11 - Sleepless

Cammie was awoken by someone crashing into the bed next to her. She was drowsy from sleep, dark dreams of smothering entangling with reality as she became aware of a moving form beside her, and she withdrew from sleep and into one corner of her bed with alarm, frightened in the absent way of dreams. The hulking silhouette reached for her.

"Whoa, whoa, calm down baby, it's me, it's me."

It was Lachlan, her boyfriend. He didn't live with her, but he had a key and he sometimes let himself in. Cammie glanced at the clock radio behind him, small numbers spelled out in thin blue lines. It took them a moment to come into focus- when they did, she was that it was just before two in the morning. She rubbed her right eye with the back of her hand.

"Wh-what are you doing here?"

"Didn't you get my text?"

"No. When did you send it?"

"I dunno." said the dark shape. "A few hours ago?"

She estimated where the shoulder of the shape would be, and threw a punch at it. She was rewarded with an:

"Ow! What was that for?"

"I was asleep a few hours ago, jerk."

She didn't see but rather heard him smile. "I didn't think you'd mind. Give us a kiss." He leaned across the bed and kissed her. His breath was beery, smoky. She drew back a little, but he simply moved forward with her. They kissed in the dark for a few moments.

"Where have you been?"

"Oh, y'know, just out with the guys from work. We all came down to have a few drinks- went a bit longer than I thought it would. Too far to go home. Alright if I crash here tonight?" He was already kicking off his shoes and shirt as he spoke, assuming her answer would be yes. She said nothing.

"I called you a few times to see if you wanted to come with." he said as he continued to undress. "What were you up to?"

She stared blankly into the darkness a while before answering, lost in thought. "Oh," she started. "not much. Had a drink at Dog's, came home, had a bath. Had a think."

"Oh yeah?" he mumbled. He had finished undressing and buried himself under the covers with her, throwing an arm across her belly. It was cold and she shivered involuntarily. He mumbled something else into her shoulder.

"Do you ever think about the ... hey, wake up." she nudged him awake.

"Wha?" He lifted his head up from her shoulder. She didn't know if his eyes were closed or open.

"Do you ever think about the future?"

"The future? Christ Cammie, it's two in the morning."

"Hey you crashed my bed and woke me up, you think I give free board? Now pay up with attention."

"Uhm, right, attention. I'm with you." he said, slurring his words slightly. He was drunk.

"Do you?"

"Do I what?"

"Think about the future?"

"The future?" He smacked his lips together, dry-mouthed. He would ask for some water soon. "Sure. Hovercars, underwater cities, the whole deal."

"No!" she said, half-laughing. "I mean our future."

"Our future? Oh ... do you have any water?"

"There's some on the bedside table." It was a day old, but he probably wouldn't notice. Day-old water tastes great to a drunken man. She heard him grope around in the darkness for it, then heard the noise of him drinking. She could see the presence of the glass in the darkness, a sliver of illumination making a moving line across the surface as he slowly inverted it. He gasped loudly as he finished it, then slammed the glass back onto the bedside table. His head fell back onto the pillow.

"Lachlan?"

"Huh?"

"The future? Our future?"

He shifted in the bed slightly. "How do you mean babe?"

"Like, where are we going to be in ten years?"

"Ten years?" he said blurrily. ?I don't know. Christ, babe. Can I sleep?"

"It's a pretty simple question, Lock."

"Fine!" he said angrily. "In ten years, I imagine we'll be married and have four babies and we'll live in a house in the suburbs."

"A house? I'd like that, but I feel like ... well I feel like we can barely afford our own rents."

"We'll, God, I don't know, we'll save some. We can move in together, that'll save money."

"And what will we do? Y'know, for a living?"

"In ten years? I don't know babe. What we do now. I haven't thought about it."

"Yeah, that's what I've been thinking about." Cammie said quietly. "The future, and how we're going to get there. I really don't know, Lock. Do I really want to be working in the cafe for the next ten years?"

Lachlan was silent for a moment. "I don't know. I haven't thought about it."

"Well, I need to know. I don't know how to keep going forward. I don't know how to get to the next step. I really don't know how we're going to get there, and it's scaring me."

"We'll get there." He said, rubbing her arm. "We'll get there somehow."

She looked down at him. "But you don't know how."

"No." he said flatly. "I don't know how. I don't even think you know where there is, so of course we don't know how to get there. Like I said, I haven't thought about it."

They lay silently in the darkness for some time before Cammie spoke again.

"Lock?"

He sighed, loudly. "Yes?"

"Do you really think we'll still be together in ten years?"

He was quiet for a long time. Thinking. Somehow, she knew what he was going to say next before he said it.

"No."

