Ohhhhhh.
Oh no, you are not going to pass out, you silly cow.
She forces herself to her feet, to one foot at least, and hobbles to the bathroom for gauze and antiseptic wash. Because better safe than sorrier-than-thou, as Paul would say – a fresh threat of tears served along with that thought – and Antoinette perches on the side of the bathtub, wraps the gauze around her injured heel. There’s a stab of pain as she stands, slightly woozy and putting too much weight on her bad foot, and for a moment she can almost see him in front of her, can almost feel his hands on her waist, holding her together.
Ant, baby, you’re my favourite kind of disaster area.
‘Paul,’ she whispers. ‘Paul, it hurts.’
Shhh, baby, I know. How about I kiss it better?
And this is what she wants to write about, this is the story she wants to tell. How it was when they first met, how it might have been, how it should have been. This is what she wants to pin down with words, what she wants to preserve.
Back on the couch, foot propped up by a cushion, Antoinette flips to a new page in the notebook. Paul, she writes again. Frowns and crosses it out. Turns the page. She closes her eyes, conjures an image behind their lids: a boy with ivory skin and irises of pale, arctic blue; a boy whose hands are always gentle, and whose wild, blue-black hair isn’t poured from a bottle every six-to-eight weeks. So clear now, she can picture him in the room with her, leaning with one hip against the wall, leather pants slung low, the crooked flash of a smile. So clear, she can almost smell the salt on his skin.
Paul, yet not Paul.
Paul as he might have been once, right at the beginning of things, or maybe only ever how she wished him to be. Paul, with all the rough edges shaved away, all the sniping and petty selfishness that set in over the past few months – the past few years, if she’s honest with herself; a trait there from the start if only recently aimed in her direction. Paul, without the petulant attitude and apparent inability to comprehend any point of view aside from his own.
A delicious fantasy, if one too fragile to exist beyond the pages on which she now begins to write. Paul-not-Paul: a boy who loves her, absolutely and forever; a boy who could never so much as dream of betrayal, who would sooner carve out his own heart than inflict the slightest wound on hers.
Everything she desires, everything she needs; nothing she does not.
Her hand moves fast, the ink smearing in places as she rushes to capture all that she holds in her head, and Antoinette wonders how much of it will even be intelligible later. She feels odd, like something more potent than vodka lurks in her veins. The words flow through her like smoke. But it’s not enough to merely describe him, this strange and beautiful boy. She weaves him a story as well, a past cut from old cloth with every stain and painful rip excised or hidden, tucked sly behind fresh and clever seams.
Paul made perfect – this is what she needs right now. Because if it’s impossible to stop loving him, to simply turn her emotions off at the switch, then maybe a sneaky bit of re-wiring will work just as well. The object of her love no longer a flesh-and-flawed boy but instead a most perfect version of him. A creature against which the real Paul will stand little chance, even if he gets down on his knees and begs her to come back.
He cheated on you, Ant. Jacqueline, last night, a frown shadowing her usually calm features. How can you ever trust him again?
No, she can’t trust him, but neither can she trust herself. Because if he knocked on the door right now, greeted her with outstretched arms and that slow, easy grin – Antoinette shakes her head.
Deep inside, pressure builds.
She keeps writing, ignoring the sparks of pain in her hand, the winch-tight ache across her shoulders from sitting curled over for so long. Knowing that most of it has to be rubbish, the words no better than ashes and dust, because nothing that comes this easily can possibly be any good – can it? can it? – but writing anyway, compelled to get everything out and onto the page.
The pressure expands within her, fills every space, pushes at her skin. It feels like dread and delirium and desire, and yet like none of these things, like no thing she has ever felt before – or nearly so: a subtle taste of the familiar lingers at the margins, coupled now with the iron-sharp flavour of threat. She is saturated, swollen, ready to split apart, to fly apart until – oh! – this last fleeting sensation rushes through her, quick and sudden as thought: it is done.
