Page 49

It’s a Saturday morning streaming with early winter sunlight when Ethan wakes to the smell of butter, vanilla, and sugar. Jasmine doesn’t cook often, but she makes great pancakes. He’s hungry, and his mood, as he opens his bedroom blinds all the way, is as bright and sunshiny as the day. Ever since their visit to the psychic, he and Jasmine have been talking more, spending more time together. She calls him Jason Bourne now. He still calls her Jasmine. No nickname has come to mind.

They have talked a lot about Luca’s readings that day. Ethan told her about how Luca had channeled Harvey’s words, “guys like us.” Jasmine said the first time she saw Luca he told her that he could see someone behind her plaiting her hair. “That’s Nana!” Jasmine had cried. Ever since then she has felt a wonderful sense of peace knowing her grandmother is with her at all times.

Ethan isn’t one hundred percent convinced. Luca could have hit on that “guys like us” phrase by pure luck. It’s not that specific. “It’s pretty specific,” said Jasmine. Also, when Luca read Jasmine’s cards that day he told her to be prepared for “financial difficulties” later this year, which seems as likely as Ethan dying in a fight. (Does the guy really not know who Jasmine is ?)

Ethan is still fairly chill about the lady’s prediction, but he has noticed that when he’s out, he is more aware of the possibility of violence. He scans the streets like he’s actually Jason Bourne on a mission. He keeps an eye out for drunken angry thugs. On more than one occasion he’s crossed the road so he hasn’t had to walk past the entrance of a noisy pub. He’s not sure how he feels about that. More sympathetic to how women live their lives?

He reminds himself to never accidentally mention this revelation to an actual woman.

He pulls on a T-shirt and jeans and heads to the kitchen. He can hear the sizzle of butter. There is a skip in his step, a “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” tone in his voice. “Do I smell pancakes?”

“You sure do, mate,” says a deep voice, and Ethan fails to catch his face before it falls like a disappointed child’s.

There’s a guy in the kitchen, in fucking Calvin Klein boxer shorts, tanned bare rugby-player chest, private-school floppy hair, strong jawline no doubt inherited from his dad along with his trust fund, drinking coffee from Ethan’s favorite mug, leaning back against the counter, watching Jasmine cook pancakes.

“Morning, Ethan,” says Jasmine. She gestures with her spatula. “This is Carter.”

“So you’re the flatmate.” Unmistakable animosity in the word “flatmate.” Carter puts down Ethan’s mug, holds out his hand, and Ethan knows what’s going to happen and it does: Carter crushes his hand, holding eye contact, letting Ethan know he’s the highest-ranking chimpanzee in this kitchen.

“Nice to meet you,” says Ethan. “Wow. Good grip there, mate.”

Jasmine glances over. “Watch it. Ethan broke his wrist rock climbing. He only just got the cast off.”

Fury flares in Carter’s eyes, because Ethan called him out on his alpha male behavior, in front of Jasmine, and everyone knows women hate that, but the guy isn’t stupid. He comes right back at him with a right hook of good-humored good manners. “Sorry. My old-school dad is obsessed with firm handshakes.”

“You want a pancake, Ethan?” says Jasmine. She’s wearing a tank top and pajama pants, and her hair isn’t as wild as it normally is in the morning, she’s swirled it into a kind of topknot.

“Does she cook breakfast like this for you every day? Lucky guy!” Carter puts a possessive hand on Jasmine’s shoulder, rubs up and down, up and down. Ethan’s skin crawls.

Oh, Jasmine, thinks Ethan. He’s trouble. Can’t you see he’s trouble?

When he first moved in he was ready to run into hookups in the kitchen. They are two single people, it had to happen at some point, but Jasmine had only just come out of a long-term relationship at the time. He’d stopped expecting it. He got comfortable. He got delusional.

“I’m good,” says Ethan. “I’m about to go out.”

Everyone knows it’s a lie. His trilling “Do I smell pancakes?” still echoes.

