by Nick Earls
Movement out of the window and down in the garden catches my eye. It’s Frank. He’s here. And he’s with Sophie. He’s chasing her off the patio, across the lawn and around to the sculpture garden. And he’s holding my borrowed video camera up to his head as he runs.
I don’t know what it is I’m seeing, but it looks like life passing me by again. They’re too far away for sound, so it hardly even seems real. It’s a silent movie of life passing me by, but it’s real enough. I get to have a stupid conversation with her in the kitchen about bags and tissue boxes and toilets, Frank gets to chase her round the garden. And, since before he squeezed his first zit, Frank would have been chasing girls around gardens for one reason only.
Step away from the window, I tell myself. This is all getting much more depressing than it’s supposed to be. It’s yet another reminder I don’t need that Frank’s form is nauseatingly better than mine and his unpartnered intervals much shorter. It’s easier, I guess, if you’re prepared to go out serially with members of the same family, and not fussed about generational issues.
But nothing, no signal from Sophie in the kitchen, said ‘chase me’ as she slouched against the counter taking mouthfuls of rum and Diet Coke and getting our conversation over with.
I want Clinton to come along now and break this up. A Frank and Sophie combination would make work hard to bear. Frank gives me details. Zel excepted, he always keeps me up to date with his liaisons, and here’s one I really don’t want to know about.
I step away from the window, go back into the bedroom and stand there for a while feeling stupid. I’m tired and I’ve stopped caring about what people think, so I lie down on the bed. If anyone else wants to have sex at this party, they can do it in a fern enclave or wait till later. This room is for depressed single people who are no good at darts and should be home studying.
And I wish the ceiling didn’t reflect that quite so honestly. There I am in the mirror on this big purple heart, my head in the left atrium, my body in the left ventricle, looking very unbullworked and very over this. In the sculpture garden, Frank kicks sand in my face and Charles Atlas tells him he won’t stand in his way.
They can do whatever they want, of course. Of course they can. Frank will, given the chance, because that’s what he does. He even told me he might do this, and Frank would call that considerate. ‘What more do you want?’ he’d say, and maybe he’d be right. But he doesn’t understand. There are some things you don’t admit to, even when provoked. People should sense them if they know you, and they should act accordingly. And they shouldn’t make a move on Sophie and chase her round the garden. But that’s never been Frank—sensing things—and I can’t complain if it isn’t Frank now.
With Sophie it’s not the same. I deserved better. We were friends and then it all changed. She thought I was having an affair with her mother and she kept it to herself for weeks, turned cool and less friendly. And I behaved like an idiot for her and did every single thing Frank thought I might, because it was fun to do it but also because there was a chance she might have noticed.
And how does it work out? Frank has the affair with her mother, I don’t tell her and he gets to chase her round the garden. How could she think that about me, and how could she think it for weeks and let it spoil things? I’m angry again. And that stupid conversation in the kitchen. She’s shut me out. She’s a bag handler and a giver of directions and we share a chicken suit and, after these past few months, that’s what it’s down to. All it’s down to. And I’m angry because I let her get to know me, a lot of me, out the back of World of Chickens. I’m angry with me for doing that too, for putting quite a lot on the line without ever taking one actual risk.
‘Phil,’ she says. She’s at the door. Standing in the doorway, her drink in her hand.
‘What?’ It’s not friendly, the way it comes out. But that’s fine. It’s not supposed to be.
‘What do you mean, “what”?’
‘I’m having a break from the party. Remember?’
‘I just wanted to talk to you. To talk to you about something.’
‘Some other time, maybe. After the exams. That’d be better. If the timing of things in my life is any issue to anybody.’
As if I want to hear about her and Frank now. As if I’m some loser who needs to have it broken to him that there’s something going on. I should tell her I’d be happy just to watch the video highlights later. Next weekend, maybe. They can both come over. There’ll be pizza. How about that?
‘You should leave me alone,’ I tell her instead. ‘I’ve had enough of all this for now. And thanks for looking after the bag so well. Good to see No one fucked around with the camera.’
