How Do I Love Thee? (3 page)

Beside the door, in the middle of the path, was a fresh gravestone, with a man on his knees, bent away from me, chipping at the headstone with a hammer and chisel as if his life depended on it.

Drawing closer so I could read the engraving over his shoulder, and already terrified that I knew what I’d find, I saw that it
was
my name—or would be, just as soon as he finished squeezing the second
s
into Hossted.

He spun around and grinned up at me with those sparkling brown eyes and that five-o’clock-shadowed smile that always manages to make my skin ripple with anticipation. Then I noticed that I was blushing, not only embarrassed to appear
nearly naked before him, but also from guilt, since I never felt this kind of thrill with my poor husband.

‘Marty?’ I asked, stepping closer. ‘Why didn’t you ever mention you were a doctor?’

‘Not important.’ He rose and pulled me into his arms. ‘What do you think of that? Some idiot misspelled your name, so I fixed it. That’s how much I love you, Emily, let me count the ways …’

He broke into song, balladising my favourite poem from memory, having seen it only once recently as far as I knew, framed in my living room.

I glanced to the gravestone, engrossed by his resonant voice, and was relieved to notice the date of death was blank.

‘I’m not dead yet,’ I said, wondering why he—or my romanticised illusion of him—wasn’t devastated to think that I might be. Surely he would have noticed that I hadn’t passed him in the hall on my way to work that morning?

‘You’ll be dead soon enough,’ he promised flatly.

His smile widened and I couldn’t tell if he was being sinister or matter-of-fact.

‘We’re all going to die eventually, I hope you mean?’

In response, he dropped with me, putting us both on our knees, all the better for me to read the whole epitaph while still clasped against his broad and usually reassuring chest:

I screamed, but that damned light blinded me again, making me wince.

‘I told you she wasn’t up to it,’ I heard Death complain to Detective Symes. ‘Not as bad as the last seizure when they lowered her over the balcony, but she’s still on very shaky territory. I’ve dosed her enough to steady her heart and dull the pain without knocking her out, but if you can’t do this without triggering another event, I’m kicking you out of here. Are we clear?’

‘Sorry,’ Symes said, replying to me instead. He took off his hat and shook it twice. ‘I’ll be quick as that if you can answer me this …’

But why hadn’t I noticed that funky retro pinstriped hat before? Oh, hang on, I had. He was wearing it in that hit-man caricature I drew earlier in my subconscious. Funny that.

‘I need to know how you first met.’

‘Who, Marty?’ My teeth chattered, only this time it had nothing to do with electric shock and everything to do with that bad feeling that was stirring in my gut again. ‘Let me think, I …’

I stared at the bed sheets, thinking back to a year ago, to that cloudy day when sunshine appeared briefly in my life before the hurricane.

I’d been out on the footpath outside my apartment building, on my back under my car—Roger’s classic Monaro—with only my legs protruding while I tried to disentangle the long string of a kid’s yoyo that somehow had managed to tangle up in my undercarriage—and no, I didn’t have to untangle a kid first, although that’s the sketch that appeared in the next episode of my
Daily Grimes
cartoon strip.

Marty, on the other hand, had spent the morning on the beach, riding his palomino that he owned and stabled at an equestrian centre a few blocks away. That’s the way he explained it the first time anyway; that he’d been galloping past on his way back from the beach when I slid out from my car, causing his horse to shy at the sudden sight of me. Marty was thrown and he landed on the thick grass at my feet. It took him a whole month to confess that he’d really been riding up and down past me for an hour—and at every other opportunity for nearly three months—and it wasn’t until he faked his accident that I finally noticed him.

‘I don’t really remember how I met him,’ I told Symes, but I noticed my hands were sweaty, so I clutched a handful of dry sheet. ‘In the hall, I guess. He’s lived just across the hall from me for more than a year.’

‘And you went to the Snowy Mountains together …’

Huh?
That caught me off guard. How did
he
know?

‘With twenty-seven couples from your building. I saw the group photos in your lobby. So that’s quite a close-knit community you must have for so many to go off on dirty weekends together?’

