Riverbed of Two Fires

The river smelled like diesel and rain. I was sitting on the concrete steps near the Kangaroo Point ferry terminal, watching a CityCat slide past, its wake slapping the rocks below. My phone said 6:47 PM. I'd been in Brisbane for three weeks and hadn't talked to anyone except the barista at the cafe near my apartment. That's not a complaint. I came here to be alone. I came here because being alone in a new country is cleaner than being lonely in the one you're from.

I didn't notice him until he sat down two steps below me. Not close. Not far. The kind of distance that says I'm not here for you but I'm not avoiding you either.

He had a paper cup of chai. I could smell the cardamom from where I sat. That's what made me look. In China I drank tea every day, but it was green and bitter and my grandmother poured it with both hands. This was different. Sweet and spiced and foreign.

"You're staring," he said. Not rude. Just a fact.

"I was smelling," I said.

He turned around. Dark eyes, dark hair, a beard that looked like it had been trimmed three days ago and was already forgetting its shape. He smiled with one side of his mouth.

"That's either very strange or very honest," he said. "I haven't decided."

"Both," I said. "Usually both."

His name was Cable. He told me that with a straight face, like he'd been waiting his whole life for someone to ask. He was from Chennai, been in Brisbane for two years, worked as a structural engineer on the Cross River Rail project. His accent was soft and musical, curling around the edges of words like it was tasting them.

"Your name is Ash," he said. "Like the tree?"

"Like the color," I said. "Like what's left after a fire."

He laughed. Real laugh, not polite. It came from his chest and made his shoulders move. I hadn't made anyone laugh in a long time. I forgot how it felt. Like being seen.

We talked for an hour. Maybe two. The sun dropped behind the university buildings and the river turned from gray to gold to something darker. I told him about Shanghai, about my job at the translation firm, about how I left because my mother kept asking when I was getting married and I kept not having an answer. He told me about his family, about his father who wanted him to be a doctor, about the arranged marriage he'd walked away from two years ago. He said he came to Australia because he needed to find out who he was when no one was telling him.

"That's a very romantic reason," I said.

"It's a very expensive reason," he said. "I'm still paying off the student loans."

I liked that. The honesty. The way he didn't try to make his life sound better than it was.

A ferry horn sounded. The last one, maybe. The river was dark now, city lights starting to flicker on across the water. South Bank looked like a postcard, all glass and green and too clean to be real.

"I should go," I said. But I didn't move.

"Me too," he said. He didn't move either.

We sat there while the sky went fully black. A few other people passed behind us, joggers and dog walkers and couples holding hands. I watched them and felt something I couldn't name. Not jealousy. Something more like recognition. Like I remembered what that felt like, being part of a pair. And then I remembered why I stopped.

"I know a place," Cable said. "Good chai. Not this." He held up his paper cup. "Real chai. My aunt runs a restaurant in West End. She'll make it for you the way it's supposed to be made."

"I don't know what that means."

"It means with milk and sugar and cardamom and ginger and about twenty minutes of your patience. It means you sit and you wait and you drink it while it's hot and you don't rush."

I thought about my apartment. Empty. Clean. The single chair facing the window. The bed I hadn't made in three days.

"Okay," I said.

We walked along the river path toward the bridge. He talked with his hands, pointing at buildings, telling me stories about construction accidents and concrete pours and the time he nearly fell off a scaffold because he was looking at a bird instead of his feet. I listened. I liked the way his voice filled the space between us. I liked the way he didn't ask me questions I didn't want to answer.

The restaurant was small and bright and smelled like cumin and fried onions. His aunt, a woman with gray hair and gold earrings, took one look at me and smiled.

"You brought a friend," she said to Cable. Then to me: "You're Chinese?"

"Yes," I said.

"Good," she said. "We need more Chinese around here. Too many white people."

Cable laughed. I did too. It was the kind of thing my grandmother would have said.

We sat in the corner. The chai came in small glasses, steaming. It was sweet and spicy and thick, and I burned my tongue on the first sip because I was too eager. Cable watched me and didn't say anything. He just drank his own chai and looked at me like he was reading a book he liked.

"What?" I said.

"Nothing," he said. "You just. You look different when you're not thinking."

"What do I look like?"

"Like someone who's been holding her breath for a long time."

I didn't have an answer for that. So I drank my chai and let the heat settle in my chest.

We stayed until the aunt started stacking chairs. Cable paid. I offered. He refused. We walked out into the night air, which was warm and wet and heavy with jasmine from someone's garden.

"My place is close," he said. "Do you want to come up? I have better tea. Real tea. None of this chai business."

I knew what he was asking. I knew what I would say. I'd known since he sat down on those steps.

"Okay," I said.

His apartment was on the third floor of a brick building with no elevator. Small. Clean. A mattress on the floor, a desk covered in blueprints, a shelf of books in Tamil and English. A window that looked out at the river.

He made tea. Green tea, loose leaf, in a clay pot. He poured it into two cups and handed me one. Our fingers touched. His skin was warm.

"I don't do this," I said. "Not usually."

"Me neither," he said.

We looked at each other. The tea steamed between us. Outside, a train rattled past on the bridge. Inside, the only sound was our breathing.

He kissed me. Soft at first, like he was asking a question. I answered by opening my mouth. His hand found my waist. Mine found his neck. The tea went cold on the desk.

We didn't talk after that. Not with words. He pulled my shirt over my head and I unbuttoned his. His skin was darker than mine, brown against my pale yellow, and I thought about how we must look, two bodies from opposite sides of the world, tangled together on a mattress on the floor. He kissed my collarbone. I traced the line of his spine.

"Ash," he said. Just my name. Like it meant something.

I pulled him closer.

Later, when the city was quiet and the river was black and his arm was heavy across my stomach, I stared at the ceiling and listened to him breathe. I thought about my mother. I thought about the translation firm. I thought about all the reasons I came to this country and all the things I was trying to leave behind.

I didn't sleep. But I didn't leave either.

When the sun came up, pink and orange through the window, Cable was still there. Still asleep. Still holding on.

I didn't know what that meant. I didn't know if it meant anything at all.

But I stayed.