She pulls him close, looks at him with nothing but affection. ‘I love you, baby.’
‘Wow. You’ve gone the full lovey-dovey twice in one day.’
‘And I’m gonna keep doing it from now on.’
‘Fine by me — and I love you too.’ They kiss — and the passengers break into a round of applause. Rhonda and Judd part, embarrassed.
Severson leads the applause and addresses the crowd. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I give you our captain, the woman who just landed an airliner without engine power in the middle of a tourist attraction and saved every one of our arses, the one and only, Ms Rhonda Jacolby!’ He sweeps a hand towards her and the applause morphs into a cheer. Severson grins. ‘And, yes, I taught her everything she knows.’
Rhonda nods to him and mouths: ‘Thank you.’
He returns it. ‘Anytime, Nagatha.’
Twenty-five metres away Lola lies on the grass. Corey kneels beside her, studies the pencil-sized shard of metal that protrudes from the right side of her stomach just above her hip. ‘I’m going to pull it out now.’
‘That sounds really painful.’
‘You ready?’
‘Not really but do it anyway!’
He gently takes hold of the shard. She muffles a scream.
‘Okay. On three.’
She nods. ‘On three.’
‘One —’ He pulls out the shard.
She screams: ‘What happened to three?’
‘It’s better if you don’t expect it.’
Her eyelids flutter.
‘Stay with me.’
Her face is grey.
‘Lola! Are you staying with me?’
She is not. She passes out.
Spike barks.
‘No, taking off my shirt will not make her wake up.’
‘Lola.’ Corey lightly slaps her cheek. ‘Lola.’ She’s limp in his arms. He feels sick to his stomach. ‘Lola, wake up.’ She doesn’t. He inspects the wound.
Spike barks.
‘Yes, thank you for pointing out I’m not a doctor. But I need to stop the bleeding —’
‘Who are you talking to?’
Caught, Corey looks at Lola as her eyes blink open. ‘I’m, well, I um…’
‘It’s your dog, isn’t it? You’re talking to your dog.’
Corey takes a moment, then nods.
‘You know what he’s saying?’
He nods again.
‘Why didn’t you tell me this?’
‘Most girls think it’s crazy.’
‘I’m not most girls.’
‘I noticed.’
She winces, looks at her wound. ‘Man, it hurts like a mutha. I mean, seriously.’
‘It’s not that deep, but we have to stop the bleeding. We need a bandage to put some pressure on it.’ He stops, thinks, then realises what he must do. He pulls off his T-shirt.
Spike barks.
‘Shut it.’
‘What did he say?’
‘“I see you’ve finally got your shirt off.”‘ He’s been telling me to do it for weeks, thought it’d make you like me.’
Lola can’t help but check out his cut physique as he rips the T-shirt, still damp from the tar pit, into one long strip and binds it around her torso, makes sure the material presses firmly against the wound. ‘That should do it until we get you to a doc.’
She nods stoically.
‘I’m glad you’re okay.’
‘Thanks to you.’
‘You helped me too. Anybody would have done the same thing.’
She smiles through the pain. ‘You know, they really wouldn’t.’ She looks him in the eyes. ‘I’m having a thought, which I’m turning into an idea.’
‘Oh, yeah? What is it?’
She pushes herself up and kisses him on the mouth, hard and fast.
He’s genuinely surprised. ‘But — aren’t you with Scott?’
‘Not any more. Remember when I said other people wouldn’t do what you did? I was talking about Scott.’
‘Really? I did not get that at all. I think I told you I’m not great with subtext.’
‘Then let me lay it out. In a crisis situation you see a person’s true nature. I saw his and it was awful. And then I saw yours, and it was — breathtaking. It literally took my breath away. And now I’m worried I’ve screwed up any chance of… us.’
‘Well, yeah, you kind of did.’
She deflates. ‘I know, and I’m so pissed off about that.’
He looks at her. ‘You let me do that whole thing, with the dancing and the moonlight and the beach and you didn’t tell me you had a boyfriend. It was bloody embarrassing.’
‘Of course it was. And I’m an idiot. But I did it because I like being with you. If you could just — do you think you could forget about it? Because I think this works. You and me. It works.’
He rubs his face and turns away and she can see he doesn’t agree. Gee, she royally screwed this up. She can’t think of anything to say — but she can think of something to sing, so begins in a low, husky timbre: ‘Baby come back…’
She sings the song for a moment and then trails off when it doesn’t have the positive effect she was hoping for.
He studies her. ‘You know, I’ve always thought she should come back in that song.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. He seems to be genuinely apologetic, and he went to the trouble of writing a great song.’
‘So you think she should give him a second chance?’
‘Well, if the roles were reversed and he hadn’t told her the truth about, say — how he could understand his dog, for example, or maybe he’d landed his helicopter in the middle of nowhere and told her to get out —’
‘And she’d been really pissed off about it.’
‘Exactly. Then maybe, you know, considering all that, they could call it even.’
‘Maybe they could.’ She rises up and kisses him again — and he’s not surprised by it this time. They part and their eyes meet. She touches his face. ‘You know you don’t need to protect me, or try to save me, right? I’m not your mother.’
He nods.
‘I’d like you to tell me about her, though. About what happened.’
‘I will.’
‘Good. You can start now if you’d like.’
Corey regards her for a moment, then begins: ‘Well, her name was Roberta. .’
EPILOGUE
Cement dust swirls around the room.
Whack. Corey slams a heavy mallet into a brick wall. Whack. Another lands right next to it, swung by Judd this time. Rubble falls to the floor and is scooped up in a shovel, which Rhonda deposits into a large green garbage bin. Lola picks up the next load with her shovel and the process begins again.
All wearing dust masks and work clothes, they’re in the living room of the house on Sepulveda which Lola inherited from her grandfather. It was partially damaged on 7/27, when a motorcycle ploughed through the wall they’re presently demolishing, so Lola decided to extend the hole and install a panoramic window to overlook the front garden.
Like her grandfather’s house, greater Los Angeles is being rebuilt too, though three months after the events of 7/27, progress is glacial. Lola had heard the damage is even worse than the Northridge quake in 1994, the final price of the clean-up and reconstruction estimated at over one and a half trillion dollars. The good news is that the death toll, though still a staggering 1867, was less than first feared.
Whack. Lola takes in Corey as he swings the mallet again. The Aussie volunteered to do the renovation and it’s going really well. He’s very good with his hands, in a number of ways, which she’s happily finding out, and knocking down walls is one of them. They’re taking the relationship slow but it feels right to her, like nothing she’s experienced before. He’s a man — actually he’s a bloke — and she couldn’t be happier about that.