Page 37 of Malaise
Carver looks across to where I still stand in the doorway, stiff as fuck. “You can stop worrying now, Meg.”
Yeah—that’s totally what I was worried about. Not the fact that I’m supposed to be sharing a room with this hulk of a man tonight. Wonder who has the floor? I walk carefully across the space between them and take the last solo armchair by the window.
Carver’s eyes track me the whole way, a hard, unreadable expression in place. “How are you feeling now?”
“Seedy as hell.” I curl my legs up on the seat and tuck myself into the side of the chair. “My head still feels like one of those dashboard dogs’.”
“I’ll go grab you some Panadol,” Tanya says as she stands. “Might at least take the edge off in the morning.” She takes two steps and then hesitates, giving me a pitiful look. “Plus some dry toast, I think.”
“And what have we learnt today, Meg?” Carver asks as she leaves the room.
“Don’t get drunk without eating first?”
He huffs and leans forward, his arms flexing as he rests his elbows on his knees. “How about, ‘Don’t get drunk at all’?”
“You saying that you never have an alcoholic beverage?” I tease.
His narrowed eyes have me finding that extra inch of the seat to sink into. “No, I’m not saying that. But I also don’t make a point of going out to reverse the blood/alcohol ratio of my body.”
“Oh, shush,” Tanya says as she re-enters with a bottle of water in her hand. She places it on the side table beside me and spills two white pills out of her closed hand. “You might be like that now, Brett, but that’s only because you spent enough times yourself calling Ralph on the porcelain phone to know better.”
“I’m simply trying to get Meg to learn from my mistakes,” he answers tersely.
“I think she’ll learn from her own.”
I sit in silence and down the pills while they bicker between themselves. My gut protests at the simple intrusion of water, and the overwhelming need to lie down to even out this topsy-turvy nausea hits me. “Guys?”
“Yeah?” Carver answers.
Tanya storms off in a huff, presumably to make the toast.
Hand to my stomach, I ask Carver, “Where can I go lie down?”
“Follow me.” He rises out of the seat and jerks his head toward the hallway. “Don’t worry about the toast, Tanya!”
“Good thing I’m hungry, then,” she calls back in a teasing tone. “It just popped.”
The house is old enough to have the high ceiling and narrow halls that are quintessential to all bungalows of this style. Our footsteps are loud on the wooden floor as we track past Tanya’s room to the next on the right, beside the bathroom.
Carver gestures to the door opposite his, the room beside Tanya’s. “That’s Dad’s room.”
Awkward. “Okay.” It wasn’t lost on me that he called it “Dad’s” and not “Mum and Dad’s” or “my parents’” room.
I hesitate in the doorway of his, still a little weirded out by the concept of sharing a room with Carver. What if I snore? What if I talk in my sleep?
“You coming in?” He fusses with heavy, dark green drapes that hang from an old-fashioned iron rail.
My eyes roam the cream-coloured walls, over the dozens of dark charcoal drawings covering every free space. There are night landscapes, dragons, old cars, and women similar to the one on my T-shirt. “Did you do all these?”
“It’s a pastime,” he answers simply, as though trying to demean the extent of his talent.
“They’re amazing.” I step closer to one he has beside his bed and study the intricate detail in the leaves of the tree and the reflections on the water.
“I had time to fill, and drawing was one way of keeping my mind busy with anything but what was going on out in the world.”
I cock an eyebrow and step back to face him.
“Home detention,” he explains. “If I watched TV, or talked to my friends, I always ended up so fucking angry at missing out that I wanted to smash the shit out of stuff—so I drew.”