by Paula Weston
He watches me for a moment and then pulls out his phone. He flips through a few images, and then turns it to me. My breath catches. It’s Jude, smiling, with a box of beer on one shoulder. He’s walking towards the camera, wearing a Led Zeppelin t-shirt, untucked. I can’t see past his knees, but I’d put a week’s wages on him wearing combat boots. He has—had—dark hair like me, and it’s threatening to fall into his eyes. He looks different from how I remember him. Wilder somehow.
Rafa flicks his thumb across the screen and another image comes into view. This time it’s the two of them, shoulder to shoulder, with a packed stadium behind them. A footy match. They’re both laughing. Another, Jude and Rafa again, pretty blonde girls either side of them, trying to force their way into the frame. The girls are posing, Rafa’s brooding at the camera and Jude’s laughing at him.
I don’t realise I’m touching the screen until the image flicks off and another appears. Rafa hesitates and then lets me take the phone. This one is of Jude sitting at a table, outdoors somewhere. There’s an orange-streaked sky behind him and a calm sea. He’s wearing a beanie; his hair is sticking out underneath. His head and shoulders fill the frame, but he’s not looking at the camera. Something offscreen is holding his gaze. He’s thinking, trying to figure something out. It’s the quiet Jude most people never got to see. He looks about seventeen, not long before the accident, but I can’t work out when any of these could have been taken.
I can’t look away. Seeing new images of Jude…I know it’s going to rip my heart out sometime soon, but right now it feels like a gift.
‘Can you send me these?’
‘If you want.’
I can’t place his accent, which is rare for me.
‘When did you last see him?’
He’s measuring me again, like it’s a trick question. He swigs his beer. ‘Just before you two took off.’ He looks me over. It’s not subtle. ‘Were you hurt?’
I nod.
‘How bad?’
‘Bad enough.’ I’m glad my hair’s down. It’s long enough to cover the back of my neck.
He raises his eyebrows.
I sigh. ‘Broken leg, two busted ribs, twenty stitches in my neck, bruised spleen, huge lump on my head.’ My fingers go to the spot where the lump was. It’s long gone, but the habit remains. ‘How come I’ve never heard of you?’
He runs his thumb down the length of his beer bottle. It’s very distracting. ‘You tell me.’
I look straight at him, at those green eyes, and I’m taken aback again by how familiar he is. I must have met him before. How else could I have pictured him so clearly? But why have I been dreaming of him?
‘I lost some things, after the accident. There’s a few gaps here and there.’
In truth, the details of my life before the night of the crash are still in a fog. Leaving school, all the shit with my parents, it’s all sitting there under a layer of numbness I’m not ready to deal with.
Rafa leans forward, and I smell sandalwood, the faintest trace of it.
‘So, what are you doing’—he looks around—’here?’
‘It’s peaceful,’ I say without thinking. ‘I like it here. Everything’s simple.’
‘And how long do you plan on keeping things simple?’
‘As long as I can.’
‘I find that hard to believe.’
He settles back and the sandalwood is replaced by beer and wood-fired pizza, and a hint of frangipani blossom from somewhere outside. I watch, fascinated, as he tears the label off the bottle without looking. He rips neat long strips and then absently pastes them on the table in a row, like soldiers. Exactly how Jude used to.
For once, I’m thinking about Jude without it feeling like I’m swallowing wet cement.
‘You wanted to talk about Jude?’
He nods. ‘Your shout, though.’
I raise my eyebrows, but go to the bar. Maggie is still with the surfer. He’s pulled on a t-shirt and tied back his bleached blond hair. She’s always polite to the guys who hit on her, but she actually seems interested in whatever he’s saying. She touches his arm when she speaks, her eyes bright.
Simon serves me. ‘Who’s that?’ he asks.
I follow his gaze and meet Rafa’s. ‘Friend of Jude’s.’
I go to pay, and find Simon staring at me. He’s never heard me say Jude’s name before, though Maggie told him the story, and I guess it’s taken him by surprise. ‘You okay?’
‘I’m fine.’ I avoid his eyes and take the beers back to the table.
