Just Another Week in Suburbia

by Les Zig

  Dr Dudek laughs. ‘He’s eating fine,’ she says. ‘That’s a good sign.’

  I pat Wallace and stroke his head. He’s not shaking anymore, which makes me feel better. In fact, he looks tired, like he wants to drift off. But each time his eyes close, he rouses himself, checking I’m still here. I really don’t want to leave him. My phone vibrates incessantly in my pocket.

  Wallace finally falls asleep. Dr Dudek pats me on the shoulder and escorts me through the clinic and towards the door.

  ‘This is probably the best time to go,’ she says. ‘I’ll give you a call tomorrow to let you know how things went.’

  ‘Thanks, Dr Dudek. I realise you were probably finished for the night.’

  ‘You caught me minutes from leaving.’

  ‘I’m sorry for inconveniencing—’

  ‘It’s okay. My plans can wait. Are you all right?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m …’ I don’t know what to say.

  ‘He’ll be all right.’

  I nod. She opens the door. I leave.

  I sit in my car, in the clinic’s parking lot. The dashboard clock says it’s 7.05pm. I thought it would’ve been later. Usually, there’s a wait to see a vet. It’s lucky—for me, and Wallace—that I grabbed Dr Dudek when she was free and off-duty.

  I pull out my phone. Jane’s alternated between texts and voicemail.

  ‘Hey, where are you? I’m going to the restaurant,’ her first voicemail says.

  Then it’s a text from the restaurant: Here with Sarah and Alex.

  Another voicemail: ‘I’m getting really worried. Please call me immediately.’

  Then a text: What’s going on?

  And another: Please call me!

  A final voicemail: ‘What’s happened to you?’

  And a final text: I’m coming home.

  I start the car.

  27

  I pull into my drive, reverse onto the nature strip, and get out of the car. Chloe emerges from her house, dressed in her nurse’s uniform.

  ‘Hello, Casper!’ she says. ‘How’re you?’

  My wife’s cheating on me, I’m being accused of rape at school, and my dog has a broken leg.

  ‘You okay?’ Chloe stops before she gets into her car.

  It’s nice she can show concern. I guess that’s the nurse in her. If we were better friends, I might spill everything to her. I nod.

  Chloe is frozen, about to sink into the driver’s seat. I must look bad for her not to move.

  ‘Sure?’ she asks.

  ‘Sorry. Just distracted.’

  ‘Okay.’ Chloe purses her lips. She knows I’m lying. But she can’t push it. Work awaits her. ‘If you need anything, you know where I live.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I mean that, Casper—okay?’

  ‘Sure.’

  She gets into her car, although her eyes remain on me.

  I don’t know what comes next, what I’m meant to be doing. Front door. That’s it. I begin to move.

  I grab a beer, sit on the couch in the dining room, and take my sketchpad from the coffee table. This morning I was contemplating how to finish my sketch of Jane. Now I see Kai’s hands on my wife, see his hips smacking against her buttocks, see his cock against her face.

  I hear a car—Jane’s VW. I forgot she was picking it up today and didn’t even think about how she’d get home. Within moments, her keys jingle and the front door swings open. I don’t move, don’t breathe. Jane’s footsteps thump down the hallway. There’s the briefest pause as I hear her drop her handbag in my study. Then she’s at the archway of the dining room, hands on hips, shoulders cocked forward. The little white bag from Joe’s Chemist dangles from her left hand. Maybe it’s more glow-in-the-dark condoms.

  ‘Where the hell were you?’ she says. ‘Do you know how worried—’

  ‘Wallace broke his leg.’

  Her head cranes forward. ‘What?’

  ‘I had to take him to the vet.’

  ‘Is he okay?’ Jane puts her bag on the kitchen counter. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘The vet’s keeping him overnight. They’re going to perform surgery tomorrow morning to insert plates.’

  ‘How did he break his leg?’

  ‘I found him waiting on the front doorstep like that when I came home.’ From seeing you fucking Kai.

  ‘On the front doorstep?’

