by Dale, Lindy
“What do you want?”
“I want to be happy.”
He put down the sponge, his broad shoulders slumping. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, Bel’. I should have looked after you and I broke my promise.”
“Shit happens.”
He stared at me, his eyes filled with regret and I wanted to throw my arms around him and hug it away. “Yeah… but the drugs.”
“Who told you that?”
“ Um… Justin. If I’d been here for you….”
“It wasn’t your fault. I made those choices.”
“You could have died.”
“But I didn’t and even if I had, it wouldn’t have been your fault. Nobody forced me to shove that powder up my nose.”
“I’m still sorry.”
I wiped and stacked in silence, bending and reaching until all the dishes were returned to their rightful place, except for two large platters. It was food for thought. I’d made many choices over the years and I didn’t regret any of them, even though some of them had been foolish. At least I could say, in hindsight, that I’d learnt from them.
“Did you ever think about us?” I asked as I climbed onto the bench to reach the highest cupboard. “Hand me those, will you?”
Ben turned, throwing the sponge into the dirty water, and ran to the bench where I stood. “What the fuck are you doing? Get down. You’ll kill yourself.”
I looked down at him, his face intense, his arms outstretched as if waiting for me to fall into them. He still cared for me, even if he was trying to be cool about it.
“Don’t be silly; pass me the plates.”
He handed me the two plates and watched as I stowed them in the highest cupboard. “Well, did you?” I asked.
“I used to think about you all the time. I used to wonder what you were doing.”
“It’s probably best for your memories if you don’t think about that. Sometimes even I like to forget about my behaviour. It was ugly.”
“Anything you’d like to share?” he asked, his mood swinging suddenly as he put his hand out to help me down and I jumped to the floor, landing close.
“Maybe. One day. You know… I thought about you, too, I wondered who you were with, if you’d married Natasha.”
His hand squeezed mine and he leant into me, pressing me against the bench, the insistent Ben of old returning. “There wasn’t anyone. And I told you blonde bimbo models aren’t my thing. I know you didn’t believe me but she was only ever a friend. What about you?”
His face had changed again, as he openly dared me to show him what I was made of.
“I went out to have a good time after you left, and that’s what I did. I grew up and I had a good time.”
“No deep love affairs?”
“One, a long time ago. He broke my heart and I don’t know if I like love anymore. It scares me. Sex is much more fun and way less complicated.”
Ben threw back his head. A burst of laughter echoed around the tiny kitchen. “I can’t believe you said that. You used to blow a gasket if I tried to cop a feel.”
“I told you I’d changed.”
He stepped towards me again, his face so close to mine, I could feel his breath against my cheek. “I don’t think you’ve changed at all. How about we test the theory?”
Ducking under his arm, I looked around the tidy kitchen. “Looks like we’re done. Guess I’ll go back to the lounge. It sounds like Coops has put INXS on and I need a dance.”
“You do that, Bella.”
Chapter 21
IT’S TOO LATE
But it’s too late baby, now it’s too late
Though we really did try to make it
Something inside has died and I can’t hide
And I just can’t fake it
Carole King
I was handling the whole Ben thing very well. He continued to tempt me with all types of dirty tricks, which I could have found engaging but had chosen to ignore. I held conversations with him that didn’t carry any sexual innuendo and could sit next to him without wanting to throw myself into his lap and purr like his Pussycat. Our connection moved to something above teenage lust and angst. At least, I thought it had. Meanwhile, Coops and I relaxed back into our relationship. He was a beautiful man and I told him so, every day. Life was smooth, quite a new concept for us, until the night that Phil returned from Melbourne.
When we walked into Mac’s Bistro that night, Justin and Prue were already there, sitting close, so close in fact that they could’ve been sharing a chair. I raised an eyebrow as I walked over to kiss Justin’s cheek.
“What’s the story?” I asked, gesturing at the expanse of empty table and noting the number of chairs. “I thought it was only the gang.”