‘New boyfriend?’ Rafa asks.
‘He’s on the shortlist.’
‘Brave man.’
I fold my hands on the table and wait.
‘You seriously want me just to talk about Jude?’
The truth is, I don’t know if I want him to or not, but I nod anyway. Rafa regards me. It takes him a few seconds to begin speaking.
‘We were in Egypt once,’ he says, ‘and Jude ate kushari from a roadside stall. Typical Jude, you know. Eat anything.’
I picture it as the story unfolds: an explosive stomach bug on a donkey ride. I’m listening, but the distance between me and Rafa is so much wider than the table separating us. I can’t stop thinking: I don’t remember Jude ever going to Egypt.
Rafa breaks into a grin as he describes Jude paying a couple of Egyptian pounds for a handful of toilet paper in a Third World loo, and Rafa having to pay extra so Jude could stay in there until it was safe to come out.
‘He was pale and sweaty. God, I laughed. But he cleaned himself up and still managed to pick up that night. The man had a gift. Here—’
With a few flicks of his thumb, Rafa brings up a photo of two tall guys on tiny donkeys in a dry landscape. A boy in a white dishdasha robe stands next to them, a huge smile on his face. They look ridiculous with their legs almost touching the ground. Both are wearing caps and sunglasses, but I’d know Jude anywhere, and the other rider is unmistakably Rafa. It doesn’t make any sense. Just how much did I lose in that car wreck?
I can’t focus. I need space. ‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ I tell Rafa. I go to the ladies and splash water on my face. It doesn’t help.
Rafa watches me walk back through the crowded room and I feel heat climbing up from my chest. ‘You’re really going to keep this up?’ he asks when I sit back down.
I have no idea what he’s getting at, and when I don’t answer, he leans in closer.
‘What about if I do this?’ He runs his fingers through my hair, not quite far enough to discover the scar at the nape of my neck. It feels good. So good, I sigh.
With his hand still in my hair, he brings his lips down to my ear. ‘You’re not going to hit me?’
‘Not yet.’
‘What about if I do this?’ He kisses my neck, just under my ear, his warm tongue against my skin. I can’t help myself. I shudder with the pleasure of it. It’s been so long since I let anyone touch me. I don’t even mind that it’s my neck.
He pulls back, watches my eyes. He’s the type of guy who never goes home alone, but it’s as if he’s expecting rejection. From me. It’s endearing. I put my glass on the table and touch his lips with cool fingers. They’re as soft as they look.
I kiss him.
He kisses me back, but he’s not really committed. It’s like he’s waiting for something. I run my fingers over his arms, pull him to me. His grip tightens on my hair and his arm comes around my waist. He’s not waiting anymore. It’s all heat and breath and tongue. I’ve never been kissed like it.
Finally, after what feels like an indecently long time, we pull apart. His eyes are ocean-dark.
‘I had no idea you were this good.’ He’s breathing fast, but then so am I, and my head is a little swimmy, between the beer, the noise of the bar and the heat in my body. The night air is heavy with blossom and sandalwood.
‘I think it’s time to get you home.’ Maggie is beside me, pushing a half-full bottle out of my reach. I didn’t notice her
coming. ‘Big day tomorrow. You have to work, remember?’
Rafa takes his hands from my waist. It’s not what I want. What I want is to take him back to my room and see what else I might be good at.
He finishes my beer. ‘Work where?’ He’s still watching me closely.
‘The library,’ Maggie says, steering me off the barstool.
‘You work in a library?’
‘Certainly do.’ My legs are a little shaky so I keep hanging on to Maggie.
He throws his head back and laughs. ‘That’s priceless.’ He leans in and kisses me again, tongue and all, right in front of Maggie. I feel him smiling before he pulls back. ‘See you soon, Gaby!’
He disappears into the crowd, every girl he passes checking him out.
‘Oh, babe.’ Maggie squeezes my arm. ‘What’s gotten into you?’
I don’t answer because, honestly, I don’t know.
