Lovesome

by Sally Seltmann

  11

  Simon is sitting at the staff table when I walk through the back doorway. He’s sipping on a latte, smoking a ciggie. His relaxed, slouchy body is hunched over the table, and his long, dark blond hair looks like it hasn’t been washed for weeks. He wears chunky silver Celtic rings, and a black leather necklace falls halfway down his hollow chest, weighed down by a mysterious-looking bronze pendant. It’s sort of like a cross, or a hammer. I can’t quite tell, and I don’t really want to go in closer to get a better look for fear of being taken out by his smelly BO.

  Every T-shirt he’s ever worn to Harland has a hole in it. Actually, most have multiple holes. I don’t think he does much during the day. If he does, he certainly doesn’t share it with us. He’s possibly cruising through a lazy phase in his life. Or maybe this is Simon’s forever disposition. Who knows. Tonight, his lips look cracked and dry.

  ‘Hi Simon,’ I smile, and he nods a hello, a nod that looks awkwardly like he’s bowing down to me, ready to do whatever I say.

  Dave is in the kitchen, and pokes his head around the corner playfully, a dirty tea towel flung over his shoulder. ‘Hey Joni!’

  ‘Hi Dave.’

  Mmmm. I feel okay. But only okay.

  ‘I’m just finishing up this béchamel, and then I’ll come out and join you for a coffee.’

  ‘Okay, sure. I’ll get the coffees started.’

  I bury my head in the coffee machine. I realise that this is becoming a bit of a habit, but I don’t want to get into boring small talk with Simon, so I behave like the shy aunt at the family Christmas dinner who keeps busy doing the washing up all night so she doesn’t have to talk to anyone. I look down at my coat, and it suddenly feels too over-the-top. I felt confident enough to wear it when I left the house, but now I wish I’m wearing my blue cardigan, or a big grey trench to hide behind.

  As I’m frothing the milk, I turn and take a long look at the staff table where last night’s action took place. Yuck! Although, actually, it was Dave’s bare bum that was lying on that table. But, yeah—yuck! That disgusts me, which makes me question just how attracted to Dave I really am. I’m just desperate. But obviously not as desperate as Lucy.

  My nerves overtake my thoughts when I hear the sound of the screen door opening. It’s got to be her. It’s got to be Lucy. My stomach tenses up, and then a long purple terry-towelling skirt covered in cheap-looking white lace becomes visible as the back door swings inwards. It’s Juliet, and she exhales a loud, ‘Hi Joni! Hi Simon!’ before throwing her black backpack on the floor. She sits at the table and stretches her arms out, slowly rubbing her hands all over the exact area where Dave’s bum was last night. She’s wearing a lime-green turban covered in a ladybird print, and bright orange lipstick.

  Her outfit is beyond atrocious. It’s a mismatched colour palette that hurts my head when I look at her. I begin to wonder whether she raided her niece’s dress-up box before coming to work. But I must admit I do find her quite entertaining. She is nice, she is sorta funny. She’s never really unkind to anyone. I do like her. And besides, I’d rather surround myself with unusual people than mingle with complete bores.

  ‘What a day,’ she begins, and I know this is the intro to a long whinge. ‘I just had to move all my furniture out of my room because the landlord is painting it tomorrow. God, so heavy! I have so much crap!’

  ‘Oh, that’s weird,’ I tell her, pouring the frothed milk into Dave’s coffee. ‘Usually they just get you to drag it all into the middle of the room, and then they cover it and they can still get to all the walls and ceiling.’

  ‘Well, he told me they need it all out. I think they’re sanding the floors as well. Can you do me a giant favour and make me a coffee? Seeing as you’re there?’

  ‘Sure.’

  I start on Juliet’s latte as Dave walks into the room with his usual enthusiastic energy. He pretty much ignores Juliet and Simon, and asks me all about my day. I fill him in with the details that seem appropriate—hot chips, catching up with Annabelle, and painting. While I do this, I look at his semi-ugly, overly bushy eyebrows, his unattractive paper-thin lips, and his slight, unmanly body. Anything I can see that will help me turn my back on my desire for a romantic relationship with him. Anything that will assist me in reverting to having a feeling of contentment in just being good friends with him.

