Making Laws for Clouds by Nick Earls Page B

the whole time. So keep at it.’
    â€˜That’s the plan. See you in twenty.’
    He keeps looking up at me, as if he’s about to say something more, but I haven’t done one new thing wrong so he has to go. He turns round at the gate. What’s he looking for? Fornication in a matter of seconds up on a plank in Brown’s Slipway? I give him a wave. I’d shout out to him, something friendly about twenty minutes, but there’s a circular saw going over at a boat nearby.
    So I wave and I smile and I let him know that it’s me who’s looking at him as much as the other way round. He nods – that’s all I get for my wave – and he leaves.
    The bus pulls away, and I watch it go.
    I paint, towards the bow. Twenty minutes isn’t long so I paint quickly, starting with a band of second coat running along just below the deck.
    Around the bow, on the other side, I can hear a brush tapping on the rim of a paint tin when the sawing’s stopped. Boots sliding along a wooden plank with the small sideways steps of a painter.
    I get closer to the front and I can see a trestle round there, lined up with mine, and the end of a plank sticking out. Then a foot, an ankle, another foot, a calf. Tanika Bell. Then the other ankle, a knee, a thigh. Fifteen minutes, fifteen minutes at least. That’s how long Mr Bell’s been gone.
    I load up with paint, push further forward, load up again and push till the brush is dry, right to the edge of the bow.
    â€˜Beat ya,’ Tanika says as her brush hits mine and pushes it away.
    We each take a step towards the water, and we’re standing on our planks face to face. She’s got paint in her hair, like I knew she would, and a daub of it on her forehead.
    â€˜Hey worker,’ she says. ‘Who would have thought these things got so narrow at the front they just ran out? It’s not like the back at all.’
    â€˜No, if we were at the back we’d still be miles apart. No wonder they call it the stern. There’s no fun there.’ Okay, my stern joke isn’t brilliant but I might as well get something out of it.
    â€˜You must be hot in the sun,’ she says. ‘Even round this side it’s so hot I’m sweating like I’m having my own wet T-shirt contest.’ She pulls her shoulders back and of course I stare right at her front. ‘Ha, made you look.’
    â€˜Well, you were making certain claims. I had to see if the evidence stacked up. About the sweating.’
    â€˜So, how’d I go?’
    â€˜I don’t think you want to know. I think I should be painting. I think you did fine. It’s a hot day. You stacked up. You sweated, quite a lot. Actually, I thinkI might be going from “clean thoughts of meaningful attachment” to something altogether less appropriate and possibly deeply lustful.’
    â€˜Sure, I get that too.’
    â€˜We’ve got to, um . . .’
    Tanika Bell’s shorts are creased at the front from bending, and most of her T-shirt’s wet and there’s sweat above her upper lip and down her neck. She’s smiling, smiling the way she did the night we left the nativity play and before word got out. And that’s not the same as the regular smile people get from her on the bus. There’s a subtle but definite difference.
    We should have known there was going to be trouble. I think we did know, back at her place that night. But we didn’t have our stories straight, and you’re not supposed to have a story anyway.
    â€˜Mr Harbison’s gone for some smokes,’ she says. ‘He reckons they might sell them at the fish and chippie next door.’
    â€˜And he’s a slow old walker at the moment, Harbo. It must be frustrating the heck out of him. It could take him ages.’
    â€˜Ages. Yeah, ages.’
    She spins the brush in her hand but it’s spiky with drying paint and none of it comes off.
    A bus horn