Page 71 of The Elements

Granted, it’s early in the morning, but I’m disproportionately irritated when I emerge from the gents to find that Emmet is not seated where I left him, his bright yellow backpack abandoned on a chair next to my own.

I look around, my gaze darting between sleepy-eyed passengers, cleaning staff, and airline crew, all making their way through the concourse.

It’s not the first time I’ve lost my son.

When he was five, I let go of his hand for a moment in David Jones on Castlereagh Street, and it was almost thirty minutes before I found him again, sitting in a corner of kitchenware, with the patience of an obedient puppy, his cheeks streaked with tears but hopeful that his master will return for him sooner or later.

Most parents are at their most protective when their children are infants but I’m the opposite, having become increasingly vigilant since he turned fourteen a few months ago.

I can’t help myself. I know the dangers out there for boys his age.

A woman stops before me, probably noticing the uneasy expression on my face. “Are you all right?” she asks.

“It’s my son,” I tell her. “I told him to wait for me but—”

“I thought it was something like that. Look, I’m not on duty, I’m catching a flight, but I’m a police officer and can help if you like. When did you last see him?”

“Just a few minutes ago. I went to the bathroom and—”

“How old is he?”

When I tell her, she studies me with a mixture of incredulity and pity.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” she says. “I thought you meant a toddler. He’ll be around here somewhere. You can’t lose teenagers, as much as we might want to sometimes.”

A moment later he appears from behind me. He must have followed me into the bathroom and used one of the cubicles.

“What?” he asks when I glare at him.

“This is him?” the woman asks, and I nod.

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll leave you to it,” she says, walking away.

“I didn’t know where you were,” I tell him when she’s out of earshot.

“I needed to go,” he says slowly, as if speaking to someone of limited intelligence, a tone he’s increasingly adopted with me in recent times.

“I asked you to wait with the bags.”

He rolls his eyes. If this gesture was ever to become an Olympic sport, he’d be Australia’s number one hope.

“Can I get some chocolate?” he asks. “I didn’t have any breakfast.”

“You said you weren’t hungry.”

“Because you got me out of bed at three in the morning. Of course I wasn’t hungry.”

I made sure we had everything packed by yesterday afternoon so there would be nothing for either of us to do but take quick showers when our alarms went off, but the taxi still picked us up from North Bondi at three thirty.

Neither of us uttered a word on the way to the airport, Emmet wearing completely superfluous sunglasses along with the AirPods that have become my mortal enemy.

But it’s important not to get the day off to a bad start.

We’re going to be in each other’s company for an extended period and if we’re going to survive this trip without killing each other, then it’s down to me, as the adult, to adapt to my son’s mood swings.

“An apple might be better,” I suggest, knowing exactly how this will be received. “Or maybe we could find some ham and cheese croissants.”

“Nah. Chocolate. I need some for the plane too.”

“Fine,” I say, leading him toward a Relay, where he loses himself before a wall of processed sugar.

He’s always had a sweet tooth but never seems to put a pound on.

If I ate half the trash that he does, they’d have to wheel me home.

I watch him from behind, his bare legs bronzed and slender from spending so much time at the beach, and recall when my own body was as slim and athletic as his.

I’m still pretty fit, for my age, even if the belt buckle is starting to loosen by a notch.

I run and I surf, although Damian—Emmet’s closest friend—recently said that what I do isn’t surfing at all, it’s controlled drowning, which set them both off in near hysterics of laughter.

That said, Emmet isn’t as tall as I was at that age and, at only five foot seven, remains shorter than most of his friends.

Although he’d never articulate it, I suspect he’s hoping for a growth spurt soon.

He recently bought some dumbbells, trying to add some muscle to his lean frame, and he’s started buying enormous tubs of protein powder that he’s adding to his morning milkshakes.

I make my way toward the magazines, where I pick up a copy of GQ , a crossword book, and the Sydney Morning Herald , scanning the headlines quickly.

Turning away, my eyes land on a table holding a selection of the latest fiction, and at its center is a pile of the new novel by Furia Flyte.