Antoinette straightens, lays down her pen. Her right hand is a cramped, arthritic claw, the hand of a crone; her fingers all but scream as she flexes them. How long has she been writing? Long enough to have filled near half the notebook with her messy scrawl, long enough for the night to have slipped away, for the thin grey light of just-before-dawn to inch its way around the sides of the blinds. Long enough to write herself halfway to sober as well, her head swollen and heavy on her shoulders, her mouth parched. The heel of her injured foot throbs, the bandage is dark and damp to the touch, and there’s a bloody stain on the cushion beneath it. Clotted red soaked into fine cream jacquard; Jacqueline is going to kill her.
Cushion tucked under her arm, Antoinette limps back to the bathroom. She tries to rinse the blood out of the fabric, scrubbing at it with her short-bitten nails, but only succeeds in spreading the stain around. She swears, tosses the cushion into the shower for a later attempt. Is it salt that’s good for bloodstains, or baking soda? Whatever, she’ll google it tomorrow – today – whenever. Her foot is easier to clean, the wound not as bad as she remembers, not anywhere near as bad as it feels to walk on. It only bleeds a little after the dried and scabby crust is washed away, and this time she pads it with cotton wool before wrapping a fresh length of gauze all the way up to her ankle.
Good enough. She splashes her face with cold water. Glares at herself in the mirror. Enough, full-stop. Enough drinking and weeping and wallowing about in her own misery. Paul isn’t worth it. Time to snap out of it, girlie-girl. Time to get a life.
But first, she needs some sleep.
Her clothes and other assorted chattels are still staging their hostile takeover of the futon, and Antoinette is too exhausted to even contemplate its liberation. Across the hall, the door to her sister’s room is neatly closed. Behind it, there’s a queen-sized bed with a comfy mattress and fat, Euro-style pillows – a far more tempting crash zone than the small, cramped study – and Antoinette doesn’t have to think twice. The smooth metal handle zaps her fingers with static and she hisses, shaking off the charge as the door swings open to reveal a figure, solid and backlit through the half-drawn curtains, sitting hunched on the end of the bed.
Antoinette freezes. The nape of her neck prickles with sudden sweat.
He lifts his head, turns part-way towards her. Shadows move across his bare skin, and within the depths of those too-pale eyes.
‘P-Paul?’ Her voice squeaks. She clears her throat. ‘How did you . . .’
Faltering, realising her mistake even as the words die on her lips. Not Paul. Not her Paul. Or maybe now more hers than ever.
Then she’s running. No thought beyond getting herself to the front door, through the front door and out into the thin dawn light, the close confines of the flat too easy to be trapped within. But the security chain is still drawn, her fingers clumsy in their panic, and by the time she has it free his arms are around her waist, dragging her away. She fights back, or tries to, fingernails and elbows and knees the sharpest weapons at her disposal, and stop it, he says, and please. He pulls her down to the floor, both of them falling in a barely controlled collapse, his weight knocking all the breath from her body. She could laugh, she really could, to think that she’s always considered herself more than capable in the self-defence department, one tough cookie if it ever came to the crunch – because how bloody helpless does she feel now?
‘Don’t hurt me,’ she whispers. ‘Pl
ease don’t hurt me.’
‘Shhh.’ He takes her face in his hands, hands fine-boned but stronger than the world, and tilts her gaze to meet his own. Even in her terror, Antoinette marvels at those eyes, those black-rimmed irises of cool and pale blue. Arctic eyes, husky eyes, brilliant with unspilled tears. ‘Please,’ he echoes. ‘I’m scared too.’
Maybe it’s something in his voice, harmless and uncomprehending as a kicked puppy, or the gentle-firm way he’s holding her, pinning her moveless to the carpet the way you might keep a panic-struck bird from breaking a wing. Something in his voice, his touch, that makes her stop and look at him, really look at him, at that face which is so familiar, yet wholly new. The differences are subtle but definite: his features more finely wrought, their symmetry close to perfect; his skin beyond pale, almost inhumanly white, and flawless but for an inch-long scratch below his right eye, still beading crimson along its edge.
Antoinette swallows, the stale aftertaste of fear lying flat on her tongue.
