber shops and hotels
