by Eugen Bacon
And then: “There then.” She pecked him on the cheek.
“Already?”
She smiled in a tolerating way. “It’s been a long day.”
“Alright then.”
She climbed up the stairs to her room whose walls were sprigged with heart-shaped bouquets. His had 3D rendering, cubes, fires and dark.
He tried to read the news, swiped his handheld tablet. He flicked through articles and stories, restless. Same old: celebrity scandal, teen gang arrest, new gadget on the market.
He retired not long after to his own downstairs bedroom.
He dropped his day clothes, insurance guy smart casual. He took to the bathroom. A blast of heat as the shower ran. He polished each tooth one by one inside the hum of an automated toothbrush. The tiles on his floor sparkled around the shower mat. He used a spare towel to wipe the spray. He rubbed his hair as he walked out of the ensuite bathroom, and stopped short.
“Someone’s been sleeping in my bed,” he said lightly. “Someone’s still sleeping in my bed.”
Audrey lay neat inside his doona. He felt a flutter of excitement. This was unbelievable. He threw aside the doona. Inside it, on his bed, she lay posed for him. She was wearing a black, lacy number he had not seen before. It was far different from her nightgown that resembled in shape, color and feel what a medic on call might wear. The lace Audrey wore was nothing like the medic’s cloth: this one showed everything.
Liam blinked. She was still there: Audrey. In his bed. Not in her own aurora bed, four-poster, in her room at the top of the stairs. She was here, laying on her back, posed and ready for him. And it wasn’t his birthday.
That’s right: he got lucky on birthdays and special occasions.
Liam threw off his pajamas and climbed in his jocks beside her. “What’s this?” He touched the straps of her lacy number.
“For the love of—”.
“Have I forgotten something?”
A flitting in her eye. “What do you mean?”
“Special something?”
“Nope.”
He couldn’t remember the last time . . . No, he remembered. Every detail. Her cream ankles.
Who knew what snatched couples apart, why after a starry-eyed start they wound up living, perhaps quibbling, like siblings? But Audrey didn’t fight. How did you pick a fight with someone unruffled?
He slid the straps off her shoulders. His lips tailed his hand as he moved the clothing.
“Please,” she said.
Mesh covered her velvet skin. He traced the lines of her tiny undergarment, a black silhouette, vivid against her skin.
“What are you doing?” she said.
“I don’t want to rush this.”
“It’s not rushing—we need to sleep.”
He pressed against her. She gave him an uncertain smile, one that said he was too close. He kissed her fully on the lips. Her lips were soft, but she did not kiss him back. Audrey didn’t, couldn’t, kiss anyone back.
“Really, Liam. Stop mucking around. Please.”
She lay immaculate, quiet. Then she pushed his weight, slid from him.
“Night darling.” Her peck on his forehead. Her graceful glide out the door, away from him, away from the disquiet of his room, toward the safety and normality of her own room.
***
Before the dinner, with Audrey, always with Audrey, Liam reminisced about his homeworld: Bathox. No Roaditor Turbos there, four-wheeled jumbos: just gruntless gliders, flexi vessels that shape-shifted into any trajectory. In Bathox, travel was another realm. Everywhere was possible.
Nero was one of the first of this world that Liam saw the day he poured out of an acorn. There was a freshness about the air. Liam sat naked, gliderless, arms wrapped about himself, before he unfurled. People stared as he walked. Someone shrugged off a coat and hugged it around him. It was Nero. Later, Liam understood why people stared. Not so much for his nakedness, but for the magnificence of the body he inhabited.
In those early days, Audrey said he was perfect. And Audrey was not a black mirror. The reflection was true. In those days, the two of them spoke, truly spoke. They communed with easiness, easy words, easy eyes of friends, of lovers. Audrey asked no questions. His past was just that: history. From the moment of his arrival to this world, Liam understood that now was now. Immediate. But not a day went past without hauling his mind to Bathox, to the ones he left behind.
