AUSTRALIAN ADVENTURES
Chapter 15: Soap Opera House
Then he caught sight of Bunny and he remembered loving her with Maximus'
body. He bit his lip till a bit of blue oozed. If the blue of the
aurora was gone, sunken into Ayres, why, then, were his memories not gone with
it? Having the memories but not the feelings was...hell. With a
rustle of fronds, he turned, sprinting back to the bridge.
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After lunch, they stopped by a series of shops so Steve could get more film,
a number of women could purchase more comfortable walking shoes at long last, and
several of them various and sundry items at a pharmacy, amongst them Ando's extra large bottle of aspirin.
Cutting back through the park,
they walked around the gardens of Government House, then strolled on toward the
Opera House. Steve could hardly contain his excitement.
"You have no idea how
long I've dreamed of photographing the Opera House," he said to Laura.
"I've seen so many shots of it over the years, but always wanted to
see if I could come up with some new perspective, some framing no one ever
thought of before."
"It's been here
since, what, the early 70's?" Laura asked.
"1973," he
replied. "Well, it opened in October of that year, but it was under
construction since 1959." As they rounded the final bend and it lay
before them, he sucked in his breath. "Wow!" he said
appreciatively.
Jack smiled at it, too. "Very, very like sails," he commented
approvingly.
Steve nodded. "Most
people do find sails in the appearance of its structure," he agreed,
"but do you know what the architect Utzon actually found as his
inspiration?"
"I have no
idea," Jack replied, waiting.
"The segments of a
mandarin orange." Then he turned to Laura."Will you come over there with me? I have an idea I'd like to
try." Together they walked some distance toward it and he stopped,
posed her, then lay flat on the pavement, angling his lens upward sharply.
Rolling back up to a sitting position, he called out, "We'll be occupied here the better part of the afternoon. You guys go on ahead.
We'll meet you back at Woolloomooloo later."
Jack and Rose walked out to the farthest end of the promontory where he paused,
looking at the Harbour Bridge now that he had a full, unobstructed view of it.
His eyes roamed and roamed over its structure, lingering on the height of
its great arches. Raising his hand, he pointed.
"I want to stand
just...there," he said.
She could hear a certain
yearning in his voice, a longing containing echoes of tall masts and the sea.
Himself had been close enough to hear.
Himself smiled a bit ruefully. "You, my friend, are the one who likes heights.
I
merely... endure them."
"I hear Hugo Weaving
has done the bridge climb," Berti chimed in helpfully.
Himself narrowed his eyes
at her, making no comment.
"As has, um, Will
Ferrell."
He remained silent.
"And, um, Matt Damon
and...and...Mandy Moore."
"And this has some...significance...concerning
me?" he finally replied.
But Jack clapped him quite
soundly on his back, booming out , "Tomorrow! We shall all climb it tomorrow!"
He grinned happily. "You can make the arrangements, I trust?"
Himself sighed.
Climbing to the top of a mast so that he could be filmed in a helicopter fly-by for the purposes of realism in cinema was one
thing, standing on the high catwalks of the Harbour Bridge just for the heck of
it was quite another.
"I...don't...,"
he began, but Jack clapped him again.
"Great! I can hardly
wait!!"
"Just think," Berti
added, "then you can have your picture on their celebrity climbers wall
right up there beside Will Ferrell's."
He frowned, remembering
how well the dratted Elf had done at the
box office when Master and Commander was also released.
The cast split up into smaller groups for the remainder of the afternoon.
Jack, Rose, Biebe, Buggie, Himself, Phyllis, Andy and Anna followed the walkway
that led from the Opera House to the Circular Quay at the foot of the central
business district. Himself pointed to the ferry terminals.
"We'll come back
another day and do some trips on the harbour. There's a lot to see in the
Sydney area."
Stopping by a small
outdoor cafe, they listened to some of the many buskers. Himself smiled
fondly at them.
"Brings back memories,
eh?" Phyllis commented.
He nodded.
"Seems like a long time ago now," he sighed. "Life
was simpler then."
"Yeah," Buggie
rejoined, "and the Northern Apartments of Woolloomooloo were on a
different planet."
"They were," he
agreed. "They were, indeed." Then he laughed, "Well,
they WOULD have been had they existed back then!"
Joimus just wanted to sit on the steps by the Opera House, watching the people
who came to gaze at it, watching the many ships and small boats crossing the
harbor. She leaned her right shoulder against Maximus' left.
"What a wonderful city," she said softly.
"As long as you are
here, I am content," the General whispered in her ear.
She knew large, modern cities
made him a bit uncomfortable still. Taking his left hand, she sandwiched it
between her palms.
"The bread is smaller
than the slab of beef," he chuckled, looking at how small her hands were
compared to his.
She moved his hand, then, to
her lips, kissing his fingertips. "But tasty," she added. Suddenly serious, she
looked into his eyes."ARE you content, Maximus?"
"There
are...things...I wish for," he admitted truthfully, "but nothing that
has meaning without you."
"What, Maximus, what
do you wish for?"
