He looks at the Post-it note stuck to his computer.
Rod Van Blair and a phone number, in Neve’s handwriting.
I know who you’d call, Leo.
She didn’t have to think about it. She didn’t check to make sure she had it right. They haven’t talked about Rod in years, but it’s like he’s always been front of mind for both of them.
He remembers how confused his parents were when Rod wasn’t at Leo’s thirtieth birthday party.
“Where’s Rod?” asked his dad, the only man at the party in a suit and tie, as he peered over Leo’s shoulder.
“He’s not here, Dad. We kind of lost touch.”
That’s what you say. You don’t say “we broke up” when a friendship ends. You don’t say “we’re estranged” if it’s not a family member. You say you “lost touch,” as if you carelessly misplaced your friend, as if it’s not one of your life’s greatest failures and regrets.
Leo hadn’t seen Rod in two years by then. He couldn’t believe he was having a thirtieth birthday party without him. He hadn’t enjoyed the party, and has refused to have one ever since. Parties are too stressful anyway.
“You what?” said his mother. “You did not lose touch. What happened?”
He never did tell his parents what happened.
The kids have sometimes asked about Rod when they look at the wedding photos. Rod was his best man and there are photos of them together at the reception, arms slung carelessly around each other’s shoulders, ties askew, rumpled shirts and hair, young unlined faces.
“Just an old friend,” said Leo. “We lost touch.”
“Why did you do that?” asked Bridie.
Yes, why did he do that?
Leo and Rod had met on their first day at Sydney University. They were both studying for a Bachelor of Engineering (Honors) in the Civil Engineering stream. Neither of them had gone to school in Sydney, so they both felt like outsiders when other students hollered the names of friends across the quadrangle. Rod was from regional Victoria and Leo was from Tasmania so they probably both felt like country bumpkins, although both would have denied that at the time.
They ended up sharing a terrace house near the university. Rod taught Leo how to make a curry. Leo taught Rod how to do laundry.
Rod played squash and one of his squash friends became sort of friends with Leo too. And it was at that sort-of-friend’s twenty-first that Leo caught sight of a tangle-haired girl wearing a Cartier watch. So basically Leo owes Rod his whole life.
When they were twenty-eight and had been each other’s best mates for over a decade, Rod fell for a beautiful woman who constantly spoke to Rod in such a dismissive way it was painful to hear. She was a wicked witch, it was clear to all, but Rod was besotted, which meant, as Neve said at the time: the situation needed to be handled sensitively. Leo tried to tiptoe. He dropped hints over many months. He said mildly, “She sometimes seems kind of critical of you, mate.” But nothing worked, and the relationship continued for over a year, and Leo had to watch as she sucked the lifeblood out of Rod; he was becoming less and less like the real Rod and more like a pale, anxious, second-guessing version of himself, which is why, one night at the pub, Leo lost patience. He did it out of love! But he’d had too much to drink and all his most unfortunate eldest-brother tendencies were on display and Rod responded like the defensive youngest brother he was, accusing Leo of being jealous, which, what the fuck, was an insult to Leo’s wife. Leo had no reason to be jealous! Rod should be jealous of him! They ended up in a yelling match outside the Lord Nelson Hotel. There was chest shoving and swearing, red contorted faces and a security guard saying, “Oi! You two! Stop it!” The memory still makes Leo feel ill.
Some people who were at the pub that night said Leo was in the right, some people said he was not. Alliances were formed. The alliances didn’t help, they only fed the fire.
Why didn’t he get on the phone the next day, apologize, and end the thing? Rod was the only one who mattered in that group of friends, the rest have all fallen by the wayside. Rod loved Neve; he wasn’t insulting her by calling Leo jealous. He was lashing out. He was in a really bad relationship and what he needed was Leo’s support and understanding.
But the longer it went on, the more impossible it seemed. Leo told himself that uncomfortable emotional conversations are bad enough with your romantic partner, there’s no need to suffer through them with your friends, life is too short, it shouldn’t be necessary, et cetera, et cetera. Leo told himself it was for the best. If Rod wanted to waste his life with that woman, then so be it, but he couldn’t be around her.
They haven’t spoken since. Leo heard through the grapevine that Rod eventually broke up with his cruel, toxic girlfriend (Leo should have just waited it out), found his personality again, moved back to Victoria, and married someone else, apparently not a wicked witch. He had three children. He got out of engineering and ended up working for a global travel company. Leo hasn’t heard anything else for years now. The grapevine no longer exists.
He has sometimes wondered if the reason he doesn’t have many friends (“any friends,” says Neve, which is rude and not true—he has friends, it’s just that everyone is very busy) is because of his shame over what happened with Rod. Sometimes it still shocks him. He can’t believe he wasn’t best man at Rod’s wedding. He can’t believe they don’t know each other’s children.
If Rod was told he was going to die, would he call Leo? Leo is pretty sure he would. And Leo would be devastated. For Rod, and for himself, and for the time they’d wasted.
Or maybe Rod barely remembers him. He might say, “Who did you say you were?” People change. You can’t go backward, only forward. They might have nothing to say to each other like those stilted, awkward conversations at school reunions where everyone is thinking, No, but I’m different now.
He unpeels the Post-it note from the computer, crumples it into a tiny ball in his hand. Neve should not be interfering in his life, calling his mother like that. But then he is flattening it out on his desk, and he’s punching in the numbers on his phone, and he doesn’t remember agreeing to do this, but apparently he is, he’s running off a cliff without checking the depth of the water.
The phone is answered before he has time to change his mind.
“Hello, this is Rod.”
A bit brusque, a bit deeper than Leo remembers, but essentially still Rod: just the tiniest suggestion of his dad’s Dutch accent. It’s unbelievable. Rod still exists. All this time Rod has always been available on the other end of a phone. As easy as this, and yet it’s like Leo has done something metaphysically impossible.
Leo says, “Hi, Rod. This is…I just thought…well. It’s Leo.”
There is a long pause. A very long pause.
“Leo Vodnik.”
This time Rod laughs. “I know who you are, Leopold.”
His laugh catapults Leo back through time. He can smell Rod’s chicken curry, he can taste the Carlton Draft beer they used to drink, and even the way he is sitting, loose and slouchy, tipped back in his chair, reminds him of the Leo he used to be, when Rod was his friend. He rests his feet up on his desk.
“Long time no see,” says Rod. “All good?”
“Yeah,” says Leo. “All good. What about you? Been up to much?” Because he sees how they’re playing this, the comedic bit they’re about to perform. They’re going to pretend nothing has happened, no time has passed.
But then Rod says, in a different, urgent tone, the tone of an older man who has learned that bad things can and do happen, “Please tell me you’re not dying, Leopold.”
“No,” says Leo. He puts his feet back on the floor before he falls and hurts his back—he’s always telling Oli not to sit like this. “I’m not dying. Well.” He sighs. He sees the lady on the plane, those pale blue eyes, the strangely familiar brooch. “According to a psychic I’m—”
He stops, because he suddenly remembers what the symbol on the lady’s brooch signifies. Only Rod Van Blair saying “Leopold,” a name no one else uses, could have excavated this obscure, specific memory from the crystallized layers of his consciousness.
