Zigzag Street

by Nick Earls

Have you got the paper open in front of you?

  No. Yes. Well, not exactly in front of me, but I can see it from here. So I could see there was an eight forty-five session. I think it says eight forty-five. Let me just get closer and check.

  Respectable pause. Sounds of movement.

  Yeah, eight forty-five. I must have just left it open at that page, reading the reviews or something.

  Yeah. Lucky.

  Yeah. So, maybe we could meet for coffee before-hand. Maybe at the New Farm Deli.

  Sure.

  What? About eight o’clock?

  Yeah. Good. Okay, well, I’ll see you there.

  So she leaves me to get back to my not renovating. And trying to convince myself that that was all fine, that she knows me to be a sophisticated man who happened to have a newspaper near him when he needed it. And I trust she has an appreciation for the elegance, the slowness of it all.

  53

  By eight-ten I have spent fifteen minutes pacing alone outside the New Farm Deli.

  In the world of signs, this is not good.

  Rachel Vilikovski is nowhere to be seen.

  I go into the deli, I buy a coffee. Around me people sit in groups from two to ten in size, and I am the only group of one. And there is no way I look cool. No way I look like the sort of person who can sit in a coffee shop alone, reading a Veny Armanno book and attracting the attention of sixteen-year-old babes. Not tonight. Tonight I am sure it is visible that I am only half a night out.

  At the counter the man says, Is there a Richard Derrington here?

  This is bad. I knew it was bad. It’s bad. I go to the counter.

  Rachel called, he says. She said to tell you she’s running a bit late and she’ll meet you at the movie.

  I sit and try to finish my coffee. Who can finish coffee at a time like this? I can just imagine it. Eight-thirty. Eight-forty. Eight forty-five. Standing outside Bullets over Broadway. Eight-fifty. Nine. Going home. Remembering it far from fondly, even though I never saw it. There is a precedent for this. Educating Rita, years ago. I arranged to meet a girl at Educating Rita and she didn’t turn up. I was such a loser I hung around for two hours in case we’d arranged to meet at the next session. Months later I bumped into her, when she was mid-relationship with someone else, and she got really shitty with me for standing her up. Of course, when we talked it became apparent that she thought it was Educating Rita at the Forum, and I thought it was Educating Rita at the Wintergarden. So we’d been round the corner from each other. I’d been a block away from her. A block away from who knows what? The moment had passed.

  So I wait at the Village Twin. Eight twenty-five. Outside the Village Twin trying not to look up and down Brunswick Street. Trying to gaze nonchalantly at the fluoro lights of the medical centre across the road. Eight-thirty. Telling myself not to look at my watch. Ten minutes pass. Eight thirty-two.

  Richard Derrington, she says behind me. I turn around. You were away somewhere then.

  Yeah. I’m back now. Hi.

  Hi.

  She gives me a smile, more than just a quarter now, but not explanation.

  We go into the movie, and it’s been years since I’ve been on a movie date. In fact, last time I went on a movie date, it was probably just organised as a parent-free pash venue and the movie was irrelevant. I assume that would be inappropriate now. I assume that as I am now a very sophisticated man, with a previously well-described multifaceted approach to my liaison with Rachel Vilikovski, that I should not attempt to jump her bones in Bullets over Broadway. I imagine she has some expectation that she will be watching the film. The cock will not crow, I tell myself, the cock will not crow.

  This is fine. No-one jumps anyone. Totally like grownups, we watch the movie, despite my unseemly urges to go the pash at several points. And the only thing that isn’t completely fine is my rumbling bowel gas and my urge to fart. That would not be good, I tell myself. There will be better times to fart than this.

  In the street afterwards she says, Hey, we didn’t have the coffee. I don’t point out to her that one of us managed without any problem at all. We should have coffee.

  Sure.

  So, it’s about eleven now. Where can we get coffee?

  I don’t know.

  Okay. What about your place? It’s not far from here.

  Yeah. Good idea.

  And I don’t point out that this is looking like a Moccona ad backwards.

  Well, let’s go then.

  Where’s your car?

  Kathy dropped me off. She’s going to pick me up later.

  Where?

  Wherever. By midnight I told her. When all glass slippers turn back to old shoes again. Besides, it’s a school day tomorrow, remember? We can’t be up late, can we? I told her I’d call her, wherever I was at midnight.

