ute. I needed to get warm, and I needed to get him warm. I’d focus on those things, and on what was wrong with him, and then I’d do the next thing, and the thing after that.
My mind wanted to descend into the panic I hadn’t let myself feel before. I couldn’t hold it off forever, but I couldn’t afford it now. The man had the dog, was encouraging it along, so that was good. We’d all get in the ute. We’d all get warm.
Step by step.
I pulled myself up into the driver’s seat, tossed my wet clothes and shoes into the footwell of the back seat, started the engine, found the heater, and turned everything up to full, then wrapped my arms around myself and allowed the shivering and shaking to take over. The man came after me, lifting the dog into the cramped back seat before he tossed his shirt back there and dumped his boots into the footwell, wrapped the damp blanket he’d used on the dog around his waist, and got out of his own jeans. They didn’t take as much effort as mine. He was about twice as big as me, but he didn’t wear his jeans as tight.
The other two fellas were still standing there beside the road. I buzzed the window down, though I didn’t want to, and asked them, “Did somebody ring 111?”
“Yeh,” the one who’d given me the jacket, a middle-aged man with a ruddy face like a farmer’s, answered. “On their way.” He glanced at the river, then back at me, rubbing the back of his head ruefully. “Car’ll be done for, though, if they can find it at all. I’d offer to bring out the tractor, but …”
“No worries,” I said. I was shaking hard now, but that was good. The body warming itself. I was immensely sleepy, too, from shock and stress and cold, and I was going to have to fight that. “Cheers for your help. We’re all good now. Oh. Your jacket.” I wanted to take it off and give it to him, but there was the wee problem that I was naked under it.
And that I’d let a strange man take off my clothes in front of two other men, making me much too vulnerable, but I couldn’t think about that now, either. That thought would definitely make the panic rise.
Later.
“No worries,” the fella said. “Best keep it. You need it. Got nothing else to wear, have you.” The younger man, more like a boy, because he was maybe sixteen, was shifting from foot to foot, looking at me, then looking away when he caught my eye. Maybe he was cold, or maybe he was embarrassed that he’d seen me naked. Or both.
“Give me your phone number,” I said, “and I’ll get both things back to you somehow.” Which was when I realized that I didn’t have my phone. Didn’t have the backpack of supplies I’d packed, or my tote. Didn’t have my wallet. Didn’t have anything.
There was that panic again, trying to take over.
Breathe. Think. Act.
Everything I’d brought with me was gone, my car was too old to have had replacement insurance, and I couldn’t do anything about any of it. I hadn’t died, and we were getting warm, that was the main thing. Me, the dog, and … whoever this was.
I couldn’t keep a dog in the flat. Not allowed.
Next thing.
I told my would-be rescuer, “Put his number on your phone, I guess.”
He glanced over at me and smiled. Ruefully. I was operating on a need-to-know basis just now, discarding any information that was superfluous, and still, I noticed his smile. He was part Maori, or maybe part Islander. Dark, wavy hair cut short, high cheekbones. The clean white line of a healed scar running beneath a dark brow, and another one bisecting the web of lines beside a brown eye. A nose that had been broken, and the kind of strong jaw that suggested it wouldn’t break easily.
A tough face. A nearly beautiful one, too, in that grown-up, lived-in way that’s so appealing.
I may have blanked for a couple seconds, and then he reached for the jeans he’d pulled off, fished out his phone, and said, “They say it’s good to two meters down and thirty minutes in. Reckon we’ll find out if it’s true.”
If it didn’t work anymore, was I going to have to replace that, too? My car. My wallet, my phone, my bag … and his phone as well?