Chasing Chris Campbell

by Genevieve Gannon

  A photo of her and a curly-haired boy appeared, with the caption: This is Adnan. He’s great.

  An email had arrived by the time I got to my flat. (Silvie left her laptop on the coffee table for me.) Cass wrote that she was smitten. Zach had been selected to represent the school in the state running meet, and our friend’s short film was being screened at a festival in Sydney next month.

  One more thing, I wasn’t sure if I should tell you, but Mum ran into Michael at the supermarket the other day. She said he looked awful.

  I felt a spasm of guilt. I still hadn’t written to him. I replied to Cass, then started composing an email to Michael. But it was late, and by midnight I’d only come up with two sentences: I’m glad to hear things are good with you. And: Things are good with me too.

  I closed Silvie’s laptop figuring I’d think of something to say by morning. But I didn’t feel like sleeping. The thought of Michael waiting for my reply and getting nothing was gnawing at me.

  There was the noise of a key in the lock. An elfin Silvie entered with a skinny guy in a Spiderman costume. He removed his mask to reveal a red-haired Peter Parker with a narrow nose and full lips.

  ‘You’re up.’ Silvie was smiling. ‘This is my housemate, Violet,’ she told Spiderman, whose real name was Brett.

  I tried not to be overcome by envy as they entwined their fingers and smiled secret smiles.

  ‘It’s so nice to meet you,’ I said. ‘How about some tea?’ I went to the kitchen to boil the kettle.

  ‘Violet has a very important date tomorrow night,’ Silvie said when we were settled with our cups in our hands. ‘Any tips on how to seduce him?’

  Spiderman shrugged. ‘Just be yourself. I used to do all sorts of things to impress girls. But all I really wanted was a property nerd who loved comic books as much as me.’ Brett put his hand on Silvie’s.

  ‘She is great.’ I grinned at my friend.

  After Brett had gone to bed Silvie snuck out of her room and threw her arms around me.

  ‘Thanks for tonight,’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t do anything.’

  ‘Yes, you did. You were so welcoming to Brett. You helped me not to be so nervous. And it’s not just tonight. I used to get really lonely here with only Jordan’s things for company. I’m so glad you moved in.’

  ‘Me too. Hey, next weekend you should come with me to this great skeleton bar I found. You’ll love it.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ said Silvie.

  I went to sleep content, thinking that even if nothing happened with Chris, things weren’t so bad. But I still dabbed on some eye-cream and painted my fingernails fresh for the following night. Just in case.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘Have you still not read that?’ Silvie demanded as she buttered some toast. Spiderman had left early and she was slopping around in purple pyjamas, looking sleepy and content.

  I sat at the dining room table staring at my phone, wishing the envelope would disappear. I had woken to the sound of a text message from Chris. I dared not look at it, scared he would be cancelling.

  ‘Just open it.’ She stole the phone out of my hands. ‘Dear Violet, you are vile and I never want to see you again,’ she read.

  ‘What? Give me that.’ I lunged at her.

  ‘It can’t be worse than that, right?’

  I snatched my mobile back and opened the message. An imaginary but still very strong vice clamped down on my chest as I did so. But it was all okay. He was just giving me the details of the restaurant.

  ‘You need to relax,’ Silvie said, biting into her toast.

  I nodded and tried to force myself to swallow some coffee. ‘I’m just scared something is going to happen to prevent me from seeing him,’ I said.

  A new blue dress was hanging in my room, with the flesh-toned bra hooked around the coat hanger neck like an avant garde necklace. Shoes stood patiently beneath. Everything was prepared.

  ‘Besides, I don’t feel well,’ I said. ‘I didn’t get much sleep.’

  Silvie pressed my hand. ‘It will be fine. It’s just dinner.’

  ‘I know,’ I took a deep breath. ‘I just feel a little overwhelmed. It’s been a huge month.’

  I went into our spotless bathroom where I kept a one litre bottle of hand sanitiser, and squeezed a dollop onto my palms. My eyes looked red. I leaned forward and pulled up my lids up to examine them.

