RAW BLUE

by Kirsty Eagar

  Things quieten down at around eight-thirty. Marty comes out and stands behind me while I’m slicing the baked biscotti, pressing the whole of his body up against mine.

  I twist around. ‘What do you want, Marty?’

  ‘You, Carly … Nah, biscotti.’

  He takes the end slice, pushing it in his mouth so his cheeks balloon, then grins at me. ‘Nah, can you make me some scrambled eggs?’

  ‘Does Emilio know?’

  Emilio’s got this thing about staff paying a token amount towards the food they eat. Probably to help cover the cost of the food they steal.

  ‘Come on, Carls.’

  ‘Emilio.’

  ‘It’ll be cool, Carly, Carly, Carly.’

  He leans in and blows against the side of my neck and a wave of goose bumps wash over me. I clear my throat to say something light – what? – but he’s walking off towards the office. In his aftermath, I feel like I do when I paddle out and I haven’t caught a wave yet. Like I’m out of my body.

  We keep a jug of beaten eggs and cream in the fridge. I pull it out and heat a pan on one of the hobs, spraying it with oil. Using a ladle, I portion out a double serve of eggs. When I ding the bell, Marty’s out front making himself toast in the grill. He carries it out the back in his hands and plops it down on the plate with his eggs, along with five sachets of butter.

  ‘Thanks, darlin’.’

  As he walks out to one of the tables at the side of the café, I can hear Emilio saying, ‘Did you pay for that, Marty?’

  When Kylie brings in her next load, I stop her on her way back to the front. ‘Hey, do you want me to make you some dinner?’

  Her eyes lose focus. She’s doing that more and more and it worries me. Brains need fuel to work, too, don’t they?

  ‘Like ah … Greek salad or something?’ I say, trying to reach her. ‘Or how about a Caesar salad?’ I’m thinking if I use the magic word ‘salad’ she might say yes. As far as I can tell she’s surviving on four skim milk lattes and fifteen Marlborough Lights a day.

  Kylie blinks and comes to. ‘I ate in my break.’

  Kylie’s always just eaten. And she does eat, she just eats ‘healthily’ – Georgina repeated this to me like a truism the other day. Emilio’s eyes skip over Kylie when he asks her if she’ll work a double shift. Marty doesn’t leer at her. Nobody says anything. It does my head in. Can’t they see she’s committing suicide?

  Me, I know she’s killing herself. And I also know that me making her a salad isn’t going to stop it. That’s because a while ago I recognised something in Kylie. It’s the need to be alone. Kylie is alone all the time. She doesn’t want to know how you are or what you did yesterday because she’s completely preoccupied with calories consumed and calories denied.

  I recognise this in Kylie because I can relate to it. I’m not interested in saving her or anybody else. I’m only interested in a beautiful saltwater skin; in the next time I’ll be thrumming across it. I have to surf every day, sometimes until I’m so physically tired I can feel muscles ripping in my upper back. That way I’m too tired to think or remember, too tired to hate myself, too tired to be angry. Because when I’m angry there’s no telling what I’ll do, especially if I’m driving a car.

  But that night, driving home, I don’t want to crash. Instead I’ve got the radio up loud and the front two windows wound down so that air rushes through the car. I’m thinking about Marty, what it would be like to have his hands on me.

  Surfing’s the only sex I get. Board fins come in small, medium and large. They’re stiff and give you rides that are smooth and fast. Wax sounds like pornography: Sex Wax, Quick Humps, Mrs Palmer’s, The Five Daughters. Surfer chicks like a stick between their legs. Gettin’ a few? Getting any?

  6

  Six purple fish

  I wake with their voices in my head. You want a crack? Aw yeah, good one, mate, leave me the sloppy seconds. Are you up for it or what? Yeah, righty-oh then – nah, not with you watchin’ me. Go on then, get into it. Their stupid, slow Australian-male voices.

  I can’t make their voices stop.

  My disgrace, oh God, I want peace from it. This is why people kill themselves, they can’t get away from the things they carry in their heads. Shame isn’t a quiet grey cloud, shame is a drowning man who claws his way on top of you, scratching and tearing your skin, pushing you under the surface.

