Tremble

by Tobsha Learner

  He felt a twinge in his balls. It reminded him that he hadn’t had sex for over a month. He gazed out his office window across the river that snaked lazily through the city. Perhaps he would see Amanda that night—what harm could it do? It might even take his mind off his growing anxieties. He shouted to his assistant to put a call through.

  They lay across his fake satin sheets, Amanda’s long torso arranged perfectly as if she was conscious of the way her body fell. Gavin was convinced that she was: everything Amanda did seemed calculated. The twenty-three-year-old was almost as tall as he, an ex-gymnast and an aspiring model. Amanda taught four Pilates classes a day, except on Sundays when she practiced Ashtanga yoga in the morning and rode a horse in the afternoon. In other words she had absolute control over the lithe small-breasted body that lay like a reclining python beside Gavin’s own naked body. Feeling a little vulnerable about his thickening perimeter, the property developer pulled up the sheet.

  “Why cover up? You’re beautiful,” Amanda purred in that irritating little-girl voice she adopted whenever they’d had sex—only in this case they hadn’t.

  “Don’t patronize me,” Gavin replied, then immediately regretted his harsh tone. It wasn’t her fault he was distracted. In truth he’d never fully engaged with his women, even his wife. He could never relate to descriptions he’d read in books about the emotional surrender men felt at falling into the body of the woman they loved. He was always a little removed, as if his consciousness was floating above his body, a small helium balloon jerked along by his galloping penis.

  Gavin looked at Amanda’s rippling abdominal muscles that undulated toward her naked pubis…perhaps his eye was too cold, too critical.

  “Did you notice?” Amanda purred. Gavin glanced at her again, wondering if he’d missed a body piercing or a new haircut.

  “The total Brazilian, silly!” she giggled, pointing to her crotch. “I did it for you—not a hair left.”

  “It’s okay,” he grunted, wondering if he should raise the question that hung over them, thickening the air like humidity.

  Amanda rolled onto her stomach and faced Gavin’s back. The three scratches had already begun to form thin white scars. Could they be war wounds from a secret lover?

  “Gav, how did you get those?” She ran her cool fingers across the bumpy ridges.

  Panicking slightly Gavin searched wildly for an explanation.

  “New suit I had altered—silly bugger of a tailor left a pin in. Why?”

  “There isn’t anyone else? I mean, if there was you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”

  He kissed her shoulder. “Baby, of course there isn’t. I promise. Listen, I’m sorry about…” He couldn’t bring himself to actually say the words. Under the sheet his flaccid penis lolled against his thigh like an accusation.

  “It’s okay, I know it happens a lot to men your age,” Amanda murmured, curling up under his arm. Spoken like a true twenty-three-year-old, Gavin thought, fighting the urge to run from the room.

  “Yeah well, it’s never happened to this man before.”

  “It’s the divorce, it must be really stressful,” Amanda continued, unaware that she was moving in a very dangerous trajectory. She’d tried everything—fellatio, blowing on his balls, a full body massage, even tickling—but he’d failed to grow hard, and frankly she was feeling a little demoralized herself. Maybe he’d stopped finding her attractive. She sneaked a look at herself in the full-length mirror opposite—was that possible, she wondered.

  “You don’t love me anymore,” she whined, her guard slipping. An uncharacteristic tiny pool of sweat began to gather in the hollow of her hip.

  “I do, baby, I do,” he answered automatically, already calculating ways of getting rid of her before nightfall. She was so perfect with her immaculately plucked and waxed eyebrows, her manicured fingernails clipped to just the right length and varnished mauve. Originally he’d been attracted to her because of the boyish figure that seemed to defy its own femininity with breasts that were hardly there, hips more reminiscent of a young boy’s than a woman’s, a body that still dominated over nature and the onslaught of gravity. She was always impeccably clean, never seemed to perspire, and her scent was a very faint lemony fragrance that didn’t even hint at the fruity earthiness that even his pristine wife exuded at certain times of the month. In short, Amanda seemed unnatural and this was precisely what Gavin had loved about her. But now? Now he couldn’t even get an erection.

