Lexicon

the dashboard was an object with something black twisting and crawling across its surface and the blackness kicked him somewhere in the core of his brain and everything went still. Something inside him revolted, a long way down.
    “Lie down,” she said.
    He lay in the dirt. An ant crawled across the sand in front of his eyes.
    “You could have helped me, Eliot. I gave you that choice.” Her boots appeared before him. “But you chose Yeats.”
    The words rolled by him. They evoked no reaction. He was patient, waiting for the words that would tell him what to do.
    “Lie still and don’t talk or move until the sun rises the day after tomorrow. After that, I don’t care what you do.” Her boots crunched toward the car. “You and me are done, Eliot. Next time, I won’t leave you alive.”
    The door slammed. The engine turned. The car rolled away.
    The ant reached his nose and began to tentatively feel its way up. Eliot lay still. He breathed. He did not talk. He did not move.
    • • •
    She drove to the homestead in Eliot’s car and killed the engine. The metal ticked as it cooled. She could see Harry’s paramedic van, and the garden, which had gone to crap since she’d last been here. Through the living room window she could see the back of their sofa, the lamp in the shape of a dog, a corner of a table: small proofs of her old life. She looked at these awhile, because there had been times over the past three months when she had wondered if they existed.
    She collected her satchel and climbed out into the blazing sun. She felt curiously fragile. Transparent. She ascended the steps and knocked. The thing was, if Harry wasn’t pleased to see her, she was in kind of a tough spot. She was kind of completely fucked. He would be pleased to see her. She knew that. It was just hard to stop thinking about, since the consequences were so horrific. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. She knocked again. Harry was here somewhere; she had made sure of that. She waited.
    She left the front door to circle the house. The land was wide and empty of dust gyres that might signal he was out on one of the bikes. She peered in the kitchen window but saw only plates and cups. She tried the door and the handle turned. That meant nothing; it was never locked. She went inside.
    “Harry?” She touched her satchel for reassurance. She felt tempted to pull out the word, in case there were poets lurking around corners, behind sofas. Crazy. There were no other organization people in Broken Hill. She had watched this town for a week. But still. “Harry?”
    The living room looked like she’d left it yesterday. The sofa cushions were bowed: Harry had imprinted himself on one and she thought she could see a hint of herself, the briefer denizen, on the other. She had been here. She had affected things. She touched her forehead, because she was having trouble thinking. All her planning and he wasn’t here. She should have considered what to do about that. But he should be here. An odd thought occurred to her: that he knew she was here, and that was why she couldn’t find him. He didn’t want to see her. “Harry,” she said. She wanted to explain. She had been through a lot. She hadn’t talked to him in three months because that was the only way to keep him safe.
    Outside, three kangaroos bounded across the driveway, one after the other. The world felt uncertain. She was afraid. This was going badly, very badly indeed. She was beginning to think that after all her hopping, with the ground growing hotter beneath her feet, she might not make it to Harry after all.
    She heard an engine. She ran to the kitchen and saw him bouncing across the earth on a dirt bike. He went right past the window without glancing and she didn’t move because her body was staked to the floor. The tires chewed earth. He kicked the stand and came up the back steps. His eyes met hers.
    She opened her mouth to say hello and he disappeared. She blinked. The back door burst open and he came at her like a train. She raised her hands and he crashed into her. She was enveloped by the scent of earth and motor oil. “Mother fuck!” he said. “How are you here?”
    “I just am.”
    “Em!” He squeezed her until she thought she would pass out. “Jesus, Em!”
    “Let me go.”
    “No.”
    She wound herself around him. “Where were you?”
    “Me? Where was I? Where the fuck were
you?
” Her T-shirt moved. She realized he was undressing