  So we go in my car. We go back to my house in my car. Rachel Vilikovski and me. And there are several possibilities here. I could be misunderstanding things, even now. Still a possibility. Or maybe I’m not having any say in the running of this show at all. Maybe Rachel Vilikovski has no respect for elegant slowness. And maybe I’ve been saving up my supply of erections for the past six months or more, just so I can use them all this week. Suddenly, from the libido of a dead man, to this. I expect I shall break out in acne any day, and start going to school dances, or at least dreaming of richly-patterned propagating waves.

  We arrive at 34 Zigzag Street.

  There’s a message on the answering machine. I press the button. Jeff’s voice says, So have you flayed that poor woman to death with Bob yet?

  Fucking wrong numbers, I say, and push the rewind button. Why do they leave messages? They must work out it’s a wrong number.

  Who’s Bob?

  Who knows?

  So I actually get away with it. The Krapmeister fights back. I feel good. I feel good about tonight. I have all the explanations I need for any eventuality and I have the glorious Rachel Vilikovski in my house.

  I show her round and she says, So exactly which bits are you renovating?

  I started on the verandah. I haven’t really done much inside yet.

  I have friends who renovated. It took them ages and to stay sane they always kept one room for indoor soccer.

  So that’s where I went wrong.

  She sees the piano. Do you play?

  Well, I had lessons. Years ago.

  Play this, she says, pulling the sheet music for ‘Always on my Mind’ from the top of the piano.

  ‘Always on my Mind’?

  Sure.

  I’ve never played it before.

  So why was it on top? Now you have to play it and sing.

  Really?

  Really.

  So I think, why not? And I do ‘Always on my Mind’ for her, straight to start with, and then I get carried away and say, Okay, now as Elvis. And then I do Willie Nelson. And before I explain that I don’t have the gear to do the Pet Shop Boys she says, Do you ever get very bored here?

  I hear Greg at the door and I let him in, thinking, why didn’t you come earlier? Why didn’t you turn up before Elvis? Or at least before Willie?

  Great cat, she says. He’s sort of quaintly dishevelled.

  Really? He’s the together one of the two of us.

  And Greg goes and fetches Purvis, Purvis the fucking Sock Friend, as though Rachel might be interested.

  Oh, how sweet, she says, stroking Greg and looking Purvis in the eye. He’s got a little friend. And what’s his friend’s name?

  Why does his friend have to have a name?

  Come on, what’s his name? He’s got a face. I bet he’s got a name.

  Purvis. Purvis the Sock Friend.

  Purvis the Sock Friend? she says, and she’s smiling. Do you have any human contact at all? And she’s looking at Purvis, straight into his crazy dazed face. This is your own little world here, isn’t it?

  I told you I shouldn’t live alone.

  So all of a sudden the lid is lifted off this crap un
iverse, this peculiar little world where I make up different versions of the one uninspiring song and turn socks into cat toys. We shouldn’t have come back here. I should have stuck to the plan. I had no idea this house was filled with so many traps.

  So why is she still behaving as though she likes me? Still standing close to me with her fatal grey eyes and her new glasses and her yellowing bruises.

  We go out onto the verandah and sit on the old sofa with coffee and a packet of Tim Tams, and even with the lounge room lights shining out through the windows it’s still quite dark. My biological urges are stirring again and I think I might be going to make a move. I tell myself to be calm. Timing is all. Be elegant and slow.

  This is a great place, she says. It’s got a really nice feel about it.

  Yeah. Yeah, it has. I thought maybe I was the only person who thought that, since it was my grandparents’ house.

  No. It’s a great place. It’s very friendly. Some houses are cold and unwelcoming and just don’t seem like places people could live in, but this has a really good feel.

  Did you know that in Bolivia, when they build a new house they burn a desiccated llama foetus and bury it under one corner? Just to give the place the right feel.

  I’m regretting this round about the point where I say Bolivia, but once you’ve said Bolivia there’s really no turning back. I’m clearly not as calm as I’d hoped.

  Llama foetuses. Where did you get that from?

  I must have read it somewhere. In-flight mag maybe.

  She laughs. You are a very strange boy.

