"You thought you remembered? Why didn't you call Billy?"

"I thought I remembered correctly," he repeated doggedly, the conciliatory smile fading.

"Did you throw my letters out? Because I wrote in my last letter what time I was arriving."

"Ah," he said, pointing like a teacher with his index finger and grinning, "When did you send it? Because I didn't get it. The mail takes four months to get to Pooncarie. It's like the Pony Express. You'd write me in August, and I'd get the letters in late September."

She stood, staring at him, saying nothing.

"So actually," he said cheerfully, "I did pretty good, all things considering. Hey, it could've been worse, I could've mixed up the days."

"I think that would've been difficult, seeing that I wrote the date of my arrival at the top of every letter I sent you. It would mean you didn't read a single one."

"And that wouldn't be true." He hugged her again in reconciliation. "I'm sorry," he said into her neck.

"Oh, Kai. I've missed you so much."

Nuzzling, he didn't answer her. She backed away to appraise him. He was wearing distressed rolled-up jeans, a wide belt, old work boots, a black T-shirt, a jean jacket. He didn't look like himself without the kinky hair falling to his shoulders, but he was undeniably the most fly guy around.

"Kaia" Larissa wasn't angry anymore. She was tired, and so happy to see him. They stood like this holding hands in the middle of the airport. Tiptoeing up, she kissed him. "Forget it. Just a mistake. Don't worrya" She was ready to cry. "I can't believe we haven't spoken in three months. I wish you could understand how mucha""

"I know. It's been such a long time." His hands squeezed her hands.

"I called you every day. Every single day. You never answered the phone." She couldn't believe she was lucky enough to have him for her own, to feel him. She had put on jeans, a raw silk ivory blouse. On the plane she applied some makeup for him, brushed out her hair extra sleek and shiny. She spritzed on his favorite perfume, Moon Sparkle, donned his favorite G-string, a lacy see-through gold La Perla. Everything was for him. All the scattered ruins of all the other hearts were at his feet.

"It's true, we were never home," he said. "If you saw Billy's place, you'd know why. Just kidding. But we've been crazy busy. And of course Billy doesn't have an answering machine."

"Why would he? But why didn't you spend twenty dollars and get one?"

"It's not my house," Kai said evenly. "I don't tell Billy-O what to do. Besides, they don't sell electronics in Pooncarie. I'd have to go down south to Adelaide for that."

"Oh, Kai." She leaned against him and closed her eyes.

"Well, come on. No use standing in the middle of the airport. You must be hungry."

"What are we going to do? It's nearly eight."

"Yeah, it's too late to drive back," she said. "Let's get a room."

"It took most of my dough to get our cruiser out of hock. We need the money. I don't want to spend it on a room."

Smiling, she showed him the hundreds in her purse. "We got us a little bit of money."

"Nice! Where's you get that? Nuns hold a fundraiser in your honor?" He grinned.

"Actually, funny story there, about the money. Wait till you hear. But let's stay somewhere nice. I've been sleeping practically on a rack for three months, with itchy blankets, oppressive humidity, no AC." She caressed his face. "And I'm sure Billy's couch was not exactly a luxury suite."

"That's more true than you'll ever know."

"So let's splurge. What do you say?"

Reluctantly he agreed.

"What's the matter? You're worried about the money? It's found money, Kai."

"I know. ButaI too vividly remember not having any money at all. Kind of hard to spend hundreds on a hotel room."

"You've been working too hard. I can tell by your face. You're so tanned, though. Must've been outside a lot. Come on, don't worry. Our tour season is starting in two weeks. We'll be fine. Let's go have a nice dinner."

"I brought nothing nice to wear."

She lowered her voice. "We'll get room service."

"Ah."

"We'll have sushi for room service," she cooed, gazing up into his face, kissing his chin, stroking his hedgehog head. "How did you get here? On the bike?"

"How do you propose we put your suitcase on my bike? No, on our safari jungle boy." He kissed her and picked up the handle of her suitcase. "Ready?"

"Where's the bike?"

He paused. "It's in hock."

She stopped walking. "You p.a.w.ned your Ducati?" she said incredulously.

