Im walking around by the cars staring blankly at the ferny wilderness around the house. Im feeling time.

I see teeth. I see three and a half, no, lets just say three. I see three teeth knocked out of the jaw of my life. Im wandering around behind the house in the dead dull sockets of the time knocked out of my life. I arrived on Saturday and now its Tuesday. It may seem trifling, three days so what? you could say. You dont get them back though; each second burns away and brings you closer to the final darkness. I dont imbue time itself with any sort of raw value; I dont see untreated piles of it lying about and rub my hands. Time itself is nothing; it is an inert agent in which experience occurs. Its nearly dark and dinner is being prepared. I can hear one of the English girls laughing in the kitchen and a bottle being uncorked. A kangaroo has lurked into the orchard and I can see its black ears twitching against the dusk sky. I stub my cigarette out in the gravel and I see missing teeth. Its Wednesday morning and Yvonne and I are about to break up. We argued last night, established a delicate ceasefire, and started to have sex this morning. I wont go into technical details but she got up from the bed saying youre angry with me and left the room. One of the English girls was already up and I could hear Yvonne and her talking. Yvonne came back in and handed me a cup of tea and then put her jumper on and went out again. I drank the tea and started reading. Id found a copy of a novel in her room Id wanted to read for years and had nearly finished it. I read away thinking were breaking up today, I had about sixty pages to go. She was gone for ages and it occurred to me that she must have gone for a walk. I thought she might be crying, shed gone for a walk because she didnt want the English girls to see her crying. During our argument she kept telling me to keep my voice down because they were sleeping in the next room. Ill go into what started the argument later, but it ended when I called her a cold bitch. She rolled over and we were both quiet for a long time. A moth rustled against the roof, the house was full of them, big black blobs on the skirting boards that came to life at night when the lights went on. I didnt cry, my guts didnt bubble and I didnt feel in shock, I felt relieved. Resolution flowed through me as satisfyingly as the tea I slurped. I was glad it was over, finally. After so many rehearsals, so many nearlys, it was really finished. Kaput. Ghosts didnt begin to gather and regret didnt cloud the horizon. The spell was broken and I was intact, completely whole, a strong, confident, fully functioning unit ready to stride out into the sunshine and grab up the life Id let submerge and throw it again about me. But lets go back a few days. I said Id go up, I ignored the invite on the fridge to the end of year do, and the pile of bills on the kitchen table I told my house mate Id leave money for, and inklings to get some work done and just said, yeah Ill come up. I caught a tram from Hawthorn into the city, then another tram to Spencer street station, then a train to Geelong, then a bus to Torquay. I walked for a while with my thumb out and got a lift to Jan Juc in the back of a panel van. I hadnt hitched for a long time. Yvonne said on the phone that the bus went past the road the house was on but she was wrong, it turned off about ten kilometres before that. It had been a sunny morning but by four dark woolly clouds sat over the pastures and every now and then I felt speckles of rain in the wind. The panel van pulled over and a plump freckled guy in boardies and a vest got out as I approached to open the back. There was a thin teenage girl in the back and a thin blonde boy next to the driver, the guy who got out. They were all drinking beer and a carton was torn open in the back and they had sleeping bags and blankets and a Verve tape was playing. I asked the girl if theyd been surfing. She looked at me a bit strangely and said nu. Ive got no idea about surfing at all, but it seemed like a fair question, despite the fact there were no boards either in on attached to the vehicle. The driver pulled over and I said thanks and walked some more until I found the road.