  I curl up into a ball. On the ceiling of my bedroom there’s a square of moonlight and in it the shadow of the palm tree outside my window. The wind is making it move so that it bows and lifts itself over and over, looking like a restless hand with too many fingers. It’s hideous.

  I wish I could bury this, but there are reminders everywhere. Stories in the media: a football team and a woman; drink spiking; packs of males picking up girls at train stations. All different, but the same. Men doing it, women taking it. Same as it ever was.

  This is how it is for me: every time I meet a new guy, I listen hard to his voice, wondering if it’ll be one of the voices I carry in my head. I don’t roam much on the internet because I’m terrified one of them might have had a mobile phone and taken photos of me as it was happening. I’ve let my hair grow long since it happened so I look different, so even if I turn up somewhere in cyberspace no one will ever match that girl to me.

  Rape is the perfect crime because the victim is the guilty one. I did not fight back; I did not say ‘no’; I did not make a sound.

  My top sheet is twisted around one of my legs like a tentacle and I kick it off in a panic, fighting my way out of bed. Then I stand there, breathing hard, not sure what to do, just sure that I have to do something, because this is unbearable. There’s crap all over the floor and I stare at the shadows of it, wondering how these things came to be strewn around my bedroom.

  I pat around for my shorts and pull them on. Resolved now, I switch on the light and gather up my doona and a pillow. I find my keys on the kitchen bench and lock the glass sliding door to the deck behind me.

  After I’ve knocked on Hannah’s door, I wait. I knock another three times, getting louder and louder, and I’m just about to give up and go back downstairs when I hear footsteps on the other side of the door.

  ‘Hannah, it’s me. Carly.’

  The outside light comes on. I hear the sounds of her unlocking the door then it swings open and she’s standing there, her white T-shirt billowing in a gust of wind, hair all sleep-mussed, face creased.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Hannah, for waking you up, but I … This is a bit weird, but can I sleep on your couch tonight? I just feel really horrible.’

  She squints at me, sees that I’m about to cry. ‘But why … You are … Yes, yes. Come in.’

  When dawn comes, the ocean looks bruised. I can see part of it framed by trees through Hannah’s lounge room windows. Being higher up she’s got a better view than me. The sky is a feverish yellow and completely clear except for six small purple clouds just above the horizon. They look like fish. When I see them I say ‘Oh’ out loud. They’ve surprised it out of me. After the night, six purple fish seem like a promise that there will be something better soon. It’s fragile, but there all the same.

  I go to sleep.

  The noise of an alarm. I fight it, not wanting to surface, feeling sick with tiredness. I remember that I’m at Hannah’s and it’s her alarm and I don’t have to worry about it. It keeps blaring. I bury my head under my pillow, rubbing my cheek against the hard seat of Hannah’s blue couch.

  Hannah rolls out of bed with a thump and thuds across her room. The alarm is cut off. Then comes the quick thump-thump of her feet rushing back to bed. I feel bad for waking her at two in the morning.

  I’m just starting to dissolve again when another alarm goes off. This one has a different noise. It’s shorter, more urgent, high-pitched. Bip-bip-bip … bip-bip-bip … I groan, confused. There’s a smattering of footsteps, but this time in a different pattern. From the echoing noise, I guess the alarm was in the bathroom.
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br />   Silence. I’m paralysed. Sticky with sleep.

  Another alarm goes off. This one is close, jarringly insistent. I pray Hannah will come and make it stop because it’s doing my head in. Hannah thuds into the room. Her thudding is unbearable too. I peek out from under my pillow and see the flash of her white T-shirt. She goes to the bookcase and reaches for something high. And then there’s silence again so sudden and sweet. Like a leaf see-sawing to the ground, I slip back into …

  Aaargh. Another alarm, an old-fashioned bell-ringer. Hannah’s out of bed, rushing through the lounge room past me and heading into the kitchen. I hear the scrape of her moving a chair and I sit up to look at what she’s doing. She’s standing on the chair, reaching up on top of a cupboard, bringing the alarm down and turning it off.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Hannah. How many alarms do you have?’ I ask, my voice thick.