A miniature cardboard cut-out of the author is propped up, showing her with her head turned coquettishly to the left, an enigmatic smile on her face.

She’s dressed entirely in white, which only accentuates the blackness of her skin, and her arms are wrapped around her body.

Something in the pose seems a little strained, as if she’s uncomfortable connecting her beauty to her work but has been convinced to do so.

“It only happens with women,” she told me once, when I quizzed her about the machinations of the publishing industry.

“Maybe because all the men are ugly,” I suggested, and she shook her head, listing four or five male novelists who she considered handsome, none of whom I had ever heard of but who I looked up online afterward to see what they wore, how they styled their hair, how they presented themselves to the world, looking for tips as to how to model myself on them so that she might fall for me as I fell for her.

Studying their author pictures, and the pained expressions on their faces as they stared into the middle distance, looking for all the world as if someone had asked them to explain Fermat’s Last Theorem, they seemed more constipated than anything else.

Being confronted by her image now, however, feels like a punch to the guts, a complicated blend of lingering desire and anger.

Since its publication, I’ve done all I can to avoid Furia’s book—her fourth—which hasn’t been easy, as it’s been heavily promoted.

Her picture has appeared on the front page of weekend supplements and, driving into work, I’ve occasionally been forced to turn off the radio when she’s been announced as a guest. I haven’t even set foot in a Dymocks store since Christmas for fear of being confronted by it and, while I’ve never been a big reader, I usually have a thriller on the go.

But some masochistic urge forces me to pick it up now and read the blurb on the back.

I already know the basic story, which concerns the relationship between an indigenous female drover in nineteenth-century Western Australia, a traveling magician, and the magician’s wife, and I grit my teeth as I read the synopsis.

I can’t bring myself to turn to the dedication or acknowledgments pages so return it to the pile.

Just as I do, a woman’s hand reaches out to lift it.

“You haven’t lost him again, I hope?” she asks, and I realize it’s the policewoman from earlier.

“No,” I say, nodding across the shop, but Emmet’s pulled another disappearing trick, causing me a fresh burst of irritation. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I mutter.

“Perhaps you should keep him on a leash.”

“It would make life a lot easier.”

“I’m just teasing,” she says. “I have one of them at home myself. A teenager, I mean, not a leash. So I know what they’re like.

Bloody nightmare, most of the time. Sweetest kid on the planet till puberty hit and then, bang, Hannibal Lecter without the charm.

I’ve basically decided to stay out of his way until he turns twenty. Maybe twenty-five.”

Looking around, I discover him standing before a display of neck cushions. He’s placed one around his neck, and I know that he’s going to ask me to buy it for him. Sure enough, he trots my way, holding it out like a peace offering, one that I’m expected to pay for.

“Dad,” he says, but I cut him off. There’s no way I’m spending eighty dollars on something so pointless.

“No,” I say.

“But—”

“Emmet, no. There’ll be plenty of pillows on the plane. Those things aren’t even comfortable. They just look like they are.”

He glances toward the woman and, perhaps because she’s present, decides not to make a fuss. He notices the book she’s holding, however, and an opportunity for payback presents itself.

“You should buy that,” he tells her. “It got great reviews. Well researched. Unreliable narrator. Literally everyone is reading it.”

“Literally everyone isn’t,” I say, making inverted comma symbols in the air, but he saunters away without catching my eye, a self-satisfied smirk spreading across his face as he returns the cushion to where he found it.

“He doesn’t seem that bad,” she says, turning to me, but I say nothing. It’s hard not to admire my son’s ability to offer a fuck you without actually saying the words.

“No, he’s a total charmer,” I reply, laughing a little to myself.

Over the Tannoy, I hear an announcement that our flight will begin boarding shortly and make my way toward the till, paying for more chocolate and gelatinous sweets than any human being should consume in a month.

“And these,” says Emmet, appearing by my side now and throwing in a party-size bag of Honey Soy Chicken crisps, enough to feed a family of four.

“For fuck’s sake,” I say. “You do know there’ll be food on the plane, right?”

“It’s always smart to bring your own supplies.”