The house was broken. As a house - that is as something to keep the elements out and keep you safe - it didn't work. He stood on the broken porch in the shade of the broken roof and felt the summer heat desiccate and wither everything in the yard behind him.
The house would take a lot of work but he had time and it felt good to have a project. But before the house came the garden, if you could call it a garden. Where it wasn't parched dirt and rocks it was waist high grass - coarse and tough as anything. And everywhere junk: broken wood, parts of unidentifiable machines.
Through the doorway the house looked blessedly cool and dark. It also looked like it had been gutted by both fire and flood at the same time. No wonder his uncle had done nothing to it in twenty years and had died before he'd gotten round to it.
Apparently Hal had spent his first five years in the house. He'd expected a few memories to be shaken loose when he first came back to take a look at the property he'd inherited, but nothing. Even so he didn't just want to sell it and for some reason he didn't want to tear it up and start again.
But the house was a lot of work. Start with just clearing the yard: that was the plan. He turned, and even in the shade, even that little movement made fresh beads of sweat start their journey down his brow.
The long yellow car pulling up on the other side of the low, wire fence seemed to be arriving perfectly on cue. He waved at the driver as she stepped out onto the road and held up her hand to keep the sun from her eyes. She was the only person in the car he noted with disappointment.
"Where's Johnny?" he called by way of greeting.
"He said he forgot. He said he had another thing."
"Yeah," Johnny had taken a look at the air trembling over the blacktop beneath his window and found another thing he had to be doing. Probably in an air-conditioned bar. He didn't blame him. "You could've called me," he said as she rounded the front of the car and pulled on the passenger door. "You were only giving him a ride." The car was a rust-trimmed classic, but you have to take classics like that on their own terms. The door didn't open.
"I came to help," she said over her shoulder and laughed.
He looked at her, her yellow sundress blurring against the bleached yellow of her car, her slender arms and legs bare and already tanned from the summer. Sandals. No hat.
"You came to help?" He moved his straw hat, settled it on his head. "I don't mean to be rude, but... this is gonna be hard work Luce."
The muscles of her arms tensed for a moment as she really put her strength into opening the recalcitrant door. She heaved, grunted and it popped open. "I ain't helping with this fucking wasteland," she informed him, again holding her hand up to shade her eyes in a lazy, thoughtless movement. She turned and bent and Con just let himself watch the thin dress slip up over her ass a little. He wondered if she was sweating as much as he was - her dress looked like it might be clinging in a few places. She had to be sweating. She wouldn't be human otherwise.
She came up holding a glass pitcher and a thermos by their handles in one hand. In the other hand was a large plastic bag, which shone and glittered - crystal and white.
"I made lemonade," she raised the flask and the pitcher. "I brought a pitcher and some glasses. And I got ice at the store." She smiled, her eyes practically closed against the blinding, late morning sun. "Tell me that's not helping."
- - -
She had brought an old folding chair too, with a tear through the fabric at the back that made it look like it was going to give way at any moment. She set herself up on the porch, exactly where he had stood watching her arrive and she sat with her legs crossed, watching him.
He bent his back in the heat and worked. The thin, old shirt he'd picked was plastered to him in no time, and he felt a little like bacon - like meat on a grill. He waded into the sharp, dry grass and tried to clear out the engine parts and discarded furniture that was hidden like the world's worst Easter egg hunt. When he'd cleaned an area enough he fired up the noisy petrol driven slicing thing that he'd rented and tore through the grass until you could see the ground.
He worked and he sweated, and every now and then she would call to him, "Have some lemonade." Or he would feel his head start to buzz and knew he needed to get out of the heat for a while.
The sun moved over the house and the shade from the broken porch roof stretched a little further so he could sit on the low, broken steps and try not to down the cool, beautiful lemonade in one big gulp. She sat behind him in her chair and they talked about everything: the hot, hot city that they'd both only moved to (or moved back to) in the last few years, people they knew, the work where they'd met.
And he'd liked her since he met her, but whatever there was between them had just never had a chance to become something else. There were always other things in the way, small things that made it seem like something that wouldn't happen.
Now she was behind him in that thin, yellow dress, legs crossed and bouncing one foot idly in the air just at the corner of his vision. When he talked to her he didn't turn to look at her, he just looked sideways at her small foot and the cheap sandal that was dangling from it, dancing with her movements. He looked at her orange nail varnish and as the cool, precious liquid flowed down his throat he wanted to turn and let his eyes roam up the rest of her legs.
"Who taught you how to make this stuff," he held the tumbler of lemonade up to look at the cloudy, fresh juice, then gave into the temptation and rolled the glass across his forehead.
"My grandma told me. On her death bed."
"Shut up."
"I got the recipe off the internet," she laughed, "but it's good right? It's like the third lot I've made this summer. I keep going to the store and buying all these lemons. It ain't odd, I don't think, but they keep looking at me so weird."
He went back to work. He found a twisted, rusted child's tricycle and tried to remember if he had ridden a tricycle when he was a toddler. He recalled the few photos he had seen of the time and nothing came to mind. He found three or four grills that he was sure were parts of refrigerators - but no actual refrigerators.
He cut the next area down and went back for more lemonade. She grinned as he came towards her and told him that she'd always wanted a porch to sit out on in the summer, and asked if she could come over and pretend it was her house when he'd finished with it.
