Free Harlequin Rex by Owen Marshall

and made it her business to find out that David was one of the few guys who could supply the stuff. After three weeks she came over in an evening that had a sweet, fine rain drifting in from the sea. David was in the lounge room with others, sitting with Abbey and old Mrs McIlwraith as he helped the latter to glue a break in her reading glasses.
    Lucy wore a navy blue jersey, and the tiny droplets were caught on the fabric, and on her dark hair. She had a bruise beneath her left eye, from a fall in the night she said, but her tone didn’t invite commiseration. ‘I don’t want to be a pain, particularly if you’re not on duty.’
    ‘Can’t hear a word,’ said Mrs McIlwraith.
    ‘She’s not talking to us,’ said Abbey.
    ‘Eh? What’s that?’ Mrs McIlwraith had a hearing aid, but made no adjustment. She didn’t appreciate the progress on her repairs being threatened.
    ‘Just a minute or two if you’ve time,’ said Lucy. ‘I’m told you might be able to help. No hurry, though.’
    The low clouds were grey, the sound was grey, the drifting rain was silver grey, the bush high on the hills behind the centre was massed green-grey. It was still warm at eight o’clock as Lucy and David stood on the verandah of Takahe for privacy.
    ‘David, you’ve still got my superb glue,’ shrilled the old lady.
    ‘She means super glue,’ David told Lucy. Why should he feel a need to explain?
    ‘Take no notice of her,’ called Abbey.
    ‘Look, I’m in no rush.’
    ‘It’s fine,’ said David.
    ‘The thing is,’ said Lucy, ‘I need a few joints. Something to while away a wet evening in this paradise of yours.’
    ‘Schweitzer’s against it. You know that. It’s banned within the centre. Some people say it even sets Harlequin off.’
    ‘This is to jack up the price, is it? All the difficulties you face, the risks. I gather there’s others you’re happy enough to help.’ It was disconcerting the way that she kept direct eye contact: not aggressively, not at all flirtatiously, but to get the two of them talking on the same level if she could; make some connection she was able to assess.
    ‘I’m not a supplier here or anything,’ he said. ‘I give some of my own stuff to a few friends, that’s all.’
    ‘I didn’t mean it about jacking the prices up. Sorry, that’s shitty. I’ve been an occasional user for several years now. I could get Laurie to send it in somehow, but that takes time. At the moment I’m a bit down to it in this place. I haven’t got the knack of living here yet, you see.’
    ‘It’s not so bad.’
    ‘Compared to what!’ Lucy seemed to think she’d made a joke, and laughed at it herself. ‘For you it’s a job, isn’t it? Well, I had a life and job out there, and now it seems likely enough that I’m in this place for keeps. What’s a little happy baccy if it’ll schmooze the days.’
    David couldn’t come up with any reply that wasn’t fatuous, so he just smiled, lifted his hand as a sign that she should wait and went to his room for his stash. He had some in his pocket as he came back through the lounge room, but no one was paying any attention. Abbey had joined several others who were watching TV: lives almost as far removed from everyday existence as their own. Mrs McIlwraith was left upright in her chair, grasping the armrests like Abraham Lincoln. He could have injected himself with heroin before her face and she be none the wiser. Her eyesight was okay, but there was nothing in herpast that gave awareness about such things. Indoor plants were what she knew, brass and copper antiques, and dinner parties in Merivale for six, or eight at a pinch. The Slaven Centre, and the episodes Harlequin imposed on her, were incomprehensible and therefore best ignored when possible.
    Lucy was well back on the verandah to avoid the drift of rain, and she took the four tinnies David offered and closed her hand softly over them.
    ‘These might do something for you,’ he said. ‘Some good