Free Etiquette for a Dinner Party by Sue Orr Page A

feet are cold on bare floorboards. There is no money for carpet, Mum says.
    Her father picks up the drumsticks and settles into the chair. Then he starts a slow rhythm: boom tap, boom tap tap. His eyes are closed and he is smiling. Ruth stares at him.
    Her mother wears red lipstick and her favourite blue dress with the birds on it. Her hands run quickly across the piano keys and she laughs as Uncle Ron acts like a crazy man.
    'Ten Guitars' is the name of this song — Ruth has heard it on the radio, heard her mother singing along to it while she gets breakfast ready. The man that sings it usually has a name she can't say.
    Then, when they get to the bit that goes 'and this is what you do, oh . . .' her father leaps up from behind the drums and grabs her mother from behind. He drags her by the wrists out to the middle of the room.
    'Solo Ron, go for it,' her father shouts to Uncle Ron and together her mother and father laugh and hug and dance, dance, dance to the ten guitars. .

    In the taxi, on the way home from the jazz club, she thinks about the boat trip. 'You can reverse a river, Peter. A natural flowing river. Imagine that.'
    Later, she makes the call. 'Hi Mum — it's me, in Chicago.'
    'Hello love — what time is it over there?'
    'Just gone eleven. At night. How's everything Mum?'
    'Eleven at night? So are you ahead or behind, exactly?' Her mother's voice sounds next-door close; there are none of those echoes that can distort long-distance calls.
    'Behind, Mum. Eighteen hours, I think it is. It's about four o'clock there, isn't it.'
    'Yes, four o'clock. So what day is it there?'
    'It's Wednesday.'
    'Oh, so we're ahead of you.'
    'Yep.'
    'So, love. Are you having a good time?' Trish pauses for the briefest time. 'What's it like there, Ruth? What's Chicago like?'
    Ruth thinks for a moment before she answers.
    'Fabulous, Mum. The trip of a lifetime.'

GYPSY DAY
    I saw Gabrielle Baxter down the main street of Paeroa. She was about a block ahead and walking in the same direction as me. There were two teenage girls with her. They all stopped outside Glamour World.
    I'd been following Gabrielle for a while, but it was only when she turned towards the shop that I knew for sure it was her. It was the way she walked. I thought: funny how people getolder but their walks stay the same .
    When she was twelve, her body was tall and pale and upright, like a skeleton wrapped in frayed tissue paper. She sort of drifted, rather than walked. These days she'd be a supermodel but back then she was just skinny.
    So there she was, thirty years on, with that same walk. The two girls went into the shop and she followed.
    I got that funny little thing when your stomach lurches halfway up your throat and the skin across the back of your head goes tight. It felt like I'd seen an ex-boyfriend. I got the curiosity. You know how it goes. You need to see whether he still wears an earring. You need to check out his wife and kids.
    That's how it was. Overwhelmingly, I needed to spy on Gabrielle Baxter. I didn't have anything specific to do in town. Next thing I knew I was following her. Then I thought for Christ's sake, get a grip . She was in Glamour World and I stayed in the street shuffling backwards and forwards in some sort of dopey little solitary tea dance. I messed around in my handbag, pretending I was looking for something. Then I forgot that I was only pretending to look for something and I panicked because I couldn't find it.
    We were friends in our last year of primary school. In fact, it wasn't a year — the Baxters arrived in the middle of winter. Sharemilkers usually stayed two or three years, but by the following season the Baxters had moved on. It was just a few months, the entire extent of me and Gabrielle Baxter. .

    We sat on the mat, us big kids at the back. Mr Frank's exact instructions were to chat among ourselves until the sharemilker kids arrived. We were too excited to whisper, even, which was a waste because normally total