‘No, not at all,’ she says, and almost believes it. ‘It’s nice to have someone to talk to.’
‘Would you like to join me for coffee, then?’ he asks. ‘I’ve always thought about visiting Australia, and I’d love to ask you some questions about it.’
If Ruby feels a heart-patter of wariness, it gets lost in that desire to forget where she is, what she knows.
‘Sure. That would be nice,’ she responds, and before she has time to think better of it, she is following the man to the crowded patio of a small cafe, taking the seat he holds out for her. His name is Tom. He tells Ruby he works in finance—‘Yes, down on Wall Street!’—and his style of conversation is breezy, brash, so that she only has to nod at his commentary or answer his questions directly, rather than come up with something new or interesting to say. As Tom chatters away in this fashion, Ruby finds her thoughts drifting to Death Club, missing the way her new friends listened as well as they talked. There is so much she could tell them, especially after coming back to the park today. It is a week since she learned about Josh. At first, they sent messages about the next meet-up, which she didn’t reply to. Then individual ones, to her. And now, the unanswered messages have stopped coming, and Ruby is unsure how to reach across this newly created divide. Something, she fears, has been irretrievably lost in the distance Josh’s revelation has opened up between them.
She is sipping at her latte, trying to put Death Club out of her head once and for all, when Tom puts down his coffee cup and looks out across the water, appears to weigh something up before he speaks.
‘You know, Ruby. A girl was murdered here in the park. Just a few weeks ago, back in April.’
Ruby feels her cheeks grow hot.
‘I did know that, yeah.’
Tom is still staring into the distance, his eyes squinting against the sun.
‘Such a terrible thing to happen. And it’s usually so safe around here. I only bring it up because you said you’re here in New York on your own.’
He turns, looks into her eyes. ‘As a woman on her own, you need to be careful, Ruby.’
（They want you to be grateful. When they show off their care in this way. Ruby understands this, and she bristles at this man’s concern, no matter how well-intended she thinks it might be.）
‘I’m careful enough, Tom,’ she says, her smile stopping half-mast. ‘Most women are, actually. I can only assume Alice was trying to be careful, too.’
‘I wouldn’t say being alone in a city park in the dark is careful,’ Tom responds, an arch in his voice, as if Ruby has offended him, but then he sighs, shakes his head. ‘Sorry. What could I know about such things? About what it’s like to be a woman. It’s just—I have sisters, nieces. And I feel sick thinking of anything like this happening to them. At any rate’—Tom shakes his head again, as if reshuffling his thoughts—‘what a terrible conversation to have on such a nice day. Tell me more about why you decided to come here. Like I said, I’ve always wanted to go to Australia. I think Sydney first, then …’
And he’s back to his sunny side up conversation, just like that.
For Ruby, however, the spell has been broken. He knows about the murder. There’s no way he wouldn’t, when it’s still all over the news. She had thought, hoped, she could escape it, even for an hour, but what did she expect, coming down to the river like this. She scolds herself for her optimism, even as she feels that sense of prickling unease return. Tom, so light and breezy just moments before, now settles on her skin as an irritation. How can he be so blithe, so unaffected by the things going on around him, she wonders? He has not even noticed the change in her mood.
Ruby knows she is being unfair. Understands she shouldn’t resent this cheerful man’s lack of complications, but the absence of her Death Club friends feels even more stark, as he launches into another glib story, this one about the time he met Mel Gibson at a bar downtown.
‘Top bloke,’ Tom is saying, mimicking an Australian accent poorly, and Ruby forces a smile, but all she can think of is excusing herself, getting away from this failed attempt at normalcy as soon as she can. Back home in Melbourne, they used to say there could be four seasons in a day, temperatures dropping rapidly, sunshine giving way to hail with no warning. She thinks now that she has become the weather.
Her reprieve comes when Tom’s phone, face down on the table, buzzes.
‘I might have to get that,’ he says.