Free Treading Air by Ariella Van Luyn

‘It’s hard. At least mine left his look with the baby.’
    Lizzie glances down at the sweaty baby and decides it’s easier to let the woman think what she wants.
    Shifting her bags nearer the wall, Lizzie stands in the shadow of the corrugated overhang. She imagines Joe lost in the carriages, stepped in the wrong place, disappeared somewhere, sucked back in time to the war, stuck in a loop on a wagon with other soldiers, like in those ghost ships she’s heard about that sail the seas endlessly. She wonders again what happened to him in the war. The frond of a potted palm swipes her elbow. She brushes it away, her skin overly sensitive. The frond springs back, tickles her, and she rips the leaf off the stalk and shreds it to strips along the length of its veins. She needs to do something with her hands; she can’t stand the waiting.
    Joe appears when the pavement beside her is scattered with green curls.
    â€˜Where you been?’ she asks.
    â€˜Getting us a honeymoon.’ He grins, grabs at her waist, but she curves out of his reach and boots his suitcase. Can’t believe he up and left her like that.
    â€˜Not your packhorse,’ she says.
    Joe locks his fingers over her hand and brings it to his lips. ‘Sorry, peach.’ He breathes warmth over her knuckles.
    She pulls her hand away but is caught up with him again, his body, the lines at his mouth and eyes. He can read her too easily.
    At the ticket booth they ask for a place to stay for a couple of days, and they’re directed to the Great Northern Hotel. Lizzie makes a fuss, still irritated with Joe for leaving her in this new place, so he carries both their suitcases across the wide white road, divided by a traffic island planted with palm trees, still new and spindled. The powerlines cut the sky above their heads. White lattice dips below the top verandah of the hotel and casts long shadows over the timber front. Lizzie wonders whether she and Joe can really make a go of it out here; there’s something unformed and expectant about the place.
    They book a room at the Great Northern, facing the station and the curved garden directing the cars and carts picking up passengers. The man at the bar leaves them to bring their own bags up the stairs. When Lizzie opens the door, a wave of hot trapped air hits her. Joe heaves the suitcases onto the mattress. She opens the door to the verandah. Through the slats she sees a dog panting out the front of the pub, waiting for its owner. The cars and omnibuses are funnelled past. A man drives by with his arm hanging out the window.
    She turns to Joe and finds him sprawled out on the bed. He touches his bent knee against hers. ‘We’ll get a proper place soon.’
    Two weeks until he starts work at the meatworks. Their honeymoon.
    He sits up on his elbows, reaches his hand for her, but she’s too hot to be touched. He drops back on the bed and spreads his arms out. ‘Come on, let’s get your present.’
    She waits for him to take something from his bag, worries that she broke her own present at the station, throwing his things around. In the silence, another car rattles past, and a man on the bottom floor calls out something lost in the roar of the engine.
    Joe hauls himself up, takes her hand and leads her downstairs.
    â€˜Don’t reckon this present exists,’ she says, and he laughs.
    On Flinders Street, the road is smoother; the hotel owner told them it’d just been concreted. Three men in overalls watch another feed electric wires through a light pole that erupts in four curved prongs, an upside-down anchor. The old gas lamp lies on its back on the pavement, one side smashed. Lizzie wonders whether the lamplighter will end up in a patched canvas tent, squatting in the dirt, back at the unemployment camp she saw on the fringe of the railway station.
    Powerlines crest buildings with flagged awnings like bibs. A man in a tie leans against a pole,