I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE THINKING
I wake up seedy. The pain in the base of my skull is a dull throb rather than a steady pounding, so I guess I should be grateful.
Maggie is in the kitchen when I shuffle in, reading the paper and drinking dark juice. Beetroot and carrot. My stomach turns.
‘So this is what tall, dark and handsome would have woken up to? You definitely owe me.’
I look down. I’m wearing grey trackpants, a baggy white t-shirt with some sort of food stain down the front— probably spaghetti sauce from two nights ago—and my hair’s a bird nest. ‘He was blond,’ I say, slipping into the chair across from her, ‘not dark.’
‘I wasn’t talking about his hair.’ She smiles, but she’s not as playful as she’s making out. Maggie isn’t good at conflict, but if she’s got something to say, she’ll find a way to say it. It usually takes her a while to get the words right in her head, so I’m guessing she’s spent the last hour stewing over whatever it is she wants to say to me. It’s a wonder she hasn’t pulled out her craft bag—not that she needs to knit another scarf she’ll never wear in this climate.
‘Every second guy in that bar has made a play for you over the past nine months,’ she starts. ‘You show no sign of interest. And then along comes this guy, and you go from snarling at him to sticking your tongue down his throat in the space of an hour. In front of Simon!’
She’s known Simon since kindergarten. It’s no secret she hopes we’ll hook up.
‘What’s going on, Gaby?’
I shrug. ‘It just happened.’
She closes the newspaper, folds it and pushes it aside. ‘Is this a grief thing?’
‘Maybe. I don’t know.’
‘But why him?’
Thinking about Rafa brings a flush of warmth across my chest. God, I was ready to drag him home last night. I don’t even know his last name, or where he’s from. Or, now that I think about it, how he knew where to find me.
I shrug again. ‘Did you see him?’
She nods. ‘Oh, he’s got it all happening, all right. I just think you might want to ease yourself back into the dating pool. Not throw yourself in the shark tank.’
I laugh. I can’t help it. She so rarely gets this annoyed.
‘Does this have anything to do with that story of yours?’
I stop laughing. ‘What are you talking about?’ I get up and go to the espresso machine.
‘You’ve been writing that violent stuff, and now you’re all over some guy we’ve never seen before. I didn’t know that was your type.’
‘It’s not.’ I scoop coffee out of the tin and pack it down in the basket.
‘But you’re going to see him again?’
‘It’s a small town, and you did tell him where I work.’ I start frothing milk, and the noise ends the conversation for a while. I make us each a cappuccino and then sit down again. Maggie doesn’t even notice the fern leaf I’ve made in the foam.
‘Is it because he knows Jude? Is that why you could talk to him?’
Finally, the light comes on. Maggie isn’t worried about my sex life; she’s hurt that I can talk about my brother with a complete stranger, and not with her.
I met Maggie on my second day at Pan Beach, when she dropped a plate of scrambled eggs on the floor beside me in the Green Bean. Instead of losing it, she just laughed. I helped clean it up and she gave me breakfast on the house. Before I knew it, we were talking about travel and books and she was loaning me her well-worn copy of The Book Thief. Then she put in a good word for me at the library and talked me into moving out of the backpackers and in with her. I know it was tough for her to leave her mum. Her dad had died only the year before, quickly and horribly from cancer. But she needed to breathe. She told me she couldn’t afford to move out on her own, which I knew wasn’t true, even back then. We got the bungalow and didn’t care about the minor annoyances: how tiny it was, the shower-head with the pressure of a soak hose, the front door that sticks every time it rains, and the stove with only three working gas burners. I’ve always been grateful.
I take a deep breath, wanting to give her something.
‘Every time I think of Jude, it’s like someone’s stabbing me in the heart.’ I tap my breastbone with two fingers. I feel the tears coming and for once I don’t force them away. ‘I can’t stand it, so I avoid it. But Rafa…he knows Jude, and he misses him and, I don’t know, it was a bit easier because he’s grieving too.’ I turn away before the tears spill down my cheeks.