  “Mandy baby, look, I’m dealing with some very big issues right now—you know, men’s stuff I can’t really share. But listen, remember that holiday I promised you—New Orleans? We’ll go there in the summer. In the meanwhile, let’s take a break from each other for a couple of weeks while I get sorted out, eh?”

  “You’re not leaving me, are you?” She sat up suddenly and her blow-dried raven hair shiny with product—Gavin had always loved the slightly chemical smell of it—slid around her shoulders, just like in a television commercial.

  “No, I promise. I just need to get some distance to really be able to give myself to you.”

  He wondered how she’d believe such bullshit, but Amanda, looking at him with wide black eyes, seemed to hang on his every word.

  “I understand. Men are like that,” she said. “I read about it in that American book. They need to retreat into their cave and then they spring back at you like a ball at the end of a piece of elastic. Well, Gav, I’m here for you when you’re ready to bounce back,” she announced with a very serious air.

  Just to bounce up would be good at this point, Gavin thought darkly, and reached over to hand her back her clothes.

  Saturday Honeywell’s house was one of those large Queenslanders encircled by a wide wooden verandah. Balanced precariously on stilts it looked as if it hadn’t undergone any renovations since it was built, which, Gavin judged, must have been a good hundred years ago. He pulled up the parking brake and rested his head on the edge of the car window. The block was substantial: it could hold two residential apartment buildings with parking if you knocked the house down and extended as far as the fence boundary, he noted, already calculating the profit margin.

  He got out and steeled himself. It looked far worse than he’d imagined. He had been hoping that Ms.—God, he hated it when women called themselves that—Ms. Honeywell might be one of those neat scientists who pride themselves on their organizational skills. He had tried to console himself with the thought that he might finally have located someone he could feel safe confiding in, but this—this fecund jungle, this obscene waste of good building land—was almost too much to bear. He hitched his trousers up and walked heavily toward the front gate. There were the remnants of a large vegetable patch with a few struggling ears of corn and several bean plants. The rest had gone to seed and been left to sprawl across the garden path, some hardy offshoots even climbing up between the wooden slats of the verandah, which, he noted, was in a state of irredeemable disrepair.

  The front door had a brass knocker in the shape of a turnip root. Obscenely twisted, it looked suspiciously turdlike. Gavin, thoroughly revolted, had to shut his eyes as he lifted it to knock. The heavy banging resounded through the wooden house.

  Immediately several dogs began to bark. Gavin heard the patter of tiny paws, then the unmistakable clunk of human feet. Three minutes later the door was flung open.

  “Nah, the place is not for sale.”

  A mass of red hair, small suspicious piercing blue eyes, and some kind of green and gold bandanna flashed before him, then the door was slammed in his face. Determined, he knocked again, then shouted through the copper letter slot that looked disconcertingly vaginal.

  “Ms. Honeywell!? I’m not a real estate agent! I need to talk to you, it’s urgent! My name is Gavin Tetherhook—”

  The door was flung open again, catching Gavin still bent to the letter slot.

  “The Gavin Tetherhook?”

  Saturday Honeywell stood with her hands on her hips, her ample
figure swathed in a black cotton kaftan embroidered with the stars of the southern hemisphere and a local indigenous slogan which, translated, read Fat White Rich Woman—a fact Saturday was ignorant of, but had she known would have found vastly amusing.

  A fog of patchouli, stale sweat, and coconut oil (Saturday marinated her hair in it once a week) almost knocked Gavin off his feet. From her lower lip hung what appeared to be a rolled-up vine leaf, the “cigarette” emitting a strong smell of cloves. The paleobotanist exhaled a lungful of smoke in Gavin’s face. The property developer stumbled back, then, recovering, drew himself up to his full height. He was dismayed to see that Saturday towered over him by a good inch—which made her six foot five.

  “The one and the same,” he said curtly and handed her his card. He was further disgusted by her grimy fingernails, all of which appeared well-chewed. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing at the thing she was smoking, “pot?”