  I take a swig of beer.

  ‘Then he was out?’

  It hadn’t even occurred to me. Of course he was out. His nose was dirty. He must’ve burrowed back under the fence.

  ‘Maybe he got hit by a car,’ Jane says.

  No. Now I realise how improbable that is. A little dog like Wallace, if he tangled with a car there’d be evidence. He never goes on the road anyway. He had an encounter all right. But it was with Vic—Vic, who threatened to dropkick him.

  ‘Why didn’t you call?’ Jane says.

  ‘I got caught up.’

  ‘You should’ve called.’

  I take another swig of beer.

  ‘Or at least messaged.’

  I keep drinking.

  ‘You called earlier. Tons of times.’

  That’s right. I did. Which is what led to the peep show.

  ‘Was that when he got hit?’

  I drink again.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘Is he going to be okay?’

  I don’t say anything.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘You’re acting weird.’

  I snort. A few hours ago, I wanted to lean on her because of everything happening at school. I needed her to assure me. Now I can’t imagine where we go from here.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  Everybody keeps asking me that. My fingers trace my sketch, smudging the outlines. She puts one hand on top of mine and shadows me.

  ‘This is hardly the time to be thinking about your drawing,’ Jane says.

  ‘This morning I couldn’t stop thinking about how I could finish it. Like maybe I could draw a little bow around your neck.’

  ‘A bow?’

  ‘Or your hair up in braids.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Or maybe I should draw you with Kai’s cock in your mouth.’

  Jane’s hand jolts mine still. She gapes at me. Her mouth opens like it did when she fellated Kai’s cum-covered cock. I expect a barrage of excuses now. Her lower lip quivers. Her mouth’s still open, her chest still.

  She gets up. Walks from the couch. Stops. I glower at her. She spins away. Leans on the kitchen counter. Bows her head. Then rushes from the dining room. I hear her pick up her bag from the study.

  The front door opens and closes.

  Her car pulls out of the drive.

  28

  My mind is still. I must’ve had a breakdown. My mind shouldn’t be this still. It should be raging with everything that’s going on. I should be angry. Upset. All of that. But I’m not.

  I put my beer on the coffee table. I’ve drunk about half. It’s not going down well. Some days they go down. Some days they don’t. But go down it will.

  Maybe that’s what my dad thought when he began drinking. That should frighten me. Like father, like son, like this is a genetic trait I might inherit—alcoholism.

  I clench my teeth, scrunch my eyes. I should be crying or something.

  But nothing comes out.

  I think about Jane. Maybe she’s gone to Kai now. Maybe he’ll console her. Fuck her. They’ll have sex. He’ll treat her in ways I never have, like I saw them this afternoon. And she’ll enjoy it. Lap it up. Meanwhile, I’ll sit here, and wait for the police to question me about Bianca while I worry about Wallace.

  Poor little Wallace.

  I get up.

  29

  I ring and ring the bell to Vic’s house.

  His footsteps thump down the hallway. The door swings open. Vic stands there barefoot, in jeans, a T-shirt, and a Coopers in ha
nd. He’s unshaven, face hard, chiselled into a permanent state of disapproval. Moans echo down the hallway. The dining room is directly adjacent. I can see half the TV—a black guy is having sex with a blonde doggy style. The camerawork is shaky. So this is what Vic does with his spare time.

  ‘What?’ he asks.

  I shake my attention from the television. ‘Wallace got hurt today.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Did you do something to him?’

  ‘I told you if he came in here again I’d dropkick him out.’

  ‘So you kicked him?’

  ‘I taught him a lesson.’

  ‘You broke his leg.’

  ‘That’s his bad luck.’

  ‘His bad luck?’

  Vic takes a long drink, like he’s trying to tell me he’s in no hurry to respond. ‘Fuck off, Casper. You want to avoid this happening again, you make sure that little shit stays in your yard.’

  Vic slams the door closed.

