Sealed

by Naomi Booth

  I felt something other than envy, too: a new curiosity, as he looked at me, about what he’d become.

  ‘Will you come for a drink with me, Ali?’ he asked.

  ‘You’ve got company,’ I said.

  ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘She’s going.’

  ‘What a gent,’ I said.

  * * *

  It’s strange to be told that someone is in love with you when you’re an introvert. How can you be in love with me, I thought. What bit of the tiny sliver of myself that I allowed to escape can possibly have given you enough grounds for love? Sure, we’d been friends. At times we’d been more than friends. But I’d stayed guarded; when we played together, when we’d pashed as teenagers, even when we’d messed around. How could he possibly think he loved me? Pete declared it over and over again that summer. That first night, when we drank ourselves stupid in an empty bar at the edge of our estate, then walked home along the dark streets, laughing and bumping into one another, standing in front of the flats, kissing each other while the world seemed to spin around us – it was the world that was drunk, not us, we were the still bright centre for the whirling stars overhead and the lopsided cats that weaved around us and the distant cars and someone, far off, shouting again and again ‘Maria, Maaaarrrrriiiiiaaaa’ – all of it span around us while we burned into one another, bright and hot. And I sneaked him upstairs into my old bedroom, and we kissed and kissed till our lips were sore, and then we moved onto the floor so as not to make the bed moan and he poured the words into my ear: ‘I love you, I love you, Alice, I’ve always loved you.’

  He declared it again, every time we met. Sometimes as soon as we met: outside a bar or a restaurant, he’d greet me and kiss my face and say straight away, as though the world was ending and we had only minutes left, ‘I love you, Ali, I love you, I love you.’ He said it until I believed it, until I felt it too. I’d always been guarded, not just with Pete, with other blokes too, but now something inside me broke away, painfully. I remember my mother once told me that there are plants in the bush that have adapted to survive the wild fires: their buds burst into seed only through flames. That’s what it felt like: I was on fire, exploding into life. And finally I said it, the words burst out of me too: ‘I love you,’ I said. ‘I love you, Pete.’ And I felt it, hot and wild and painful.

  We started making plans. Pete was living in a filthy shared-house in a bad part of the city. He’d done a course on design and was trying to find work, taking up anything he could while he worked up a portfolio. He worked all kinds of jobs to stay afloat, horrible jobs, and they never lasted long. He took night shifts in a bottle factory at the edge of the outback, until all the summer workers got laid off. Then he worked on a demolition site, where the safety procedures were sketchy at best and the gaffer made everyone work their first fortnight without pay, ‘To reimburse the company for your equipment, mate.’ Pete stayed at that one until he almost fell: he’d been edging along a rafter when a pigeon shat on his face. Then he found a job working behind a bar, at a place on the right side of town for our estate. This was the best gig he’d had by far. Said he’d move back home too, and we could both save up and look for an apartment to rent together in the city.

  I didn’t go to the bar he worked at that much. I was commuting everyday anyway, working hard to impress Kim and to earn a permanent post at the Department. And I didn’t like to cramp Pete’s style: he looked shy whenever I did go in, and I guessed it must be awkward for him to serve me. One evening Pete’s bar was hosting a festival: local bands in the car-park, food-stalls, buckets full of ice and beer, that kind of thing. Pete’s brother knocked on our door, suggested we go down together. It was nice to walk across the estate with Harris: it was Friday night, weekly payday for folks with jobs, so everyone out had a swagger to their step. A couple of lads whistled hellos to us from across the road and the high-rises at the centre of St Paul’s were hazed in bronze light, so that even they looked kind of pretty. Windows were open, music was playing, people were running their mouths and laughing. Harris had grown up too: he’d been a giddy boy, liable to start fires and shoplift. Now he was training to be a nurse, and he held my hand, careful and protective, as we laced through the blocks towards the city.

  The place was rammed when we arrived, so it took us a while to spot Pete, serving beers from behind a table at the far end of the car-park, just under the flyover. There was a punk band playing and the traffic roared overhead. Pete didn’t look exactly pleased to see us. He patted Harris on the arm, gave me a kiss on the cheek.

