Before You Knew My Name (30)

If he’s honest.

What use is it trying to get into his head, Ruby fumes. As thunder rumbles in the distance, she feels certain Ash has not been honest a single day of his life.



I have left some things out. The days after my birthday party, I begin to relax. Trust. I take more photographs. Spend time with Franklin at his favourite dog run in Riverside Park. Leave a message for the photography school, dog-sit, and write out more IOUs. Soon it will be a full month since I left Wisconsin. I have had two birthdays, and I have plans. I try to call Tammy, something I know I should have done much sooner, but she doesn’t answer her phone. I make one other call, heart in my mouth. The school replies to my message and requests a submission, a portfolio of my work that should include, the form says: A self-portrait, designed to show us the artist you intend to be. I have taken photographs all over this city, and I have four exposures left. I have plans.

And then, one early morning, it ends. There was an I, and it was me. I was at the centre, looking out. Until someone decided to enter the space I had created for myself, take it over.

You think if you hold on tight enough when things try to pull you away, you can still make it. But then someone else takes up all the room, blocks the view, and suddenly you’re pushed right out of your skin.

It’s their turn now.

There was an I, and now there is a he, a him, a his.

The tip of his cigarette. Vivid red extinguished. The ash falls. Little pieces of burnt snow, drifting. A flutter lands on my shoulder. I go to flick it away. His hand comes down on mine and I—

I don’t feel like telling you anything else right now.





TEN

IN THE HOURS BEFORE I DIE, RUBY JONES HAS SLEPT ON HER anger and wakes up coated in it. Outside it is raining heavily, but she barely notices the weather. It is 5.55 a.m., early for her, but she is already up, pacing back and forth across the small path made between her desk and the bed. God, this studio is too small! Filled up with unnecessary things. She straightens the TV remote, pats down the corners of the bed, shifts her hairbrush to the bedside drawer. Does a 360-degree turn, then removes the hairbrush, turns the remote sideways again.

This is how people go crazy, she thinks. I need to get out of this room.

As she puts on her running shoes, Ruby hears a boom of thunder. Or it could be the hard slam of a car door. She strains against the sound and then shrugs. No matter, she’s not afraid of a storm. A little rain never hurt anybody.

The street is empty as she exits her building and heads west toward Riverside Park, rain spiking across her face. At the first intersection, already saturated, she considers turning back, then remembers the pacing, the locked in feeling she’s had since yesterday.

‘Fuck it!’ she shouts out, and waits to cross with the signal, though there are no cars on this part of the road.

There is no one to startle on the street either, no dog walker with their twist of leashes, no nanny carefully guiding a wobbly-legged toddler. As Ruby reaches Riverside Drive, she finally encounters cars, a row of them stop-starting, gushing by, each one sending up a spray of water as they pass. It is proof, at least, of other people. Even if she is the only one out here running in the rain.

Ruby considers staying on Riverside, but the pavement is narrow, and when car after car sends a muddy shower her way, she pivots and heads into the park. It’s darker than she anticipated, the sky looks as if it is closing in around the trees, but she keeps going, sure there will be other runners and cyclists down on the waterfront trail. As she cuts through the upper levels of the park, Ruby searches for the stairs to take her down to the water, but the thick clusters of trees on either side of her don’t look like she remembered them to be. Perhaps she has entered at a different spot today. Riverside Park is still new to her, and the weather may have turned her around, somehow. She knows from her maps that the park stretches for blocks, street above, river below, so it’s not like she could get lost. She just needs to keep heading south, she tells herself, until she finds a landmark she recognises, something to orient her. Still, she feels a brief flicker of panic.

Thunder claps loudly over her head and Ruby startles, rolls her ankle. Her yelp of pain echoes off the trees as lightning jags across the sky, and she considers giving up, heading home. She is stopped, wiping her eyes and flexing her ankle, when two northbound runners come flying past her. They nod, give her the thumbs up, and she immediately feels foolish for letting her mind run away on her. This is New York, you are never the only one, anywhere!

Feeling less jittery now, Ruby puts her head down against the rain and charges at it, mud splattering as her feet hit the ground. She finally comes to a set of stairs, steps cut into a sloping, wet bank, so that she has to descend gingerly, careful not to slip on the well-worn stone. There is a short tunnel at the bottom of the stairs, graffiti and old urine staining the damp concrete walls. Emerging from the tunnel onto the waterfront path, she lets out her breath—Made it!—and is surprised to discover that, left or right, the path remains empty of people. As lightning shoots above her head, Ruby feels a corresponding flash of alarm, her sense of relief diminishing. There were supposed to be people down here, there are always people down here. How had she not noticed the severity of this storm when she set out?

She stops and leans on a railing at the water’s edge, wills herself to calm down. She’s not going to last long in New York if she lets a little storm scare her. This is just rain, and some thunder and lightning, and a dumb Australian going for a run, when everyone else was smart enough to stay home. Maybe they woke to an emergency message on their phones: Flash flooding ahead. Stay away from waterways, then rolled over and went back to sleep. No matter, she’s not going to get swept into the murky waters of the Hudson today. Antipodean jogger drowns is hardly the way she’s going out.