  I knock on the door again. Nothing. I knock, then begin slamming the door with an open palm. Vic’s intention must be to ignore me, but I hammer relentlessly. Finally, footsteps thud down the hallway. The door swings open. The moans are gone. The image on the television is frozen—the blonde’s now on top of the black guy, head thrown back, ponytail caught midbounce.

  ‘Vic, I need to talk—’

  Vic grabs me by the scruff of my T-shirt, yanks me towards him, then hurls me—effortlessly, like I’m weightless—from the doorstep. I fly through the air, hit the ground on my hip, roll, and sprawl onto my back. Vic advances, leaning over me, and thrusts one finger at me.

  ‘I’ve warned you about your dog!’ he says. ‘Time and time again! I’ve warned you about that fucking mutt!’

  My hip’s sore and palms burn. I rub one of them into my left eye. It’s not Vic. It’s everything. I’m aware others are out now—my hammering on Vic’s door has drawn them. Behind me, Josh and Karen have just pulled into their drive, and are frozen halfway out of their car. Tarika Gupta shields her kids, Kirit and Pia, on her front doorstep. Vic surveys them indifferently—almost like he’s challenging them to defy him, each of them averting their gaze—then he glares at me.

  ‘You gonna cry?’ he asks.

  I shake my head—not so much at him, but at the day.

  ‘You got anything more to say about it?’

  I sit up and rub my hands together.

  ‘I didn’t think so. Now get the fuck off my property.’

  I haul myself to my feet and slink home.

  30

  Once inside, I storm across to the landline, pick up the phone from the handset, jab my finger towards the keypad, and stop. Who do I call in a situation like this? Emergency? No. Of course not. I would have to call the police station closest to me. I think there’s one over in Greenbrook.

  I don’t know what the penalty is for breaking a dog’s leg, but there must be a penalty. It’s animal cruelty. Not to mention Vic assaulted me. Of course, he’d get out of it somehow, if not use it as a moral triumph that I ran to the authorities. I put the phone back in the handset.

  Right now, it’s not just about Vic. While there’s humiliation in being bullied in front of the whole neighbourhood, it’s nothing compared to the humiliation of seeing your wife behave like a porn starlet at the hands of some scrawny ingrate.

  I grab another beer, wrap my hands around it to absorb the cold on my burning palms, and sit cross-legged on the couch.

  I can’t fathom what Kai offers that must be so appealing to Jane. If she’d been cheating with Roger, I could almost understand that. He’s … well, I don’t think he’s really that handsome, or charismatic, but he is successful, and I guess that means something. Kai looks like a reject from some pseudo Gothic band.

  I take a long drink, finally absorbing that the house is too quiet. No, it’s more than that. It can contain Jane and Wallace and still be quiet.

  It’s too empty.

  I pace around the dining room, trying to think of something to kill the time as I kill my beer. I’m not sure what I want to kill time until. There are nights Jane’s gone out with her girlfriends (although now I question those), and I’ve killed time until she’s come home. But now I don’t know.

  What lies on the other side of this?

  I go into the kitchen, open the fridge, and grab another beer. The half-beer I left behind before I went to see Vic still sits on the coffee table. I sip from it. It’s lukewarm. I down it in a couple of gulps, gagging repeatedly.

  I put it and the fresh beer down on the coffee table, sink onto the couch, and hold out my hands.

  They’re steady.

  I open the fresh beer.

  I try to find something on TV to occupy my mind—there’s a choice between football and movies. Nothing grabs me. My mind’s Teflon.

  I pick up the sketchpad, trace my fingers over my picture of Jane. I should rip it. Or scribble on it. Or something.

  Something.

  I finish what’s left of the beer in the fridge—another five. I drink because it seems the right thing to do, until the stillness in my mind spasms into some semblance of activity.

  Luke said things happen just like that.

  But how can everything change just like that?

  And how does it always seem to change for the worse?

  There are good news stories—people who win lotto, things like that. But that always seems to be somebody else. Bad news is always you.

  Jane, Wallace, Vic, the neighbourhood, and Bianca: tomorrow they’ll all be there. But my connection to them has changed, and I don’t know what that means for me.

