Losing Everything

Chapter 11.1: Now

Later, Lucy went for a walk. She didn’t have much else to do, and had begun to feel a little bored, and also useless, just sitting around watching Erica work. She decided to go for a walk down the beachfront road and back again, and hope that the fresh air would help clear her head of the last of the haze of weed and pills and sadness.

She told Erica where she was going, and Erica nodded, but barely looked up, so Lucy said bye, and left.

Lucy walked, and looked around as she did, curious, paying a little more attention to the town now. Everything was quiet. That was the first thing she noticed. It was a beach-side holiday resort in the off-season, and so almost everything seemed to be closed up.

She looked at the houses she passed. The newest houses, the ones closest to the beach and with the best views, seemed larger and more architectural. The older houses, back from the shore, were smaller and simpler, and tended to be made from square panels of fibreboard, squatting on low foundation piles, and surrounded by seas of cut grass. That was the kind of house which Erica had.

Lucy kept walking, looking around, and the further she walked, the quieter the town seemed. The roads were empty, and most of the houses seemed to be closed up. The town was so quiet, she realized, that kangaroos had wandered out of the bush behind the town, and were grazing on people’s front lawns, where the grass was presumably tender and tastier, or lying in the shade under trees and on roadside verges. They looked up, as Lucy walked past. Looked up, and watched her lazily, apparently accustomed enough to people going past that they didn’t bother hopping away.

Lucy walked past quietly, trying not to disturb them. It seemed nice to be in a town that had kangaroos grazing on lawns.

She walked a little further, wondering if the kangaroos were a problem for traffic, or if people just drove around them. Probably all the local people knew to keep an eye out, she decided, and just slowed down and waited for the kangaroos to move.

She walked as far as a takeaway place beside the beach, near an old wharf, which she hadn’t noticed that morning. She went inside, not really expecting them to sell coffee, but the guy at the counter seemed surprised by her uncertainty and pointed to an espresso machine between the till and the deep fryer. Lucy asked for two, thinking she might be able to get one back to Erica before it got completely cold, and then stood there breathing in the smell of fat and grease while he made it. He handed her two paper cups, and she paid, and then went back outside into the fresh salty air, and started walking back towards Erica’s as she sipped.

On the way, she saw a tiny, fluffy white dog suddenly come running out of a house through a dog door, yapping ferociously at three kangaroos that were grazing on the front lawn. The kangaroos looked up, disinterested, and then jumped over a low fence and hopped away, while the dog, trapped behind the fence and a closed gate, watched them go, barking.

A win for the tiny dog, Lucy thought, wanting to laugh. She walked past, smiling at it, but it ignored her and glared after the kangaroos.

She wondered why the barking had happened so suddenly, and whether this was a habit, something the dog did daily, or whether it had just been watching the kangaroos and finally become frustrated by their presence on its lawn.

She didn’t know, and couldn’t know, but she liked the idea that this happened every day, and that the dog and the kangaroos all somehow knew their roles, and played them without any great distress.