The Slap

by Christos Tsiolkas

  She put an arm around him. ‘I’m really sorry.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘That it ended so badly.’

  Hector shrugged.

  Richie was looking behind, down into the alley, across the roof-tops. He yelled down to Connie. ‘I think I can see your house from here.’

  ‘Come down, Richie.’ Tasha ordered patiently.

  The boy jumped. Hector closed his eyes; he half-expected to hear the crack of a bone but Richie landed on his feet, stumbled and righted himself. He had a big grin on his face. He ran up to the verandah and stopped abruptly before Hector. He grasped the man’s hand and shook it vigorously.

  ‘That was great. The food was awesome.’ Then, just as abruptly, he blushed and stepped back.

  Hector couldn’t think of a word to say in reply but fortunately Aisha emerged from the doorway. ‘Thank you, Richie. But I think the party’s over.’

  ‘We’ll help you clean up.’

  ‘No, Tasha, it’s fine. We’ll do it.’

  Connie shook his hand limply, without looking at him. But she threw her arms around Aisha and held onto her tight. Hector stared out into the darkness. It was only when he heard Tasha’s car start up that he let out his breath. He pulled Aisha towards him. She said nothing but leaned into him, his arm tight around her waist. Her hair smelt of barbecue smoke and lemon juice. He was glad they could stand together in silence, a peace broken when he went to butt out his cigarette.

  She pulled away from him. ‘I’ll put the kids to bed.’

  ‘It’s still early.’

  ‘I want them in bed.’

  ‘It’s Saturday night.’

  ‘Please, Hector, help me on this one.’

  He hesitated, wanting to put off the inevitable conversation, wanting to remain in the blissful, uncomplicated silence. ‘So, what are you thinking?’

  ‘I’m furious.’

  ‘With who?

  Her eyes flashed angrily at him. ‘With your cousin, of course.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘If that had been your child you would have never stood for it.’

  But it hadn’t been their child and it would never have been their child. Not because of him, he knew that, not at all because of him, but because of her. She was a terrific mother. Aisha was watching him warily, he knew she was preparing her arguments. He was suddenly glad for the drugs. He didn’t want to fight—he couldn’t summon either annoyance or self-righteousness. She was already there, he could tell, she was spoiling for a fight. She wanted to insult Harry, to excoriate him because, in part, Harry was his family. He had not even noticed Ravi leaving and it dawned on him, there and then—how could he have been so stupid?—that in part the day’s gathering had been meant to celebrate her brother’s visit.

  Aisha’s eyes were alive and shining, she was clenching her right fist. All he could think about was how to seduce her.

  ‘It’s true,’ he said quietly. ‘Harry had no right to hit the child.’

  She was taken by surprise; he even thought a shadow of disappointment might have crossed her face. She unclenched her fist. ‘No, he didn’t.’ But her response was muted, unconvincing.

  ‘You put the kids to bed. I’ll start cleaning up.’

  He was stacking the dishwasher and he felt like dancing. He flicked Benny Goodman into the kitchen stereo, feeling like something jaunty but solid. He was whistling as he closed the machine and started clearing the benches.

  ‘How the hell can you be so cheerful?’ She was standing with her hands on her hips, her expression unamused.

  He danced up to her and kissed her lips. ‘Cause I got you, babe.’

  And it was true. It was so fucking true. He put his arms around her, lowering his hands to cup her buttocks. He kissed her eyes, her cheeks, her earlobes. He tightened his grip.

  ‘They’re not asleep yet.’

  ‘I don’t fucking care,’ he whispered. His cock was hard and he took one of her hands and placed it on his crotch. She giggled, and it reminded him of Connie. He closed his eyes, realising that he’d been hoping the girl had faded from his imagination forever. But of course she hadn’t. He gave himself over to the fantasy. He was undoing the buckle of his wife’s belt, lowering her skirt, stroking her belly, reaching for her breast. With his eyes closed, he was recalling the soft, sparse bristles of Connie’s cunt.

  ‘I don’t need a rubber, do I?’