  ‘You left your backpack here last night,’ he says, after his first sip of coffee.

  ‘I know. Annabelle was home, so she let me in. How was your day?’

  Dave tells me that he slept in and then wandered up to the Emerald and had a few lunch-time beers. Because he had heaps of unpacking and prepping to do here, he came in around two o’clock.

  ‘Nice.’ I stir my coffee slowly with a spoon.

  Dave continues. ‘Lucy met me at the Emerald.’

  ‘Oh,’ I reply. She fucking slept over at your house and you both walked up there together, you liar. I try to think Who cares? but I can’t kid myself—I kind of do care.

  I hand Juliet her coffee and sit beside Dave, and then Lucy waltzes in through the back door in a sheer black silk top and a gorgeous flowing black velvet skirt. Her blonde locks fall casually around her shoulders, one side pinned up with a clip decorated with a crimson rose. She smells of what I recognise as Yves Saint Laurent’s dark classic: Opium, a perfume my art teacher in high school wore. Lucy’s got the Bette-Midler-in-Beaches look about her tonight, in a good way—glamorous, but dishevelled at the same time. I can see why Dave has fallen under her spell.

  ‘Hi Joni, hi Jules,’ she purrs through her red lips. ‘Nice coat, Joni,’ she adds, and I instantly feel glad that I chose to wear it this evening. I like it when Lucy likes me. I watch her run her slender fingers down the open page of the bookings diary as she checks how many people we have in this evening.

  ‘We’ve got a quiet night tonight, girls. No one in the Red Room. No one in the Pines. Juliet, would you mind doing a proper dust and clean in the Red Room and the Pines?’

  ‘Sure,’ Juliet answers, through a milk moustache from her frothy coffee. What is she, five?

  ‘Joni, we’ll cover Lillibon and Gatsby, and maybe do a bit of a clean-up in here.’

  ‘Okay.’ I take note of her orders while finishing my coffee.

  ‘I’ve got some insanely great falafels for dinner tonight, girls,’ Dave tells us, taking our empty coffee cups into the kitchen.

  And then Michael arrives, sheepishly saying a soft hello to everyone.

  ‘Mikey boy!’ Dave calls out from the kitchen, reappearing seconds later with a tray of falafels, tabouli and pita bread. He’s gifted at drawing a gang together, with his inclusive, lively disposition. Michael sits, and then Lucy joins us all around the table.

  We happily begin eating the non-French meal—a nice change from the creamy, buttery food we usually get. I have to say, the menu here is killer, but a little monotonous when we have it night after night.

  Juliet talks to Michael nonstop, with her mouth full. I hear the re-cap of her furniture lifting, and how she’s left it all on the balcony out the front of her house, ready for the painter to arrive tomorrow morning. She has three huge bits of parsley stuck in her teeth, and Michael doesn’t say anything. He just listens.

  Lucy looks over at Juliet and scrunches her face up. ‘You’re not wearing that ladybird scarf thing tonight, are you? It doesn’t look quite right with your purple skirt. The colours…together.’ She waves her fingers around over the top of Juliet’s head.

  ‘I was thinking I might wear it. But that’s cool, I don’t have to.’

  Juliet removes the lime green ladybird turban, and her hair looks so greasy I can understand why she was covering it.

  ‘Great!’ Lucy seems pleased to have made a suggestion that was accepted with no answering back. She heads out the back door, and returns with a pile of neatly chopped firewood in her arms.

  I take off my coat and hang it on the hat rack, reach for my apron, and glance at the open page of
the bookings diary; I check how many are coming, when they are expected, and where they are to be seated. Juliet puts on a Serge Gainsbourg CD, and his smooth sultry music wafts through the rooms of Harland, weaving around the legs of the antique tables and chairs.

  Tiger-Lily jumps up on the back window ledge and rubs her back against the glass. I wander outside and give her a pat, hearing her soft purr travel through the cold, crisp air. Her water bowl is almost empty, so I refill it, then head back inside, absorbing the warmth coming from the newly lit fires.

