‘Chris, just keep your eye out for a car park, will you?’ I hate being the designated driver on a Friday night in the city.
‘I love the way you change the subject when you know I’m right.’
Good – finally found a car park spot and it’s only one block away from where we want to be.
‘Sure, hon, you’re right – I’m just frothing at the mouth to push something the size of a watermelon out of an opening the size of a lemon. You want to tell me why we’re going to this thing again?’
My reproductive desires – or lack thereof – are not an appropriate topic of conversation for walking the city streets.
‘New client. He owns a chain of bars and coffee shops and wants to bring them all in line – create an image, streamline his operations and all that stuff. I haven’t done this sort of thing since I was starting out, but I went to school with Angelo.’
‘So he’s not a corporate executive type?’ Maybe I can hold my own tonight. Chris is just helping out an old mate.
‘Why does the whole corporate tag scare you, babe?’
God it’s chilly tonight. Never believe the weather-man. Summer is just around the corner but it feels like there is an arctic freeze happening in the streets of Melbourne tonight.
‘It doesn’t scare me. I just don’t want to screw things up for you by opening my mouth and saying something stupid.’
‘Desi, you are a beautiful, intelligent woman. I wish you could see that.’
‘And we both know that my mouth runs two minutes faster than my brain.’ Especially when there is alcohol involved.
‘That’s why you’re driving tonight, babe. Relax. You’ll be fine.’
Oh, God. This has to be someone’s idea of a joke. A sick one at that, because I am not laughing. Angelo is not just an old friend of Chris’s; he’s an old friend of Denny’s and he owns the coffee shop we all used to hang out at. He’s the one who introduced me to Denny when we all used to hang out at the coffee shop. Angelo thought Denny and I would be ideal for each other. He really didn’t know me at all.
I gave things a real try with Denny after Angelo introduced us. That’s the thing with a set-up – you’re less likely to end it without giving it a shot, because you don’t want to disappoint friends; you don’t want people to feel awkward around you if it doesn’t work out and you can never tell them the truth about your relationship and why it ended – unless you are screaming it at the top of your lungs in the middle of a crowded coffee shop.
‘Jeez, Wonder Wog, you show up in the strangest of places. You and Chris, hey?’
Denny started calling me Wonder Wog to irritate me, because I could party, work, and pull my friends together for a night out on the town and never seemed to get tired of it. I could leap tall bar stools in a single bound. Most people thought it was a cute nickname but I hated it and I never thought I would hear it again.
‘Wonder Wog?’ Chris is smiling, but I would rather forget that Wonder Wog ever existed. ‘I take it you two know each other?’
‘Know each other? Desi and her crew had a permanent table at my place on Chapel. Haven’t seen you since you became Destructo Des.’
I didn’t stick around long enough to hear that nickname. I realise, with a sickening feeling, that it probably came about after my explosive confrontation with Denny in Angelo’s coffee shop.
‘That was a long time ago, Angelo. We’ve all changed since then.’ God I hope he gets the hint to shut the fuck up.
‘So, why is she called Destructo?’
Chris, please, don’t encourage him!
‘Man, last time I saw this gorgeous girl, she was giving it hard to her prick of an ex – not that he didn’t deserve it. She let him off easy.’
Shut up you moron.
‘God, Des, none of us knew he was such an arsehole.
We would have warned you if we did. I never would have hooked you guys up. We would have beaten the crap out of him for you.’
‘It wasn’t anyone’s fault, Angelo.’ Just mine for not seeing the truth sooner.
‘If it makes you feel any better, Denny stayed in Greece too long and got picked up for the National Service.’
Now that is funny. But unfortunately Chris does not look amused. He looks like he has just walked into the tail end of a secret conversation that he thinks revolves around him. Chris doesn’t need to know any more details.
‘Somewhat.’
‘Yeah, well, I just hope someone beats the shit out of him so he knows what it feels like. I hope that bastard knows what it’s like to have someone bigger than him knocking the living daylights out of him.’
All I can do is look at Chris but I can’t read his face. Is it anger? Is it sympathy? Is it disgust that I allowed myself to get into that sort of situation? And who the hell was the genius that thought banning smoking in all bars was a good idea? Right now I think I could possibly chew threw my packet of cigarettes.
I don’t want to go back in there. I don’t want to have to face Chris and all the questions I know he must have for me right now. I excuse myself for a smoke and escape to the rooftop garden as soon as I’m able to. I feel like the whole room is laughing at me, pointing as if to say: look at her, how pathetic is she?
‘Let’s get out of here, Des.’
When did Chris manage to sneak up on me? I didn’t even hear him approach.
‘What about Angelo? Don’t you have business to discuss?’ I hope I haven’t screwed up a done deal for him. The last thing Chris needs is my baggage messing with his business.
‘He’s an old mate; I’m doing this as a favour so he’s not going anywhere. I told him you’d been feeling a bit seedy all night.’
Seedy is a good word for it.
‘Aren’t you coming in?’
I drove back to Chris’s in silence. I can’t even answer him; all I can do is shake my head. Chris will want to talk. I can see that he has so many questions and I just don’t have all the answers. And I don’t want to voice the answers that I do have.
