The Ice Age Read online

  the ice age

  Kirsten Reed was born in 1973 in Seattle. She grew up in New Zealand, in Germany and in various parts of the US before moving to Australia as an adult. She now lives in Brisbane with her partner, two cats and various foster animals, and works as a freelance artist and writer. The Ice Age is her first novel.

  kirsten reed

  the ice age

  Text Publishing Melbourne Australia

  The paper used in this book is manufactured only from wood grown in sustainable regrowth forests.

  The Text Publishing Company

  Swann House

  22 William Street

  Melbourne Victoria 3000

  Australia

  www.textpublishing.com.au

  Copyright © Kirsten Reed 2009

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  First published in 2009 by The Text Publishing Company

  Cover design by WH Chong

  Page design by Susan Miller

  Typeset by J & M Typesetting

  Printed in Australia by Griffin Press

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

  Reed, Kirsten, 1973-

  The ice age / Kirsten Reed.

  ISBN: 9781921520747 (pbk.)

  A823.4

  For Dan and his fangs

  There were those teeth. Those little vampire teeth, glinting sharply as he stared at the road in front of us in a vacant daze. We drove past all the gaudy painted signs telling us where the next doughnut shop was, the nearest hamburger joint; pizza, now doughnuts again. The road was stretched across this wasteland like a big silver rubber band, stapled down by fluorescent mustardy-yellow lines. Even the sky looked tacky, needlessly aqua, a tourist’s T-shirt. And that white skin. His iceberg eyes, luminous whiteblue, burning into the distance. I wished he would hurry up and bite me. Drain me of this wish, pull me over to the other side. Surely anyone with teeth that sharp…

  We stopped at a roadside diner. People asked if I was his daughter. They ask all the time. Hoping, accusing. We never say yes, and we never say no. We ate our food at a booth in a hungry, self-conscious rush, straight out of the wrappers. They didn’t have plates. We left a tip, just change. The waitress scooped it up straight away as we slid out of the booth. She was middle-aged and bulgy, in a proper matronly waitress’s dress. She shot us what I suppose was intended to be a look of gratitude. She really only managed a weak glare. I guess that’s the countryside for you. People are a little edgy.

  Of course Gunther’s never tried anything on with me. It must be the age difference. He’s probably right. I do and don’t feel young. I know he’s old, and in comparison I’m young. But it’s the two of us together, and I must be old beyond my years to be hanging around here with him, talking, reading, smoking, riding around in the car observing stuff. I’m getting it all. I’m starting to get it, that is. He said when he picked me up way back there he thought I looked young, but my intelligence made me look older in the face.

  I was cutting across a gas station lot, weaving through the pumps. I hadn’t been on the road long. There were a lot of seedy characters lurking around. Pretty much everyone filling up their cars looked like they’d just been busted out of prison. I was trying to pass through undetected, but the station speaker system was piping out KISS. ‘I Was Made for Loving You’. An anthem to fucking if ever there was one, recorded before I was even born. Those songs bring out the animal in some people. I was the only female in sight, so by default the closest thing to a Rock Video Fantasy Chick. Gunther pulled out in his big long tank of a car and I stuck my thumb out. He peered over at me with a kind of worried look, and I got in. He asked where I was headed. I asked where he was headed.

  After a brief silence I asked, ‘Is there a penitentiary around here, or something?’

  He smirked and said, ‘No, but there is a meat packing plant.’ I figured he must be vegetarian or something.