‘No, I . . .’
‘I’ve got exams next week, and you know how that affects people’s moods? Put it down to that.’ I sit up. I stand. I wanted to keep lying down to look as if I didn’t give a shit, but it doesn’t work that way. ‘I’ve had enough of this, right? You, Frank, every bloody Todd I’ve ever met, my parents, Gilbert, Sullivan and this whole stupid small-town life. You don’t even know what life looks like anywhere else, anywhere that really counts. Have you read Bright Lights, Big City? It’s about New York . . .’
‘I’ve read it. And it didn’t seem to be about New York to me. Not really. It seemed like it was about a guy . . .’
‘Whatever. It would really be better if you left me alone now. We were friends, you thought I slept with your mother and you kept that to yourself for weeks. The fact that you even thought it . . .’
‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry about that. Give me a break. I had a lot of things happening at that time, and . . .’
‘Busy? You were busy? Busy, so therefore I was sleeping with your mother, and now I give you a break? Usually when I see people are busy, I sleep with their mothers.’
‘That’s not it.’
‘I have had enough of hanging around with people who think that way.’
‘You don’t know how I’m thinking.’
‘Well, that’s fine, because I’m pretty much sick of how other people are thinking, and what I’m thinking is that I’ve had enough. All my life is at the moment is study, shit from everyone I know and time in a chicken suit. There’s not a whole lot of fun. I think I could do better.’
‘Better? What’s that about? This gets so boring. Every time you shit on your life—which is pretty often—you’re shitting on all of us. Me, Frank, whoever. If you’ve got a problem with all of us, line us up and tell us. Don’t just leave it at having a go at me. If you’ve got a problem with yourself, deal with it. I made one mistake, one fucking mistake, and you’ve decided it’s unforgivable. You think you could do better? You think you could have some better smarter life somewhere else? You don’t even have the guts to try. You were born for that chicken suit. You’ll never go to UCLA.’
And, with that, she hurls her drink at me and it’s almost as though it has physical force, rum and Diet Coke cannoning into my chest and sending me backwards until I’m sitting on the bed.
‘Fuck,’ she says. ‘Fuck. That was stupid. I didn’t mean that. I . . . oh, fuck.’
She runs from the room and the rum and Diet Coke soaks through to my chest, cold and trickling down inside and showing up dark on the front of my shirt. A door slams. She’s shut herself in her bedroom, and I can’t believe the things I said. There are ice cubes on the carpet and brown streaks of drink in the off-white shag pile.
I go after her. I run down the hall and I knock on her door and she says, ‘Go away.’
‘Do you really . . .’
‘Yes, I really want you to go away.’
I don’t know what to say, I don’t know what to do.
‘Sophie . . .’
‘I have several tubes of Colgate freshmint and I’m not afraid to use them.’ She laughs at her own joke and, for a second, things aren’t as bad as they were.
Frank appears at the top of the stairs, video camera slung casually over his shoulder.
&n
bsp; ‘What’s happening, kids?’ he says.
‘I want Phil to go away.’
Frank mouths the word ‘winner’ and comes up to the door. ‘Okay, Soph, Philby wants to know, is this one of the times when it actually means go away, or does it mean you want him in there?’
‘I’m so embarrassed,’ she says, probably to herself. ‘So embarrassed.’ And that’s followed by the sound of punches thumping into pillow.
‘Looks like we should go,’ Frank says. ‘It sounds like she’s beating the shit out of Holly Hobby in there.’
‘Phil.’ It’s Ron’s voice from halfway up the stairs. ‘The chickens need you. Your World’s falling apart at darts, mate, and I’m thinking only you can save them.’
‘Go,’ Frank says. ‘Go. Do it for chickens everywhere.’
‘But what about . . .’
‘Don’t worry. Just go.’
