Page 5 of In Sheets of Rain

2

And Be Crushed By It

“Got my permanent roster,” Faye said, sipping her wine next to me.

“Yeah? Where?” I asked her, munching on a fry dripping with tomato sauce.

“Papakura.”

“Papakura? Why would you want to be down there? I thought you liked the city.”

“New Lynn was fun, but I want to be closer to home.” Home was Hamilton. Where I was from. Faye and I had joined the Service together.

Heck, if it hadn’t have been for Faye pushing me to sit my AO exams, I would have still been a weekend volunteer at Hamilton Station dealing in foreign exchange during the week in a small kiosk that overheated in summer.

“Yeah, I guess it’s easier for Jack to visit,” I offered.

“He’s transferring up here.”

“Really? That’s awesome!”

“I wished he’d told me sooner; I would have got a bigger house.”

“He’s moving in with you?”

She said nothing. Jack and Faye had met on the job. He was a paramedic. A nice guy. I liked him. I’d worked with him in Hamilton more than once. I’d even helped him woo his then wife with flowers picked from the Station’s gardens all the while knowing he had started seeing Faye on the side.

Life was complicated. I tended to not complicate it further if I could help it.

“What about you?” Faye asked. “Did you get Pitt Street like you wanted?”

“Yeah, I did,” I said grinning. She grinned back at me; our smiles a mile wide and then some.

“Is Kent gonna come up to Auckland?”

I shook my head. “Nah, we’re done.”

It had been the easiest breakup and also the hardest. My mother hadn’t handled the news well when I’d finally told her.

“But he’s a New Worlder, too,” she’d said. “His mother goes to our church.”

“Now, now, Mary,” my dad had interjected. “Kylee’s living the big life now. That boy never stood a chance.”

“But what am I going to say to his mother when I see her on Sunday?” my mother had wailed, wringing her hands.

“God bless, and have a nice day,” my father had offered, winking surreptitiously at me.

“This is no good. No good at all,” my mother had muttered and then we’d not seen her for the rest of the day.

I brought my mind back to the present and the sound of Faye topping up our glasses with the last of the wine.

“Sorry to hear that, chick,” she said, kindly. She looked at me over the rim of her glass. “So, Pitt Street, eh? Busy. Busy.”

“And then some.”

“You OK with that?”

“I love it,” I told her and it was the God’s honest truth.