“Phil’s bringing a partner.”
“Ahh.”
In all the time we had been friends, Phil had never ‘brought a partner’. This was a first for us all.
“Who is she?”
“Some chick called Lee, they met at the theatre.”
“No wonder he sounded so chirpy on the phone. Who’re the other seats for?”
“Me.” Ben walked around the table and stood on the opposite side. Next to him, sporting a tote bag the size of Sydney Harbour Bridge was a brunette with the statuesque proportions of a Sports Illustrated bikini model and the perfect face to match. I struggled to keep my mouth closed as the shock rendered my body impotent of muscles that functioned. It wasn’t every day, after all, that the previous love of your life delivered such a devious blow in the form of such beauty. I had only just gotten used to the idea that Ben might want to have sex with other girls, but to have it flaunted in my face was the end.
“Fuck me!” Coops muttered, knocking his glass of wine across the linen tablecloth.
I glared at him, not knowing if the expletive related to the wine or the Wonder Woman impersonator who stood opposite us.
“This is Skye,” Ben said, as he drew a chair from under the table and offered her a seat.
Of course, I thought, her name would be Skye. A thing of such beauty would never have a name like the rest of the populace.
“Skye…. Justin, Prue, Bella and Coops.”
From the other side of the table, Skye reclined with her long legs crossed and nodded in our direction, as if we were servants waiting to be dismissed. “Pleasure. Ben, could you get me some bottled water, please? Evian, if they have it.”
We looked at each other as Ben went to the bar and Skye gazed over our heads with no intention of conversing further. We’d been pigeonholed and packed away as unsuitable in the first ten seconds. We knew where we stood and it wasn’t on an equal footing with her.
“What do you do, Skye?” I asked. I couldn’t have given a shit less but someone had to show some manners and the others were still trying to drag their mouths off the table. How dare Ben flash one of his women in my face. It was … appalling. Why, only a few weeks before he’d told me bimbo models weren’t his style. Now he was bringing them on dates.
“I’m a swimsuit model.”
I grinned stupidly. Of course.
Next to me, Coops spluttered into his napkin. “Sorry, something in my throat.” Apart from his dream of watching two girls get it on, being with a swimsuit model or a Playmate was the next best thing.
“I don’t s’pose there’s a lot of call for that in winter.”
“It’s only a hobby. I work at the University of Melbourne.”
Shit.
Praying that she was going to tell me it was as the tea lady or parking attendant I waited for her to elaborate, until Ben added, “Skye’s a Doctor of Sociology. She’s doing research into the link between sleep patterns and violent crime.”
Oh please! I thought, surmising that if she didn’t remove herself from Ben’s body she may experience a violent crime first hand.
“That must be very interesting work.”
“Sometimes.”
It was plain to see Skye was only with us under suffer
ance.
All through dinner, at which more earth shattering revelations were brought to the fore, including the news that Phil’s partner, Lee, was in fact a very good looking man called Leigh, and not the girl we’d all been expecting, I studied Ben and Skye across the table with the precision of a hawk watching a nest of field mice. Skye picked at her vegetarian entrée size cannelloni, declaring she shouldn’t be eating carbohydrates after 8pm, it made her bloated, and promptly went to the ladies room (probably to throw up). Ben on the other hand, demolished his rump steak with the gusto of a medieval knight and smirked at me across the table. His use of Skye as a jealousy tactic was working like a charm; we both knew it, especially with her hand firmly locked to his as it was. Ben was indifferent. He spent the entire time making jokes and telling the table about what we were like when we were teenagers. Everyone laughed and had a fun time. Skye looked exceedingly beautiful, even when bored and I sat and seethed.
***
At nine-thirty, prising herself away, Skye stood and announced to the restaurant that she would need to go home for an early night, she had a shoot in the morning and a 5am start. Picking up her massive bag, she brushed Ben off with a token peck. “You stay with your little friends, darling. I need the sleep anyway,” she said, and swanned out the door, a vision in flowing black pants.