In the early days of Audrey, Liam’s heart was still a wasteland. He was bruised, disheveled, whisked inside out. Reeling at the aftermaths of an intergalactic war that brought him to this world. He was ready to neck himself. But Audrey fixed him. The moment their eyes met, they had a real moment right there. Be choosy, his heart said. Females are moths, they flitter from light to light. But Audrey stayed.
***
Might have been easier if they’d fought. If Audrey were tight-faced and screaming, shrew-like and abusing, spitting out words that not only goaded but stuck. Abuse that returned to haunt in little bursts: in the stillness of the bath, between pages of a novel, in the heart of a dream.
Liam might have understood if there had been a wrestle, if—as he held her by the hair to subdue her and she punched girly fists into his ribs—she had said it. Or if she had flung something at him and it bounced off his cheek, cracked on the floor and, as he touched his flaming skin, she had said it. Or if he’d beat her up so bad and, as cops pressed him to the back of a car, she had said it.
But there was no precedent. Even if she had said it that normal way, fought him, lashed horrible words at him, then spat intentions of leaving, it would have been hard, so very hard, to let her go.
***
It was middle of spring. Audrey sat delicious and serene across the dinner table. She listened with slanted head to the flavor of a buttered parsnip on her tongue. She smiled at Ride of the Valkyries playing in the background. She held her fork with nails faultlessly shaped; chewed delicately and moved lips immaculately painted; dabbed at those lips with a napkin flawlessly white. She sat there clad in cat-walk material: baby-soft, catchy enough to intrigue, toned enough to not encroach.
When the serenity of Bach touched their world, there was no disdain in Audrey’s look at Liam. No wonderment at a fool with the table manners of a possum, as he fingered corn on the cob, greased cutlery with messy hands, and pushed aside parsley with a thumb.
That type of derision was not in those temptation eyes that lifted from her plate, not in those lips that smiled a tender smile, and said, “His name is Flint.”
The music stopped. Perhaps the classical selection had come to a natural end. Audrey’s smile, directed at something between Liam’s nose and his forehead in that long stretch of silence, rendered him useless. He looked at Audrey and said nothing. Not “Why?” or “How?” or “When?” Perhaps she would have understood if he had spoken, would have perfectly understood with that efficient air of hers. But he gave nothing.
Now was no longer now. No longer immediate. Who was this Audrey?
She forked a sliver of beef, placed it in her little mouth, toyed with the flavor as she ate it. She even nibbled and swallowed a second parsnip, began to pierce a capsicum but thought better of it.
He waited, fork and knife poised in space. Stared in silence at the woman who was everything to him, and more: his firework—the sparkler on the wick; his candle—the orange on the flame; his flower—the velvet on the petal. Audrey was his stream, his river, his moon. And now she, she . . . He said nothing.
Liam remembered the bright stars and triple moons by day back home in Bathox, gazebos overlooking natural air-loft gardens that shimmered like ruby and emerald chandeliers, cratered beaches full of water birds . . . He remembered how back home in Bathox mating was for life.
Audrey laid down her fork, dubbed at soft lips, folded the napkin and laid it on the calm table. She sipped a
baby nip of burgundy wine, left no stain of lipstick on its rim. She stood up, hedged the table, paused. Even lifted hair from her face with immaculate fingers, smoothed it and pushed it to unruffled waves. Only when she turned away did he grip the edge of the table as if to rise, as if to follow her with those questions: “How?” “Where?” “When?”
He began to rise but his knees gave. So, he sat with a tomb in his heart. A dark, uninvited tomb that deepened, filled emptiness with more empty, blackened darkness with more black. When anxiety began to rise, then confusion, pain, and finally rage so wild it was silent, his mouth tasted of cardboard.
Audrey moved away from the table. When the door shut quietly behind her, Liam watched the wood, as though his wife were embossed on it.
Suddenly, he felt fear. Fear of loneliness real as touch. Beyond that moment, that night, that revelation, what else? He hugged his fork, listened to her heels clip! clip! clip! toward the door, as they had done, even though she was no longer in the room. His name is Flint . . . Flint . . . Flint . . . The ghost clippity clip did nothing to soothe those words said calmly, yard-long words from the weight of them, words that had slipped with ease from such beautiful lips. Refusing to settle, the words filled Liam’s air with resonance: Flint . . . Flint . . . Flint . . .