  “Unfortunately not. It’s a beedie—a clove cigarette very popular in Indonesia,” she replied, staring down at his card. “Well, fuck me dead.” She looked back up at Gavin, a withering appraisal that seemed to him to encapsulate both strong disapproval and wry humor. “The enemy was demeaned to visit the Indians, so to speak,” she continued. “Do you know who I am?”

  “Yeah, Saturday Honeywell, paleobotanist.”

  “And head of the committee to save the Kellen wetlands. Why the hell would you be visiting me?”

  “I need help.”

  Surprised, she smiled slowly, already calculating the ways she might take out her revenge on the property developer, who, after all, had been the bane of most of her professional life. She looked more closely at the immaculately groomed man standing before her. He was better looking in the flesh than in the photos, she observed ruefully. One of those genetically blessed individuals with an obvious penchant for control, but there was a slight fragility behind the eyes, an anxious knotting of the hands that betrayed a hidden vulnerability that made her hesitate for a moment, curious about what could be disturbing such a bastion of confidence. Then the memory of Gavin’s flushed smug face adorning the front page of the Courier-Mail after winning the right to develop the Kellen wetlands floated into her mind.

  “You? Don’t make me laugh.” She began closing the door again but Gavin had already placed his foot in the doorway.

  “Please, I’m desperate.”

  “No way—desperate?”

  “It’s an issue I have no understanding of, a supernatural issue. Stanley Jervis of the Queensland Museum said you might be able to help.”

  “Supernatural? You’re joking.”

  “I wish I was.”

  Saturday paused, reappraising the situation. If he was genuine and there was some problem, the knowledge of such a vulnerability could be very useful the next time Mr. Tetherhook decided to develop an environmentally sensitive site. Concealing her revulsion, she held open the door.

  The living room was lined wall to wall with books whose only organizing principle seemed to be by dint of association, so that the feminist tome Women Who Run With The Wolves sat next to Mother Dog—A Treatise on the Matriarchy of Wolves, while The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas nestled happily next to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. A dusty Victorian tome lay on the floor, its leather cover embossed with the intriguing title The Orgy—Pompeii’s Hidden Glory: A Catalogue Collated by Mr. Alistair Sizzlehorn Esquire. Gavin took heart; perhaps Ms. Honeywell wasn’t as politically correct as he’d feared.

  If you could judge people by the way they filed their books, Ms. Honeywell’s life had a frenetic but semilogical order, Gavin thought, refusing the offer to sit down as every surface appeared to be covered with gray balls of cat fur. The felines responsible lounged regally on every available surface, six all counted, moggies of varying sizes. The cats watched Gavin with a supercilious arrogance bordering on outright disdain. Not that Gavin cared; he was too busy trying to ignore the fact that Ms. Honeywell evidently preferred not to wear underpants, a detail made obvious by the way she had collapsed into a huge battered leather armchair, her kaftan riding up to her knees. Oblivious, Saturday Honeywell stared at her bête noire, who, until this moment, she had assumed had no idea of her existence.

  “Oh, for God’s sake sit down!” she barked, concealing her own nervousness with aggression, an unfortunate characteristic that had not helped her popularity among her fellow botanists.

  “Sorry, but I’m…” Gavin floundered, the darkened crevice between Ms. Honeywell’s legs hovering at his peripheral vision like some horrific demon whose face he dared not look into.

  “Allergic to cats? I thought so, you look like the type who thinks his shit doesn’t stink! Erasmus—hop off!”

  Saturday threw a large tome at what Gavin had thought was a statue of a large cane toad. The amphibian in question—indeed a huge horny cane toad of some vintage—croaked angrily, then sprang off the wicker rocking chair he had been squatting on and bounced wetly into the recesses of the shadowy room. The cats remained unconcerned, Gavin observed.

  “Erasmus, in case you didn’t know, was a great philosopher, the early father of humanism—not that you would care, being the local embodiment of the Antichrist and everything that places profit over people,” Saturday continued smugly.

  Gavin perched himself delicately on the edge of the rocking chair, his feet firmly planted before him as ballast.

  “Now listen, girlie,” he began, his patience snapping.

