by Rose Hartley
‘I’m a children’s author,’ I said. ‘Picture books. I’m having a meeting with my editor tomorrow.’
‘That’s pretty cool. What’s your book called?’
I swallowed and searched frantically among the posters on the wall for inspiration. My gaze settled first on a vintage Karate Kid poster, and then on a bull’s skull. ‘Karate Cow,’ I said.
After ten more minutes of chat, I took him by the hand. ‘Hey, come with me for a second, will you?’
I led him through the crowd. We weaved through the front bar, past film posters for 1950s B movies and the Elvis paintings hanging on the wall above Sarah, who was now holding the palm of her hand up against Sean’s as if to measure the difference in size. I caught a strain of laughter and the fragment of a sentence, something like, it’s so big. I tried to swallow the humiliation. Sarah was a sadist, and I would not give her the satisfaction of knowing that seeing her with Sean hurt me. But it did. I coughed loudly as I passed to make sure Sean saw that there was a guy with me. An undergraduate technique, like Jen said. I slowly and theatrically pulled open the door, making sure the bell jingled.
On the footpath, a lone smoker puffed away at one of the wooden tables facing the side street. A few hundred metres away, police cars, taxis, fixed-gear bicycles and tottering drunks would be crawling Smith Street, savouring the aromas of lamb and garlic sauce coming from the Souvlaki Palace. Faint sirens whined and blue lights flashed in the distance. The cold air hit my face but my body was warm and buzzing from the cider. Dan followed me out of the bar, looking around.
‘What are we doing?’ he asked.
‘We’re gonna make out,’ I said.
‘Okay.’
I pushed him against the wall, making sure the smoker had his back to us.
‘What’s your name again?’ Dan asked.
‘Maggie.’
The brick wall seemed to be moving, or maybe I was swaying. We kissed like high schoolers, urgent and pestering. My dress rode up a little around my hips and I pulled away from him for a second to adjust it, checking to see if anyone had popped their head around the corner. My hands shook a little. Hardly thinking, I grabbed Dan’s crotch firmly with both hands to stop them shaking.
‘Oof,’ he said. ‘You’ve got some grip.’
He had a good smell about him, a hint of maple syrup. I wanted to tell him he smelt like a pancake, then giggled as I imagined his confusion. Dan must have thought I was trying to take his pants off, because he unzipped. Shit, now he was waiting for a hand job. I had made a slight error of calculation. I wanted Sean to see another man hitting on me; I didn’t really want to be caught with my hand down the other man’s pants. My plan, if you could call it that, was for Sean to see me cosying up with some guy, drag me away, and then rediscover his passion for me on the couch later. Although, now that I was here, Dan was feeling pretty fine to me, warm and firm. Somehow, the next second – I swear it was automatic, a reflex – my hand was inside his underwear.
‘Ouch,’ Dan said.
‘Sorry. My heel got caught in the drain.’
‘We could go back to my place,’ he suggested.
‘Better not,’ I said, ‘I—’
The noise of a lighter catching made me turn my head. Behind us, the guy I’d ignored as a solitary smoker was tucking a silver lighter back into his pocket. Next to him, Sarah Stoll leant companionably against a table, a lit cigarette dangling from her fingertips, watching me with a triumphant smile. All of a sudden, I felt the cold.
Chapter 2
Sarah’s eyes roved from my hand, still firmly wedged in Dan’s pants, to my rumpled dress, to my mouth, which was probably smudged with pink lipstick. I removed my hand and smoothed the folds of my dress while Dan re-zipped his pants. Even through the cider haze, the stupidity of my entire plan came barrelling home to me. I had just handed Sarah an ace.
‘I was helping Dan fix his fly,’ I said.
Sarah took a puff of her cigarette. ‘Uh-huh.’
I beamed at her and then brushed past to get back inside. No point lingering. My heart hammered in my chest. It was uncomfortably crowded and I kept my head down as I weaved among people. Dan caught up with me at the bar, flushed and breathing heavily.
‘Can I have your number?’ he asked.
‘Are you serious?’ I looked at him, incredulous. ‘I just gave you half a bad hand job and you want my number? What are you gonna do, call me?’