‘That was
not
a dirty weekend!’ I flushed hot, and only barely managed to stay calm, knowing I couldn’t take a seizure now. I had to defend myself—
and
Marty! ‘That was the annual general meeting, Detective; the first I’ve attended in more than a decade! You must understand,’ I sighed, swallowing my frustration with my fat tongue, and grateful that Death had dosed me enough to make talking easier. ‘Most of my neighbours are business professionals, barely enough time for their families, let alone holidays. So the building management committee, in their
wisdom
,’ I added with emphasis, ‘organises a bulk discount at a tourist resort each year so we can get significant discounts. Mixes pleasure with tax-deductible business, you might say. But who knew it would be the coldest autumn week in history until it was time to drive up to the ski lodge? If it hadn’t been for Marty’s offer to car-pool in his four-wheel drive, I’d have been in my late husband’s sports car. And that’s all there was to it.’

All that I was prepared to confess to, that is.

Now that I thought about that road trip, though, the taste of my first muffin came back to me—sweet with sultanas, dripping with melted butter and virtually the only bright spot in the whole weekend!

Then I was there again, strapped into the front passenger seat of Marty’s stylish grey Landcruiser with my left ankle in plaster and my mouth full of muffin and diet coke.

‘You must admit it was funny,’ Marty said, trying to make light of his own accident—although how he could drive down such a steep icy road with a broken arm and still manage to joke was quite miraculous. ‘I’ve never hurt myself laughing before.’

‘Serve yourself right,’ I replied, trying to maintain what little was left of my dignity without splurting food all over my lap. I didn’t dare to ask how much of my naked butt he’d seen as I screamed, skiing backwards past him with my pants hugging my ankles. He’d seen far more than I cared to imagine a few minutes later when I’d struck a tree at the bottom and snapped my ankle so I couldn’t manage to pull up my trousers by myself.

‘How was I supposed to know there’s a right and wrong way to angle skis when stopping for a nature break? We were so far from the lodge and I was busting so bad, I didn’t even think.’

He chewed on his lip, trying not to grin. ‘I’m sure it’s all over the internet by now, Emily, so you don’t need to fear any other beginners falling foul of the same danger.’

‘Oh, yes, that makes me feel a
lot
better. Thanks Marty.’

‘Don’t feel bad. It was my fault entirely. I offered to coach you away from everyone else, so I should have warned you. I was just so preoccupied looking the other way to make sure you had privacy, I completely forgot.’

He did break his arm in a fall while helping me back to the lodge alone though—three kilometres through the snow—so I could hardly scold him.

Just then—fatefully—the ice chains on his tyres found a rough patch and my drink lurched, spilling it down my blouse despite my amateur attempts at juggling, trying to save myself.

‘Take my ski jacket,’ he said, meaning the one that was hooked behind his driver’s seat. ‘The inner lining might soak that up for you.’

I nodded, but felt guilty all over again. A four-hundred-dollar ski jacket and I’d torn it when I fell off his shoulder. Sure, he’d been laughing when his boot slipped, but he was only trying to make light of the situation. We weren’t even halfway back to the lodge by then, but rather than leave me out there alone, he chose to lug me the rest of the way on his back despite his pain.

To make matters worse now, I’d barely soaked up the coke when a secondary consequence of a wet shirt and water, water everywhere around me, increasingly demanded my attention.

‘Oh perfect!’ I muttered after trying to suffer it out. ‘I need another nature break.’

He looked at me as if to say,
now
? But he was smart enough—or maybe just as embarrassed as me—not to mention it.

‘I think it’s the snow,’ I confessed, shuddering at how irritated he must really be. ‘I’m so sorry, Marty, I
did
try to go back at the truck stop, but the cubicles were so small I couldn’t shut the door without climbing onto the toilet, and don’t think I didn’t try because … well, I’ve already said more than I should!’

I patted my knee to remind him of the cast on the end of my leg, but only managed to remind myself that another painkiller would be nice too.

He glanced to his rear-vision mirror. ‘Well, it’s all clear. You could—’

‘You’re kidding?’

‘It’s another twenty minutes to the nearest pit stop,’ he said with a pained but sweetly sympathetic expression.

‘I’ll make it,’ I insisted, and to his credit, he didn’t voice any concerns about the welfare of his leather bucket
seats—although
I
certainly would have if we’d been in the Monaro.