So I leave him outside Sophie’s door, I go with Ron and my feet even make a sound something like ‘trudge’ in the shag pile. I am escaping from my escape from the party. I don’t know what’s going on now. I’m not used to fighting with people, and I’m not used to anything that ends with a door between us. And then walking away, leaving Frank in my place.
Ron points to my shirt front on the way downstairs and says, ‘Bit of an accident with a drink, hey? We should all stand well back when you’ve got a dart in your hand, should we?’
‘Standing well back could be a very good idea.’
Ron’s behaving like the host with the most because people throw drinks at his parties. He thinks it’s all going perfectly, and that there’s nothing better than a lot of beer and a lot of darts. Party Central, and he’s the station master. Ron, ugly people just fucked in your jacuzzi. I want to tell him that, but today he can have the contented smile and I’ll play the darts and eventually this’ll all be over.
‘Hey, mate.’ It’s Frank’s voice. He’s up at the railings above, looking down at us. ‘Sorry, Ron, but I might have to come and get Phil soon. We’ve got to head off and hit the books.’
‘You guys really earn those degrees, don’t you?’ Ron shakes his head as though our dedication’s something to marvel at and it’ll kill us to leave. ‘Still, can’t go before you’ve had a game, can you?’
Darts. I expect that I’d be bad at darts, or at least not good, at the best of times. This is not the best of times.
Soon, I’m flinging the darts into the board with some force but no aim, and I’m working a few things out. Ron’s cheering me on, unambiguously my buddy and, let’s face it, I want his daughter so much that I’ve sent her to her room and left her punching her Holly Hobby pillow, with only Frank to help the situation. Sophie and I have had a conversation that I will never understand. Perhaps two conversations—one in the kitchen, one upstairs—fitting neatly together like the Titanic and a large iceberg, and ending in grinding and carnage.
I should never have invented Phoebe. Or all of the other things I’ve made up as I’ve gone along. I should stop being so full of shit and start being full of something else instead. Look at Vanessa Green. She wanted tree lopping in the same kind of way I want film making, but she made it happen. I should be making things happen. Or at least trying, instead of hiding out here, in fear of Los Angeles. Hanging around at parties at Sunnybank Hills and Carindale, silently seething about them not being New York. Seething about grass and darts and who left the lights on. And so what? Seething about Sophie, and all that.
Geography’s not the problem. It is what it is, places are what they are. And so what if they can’t all be Manhattan? So what if some people’s map of the world is bounded by the Hudson and East Rivers? It happens that my map’s bigger than that, even if it includes places where people argue about six lights, or grasses that’ll grow under fig trees, or whether or not people have the guts to do certain things. And all of that has to be as real as anything else.
It feels real enough, when the drink hits you in the chest, when the chance is gone, when you’ve taken another conversation at some stupid angle and turned it all wrong.
Darts, the new tactic: death or glory. I fling ambitiously at the triple twenty every time. I miss every time. The poor form of World of Chickens slumps to an improbable new low. Barb is pushing me aside saying, ‘Here, give me those,’ when Frank comes down the steps.
‘We should be off, I reckon,’ he says. ‘I’m guessing the team’ll find a suitable replacement.’
And finally, my darts time served, Ron lets us go. ‘Righto lads, good to see you. See you back at the World, then. Thanks for everything.’
‘I can catch a bus,’ I tell Frank when we’re going through the kitchen on our way out. ‘A bus into town, then another one home.’
‘It’s raining.’
‘They still run them in the rain. They’ve got roofs on them now. Besides, waiting at the bus stop would give me a chance to rinse my shirt out. It’s starting to get sticky.’
‘It’s dark, it’s raining, it’s very off-peak and you’ll be waiting ages. Sticky is the least of your worries. And anyway, your camera’s in my car. For safe-keeping. People were really starting to dick around with it. Mainly me.’
In the car, before he gets the chance to speak about what happened upstairs, I tell him I don’t want to discuss it. I know we had that talk where he checked if I had any kind of interest, and I know what I said and let’s just leave it at that.
