Authors: Samantha Forest
‘Have I just caught the rain Rob?’
‘I think it’s just drizzling, this place always makes me a little dizzy if I’m out here for too long’
‘Yeah it’s fairly bizarre. Imagine being in one of those buildings in Dubai where the top floors are above cloud level. ‘
‘Nah this is plenty for me’
‘Fancy grabbing a drink this evening? I know great bar near here, it’s new.’
Rob was a little taken aback but he had to respond before thinking about her motivations for too long. Katie’s long hair was tousled by the wind making her even more beautiful.
‘Sure that sounds great? Round 8?’
‘See you then.’
Rob waved and headed back towards the elevator, now dizzy from a combination of the soaring balcony and exhilaration.
***
That evening Rob found himself standing in the glow of his office building turning over his car keys in his hands. Katie had messaged him asking him to wait there rather than to walk her out of the office because she had some important meeting with Lee and didn’t know when she’d be finished. He was beginning to get a little bit worried she was going to bail on him but sure enough there she was emerging from the huge revolving doors at the front of the tower. She had changed from her work suit into a tight black dress which on closer inspection was flecked with tiny stars of silver thread. It made her pale skin glow and for a second Rob was lost for words. It was rare that Rob even managed the courage to talk to a girl like Katie, let alone go on a date with her.
‘Sorry I’m so late!’
‘Don’t worry! I got out late as well I’ve only been here a couple minutes’. This was a lie but Rob wasn’t going to call her out on her tardiness at this stage of the game. Rob complimented her on her outfit and she pointed up towards the river
‘That’s the bar I was thinking of up that direction, they do great cocktails and I think a few craft beers’
‘Sounds great’
Rob had no specific interest in craft beers or cocktails, but he was pleased that she seemed to be out to impress him with her choice of bar. Walking along the sidewalk under the glow of streetlamps, they made small talk about work and the weather, and Katie discussed her recent trip to Thailand. Rob felt a little awkward. It felt like small talk but maybe it wasn’t small talk. Maybe this is just what men and women talk about on dates and he should be trying to suppress his excitement at having finally got the girl but he wasn’t. As Rob saw the sign of the bar approaching on his left hand side he decided to try not to overthink things, to try to focus on what Katie was actually saying and ideally make himself seem vaguely interesting in response.
Katie ordered some sugar pink cocktail at the bar which in spite of being fairly fluorescent packed a fair punch, Rob noted as he watched the bar tender pour it. He ordered one of the craft beers he remembered vaguely having heard someone say was good. The bar itself was modern and sleek and hummed gently with conversation. There was no overwhelming wall of clashing music and shouts and the bar was furnished in a simple, elegant manner using dark hardwood and a copper finishing.
They chose a table near a corner beneath a small alcove. Rob watched the way she moved, wrapping long, delicate fingers around her glass. There was still something guarded or performed about her, he thought, but maybe that was just how women were on first dates. The thought crossed his mind that most of who we are came down to slight variations in performance. Different scripts for different situations or people. There were tiny spaces in Rob that he simply couldn’t account for. Couldn’t explain why they didn’t seem to respond to anything, like fixed pupils after a head trauma, he feared they augured some central damage in him he was never quite going to be able to heal.
Rob again tried to keep his mind off these things but they flickered to the surface like white noise on a television set. They ordered more drinks, continued to chat about various different things until Katie clinked her glass on the black stone table top slightly louder than seemed appropriate.
‘I have a questions for you Rob’
‘Sure?’ he replied a little nervously.
‘Your friend Patrick’
Rob’s heart sank immediately. He knew what this meant, that he had been relegated to helpful, benign friend status and yet again Patrick was going to swoop in and steal her away.
‘I was wondering if you knew he was single and whether or not you could introduce us’
Forcing the words through the tightness in his throat that was a kind of bored bitterness, he answered her questions about Patrick and quickly swallowed the rest of his drink. Glancing at his phone he made some half-hearted excuse about needing to go home early. She waved him off, texting another friend to meet her at the bar as he put on his coat to leave. He couldn’t really hold it against Katie, she was under no obligation to find him attractive, but he couldn’t help but feel disappointed. His anger with Katie was intermixed with a similar but even less well founded annoyance with Patrick. There was very little logic he could use to displace the general sense of feeling cheated. He hailed a tax and gave his address to the driver, hoping he wouldn’t try to make conversation.
***
Rob spent the rest of that week feeling fairly bitter about everything. He submitted his report to Lee, whose joking nature had subsided back to his usual cold manner, and made an effort to avoid Katie. Made an effort to avoid most people, spending as much time as possible engrossed in his computer with headphones in to avoid anything resembling passing chatter. Katie’s rejection had hit him harder than he had expected, and he found himself irritated and exhausted not just by her but by the office and his boring work and Lee and the entire clogged, grimy city. Even his runs in the gym frustrated him. He missed the clean air and the connection with the earth he used to feel running through the woods when he was a teenager. Everything just lacked something. It all seemed like a piss poor generic version of what he really wanted (whatever that was) and he was done with it.
He started making some calls. He had built up several weeks of holiday time and his company regularly gave sabbaticals for one reason or another. Frankly Rob didn’t particularly care whether he could come back to the job or not, but the cautious part of him at least wanted the option.