“Take ours back to bed?” says Carter to Jasmine, his hand now low on her back. He gives Ethan a shit-eating grin. It says: I know how much you bench-press, your bank balance, the crappy car you drive, how badly you want her. You lose, I win. On every count.

Ethan gets out of the apartment as fast as he can and walks toward Bronte Beach, as if he really is meeting someone for breakfast.

What a loser he is, thinking he had a chance with a girl like that when she gave him no indication whatsoever that she had any interest. Carter is probably “someone,” or his dad is. People like that date each other. They speak the same language, holiday in the same ski resorts. Jasmine and Carter are probably in bed right now imitating his hopeful nerdy tone: Do I smell pancakes?

Sorrow and humiliation make his throat catch. He pulls his phone from his back pocket, dials. As the phone rings he sees a couple passionately making out. The guy is sitting on a low brick fence. The girl is standing between his legs. It’s nine a.m. It’s unnecessary.

“Hello?” A woman’s voice.

His heart plummets. He takes the phone away from his ear to look at the name of the person he has just called and the realization of what he has done crashes through him.

He has called Harvey. Harvey is the friend he calls when he’s miserable. You don’t call Harvey when you get a promotion, you call Harvey when you crash your car. Harvey loves misery. He never tries to make you feel better or downplays your feelings. He wants every detail, the more humiliating the better.

Ethan can’t speak. That axe-like sensation of grief again. He wants to speak to Harvey.

The woman says, “Ethan? It’s Lila. Harvey’s sister. We met at the funeral.”

Pocket dial. Pretend it’s a pocket dial.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, and he hears tears in his voice. “I just…forgot. For a moment I forgot. I can’t believe I did that. I felt like talking to him.”

“Don’t worry about it. It happens to me all the time.”

“I remember meeting you,” says Ethan. “Hi, Lila. I really can’t believe I did that.”

“I’ve got his phone,” says Lila. “Some people text. I mean, not accidentally, they know he’s dead, but they text him. One guy texted: Sorry about the hundred bucks, miss you, mate. ”

“Deano,” says Ethan. “Tosser. Harvey wasn’t going to let that go.”

“I should get him to pay it to Harvey’s estate,” says Lila.

“You should.” Ethan wipes his sweaty forehead, looks up at a cloud-scudded blue sky. How is it he still gets to be here in this solar system, is still allowed to stand on this planet as it orbits around the sun, when Harvey is in some other dimension? Or simply no longer exists? “How are you…managing?”

“You know what, I just can’t believe it,” says Lila. “It’s nearly twomonths since the funeral and I still…I still can’t get my head around it.”

“I know,” says Ethan. “I know. ”

“Harvey never seemed the type to die young,” says Lila. “He’s been middle-aged since he was ten. He should have got to be middle-aged.”

Ethan laughs. “I know exactly what you mean.”

A seagull squawks raucously and someone honks their horn. Ethan presses the phone to his ear. Is she crying? Please don’t let her be crying.

“I should let you go,” says Ethan. “I’m sorry, again—”

“Call him—call me—any time you feel like it. It’s nice for me to know people are out there thinking of Harvey. Missing him too. Bye, Ethan.”

She hangs up and Ethan walks toward the beach, past the couple who don’t stop their rabid kissing. He feels better. Surely Carter won’t be around for long, and if Jasmine falls for a guy like that, then she’s not the girl for Ethan.

He catches sight of a quietly perched kookaburra, sitting regally on the branch of a white gum, almost completely camouflaged against the trunk. The bird’s coolly calculating eyes meet his, and a childhood memory comes to him. Their next-door neighbors invited Ethan and his sister over to admire their fancy new pond filled with shimmery goldfish. The very next afternoon, as Ethan got changed out of his uniform, he looked out his bedroom window to see a kookaburra with something large, shimmery-gold and helpless in its mouth, which it was hitting, over and over, against the trunk of a tree.

Death and brutality in his own front yard.

He’s never forgotten it.