by Lisa Swallow
Vanessa moistens her lips as she considers something, and I imagine myself licking them too. “Which arts degree?”
“I’m an English major.”
“You like poetry?”
Could she sound any more incredulous?
“Is that so strange?”
“Umm. Yes.” Vanessa twists her glass on the table. “Next you’ll be telling me you write poetry too.”
“Nope, too busy corrupting innocent girls with my sexy, fit body.”
Vanessa’s attempt at her customary stare is marred by the hint of embarrassment on her face. “Byron was a poet, and he was a bit like you.”
“A bit like me?”
“A bit of a misogynist.”
I draw in a deep breath. Okay. I don’t have to sit and be insulted by some girl who I have no chance of getting into bed. I don’t mind flirtatious battles of wills, but this is downright rude.
“You like to put people in compartments?” I ask her.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You call me a misogynist, but I think you’re being sexist. What about the girls doing the same as me? Are they using the guys they sleep with? Or would you call them worse names than misogynist?”
Vanessa shifts in her seat and picks up her drink. “No.”
“I suggest you get to know someone before you make a decision about the kind of person they are.”
“Okay, sorry…”
I take a drink. I love getting one over on people like her, those who make snap judgments about me, imagining themselves superior. Yet with Vanessa, this niggles; the waste of time arts degree thing I hear all the time, but accusations I’m a bad person don’t sit well with me. After offending her last night, maybe she has an excuse. Who knows, but she has sharp claws and since there’s no chance they’ll be raking my back anytime soon, I’m moving on.
I look around the pub for someone else I know. There’s a group of girls from one of my lectures; I’m pretty sure the petite blonde in the very small dress has given me the come on before, and she’s smiling at me now. I excuse myself more politely than I feel, cutting short something Vanessa was about to say. What I don’t understand is why guilt tugs when I see the hurt in Vanessa’s face as I walk away, leaving her alone.
4
NESS
I’m dozing under a blanket, as I watch a late night movie, when the front door opens. I heard the loud voices of the group approaching along the street before they arrived and toyed with the idea of retreating to my bedroom. Too late. Abby stumbles in first, rain glistening on her long hair as Matt pushes her through the door. Some guys I recognise from previous party nights trip in after her. One, straggly hair and black band T-shirt, carries a clinking carrier bag and another skinny guy balances a stack of pizza boxes. Great, not a quick visit then.
My stomach lurches as a pretty girl with long blonde hair and drunken eyes enters the house. She’s pushed through the door by Evan, who has his arms tightly around her waist. Evan’s eyes meet mine and he drops his hold on her. The door closes behind him and he rests against it, not touching the girl who curls herself into him.
By this point, I’ve turned away, angry with myself that seeing the pair bothers me. Why should it? We only had a brief chat in the pub, which ended abruptly. Okay, I enjoyed holding a conversation with someone who was interested in talking to me, even if our words were snarky. Evan tried to turn his charm onto me, briefly, successfully flattering me into thinking he liked me until he walked away. God, I must be desperate for attention.
I haven’t tried to connect with people since I got here. At work, it’s easier to keep my head down and get on with things. Perhaps after these few weeks of feeling like a piece of Abby’s furniture, I was flattered by Evan. Something he’s evidently good at, I decide, watching the girl pushing herself into him.
“Oh! You’re still awake, have a drink with us.” Abby pushes one of her bottles of alcoholic juice into my hand.
“No thanks, I’m going to bed.” I push the drink back at her.
Evan’s looking at me. Staring. I look pointedly at the girl he’s with, and then back to him. Bizarrely, he shrugs at me. When we sat together in the pub, I was on guard. I thought I had him figured out, and then I made the comment about arts students and my embarrassment caused a slip in defence. Evan emanates confident sexuality and he drew me in with flirtation. Afterwards I kicked myself because his tricks worked. Yeah, they work on both random blondes and me. Ignoring the gaze burning my skin, I turn and disappear upstairs before he tries to speak to me again. I don’t want another encounter with the drunk Evan.
I switch the lamp on in my room and throw a book onto the bed, then pull on warm pyjamas. My night: a book and some music until the revellers below pass out.
When I’m finished in the bathroom, I walk out to Evan sitting on the top stair, leaning against the wood chip wall. His smart shirt is untucked now, and has lost a button. The blonde girl, I bet.
“All yours,” I say nonchalantly, indicating the bathroom.
Evan doesn’t move, head against the wall, watching me. My neck prickles, wishing he’d stop looking at me this way. The missing button means a clearer view of the chest I’m sure I’m beginning to obsess about. Smooth and kissable. I squeeze my eyes shut. Hormones. Leave.
“Are you?” he says slowly, appraising me in my thankfully shapeless pyjamas.
“Am I what?”
“All mine.” Evan pulls himself to his feet and places a hand on the bannister. “Just kidding.”
“Isn’t she all yours? The blonde?”
“Nah. I’m too much of a misogy…misogyn…” He stumbles over the word and clears his throat. “Byronesque.”
“Arrogant and destructive?”
The smile from before creeps up his face. “‘What a strange thing man is; and what a stranger thing woman.’”