  At six-thirty the first couple arrives and I seat them in Gatsby. They look like they’re in their twenties, and they tell me they’re celebrating their two-year anniversary. The handsome Asian man has slick black hair and he carries a single red rose with a pink velvet ribbon tied around the stem. The woman has a particular nervous giggle that she repeats after each sentence she utters. It’s quite captivating, and I can see her partner gazing lovingly at her freckled face whenever she talks. Her ginger hair is tied back, and her fingernails are painted red. I seat them near the fire, and they immediately reach over the menus I’ve placed in front of them, and hold hands.

  They have an intimate connection. A warm energy floats between them. I can’t imagine they’d ever fight with each other. I guess that she’s a secretary and he’s a doctor. Or maybe it’s the other way around? I can tell their house or apartment would be spotless, minimal, clean.

  I ask them both if they’d like something to drink, telling them the wine list is on the back page of the menu. As I wait for a response, I glance into the Red Room, and see that Juliet is already in there with a feather duster. I catch sight of her lifting each urn off the shelf, one by one, and dusting it in a bubbly fashion, as though she’s a contented housewife from the 1950s.

  Lucy seats the next group of people in Lillibon, and when I go in there to check on them I’m fascinated by how beautiful they are. I notice myself standing taller, slowing down my movements, trying to look as well-to-do as possible. They are a handsome family of five, all with the same blue eyes and curly hair, although the dad’s hair is only slightly wavy. The two sisters and brother, who look like they’re all in their twenties, share in-jokes with each other, while the mum opens beautifully wrapped presents, all tied with fancy bows that match the wrapping paper. She reads each card as she opens it, ahhing and giving thanks, getting up to hug each of her adult children in turn. It’s a little sickening, how happy they are.

  I begin to imagine what their dark secrets might be. I mean, everyone has them, buried deep down. Maybe the brother’s business is about to go bankrupt, but he would never dare tell his parents. Maybe the father killed the family dog with rat poison but lied to them all, saying she must have walked away to die peacefully in the bushland that surrounds their house. The mum had a baby with her English teacher when she was eighteen and put him up for adoption, and she’s never even told her husband; but next year the adopted boy will track down the mother and the whole family will fall apart. Then they’ll discover her secret gambling problem. Soon after, the dad will come out of the closet, and admit he’s been having an affair with another man for three years.

  This is all possibly a little far-fetched, but I’m bored senseless if I don’t conjure up scenarios like this. I wait for their drink orders, twiddling the tie of my apron with my left hand, holding a notepad and pen in my right.

  Lillibon is a cute little room, named after Lucy’s grandmother. The ivy wallpaper that covers all four walls is faded in the corners, some sections torn and discoloured with what looks like water damage. I love these imperfections. The torn edges remind me of the fragile outlines of countries on a large map, like the ones that hung in my primary school classrooms. There’s a cuckoo clock hanging on the wall, and its non-stop tick-tock can be heard every second, like a repetitive, robotic heartbeat. On the hour, two wooden doors above the clock face open up, and a little boy and girl spring out each time the cuckoo calls. I often hear it throughout the restaurant, whether I’m re-setting Gatsby or taking orders into the kitchen.

  By the time the two-year-anniversary couple leave Gatsby, there are only seven people left finishing their meals and sipping their wine. Lucy calls me into the Bar Room, and I sit down at the staff table in front of a large pile of white napkins. I begin to fold them one by one as Lucy dusts and rearranges the liquor bottles and coffee cups on the shelf near the coffee machine. She begins to talk to me as though a switch has been flicked, and she’s finally decided she can trust me.

  12

  ‘My ex-husband is a piece of work,’ Lucy tells me, taking down the liquor bottles from the shelf. ‘Have I ever told you about him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We met when I was twenty-seven, in Paris. I was living in my apartment in Montmartre, and we’d stay up late drinking in smoky bars, dancing at all the cool clubs in Pigalle, and then we’d stumble home together.’ She pauses, then continues. ‘Those were the days. Our salad days.’

  She places a full bottle of vodka on the bench, and I can see her getting lost in this enjoyable slice of her past.

  ‘God, I remember we’d trip up the stairs like two drunken lunatics, laughing out loud, getting yelled at by the old woman in the downstairs apartment. And then we’d have great sex on the Persian rug in the living room.’

  She turns her head and stares at nothing in particular, and I get a French version of Breakfast at Tiffany’s in my mind. Then I notice Lucy’s facial expression quickly change, as though a storm has blown over.