  He said he thought I was about twenty. Which is still too young. But not running-from-the-law young. I guess I’m not worth it. I’m good company so he keeps me around. Sometimes I think anyone would be good company on this stretch of road. I said lucky for him I’m a virgin. Because if they test me, he’s in the clear. He said no one would believe he hasn’t molested me anyway, so what difference does it make? I said I could tell them I’m a perfectly willing driving companion, and he said, ‘Brainwashed…’

  Now this is taking a long time to write, because it’s hard to type when you’re stoned. Gunther bought us this ageing portable typewriter. Really, it’s his, but I use it more often. I just like to keep busy. And Gunther says if I have something I want to do, or be, I should start now. He said a painter is someone who gets up in the morning and paints, nearly every day. And writers, by his definition, just write things down, a lot. So far the only thing I’ve seen him do on a daily basis is drive, and smoke. He smokes and smokes and smokes, rolling joint after joint, in every hotel room we stop in. He always looks so gentlemanly doing it, throughout the entire ritual, in every practised gesture. Cutting out a little card and rolling it between his thumb and index finger, chopping, sprinkling, caressing it all into place. And the licking…I remember his old friend Glorie Wethers. Funny old broad. Gunther’s known her from way back.

  He introduced us a few weeks back, on a Mississippi steamboat of all places. At an art opening. She’d lent one of Gunther’s paintings to this traveling exhibition; a portrait of her, younger, softer, more fragile. Gunther boasted kind of sarcastically he could now say he’s exhibited in every town along the banks of the Mississippi. I looked at it for ages and couldn’t speak. I wondered if Gunther painted daily circa the time of this painting…if Glorie had been some sort of muse. He assured me it was only the one painting.

  She stood there amongst idle chatter and tinkling glasses, smoking out of one of those long filter holders, filling our side of the main cabin with plumes of smoke. She has excellent posture, projects her voice, enunciates. It was in one of those moments of hers, of self-possessed, well-preserved elegance that she announced (through a heavy waft of smoke) that watching Gunther lick the seal of a joint was the most erotic experience she’d had for quite some time.

  Glorie also said Gunther draws attention by shunning it; everyone has a great paradox, and that is his. His distance from the rest of the world makes him magnetic. She’s right. He’s just far enough away for me to feel the pull toward him. My eyes just follow him around, and the sight of him going about his measured, dreamy rituals fills me with calm. There on the bed where he’s sitting, rolling, licking, smoking, passing it to me. That’s a spot on the world that’s not spinning, a pocket of perfect stillness. The smaller the room, the better. The closer the walls, the tighter they hug me, the safer I feel. It’s only claustrophobic if you don’t want to be there. I always want to be here.

  Maybe I’m being pretentious, but if I am, it’s all this damn poetry he’s got me reading. Novels, biographies, novellas. Novellas. Not so long ago I would have been punched for even knowing that word. Girl or no girl. My mom always maintained I was ‘a bookish child’, but most of those were horsey books.

  He’s wondering where to drop me. And he can’t find a place. The world is too ugly, too plain. Every town is an empty blank. And the cities, well, they’re full. As long as Gunther’s acting like some weird detached dad, I’m his little girl. He says it’s a sad state of affairs when the apparent predator is the protector. I don’t understand what
he gets all heavy about. We like it here with each other. I don’t want the world to close in, but if they do, surely they’ll see the innocence. Who said, ‘All’s fair in love and war’? I hope that applies here. I don’t want him to give me up.

  Once I dreamed he was a dragon, flying over all the strip malls with me dangling from his talons by the back of my shirt. He was swooping down over all that bleakness; the parking lots, the fatties waddling to their cars with mouths full of burgers, spitting crumbs…the litter, the rust, the neon, looking for a place to set me down.

  And when I say something clever…Gunther likes it when I get a little insolent. He fixes those blinding eyes on me. They’re like headlights. Standing there in those beaming spotlights, that starts a little jump in my chest.

  We shack up in another generic hotel room. He rolls another slew of elegant joints. I type some stuff on the old typewriter. Actually, it’s not old enough to be cool. It’s not retro or anything, just used. It’s all plastic and tacky. But it was cool of Gunther to buy it for us, although he hasn’t done a damn thing on it yet. He’s kind of mysterious a lot of the time. He gets up and makes a little cot look slept in, ruffled up. He does that a lot. Sometimes he even puts crumbs and wrappers on the bedclothes. But I always sleep beside him. Not with him, just next to him. I once half woke up and he had his hand on my shoulder. Like a long, still pat on the back. All full of peace, like everything else Gunther does. Usually he just sleeps on his back. I try and make it a point to wake up earlier than him. It’s not easy. But I like staring at him, at his profile, in the mornings. He looks so pale. This is when I pretend he’s in his coffin, and wonder again when he’s going to bite me, so I can start my life with him proper.

