219
a r e y o u s e e i n g m e?
The chair hits a metal garbage bin, and the man gets
thrown forward like a crash-test dummy. He groans and
a long line of drool hangs out of his mouth.
“Whoops!” says the woman, pulling the chair free
and keeping the ice cream away from the spazzing man.
I watch until they disappear into the crowd.
“Is a fear of earthquakes one of the reasons you’d like
to come back to Brisbane?” I ask.
“No, that hasn’t really entered into my thinking.”
“Brisbane is a good choice. Brisbane doesn’t have fault
lines like here.”
“I’ve got one reason for coming back, Perry. Well,
two, in fact.”
“I think it would be difficult living on a fault line.”
“Lots of people choose to,” Leonie replies. “They
accept it.”
“Some don’t. Some move away.”
The wheel shifts for the third time on our ride. It is
our turn to go to the very top. There is a large bird—
maybe a hawk or a bald eagle—flying in the distance,
making figure eights above the houses. It looks similar to
the one Ogopogo was watching at the lake. I wait for the
cage to stop rocking before I speak again.
“Where did you go after leaving our family?”
Leonie sits up straighter and uncrosses her feet. She
grabs hold of the nearest bar in our cage. “I, uh…I lived