  Aisha shook her head. ‘It shouldn’t be a problem,’ she whispered close to his ear. He shivered, the sound, her breath, entering and invading his body, waves of euphoria rollicking through him, again and again.

  ‘Let’s go into the bedroom.’

  He did not reply. Instead he lifted Aisha’s arms in the air, and began kissing her neck. He pulled her top up and first cupped, then he began kissing her breasts. She tried to pull away from him but he would not let her. His lips closed over a stiffening, obliging nipple, then he was sucking it, biting it, till Aisha let out a small whimper of pain and reluctantly he stopped. He straightened, faced her, her eyes were sparkling, and then, suddenly, they were both giggling. He wondered, briefly, if the children could hear, then the thought was gone. His zip had lowered, his cock had been released from the cavity of his Y-fronts and he could smell Aisha’s desire. He pushed a finger inside her, she moaned, and he pushed his jeans down and his cock was inside her. Like that, standing up, her skirt bunched around her ankles, his jeans pulled down to his knees, moaning into each other, the drug keeping him hard and allowing him to forestall climaxing, they fucked for ages. When he came he could not help crowing out his rapture and Aisha, laughing, placed her hand across his mouth. He left his softening cock inside her, thrusting gently, whispering he loved her, whispering her name. He heard her gasp, then she was kissing him hard, almost biting his lip. His eyes were still closed, he wanted to stay inside her. He had banished all thoughts of Connie—now that he had come. Not before, he couldn’t before. He had merged them in the fantasy of his exertions, fucking his wife, fucking the girl, all at the same time, their bodies, their cunts, their skins both one and distinct for him. Aisha shifted and his cock slipped out of her. Still grinning, they pulled up their clothing.

  Aisha went to check on the children and came back. ‘I think they’re asleep.’ It was years since he had seen her look so sheepish.

  ‘We were quiet.’

  ‘No, we were not.’ She went to the kitchen sink and started clearing the remains of the salads into the compost bin.

  He went up behind her and clasped her tight. ‘Let me do it. I’ll clean up.’

  ‘We’ll do it together.’

  ‘I’ll do it.’ He was firm. The drug, though less relentless now, was still in his blood and he wanted to move, to be active. The sex had re-energised him.

  ‘What am I going to do? It’s too early for sleep.’

  ‘Watch TV, read. I’m going to clean up.’ He’d pop the Valium, enjoy the comedown as he put the house in order.

  She twisted around, his grip still tight on her, and she stared into his face. She was calm, a tremor of sweat still lay sheening her top lip. He licked at it.

  ‘What are you going to say to your cousin?’

  Nothing.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Hector.’ She just said his name. There was an urgency and a potency in it. He wondered if he could manage to fuck her again, like this, her arse against the kitchen bench.

  She repeated his name. ‘I want you to be kinder to Adam.’

  Where the hell had that come from? He let go of her and fumbled for his cigarettes. Opening the sliding door, he stood under the doorway between the kitchen and the verandah. She followed him and pinched the cigarette from his hand. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen her smoke, it was certainly before she was pregnant with Lissie. It was as if that night he was seeing her and their life together in a different way. He wished he could confess, tell her about the last few months, how he had betrayed her, how he had almo
st come to be indifferent to her. He wanted to confess because he was, at that very minute, assured of his love for her, for all of her, for everything they had together. This house, their children, their garden, the still comfortable queen-size bed that had begun to sag in the middle from years of their bodies linking in sleep, his arms always around hers, shifting only when she, still asleep, nudged him, still asleep, to move and to stop his snoring. He could not bear life without her. His chest tightened, his fists clenching in determination. He would not allow her to see his fear.

  ‘I promise I’ll change. I won’t be so hard on the boy.’

  ANOUK

  Anouk looked in the mirror and smiled wryly to herself. There were more wrinkles around the edges of her mouth, she was sure of it. You’re getting vain, girl, she lightly scolded. She flushed the toilet, switched off the bathroom light and slipped back into bed. Rhys protested in his sleep, then turned and wrapped an arm around her. He felt warm and sweaty. Anouk peered at the alarm clock: 5.55. No way she would get back to sleep now. She kissed Rhys’s arm, brushing her lips against the coarse hair and soft, boyish skin, tasting his salt as she slid out from under him.