"Billy-O wanted to buy two beautiful horses from the local wrangler." Kai said. "They really were stunning. He promised to pay me back ASAP."

"I don't understand why Billy-O would need to borrow money from you," Larissa asked slowly. "Isn't he paying you? And didn't he get a business loan?"

"Yeah, for the stable, not to buy expensive horses, Larissa. We've never seen mares like these. They're pale white. Come on, let's go."

They walked out of the terminal and crossed the street to the parking lot.

"Billy said you've been in Jindabyne a few days," Larissa said. "Did you get a chance to look for a new place?"

"No," Kai said. "But we can have our old place back if we want. I paid Mejida."

"You did? Why?" she exclaimed. "She was such a witch."

"Be that as it may, it wasn't her fault that we owed a witch money. I don't like to leave debts unpaid. What if I do business with her again? Bart and Bianca depend on her, and she was hara.s.sing them, threatening to stop driving Bart's customers. Too much bad blood all around."

Larissa shrugged, speeding up when she spotted their tour vehicle, happy to see it. "I guess. But I could think of many uses for that thousand bucks we owed her."

"Thirteen hundred."

"Look how nice it looks! You washed it? Did you get it tuned? Because it needed it."

"I did it all, Larissa."

In the troopie, Kai drove them into Sydney, to the Intercontinental Hotel on Macquarrie Street. Larissa was about to run to reception to see if a king deluxe room was available with a Harbor Bridge view, on a high floor, but she was stopped by the valet manager who said there was no how, no way that the hotel could park a vehicle that size in their garage. It simply wouldn't fit, he said. It's as big as a tank. A wartime troop transporter. There's not enough headroom, no clearance for this item. Sorry, can't do it. He and Larissa argued, while Kai stood nearby and said nothing.

Larissa was so disappointed. "Kai, how come you're not more upset? We could have had us a soft downy bed and a hot shower." She pouted.

He was philosophical about it. "Nothing we can do," he said. "I don't like to rail against things when there's nothing I can do. I would like to, however, do something about my hunger."

They got take-out from the snazzy Cafe Opera at the Intercontinental; Larissa ordered black bean squid and soft sh.e.l.l crabs, and tuna, and in a little white shopping bag, she carried it out to the cruiser, and they drove off, parking in a metered spot on a side street near the Opera House, and sat on the bench side by side looking out onto the Sydney Harbor, eating their sushi on their laps just like they once used to. Was it her imagination or was he reticent? But the harbor looked so pretty as they sat. A little bit like the Tappan Zee Bridge looked over the Hudson River when she and Che were kids and would sit like this on the banks of a park in Piermont and watch the white sailboats in the fading light.

"Everything's fine. I'm just hungry, Lar," Kai said. "When my mouth is full, it's kinda hard to speak."

"Do you want me to tell you about Paranaque?"

"You mean something you forgot to put in your letters?"

She chuckled. "Were they effusive?"

"You could say that."

"Yeah, unlike yours." She poked him. "What was that one letter you wrote me? It wasn't a letter, it was a telegram. Dear Lar. Stop. Things are good. Stop. Miss you. Stop. Have nice day. Stop."

Kai smiled into his squid, licking the black bean chili sauce off his fingers. "You don't know how hard Billy and I worked. I couldn't lift a fork to my mouth at night. Every time I'd try to write, I'd fall asleep."

"But when I called, you were never there. Where were you sleeping?"

"First off, Billy doesn't have caller ID so we had no idea you called. And second, we're men, we don't cook. After work, we'd run back, shower quick and then head out for a bite to eat. We had some other guys working with us, so we'd all go out and what not." He fell quiet while he finished his food. It was nearing ten, and the last light had left the sky. The harbor went from violet to twinkling navy. Larissa had a sense of the unreal, a material awareness of herself being central to the elusive meaning of her own life. Just to thinka"she, a girl from a little town near Nyack who'd never been out of the United States, would be sitting in the middle of her life with her extraordinary Hawaiian boy, looking out on the harbor in Sydney, Australia, a hemisphere, four oceans, six continents away from home.