Five more minutes down the road though, after bumping, jerking, and staring out the window at all that ice while my damp shirt continued to work its tragic magic, the inevitable moment was upon me.

I looked at Marty, and he looked at me as if he’d been expecting it. With a grim but ever-gallant smile, he pulled over to a snow bank and angled his car to afford me a little shelter on my side from the chilly breeze.

‘Hang two secs,’ he offered. ‘I’ll come round and—’

‘Oh, no you won’t!’ I said, already shoving my door open. ‘I’ll do this myself or die trying! Finish your coffee while it’s still hot.’

He nodded and adjusted the side mirror to keep watch on possible traffic for me.

It took too many painful hops to reach the back of his car, but that was far enough. The rising wind and my leg cast made it impossible to hobble across a snow-filled drain to the woods anyway. So I lifted my skirt well clear and stretched my panties aside far enough to do what I had to. Twenty-dollar lace elastic ruined, but there was no way this side of hell I was dropping them outside my apartment ever again.

Squatting with my leg in plaster soon proved to be an unexpected balancing trick, but I overcame that too, by leaning my butt against the rear bumper. Man, it was cold against my bare skin, but the relief to my bladder was worth it.

Until I tried to get up.

I was stuck—literally—to the bumper.

Maybe I had sweated just enough from the pain of hopping, or maybe my warm skin bonded to icy moisture already on the car—made so much colder by driving through icy mountain air at velocity—but the end result was the same: I might as well have used glue.

I tried to warm the bumper with my hand, using the corner of my skirt as a protective glove, and despite the awkward angle, or perhaps because of it, my skirt stuck to the bumper too. Then when I wrenched it off in a desperate fit of anger, the fabric tore.

I heard the electric buzz of a window.

‘Hey, are you okay back there?’

Only then did I realise that my bumping must have been jolting the whole vehicle.

‘I’m fine!’ I shouted against the wind. ‘Just one more minute!’

‘Well, okay, but just so you know, that’s about all you’ve got. I see lights coming on the road below us.’

‘Oh great,’ I muttered to myself. ‘A bus load of Japanese tourists, no doubt.’

Beginning to panic, I tugged and bumped, but the cold sweat from my exertions only managed to worsen the problem.

‘Are you
sure
you’re okay?’

‘Well …’ I croaked, totally mortified. ‘That depends if you drank the rest of your coffee.’

I could see tourist photos of this twittered to every dark corner of cyberspace, no matter how he replied. There was no way I could see the lights of the oncoming vehicle, but the wind brought the sound of its engine through the gullies—and I would have bet my other butt-cheek it was a
bus
labouring up the mountain!

‘Yeah, sorry,’ he said. ‘Did you want some?’

‘Not really.’ That would mean he’d have to bring it to me, and I was so desperate for him not to see me in an embarrassing situation ever again, I would have warmed the bumper with handfuls of my own warm water to melt the ice—that’s if I hadn’t spent every last drop in the snow already.

Then—call him intuitive, or call him intelligent enough to figure out my predicament—I heard his door open.

‘No, don’t!’ I cried as snow and ice crunched under his boots. ‘
Please
, Marty, stop! I’d rather have a bus load of tourists see me!’

‘Oh no you wouldn’t.’ But he stopped anyway, probably steeling himself for the sight of a stupid, clumsy, half-naked wretch stuck to his car. ‘Come on, let me help,’ he said, in that gentle, calm voice that only managed to make me feel worse. ‘I’ve already seen all there is to see—unless you’ve somehow managed to ditch your shirt, and trust me, you have nothing to be ashamed of anyway.’

‘No, honestly, just speed off and leave me! Go fast enough and it should just rip the skin off cleanly. Only please don’t come back here. I’d rather hitch a ride with strangers I’ll never see again!’

‘Hell no!’ he said, bursting around the corner. ‘I’m not ditching you by the roadside in this weather. Not—’ He did stop when he saw me though. ‘No, Emily. Not under
any
circumstances.’

I buried my face in my hands, wishing myself to disappear.

‘Yeah, good idea,’ he said. ‘You’d better not look. I’m afraid there’s really only one way to get you out of this without having it splashed all over the newspapers—and I doubt that you’ll ever forgive me for it.’