  ‘It’s so busy,’ he said, slipping us a couple of free beers under the table. ‘I don’t think I’m going to get a break till we finish up at midnight, babe. You two go listen to the bands, enjoy yourselves.’

  Harris downed his beer and got straight down the front, doing this strange little dance of his: when Harris dances, he bends repeatedly, suddenly tipping his torso forward with alarming rapidity. I milled about the edges of the circle of moshing kids, watching Pete from a distance. Everyone seemed to know him; regulars I guessed.

  I got another free beer and bought some shots. I danced a bit on my own. I chatted to an older guy who was high and wanted us to go for a walk together, ‘Off under the flyover and into the sunset.’ I laughed. Said I needed to powder my nose and gave him the slip.

  The loos were full of discarded bottles and girls chattering aggressively, sharing stalls and hatching plans for the rest of the night.

  ‘Let’s go on to Tony’s.’

  ‘I don’t want to. He’s a bloody bore.’

  ‘Yeah, but he’ll have ket, and I know he likes you. He’ll be generous with it.’

  ‘So what’s that, darl? You trying to pimp me out to get your pills?’

  Laughter. Clattering. Laughter.

  I was just about to flush when another pair started up in the stall next door.

  ‘Don’t you fancy him?’

  ‘What, Pete?’

  ‘Yeah. He was all over you, babe. And he can’t stop looking at you.’

  ‘I guess he’s good looking. But I think he’s sort of creepy.’

  ‘Really? I think he’s hot.’

  ‘Nah. He’s got a girlfriend. And he’s slept with every other girl who works behind the bar. Lindsey had a thing with him, a bit ago. Says he can get nasty.’

  ‘What do you mean, nasty?’

  ‘Like, wild. Really pushy. And then wants nothing to do with you.’

  ‘Well, do you mind if try him out? I could do with a bit of nasty, tonight.’

  ‘Be my guest, babe. Just don’t come crying to me when he goes back to his childhood sweetheart. And you better make sure you stay safe. That guy is reckless.’

  My heart is beating hard in my chest. I hear their stall door clatter open, and I follow them out a couple of seconds later. I loiter beside them at the basins, sprinkling my hands with water while they gum up their lips with more gloss. I vaguely recognise one of them: she’s got long red hair and I guess I must have seen her behind the bar. I keep my head down, so she won’t recognise me. The other girl is tall and blonde with extremely assertive tits, which she pushes up inside her bra. I trail them out of the loos and watch as they make their way towards Pete. I sit down on the banking at the edge of the car-park, trying to make myself inconspicuous. The sky is navy-blue now and the air is cooling quickly. Multi-coloured lights are strung-up around the edges of car-park, but I’m a way back from them and must be pretty well hidden in the darkness. Pete looks delighted to see the girls: he barrels out his chest, slips them drinks too. The Amazonian blonde is sidling up to him. I see him do a quick sweep of the surroundings, presumably looking for me. He scans the crowd in front of him once, twice, and then he relaxes, steps back from the table with the girl, lights her cigarette. I sit a while longer, watching as Pete and the girl dance around each other, their bodies getting closer and closer, Pete getting more and more tense. The girl cups her hand around his ear, presses her body against him, whispers somet
hing. He keeps checking around, and he looks kind of agitated, in a nervous-excited way. I see him glance around once more, and then he moves quickly in a fuck-it, let’s-do-it kind of a way: he grabs the girl by the wrist, practically spins her round, and yanks her off into the darkness under the flyover.

  I tell Harris that I’m leaving. ‘Righto,’ he says, then carries on dancing. I melt into the darkness, out towards the city. I walk across the flyover, and the dancing kids below, and the roar of traffic underneath me, and whatever Pete and that girl are doing, feel further and further away. There’s a breeze up here, and the stars are glinting, and I feel very, very sharp. I’m an arrow ready to be shot into the night sky.