He smiled. ‘Tomorrow morning I want to look into my phone and know that this really happened.’
I put my number in Dan’s phone and waved goodbye.
‘Half a bad hand job? Sounds like you made someone’s night.’
I turned to find the tattooed guitarist I’d tried to drag into the bathroom earlier grinning at me from the next barstool. He raised his beer glass.
‘Shut up,’ I said.
Every life has the occasional lucky instant. For some, good luck is just avoiding something bad when it happens, like missing the plane that goes down over the ocean and later insisting to the cameras that God was watching over you – too bad for the two hundred poor fuckers who caught their flight. For others, it’s an impulse that turns out to be a good decision. Staying for one last drink after you catch a glimpse of longing on the face of someone you thought was too good for you. Or reaching your boyfriend at the bar before Sarah Stoll could press her lips to his ear and tell him she saw you in the alleyway with your hands down another man’s pants.
Sarah was detained by her radar for gossip; Jen and Jono were arguing and she paused to watch, taking in their contained, jerky gestures with eagerness, lips open as if the sight of an engaged couple arguing gave her true pleasure. One hand was resting on her collarbone, the other held her glass close to her shiny orange face. Behind her, the owner of the bar eyed Jono with distaste, slowly wiping a tea towel over the counter. Jono had probably insulted him, or said something explicit to one of the pretty bartenders. But I couldn’t afford to waste time helping Jen. I had to get to Sean. I elbowed my way through the crowd to reach him.
‘Hey, Big Bum,’ Sean said, hooking a hand under my butt cheek.
‘Wanna go? Looks like the party’s gonna be over in a second.’
I woke up around eleven, the sheets in a tangle around my legs, the soft but persistent tapping of a paw on my left cheek. A grey blur passed across my vision as my cat Dot shoved a wet nose in my ear and then took off out the bedroom door, yowling. I rolled over and felt a twist of anxiety in my stomach. I had got Sean home without incident, but in the cold light of day I realised two things: either he was cheating on me with Sarah, in which case my relationship was already over, and in the worst possible way; or he wasn’t, in which case I’d been caught by Sarah making out with some stranger without cause.
Either way, I was screwed. And besides, what did I think Sean would do if he had seen me with Dan, even if we had only been flirting? Rush over and drag me away? More likely he would have shrugged and started talking to Dan about football. Sean never got jealous, because it never occurred to him that he might be inadequate. He was Gaston with a Toorak accent.
With my trackies hanging low around my hips I shuffled into the living area to find Sean flicking through television channels, a plate of bacon rinds in front of him. The designer stubble across his perfect jawline was a fraction darker than last night. He settled for a moment on the news, where a woman with frosted coral lips was reporting that more asylum seekers had died in detention this year than had been resettled in Australia, then he shrugged and bounced to a morning program hosting a battle-of-the-sexes debate on the weighty topic of ‘Does leopard print make a woman look slutty?’
‘Hey.’ He didn’t turn his head from the screen.
Fear rose in my throat. Had Sarah already told him?
‘Morning,’ I said.
‘How’re you feeling?’ He sipped his coffee and I sensed no seething fury under the question. Relief washed over me. No one had told him yet, which meant
I had time to think about how to argue my case when he inevitably found out.
‘Hungover.’
I moved to the kitchen, pulled more bacon out of the fridge and greased up a pan. Bacon fried in butter is an excellent hangover cure.
‘Yeah, you crashed out hard,’ he said.
‘Mmm, and how were Sarah’s caresses last night? Lingering? Coquettish?’
It’s a fact that infidelity does not make a person less prone to jealousy. The more unfaithful a lover is, the more they suspect their partner of the same behaviour.
Sean didn’t answer. Instead he took a sip of coffee and asked, ‘Why didn’t you do the washing-up yesterday?’
‘They’re an art installation.’ I jerked my hand at the pile of dishes in the sink. ‘It’s a narrative piece on my life. I call it The Tower of Mediocrity.’
He shot me a sarcastic look. ‘Just wash them, will you? I did them all last week.’
