‘That’s why Antony called me for lunch. It had already got back to him that Nick was bragging about you around town and how you were gagging for him, so he thought you should be warned.’
‘Well, I suppose I should be glad of Sydney’s over-efficient bush telegraph for once,’ I said, handing Percy his cup of tea. ‘I’m going to cancel those dinners right now.’
I went behind the counter to find the numbers and nearly had a heart attack when Percy suddenly shrieked, ‘Oh my GOD!’ terribly loudly.
‘Whatever’s wrong now?’ I asked him. ‘I nearly had a cardiac arrest.’
‘No!’ said Percy, in full Heaveringham flow. ‘I nearly forgot the other thing I had to tell you. I must be going potty. Guess what?’
‘I have no idea and I’ve had almost enough surprises for one day.’
‘No, no, this is good news. Nikki’s Knacks is closing. Paul told me. It’s been haemorrhaging cash since it opened, as you can imagine, and apparently Nikki’s husband blew up and told her she had to close it immediately. He hits her apparently. Isn’t that horrid? Anyway, his business isn’t doing too well either, at the moment, and he doesn’t think it’s adding to his image having such a public failure on Queen Street, where all their friends and associates can see it.’
I felt sorry for Nikki if David did hit her, no woman deserves that, not even her, but I was so pleased the shop was going I was jumping up and down and clapping.
‘Paul’s furious,’ Percy was saying. ‘Because he left his job at the piercing parlour specifically to work there and of course Nikki is blaming the shop’s failure entirely on him. Says he put customers off, which is true, of course, he’s absolutely poisonous, but nobody could have sold that dreadful tat, especially at those prices. Not even me.’
As Percy twittered and stitched on, I was beaming with happiness that justice had prevailed, but I was also having another little thought I wasn’t going to share with Percy just yet.
If Nikki’s Knacks was closing, that gorgeous little corner shop on Queen Street would be up for lease again and if I got Dee on board as a business partner, I just might be able to afford it. And I wouldn’t even have to paint the exterior.
I went to Muscle City late that night – to see James as much as to work-out. I wanted to thank him for warning me about the Wolves of Woollahra. He’d been absolutely right and I owed him an apology. But when I got there he wasn’t on the desk. Instead it was another, rather burly, hairy fellow I didn’t like much. I’d seen him there before, talking to James. I thought he looked like a Hell’s Angel and he probably was one, judging by his filthy old Harley Davidson T-shirt and the tattoos on his hands. His fingers said ‘LOVE’ and ‘HATE’ and his name badge said ‘Spider’.
‘James not working tonight?’ I asked casually, handing over my membership card.
‘No,’ said Spider, sniffing contemptuously and punching in something on the keyboard.
He looked up at me.
‘You’re that chick he’s always talking to, aren’t you?’ he said and chuckled to himself. ‘If you really want to know, he’s off on one of his mystery jobs. The Inspector Morse of Muscle City.’
‘Is he a policeman?’ I squeaked.
‘Shit no, it’s not quite that bad. He’s a private dick.’
I must have looked bewildered. I wished Spider would speak English.
‘He’s a private detective,’ he said, slowly, like I was retarded. ‘People pay him to poke around where he’s not wanted. Hasn’t he told you all about it when he’s chatting you up on the adductor? I’ve seen him at it. Not that it’ll get you anywhere.’ He laughed coarsely, so I reckoned I wasn’t the only one who knew about James’s elective celibacy.
‘Fuckin’ kung fu weirdo,’ he said, scratching his stomach and smiling to himself. I noticed he had several teeth missing. ‘Mind you, I wouldn’t wanna be in a fight with him. Here’s your card, darlin’.’
I did my routine very quickly and went home. Muscle City didn’t seem such a safe place with Spider on the door and even less so when a group of enormous thugs came in at 3 a.m., still wearing their bouncer dinner jackets and dicky bows. I fled while they were still high-fiving Spider and calling each other ‘bro’.