"What a fascinating place, the Philippines," she said finally. "I wish you could've seen it."

"Really? All that vinegar and boiled water? No, thanks. I'll take my Pooncarie any day."

"So you liked it there? It wasn't horrible?"

"Liked it?" He shook his head. "Larissa, it's like nothing else in the universe. Honest. It's transcendental there."

"Hmm." Pensively, she stared at him. "But we're going back to Jindabyne, right? You didn't leave anything behind in Pooncarie, did you?"

"No," he said without emotion. Why did Larissa get the impression he was struggling not to sigh? Instead he pointed quizzically to the sushi she was dismantling by separating the tuna from the rice. "Whatcha doin'?"

"Not eating the rice is what. I should've ordered sashimi." She spread the wasabi on the last piece of her raw tuna. "I've had enough of rice, thank you very much, to last me the rest of my days. If I never have it again as long as I live, that'll be just fine with me." She watched him get up, collect his garbage. "So tell me more about this Pooncarie. Did you make good money with Billy-O?"

"Yeah, he took care of me. It's not about the money, though. Listen, you want to head out? We'll drive out of the city, find a campsite."

"Okay," she said. "I'm kind of ready for that campsite right now." She pressed herself against him.

"Yum," he said. "We're in a public place."

"So?"

"Aren't you frisky."

"I've lived with nuns for three months," said Larissa. "Frisky? I'm positively feline. You're lucky I don't ravish you on the bench in front of the Opera House."

"Lucky? I dunno. It'd be one h.e.l.l of a story to tell the kids."

And just like that, the conversation guillotined by cliche. Mutely she threw out her garbage and got into the troopie. Kai prided himself on being scrupulously careful, avoiding verbal gaffes like that, invoking the word "kids" in jest. But perhaps after three months he'd been out of practice.

He drove them to Bondi Beach, where they parked up in the deserted scenic view of the secluded hills, and lay down on a blanket in the dune gra.s.ses under the stars. The rhythmic ocean crashings served as background love music. She gave him all the love she got.

Don't cry, he kept whispering, through his own rhythmic crashings, don't cry.

Kai, do you have any idea how much I've missed youa?

I have some idea. Please don't cry.

There was something fragile in their lovemaking, tentative, as if the magic rite was faltering, as if they both had to be extra careful lest the parchment leaves in their ancient books would crack and fall like cigarette ash. Larissa couldn't quite put her finger on what was wrong. Was the rhythm off? Was there less panting? Was there one less Oh my G.o.d than there should've been after three months apart, three months of silence?

Afterward she lay on her back, stretched out, arms flung out in a perpetual eternal cross, questioning, asking, receiving few answers tonight. He was tired, he said. He had worked and driven and had to haggle down the price of the cruiser buyout. He was exhausted. He needed to sleep. So that's what he did. He fell asleep and she lay under the sky. Bondi was dark, warm but dry, not sticky or muggy like Manila.

Something is flowing out without blessing, Larissa thought. I don't know what it is. There is a tiny detail in him that's been a.s.sembled incorrectly. There was no a.s.surance, no gold underwriting in the man sleeping next to her. Imperceptibly he was simply saying the wrong things. But what? He was looking at her the wrong way. But how? She couldn't put her finger on it. She put her finger on his heart. I'm flying flying flying. The wooshing breaking ocean soothed the raw ends, filled in the hollow ill-defined fear. Everything was going to be fine. They'd drive back to Jindabyne. Larissa looked forward to seeing the lake again. Summer was coming, the best time for them, the happiest time. They'd go out to dinner with Bart and Bianca, go drinking with Patrick. They'd find another place to live. She was done living on top of hills. She wanted to try the banks this time, in the aromatic eucalyptus-forested sh.o.r.es on the way to Thredbo. Not too far from town. And maybe this time they could look for an unfurnished place so she could nest and buy homey things for it: pillows, cotton throws, vases to put fresh flowers in. Everything would be all right. We have a fundamental union with each other. Things are never perfect, Father Emilio had told her. We are human and we are not perfect.