  ‘He was such a prick!’ she yells. ‘An absolute bastard! If I saw him now, I’d spit in his face!’ She begins to slam the liquor bottles on the bench, one by one, giving them a stern wipe down, as though they’re children who have misbehaved.

  ‘Was he Australian?’ I ask hesitantly, frightened she’ll tell me off.

  ‘Yeah, he grew up in Sydney, which is why we settled back here. He was in France en vacances—holidaying with friends, who by the way were all obnoxious young businessmen. But he stood out, you know? I was working in a patisserie near my apartment. I didn’t need the money because my parents had loads, but I needed something to do with my time. Working at the patisserie helped keep me out of trouble. My boss let me rearrange the window display, and bring in a lot of cake stands and china plates that I’d collected from all my weekends spent foraging around at the Montreuil flea market. We fought like crazy, me and my boss, but I loved it, and it’s what made me want to run my own place.’

  ‘So how did you meet, um…’

  ‘Damian?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘He started coming into the patisserie every morning to get his coffee. He was so handsome back then. Like Jean-Paul Belmondo, you know, the lead guy in that film you love, À bout de souffle. Breathless. He’d hand me the money, and the way his top teeth bit his bottom lip…awww, it killed me! He was so gorgeous. And he was always half asleep—with bed hair, and little sheet creases on his face. He’d try to order in French, getting it all completely wrong. I’d never really heard an Australian accent before and I could not believe how adorable he sounded.’

  Lucy pauses and smiles, wiping the bench gently. Then storm number two blows in. ‘I can’t believe I got sucked in!’ Her tone of voice is brutal. ‘Worst mistake of my life!’

  I want to ask her what went wrong. Why did they separate? Why does she hate him so much? What’s it like being divorced? I’m too afraid, though, so I sit silently, continuing to fold the white napkins as neatly as possible, pressing down on each fold with my fingertips. Then, to my surprise, she continues to reveal more, of her own free will.

  ‘Il a eu une aventure.’

  I don’t know what she’s talking about when she says it in French. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘He cheated on me with an older woman,’ she says, with disgust. ‘He was always running after skirts. And I know I’m…hard to live with, up and down. I admit all that. But he wanted kids, and I was not able to give him that.’


  ‘What do you mean—you don’t like children?’

  She hesitates before she goes further. I can tell she’s beginning to wonder whether it’s a good idea, telling me her personal history. At this point one of the curly-haired sisters from Lillibon comes into the Bar Room. Her cheeks are flushed and she giggles while asking for the bill.

  I leave the napkins on the staff table and place the torn-out page from my order pad on a rosy saucer, adding some after-dinner mints on top. As soon as I arrive at their table, the dad lays a wad of cash on the saucer. I see them out the door, wishing them all the best. As I do this, my mind is sifting through all the information Lucy’s been telling me. I’m eager to get back into the Bar Room and hear more about her failed marriage, and her lack of interest in having children.

  I clear Lillibon as quickly as I can, taking all the dirty dessert plates, glasses and coffee cups in to Simon. Dave’s busy cleaning out the fridges below the bench. Michael must have been sent home, and I haven’t seen Juliet for a while. Her bag is not on the floor, so Lucy must have sent her home early too.

  I settle back in front of the pile of napkins, turning to see Lucy giving the coffee machine a good clean. She’s shifted it right over to the other side of the bar area and, after polishing the top and sides, she gives the bench another wipe down. She smiles at me as I get back to my folding, and when she picks up from where she left off, my body relaxes as though I’ve just pressed Play on a video that was paused mid-movie.

  ‘I do like kids. I did want to have a baby,’ she confesses. ‘Quite desperately.’

  I stay silent.

  ‘I was diagnosed with very severe endometriosis when I was sixteen.’

  ‘What’s endometrio…’

  ‘Endometriosis. It’s a disease.’ She looks me directly in the eyes. ‘You know this is hard for me to talk about. I don’t tell this to everyone.’

  I return her gaze, feeling scared and privileged at the same time.

  She carries on. ‘A lot of women have it, but you don’t hear about it much.’ She unexpectedly adds, ‘Marilyn Monroe had it.’