‘Are you hurt?’ he asks, relaxing his hold when she shakes her head. A heartbeat later and he’s on his feet, his movements too quick, too fluid to follow. He reaches out an arm and she takes it, feels his hand close around her wrist as he helps her stand. Her sore foot protests sharply and she half-shifts, half-stumbles against him. ‘You are hurt.’ He points to the bandage which is bloody again and starting to unravel.
‘No,’ she says. ‘I mean, that’s not from just now.’
‘Come on, I’ll clean it for you.’ His arm slips around her waist, and she actually takes two dazed and limping steps at his side before asking him to stop, to please just stop and wait a second.
‘Is it bad?’ he asks. ‘I can carry you.’
‘No, it’s not that. I just need . . . please, just stop. Stop everything.’ She pushes him back, a gentle shove to arm’s length so she can see him more clearly, the whole of him. ‘My god.’ Not exactly the same, but close enough, more than close enough: they could be brothers, the two of them; stand them side by side and that’s what anyone would think, couldn’t help but think. One of them taller, cast from finer clay maybe, but undoubtedly brothers, brothers if not twins.
Paul and Not Paul.
‘What are you?’ A thought not intended for words but finding them anyway, just as her hands find the bare, milk-smooth skin of his shoulders, his chest, his hips. The flesh is solid and warm, and feels as real as her own. Only dimly does she register the fact that he’s naked, the observation devoid of promise or threat. What does matter are the marks which redden his skin: scratches that match the one beneath his eye, an angry carpet burn on his knee. Perfect, he was perfect until she went and injured him, marred him, idiot girl that she is. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, knowing it’s not enough but repeating it anyway as his eyes gloss over and he dips his head, blue-black hair falling like bowerbird feathers into his face.
‘I don’t know,’ he whispers. ‘I don’t know what I am.’
Antoinette wraps her arms around him and squeezes tight, a desperate-fierce hug to make it all go away. Because she doesn’t know what he is either, and for that she’s sorry as well. ‘It’s cold,’ she says at last. ‘Aren’t you cold?’
‘No, are you?’
He steps from her grasp and she almost falls, her vision darkening around the edges as the walls start to sway inwards and the floor tilts beneath her feet. Her hands shake and she pushes her knees together to stop them from buckling, bites her tongue in an effort to hold onto consciousness. ‘Little help?’ she murmurs, but he’s already there, one arm firm on her waist as he steers her back down to the hall to Jacqueline’s room. The bed has never seemed bigger and Antoinette curls up right in the middle, hands tucked close to her chin. He draws the curtains and pulls the doona over her. ‘Sleep now,’ he says, his lips brushing warm and dry across her cheek. Down near her feet, the mattress sinks beneath his weight.
Sleep, yes. She hasn’t felt so utterly wasted for ages, or maybe never; not even the nights spent clubbing till dawn – not even those nights when she managed to score a dex or two – ever strung her this far out. But how can she sleep, right now, with her own breathing, blood-bearing miracle perched at the end of the bed like something out of a trashy teen vampire flick? How can she . . .
‘Hey, Antoinette?’
She starts, the path to dreamland not so elusive after all.
‘What’s my name?’ he asks, as if the thought has only just now occurred to him. But the question feels too big, too complicated; nothing her poor, fried brain wants to ponder right this second, so she throws him an old scrap of a syllable instead, the first and last thing that comes to mind – Paul – and buries her face into the pillow.
Paul, he might have echoed as she drifted away. And then, no, he might have whispered, scornful and proud. No, I don’t think so.
— 4 —
Jacqueline wonders if she should have had the taxi wait. The address matches the details in her diary, but the place isn’t what she expected. More bungalow than house, its wooden boards are the pink of early dawn. The lawn is neatly mown. Flanked on three sides by colourful gardens. Small concrete statues, some partially painted, congregate in groups. Others peer out from beneath plants. Fairies and frogs. Mermaids draped dry over rocks. A baby dragon still emerging from its shell, a flower clutched between its paws.