  “Girlie! I’m forty years old, mate. That makes me a woman, which you’d know if I sat on your face—not that you’d ever get the pleasure!” she fired back.

  Momentarily stunned by the image, Gavin leaned back. Immediately the rocking chair tipped in a deep lunge, sending him into a rocking motion that instantly diminished his status further.

  “I’m not here to have a bloody debate about eco politics, feminism, or some ancient codger who liked people, I just need to talk to an expert!” he bellowed, rocking violently out of control.

  “Shouldn’t you be talking to an exorcist rather than a botanist?”

  “Well, it’s both a supernatural and environmental problem.”

  “Impossible!”

  “Is it?” Gavin’s challenging tone made Saturday soften.

  “What have you got to show me?”

  “This.” The property developer finally managed to steady himself and, with a dramatic flourish, pulled out the illustration of the leaf he’d stolen from the library. Saturday glanced thoughtfully at the held-out page, then snatched it, lifted to her nose a pair of huge red-rimmed spectacles hanging off a chain around her neck, and peered at the image.

  “So it’s a Dicroidium, a rather common plant from the Mesozoic era some 225,000,000 years ago—what’s this got to do with you?”

  “I’ve got this dumb idea that this and some other very strange shit is somehow all coming together and attacking my mind…well, my senses really. So if you picked up that phone right now and called mental health services I wouldn’t blame you,” he finished, his feet firmly anchored back on the frayed rug with the immortal phrase Yes, I am Woman, hear me roar woven into it.

  Saturday Honeywell leaned forward. To Gavin’s immediate relief her kaftan fell back over her knees. She reached across and took one of Gavin’s hands between her own. Somewhere in his shocked mind Gavin dimly registered the fact that her hands were the same size as his.

  “You poor little man,” she said in a voice Gavin decided to interpret as sincere—which was exactly the effect Saturday intended. “You really are being haunted.”

  And for the first time in over a month Gavin felt that at last he had found a confidante.

  They sat in front of the computer screen in the corner of the living room. Saturday’s technology was surprisingly up to date, and, as Gavin watched her fingers dance across the keyboard, it was evident to him that she lived up to her reputation as one of the country’s top paleobotanists. She had carefully noted down every singl
e encounter he described into a notebook covered in cane-toad skin, quizzing him on various minutiae: the precise sound of his aural hallucinations, the places they occurred, circumstances leading up to the event. All of which was immensely reassuring to Gavin. Maybe he wasn’t insane; maybe there was a genuine reason, even some natural phenomenon, that would explain everything away, he thought hopefully as he scrutinized her every keystroke.

  He perched close by on a stool she’d pulled up for him. Her curly locks, which radiated out like the epicenter of some storm, presented a curious enigma for Gavin. Normally he hated messy hair on a woman, particularly when it was as defiantly unruly as this. But somehow, as the not unpleasant drone of her voice listed all megaflora of the Mesozoic era, the whorls of each curl proved a source of fascination.

  “What I’d suggest, looking at the body of evidence, is that we create a panorama of the Mesozoic forest on the computer and see if we come up with anything you recognize. How’s that sound, Gav—I can call you Gav, right?”

  Gavin’s concentration snapped back; he liked the way she said “we.” It was always “I” when he talked about work, but her “we” felt warm and maternal. It made him feel safe.

  “You can actually do that?”

  “Sure, I designed some software myself: Honeywell’s Worlds—not very original, I know, but I’ve got several enviros that cover that period.”

  As she leaned forward and slipped a disc into her zip drive Gavin couldn’t help but notice her pendulous breasts that hung completely unfettered beneath the thin cotton. She’d have a figure like one of those early caveman goddesses, he thought, remembering a history project his daughter had brought home one night. Then found himself wondering if she had a lover and, if so, whether it was a man or a woman.

  “No, I’m not gay,” Saturday said out loud, eyes on the screen as she worked her way through a variety of landscapes. Gavin, unable to help himself, emitted a small gasp.

  Saturday chuckled. “Relax, I’m only telepathic when it comes to myself and sex.”