I poured some coffee and poked at the sizzling bacon with a spatula. Sean waited for me to respond. When I said nothing, he prodded further.
‘Think of it like exercise.’
‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘Don’t say anything more, if you value your life.’
He turned back to the television. ‘I’m just saying, it wouldn’t hurt.’
I looked for something to throw at him. Coffee? Too hot, might burn him. Bacon? Can’t waste it. Cat? Animal cruelty, plus she’d scratch me. I settled on Sean’s mobile phone, which lay on the bench, an unread text message on the screen. I pitched it with my left hand while still grasping the spatula in my right. It hit his shoulder with a satisfying thud.
‘Fark!’ he shouted. ‘Jesus, Maggie!’
Too late, my hungover brain realised whose name I’d seen on the message notification. Sarah. Sean picked up the phone, shaking his head. Then he read the text message. His face turned white, then red, and his nostrils flared.
‘Maggie.’ His voice was thick and strained as he looked up at me, stunned and yet oddly triumphant. ‘Sarah says you hooked up with some guy last night.’
The bacon popped, and I discovered I was no longer hungry.
‘What?’ My voice cracked. ‘Sorry?’
‘“Sorry”. Is that it?’ he said in disbelief. ‘So you don’t deny it?’
‘No, no, no. Wait. This is ridiculous. I was just getting some air and—’
‘While rooting some guy in an alleyway?’
‘It wasn’t a root. She’s mistaken. It was probably someone else. It wasn’t what it looked like. I was really drunk. Sarah was really drunk, I mean.’
He stood up. I put down the spatula. He thundered into the bedroom and I followed him, shaking. He began pulling my belongings out of the wardrobe. Tired student clothes – leggings and frayed T-shirts and oversized woolly jumpers – sailed onto the floor like autumn leaves.
‘Sean, wait.’
‘Get out of my house.’
‘What, so you can move Sarah in? I only made out with him because you’re obviously sleeping with her!’
‘I’m not sleeping with her,’ he said.
The smell of burning bacon wafted into the room. Sean kept throwing my possessions over his shoulder. I dodged a flying shoe.
‘You know, you’ll change your mind about this when you realise what a horrible person she is,’ I said.
He swivelled to face me. ‘I’ll change my mind when you get off your arse, cook a meal for once in your life and get a fucking job. So never.’ The smug tone in his voice was rehearsed, as if he’d been wanting to say it for months. Had he been wanting to say it for months?
He grabbed my clothes and stamped out the front door with them, throwing them onto the street with a flourish. Unpleasant rays of sunlight bounced off the neighbour’s white fence. A young hipster couple paused at the bundle of clothes before detouring around it, smirking. I covered my face with my hands while Sean disappeared into the house, returning with my favourite lamp, followed by my mother’s teapot, some books and utensils, a Depression-era chest of drawers made from fabric-covered fruit crates, and finally the cat. He dumped all of it next to my clothes, except for Dot, who clawed him in the chest when he tried to drop her on the bundle of student rags, so he shoved her at me. She lay tense and poised in my arms but for once didn’t scratch me. She must have known it was serious.
Sean went back inside and slammed the door.
‘Sean!’
The small Victorian houses lining the street stood still as sentries and a gentle breeze ruffled my cheeks. I scratched Dot behind the ears and she began purring. My meagre possessions, the only signs that I’d lived twenty-nine years in this world, were scattered over the footpath. My mother’s teapot had rolled into the gutter and broken, the fragments of green and pink china pointing sharp edges upwards. I closed my eyes.
The door behind me opened and Sean stepped out again. Maybe he’d changed his mind? I opened my mouth to say something pitiful and he threw my favourite cushion at my face. It was the one purchase I’d made since I moved in with him, and was covered in rainbow-coloured splotches like a watercolour painting. The cushion landed in the gutter, which made me angry.
‘Enjoy looking at Sarah’s orange face for the rest of your life,’ was the only insult I could come up with.
‘I hope you get swine flu,’ he said.
It was the most intelligent comeback that had ever come out of his mouth. I wished I’d thought of it.