  Is that a problem? Not that I accept that I’m strange, but just supposing you’re right, is it a problem?

  No. No, I don’t think it’s a problem at all.

  Good. And I think you’ve seen all the strange things anyway. I think after this I become really normal. Sophisticated in fact. That could be the word.

  Don’t hurry. Normal is terribly overrated. And I’m not at all sure how I feel about sophisticated.

  I lean forward to pick up a Tim Tam, and I take the opportunity to sneak slightly closer towards her. I lean forward again, take a sip of coffee, sneak a little more. And I’m about to make my move when a silent but very nasty fart catches me unawares and dumps itself into the sofa. So I have to stay still. One move and the fart gets out.

  She laughs, or at least seems to struggle not to, and turns it into a cough.

  I think there’s a problem. I decide to go for a pre-emptive strike.

  Do you smell something? I say, as though I haven’t just farted very nastily. I think it must be the sofa. It’s pretty old and I think a dog used to sleep on it. I think it needs cleaning. It does have a few unexpected smells.

  Yeah, and at first, I must admit, you aren’t thinking dog.

  And just when I’m telling her I remember the dog well, and I’m about to invent a name, I really let one go. A definitive, heroic, exuberant, far-from-silent fart. A fart that suggests I have sat on a bugler in the instant he blows charge. Right now it feels like the last post. This fart has such momentum I’m sure it briefly separates me from the cushion. This fart could not be kept secret in a war zone, let alone the attractive quiet of a dimly lit verandah.

  So you didn’t fart, she says, laughing with a quite unnecessary loudness, but I think that dog chased a duck into your sofa. She laughs so much she nearly falls off. She starts calling the duck out of the cushion. Here ducky ducky ducky. Here ducky ducky.

  With the panic-mediated increase in muscle tone, I fart again.

  She squawks with laughter. Why do her ridiculous noises come out of her more respectable top end? I think tears are running down her cheeks now. I can’t believe it. I get this girl back here and I’m about to make a move and I blow out enough methane to light the city.

  And just when you were about to make a move too, she says.

  What do you mean?

  You were just about to make a move. That’s the tragedy of it. Here we were sitting on the sofa on the dimly lit verandah and you were sneaking towards me and at the critical moment this is what happens. It’s tragic timing.

  No, it’s not true.

  You still say you didn’t fart?

  No. I might not have been making a move. Maybe.

  Don’t lie to me Richard Derrington. Trying to make a move with a few Tim Tams, an old sofa and a hundred litres of bowel gas. That might be what you sophisticated men try on a girl, but don’t think I can’t see through it. And do you know what the worst thing is?

  What? I thought the fart was the worst thing. Well the farts, the three of them. There was no dog.

  Really? No, the worst thing is, it’s midnight, and I’ve finished my coffee and I have to go home. Remember? And now you’re going to think it’s all because of the fart, which it isn’t.

  What?

  I have to go. Really. Look, it was a big finish. I don’t think we can top it. Not tonight anyway.

  Can I take you home?

  Kathy said to call. She said I had to call and she’d get me, wherever I was. She’s, well, she’s just being a friend, you know. You know what they’re like, full of advice, full of help. Well, I’d better call her. This sounds bad, doesn’t it. Well, there’s more to it. It’s no big deal. We just had a few hassles early this evening, well, she did, and I said I’d call her by midnight. She doesn’t like being home alone, that’s not the hassle, but it’s an issue too. She can’t sleep when she’s home alone, and Mel’s away doing some quality assurance thing in the south-west region. So I’d better call.

  I take her to the phone and while she’s making the call I rinse the coffee cups, and I’m sure I have never felt a bigger loser in my whole life than I do at this moment. I can hear her talking to Kathy and saying, No, no, it’s been great, really, and laughing and saying, Nothing, nothing. I’ll tell you later.

  She comes into the kitchen and says, She’ll be here in ten minutes, and then she starts laughing again. Stop looking like someone died. Leave the cups till later and sort out that look on your face.

  And the car’s there soon enough, driving slowly down Zigzag Street and pulling up outside.

  Better go, she says. It’s been a lovely evening. And then she bursts out laughing again. Sorry.

  Kathy honks the horn.

  We have another pause when no-one moves, then Rachel leans forward, kisses me quickly on the mouth, smiles. Says, I’ll call you. And she’s gone.