I’m going to go home, I’m going to study Beischer and Mackay, I’m going to pass obstetrics. Even though, right at the moment, I don’t care about it at all. I don’t care about anything, I don’t want to talk about anything.
‘You know,’ Frank says, three songs later during an ad break on Double B, ‘once you’ve rinsed out the shirt, I think this is going to be fine.’
‘Yeah, right. It’s such a special shirt, after all. If it’s in good shape, I’m pretty much guaranteed to be okay.’
‘You, and your special shirt, and your rum smell and your video camera.’ He’s trying not to laugh, but not trying hard. ‘Party boy. You should play the tape when you get home.’
‘Yeah? I really don’t think I’m likely to.’
‘Okay, here’s what I’m saying. Play the tape. You get inside and you play the tape. After that, it’s totally fine for you to be in whatever mood works for you.’
‘If this involves your arse and anything you found in their kitchen . . .’
Now he lets the laugh out. ‘I’m so easy to read, aren’t I? Bugger. I always wanted to be complex and interesting like you, but the old arse joke—it’s too tempting. How could you go past it? No Tim Tams though, not this time.’
‘Oh, no. What did you use?’
‘Watch it and see.’
*
My parents are out when I get home. I want to throw the tape in the bin or at the very least erase it without watching it, but I told Frank I wouldn’t. So I stick it into the machine, and press play. I know my mother will come home from rehearsals right now, as soon as Frank’s buttocks are gleaming from the screen.
The picture crackles, from black into trees, shuddering trees. Sophie running away shouting ‘piss off’, an invisible Frank laughing. He traps her among the statues, her back to the Venus de Milo. He’s got her looking west, straight into the sun. She’s holding her hand up and he’s losing her eyes in a triangle of shadow.
EXT. GARDEN. LATE AFTERNOON
SOPHIE’s back is to a statue, as though she’s pinned there, having been caught. She still has her glass in one hand, but she’s spilled at least some of her drink during the chase.
FRANK
So, how’s it going today, Soph?
SOPHIE
You’re sure there’s no tape in that thing?
FRANK
Of course. But you can still look through it if you press the button. It’s like watching you on TV. So, Sophie, tell everyone what you think of the party so far.
SOPHIE
It’s as bad as I thought it’d b
e. Slightly worse.
FRANK
How about that Mowers crowd?
SOPHIE
Exactly. How about that Mowers crowd? Chickens rule, Frankie.
FRANK
And what do you think of Philby?
SOPHIE
Phil? Why?
FRANK
Just wondering.
SOPHIE
(She frowns, drinks) You’re not lying to me about the tape, are you?
FRANK
There’s no tape. It just looks like TV when I look through it. Like you’re on TV. It’s like a doco.
SOPHIE
So, what was the question?
FRANK
What do you think of Philby?
SOPHIE
What’s it to you?
FRANK
Okay, how are things with Clinton?
SOPHIE
Clinton? (She pauses, drinks) Over. If you really want to know. Fucked up for ages, finally over a week ago. Friday of last week. Not one of my better days. For all kinds of reasons. Anyway, I think I have to go now. There’s something I have to do. Something I have to fix.
INT. BEDROOM. LATE AFTERNOON
SOPHIE is sitting on her bed, propped up by her Holly Hobby pillow. There’s a Madonna poster from about 1981 on the wall behind her, and various objects that suggest she transplanted her childhood bedroom here when they moved to the house about four years ago. She looks distraught.
FRANK
So, you’re embarrassed, you were saying.
SOPHIE
Stop this stupid pretend TV thing.
FRANK
Sure. Just tell me what you think of Philby.
SOPHIE
I don’t think that matters now. I think we just had a big fight. I threw my drink at him. I’ve never done that kind of thing in my life. He’s, like, practically my best friend, or he was until I did something really stupid. And I know it was stupid and I went in there, where he was—I’d been looking all over the house—I went in there to tell him things. Fix it, and stuff. And he shouted at me and I shouted at him and I threw a drink at him. And I don’t know how we pretend I didn’t and go back to going halves in a chicken suit.