I gawp. That’s the only word I can think of to describe my reaction. A half-drunk guy is quoting poetry at me, as I stand in my pyjamas above a room full of inebriated students.
“Is that how you do it?” I ask him.
“Do what?”
“Seduce girls into bed.”
Evan laughs and leans in, whispering, “No, that’s my good looks and sexy, fit body.”
He’s teasing me, but he won’t win. “Don’t deprive her then.”
“Who?”
“You’ve forgotten the girl before you even have sex with her?” I say with mock incredulity.
He shrugs. “No. She’s a bit too keen. I prefer a challenge.”
“A challenge?”
He lowers his voice. “I bet you’d be a challenge.”
Wow. Evan has a girl waiting downstairs and he’s hitting on me? This guy is back to being a wanker now he’s had a few drinks. “I’m not interested, Evan.”
“Yeah, I noticed.” He pulls a dejected face then grins again.
“Off you go then.” I shoo him with my hand.
“Off I go.”
As Evan walks into the bathroom, he pauses and looks back over. “Such a shame. This between us feels destined somehow.”
“Destined. Right. Do you have a poetry quote about that too?”
“No, I mean because we fit.”
“Fit?”
“Our names. Evan…Vanessa…” He gives me the lopsided grin, accompanied by amusement crinkling the corners of his eyes. “Evan fits into Vanessa.”
“He most certainly does not!” I retort and rush into my bedroom.
I rest against the door, and my heart thumps in my ears as I listen. The bathroom door clicks shut. I bang my head softly, annoyed at my pathetic comeback to his vulgar comment. Evan bloody won.
I’m still by my door when I hear him leave the bathroom and return downstairs. Every time we encounter each other something new intrigues me about Evan. Apart from the obvious and frustrating attraction I have to him, there’s something else. A guy who quotes poetry and engages in battles of will can’t be the vacuous wom
anizer I thought he was when we met yesterday.
I want to know his story.
5
NESS
I push the cereal around my bowl with a spoon; Abby rests against the sink waiting for the kettle to boil. Matt is upstairs in her bed, but nobody else remains in the house from the night before. I can’t help thinking about Evan and the blonde girl, even though it’s none of my business. After we spoke at the top of the stairs, I tried to concentrate on a book and music so I didn’t have to think about him. My heart thumped for too long afterwards as the evening replayed in my mind. How Evan looked at me and flirted in the pub then chose another girl. She was his logical choice, as if I would do what he wanted anyway— no sex from me. I drifted off to sleep as the voices faded downstairs, images of Evan’s missing button and intense look dancing into my dreams.
“Does Matt live with Evan?” I ask Abby.
She rubs her panda eyes; the make-up, which accentuated them so beautifully last night, has spread down her cheeks. “In the same halls, yeah.”
“And they knew each other before uni?”
“Think so. I’ve heard them mention places from the same town. Why the sudden interest in Evan?” asks Abby.
I spoon cornflakes into my mouth and nod, and her face lights up. “Oh! You’re into him. Hmm. Join the queue there.”
She pours water into the three chipped mugs and pulls her hair over her shoulders. I shouldn’t push the conversation, but I decide to keep going.
“What do you think of him?” I ask.
“He’s a nice guy. Mostly. He gets drunk a lot. More than Matt, anyway. But I guess some people behave like him when they hit the freedom of uni.”
“Yeah, Evan seems to be with a different girl every time he comes here.”
Abby smiles. “I don’t think he’s the boyfriend type.”
“And Matt hasn’t said anything about him?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, about his past.”
Abby walks over and taps me on the head with a teaspoon. “You mean is he some kind of dark, brooding, broken guy?”
I curse my pale skin and inability to hide embarrassment. “No.”
Abby returns to the mugs. “Nope, he’s just a player. Besides, guys don’t talk about that stuff, do they?”
As I finish breakfast, disappointment rises inside. I wish Evan was a little bit broken then I could like him a little bit more.
6
NESS
Working in a call centre is experiencing life as a battery hen, penned into the cubicles all day. We start the shift, plug in our phones, and then we’re at the mercy of the automated telephone service. Fluorescent lighting hurts my eyes and the temperature control inside the windowless centre of the building dries them out. Everything is logged: lunch breaks, coffee breaks, and even toilet breaks. We’re in teams. With targets. This is to create camaraderie, but only the team leaders are interested in the sales targets they battle to meet. Most of us want to get the shift over with and go home.
Abby is gradually becoming more considerate. Over the last couple of weeks, she hasn’t dragged half of campus home, so I’m getting decent sleep. Recently, only Matt and a select few are around when I’m home. No Evan for a week though, which I have mixed feelings about. I can hang onto the reasons for my dislike of Evan if I don’t see him.
Today is tough. I worked an evening shift last night followed by another this morning. Less than six hours between shifts and I’m not in the mood for difficult customers.