I didn’t fancy another evening with the bikies, so I got Dee to ring Muscle City the next day to ask who was going to be on the desk that night. I didn’t want my Pommy accent to give me away. She did a really good job, putting on a very believable whiny nasal voice and making up some cod story about having to give James back something she’d borrowed.
I had to put my hand over my mouth, to stifle my laughter until she put the phone down.
‘You constantly surprise me, Dee,’ I said.
She smiled like a naughty cat.
‘Granny again?’ I asked.
‘Yep,’ said Dee. ‘She used to come up with the best excuses when I didn’t want to go to school. She could do a perfect impersonation of the district nurse. I used to put her knitting in my mouth while she was doing it, so they wouldn’t hear me laughing.’
‘Did you live with your granny when you were little?’
Dee got her nervous look on. My questions were getting too personal.
‘Yes. She brought me up. My parents, er, left. Anyway, I’m afraid your friend Spider’s on the desk again tonight. They’re not expecting James back until Sunday.’
I was at the gym by midnight on the appointed day, but James still wasn’t in evidence, there was yet another guy on the desk. At least it wasn’t Spider, I told myself, but I felt really deflated James wasn’t there, because I’d geared myself up for the big apology. I’d been practising what I was going to say.
About an hour later, when I’d nearly finished my circuit, I was straining on the chin-up machine when I heard that wonderfully deep voice by my head.
‘Sure you’ve got that on the heavier weight, Antonia?’ it said.
I nearly brained myself on the crossbar I was so pleased to see him.
‘Jim of the gym!’ I said, beaming. ‘You’re finally here. You’ve been away …’
I petered out, not sure if I was meant to know about his other job, or whether it was even true. Spider was probably just making it up to be weird.
‘Yeah,’ said James, sighing quite heavily. ‘I had a job on. How are you anyway? Get back to your reps, Mrs. You can talk while you do it. Where were you up to with this lot? I know how much you like this machine – not – so I’d better keep an eye on you.’
‘I’ve done my first ten – and, yes, it is on the heavier weight and, yes, I am suffering.’
‘Good.’
He counted me down through the next set and I didn’t really feel up to talking at the same time. Even with my new breathing routine, I still hated that machine. When I’d moved over to lying on my back on the hip extension, I felt a bit more sociable.
‘So have you been away?’ I asked, trying to sound artless.
‘No, I was in Sydney, doing another job I do sometimes,’ he paused. ‘I thought Spider told you about it.’
He was smiling his secret smile. I grinned back, knowing I was found out. He must be good at his other job, I thought. He was good at tricking things out of people.
‘Well, he did mention something about it,’ I said. ‘But I wasn’t sure whether to believe him. I didn’t think private detectives really existed.’
‘Well, it’s nothing like Humphrey Bogart, or Hercule Poirot for that matter, but we definitely exist. There’s quite a few of us in Sydney actually, the place is so goddamned corrupt, no one trusts the police here.’
‘Yes, I read that thing in the paper about the policeman who sold his badge to a known criminal. I couldn’t believe it.’
‘Believe it,’ said James, getting up and stretching his arms above his head.
‘Ooh, I’m stiff,’ he said, doing side bends. ‘I spent all last night sitting in my car. Gets pretty cold and cramped at 4 a.m., let me tell you.’
He was turning his head
from side to side and as his right arm went up to cradle the side of his neck, I saw the muscle on his bicep pop up like a fish leaping out of a river. Something went ping in my stomach. Well, a bit lower than my stomach actually. It wasn’t a feeling I’d ever had before. It was like a twinge. A nice twinge.
He didn’t seem aware that I was staring at him and as he carried on stretching and bending I looked at him properly, really for the first time. Up until then I had been so distracted by the hat and glasses and the horrid nylon track pants, I hadn’t taken the rest of him in. Now I looked properly I saw he was tall, his shoulders were broad, he had a well-developed chest and I could see, through his white polo shirt, that his stomach was as hard and flat as the bench I was lying on. As he bent deeply to one side his shirt came untucked and I had an eyeful of smooth brown skin.
Crikey, I thought. So this is what they call lust.