  I get up and look in the mirror. Maybe it happened in the night. No punctures; none where I can see them. And I’m so young and tan and healthy. It’s all taking so damned long. The days that just drag into other days, of people glancing over and looking away, not knowing that we’re special.

  We go on through some more tired little towns, along some more long stretches of road dotted with take-away fast food signs. We stop in some crappy towns for some crappy food. It’s not often we eat something above average. But usually it involves pie. You definitely don’t want to pick anything too adventuresome on the menu. Anything Europeansounding, forget it. It’s just going to be a perplexing, oddly constructed, stomach-turning mess. (Gunther’s words; he once got a little excited and ordered something ‘cord en bleu’.) He said he thought he’d found a droplet of culture out there in the barren wasteland. Thought maybe this noisy, greasy kitchen held a captive genius. But, alas. (As if anyone still says ‘alas’ these days.) He said he should have known not to look for excellence, or even edibility, in a meal that shares a menu with onion rings.

  I’m thinking, it was a truck stop after all. Sometimes Gunther is as stupid as the rest of us. It does all get a bit samey out here on the road, though. I don’t blame him for getting his hopes up. When we get to the coast, supposedly everything’s going to be cooler. The people, the places, the food. He says I’ll like it there; he likes it there; he knows it well, and can leave me with a clear conscience. I don’t think so; I think he’ll be too used to me by then.

  It’s sort of a light gray day, and we pull into a drugstore parking lot. There are some kids hanging out in the lot. They’re about my age, and we eye each other off. They’re all black-velvety and dark. The girl is pretty pudgy. I just look straight ahead and walk past. I can feel myself almost strutting. Can they see how tons much cooler than them I am, how much more sophisticated? I have Gunther trailing behind me, gliding fluidly, like a well-trained creature of the night. I buy shampoo, some dark-blood lipstick, and some white face powder. I apply the latter two items immediately upon returning to the car. Gunther returns with some toiletries, and the same kind of typing paper he always buys (grade-A recycled), fixes those amused beams on me and says he wonders why the young try to look so old.

  That was a kind of weird day that stands out more than a lot of others. When we stopped for lunch it was looking very much like it was going to be just another boring lunch in a boring town, with people giving us shifty glances, but basically ignoring us. But the waitress was really paying attention to us, to me in particular. She had blonde, sort of Marilyn Monroe-ish hair that looked like a wig. She looked about Marilyn’s age, too, if Marilyn were still alive, and had stacked on a few pounds and crammed them into that uniform. She seemed nice, though. She was super friendly to me, fussing over me a lot. When I asked directions to the ladies’ room she said she’d take me. She led me behind the counter, which I thought was a little unusual. Then I found myself standing in the kitchen. There was a big chef with a greasy apron pulled tautly over an enormous gut, standing in front of the stove, sharpening a huge knife. A cooking machete. He looked a little surprised to see me back there, but not enough to actually stop what he was doing. He just kept staring and sharpening. I remember thinking, ‘This isn’t the ladies’ room.’

  This old Marilyn-ie waitress took me by the shoulders. It was a little abrupt but her grip on me was steady and comforting. I didn’t think she meant any harm.

  She said, ‘Honey, I can get you out of here.’

  I said, ‘What?’

  She got more urgent. ‘Honey, what’s your name? Can you tell me your name?’

  I was getting confused now and just stared.

  She shouted, ‘I’m Peggy! What’s your name!?’

  ‘I’m OK,’ I said.

  The chef sniffed, ‘Ain’t no kind of name,’ and chuckled at his own joke.

  Peggy kept on. ‘What? Honey, I can get you away from him.’

