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Rob insisted on going to El Maximo for dinner again, but it was closed on Tuesdays. So, back at the Five Seasons, they sat on Toni's porch eating fish and chips, drinking box red wine from mugs.
"It's incredibly sad, this business with Artemis," Toni said.
"How do you mean?"
"It's like she was, I don't know, really special."
"I know, I know, I know," Rob said. He must have been bottling this up. "I thought it was only me but the photo in the file, she just looked so beautiful."
Toni glanced at him.
"I don't mean I fancied her," he said.
"I know."
"It's like she was radiant. That sounds stupid, doesn't it? But when I first saw her photo, for me, it was like light was pouring out of her."
"Yeah, I get you. You don't think she committed suicide, do you?"
Rob hesitated. It seemed difficult for him to answer. "Look, I just don't understand why she would."
"Did you know Dr Washburn was an oncologist?" Toni said.
"No, I didn't. Why do you ask?"
She shrugged. She'd hoped Rob might have found it important.
Though she could no longer see Rob in the dark, Toni could hear the sloshing as he helped himself to mug after mug of wine. The cold was becoming too much for her. Eventually, he must have heard her shivering and said, "One last smoke." The struck match illuminated his face, and Toni saw the red tip of his cigarette repeating an arc, like the flight of a fire fly.
"Have you ever been married?" she asked from beneath the blanket she'd wrapped around herself.
"A couple of close shaves," he said. "But no."
"Why not?"
"I guess deep down, below this sophisticated, lovable exterior, I'm a complete jerk."
Toni stayed silent.
"At this point, you're supposed to disagree," Rob said.
"Yeah, I know that. Look, I do think that you must be very difficult to get to know properly. If you take Johnny, well, with him, he's always Johnny – you get what you see. But with you, one minute you're like this dead serious, know it all lawyer, and the next you're like a five year old with ADT. I think that would be very tiring for someone to live with."
Rob didn't react. Toni watched the glow rise and quiver as he inhaled, then the parabola as he flicked the butt away. Her feet were stiff from cold when she stood. "I've got to be up early for my walk – see you tomorrow."
Rob said nothing, and Toni didn’t hear him move from the porch before she fell asleep.
WEDNESDAY
39
She was early again for her beach walk. Toni stepped onto the deck of Port and turned to shut her door.
"Don't get a shock, but do you mind if I keep you company this lovely morning?" Rob was waiting for her but not in his black suit. He was wearing a t-shirt that recorded his membership of the Otago Rag Committee 1989, jandals, and shapeless khaki shorts. He was also half-shaved so that the reddish shadow of a future goatee could be seen.
"What’s so funny?" Rob said.
Toni could offer plenty of reasons for her uncontrollable sniggers but settled on, "It's your face. I mean beard. What have you done to it?"
"I thought I might try growing a goatee."
"Like the cute detective I met?" she said.
"No, no, not at all. I've been thinking about it for a while actually." Rob said as his cheeks reddened. "Well, yes, come to think of it, you did mention he had one too. That must have subconsciously reminded me."
Toni wasn't sure whether she should be flattered, amused or concerned that he was prepared to make himself look an idiot for her sake. She had commented on the detective and how neat his goatee looked, but she hadn't thought for one moment that Rob had taken it in. She certainly hadn't thought he'd try to grow his own. "It's, um, very–"
"Very what, exactly?"
"–Unexpected," she said.
"Is 'unexpected' good or bad?"
Toni started to walk. "I'm not going to answer that."
"I see." Rob hesitated, and then followed. "Oh, by the way, I'm sorry. I meant to lend you my phone last night, but your lights were off by the time I remembered, and so I didn't want to disturb you. I can get it for you now if you like."
"That's OK," she said. "If I can use it later, that would be cool,"
He caught up with her.
"So how long did you stay out there in the dark last night?" she said.
"Oh, I meditated for a while."
"You mean sulked?"
"No, meditated, really. The stars were amazing. Oh, and I've given up smoking, by the way."
"Good," Toni said. "It's a filthy habit."
At the playground, Rob ran ahead and scrambled up a concrete whale. He stood on the blowhole, feet wide apart, as though Toni might want to take his kingship of the world. "This whale was here when I was a kid," he shouted down. "Chris, my brother, is three years older than me, and he could never push me off. And one day he fell over trying and broke his arm." He climbed down, cautious of the dew. "Actually, looking back, I'm surprised he didn't sue me. I bet he would these days."
Rob checked out the other playground equipment, test pushed a swing, gauged the incline of a slide, and twirled the roundabout, no doubt imagining the centrifugal effect on its joy riders. "Of course, all this wussy stuff wasn't here then," he said. "When we were kids, playgrounds were all about having fun. No one was obsessed with safety like they are now. In those days, someone was always losing their front teeth or breaking an arm, but no one seemed to be worse off for it, and do you know what, it was real fun."
"Was it made out of wood?" Toni said.
"Sorry?"
"Nothing. Let's go to the beach."
They get no further than a reef of rocks, some fifty metres from the start of their beach walk. Rob climbed up and looked down at her. "Have you ever thought what a waste of time the type of insurance we sell is? We insure people for when they die, and that's about it. And they don't even benefit from that themselves. When you're dead, you're dead, so what? We ought to offer the kind of insurance that lets people be happy while they're still alive. Happiness insurance. If you think about it – there are so many things in life we could insure against but don't. All those events that make us unhappy."
"Like what?" Toni said.
"Well, how about losing your cat – or your kid becoming a heroin addict – or, maybe, just being lonely."
Toni smiled. She blinked in the sunlight and made a visor with her hand.
"All right, take something like a failed relationship. We could issue you with a policy against that," he said.
"Would you insure against someone marrying the wrong person?"
"Better than that, we'll indemnify you for falling for the wrong person in the first place. I'm not saying we'll hand out money, but we'll put things right. If you're unhappy, we'll make you happy. Simple as that."
"Sounds cool," Toni said. "But who could afford that sort of insurance?"
"Obviously it's something only the government could do. We could set up a sort of ACC for happiness. And there would be one great big Ministry of Happiness, and we could make you the Minister."
"That sounds even better," she said. "Would I get a fat salary increase?"
"Of course, we'd have to keep the Minister of Happiness happy – and you'd get a monster bonus for every smiling face."
Toni scaled the reef next to him. Rob skimmed pebbles. "Five. Beat that."
Toni bettered his exaggerated score by two, and gave him a shove. "I could have pushed you off the whale, no problem."
"Yeah, I bet you could have."
"It's getting warm." Toni sat and pulled her hair up into a ponytail, tying it with a band she took from her jeans' pocket. Would she have done this in front of him if she'd known he'd be captivated by the action, that, when she stretched her arms up, she'd be as lovely to him as a Degas ballerina, with her vertebrae faintly revealed once more? Yes, today, she probably would.
br /> On their way back, Rob spotted something in the copse between the beach and the camp. He peered at the branch of a gnarly tree. "Hey, come and have a look at this." He pointed to a cobweb.
"No. I don't like spiders," she said.
"It's not a spider. Look."
A tissue of blossom had fallen into the plexus and, delicately suspended, it fluttered as Rob breathed on it. Toni looked over Rob's shoulder, and said, "Aware."