I was so fascinated by what I was looking at, I’d come to a complete standstill on the machine. James suddenly opened his eyes and looked at me mid-side bend. He held my gaze just for that one beat longer that let me know he’d realized I’d been ogling him. I had another twinge.
‘How many’s that, Antonia?’ he asked, straightening up, with a very small twinkle somewhere at the back of his eyes.
‘I’ve got no idea,’ I said.
‘Right then,’ he said, leaning over and putting another weight on the stack. ‘You’ll start again then.’
After that he had to leave me to it because there was some kind of commotion at the front desk. I dutifully finished my sets, gathered up my bag and towel and walked to the door. James wasn’t there. I didn’t want to go without saying goodbye to him and in all my hot and bothered confusion I still hadn’t thanked him for warning me about Sydney’s sleazy men.
I asked the other guy on the desk if he was still around. He nodded and picked up a phone.
A few moments later James came down the stairs, taking them three at a time, I noticed.
‘You done?’ he asked, smiling. ‘Did all your reps? Still breathing?’
I nodded.
‘Good girl. Want to have a bottle of water with me, before you go?’
I nodded again. I felt shy now every time I looked at him. I’d never seen such a flat muscular stomach. Hugo was slim, but there wasn’t any muscle to speak of, he was like a long piece of pasta. James appeared to be more like a well-trimmed side of beef.
He got two bottles of water out of the fridge behind the desk and we went and sat on the squashy old vinyl chairs by the main entrance.
‘So, you never told me what you’ve been up to, since I saw you last,’ he said, screwing the top off his water and throwing it across the room, right into the bin. I threw mine the same way and totally missed.
‘Well, nothing actually,’ I said. ‘And that’s what I wanted to thank you for.’
He put his head on one side and blinked at me. Then he did something he’d never done before – he tipped his hat back and took his glasses off. I only caught a glimpse before he put them back on again, because he was rubbing his eyes, but he looked very different without them. Twinge number three. This was getting embarrassing.
‘You wanted to thank me for nothing?’ he said.
I could see he was really tired. It reminded me of Tom, trying desperately not to look sleepy so he wouldn’t have to go to bed. It wasn’t the time for deep and meaningfuls, I realized, and suddenly I felt all shy and weird with him anyway. In fact I felt a bit hot and light-headed and wondered if I’d overdone it on the machines, or whether it was just some kind of lust-induced body shock. Either way my mouth wasn’t working properly.
‘Oh, it was just that I wanted to thank you for warning me about those guys,’ I blurted, in a big rush. ‘The ones that wanted to take me out. You were absolutely right about them. They were all famous creeps. The guy who introduced them to me told Percy to warn me off them.’
James sighed.
‘Was one of them called Nick Pollock, by any chance?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I answered, amazed. ‘How on earth did you know that?’
‘Oh you know, I hear things round and about and I know what he’s like. I’ve been hired twice to follow him – by two different women who thought they were engaged to him at various times. In both cases they didn’t like the photographs I presented them with.’
‘That bad?’ I said.
He nodded. ‘Yeah, he really is a supercreep. He’s not even smart about it. He was supposedly engaged to these women and I caught him on film pashing other girls in his own car. He didn’t even make it interesting for me.’ He shrugged his shoulders, holding his hands out like a Frenchman. ‘He’s not just a creep, he’s a stupid creep.’
‘Did you know it was him, when I was talking about my fabulous dates the other night?’
‘Not for a fact, but I had a hunch it might be. That Eastern Suburbs scene is pretty predictable.’
‘I’m sorry I was snippy with you, James,’ I said. ‘I just didn’t want to hear it.’
‘That’s all right, Grasshopper,’ he said, and he stood up. ‘You’re still learning about this town. See you later, I’ve got to go and work.’
And he tweaked the end of my nose. Twinge.
13
When I got home that night I dropped immediately into a deep, almost drugged sleep, but I was plagued by strange and disturbing dreams, which were so vivid I didn’t know whether I was awake or asleep while I was having them. At one point I woke up with my entire body drenched in sweat. My nightie was wet through and I had to dry the bed with my hairdryer before I could go back to sleep. As soon as I slipped into unconsciousness again, the dreams – or nightmares, I wasn’t sure which they were – came back.