It seemed like a good idea on the phone. A leisurely stroll through the farm land along the five Ks to the house. The road was hilly though, like a roller coaster, and I hadnt eaten, and after a K or so it started feeling like hard work. I calculated time, I figured at the rate I was going it would take me about an hour. Id left my house at One thirty and by the time I arrived it would be about seven. Magpies watched me from the trees and I wished Id bought a water bottle. Still, I was glad I was walking. Yvonne had complained often about my lack of drivers license, about how she had to taxi me everywhere. I never really understood that because anywhere we went she was going as well sowell I couldnt really see the point. She does hate driving though, some people like it but Yvonne hates it. So I liked the idea of just arriving on her doorstep, like the drifter in Kung-Fu. An independent mobile unit, requiring no intervention. I liked the idea of walking in to see her making a sandwich, or lying on the sofa reading a book, a hand pushing back her black hair. I liked the idea of being able to surprise her, not now of course because this was a planned thing, but in the future. To drop my bag on the veranda and surprise her with kisses. A stitch had knotted under my ribs and each step pressed uncomfortably into it. My fresh shirt was soaked in sweat and I felt light headed. In this state the farm land around me was not blissful but boring and relentless. I could see the top of the next rise before Id even got to the one immediately ahead of me. I was grinding along in a mixture of pain and rapidly spawning fatigue. A car went by every now and then but I didnt put my thumb out. It seemed different on a little side road, the request felt too liberal and the rejection would have felt too intimate. But I did hear tyres slowing in the gravel behind me. It was Jonathan, a friend of Yvonnes Id met a few times, but not enough to really consider him a friend of mine as well. I was glad to see him though and jumped into his car next to him. Christ Mate, he said, you look like you need to be hooked up to an oxygen machine! There was a bottle of water sticking out the glove box and he nodded toward it. Get some of that into yu. I was happy for the lift of course, god knows what sort of shape I would have been in if Jonathan hadnt come along, but I was also a little annoyed. My show of self reliance had been foiled, a secret drawing in the sand, sweated and laboured over, then swept away before I could show it off. Id arrive with uncle Jonathan like a kid with a satchel. So have you met the English girls? Jonathan asked as we drove up the track to the house. Yvonne met Sally and Claire in Queensland on a scuba diving trip. They were friends from London travelling together and the three women hit it off famously from the word go. Yvonne was excited when she got the email saying they were coming down. I dont have many female friends anymore, shed said, Itll be nice to hang out with the girls again. When we got inside the three of them were in the kitchen laughing. Arabic aromas lingered warmly from the stove. I immediately launched into my adventure to get there. I forgot to mention earlier that an old woman had had a heart attack on the train and we waited at Geelong South for ten minutes while an ambulance arrived. The old woman lay on one of the bench seats by the door, a gaggle of her old friends and train personnel around her. She had her shoes off and her arms crossed over her chest. I wasnt going to mention this but I will now, how little I cared that shed had a heart attack, I felt jittery, but only because I was worried that the delay would mean Id miss the connecting bus. But I figured that someone would radio ahead and that the bus would wait. I exaggerated the hitch hiking story and said that they were smoking dope as well. Sally and Claire laughed and looked at each other and Jonathan smiled while he loaded wine into the fridge. I was standing in the middle of the room acting the story out, arms flying everywhere. Hello. Yvonne said when Id finished. I shot over to kiss her and she held her hands up a little. Her fingers were sticky with cous cous. The first dinner was great. Yvonne had been cooking all day, shed made a complex flavoured main and a salad from the broad beans and tomatoes shed planted in the garden, and an onion jam and all sorts of exotic dips. John and Petra and Darcy arrived and we dragged the table outside and Darcy and Jonathan made a fire in the garden. It was a good night! Sally and Claire were funny and charming, their smiles shining in their suntanned skin. I didnt know any of Yvonnes friends that well, but theyre interesting friendly people and I felt comfortable and had a good time.