  Hannah looks at me weirdly as though she doesn’t know who I am and she doesn’t care either. She’s not wearing her glasses. ‘Five.’

  The fifth alarm goes off. This one in her bedroom somewhere. She flashes past me, running from the kitchen to her room, then dropping to her knees and crawling in underneath her bed. The alarm stops and she re-emerges with a small travel clock in her right hand.

  She comes into the lounge room and sits beside me on the couch, yawning and smelling sleep-musty.

  I rub my face. ‘Why do you have five alarms?’

  ‘Well, otherwise I turn them off and go back to sleep without even knowing what I am doing.’

  I clear my throat. ‘I’m sorry I woke you up last night. I was lying in bed and I was sure I heard a noise, so I –’

  Hannah waves her hand dismissively. ‘It does not matter.’

  I like that. It’s very European of her.

  ‘Cookie, could I ask you to do a favour for me this morning?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I washed my sheets last night. Could I ask you to hang them out for me? Could you do that for me, please?’

  ‘Okay.’

  She holds up her hand, looking stern. ‘But I will have to ask something of you.’

  I stiffen. ‘Okay.’

  ‘It will require you to curb your messy ways. I would like you to hang them out with at least, at least, four clothing pegs fixed to the top of each one. That way they can’t come off and fall on the ground in the dirt and so forth. And with this wind they should dry quickly, so could you take them off for me and fold them up neatly? I will i-ron them later.’

  I can’t believe she i-rons her sheets. Actually, I can believe it. This is the woman who told me she likes her own name because it’s symmetrical. What I can’t believe is that she needs five alarms. Or even one. Can’t she just set her head with a time to get up?

  I think of her hotpants and the men she brings home with her from the salsa club. She’s the weirdest mix of chaos and control.

  ‘Okay,’ I say again.

  She smiles. ‘Good. Now, I’ll make us some tea.’

  Even though Hannah’s place has got a better view of the ocean than mine, I wouldn’t want to swap with her. Her front door is at street level while my place is tucked away. My deck is cool too, in amongst the trees like a tree house – the house is built on such a steep slope that I’m still relatively high up. The washing line is under the house. Going down there is like going mountaineering. Hannah’s got me paranoid about her bloody sheets so I hang them perfectly. When they’re dry – which she believes will be at approximately ten fifteen – I’ll take them down and fold them.

  I get changed into my bikini and head up to my car, which I keep parked on the pavement. The carport is for Hannah’s silver Holden Barina – she pays more rent than me. It’s just past eight o’clock and traffic is streaming up and down Powderworks Road – people on their way to work and mums taking kids to school – and I’m standing there in my bikini top and shorts, loading my surfboard into the back of my car. It makes me feel free and anxious at the same time. I mean, right now I can surf every day; I’ve set my life up to get what I’ve always wanted, to live the big surf dream. But how sustainable is this? I can keep it up if I’m not worried about doing anything more than paying the bills; if I’m not worried about the future and all that. Am I worried about the future? I don’t know. When I think of the word it’s like seeing a cavity, a space where a tooth used to be.

  7

  a Wafer moon.

  COASTALWATCH

  Swell size 0.5–1 metre – Swell direction ESE

  Northeast seabreezes forecast for later so go early if you’re keen. Water surface conditions are bumpy and there are some mixed-up 2–3ft sets around but nothing special …

  I park in the top car park, and with some sort of weird instinct I know the guy from the other day, the one from the lookout spot, will be there even before I see the battered blue Commodore station wagon in amongst the cars near the lifesavers’ building. I don’t even bother checking the surf. I need to be in it, it doesn’t matter if it’s good or not.

  I watch him out there as I warm up near the water’s edge, circling my arms slowly, my back and shoulders protesting like old machinery. Everything feels so tight that at first I don’t think I’m going to be able to paddle. He surfs old school, with big muscular turns and cutbacks. It’s coming up to full tide though, and when he takes a right he only gets a short stretch of wall before the wave fattens and dies away. He turns off, still standing as his board sinks slowly under the water, and I think, but maybe I’m imagining it, that he’s staring in my direction, taking a good look.