He sat with his knife and fork. Before he had time to grasp it, bank it, judge it, confront it, scorn the value of it, define it, comprehend it even—so deep was the astonishment, it rendered him powerless—she was gone.
Audrey took with her that wildflower smell associated with home. She also took her tennis racket, a rosy negligee, two suitcases, four yoga video tapes, a bunch of books, her classical collection, and Liam’s heart.
***
That night, he wiped clean the bottle of burgundy wine she had nipped with baby sips. Before long, such was his state, he had summoned moroseness. Together they pulled several cans from the fridge, sat on the floor, killed a pint of lager and then two. Beer raced down Liam’s throat. When it pressed down on his bladder, he sorted it.
Then he took the advice of moroseness and reclined on a cushion on the floor, Audrey’s velvet cushion soft as a cat. There, he sank to acres of drinking solace. When eyelids finally closed, he succumbed to a maudlin sleep where he once more became a little boy with freckles large as pebbles.
But that little boy snored like a swine and an amoeba of drool spread from one side of his lip down his chin.
***
The corn was still on the cob on a dirty plate three days later. So were parsley and sleek cucumber slices, thin enough for a royal garden party, interspersed with cold beef julienne.
All Liam felt was . . . misplaced. He missed Bathox. He missed Audrey.
And somewhere out there Audrey was in bed tucked in the arms of a man named Flint.
On the fourth morning of drinking to a stupefied sleep, he woke with a blooming headache and bloodshot eyes. Soon as his headache waned, soon as he trusted his stomach, Liam ran. Rock-a-tee. Rock-a-tee. Past an abandoned pond lined with trees. Green trees, yellow trees, red trees, brown trees, leafless trees . . . A morning shadow raced with him below pale blue sky interspersed with silver gray clouds. A rising sun glided in and out of the clouds. Liam’s feet pounded footpaths, cyclists swerved around him, some shouted profanities, but he kept moving miles, miles out.
Rock-a-tee. Rock-a-tee. Rock-a-tee-tee-rock-a-tee.
He stopped running.
A warm sheet of sweat poured down his back and his temples. Leaning forward, he caught his breath under the silvered sky, on nutty gravel alongside grass moist with dew. Hands on his knees, he studied mad goose pimples stealing off his skin. His sweatshirt prickled from cling. Wet cotton shorts gripped his thighs.
He jogged back home to an apartment tight with absence. Strewn with dirty socks and plates, empty beer cans and scattered bottles of Claret, Shiraz, even cleanskins. Treasures Audrey overlooked when she left. He phoned the office to call in sick. A tight-arsed receptionist, broomstick up her whatsit, put him through—finally!—to Wolfe, squad boss at the dastardly insurance company.
Wolfe was not having a barrel of it. “You’re fired,” he said.
4
Nero knocked the door down—nearly.
He was a ballistics expert. Married to Vivienne Frontczak, a hybrid of Plutian and terrestrial descent; a model, legs to her chest. It was Vivienne who introduced Liam to Audrey Rivers, a movie actress with ivory-white skin and delicious eyes.
Now Nero looked about Liam’s forlorn house and said: “Place smells like rotten socks. It smells like something burning.”
“My brain,” muttered Liam. He was a dirty, disheveled mess on the bed.
Nero whistled. “Who let you out of the cage?”
“Audrey, she left me.”
“Oh man.”
That was before Liam told him about the phone chat with Wolfe.
“Man!”
And then he said: “Dude up, mate. Run, swim, do what you must. And you need a job. Two choices, matey. Moon over Audrey. Or consider a serious career in the martial force. Inside information—we’re recruiting.”
Serious career in the force, chose maudlin Liam.
Nero ended up filling the application tablet himself. Same day he put it in for initial screening and processing, Liam took his abandoned Streetwagon, wrapped a seatbelt around him and hit the road. He ran a red on Napoleon Street and got booked for drunk driving.