  I use the toilet, then go up the stairs, trying not to look at the anniversary pictures, but of course I do. At what point did the facade become a facade? When did Jane start fucking Kai? They’ve worked together for five years. Could they have been going that long?

  I stop in the doorway to my bedroom, like I’ve hit an invisible barrier. The empty bed confronts me, a stark denouement to the day’s events. This could become my life—an empty bed and alone at the end of the day.

  I strip where I’m standing, throwing my pants, T-shirt, and socks into the bedroom, but remain in the doorway. Maybe I should sleep in the spare room, although that’ll probably only continue to emphasise how wrong everything is.

  I force myself into the bedroom, each step growing increasingly heavier, inebriation fuelling my courage. I crawl onto the bed from the base, pull myself up onto my pillow, and slide under the covers. My head spins and bile rises up my throat. I haven’t had enough beers to be sick, but I’ve had a lot in a short space of time—and on an empty stomach, too. I kick the covers clear. The clock radio says it’s 10.47.

  Again, the emptiness of the house hits me. It’s not just emptiness. It’s THE GREAT EMPTINESS. There should be breathing beside me. There should be Jane’s warmth. Jane’s presence. I should be able to run my fingertips down her back when she curls away from me. I wrack my memory for the last time I slept alone, but can only guess it was pre-Jane.

  Maybe this is it. Maybe this is the beginning of post-Jane.

  I roll away from her side of the bed, close my eyes.

  The beers were a bad idea. I didn’t need my mind to loosen.

  Images plague my mind: Kai fucking Jane; Kai blowing on her face; Bianca, in art class; Bianca strolling away from Jean Jacket; Wallace, whining on the front doorstep; Wallace, forlorn at the vet; Vic towering over me, taunting me.

  I realise now what I’m killing time for—the reckoning.

  I’ll have to talk to Jane, although I don’t know if I can ever look at her now without seeing Kai’s cum on her face. Who knows where we’ll go? Thoughts of hating her and wanting her out of my life are reflex, although maybe they’re not so far from the truth either.

  But what will she do when police question me about Bianca? When I get labelled a pervert? How do I face the street now when everybody probably thinks me a coward? How do I escape my life when my life i
s a spotlight of cowardice and insecurity?

  At least Wallace will be there. Wallace, as always, without judgement.

  I close my eyes and drift off.

  Saturday

  31

  My eyes snap open. The room’s dim—there’s the glow from the clock radio’s digital numbers, as well as the light seeping through the window. Something feels wrong. My internal clock suggests it’s maybe 3.00 or 4.00am.

  I sit up. My shoulders shake. There’s a chill that touches my skin, the sort where you feel like you’ll never know warmth again.

  I glance at the clock radio: 1.12am.

  I pull the covers up around my shoulders, wrap my arms around myself and rock. There’s a ringing in my ears and a restlessness in my midriff, like an overtired muscle that can’t relax.

  I gag, then again, this time tasting something acidic.

  I jump from the bed. It feels like I land on a trampoline. My first step has me stumbling into the bedside table and I knock the clock radio onto the carpet. I don’t stop to recover it and bolt to the bathroom.

  Bile burns in my throat, tasting of beer—it’s the only thing in my stomach. It erupts just before I reach the toilet: vomit splatters across the floor. The bathroom stinks of it. Just as well this is … was … is Jane’s bathroom. I drop to my knees and vomit again. Partially digested beer hits toilet water. My hands come down on the cold bathroom tiles. Again, I vomit, but then nothing. Something sharp jags in my throat.

  I flop back against the wall, draw my knees to my chest, and rest my chin on my forearms. It feels like I could vomit again any moment, although there’s nothing left to come up. I’m still shivering and the bathroom sways in front of me.

  I close my eyes.

  I don’t mean to sleep, but I drift off for a bit. The bathroom floor chills the soles of my feet and my buttocks. My drying vomit reeks so badly that my sinuses cringe.