  The day’s fresh now, but it’s going to be stinking hot and blowy later. The sun’s got a bite to it already. I’m wearing an old singlet top as a quasi rash vest and my boardies. If there was nobody out I’d just wear a bikini – the less you wear when you’re surfing the better it feels, provided the water’s warm enough – but that’d be like giving a free show to the guys out there. They perve all the time.

  I paddle out and sit on the inside. He’s sitting in the middle, planted on his board, chest-deep in the water, as still as a statue. I try to put him out of my head but I’m aware of everything he does. He’s wearing an old black T-shirt and black-and-white boardies. No leg rope.

  Even the bunch of crows in the arrowhead can barely be heard, muttering amongst themselves quietly when normally they’d be squawking, laughing, shouting. It feels like the world is waiting for something. The ocean seems restless; the waves are fat and crumbly but there’s a lot of water moving around, surging, sucking, shifting sideways. There’s a strong sweep running down the beach and I start paddling against it. When I look at the dunes to check my position I see the moon’s still out, hanging low in the west, looking transparent. Six purple fish and a wafer moon. Something’s changing.

  I’ve got an airy feeling in my stomach this morning. Most of it goes away when I get up on my first wave of the day, which turns out to be a choppy surge rather than a wave and dies out on me in the first few metres.

  I belly flop in the water and paddle back to where I started. He’s looking over at me and for a moment I stare straight back at him. You can do that to people in the surf, not when you’re right next to them or anything, but from opposite sides of the line-up.

  Not far from me there’s an old guy resting on his elbows on an old wooden malibu. He’s out most days. He’s too old to be one of the crows – really old, maybe eighty. I’m sure he’s going to kill somebody one of these days because he can’t control his mal. He wears a crash helmet. When he catches waves he rides the fall on his belly then gets to his feet.

  He looks over at me and raises his bushy eyebrows.

  ‘How are you going?’ I ask.

  ‘Well, I’m still alive, aren’t I?’

  That knocks a laugh out of me. In spite of everything.

  I let myself drift down in front of the lifesavers’ building and paddle in closer to shore. The waves aren’t any better there, too full and fat, but of course, like an idiot, I catc
h one that re-forms and sucks up on the shore break and I get worked. I pull my board out of the suck and stand there with my hand on its deck, waiting for the next lot to pass, pushing it over lines of whitewash like a speedboat.

  I don’t see him on the wave coming towards me until it’s too late to get out of his way. For a moment I freeze, wondering if he’s going to hit me, but he kicks out at the last minute. The wave sucks up on top of me and I dive under the surface, digging my hands into the sandbank, letting my board trail behind me. When it’s passed, I start paddling out, duck diving through another line of foam. He’s in front of me, using slow, efficient strokes. If I’m not careful I’ll catch up to him, so I go slower, my throat tight.

  He glances back around at me and stops, his board drifting. I give him a nod but keep paddling.

  ‘Gettin’ a few?’ he asks.

  ‘Yeah, it’s a bit fat though, isn’t it?’

  ‘You normally surf here?’

  I almost stop paddling, taken aback by the question. Is he going to call me a blow-in or something?

  ‘Haven’t seen you here before.’ His pale grey eyes give absolutely no information about what he’s thinking.

  ‘I haven’t lived here long.’

  ‘Right.’ He draws the word out and starts paddling, keeping pace with me but staring out at the horizon like he’s no longer interested.

  I slow down so he can draw in front of me, thinking that’s all, feeling bruised. He’s still beside me. Why doesn’t he get a move on? So I start stroking hard, flustered, wanting to get away from him.

  ‘Where’d you move from?’

  The fact that he doesn’t bother looking at me while he’s speaking is annoying.

  ‘The Central Coast.’

  ‘Yeah? Whereabouts?’

  ‘Forresters.’

  ‘Forries girl, eh? Like it here?’

  ‘Yeah, I do. It’s a beautiful break.’

  ‘Yep. It’s nice all right.’