Nero bailed him out. Even drove him home.
“That’s one quick way to get martial attention,” he said to Liam. “Thirty-five kilometers per hour over the speed limit. Blood alcohol over 2.2. Way over. You’re not a P-plater, Liam. Are you mad?”
Liam regarded him with riot eyes. “Go home now,” he slobbered. “I’m good, Nero.”
“I am not leaving you, matey,” he said.
“I’m right as rain. Go home.”
“Not a spotting chance.” Nero dragged Liam to the bathroom. “Look at the mirror. Go on. Look at yourself.”
Liam lifted his head enough to brush a swift glance. Sunken cheeks, a grim pallor and drooping jaws looked back at him. Liam did not know that man in the mirror.
“Go to the gym,” Nero said. “Anything. Mooning doesn’t bring her back. Sober up, matey. Audrey’s gone.”
He tucked Liam in bed, brought him kick-arse coffee from Star Frek, or Star Wars, followed by a whopper burger and a chilled can of soda.
“God bless soda,” garbled Liam. “Lazarus in a can.” He began to sob. Thick, manly sobs, awful and loud.
Nero snapped. “Pull yourself together, grief! An ability to splash your boots does not distinguish you.”
He stormed out, leaving Liam with a hangover face streaked like a badly peeled orange. Next morning, Nero showed at Liam’s door. Refused to come in and stood by the step. Quietly, he stretched out a small tablet with a phone code on it.
Liam took it. “Thanks buddy,” he said. Pale cheeks and a lethargic smile.
“No worries.”
It took nine days. Nine whole days for Liam to summon enough interest at the number. He was sure Nero had given him a hotline to a loony bin or some nut-cracking shrink. All Liam needed was a kick up the arse, and he could get that for free; why when he was job free would he want a shrink who charged a spleen? He fiddled listlessly with the tablet and put it down.
***
For the first time in weeks, Liam took himself to an aqua center. It was deserted, nearly closing. An attendant with russet hair and vexed eyes made the rounds.
Liam stripped to his jocks. He stepped into the cool waters. He tucked on the wall, hips away from his feet, threw his arms out and his body arched into the peak of his dive. He aligned his body to the water. He timed the rotation of his trunk to the movement of his arm. He finished the stroke with a deep sweep that completed the cycle.
He swam like it was life. And death.
When he jumped out of the pool and into the shower, revigorated, he knew what he needed to do. He smiled at the attendant with an abundance of charm he had not felt in a while. That night, inside the hum of the automated toothbrush, as he polished each tooth one by one, he gazed at the muddiness of the floor tiles, and observed that they needed a clean.
He picked up the tablet and finally dialed the code. It was no psychiatric hospital.
“I’m no six-figure case,” a woman said after his introductory mutterings. “My fee is easy. I specialize in all conversions.”
5
Sugar Sweetman
Without reason or conviction, Liam accepted an appointment for which he promptly showed. Bunched blocks looked like little fists in Saville Row. Cab drivers idled and gossiped by the sidewalk. Given opportunity for something else, they watched Liam with lazy eyes.
He stepped out of the battered Streetwagon, rifled through his pockets for the address in a fit of panic, and found it:
Level 3, 517 Saville Row.
Hoochi Mama stood at 513, a bakery. Two doors away, Liam stepped through a doubtful, unnumbered doorway. It was tall between alternate numbers, which made it likely to be 517. A ground-floor reception with wall-to-wall carpeting (threadbare) stood unmanned. Hedging bets on the address and still having no clue as to what his appointment was about, he took a dawdling lift to Level Three.
A woman with cherry lips, cotton-white hair and black candy-eyes that went deep, deep, deep, answered the first door he knocked.
“Yes?” She smoothed her baby doll top.
No roots in that snow hair indicated altered color: auburn, blonde, brunette or flame. White-as-white brows matching the white-as-white hair suggested natural color. Honey skin, a bust firmed with youth, she was younger and far prettier than her voice. Fingers rubbing her chin, she cast a glance at Liam’s bowed shoulders. His eyes touched the ground, uncertainty in them.