  Spiderman was the reason I hadn’t slept. With his thin nose and round glasses, he had reminded me of Michael. I’d tossed and turned, remembering when Michael had looked at me the way Silvie’s date had looked at her. Only two months ago I was thinking about marrying him. Now I was about to go out to dinner with someone else. What if Chris wanted to kiss me? What if he wanted more? Imagining a life with Chris was one thing, actually taking that step and closing the door on Michael was another.

  I opened the bathroom cupboard and found a bottle of Silvie’s industrial grade gothic concealer and spread some over the bags under my eyes.

  Around 4 am I had crept out of bed and opened the laptop on the coffee table. It was awful of me to have neglected Michael’s email for so long. A deep feeling of guilt was pulsating in my gut, like a giant tumour that was driving up my blood pressure and squashing my other organs.

  ‘Oh God, I hope I don’t have a tumour,’ I whispered as I clicked into my email account.

  I wrote to him about Hong Kong and India and the dancing naked German. I listed the beautiful places I’d seen, the junks, the markets, and the view from Victoria Peak. I told him about Goa and my burns and the Qutab Minar. I was careful to avoid any reference to Harry, but it was difficult to talk about India without mentioning the rumpled, friendly companion I’d travelled with.

  I hope you’re well. I wrote, and signed it, Violet.

  I stared at the letters on the screen. They seemed so lovelessly civil. Almost procedural, like something you’d receive from the Tax Department.

  I added an ‘X’ to soften the tone.

  Then, in a moment of desperate craziness I’d opened up Zelda Sunspot’s webpage and read my horoscope for Sunday.

  Aquarius: Mars is in your financial sector this month, making money your focus. Work hard and rewards will follow. A family sadness may threaten to sway you from your path. But doors never close without windows opening. Your lucky colour is green.

  I immediately hated myself for opening her page. I returned to my bed and wondered if I had any green underpants I could wear for my date. I rolled over on my pretty new sheets. The thick padding on the pillow covers was soft and comforting but there was a niggling feeling that wouldn’t let go. Like someone was poking around in a backroom of my brain. Cass had slapped an embargo on all contact after I’d responded to her email with nine text messages.

  You’re supposed to be making new friends! Go and ask them. Trust me! x

  I got up again, padded into the lounge room and sat down to write.

  Dear Harry,

  Sorry I haven’t been in contact, but my owl has had an injured wing. How’s Sydney? Did you know I’ve never been there? But as a Melburnian, this is hardly surprising. Sydneysiders are our sworn enemies after all …

  The sun was rising when I’d finally tiptoed back to my bed and found slumber. Now, staring at my haggard self in the mirror, I cursed the laptop for keeping me from my bed.

  I spent the day pacing the flat. My heart was knocking against my rib cage when I arrived at the restaurant. Chris was sitting at a table chewing a toothpick and frowning at a menu.

  ‘How’s the Delhi belly?’ He gave me a polite smile, the type reserved for great aunts you barely knew.

  ‘A distant memory,’ I said, feigning nonchalance. ‘It really wasn’t all that bad. Nagarkot is a beautiful place.’

  He had chosen a restaurant with white linen tablecloths and two sets of knives and forks. I was still unsure if he had asked me to dinner as a friend, or if we were on a date. But I took the two-course cutlery as a good sign. In my men
tal ledger which weighed the evidence that this was a date, against the evidence he only saw me as a friend – the cutlery was a point on the date side. I studied his outfit: casual shirt, untucked, over jeans and lace-up shoes. Inconclusive. It was what I would have expected to see him in at home.

  ‘I figure you probably need a few creature comforts after India.’ He joked, but his heart wasn’t in it. Something had shifted.

  I nodded and tried to steer the conversation away from topics that might make him think of my explosive dysentery. He was once again clean-shaven. His bare, square jaw was a sign he’d returned to the trenches.

  ‘How’s work?’

  Chris screwed up his face. ‘My last contract got cancelled. Don’t want to talk about it.’

  I studied the menu, feeling wounded. But the prices perked me up. They were exorbitant. You wouldn’t pay AUD$56 for a steak for a girl who was only a friend. I added another point to the date column.

  He scratched his head. ‘Sorry to be such a grump. I’m starting a new contract tomorrow. Three months of work. I should be happy. But the idea of three months stuck in an office doesn’t make me happy.’