  ‘You okay?’ he mumbled.

  ‘Yep.’

  A moment later, she was throwing up into the toilet bowl. She raised her head and found Rhys staring anxiously down at her. His right hand was dangling protectively over his genitals and this made her want to laugh. She pointed at the towel and he bent down to wipe around her mouth. That’s very nice of him, she thought gratefully, and then almost immediately, and almost comically, He must be very much in love.

  She got to her feet and kissed him lightly on the brow. ‘I’m alright. ’

  His green eyes were still anxious.

  ‘Rhys, it’s nothing. Just a bit of flu.’

  ‘Take the day off work,’ he yawned.

  ‘As if.’

  ‘Go on. I’ll do the same.’ He was pissing into the bowl. She had not yet flushed her vomit away and his unconcern disgusted her. She suddenly wanted to wound him, to say that the last thing she wanted to do on a day off was spend it with anyone. She rubbed her belly and looked at her lover’s firm behind, the graceful curve of his back. There were probably hundreds of girls more than half her age around the country whose dreams of Rhys were about to be rudely interrupted by their alarms. Maybe thousands. Some of them would gladly tear her eyes out for the way she was treating their idol.

  Rhys flushed and turned to her, smiling.

  ‘You’re really disgusting.’

  He scratched his balls and ignored her. She pushed him out of the bathroom. She wanted warm water falling on her head and shoulders, she wanted solitude. She had a long, extravangant shower. She felt better after it. She felt she was herself again.

  Though they both had to be at the studio this morning, Rhys drove while Anouk took the tram. She preferred public transport because it gave her time to read or to prepare notes or just gave her time to herself. Rhys argued his was now too public a face to risk taking the train or tram. She thought this was mostly affectation. It was certainly true that a few giggling schoolgirls could be annoying but Rhys’s upmarket rockabilly wardrobe was far enough removed from his alter-ego’s surfer style—especially when coupled with over-sized sunglasses and a musty smelling Bombers footy beanie—to allow him relative anonymity. And, as she often teased him, most people heading off to work in the morning aren’t going to give a toss about some soapie star. That made him grin but he insisted that she didn’t understand the ignominy of being fawned over—or worse, being humiliated—in public. She had to admit it wasn’t all affectation. When they had first got together a drunk had come up to them at a bar and inexpertly punched Rhys in the face. ‘Fucking poofter soapie wanker,’ he screamed as his reason for doing so, as the bouncers converged.

  Fucking poofter soapie producers. She was not looking forward to the morning meeting. During the last month her writing had become florid, deliberately theatrical, and at the same time, self-aware and mocking. Her recent script had a young girl quoting Verlaine, both the poet and the rock singer. But this wasn’t why it was going to be a tense meeting. The producers and the network had been congratulating each other for introducing an incest scenario into the early evening soap opera’s storyline. They were being ‘brave’, ‘socially responsible’. Anouk had no illusions about what they were doing. It was basically a recycled child abuse theme which included an unspecified and vague sexual torment. The victim and her father were also secondary characters, newly arrived neighbours living next door to the central family. In this way, had the advertisers protested, it would have been relatively simple to immediately drop the storyline. Not that anyone had protested. As the executive producer kept reminding them, they had ‘managed to remain tasteful’. When she first heard this, Anouk had burst into laughter. Another of the writers, Johnny, told her a story about a friend who was working in Hollywood, involved in the production unit putting together a mini-series set in World War II. She’d sent Johnny a confidential email that had circulated among the writers. One sentence had been highlighted: All scenes set in the gas chambers must be tastefully executed and not upsetting to the viewers’ sensitivities. Anouk had stuck the copied email above her desk at home. If she ever fell into the delusion that her career was glamorous, or worse, important, she would remind herself of the email. She took her most recent script out of her bag, squashed next to a friendly old man on the tram seat, and began to read. She smiled to herself. They probably did want to kill her this morning.