‘Don’t shut me out, Desi. I want to help you.’
‘There’s nothing to help me with. Angelo’s blown it all out of proportion.’ Even I can hear how lame that sounds.
‘Then how come you have completely shut down?’
God, there’s not enough air in this car.
‘Why do I get the feeling that there is this massive wall between us and I’m going to need a sledgehammer to break it down?’
I can’t answer him. I can’t even look at him.
----------14----------
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go into Chris’s apartment and face his questions, and the confused look in his eyes. I just left him there; I stayed in the car and wouldn’t budge when he tried to convince me to go in with him and talk. There were no words that I could use to explain that part of my life. It’s over. I want it to stay over. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it. I just want to pretend it never happened. In what twisted world would Chris even know someone from my bar days? The thought never even crossed my mind.
Eventually, Chris got out of the car, and I sped off so fast that I left skid marks. I can’t get the look on his face out of my head. Confused? Disappointed? Disgusted? I don’t know, and wasn’t going to stick around long enough to find out. I couldn’t go home though. My mother would know something was wrong if I went home so early and there was no way to explain this mess to her. There was only one place to go.
Ari excused himself to watch TV in the bedroom pretty quickly after my arrival. I’m such a bitch. Ricki and Ari have to plan their time together and here I am, landing on her doorstep and ruining their night for them. Although, strangely enough, neither of them were overly surprised to see me.
I know Ricki will be able to make this better for me. She’ll know what to do and say.
‘What happened, Des?’ We’re sitting on the couch sharing a bottle of wine.
‘Denny happened.’ Ricki looks confused. ‘It
was just supposed to be a night out with an old friend of Chris’s who he was going to do some consulting work for. You’ll never believe who the old friend was.’
‘Who?’
‘Ange Pana.’
‘Coffee shop Angelo? So? What’s the big deal? He’s just an old mate.’
I think Ricki might be suffering from selective amnesia. ‘He was a mate of Denny’s first, remember? And he’s an old mate who doesn’t know when to shut up. As soon as he saw me he just wanted to reminisce about old times, which included apologising for hooking me and Denny up and talking about the last time we were at his coffee shop.’
‘That’s not a bad thing, Des. This needed to come out.’
How can she say that?
‘Ricki, Chris does not need to know the gory details of my past. He doesn’t need to know that I am that fucked up that I would let Denny do that to me. He doesn’t need to know how pathetic I am. Maybe it’s better that it happened this way – it was bound to end sooner or later.’
‘Are you listening to yourself? You’re insane. You are blowing the best thing that has ever happened to you; pushing away a terrific guy because it possibly, maybe, might happen later on down the track.’
That’s not what I’m doing. I’m protecting Chris. He doesn’t need my baggage. He doesn’t need my crap.
‘Rick, I just don’t do the whole relationship thing like you do. I’m not made to be part of a couple. It’s not for me.’
‘You think the whole relationship thing is easy for me, Des? It’s a tactical manoeuvre for Ari and I to spend enough time together with me living out here and him being at home in Melbourne.’
I guess it can’t be easy with all the driving back and forth. But that’s just geography. This is so different. An express freeway can’t solve this.
‘You’re using this now as an escape. You’re scared shitless of getting hurt so you’re pushing him away first.’ I do not need this right now.
‘I’ve seen you guys together. I’ve seen how happy you’ve been since you’ve been together.’
Ricki, Ari, Chris and I usually end up meeting in the city on Friday nights and we always end up having a ball. We also have the occasional night in at Chris’s place, eating takeaway and drinking wine together. For some reason we never made it to Ricki’s place. Maybe I couldn’t give up my final hiding place.
‘I have never seen you this happy. Why would you run away from Chris and sabotage this, Des?’
‘He belongs with someone better, with someone beautiful and not messed up in the head.’ Someone who can tell him what he wants to hear.
‘You need to wake up and fix this before it’s too late. You are pushing away a terrific guy.’
And this terrific guy needs a terrific woman. Not me.
‘You think that the best way to protect yourself is to isolate yourself and shut people out of your life. If you do not sort this out, by the time you realise what you’ve done it’ll be too late.’
What the hell is she yelling at me for? Why should I expose myself to the risk of getting hurt? It’s bound to all go wrong at some point anyway; I’m just saving us the hassle later on, when it would be even harder to walk away.
‘He’s not Denny.’
I don’t have the energy to argue with Ricki. ‘I know he’s not Denny. But I’m scared. If I tell him what happened – tell him everything – he’ll never look at me the same way again.’ That little smile that appears on the corner of his mouth, the way he gets this cheeky little twinkle in his eye when he’s planning something, that’ll disappear. Now, instead of the twinkle there will be something else in his eyes. Sympathy? Shock? Disgust? I don’t think I could bear to see that in Chris’s eyes.
‘You need to trust him. You need to tell him the truth. Or else you’re going to lose him for good.’
I just can’t do that.
‘Des, we’ve known each other for most of our lives. I don’t even remember you and I not being friends. I have never seen you this happy before. I have never seen you just be yourself with a guy. And you’re going to throw that all away because you’re scared?’