The main people he called were a couple of distant relatives who he knew had friends who still ran ranches. It was a long shot, but Rob had worked in ranches during his teenage years, helping with the horses and generally running errands, so it wasn’t new entirely new ground for him. He also realized that round about that time of year was calving season, so most ranches would be in search of extra staff. He eventually got in contact with a friend of his uncles who had recently lost some of the herders and was desperate for help. Rob agreed he’d get there as soon as possible. It felt like a hasty decision, but just the idea of heading out to a ranch again filled him with energy. He was excited at the prospect of doing some real work, not sitting at a desk working through endless boring insurance claims, the open air and the heat. Having the space away from Katie and Patrick was also a driving factor. It had been years since Rob had had the chance to just be himself, away from everything. He lay on his bed in his small apartment scrolling through flights before noticing there was one seat left on a flight tomorrow afternoon. It was faster than he thought he would go but frankly he was still riding the high of getting a position so quickly. He pulled out a sports bag and threw in some clothes and shoes until the bag was fit to burst. Normally a fairly careful traveller, Rob felt slightly unsure looking at the obviously haphazardly packed case. Was this a rash decision, he thought, probably, but there was some central part of him that also said it was the right decision, and he hadn’t felt so sure of an instinct in a long time.
His phone buzzed, it was a text from Patrick asking if he wanted to meet for a drink after work the following day. He didn’t quite know how or whether to answer. It wasn’t that he was angry at Patrick but he still couldn’t muster much enthusiasm for talking to him, let alone explaining that no he couldn’t go for drinks because actually he was taking a two hour flight out to the middle of nowhere to herd cattle for a few months. There was a sense of relief in that, that Rob wasn’t responsible for keeping up anyone else’s plans or feelings, or trying to impress anyone with his decisions. He let the phone screen go dark, picked up the duffel bag from the bed and threw it beside the door. He had money and keys and ID for the airport, and he was somewhat taken aback that this was all you really needed to just leave. When it came down to it, there was no decision to make. Go or don’t go. There was no one holding him there and that sense of solitude was strangely comforting.
***
Rob pulled his bag off the luggage carrousel. His bag was one of the last ones to arrive, so the lobby had emptied out. Massive toothy smiles stood out on the huge airport billboards advertising mobile phone companies and travel insurance. The people walking past carried small carry on suitcases and looked to be mostly there on business. Rob was still waiting for the anxiety to kick in, to suddenly realize he’d made a terrible decision but at this point he was still caught up in the excitement of the journey. He made his way towards the blue arrivals sign and counted the white, glossy tiles underfoot and listened to the click clacking of high heels and the rolling clicking of wheeled suitcases. The airport was well air conditioned so it was cold and dry, but he knew the minute he stepped out the door he would be hit by a wave of hot, arid air. Rob checked his phone to remind himself of the description he’d been given of the man who was coming to pick him up and bring him to the ranch. As he exited the gate and arrived into the lobby, the noise level rose dramatically, full of the chatter of visitors and staff and restaurants. He knew he was looking for a blonde man in a red shirt. He looked around a few times but saw no-one fitting that description but then heard a low voice call out his name
‘Rob Jacobs?’
‘That’s me! You must be Sam Williams. Thanks so much for coming to meet me’
‘No problem at all’ he smiled. They talked about the flight and Rob’s experience on ranches in the past. Sam struck an imposing figure. It was obvious he worked incredibly hard at the ranch. His hands looked rough and strong and his face had the glow of someone who spent a lot of time in the sun. There was a certain warm, friendly character to him, but it was also immediately clear that he was the person who Rob would be answering to while he was at the ranch.
After Rob threw his bag in the back seat of the truck they were on the highway, and very quickly it was evident that they were going somewhere incredibly far away from the city and any other sort of civilization. Rob watched the waves of tall, gold grass shift and undulate into the horizon, and behind that were huge mountains which looked almost violet from this distances. The landscape was truly alien. The reddish quality of the clay in the earth made the sky look piercingly blue. He and Sam talked on and off, but the conversation wasn’t forced and there were long periods of time where both were happy to sit in silence and admire the view.
‘So what prompted the sudden move?’
Rob shrugged, not wanting to seem overly dour about his life in the city and certainly not wanting to mention Katie and her role in the situation
‘I just needed a bit of a change, missed being out in nature, sick of the rat race’
‘Understandable’
At this point they had reached the ranch, as Sam swung the car around a sloping turn towards the house. It was an old, wooden building which appeared to have grown considerably over the years. Small tin sheds on both sides and what looked to be a rather ram shackle barn was obscured in the background. It was surrounded by scrubby grass and a sleepy sheepdog lounged on the front porch. Sam gestured for Rob to get out and so he did, the truck door making a satisfying clunk behind him. He pulled his bag out and threw the strap over his shoulder and followed Sam who was already walking towards the main house.
‘I’ll show you up to your room and then give you the grand tour, ok?’ he called back and Rob nodded in agreement. Up close the house was even more run down, but solid and clearly very old. The furniture was simple and rugged and you could see years’ worth of dents and scratches from years of use. The walls were panelled with dark uneven wood and interspersed with various maps, posters and scraps of paper, scribbled furiously all over with sketches and notes. Beyond the walls everything was relatively tidy, but it had the feel of a place that was not often visited, and Rob got the sense that perhaps Sam was a little nervous for him to be there. As if he was seeing something that had been hidden for quite some time.
‘Sorry the place is a bit chaotic’ Sam said, reading Robs thoughts ‘there’s been just me here for quite a while’
‘It’s a nice place you got here, I’d say it gets lonely in the winter though’
Sam shrugged and turned away, rattling with a coffee pot and the tap as he set it to brew. He pulled two mismatched mugs out of a cupboard and poured some sugar into a small dish, spilling some onto the counter top
‘So most of what we’ll be doing is just making sure the herd moves where it’s supposed to move. There’s been some issues with livestock being attacked lately so we need to keep a closer eye on them than I can do by myself’
‘Sounds great’ Rob said running his fingers over the indentations on the kitchen table.