He looked very thoughtful as
he answered. "I have come to place great value on my friendships
with the other characters, with Himself, so that my yearning for the land
is made...complicated...by it. I have no idea how to fit it all together."
She released her hold on
his hand and he moved it, putting his arm around her shoulders. "I
still dream of home, you know." He got a faraway look in his
seagreen eyes. "I would like to make a home for you...someday."
She turned the side of her face into his chest, closing her eyes, her
left hand feeling for a small, square package in her pocket.
Bud and Berti stood in the shadow of an overhang, looking down at Maximus and
Joimus. Berti moved so she could see his eyes.
He smiled, both with his
lips and his seagreens and she could tell the smiles were genuine. "But I
will never forget it...never," he said.
"I know," she
breathed softly. "But that is what makes you...you."
"Come," he said,
"I'd like to go back into park, find a nice spot under a tree somewhere,
and just be with you...just you and me." She smiled widely at him in
agreement, noticing that the word 'officer' was getting to be just a bit harder
to read on his forehead of late.
Ute had talked Jeffrey into a pair of rental bicycles. "I used to
ride bikes all the time back home in Germany," she called as they glided
around the curve of Farm Cove.
"It's been a while
for me," he replied, putting out one foot on a turn that proved to be a
bit too sharp for him. He didn't quite manage to stay upright and toppled
over, bike and all, onto the grass. Ute stopped, quickly put down her
kickstand, and knelt beside him, pulling the bike off his legs. He smiled
up at her and she could tell that he was fine, so she sat beside him, tipping
her face up into the afternoon sunlight.
"I'm glad we're
here," he said after a moment, laying his hand on the knee of her jeans. "I'm
happy now, you know," he added, looking at her quietly,
"because...because of you."
She rested her hand atop
his. He had come to mean the world to her with his quiet, intelligent
ways, his depth of caring that was so much more profound than most people
realized. A sudden gust of wind blew a swirl of small leaves around them
and he laughed with the simple joy of it and lay back again on the grass.
Still holding his hand,
Ute lay beside him, looking at the blue sky. "It's good," she
said, "...the fundamental, uncomplicated pleasure of the day...this
garden...being with you."
Bunny had gone again to Mrs. Macquarie's Chair, sitting alone, looking at the wind-kicked whitecaps out on the harbor. She had much to think about and was glad to be apart from the others for a time. Looking over at the Wharf nearby to her right, she thought she might go back there early.
She
had things she needed to...attend to, questions she needed answers for.
Closing her eyes briefly, she shook her head slowly from side to side.
If she got the answer she thought now she might, her world would be quite
turned on its head. What would she do? What
would...they...do?
"Try the light blue one," Zack suggested as Susan came out of the
fitting room in a dark green pants set. "It'll remind you of your
poppy."
The Fuegan gowns had seen better days and those better days had been many, many, MANY days ago. In all the long months since they'd left the southernmost tip of South America, never had they been given an opportunity to, well, shop. Now they had Himself's credit cards and were loose in metro Sydney! Taking epi history into account, they were going more for versatility than great statements of fashion. After all, when clinging to the side of a volcano, what DID a designer label REALLY mean?
Ute had wisely gotten her
jeans back in Bellingen and had sworn to fight to the death anyone attempting
to put her in satin or velvet. Even Joimus had come into the store, the
General in tow, seriously considering what to do about, um, pale yellow gossamer,
would you believe?
"It's time for new beginnings," she said, more to herself actually than to Maximus. When they left the store, she was wearing a mid-calf length flared skirt in a soft, buttery moleskin, a white shirt with a wide collar, a light yellow suede vest and had a long piece of pale yellow gossamer tying back her hair.
In her hand hung the handles of a shopping bag."For future reference," was
all she would say.
"I'm glad you stayed
with the yellow," Maximus smiled.
"There are other
colors?" she chortled.
When everyone straggled into the Wharf, they decided to eat at Russell's
favorite Kingsley's Steak and Crab House. He had called ahead and made
reservations for 47. As he was, of course, HisVerySelf, he had no problem
getting them.
Joimus had had to talk
Bunny into coming with them. "Just because Sid is being, well,
Sid," she said to the wabbit, "doesn't mean you shouldn't eat."
"No, you're
right," Bunny agreed. "I should...eat."
"Good!" Joimus
smiled, tucking her arm through Bunny's. "Come sit with Maximus and
me."
The restaurant was lively and crowded because, you know, just the cast was a crowd in and of itself. Bunny found herself, as she sat across from the General, studying him, his features, in a way she'd never quite done before. The beard and hairstyle, the way he held his head, carried himself, were uniquely his and, yet, she found Sid plainly there as well. She looked over then at Himself and knew that, of course, it was all due to him that this was so.
She sighed.
Sometimes the whole premise of epis was just terribly, terribly mind-boggling.
And now...this...had
happened. She had gotten her answer late that afternoon back in her room.
Her eyes returned to Maximus. Suddenly she wasn't hungry any more
and let her fork fall back to her plate.
He looked at her.
"Bunny, are you all right?" he asked, the genuine concern in
his voice almost her undoing.
She licked her lip.
"I...I'm fine," she lied.