  She had made the supposed victim a liar, exposed her as a sadistic vixen. She had set a scene in a high school corridor where the fifteen-year-old asked her sympathetic teacher to kiss her. When the shocked teacher refused, the girl warned him that she could get him into trouble. That had been it. A jarring scene which she had written to confront the viewers and to make the plot more interesting. She was also bored with the sugary niceness of the girl. The soap was filled with wholesome, buxom blondes and that made Anouk feel decadent and amoral, made her want to fuck them up. She smiled again. He was going to kill her.

  He screamed at her for ten minutes. She didn’t interrupt him, smirked superciliously throughout, tactics which she knew would infuriate him further. None of the other writers looked her in the eye or offered their support but this neither surprised nor annoyed her. This was commercial television: they would all be loyal to her at the pub afterwards. The script was trashed and he told her she would not be paid for it.

  That was the only point at which Anouk answered back. ‘You have to pay me.’

  ‘You’re not fucking getting one cent for that rubbish, you useless bitch.’

  She didn’t miss a beat: working in Australian television stank of the locker rooms.

  ‘And if you don’t pay me, you fat ugly faggot, I’ll shut this production down so fucking quickly that you’ll have advertiser dollars gushing out of your overstretched arsehole.’

  It was a bluff. She doubted she could muster enough union support from the writers to shut down the canteen for an hour. But her bravado made him hesitate for a moment and in that moment she won.

  ‘Well, you’re not getting a fucking dollar more for the rewrite. And I want the rewrite tomorrow morning. Got it, sweetie?’

  ‘I’ve got plans tomorrow morning, sweetie. I’ll talk to Rhys.’ She usually avoided referring to her relationship at work. It had become public only a few months ago and, by now, everyone knew, but she did not want to discuss it with anyone at the studio. However, she had a hunch the producer fancied Rhys. It was too good to resist.

  ‘I’ll get him to bring it in.’

  She was meeting Aisha at a bar across from Federation Square and had arrived early. Her hand shook as she smoked. She had felt elated walking out of the meeting. She had not lost her temper; she knew she’d made the bastard feel insecure because he wasn’t able to intimidate her. Afterwards her colleagues had privately sought her out and congratulated her on
standing up to him. But the feeling of triumph soon dissipated. There was bravado on her part, but precious little bravery. Bravery would have meant walking out, telling him what she really thought of him, of his laziness and rudeness and incompetence, of the contempt she felt for the imbecilic program they made. Her hand shook because she was confronting, yet again, her own weakness. She fingered the bracelet on her wrist, a helix of copper and silver that she had bought near Split when she was working with the Croatians on developing their version of the soap opera. She looked down at her fine leather sandals: she had bought them in Milan on a weekend off from work in Zagreb. She knew what she wrote was infantile and moronic. She knew that she assisted in exporting stupidity to the world. But she loved her shoes and her jewellery and her apartment that looked over the bay across to the skyline of Melbourne. She loved the money. And tonight, when she could be working on her book, she would be rewriting the script instead. And the good guys would be wearing white hats and the bad would be wearing black. She rang her GP to make an appointment for the morning, she phoned the library to extend her loans, and she was on her second martini when Aisha walked in.

  ‘How did it go?’

  ‘I hate my job.’

  ‘You like the paypacket.’

  As Aish went up to the bar to order a white wine, Anouk laughed to herself. She loved her friendship with this woman because they knew each other so well. Aisha had known Anouk well before she’d become a successful, confident woman. Aisha had been there from the beginning, when Anouk was the gauche Jewish girl with vomit on her too-tight red dress at the end-of-high-school ball.

  Aisha returned with the wine and sat down. ‘I still hate my job.’

  ‘Rosie and Gary have got the police involved.’

  For a moment, Anouk had no idea what her friend was referring to. Then, with a groan, she remembered the incident at the barbecue.

  ‘You are fucking joking, surely?’