  The colour had gone out of his skin since the India trip. With his face shaved and his hair cut he looked less impressive, less imposing. Even his eyes seemed to have lost some of their brilliance.

  I tried again to stoke the conversation. ‘How was your trip home?’

  ‘It was strange being back,’ he said, raking his fingers through his hair before snapping the menu shut. He started playing with the tassel that hung from the leather wine list. His nails were chewed down to the quick. ‘Everyone’s so settled. So boring.’

  ‘How’s your mother?’

  He shook his head. ‘She’s mad at me.’

  ‘Mad at you? Why?’ I couldn’t imagine anyone being mad at Chris for very long, least of all his doting mother who had made a career of rearing perfect sons. Georgia Campbell was the type of woman who wore an ironed white shirt under a ruffle-trim apron to cook the family dinner, and never spilt anything on it.

  ‘She doesn’t say it.’ Chris twisted the tassel, sliding it through his fingers. ‘She just asks in this deeply melancholic way, if I’m making any progress at work, how much money have I saved, when am I coming home?’

  ‘My old man was fifty-seven when he died. He had this massive nest egg saved up; they were going to take a trip to Europe on his sixtieth birthday. Can you imagine that? Planning three years for an overseas trip? What the point of doing something you hate for three years for a couple of months of fun. Anyway …’ His gaze drifted across the room but didn’t settle anywhere. ‘What about you? Are you working? What’s the plan?’

  I looked away. ‘I’ve got a little casual work lined up. It’s pretty mundane stuff, but it pays well. It’ll keep me busy while I figure out what I want to do.’

  ‘Mmm. Money. You know what that’s good for?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Travelling.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I nodded. And putting a deposit on an Edwardian house, I thought.

  Silence descended again. My napkin’s stitching was coming away. I pulled at the thread.

  ‘So where are you working?’ Chris asked after I’d unravelled the entire hem.

  ‘Glaxo Smith-Kline,’ I said. ‘I start tomorrow.’

  Chris whistled low and long. ‘The big time.’

  ‘It’s just to pay the bills while I figure out …’ I didn’t finish the sentence. The waitress arrived to take our orders.

  I ordered fish, having dismissed the pasta dishes on the grounds of garlic content and high splatter probability. Chris ummed and ah-ed before ordering steak and waving away waiter when he suggested wine. No alcohol. I put a tick in the ‘friend’ side of my ledger. My disappointment must have shown on my face.

  I nodded. ‘So tell me about your new contract?’ I said, wishing I could think of a topic that would return some of that sparkle to his eyes.

  ‘An old friend of my Dad’s recommended me for it. I didn’t feel like I could say no.’ Even he didn’t seem interested in what he was saying.

  Our meals arrived. We ate in silence that I interrupted twice. Once to say that my food was good. The second time to ask Chris if his was. He answered with a single nod. I pushed my plate aside and excused myself.

  I went to the bathroom to regroup. I couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong. I fluffed my hair and reapplied some lip gloss, then returned to the table smiling.

  ‘I hear there’s a place around the corner that does really great ice cream,’ I said.

  ‘We should try it,’ he said. Finally. Something positive. ‘Do you want to try it?’

  ‘We should definitely try it.’

  ‘Okay,’ he nodded. ‘We’ll try it.

  With that avenue of conversation exhausted, we returned to our meals. The only sound either of us made for the next twelve minutes was the scrape of silver on crockery.

  Later, Chris and I walked around the bay eating green tea ice cream cones. It was a scene I’d imagined a thousand times, but things weren’t playing out as I’d hoped. Chris licked his ice cream aggressively. His scoop tumbled out and splattered on the ground. I watched him stare at the ball of green melting onto the concrete. I debated offering him a bite. Do you share ice cream in a cone? Would it look too eager? Or would it further diminish my quickly evaporating allure?

  ‘Do you want –’ I held out my cone.

  ‘Huh?’ He was distracted again. ‘Ah, no thanks. Hey, look I should probably turn in. What with starting the new job in the morning, and all.’

