The phone summoned. Angrily! GLORIA HOPE.
Buddy couldn’t cope in that instant. So he let its plea go unanswered, let it buzz like a dying insect, until it gave up and lay silent in his hand, dead—a useless piece of technology that would garble anything he had to say or hear via its incomprehensible circuitry.
Not to be trusted, he judged.
The sun’s molten mass broiled over the hump of Thetis Island. Since when had its rays become carcinogenic, the searing effulgence of a monstrous, vengeful god. An x-ray deity that cooked from the inside out.
“Ding!”
“What’s going on?” Gloria texted.
As if I knew myself, he groaned.
But she wanted answers, which meant Leanne had filled her head with vitriol, which meant he had to figure things out and call her back.
First, a piss. He levered himself out of the dining nook bench and stumbled into the head, leaning against the cabinetry over the toilet.
You know, it’s never as bad as you think? an assuring voice advised as Buddy made his way back into the dining nook.
“Go away!” he grumbled.
Steam Donkey John nodded from the opposite bench. “When it’s time,” he said.
“Now!”
“Not sure you’re in fit condition to be left on your own.”
Buddy laughed. “You’re not part of my solution, believe me!”
His companion nodded inanely.
If I ignore him, he’ll disappear, Buddy figured.
Steam Donkey John obliged, fading, but not quite vanishing, become a ghostly aberration, distorting the Looner Module’s stilled atmosphere.
Buddy sighed, picked up his mobile, and punched in Gloria’s number, hoping to get her answering service.
“Dad?” she said.
“Hon?”
“What’s going on?”
“What has your mother told you?”
“I want to hear what you have to say, Dad. I don’t want to play monkey in the middle.”
Buddy sighed.
The Truth, Steam Donkey John coached.
“Well, you know your mother and I have separated?”
He waited. No response.
“Well, it’s looking more like a separation that’s going to be permanent.”
“You’re having an affair?” she accused.
“I’ve met someone up here. We’ve become friends.”
The Truth.
“Friends?” Gloria challenged.
“Well, I hope we can stay friends.”
The Truth.
“Mum didn’t hold anything back, Dad. I just want to hear your side of the story.”
“The facts don’t always add up to the truth, hon,” Buddy heard himself say. “There’s a whole lot of background that doesn’t show up in a surveillance photo.”
“Tell me about it!”
The Truth.
“Your mother and I have been separating for years. We’ve both tried to hold things together…”
“For me and Robbie! Don’t put that on us.”
“I’m not. For you, Robbie, and your mother and me,” he snapped.
“Love’s not something I can divvy up like a birthday cake, hon. I still love Mom, even if we don’t work together as a couple. I love you, and I love Robbie. I love our family… so yeah, your mother and I have tried to hold things together.”
“And now you’re saying, ‘Fuck it!’?”
The Truth.
“No. I’m not the one pushing for a divorce, Gloria. I came up here just to get away for a while. Think. Your mother changed the locks, remember? She sent my stuff up with Robbie in a bunch of garbage bags. She hired a PI to get some dirt on me.”
“And this woman?”
“She’s a pharmacist. I met her getting a prescription filled. We like each other. We’ve become friends.”
“That’s it?”
The Truth.
“I don’t know if that’s it, hon. I don’t have a clue, right now, what ‘it’ means, except I love you and Robbie, and I’m just trying to get through this shit without doing too much damage…”
Silence. He held the mobile at arm’s length. She’d ended the call.
The Truth.
Buddy looked across the table to the place where Steam Donkey John had wavered in the atmosphere. There was no sign of him now, the air having settled into an unaffected transparency.
Time to listen to my own voice, Buddy reasoned. Take my own advice…
“At least I didn’t out-and-out lie,” he figured.
A half-assed commendation if ever he’d heard one.