Dog Handling by Clare Naylor Page B

up to fate. Perhaps she should be Zen and take to the streets and see if she bumped into Ben Parker or a similar candidate for fun and love to end all love. Someone to have sex with on sheepskin rugs while eating pomegranates. Not that there was anyone similar to Ben Parker. She slid into a reverie and wondered what he was doing now. Maybe he really was in Sydney. Certainly his parents had lived here. And let’s face it, who in their right mind would want to leave? And if he did live here and was, let’s just say, girlfriendless, then he, too, might be wandering the streets in a similarly Zen-like manner. Though in her experience men with spare time on their hands tended to make plans involving beer, not destiny. So what did one do in a strange city without a car, map, or friend? She would get dressed first. Something fun and sexy. She pulled on her shorts and some great flip-flops decorated Carmen Miranda–style with fake cherries that Tim happened to think hideously tacky and set out in search of Sydney and herself. Well, she had to start somewhere.
    Actually, the only place she could think of to go was to the local shop for a pint of milk. Until Alex arrived, that might actually be the sum total of her social life. But it was definitely a start. Liv walked out onto the street and stopped to pick a flower of jasmine from the tree in a jaunty fashion. Had she been in New York or Paris she’d have simply walked in the same direction as the best-dressed person and followed the neon lights. But there were only lots of frangipani trees, a man walking a dog, and some temperamental streetlights. She just went the opposite way to the man with the dog, knowing that wherever he was she didn’t want to be and also that if she followed him either he’d accuse her of being a stalker or she’d step in his dog’s poo with her flip-flops on. So she walked up the hill past a street of beach houses all similar to her own, some done to fabulously rich banker standards, others more dilapidated and run-down, but all variations on a theme and most painted all ochres and umbres and sandstone colours, with the odd pink or cobalt blue thrown in. There were a few cars parked on the streets and the occasional cockroach scuttled underfoot, but otherwise there was no sign of life.
    The uphill became a downhill and the road wound until Liv found a buzzing intersection and a fluorescent-lit supermarket glaring out at her. She wandered in and found the fridge, thinking she may liven up her night in by buying a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, too. She had hoped that she might inadvertently wind up on some beachfront bar sipping a pina colada that matched her flip-flops, chatting to an eclectic bunch of locals—maybe a shark catcher with leathered skin. Most definitely there’d be a lifeguard and a bikini-clad waitress who’d tell her the best place to get your tarot cards read and the hippest beach to spread your towel on. But Rainforest Crunch was the next best thing.
     
    “Just gorgeous. Where did you find them?” Liv looked up and saw a six-foot man smiling down on her. Wearing a polka-dot dress and a black wig. He was pointing, with a nail that put even Alex’s French manicures to shame, at Liv’s foot.
    “My flip-flops?” She smiled. “Little shop in London.”
    “Well, they’re very special,” he commented, and eased his corseted waist and pneumatic bosom up to reach the top shelf for a bottle of wine.
    “Going to a party?” Liv asked.
    “Just a club night in Oh so low,” he replied.
    “Oh so low? What’s that?”
    “It’s what we call Soho, honey. Real dive, but I’ve been at the office all day so needed a little deeee-stress.” He smiled. “I intend to get totally arseholed tonight. So you’re new in town?” he asked.
    “How can you tell?” Liv picked up the ice cream and grabbed a packet of Oreos, too, as they headed for the checkout together.
    “Your skin’s blue. Clearly not a native.” He examined her shopping