Even when I did wake up in the bright morning light, I still felt full of all the strange physical sensations and emotions my subconscious had thrown out at me in the night and I was reluctant to let it all go. For quite a while, I just lay there, trying to stay suspended in that strange place between sleep and wakefulness.
All the dreams were about James. And they were very rude.
Of course, my strange visions were confused and nonsensical, as dreams always are, with graphic scenes of James naked, stretching his body and reaching out for mine, mixed in with Hugo telling me he could turn back for me, Percy telling me I was his little Tess and Nick Pollock’s handsome face looming around like a terrifying demon, his black hair peaked into horns, morphing into David Maier and then back into James again.
When I did wake up properly I felt really embarrassed and almost ashamed, like I’d done something dirty. But it was as though my body had made a decision about something that my mind wasn’t ready to accept. Maybe it was something to do with getting fitter and really being aware of my physicality for the first time, but it seemed as though my body was acting out what my brain couldn’t deal with – that I needed to have sexual contact with someone. Soon.
Although I could analyse that in my head – after all, it had been well over a year since I had even kissed anyone, if you didn’t count David Maier and I certainly didn’t – I was still confused and disturbed by the graphic nature of my dreams.
Why James, I wondered. I didn’t really know the guy and apart from lifting weights, I had nothing in common with him. Spider was right, he was a kung fu weirdo – and a celibate one at that. I’d never even seen him without his hat on and, given his philosophical stand on sex, I was unlikely ever to see him naked. He clearly had a great body, but if I was going to get sent into a frenzy by every flat stomach and broad chest I saw, Sydney was going to keep me busy – it was full of men who were ‘built’, as Percy called it.
Even once I was up I felt like I was wading through treacle and, though I did it every day, it seemed an awfully long walk from home to the shop. I didn’t get there until midday and Dee was waiting on the doorstep. She had her mobile to her ear, which reminded me that I’d forgotten to turn mine on. All I wanted to do was get inside and sit dow
n. Dee looked concerned when she saw me.
‘Are you all right, Ant?’ she asked. ‘I’ve been trying to call you.’
She looked closely at my face and touched my arm. ‘You don’t look too well, you know.’
As she spoke to me, reality seemed to dissolve like a Berocca tablet in a glass of water and I fell to the pavement in a heap.
I don’t remember how she got me inside, or how long passed but at some point, I saw Percy’s face looming over mine and he was dabbing my forehead with a cool wet hankie, faintly scented with lavender.
‘It’s all right, my little Tess,’ he was saying. ‘I’m taking you home.’
I don’t remember getting there, only waking up in my own bed some time later, with a pounding headache. My head felt like a cracked egg. Percy was at my side, holding my hand. Through a gap in the curtains I could see it was dark outside.
‘What happened, Perce?’ I croaked.
‘Oh darling,’ he said. ‘You’re not at all well. You have a raging temperature and the doctor says you have to rest. Do you remember the doctor coming?’
‘No.’
‘He says you’re completely exhausted. You’ve been doing too much.’
‘But what about Tom?’ I said, trying to sit up and just falling back again. I suddenly felt terribly sick and was relieved to see that Percy had put a bucket next to the bed.
‘Tom’s fine. He’s staying at Vita’s for a couple of days and when you’re a bit better he’ll come back here and I’ll look after both of you.’
I was still fretting. My mind wouldn’t stop racing.
‘But what about the shop? I can’t leave it closed, when I’ve just got the new stock in …’
‘Your friend Dee is looking after the shop.’
I turned my head to look at him and it felt like a lump of lead was rolling around inside my skull. But even through my fug, I was surprised at his tone. It didn’t sound at all contemptuous.
‘Maybe she’s not as bad as I thought,’ he said. ‘Now drink this water and then try to go back to sleep. I’m just going to sit here quietly, in case you need me, so you don’t need to be afraid.’
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