Unbidden, the memory of a trashy magazine cover from a year or two ago rose in my mind. It was after a pop singer who shall remain nameless broke up with her boyfriend and gained half a kilo. The headline screamed ‘FAT, SAD AND ALONE’ and below it was a picture of the poor sad sack chomping into a meatball sub. I’m not unattractive, I told myself. I’m fine, given the right lighting and angles. I have shiny hair and a nice face. I’ll find someone. Maybe I’ll even find someone who likes country music and buys treats for my cat. I definitely wasn’t going to cry over Sean. My eyes were definitely only wet because the harsh morning light was pricking at them, and my hands were definitely only shaking from the hangover.
I walked across the street to my car and dropped the cat and my cushion on the passenger seat. Dot was not happy. Cats do not like to be moved, and Dot has been moved several times in her life. Each move made her more ornery. She shot into the back seat and stood on her hind legs, pawing at the window and meowing.
My car is a beautiful early 1970s sea-foam-green Holden panel van, which, after Dot, is the joy of my life. Dad left it in the garage after he jumped ship, and I claimed it immediately. It has charm and style, and starts most of the time. Today it didn’t. I put the key in the ignition and turned it. Nothing but a hacking cough from the engine.
With nothing better to do, I called my mother.
‘How could you betray that nice boy?’ There was a peal of desperation in her voice. ‘You can’t go five minutes without sex.’
‘You’re just jealous because you’ve been fifteen years without sex.’
‘Hmph.’
When I was younger, my mother wanted me to marry a great man. Now she’d settle for anyone with a job and no inclination to violence. When I showed up with Sean a year and a half ago she was ecstatic. His looks would have been enough, but when he opened his mouth and the accent of a Scotch College boy rolled out, she nearly keeled over with joy.
‘I was trying to make him jealous. I didn’t mean to cheat on him.’
‘Old habits die hard, eh?’
I scratched my legs. ‘Can you please just pick me up? The car won’t start.’
‘I’ll be there soon.’
She hung up.
I rested my head on the steering wheel. When I looked up, I saw a man in a stained tracksuit pawing through my possessions, most of which were still on the footpath outside Sean’s house. His long, grey beard nearly reached the top of the rusted shopping trolley he was pushing.
I opened the car door as he picked up the lamp.
‘
Um,’ I said. ‘That’s mine.’
‘It’s on the footpath.’ He put the lamp in his shopping trolley. ‘Public property.’
‘No it isn’t.’
I jumped to my feet, strode over and snatched the lamp out of his trolley, then immediately felt mean. The little pile of junk on the footpath wasn’t much, but it was more than he had.
‘Fine, take the lamp.’ I shoved it at him.
He took it without looking at me, too intent on bending over to inspect the Depression-era chest of drawers. He drew a finger through the dust on the top.
‘You can’t have that,’ I said. ‘It cost me fifty bucks.’
He sniffed, unimpressed. ‘Fifty bucks? Looks like it’s covered in dish rags.’
He put the lamp back in the trolley and tootled off, wheels squeaking and jerking over pebbles on the footpath. A sudden foreboding washed over me. I pictured myself pushing my own shopping trolley down the streets of Collingwood, picking up hard rubbish to pawn for booze money.
Never, I thought. My mother will always take me in. Family’s family.
I carted the rest of the gear into the back of the panel van and sat in the driver’s seat to wait for Mum. She took her sweet time, giving me plenty of opportunity to mourn the beautiful little house I was about to leave. Sean lived in a single-fronted Victorian cottage with original lacework, a bronze hanging bell for a doorbell and tessellated tiles on the verandah. It radiated cute. The pot plant out the front needed watering and I considered giving it a drink from my water bottle but decided against it. Sean would have to water it now. He’d lift the watering can with his perfect muscled arms, then maybe tip it up to splash some cool water over his pecs, glistening in the sun . . . goddammit, there’s nothing worse than being horny and dumped.
When Mum pulled up beside my panel van in her thousand-year-old Ford, she was shaking her head before she even applied the handbrake. The windows were down. She looked over at Sean’s house with a sigh. Then she whipped her head back to me, eyes narrowed.