But it's better than it was when I left, Larissa decided, when we didn't know what was going to happen from one minute to the next. The future's more certain now, that part is a.s.sured. We'll get back on track.

Still thoughasomething bothered her, was not letting her sleep.

Throwing on a T-shirt, she got up and in the dark climbed inside their vehicle parked nearby, dug out a flashlight from the storage compartment, and unzipped Kai's travel duffel behind the driver's side. His jeans were in there, T-shirts, socks, a toothbrush, a few dollars, a little notepad where he wrote down things he didn't want to forget, like her arrival date except that page had been ripped out, and sandwiched in the notepad, an unsealed envelope addressed to his sister Muriel.

Larissa put the envelope back, and was about to zip up the bag and go back to him on the blanket, but a small tingle of curiosity prodded her, only becasue she herself had received but one letter from him and here was his sister Muriel with whom he had barely communicated in the last how many years, getting what felt like three folded pieces of handwritten paper right around the same time Kai told Larissa he was too tired to write.

She took it out.

Dear Muriel, I wish I could make you understand the inexpressible longing I feel when I am here, on one of our horses, clomping through the uncharted desert over the rocks. I've lived in a few places in my short life, and I know there will be many more, but honestly I cannot imagine ever feeling as completely part of a larger universe than I do when I'm in the Aboriginal wilderness. And when I say wilderness, Muriel, I mean, visibility unlimited, horizon infinite, nothing but the earth and sky as far as the eye can see, and I'm sitting atop a saddled mustang, and my lungs can't take a deep enough breath to inhale all the things I feel, to speak all the things I want to say.

For some reason when I am here in the saltbush sands, I feel like I have found meaning behind human life. I used to think I had to invent meaning, manufacture it, even when it wasn't there, imbue things with significance that I myself made up. But here, I understood somethinga"meaning is something that is revealed to me, if I so choose to open my heart and see it. Which is why before it was all about momentary satisfactions. Here it is about a permanent state of grace. My woes have vanished, my sufferings gone away. The cypress pines were here long before I came, the bluebush will be here long after I'm gone. And in the meantime, I have a confidence and a happiness I haven't had for a while that I can indeed build a meaningful life. Maybe after I make things right and we're settled, you can come to visit us here, the land of the red sand and the pink c.o.c.katoo, and see for yourself the astonishing dry earth, the vastness of the wide open rangelands, the profound seclusion, the world and all its cares a million miles away. There is mystery in everything.

Your brother, Kai How long did it take Larissa to fall sleep after reading that? She couldn't stop thinking about the letter he wrote to her, penned as if he had just weeks earlier learned how to write. Okay, she had thought; she'd never seen his writing voice before, and not everyone could be Nabokov, not everyone could dream up, light of my light, fire of my loins. She had accepted that Kai was a man of many gifts, but writing was not one of them. And yetasomehow, in this little missive he carried with him, he manageda"to his sister of all people!a"to express the physical and the lyrical, to find poetry in a dried-out landscape, to feel things and to reflect on them with significance on paper, to spin together earth science and myth and legend and a numinous metaphysical confession. While in his letter to Larissa, he couldn't be bothered to make an adjective into a proper adverb. The stables are coming along nice.

What to make of this? And why did it hurt so much?

And more importanta"or was it less important?a"what to make of the content of the letter, if she could will herself to forget the form of it?

What did Pooncarie have to do with their current life?

And how to mention this to the sleeping naked man?

Larissa was missing something, some essential component, a key piece of the puzzle and she didn't know what it was.

They set out quietly the next morning. She wished they were a little louder, because it was something else to open your eyes and gaze upon the Southern Ocean sparkling crystal green in its morning glory, to want to walk the hills, to swim, to sit with the beautiful people and drink coffeeaLarissa wished for a carefree morning in Bondi instead of the one offered to her today. After buying coffee and an egg sandwich, Kai looked over a map and got on the road. Five hours pa.s.sed slowly and not slowly enough. Time flew and crawled. Larissa said once it was hot.

"Yeah, we're having a heat spell here the last week or so. But whatever temperature it is in Sydney or Jindabyne, it's twenty degrees hotter in Pooncarie."