Maggie comes over to my side of the table and puts her arms around me. She and her mum are mad huggers. I don’t remember being hugged all that much before I came here. It used to make me uncomfortable when they did it, but now I don’t mind so much. Even so, Maggie keeps it short, giving me a tight squeeze, and then letting go.
‘I’m sorry. I’m such a crap friend,’ she says.
I pull myself together. ‘Maggie, you are many things, but a crap friend is not one of them.’ I smile at her, and I mean it. I need for us to be okay.
‘Really?’
‘Absolutely.’
She smiles.
I check the clock. ‘We’d better get ready.’ I throw down my coffee and race her for the shower. It’s only when I’m under the dribbling hot water that it hits me: I slept through the night without dreaming of hell-beasts. Or Matt.
FINGERNAILS
The Pan Beach library and gallery looms over the esplanade, its gleaming glass façade reflecting the sky and rolling surf across the road. A towering wave sculpture on the roof casts an abstract shadow over the beach every afternoon. The centre opened just before I hit town, and it still sparks arguments about whether it has put Pan Beach on the cultural map or sold its soul to the sea-change millionaires whose mansions dominate the headland. It’s my haven. All those books downstairs, the art upstairs, and the smell of freshly ground coffee coming through the window that connects the Green Bean to the library.
But this morning I sense the panic as soon as the automatic glass doors close behind me.
All but one of the couches around the window to the Green Bean have been pushed aside, and about thirty-five people are sitting in plastic chairs, waiting. On the lone couch is Jacques, whose exhibition opened upstairs last night. He’s not supposed to be sitting alone.
I find Jane, our pregnant head librarian, with her head in the toilet.
‘You have to take the session,’ she says.
‘Uh-huh. Jacques is a freak. Find someone else.’
She rests her cheek on the toilet seat, her face pale and sweaty. ‘You know more about art than anyone else here.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Last week you debated the differences between the Uffizi and Accademia galleries like you’d spent a year in Florence.’ Jane wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘Just do it, please.’
Normally, I’d stand my ground, but if there’s no way she can interview Jacques without throwing up all over him, as entertaining as that might be…
I refill her water bottle. ‘Where are your questions?’
&nbs
p; Two minutes later, I’m on the couch with Jacques. Mid-sixties. Lanky. Makes objects from human hair. And toenails and fingernails. Pretty much anything discarded from the human body, even dead skin. Upstairs is a bizarre array of items—cups, a birdcage, parchment, soap and, most disturbingly, a wedding dress—all made from things that were once part of the human body.
The gathering is a mix of familiar faces—all wearing more black than is usual in Pan Beach, some with notepads and pens—and a few backpackers attracted by the free orange juice and muffins. I clear my throat, welcome Jacques, and everyone settles down.
‘So, Jacques,’ I begin. ‘How do you source your materials?’
He nods, expecting the question. ‘My niece has a day spa. The things I use to create my objects are all a byproduct of her work.’
‘A local day spa?’ There are three in and around town. A perfectly manicured woman in the front row looks ill, probably wondering if she’s inadvertently featured in Jacques’ creations.
‘No, no. It’s in the city.’ He sits forward, wanting a tougher question. But I’m not done with this one yet.
‘Was she at all concerned about what you planned to do with the materials?’
He smiles and eases himself back against the couch. ‘It’s interesting you assume she would be repulsed by the request. That goes to the very heart of the nature of my work.’
‘I think it’s a valid question.’
‘Of course you do. But you are young, and perhaps you can’t see beyond your limited experience to think laterally.’
I smile back at him. ‘So, my question isn’t legitimate because I’m young? I thought your work was meant to speak to everyone, not just those experienced enough to understand it.’
Jacques sits back up. ‘That’s not what I meant.’ He touches his bald head.
‘Is there any of you in your work?’ I glance up at his head and there are a few muffled laughs.
‘Would it upset you if I said yes?’
I write about disembowelment and beheadings. What do I care what some creep does with his nail clippings? But what I say is, ‘Not at all. It’s one of the great things about being young: having an open mind.’ Although, quietly, I hope that if he’s used his own hair, it’s come from above his navel.