  ‘Yeah, of course,’ I replied, agreeable as ever. It was 8:27 pm. Panic was expanding in my chest. My chance was slipping away. I’d had a whole dinner to remind Chris of the chemistry that had always sizzled between us and I was blowing it. I wanted to ask another question, to tell a joke, say anything to keep him from walking away. But my mind was blank.

  He gave me with a tepid peck on the cheek. ‘Good to see you, Vy.’

  I tried to say ‘you too’ but it came out garbled. I added a million points to the ‘just friends’ column of my mental ledger.

  ‘Bye,’ I called as he left.

  I trudged back to my flat, crawled into bed and soaked my pillows with lonely tears.

  Chapter Twenty

  The next morning Tessa met me in the lobby of the Glaxo Smith-Klein headquarters.

  ‘Are you nervous?’ she asked.

  ‘A little,’ I lied. It seemed like the correct answer, but the truth was I was feeling numb after the previous night’s disaster.

  ‘Don’t be,’ she said brightly.

  I discovered after about five minutes that I didn’t need her to hold my hand. The work was familiar, almost disappointingly so. The tasks were routine, the procedures simple. Besides Tess, my crew included a new dad named Paul and an earnest girl named Rebecca. Eager to show off his parenting skills, Paul walked me through the operation of the computer, the coffee machine and the stationery cupboard.

  ‘Now you try,’ he said after grinding office-grade coffee beans that looked like freeze-dried hamster dung.

  For lunch we all went to a nearby shopping mall and ate re-heated pasta from Styrofoam containers. We cluttered-up the laminex table-tops with plastic cutlery and cans of drink. It was the single least-exotic experience of my life.

  In the afternoon Paul took the departmental car out to a meeting about fifty kilometres from our office, where it promptly broke down. I had to finish off his assignment, entering rows and rows of data into a spreadsheet. As I punched the numbers into the computer I realised I wasn’t ready to give up my new-found freedom. I wasn’t ready to return to the world of routine and responsibility. My phone buzzed announcing a text message from Chris: We’re going to Pete’s. Come!

  I felt a flicker of irritation. I didn’t know who or what or where ‘Pete’s’ was. Google told me it was a bar in the trendy Central-Mid-Levels. I took a deep breath. This could be my opportuni
ty to repair some of the damage done the night before.

  Half an hour later I was pushing through dangling red beads into the Pete’s main chamber. A business man on stage wailed a request for me to ‘Listen to My Heart’. It was a karaoke bar.

  ‘Miss Mason.’ Chris jumped up and kissed me sloppily on the cheek. He smelled of beer and was wearing a Bintang tank from Bali. He was a completely different person to the guy I’d suffered through dinner with. There was a loose group scattered around a table near the stage. One of them waved and I realised it was Noah. He was clean-shaven and dressed in a pristine business shirt.

  ‘I hope you’re feeling better,’ Noah said, handing me a beer. ‘Don’t worry. Everyone gets sick in India. By the time you found us I’d lost eight kilos. In one month. That’s unheard of, particularly when you consider I gained a kilo of facial hair.’

  ‘Are you living in Hong Kong now?’

  He told me he was doing some admin work for his father’s property valuing company. ‘Chris said you’re at Glaxo Smith-Kline.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, pleased I was a conversation topic. ‘It’s just a casual contract.’

  My eyes flicked towards Chris. He was slapping a friend on the back and laughing.

  ‘That’s the best kind,’ said Noah, ‘I only work a couple of days a week to fund my year of adventure,’ he explained. ‘I studied science after missing out on medicine. Then when I finished, I tried for med school again. As soon as I was accepted I panicked. I needed to recharge. I beat myself up so bad about missing out in the first place that I hardly lived the entire time. I was burnt out. I didn’t want to mess up my medical degree because I was too tired. I’m so excited about getting stuck into the course, learning something really useful.’

  ‘I bet you do really well,’ I said, feeling a little nostalgic. ‘I used to work in a research lab. We developed treatments for MS and motor neurone disease. It was fascinating and rewarding.’

  ‘Do you ever think about going back to school?’

  I considered. It hadn’t been part of my plan.

  More people arrived. Chris welcomed them with characteristic warmth, sloshing pale ale everywhere. Noah took a deep slug of his beer and set the empty bottle down on the table.