  I must have looked horrified, because she stopped in her tracks, quieted down a bit, and said, ‘He’s not your…father…is he?’

  ‘Um,’ was my best effort.

  ‘Well, what’s he—’

  I’m not a good liar, and started stammering ‘He’s my…uncle, we’re driving, my mother’s dead (at which point I started crying. I don’t know whether I was starting to believe my own story, or just crack under the pressure). We’re driving across, I’m going to live with my grandfather.’

  ‘Oh, honey, I’m so sorry.’ And she was clutching me to that huge, ample breast, in a long, squishy waitress hug.

  I can’t believe she bought that panicky garble. My pants may as well have been on fire. We were pretty nervous after that. I hightailed it out front without going to the bathroom, and when I got there Gunther wasn’t in our booth. He left a nice wad of bills on the table and was waiting in the car, idling, facing the exit. I got in and he drove out calmly and deliberately. We changed our route and drove out of state lines. Every time we saw a cop car we got edgy. Gunther even had me slouch down. And then he yelled, ‘My God, I haven’t done anything wrong!’ It’s not often he yells. Then he muttered, ‘Who am I kidding?’

  That kind of broke up our routine. Things weren’t as monotonous after that. There was this new excitement. Less of the old calm. We were drawing more stuff toward us. This time when we stopped at the hotel, it wasn’t a two-tiered budget inn with a bored receptionist and nothing doing. It was a proper roadhouse. This town had somehow grown its own energy, or sucked it from somewhere, out past all the farms and fields. It was kind of messy, with loaded guys ambling across the parking lot with beers in their hands, shouting to people inside. I couldn’t tell if they were mad or not. Gunther headed straight for the bar and ordered a drink. He sat himself down on a little stool and told me to go to the room. I must’ve kept standing there, because he got a little upset. Said I was too young to be drinking. I stood planted a little longer. I was just confused. Watching him roll joints half the night was part of my evening routine.

  I did go back to the room; I tried to anyway. I put my stuff down on the bed and flipped through the TV channels. But I got bored. I went out to the soda machine by the parking lot and considered what flavor I might like. I could a feel a presence near me, but the
n, there were a lot of people floating around at this joint. I decided on orange. And in the racket of the can clunking down the chute, someone said, ‘Hey.’

  Now this boy was good looking. He had shoulder length, tousled, farm-boy hair. He looked slightly older than me, just enough to be interesting. I said ‘hey’ back. We talked a little and before I knew it, we were around the corner kissing. I hadn’t done much kissing. I’d spent all my previous kisses wondering what the heck those guys thought they were doing, and whether or not I liked it.

  I liked this kissing. And the touching. He was holding me tighter and tighter, and he was warm. His shirt was scratchy, and I don’t usually know what texture people’s clothes are. All the closeness was kind of nice. I was liking the kissing more and more as it went on. Then we stopped for kind of a breather. We just chatted. Small talk and stuff. He asked where I was from. I said back East. I found his presence kind of exciting, but his talking was boring me. Gunther hates small talk. ‘Abhors’ it. Says it’s a needless strain on the vocal cords. He usually gets by with a polite grunt, and I think I agree with him, that’s usually ‘sufficient’. People aren’t really interested in you anyway. I hoped this boy would get back to the kissing. I’ve got Gunther to talk to if talking’s what I want.

  I guess I was boring him, too, because he got back to the kissing, and pretty quickly too. I don’t know how long we kept at it. He had started to touch other parts of me. At first I was uncomfortable with some of it, like when he swept his big old countryboy paw across my breasts. But then I started to get kind of tingly. And then Gunther shouted, ‘What the HELL do you think you’re doing?!’ It was clear he’d been back to the room, because he’d taken his jacket off. I wondered how long he’d been looking for me. I had no idea how long I’d been out there. Long enough to get pretty tingly. It was all kind of a blur from there. Gunther marched me straight back to the room, barely glanced at the boy, who muttered, ‘Jeez, your dad is pretty uptight.’