As Ben rose to see her out to the cab she had pre-ordered before the evening had even begun the rest of the table breathed a collective sigh of relief. She may have been the most beautiful woman we’d ever seen but she was also mind-numbingly boring.
“That was interesting,” said Prue.
“Jesus,” Justin said.
“Who the hell was she?” Phil asked.
Coops, of course, was almost speechless. “Well, fuck me.”
I turned to Justin and poured the remainder of my wine down my throat. “Did you know about her?”
“Of course not. Ben asked if it was okay for his friend to stay over for a couple of days, but I’ve never met her. How was I to know she was Lynda Carter in disguise?”
“Does he have any other friends like that?” Coops asked, still overcome by the fact that Wonder Woman’s breasts hadn’t moved for the entire evening.
“I beg your pardon?” I said.
“Well you’ve got to admit she was incredible to look at.”
Prue let out her trademark snort, “Beauty is only skin deep, Coops, a fact that has been clearly illustrated for us all tonight. She was, without a doubt, the most boring person I’ve ever met.”
“Hear, hear!”
“Who’s boring?” Ben asked as he sat down again.
“Your girlfriend,” I snapped. “She didn’t want to spend time with the likes of us. Even polite conversation was too difficult.”
“She comes across a bit snooty but it’s only because she spends all day with her head in a book. She’s not a people person and she’s not my girlfriend.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” Justin said. “Imagine if you married her. We’d have to spend the rest of our lives looking at her across the dinner table.”
“Bloody disaster,” Coops muttered.
“Will you two give it a rest, please? Anyone’d think you’d never seen breasts before.”
“Not breasts like that… no offence girls but they were damn fine.”
As we left the bistro and went out into the night, on our way to ‘41’ a new club in town, we settled into cosy conversation. Phil and Leigh led the charge, arm in arm and looking very much in love while Prue, Justin and Coops followed along, laughing and discussing the pros and cons of being strikingly beautiful and yet dead boring. For some reason I couldn’t fathom, that meant that Ben and I were alone, again, and taking up the rear. I hadn’t orchestrated the situation and given the raging jealousy that had resurfaced and was coursing through my veins, it wasn’t the best place to be. I wanted to smash his head into the footpath.
Determined not to let Ben goad me, I linked my arm through his as we walked somewhat companionably, listening to the laughter and jovial comments ahead of us.
“Why’d you invite her?” I asked. “Were you trying to make me jealous?”
Ben grinned and I could feel my heart melting, just like it always did when he smiled. “Did it work? I seem to remember a time when you’d have slapped me for it.”
“I’d like to slap you, now. Spending an evening with that sort of beauty is something that requires preparation.”
“You don’t need to feel inadequate; most of her beauty is surgically enhanced. You’ll always be the most beautiful girl in the world to me.”
I stopped and looked at him. Was that an admission? Knowing Ben it was more than likely some flippant comment designed to excite but nothing more. “Still…you shouldn’t have brought her. It was a gathering of friends. She wasn’t friendly at all. She didn’t even talk.”
“Contrary to what you may believe, the whole world doesn’t revolve around you. Skye rang on the spur of the moment because she was coming to do the shoot. It wasn’t planned.”
“Hmph.”
He squeezed my arm, “Hey, I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“It’s okay, I’m just paranoid. It’s hard to see someone you were once in love with, cosying with someone new. It hurts.”
He looked into my eyes. “I know.”
For a moment, we stood. Neither of us said a word. We merely stood and the world passed us by.
Then a voice boomed from the darkness. “Hey, pretty boy, she givin’ you a hard time?”
I squinted into the middle of the road, trying to make out where it had come from.
“Don’t put up with any shit mate,” a deeper voice yelled. “Just fuckin’ smack her if she’s pissin’ you off.”
