They are leaving soon. They are breaking down life in Perth, deconstructing, boxing. Sometimes it is a happy affair. "Will we need this in Slingapore? I dont know, will you be able to buy one?"
"You can buy anything in Slingapore! But you certainly won't find one of these in Burma!" He throws her on the bed playfully and kisses her. They dress for the beach, head 30 meters, collect coffees and lie on a towel on the warm sand. He rests his head on her stomach sideways, kisses her skin and breasts occasionally through a bikini top with gentle futile roguish movements. She swats him away playfuly and he reads from the guidebook.
"Angel, the food sounds awful!! Rice and oil!"
"You don't love bowls of rice covered with oil to keep the insects out?"
"And I won't be able to buy balsamic or tampons. I'll need years worth."
"Yes but you'l be in Slingapore all the time and you can buy anything there." He nuzzles her a little and she feels his soft whiskers, puts her hand through his beautiful think sun kissed hair, over his warm face, shoulders, strong and beautiful back shining in golden light somewhere between the indian ocean and the West Australian sun. The coffee cups are empty, the towel is sprawled, salt is soaking into her skin and yet they are planning these lives in different countries. He is trying to decide between two great job offers.
"Do you think it would help you decide if we had lots of afternoon sex?" she suggests with a cheeky smile, not quite half joking. He doesn't fall for it. She throws him over and gives him her views on the job situation, which are a detailed analysis of why both jobs are great. This is the girl he fell in love with.
Not the broken thing he found on Thurday, put up with Friday.
She didnt go to work on Thursday. He knew something was wrong by noon. By 4pm he knew things were seriously wrong. What he came home to find was ugly. Her slumped between white sheets, lost to the world, in an impenetrable sleep that could not be woken by hunger or rhinos or love of hope or disgust or pleading of the last vestiges of loyalty. He had put up with enough of this. He had seen it for far too long back then, which was not even that long ago. Grace Kelly and Audrey Heoburn didn't pull this sh*t.
And here she was. He knew he deserved better but such was his gentle discourse that the man who deserved the best, the very was taking care of this idiot woman making substandard choices.
He came home and went to the beach, looked at the water, the vibrant pink, orange ad blue sunset over the west coast of Australia and thought, rightly, about what he wanted out of life and what he deserved. He deserved the best.
He came home and sat on the side of the bed, woke the sick woman in the alpeon glow of rock salt lamps and candle, flickering across the white sheets.
'I can't keep doing this. I love you. I know you have a problem. I've known for a long time now."
She looked at him frightened but resigned.
"Since when?" like it matterd.
"Since this time last year maybe. That whole trip to Bali you were never sober, not one moment. That is why there are no photos."
She turns her face in shame.
"I have loved you and given you the benefit of doubt, dared to hope, I keep waiting for you to get well, but it's destroying me. I don't know the answers."
"I love you" she says feebly, feeling the full gravity, logic and emotion of what he is going though.
And she tries to let him go, not effusively. He says that's a cop out and tells her to get better.
"II think I am at the end of my tether. I am waiting for you to get well. CAN YOU DO IT??"
The next morning we buy tomatoes and vegetables and coffees at the market. 'So this must be very different to your last girlfriend. This place where I need daily meetings and when I am good I am amazing but when I fall I fall hard. I want you to know that with or without you I do always but my wheels back on. But you must think back to how easy it was with her". He had been with her for ten years. She was nice, bovine, unfaithful but uncomplicated. ["She wasn't good enough" says a small, hurt and jealous little voice which I think might be my own, for which dislike myself immediately. I want to let this line of thought go and focus on self love and my inherent but obfuscated goodness].
"You're completely different. I never compare" he says . His voice is steely and disappointed. Over the last 48 hours he has though about this and compared her, favourably to me. I am a shining star and an abject failure.
All I can ask for is a new day, from him, the world, my higher power. And I can only ask.
