tension between them. Her voice had been heavy with sarcasm, and something else. âYeah, right.â And sheâd smirked â a private joke with herself she didnât think heâd get.
Heâd driven the car on their first date. Sheâd liked it then, said it was like being in an ad, an old romantic 1950s ad, searched the dial on the big, old radio for something atmospheric. He was in awe of her. There was no bullshit about Andrea. She wore those op-shop dresses with aplomb, bossed people round when they wouldnât give her student concession. Making love in the back, his first euphoric inhalations of her had swirled with old leather, petrol, oily rags. Herbal shampoo. He inhales now â nothing but wet jumper.
Down the dirt track itâs like Andrea blames him personally for every rut, as if heâs providing suspension with his own body. Dave winces, thinks of the time he pranged the car and felt something in the driveshaft crack with a terrible finality, like a spine.
Itâs welded back together now. Patchily.
Andreaâs gearing up for some tight-lipped blame, but the jewellerâs forgotten they were coming anyway. Her marshalled energy hangs awkwardly in the calm. The jeweller makes coffee, and to cut the rings off they sit at a work table slung with an apron of leather. In the leather, Dave sees a dust, a sifting of gold specks and filings. A deep, exhausting sadness fills him. He canât explain it; itâs the filings and Andreaâs proferred finger, swollen with the ringâs confinement, the others so fine and tapered. The jeweller holds her hand as he cuts as if heâs fashioned it himself, as familiar as a lover.
âThank God for that,â Andrea says, flexing. Daveâs cut burns as his ring gets filed off; the relief and release are draining. He sifts through the gold filings and they powder his fingers. He compares this table with their own, a wedding present from a carpenter friend seven years ago, littered with bills and notes and lists, a bowl of brown-flecked bananas, cups rimmed with tidemarks of coffee.
Andrea is talking to the jeweller as she never talks to him; he hears news and opinions from her he wasnât aware of. At home she sits mired in long bouts of silence, sometimes glaring at the TV with something else, some other narrative entirely, racing away behind her eyes. Heâs given up trying to find out what; heâs sick to death of being cast as the one meant to guess.
Dave follows the conversation now, baffled, hearing only enthusiasm and laughter. He stares at the tiny files and awls on the workbench. A screwdriver with an end no larger than a needle, some microscopic precision-clamping device that looks like it could clench together two single synapses in the human brain. Dave listens to his wifeâs vivacity and the jeweller coming awake under her wit and energy, listens to the movie unspooling. Heâs missed a connection somewhere, he thinks, some subplot, some richer underlying symbol that would throw light on the whole. With a sort of horror he realises heâs close to tears and turns and stares out the window, feels himself floundering, fighting off a heavy pointlessness with revulsion, as if it were a jellyfish or a piece of looming dead flotsam.
The jeweller finds a device bored with holes of different sizes and Dave and Andrea both push their ring fingers through. As they stand â the jeweller jotting down a figure and explaining how he will rejoin the rings and repolish the surfaces â Dave finds he has to stare out the window again. Their hands are so close, making room for each other, not touching. He feels numb.
As they are leaving, Andrea puts her hand on his arm and mechanically he gets out his wallet.
âOh, pay me when you come and pick them up,â says the jeweller. The moment stumbles, then rebalances. Andrea looks at Dave. She has only meant to touch him, he realises, not
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