At lunch— thirty minutes and counting— I sit alone and flick through a magazine. I’ve worked at the call centre for a month now and I’m still not accepted. Because of my accent and where I live, half of the team thinks I’m one of the many students who work here part-time and avoid me. The bitchiness and lack of camaraderie didn’t faze me to begin with, but recently the animosity bothers me. Okay, so this work environment doesn’t lend itself to chatting around the water cooler because everyone’s plugged into their phones all day; but at breaks and lunch people do chat, and rarely to me. I won’t admit this to anyone but myself, but I’m regretting my rash decision to take this job. The pay is okay, but I’m isolated.
I’m toying with the idea of backpacking instead. I’ll save all the money myself from working and not accept a begrudging penny from my parents. I picture Mum freaking out and the idea makes me nervous too. I have no one to go with, and I’m not sure I would be confident enough to backpack around the world alone. Then my head clouds in with all the indecision and stress, so I stop thinking about what to do. That’s what happens when life is planned out from birth; if you deviate from those plans, the house of cards crashes down.
“Julie wants to see you.” A middle-aged woman with badly permed hair and a shirt stretched too tightly across her chest regards me sullenly.
“Julie?”
“Yeah.” She walks away.
I gulp down the remaining muddy, tasteless coffee from the polystyrene cup and deposit it in the bin on the way out of the canteen.
Only the team leaders have their own offices; little partitioned boxes around the edges of the battery farm. Julie’s is covered in team building slogans and sales charts, and the face of the ‘team member of the month’ gazes out from a gaudy certificate.
Julie waits inside and I perch myself on the seat opposite her.
“Vanessa,” she says and smiles.
Julie is skinny; too skinny. Her highlighted blonde hair is carefully styled and she wears bright red lipstick on her thin lips. With a trowel load of foundation, I can’t tell how old Julie is. Now I’m closer, I admire the lineless forehead and decide she’s had Botox.
“So, how are you finding things with us in Team Delta?”
Whenever anybody says the words, I imagine us white water rafting through Africa. “Okay, I think.”
The false smile suggests Julie doesn’t think so. “Good, good. Well, I’m chatting to all our recent recruits, going over stats so we know how things are going.” She taps a couple of buttons on her keyboard.
“Is there a problem?” I ask, shifting in my seat.
“Only with your cross-sales figures. Tell me, do you offer customers the option to sign up for other products every time they call?”
“Normally,” I lie. I’m not a natural sales person and I cringe each time I push unwanted products onto customers.
“Well, it seems you need a little more training in that area. We’ll fix you up with some sessions. Probably next week. I’ll put you in with the new starters.”
Basically, she’s telling me I’m being put in the remedial class. I plaster on a fake smile to match hers. “Sure, that sounds like a great idea.”
Leaving Julie’s office, I ignore the faces of my team watching with curiosity and walk stiffly to the bathroom. I gaze at the blurred reflection through tearing eyes; the harsh lights highlight my lack of sleep and pallid skin. For the first time in my life, I’m failing at something and the feeling isn’t good.
7
NESS
“I told you it was a shitty job,” remarks Abby in a completely unhelpful manner.
I walk with her from the university library, through the overhanging grey tower blocks dwarfing the older university buildings. We have a deal; I pick Abby up from university on days that suit my work schedule, and she does the grocery shopping on days that suit her study schedule.
The cupboards are bare and the fridge empty, despite the copious lists I leave stuck to the door.
“The job will do for now,” I say.
“But you hate it?”
“There’re worse things I could be doing. I don’t hate it.”
Abby waves at a group of girls walking by and none of them register me. “You’re so stubborn. Why didn’t you just study something other than medicine? Meet the parents half way?”
“I don’t want to take any more of their money. Especially not to use on something they don’t want me to do.”
&n
bsp; The weeks of arguments and passive aggression from Dad simmer resentment inside me. Their attempts to cajole me into changing my mind turned into threats of the cash flow drying up if I didn’t. They made me sound like a princess who sucks her parents dry, and I’ve never been that way. I never wheedled things out of guilty parents who were absent through long hours at work. I didn’t want for anything, but I didn’t ask for anything either.
Once they accepted my decision, we agreed I’d take the car with me, as it had been an eighteenth birthday present. They would also pay the security bond on the house, if I let Mum help me choose where we lived. What a fun-filled few days house hunting they were…
“You need a drink,” says Abby.
“Honestly, is that your answer to everything?”
“It used to be yours, before you turned boring.” She elbows me in the side before I can retort.
“One drink, I’m driving, remember. But not the Union.”
Abby grins and hooks her arm through mine. “Cool!”
The pub she chooses rests halfway up the steep street to the university, close enough to the city for office workers and near enough to the campus for those who want a change from the student bars. We sit in the same seats as last time, the time with Evan. I soak some spilt drink up with a beermat and place my half pint on top.
Again, Abby drinks highly coloured sugary crap through a straw. The minute we sat, she began texting until I took her phone and pointedly set it on the table.
As Abby burbles on about her recent evening antics, I nod in the right places. I can’t talk to people at work about mortgages and babies, and I can’t talk to students about studying and clubbing. Stuck between the two isn’t nice.
Abby waves excitedly at someone behind me and I turn to see Matt striding towards us, a large bag across his shoulder. His cheeks are reddened by the cold and he smiles broadly at Abby. Evan walks behind and I look at my drink before he notices me.