‘It’s easy for you to say, it didn’t happen to you. You didn’t have to hide bruises; you didn’t have to pretend you worked out too hard at the gym to explain to everyone why you were stiff and sore. You weren’t the one who got told over and over again that this was your fault; that you did this and that if you had done what was asked of you none of this would have happened. And you’re not the one who believed it and stuck around for more.’
Why did I just say all that? I’ve made Ricki cry. I can’t cry, because if I cry then he wins, all over again, Denny wins.
‘You used the gym excuse on me and I never doubted you. I’m your best friend and I didn’t see what was happening.’
‘I was really good at covering up, Rick. I didn’t want you to see. It’s not your fault.’
‘You have to stop covering up, Des. You need to talk about this. You need to make this right.’
Isn’t that what I’m doing here?
‘You don’t need me this time, Des. As much as I love you, as much as I want to fix this for you, I can’t.’
‘I know. I need to take care of this myself.’
‘No – you need to take care of this with Chris. I know you love him. You need to tell him that you love him and show him that you trust him. Let him help you. Let him in.’
I spent the night at Ricki’s; I didn’t have the energy to drive home. I knew I had to face reality, but after a few glasses of wine and my talk with Ricki, I could no longer tell who was right and who was wrong. I still can’t. Ricki’s wrong – I’m not sabotaging this on purpose. Ricki’s right – I don’t remember ever being this happy. I don’t remember ever being able to just be ‘me’ with someone else. My grandmother always tells me to listen to my heart but I can’t figure out what it’s telling me. Maybe I just have to let it lead the way.
‘You’re back.’
This is what I get when I listen to my heart. It takes me to the one place my head tells me I shouldn’t be.
‘Can I come in?’ This is the first time I have ever felt like I have had to ask. I don’t like the way that feels.
As Chris leads me into the living room I can see how tired he is. He looks like he hasn’t slept and he definitely hasn’t shaved. I did this to him. You’re not supposed to hurt the people you care about. Even as we walk into the lounge, I can see that Chris is wound up as tight as a spring. He looks like he has so many questions but doesn’t know where to start.
‘I’m sorry, Chris.’ For hurting him, for letting Denny destroy something that has been so good, for not being the person Chris wants me to be.
‘What are you apologising for, Des?’
‘For dragging you into my crap. I never wanted … ’ I can’t even finish the thought. I never wanted Chris to know any of this. I never wanted anyone to know and now it’s all out there for the world to see and judge. ‘It all happened such a long time ago. It’s dead and buried.’
‘No it’s not, babe. If it was, you wouldn’t have bolted last night.’
‘I was just shocked, you know? Angelo was the last person I expected to see and then he just wouldn’t shut up.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me, Des? Why did I have to find out from motor mouth?’
‘I didn’t want anyone to ever know. It’s a part of my life that I’d rather pretend didn’t happen.’
‘Do you know what I did after you left? After I called Ricki and asked her to make sure you were okay?’
How does he know me so well? Instantly, he knew where I would go. No wonder Ricki and Ari weren’t surprised when I showed up. But do I want to know what happened next? It can’t be a good thing.
‘I got that bastard’s details from Angelo so we could track him down. I have a cousin in Athens who works in the recruitment office.’
Oh, God.
‘Just say the word, Des, and it’ll take him a year to walk prope
rly again.’
‘What good would that do, Chris? That’s not the sort of person you are. I’d never forgive myself if I turned you into that.’
‘It would be payback for you.’
‘I don’t want payback. I want for this to have never happened. I want for you to have never heard those words come out of Angelo’s mouth.’
‘I want to fix this for you, Des.’
‘You can’t.’ Not without the aid of time travel. ‘I have to take care of this myself. I thought I had; I thought that I had dealt with it, that I had buried it so deep that it would never see the light of day again. I never thought that what he did would find its way into our relationship. Denny ruins everything he touches. I never thought he would get in here, but he did.’
‘Nothing’s ruined, babe. You just need to let me in. I can’t help you if you don’t open up. You say you buried it, but you need to un-bury it now and we can cremate it together.’
I can’t believe I’m crying. I never cried once over that bastard, I would never give him that satisfaction, but now, with Chris’s arms around me, I can’t seem to stop. It’s like the floodgates have opened and there is a deluge coming.
‘He beat me up.’ There, I said it. ‘He treated me like shit because he screwed up his own life and when he couldn’t get any lower, he dragged me down by using me as a punching bag.’ I can’t stop now. I wonder if I can just stay in Chris’s arms forever and pretend that none of this ever happened? I wonder if he can hold me hard enough and long enough to squeeze out the bad memories?
‘Baby, I’m so sorry.’
‘Why are you sorry? I’m the one that should be sorry. Maybe I should just walk out of here now. You don’t need a basket case like me bringing you down.’ But he won’t let go of me.
‘You’re my basket case. And I’m not letting you go.’
‘Why do you even bother with me?’ I don’t understand it. I’m nothing special. Chris could do so much better than me. It wouldn’t be that hard. He wouldn’t even have to try. ‘You deserve the best.’
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