Rona and Mal had accidentally slipped into a habit of meeting up for a drink every few weeks or so. It made Rona happy because Mal was, these days, more plugged in to what was going on in town than she was, and while she recognised this as a problem, as something she should rectify, she was for now content to let Mal do all the gossip-gathering.

"One guy you really need to tell me about," she said to Mal as they each necked bottles of beer, "is Alain. What the hell's going on with that guy?"

"Well I haven't seen him in ages" Mal said. "Like, months. But I talked to him on the 'phone last month."

"But you guys used to hang out all the time!" Rona said, thinking: Didn't we all.

"I've been busy!" Mal protested. "You know how life is, you start doing stuff and then the stuff gets in the way."

"Yeah, that can happen" Rona agreed. She didn't say: And sometimes you're doing nothing and it still gets in the way. "So what's the goss?" she asked Mal. "What's he up to?"

"I dunno, man" Mal said. "He's kinda, broken off into his own little world. I can hardly even figure out what he's about any more."

"He was always in his own world" Rona smirked.

"Yeah, but now he's off doing his thing, and I'm doing my thing, and you're doing your thing and it's all . . ."

"Atomised" Rona said.

"I guess so" Mal frowned. "If that means the right thing."

Rona could see that it was hurting Mal to think about these matters. "But what's he up to?" she insisted, wondering if talking about Alain might make him feel more connected.

"Well he slept with that girl" Mal said.

"What girl?"

"The one in the pub. That one he was crazy about."

"Yeah? Serious? She went for him?"

"She got back with her boyfriend or something, Alain said, and then, I dunno, something happened and her and Alain . . . You know."

"That must make him happy" Rona said hopefully, ignoring the morality of the situation as too difficult to think about.

"I thought so" Mal said. "But when I talked to him he was all . . ."

"What? Mopey?"

"The same" Mal said. "The same as always. Like for ages he'd been talking all about how he'd all changed, he was coming out with all this hippy shit and then he was all pissed off at the girl 'cause she wouldn't have sex with him or something, and it was like: 'Whoa! Turning point!' But now it sounds like it's just fizzled out."

Rona nodded. "I'm not surprised, to be honest."

"How come?"

She shrugged. Because you don't just change yourself like that, she thought, not just one day because you decide to. It doesn't work that way. "Just because" she said.