  I keep walking along the main roads. The traffic thins out and a car full of boys slows down next to me.

  ‘A’right, darl, you want to come and party with us?’

  ‘Come on you beaut, come on in and keep us company.’

  ‘Give us a smile then, ya bloody sour-faced bitch.’

  I keep on walking and their insults blare into noise as they drive past.

  In town, it’s chucking-out time and people are stumbling around, feeling their way along walls, supporting one another. I find a little cellar bar that I’ve been to before with Pete that’s open late. I sit at the bar and I order shots. I feel so purposeful-but-purposeless, so full of restless angry energy, that I think I might burst. A guy sits beside me at the bar and offers to buy me a drink. He’s tall, an enormous American, with a soft voice and a crucifix tattooed up the side of his thick neck. While he’s introducing himself I start kissing him. I don’t stop. I take him by the hand and lead him out into the city. I lead him down an alleyway and lace my arms around the back of his neck. He smells so clean and so new. I try to be wild and reckless, but I start to cry.

  ‘Listen,’ he says. ‘You’re real cute, and real drunk. If you still want to do this in the morning, you give me a call.’

  He writes his number on a piece of paper and hails me a taxi. That’s when I find out his name, as I unfurl the scrap of paper in the back of the Falcon, the lights fading out as we drive back towards the estate: Patrick.

  * * *

  When I get back to my mum’s, Pete’s asleep in my bed. I keep my clothes on and I get in beside him. He murmurs in his sleep.

  ‘I saw you,’ I say, drunkenly pushing my lips against his scalp.

  He doesn’t hear me; he wraps his arms around me instinctively in his sleep.

  ‘I saw you.’

  * * *

  The next morning we had it out properly. Pete looked stunned, genuinely injured that I was bringing it up.

  ‘Babe,’ he said, ‘it’s absolutely nothing. It was just a quick chat with a pissed-up girl. I love you, Alice, you know that I love you. Anyway, I thought we were alright with extras? We talked about it, you said it was fine.’

  It was true: we had talked about it. We’d both said we weren’t that fussed about monogamy, that we were young and we should make the most of it. But we’d said it in bed, hypothetically, with our legs laced together. We hadn’t talked about details. I thought that was for the future; I didn’t realise it was now.

  ‘Were you safe?’ I asked, over and over again. ‘Have you been safe, with every single one?’

  Of course he hadn’t been safe. I knew it the moment he paused before answering.

  ‘Lydia’s a good girl,’ he said. ‘You don’t need to worry.’

  ‘Lydia?’

  We went at it for a long time: I wanted every single person, I wanted personal histories and risks taken. There were many: many women and many risks. He had his head in his hands by the end. ‘Alice,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know how to explain it to ya. It’s like, because I love you so much, there’s too much of it. It makes me fall in love with everyone, just a little bit. I’ll stop, I’ll stop. I can stop. Just tell me to.’

  The strange thing is, I sort of understood. I know that fire spreads. I’d felt it too, the too-muchness of being in love. But I hated Pete for it at the same time. I hated his freedom and how guiltlessly he lived, how easily he took love and gave love, and how much danger he’d put me in. And most of all, I hated that he might be right, that he was living the right way and that I was wrong: too frightened, too careful, too guarded to really enjoy life. I didn’t have the constitution for it: I couldn’t live like him, it was too much, it was too reckless for me, and I should have known and I should never have said I love you, I love you too, I should never have tried to love like he did, wide open and wild.

  * * *

  Pete’s still staring at the sky above the mountains. ‘Hey babe,’ he says. ‘You’re miles away. Don’t you remember? The monorail, the storm that night?’

  ‘I remember,’ I say.

  And I do remember, I think of us again as fifteen-year olds, clinging together under the big sky. But what I’m thinking is: you can’t fall in love twice. Not even with the same person. After the first flames, everything is just dying sparks.

