Rabbits
That winter, we’d pull the blankets over our heads so it was, dark, like a burrow, and listen to the rain pelt against the thin fibro walls. Even under the blankets you could smell the damp earth. There were dingoes about. She wouldn’t say anything, but when they howled Bunny would shiver, and press her face into my back.
I first met Bunny at a party. I was talking with mates, vaguely noticing this girl with short brown hair and animal brown eyes standing on the edge of our circle. Someone asked me for another beer, calling me by a nickname I got, on account of my surname. The girl came up to me with laughing eyes, and playing to the audience said in a low, mocking voice “Buck huh? So you’re Buck. Why don’t you get me a beer, too, Buck, and guess who I am?” Later, she nibbled my ear and whispered “Guess what Bunny does best?” She never said how she got her name, but later someone told me it was on account of once nearly being a magazine centerfold.
Life with Bunny was easy. She moved in as if she’d always been there. Some mornings she’d hop out of bed thinking I was still sleeping. With eyes half closed I’d watch her pretty white rump while she did her exercises.
She liked shopping best. I’d suggest we go into town and she’d stamp her feet with excitement. On my kind of wages, I was never so broke as with Bunny.
She never ate much, mostly salads she’d prepare while the ads were on. Sometimes I’d creep up on her and hug her from behind, and gently bite her on the nape of the neck.
Nothing went wrong as such. I’d come home from work and there would be Bunny, curled up on the couch, munching from a salad bowl with her fingers, and watching cartoons. I’d sit by her and start talking about the day, but she wouldn’t even look at me, just at the TV, or somewhere beyond the TV. She’d sit there wide eyed, sometimes silently mouthing the dialogue. Sometimes she’d freeze with concentration, her nose wrinkled up, as if sniffing the situation, a hand with a lettuce leaf held halfway to her mouth.
A few times, after one of her favourite cartoons, she would say to me in this silly voice, “Would Mr Wodgers like another beer. Herherher.” She thought she was very funny. That’s about all the conversation I got from Bunny.
I knew she’d leave. You’d see her at parties eyeing the main chance, searching for a Buck with more dough. I thought I’d be upset, but I wasn’t. I didn’t feel anything. I just came home one day and she wasn’t there. Not just wasn’t there, it felt like she had never been. Not even a scent. Nothing. And that’s how I felt. Because, if the truth be told, I knew all along Bunny was too harebrained to stick around.