In my bag in Yvonnes room was the bottle of Orange Blossom Water Id been asked to track down. Id gone to the Victoria Market and located what I suspect was the last bottle in the state. I asked at heaps of stalls and was told that there was a problem with the supply from Greece, the stallholders couldnt get any themselves, but I kept looking and I found it. Yvonne wanted it to drizzle over the main just before it was served. I only mention this because of an idea I had. Yvonne wanted that water, and I was hopefully going to bring it. So when she said So are you coming? I wasnt sure who she was talking to, the Orange Blossom Water or me. Anyway in the excitement of everything we both forgot about it until it was too late. So that was the first dinner. Now to Tuesday night. I helped Sally and Claire do the dishes while Yvonne fed the chickens. The others were long gone. It had been just Yvonne, the English Girls and I since Sunday. Yvonne had tried to teach the girls to surf earlier that day. We drove down the beach and I stood on the sand with a towel around my shoulders watching them laugh and splash about. I was like a pack mule, I had oranges and chocolate and beer in my arms and cameras around my neck. I didnt mind so much on the beach, my thoughts just sort of melted and blew away with the wind. I dont mind time so viciously when Im on the beach. The rest of the time we played cards and read a lot. Sally would lie out in the sun on the balcony while Claire tapped frantically on the Internet in Yvonnes study looking for cheap flights. They were both good fun, but Claire was the worrier of the pair, if such a position had to be nominated. From time to time Id sneak out for a cigarette. Id wander down to the dam and sit on the logs to watch the ducks, or Id just hang around the carport and stare out at the ferns. I thought about the break up show I was missingA hot sweaty pub, all my uni friends carousing and glad to see me, the feeling of mischief spilling over the bar, around the bare legs on the floorboards. I stared out at the ferns and stubbed out my cigarette. I was in bed reading when Yvonne lay next to me. She lay on her stomach with a book in front of her and said, with her eyes glued to the page, Can you stop feeling my friends up in front of me? The air sizzled in the space the words left and before I knew it I was out of bed and heading for the door. The house was dark and I slammed into the table on my way out. I could hear frogs in the dam and the moon looked like a marsh mellow dropped into the clouds. My hands were shaking as I lit a cigarette. I slurped some water from the kitchen tap and Yvonne was still on her stomach when I went back in her room. Im astounded, I said as I lay back down. So am I, she replied. The nut of it was that Yvonne felt Id been inappropriately friendly to Sally during my stay. You cant keep your hands off her, she said, and I know youll just say thats the way you are, she continued, a spike already sharpened against my first shield. Are you jealous? I asked hopefully, but she wouldnt even give me that. No, Im just pissed off! I wont put you through a laborious transcript, Im sure you know the drill. Attack, defence, counter attack, defence as attack, hypotheses based on archival models, wild cards. And anyway you know what I ended up saying. So now were back at Wednesday morning. Yvonnes not here and Im in her bed reading a book, my mind somewhere between the world on the page [London in the Seventies], Yvonnes washing on the chair, and an image of myself walking away in the sunshine, my bag over my shoulder whistling a happy tune. I could walk for hours, mysteries dissolving around me, the bay of dark dogs growing distant. I could walk until it was night again. I got up and chatted with the English girls on the balcony. Theyd have to be deaf not to have heard us last night, but were well versed in the softening inconsequential banter you learn to master when youre a slave to generosity on the road. I asked them if theyd seen Yvonne and Claire said she thought she might have seen her heading for the chicken house.

I wish she hadnt caught me the way she did. Standing listless against the ferny backdrop, like a derelict in Eden smoking in my tracksuit pants, frozen like an idiot awaiting deliverance. She held up her hand as she approached, revealing two eggs shed found. Her eyes were red and she looked beautiful. Weve had plenty of scenic break-up opportunities. That night in the park in the rain after the opera, that would have been a good one, or the day my chair went flying as I stormed out of class. But now it was actually happening all my dreams seemed to be looking in another direction, and left us to fend for ourselves, huddled by the corner of the house where the bins were kept. Wetsuits hung dripping over the gravel and the bottom of our feet were black, and we were both still thick with the smell of sleep. Well lets do what we gotta do, I said, watching a bull ant climb my big toe. What do you mean? she asked, a little dazed. Lets knock this on the head. An awful phrase I know, and one Im unfortunately in the habit of often using. I had no fires to burn here, theyd already burnt, I just wanted to get this over and done with. I said it was no ones fault and that we could still be friends, having no idea how much of either of these statements were true. Tears hung silently off Yvonnes chin, she had a little beard of them. I dont want us to break up, she said, her voice lost and looking, but I cant see how were going to understand each other. And heres the funny thing. Time was suddenly very precious. Gulfs of time in which to formulate the next utterance. It was all we had. We sat in the curdled smell of each other staring at the bins and the boxes and time just squatted in our veins. I want you to stay, Yvonne said, and her lips were hot and dry. Walking back around to the balcony we heard the English girls laughing.