  VI

  WE’RE going out tonight,’ Pete says. We’re sitting on the verandah eating breakfast. Pete is stuffing toast and peanut butter into his mouth, talking while he chews. The sky is clear and whitish-blue beyond us. The storm has cleared and everything in the garden looks fresh. There’s that warm smell of earth, after the rain; an almost animal smell, like clean, soft cat fur. ‘Petrichor.’ My mother’s words in my mind again.

  ‘Are we?’ I say.

  ‘Yeah. Paulie and Mara are having a barbie tonight. Be a good way to meet some more of the locals.’

  ‘Right,’ I say. ‘Maybe you’d have a better time without me.’ If I go I won’t be able to stop myself from quizzing people, from asking them about any suspected cases and about the risk of fire here. And Pete will go ape. And then there’s the barbie itself: blackened, carcinogenic, unprotected meat; formaldehyde fumes; people smoking.

  ‘You’re coming, Alice,’ Pete says. ‘I’m not having you hiding yourself away, becoming some kind of maternal recluse. You liked Mara, right? And you’ll want friends when the baby’s here.’

  ‘Right,’ I say.

  * * *

  Pete works all day and I mill about the house, listless. When I get too hot I step out onto the verandah. It’s even warmer out here and my back’s killing me, so I take a short circuit around the garden. Moving around seems to make my back feel easier. I trail my fingers across the leaves of the plants in the borders, searching for something that feels cool. I should probably water them; I’ve got so used to the water-curfews in the city that it didn’t even occur to me. Maybe I can keep things alive out here, finally learn the skills that my mother tried to teach me before everything died back in the city? The vivid violet bush, here at the bottom of the yard, is a jacaranda, I know that much. Next to it is something I don’t recognise. I squat down. It’s a small, scrubby bush, with dark leaves and tiny pink flowers. The pattern of the petals is real delicate: five cerise leaves with a lighter centre, intricate as a snowflake. The leaves at the bottom of the bush are turning yellow and crispy. I should do something for it, work out what it needs. I’ve kept some of my mother’s old gardening books. They’ll be in one of the boxes in the living-room, I can picture us packing them up with the other books. I waddle back inside and fish around in one of the half-unpacked boxes we’ve left stacked against the wall, a placeholder for these bookshelves Pete’s going to build. I find them under a stash of Pete’s old comics. Mum loved gardening. We only had a small patch out back, but she made the most of it. Our place was built in the 1950s, a two-bedroom lower maisonette on what was then a shiny new public-housing estate. I know we were lucky, just the two of us in our place, and we were at the end of the block so we got to use the land at the side too – Pete’s family had to fit the six of them into the same space next-door, and they ran around in a yard half the size of ours. Mum was always busy out there, when I was small. She’d walk me round the yard, telling me what she’d done that day, which plants she�
��d separated, which she’d supported, which she was letting go to seed. She built raised beds along the edges of the yard, planting them with veggies. She had climbers on trellises, figs and grapes and roses. She trained growers up the walls of the flat, too, honeysuckle and hydrangea, so it always smelt sweet in the summer. She tried to grow trees in tubs, peppermint and peach, paperbarks and floodgums. I never took to it, the garden, never wanted to get my hands dirty, but when Pete was still young she’d set him on with some task – weeding around the gourds, picking out slugs and dropping them into cups of beer – and he’d be utterly rapt. He’d come in hours later, fingers and face filthy, and sometimes he’d fall asleep on her shoulder as she read to him. She did her best, even later on, to keep things going, even when the summers got too hot and the smogs too toxic, when everything got scorched and had already begun to die back. She spritzed the leaves of her gum trees, she watered every night, she improvised nets out of old curtains to protect her veggies from the air. And she never complained, my mother, when things went wrong. When she lost another job, when she didn’t get her Child Support, when the man she’d been seeing suddenly disappeared, when the city started to die and her blue gum crackled to death. It was almost as though she expected these small calamities. A little half-sigh, and then she’d be back to work, checking the small ads for jobs, making stews from frozen meat, busily planting seeds in yoghurt pots on the kitchen windowsill.