A third voice muttered something and laughed. I shivered involuntarily. It’s menacing tones made a serial killer sound like Greg from The Brady Bunch. Gripping Ben’s hand, I stood on tiptoe. “Let’s get out of here,” I whispered. “They don’t sound like they want to make polite conversation.”
Ben looked up and down the street where we stood, by that time, alone. With our dawdling the others had disappeared around the corner, into the relative darkness between the expanse of streetlights. There was no way we could call for help, and what use would a couple of gay guys and a tall skinny bloke with no muscles be against the apes that were blocking our path. And there was no way I was involving Coops in this. His face was far too precious to me.
The second ape stepped up onto the curb in front of us, “I said, just smack her if she’s giving you grief, man.”
I could smell the alcohol seeping through his pores and see the aggression building in his eyes.
“I wasn’t giving him a hard time and I don’t think our conversation has anything to do with you,” I said.
“Shut up,” Ben hissed, his hand squeezing mine so tight the blood couldn’t circulate. “You can’t talk us out of this one.”
“But they’ve got no reason to pick a fight with us.”
“Shut…up… Bella,” Ben repeated.
The second Neanderthal looked in danger of bursting out of his flannelette shirt at any moment. His podgy face was a pale shade of beetroot, perhaps from drinking too much, and his boots looked like rejects from the costume department of a Neo-Nazi movie. “Yeah, why don’t you just shut up,” he mocked.
Ben took a step in front of me, protective. “I don’t think there’s any need to be rude.”
“Whatcha gonna do about it?” Bad Guy One pulled a strange studded thing from God knows where and slipped it over his knuckles.
Ben’s eyes were on those knuckles as he pushed me down the street, “Run, Bella, for fuck’s sake, run….”
Running like there’s no tomorrow is a difficult task when you’re wearing stilettos, but I managed to dodge my way past them and to the corner. At the other end of the block, I could see the light of ‘41’ splashing onto the footpath and the carpet rope that for some reason had the power to bar even t
he most well dressed person from entry. It was only a couple of hundred metres or so away but it may as well have been the marathon for at that very moment I heard a loud snap as my ankle lurched to the side and my heel broke.
Howling with the intense pain, I reached down to remove my shoes. Footsteps were pounding down the road behind me, and Ben’s voice was calling to keep on running as he followed behind, but running for any distance at speed was never my strong suit and I knew they were going to catch me. My dieing breath would be taken on a footpath, in a torn skirt and wrecked shoes. I could see my gravestone flashing before my eyes: “Bella Stone, who died as she lived, with her big mouth open.” Picking myself up, I ran towards the queue outside the door. I didn’t contemplate the pain, I just ran.
Panting and dishevelled, I pushed through the angry crowd and stood in the doorway on my one good leg. From behind the smoked glass doors, I could hear the falsetto tones of the Bee Gees ‘Stayin’ Alive’, still a crowd pleaser after nearly ten years. How ironic, that I should be standing on the footpath like a flamingo, trying to do just that.
“You OK, miss?” The bouncer stared down at me from over his sunglasses. “You really should get in line.”
“But I can’t walk,” I whimpered. “Please? I have to wait for my friend. I don’t want to push in.”
Arms folded in front of the expanse of black that was his chest; the bouncer peered out from the portico and along the queue. “I don’t see anyone.”
“He was right behind me.”
Right on cue, Ben stepped into the alcove and hands on hips, he bent over taking deep gulps. “They’re gone. Guess they didn’t want to beat me up in public.”
His breathing returned to normal, he saw me hiding between the bouncers. A smile spread over his lips, and the twinkle returned to his eye. “Shit, that was close! Thought I was going to have to fight them all. You really should learn to shut up, Pussycat.”
Distraught tears filled my eyes.
“You alright, Bel’?”
“My ankle hurts.”
We both looked down to the spot where my bony ankle would have been. In its place was a swelling reddish-purplish balloon with some stubby toes sprouting from the end. He squatted to examine it.