  54

  So, I’m telling Jeff, the only time I ever take your fucking advice and I end up bathing some babe in toxic waste.

  He drinks a mouthful of coffee.

  I must admit I didn’t think it was the most dangerous piece of advice I’d ever given you. Eat more beans. Who would have thought that eat more beans could be the thing that would bring you down. From Krapmeister to Fartmeister.

  I can’t believe it. I really like this girl and this is what I do. What a debacle. She doesn’t turn up for coffee. We go back to my place, and I haven’t hidden any of the things I’d like to, I get tense and make a fucked remark about desiccated llama since it actually seems appropriate, right up to the word Bolivia, but once you’ve said Bolivia you’re history and you’re committed to the desiccated llama remark, however completely obviously fucked it is. Then I fart all over her.

  Hey, she farts too. This’ll be fine. She’s not such a babe she doesn’t fart.

  I bet she doesn’t fart. She’s such a babe I bet she has no waste products at all. Anyway, what’s all this reassurance? What about that girl you vomited on in grade twelve? You didn’t go out any more.

  That was grade twelve.

  Yeah, but …

  Context. Context is everything. That was an example of something completely different, whatever it was an example of. You’re making this unnecessarily complicated. Anyway, she should never have gone out with me in the first place. I was a real dork in grade twelve.

  So what do I do? I don’t know if I’m crazy about her, or just fucking crazy.<
br />
  They’re not mutually exclusive states.

  Why am I like this? Why am I flatulent and bewildered? Why is this not easy?

  What’s ever easy for you? What ever comes without the pain of deliberation? Look, it’s a timing thing. Rachel Vilikovski happens to have come along at a time when you’re going through a crazy patch. It’s a shit, but that’s when she came along. It would have been great if the two of you had been able to get down to diaries about it. If you’d been able to say, well, maybe late April I’ll have my head together, and pencilled her in. But it’s not like that. A couple of months early, you throw a shoe in her face, and it’s hard to turn back from there. But everyone’s life is like that. You’ve got to stop thinking this is unique.

  The shoe isn’t unique?

  The shoe is very uncommon. The timing is typical. Years ago I had a friend who got trashed, pretty badly trashed. And I wasn’t having a great run either. Have I told you this one? Hungry Jacks at Taringa?

  I don’t think so.

  Okay, I remember driving out of Hungry Jack’s at Taringa one night with this guy. We were each feeling pretty bad and we’d just got ourselves Bacon Double Cheeseburgers. And as we drove out, back onto Moggill Road, he said to me, Mate I think we’re going to be doing this for a long time. And he didn’t say it like a good thing or a bad thing, just a thing. Within a week of that he’d met a girl. And we all thought, fine, he’s trashed, this is a rebound. Three months later they were engaged. In less than a year they were married. And Hungry Jack’s at Taringa, the thing the two bachelor boys were going to be doing for a long time, we never did it again. Never again was it just the two of us. And the night they announced their engagement we drank a lot and I fell asleep on the sofa and he woke me at about three am and he said, I just wanted to say thanks for not calling me a fucking hypocrite. And I would’ve, if he hadn’t seemed so cheery about everything. I thought it was crap. I thought it was all bullshit. Not the two of them getting engaged, but the idea that these sort of things can happen so quickly. And then, a few years later, I met Sal. I was involved with someone at the time. A very reasonable person, and it was all fine. I got to know Sal as just another friend, and then something clicked in my head so loud I almost heard it. So I trashed Louisa, just like that. My head was filled with Sal, and nothing had happened between us. She was all I could think about. And at Louisa’s brother’s engagement party, I trashed her, I trashed Louisa, and I left. I trashed her in the kitchen, and everyone thought it was the onions when they came in and saw her crying. And I told her it wasn’t her, but she wouldn’t believe it. She kept calling me saying, What have I done? What have I done? Even weeks later. And it took about three weeks for Sal and me to realise this was it. Three weeks. We suddenly worked it out, that we would be together, that we didn’t want it to end. Of course, we couldn’t tell anyone. People think you’re crazy if you tell them that at three weeks. And Louisa was still calling me, still saying, What have I done? Still wanting to sort it out. And it seemed as though she was talking about some other life, not about the month before.