Cramp

Hot air on his face and everything seems far away—mountains on the left, distant hills on the right.

Light me a smoke will you love?

He'd rather not help her, but likes the tiny roar when the brown leaves catch. He presses a cigarette to the red coils, passes it to Sylvia.

We went to school together. I was beautiful, but Elizabeth was brilliant. She read books all the time. Sylvia takes a drag. Tom was a lawyer, like his Dad. When Amy was born he had one of those… you know, when you realise stuff? That's when he took up pottery. Sylvia snorts and slaps the steering wheel.

When Federico imagined this place it was without people, like an empty movie set. Main streets lifted from Sunday afternoon Westerns—High Noon, Shane—heavy air that hangs about like an ache. He places his bare feet on the dash. I don't want to be here.

Sylvia breathes smoke out her nose. Stony lips.

I can't stay in that house, Federico. We need a break. We need a change of scene. And now the ugly hill rolls between him and Bea.

You didn't have to sell it. He looks away to a hawk circling over a brown paddock, its eye on any movement in the ground.

It felt like Bea's house. Not mine.

He wants to piss her off. To cut her. Bea would have asked me.

I'm not Bea. She reaches over and pulls the ashtray out, squashes the smoke down like a full stop.