An enormous loquat tree looms beside the front gate, its branches low and heavy with fruit. Jacqueline ducks beneath it. Follows the narrow path that takes her straight to the front porch. Plastic frangipanis are threaded unevenly through the patchy screen door. She steels herself. Resists the temptation to retrieve her diary and confirm yet again that she’s at the right house. Beneath her finger, the doorbell chimes the hallelujah chorus.
She chooses to read that as irony.
To read it all as irony, as one huge postmodern practical joke, because what other explanation can there be?
Then inner door swings open and a short, plump woman peers up at Jacqueline through the flymesh and flowers. ‘Yes, what?’ Behind fuchsia-framed glasses the size of beer coasters, her eyes have the suspicious squint of a sun-snared owl.
Jacqueline clears her throat. ‘Does Ryan Jellicoe live here?’
‘No, he doesn’t. Who are you?’
‘I’m sorry, I must have been given the wrong address.’ She reaches into her bag for her phone. To find out how on earth Dante managed to send her to Sunny Kitsch Central. Damn it, why hadn’t she asked the taxi to wait?
The woman opens the screen door a few inches. ‘I’m Ryan’s sister. He gives out my address a fair bit.’ She sniffs. ‘Like when he doesn’t want people to know how to find him.’
‘Oh.’ Jacqueline decides to let the last remark run free. Instead, she offers her name and where she’s from. Holds out a hand which is stared at but not shaken. Allows it to drop back to her side. ‘I must have copied the wrong details from our files. Ryan would definitely want Seventh Circle to know where to find him. We’re putting on his show next month and there’s still a lot to organise before–’
‘Yes, I know all about your little show.’ The woman smiles in a way Jacqueline finds impossible to read.
‘But Ryan knows I’m here to see him. I called last night.’
‘Talk to you, did he?’
‘I left a message. I’m sure he’s very busy.’
‘He’s always very busy.’
There’s a mocking twist in her tone that sets Jacqueline’s teeth on edge. ‘How about I just call Ryan,’ she says, brandishing her phone at the woman. ‘I’m sure we can clear this up here and now.’
Seconds roll slow and sullen between them. Jacqueline holds her ground. Finally the woman concedes that a phone call might be in order, but that she’ll be the one to make it. Ryan’s her brother; it’s her he’ll want to speak to.
‘Fine
,’ Jacqueline says. ‘Thank you.’
The woman vanishes into the depths of the house, letting the screen door bang behind her. A few moments later, her voice drifts back out to the porch. There are no words Jacqueline can pick clear of the one-sided conversation but the tone is enough. Sharp, strident. Absolutely not happy. Jacqueline sighs. Pats at her forehead with the back of her hand. It’s not yet ten o’clock and already the temperature must be nearing thirty degrees. The air is thick and humid, iron lung oppressive. How people can live up here is beyond her. How they can even think in this heat, let alone get up every day and face the world–
Footsteps sound from within the house. The screen door swings open.
‘He’ll have you over.’ Ryan Jellicoe’s sister steps outside, keys jangling loose in one hand. ‘But don’t expect to be seeing any of his pictures.’
Ten minutes cramped in the passenger seat of the woman’s pokey red hatchback is enough to make Jacqueline queasy, even with the windows at half-mast. The heat, the confinement, the sweaty clutch of her blouse against her skin – all of it is too much. She presses a surreptitious palm to her thigh. To the cuts beneath her skirt. The pain is dull but immediate. A comfort, a focus. Jacqueline closes her eyes and nips at the soft, inner flesh of her bottom lip. Imagines the pain as a living creature – an octopus perhaps, or giant squid – some strong, sinuous beast with salted water in its heart. She can almost feel its enormous limbs unfurling themselves across her lap, curling about her shoulders.
Keeping her safe. Keeping her whole.
‘Here we are then.’
They’ve stopped moving. Jacqueline opens her eyes. For one absurd moment, as Ryan Jellicoe’s sister climbs out of the car and marches around to the passenger side, it seems as though the woman is actually intending to open Jacqueline’s door for her. But no, of course not. ‘You coming or what?’ she simply barks, waiting with hands on hips for Jacqueline to join her.
Perfections Page 4