He got out of the bed and went into the lounge room. She heard a cupboard open and close again, and the creaking of the couch springs. He was sleeping in the lounge. She lay staring at the ceiling in the dark for some time, she did not know how long for, but at some point in the night she must have drifted off to sleep, because she awoke to see sunlight painting itself on her bedroom wall. She walked sleepily to the bathroom and checked the lounge on her way- the couch had been slept on, but Lachlan was nowhere to be seen. She returned to her bedroom after brushing her teeth- his clothes were gone. She turned on her phone, there were two text messages. The first was the text he had sent last night, and the second had been sent by him a short while ago. It said: 'Sorry about last night. I had to get to work. We'll talk soon.'

She showered and dressed. She did not feel sad about what Lachlan had told her the night before, which she guessed told her something. She was not on shift today, but she decided to walk to the cafe anyway, to get some breakfast. She walked down the high street, passed the intersection where, two nights earlier, she had been confronted by the junkie. She did not think of him as she passed the spot- the memory had been wiped from her mind, as unpleasant memories often are.

She thought of very little as she wandered, simply enjoyed the rays of the sun that bathed the city in a warm orange light, making everything glow. The buildings, the trees. That made by humanity on top of that made by nature. She came from nature, but she was human. She felt at home when she was at one with nature, in the ocean, on the beach, in a forest. Yet she chose to live amongst the creations of humanity. In a city, surrounded by glass, metal, plastic, steel. Natural beings, moving through unnatural settings. In her mind she would sometimes pretend she was still out there, out of the city, encompassed by nature. She would look at the vast reflective side of a building and imagine it was a vast cliff face. She would run her hand along the concrete surface of a low wall and transmute it into a mighty fallen log, thick bark coating its sides. Instead of the road running alongside her, she would see a flowing river. Her mind created these things to give her solace, some primal instinct recognizing her need to reconnect with the natural world, yet still, she rarely left the city. She kept telling herself that she needed to, but something always kept her in the city. Her friends, her job, Lachlan.

She smiled in spite of herself. Lachlan. She wondered how their next meeting would go. She felt strangely philosophical about their very real possibility that the end of their relationship might be near. She guessed having Anthony intrude into her life, if nothing else, had forced her to think about where she was in life, what she wanted from it. She admitted to herself that she didn't know. But she knew what she didn't want, and there were things in her life that fell into that category. It was time for a cleanup.

Almost before she realized she had arrived, she walked through the open front doors of Juiced, saying hi to Tam, who was on shift, and asking if Steve was about. Tam told her he was upstairs, in the flat he maintained above the cafe, doing some paperwork. Cammie went out of the back doors and into the garden area, and climbs the wrought-iron spiral staircase that led to the upper flat. She knocked twice on the door at the head of the stairs and then let herself in- from opening to closing, it was technically a part of the cafe's working space.

"Steve?" She called out to the house in general.

"In here honey." He called back. He was in the lounge, which also doubled as an office, his computer set up against one wall. The rest of the room looked like a continuation of the cafe's lounge, except possibly even more extreme in its decoration, as though all the stuff he couldn't squeeze onto the walls of the cafe downstairs had been shunted onto the walls above. Small porcelain cats adorned most horizontal surfaces, model cars were stapled onto one wall, chasing each other on a painted highway.

"You're not on shift today." Steve said absently, not turning to see her. He was staring at his computer screen, which was surrounded by this month's receipts. His hatred for doing the accounting was the subject of much griping when he was in the kitchen.

"Yeah, I thought I'd just come in for breakfast."

"Lord, I thought you'd be sick of this place by now. If I ever have the chance to have a breakfast somewhere else, you know I'll be taking it. Actually," he mused. "I don't even remember the last time I had breakfast somewhere else. Oh, woe is me! Get thee gone!" he faux-shooed her with his hands.

"Actually," Cammie said, walking to his desk, picking up a pen, and searching around for a piece of paper while she spoke. "I was wondering if you could do me a favour."

"Anything." Steve said.

Cammie continued to search his desk. "You know the guy who came in yesterday, who I spoke to in the garden?" She found a piece of paper and started to write the word 'Anthony' on it.

"Brown suit guy?"

"Yeah, brown suit guy." She folded the piece of paper and started to write her phone number on the inside. "If he comes in again and I'm not here, I want you to give him this."

Steve started laughing.

"What?" Cammie said, looking up from her piece of paper mid-number. "What's so funny?"

"He's been in already." Steve said with a grin, handing her an envelope. It had 'Camille' written on it. "Looks like great minds have been thinking alike. Anything you want to tell me?"

She didn't answer, just took the envelope and tore it open. Inside was a small index card with the words 'in case you change your mind' written on it, along with a phone number.