Sex, Lies and Bonsai

by Lisa Walker

  Djennifer is the owner of Hotpunk, my former boss. She never took much notice of me while I was there. In a cutting-edge design outlet, catalogue illustrators are barely one step above mail boys. I always found it hard to explain to people what Hotpunk actually sold. Cool stuff, I’d say. You should see their teapots. This sounded ridiculous, but Hotpunk’s teapots were as much about making tea as a Van Gogh is about hiding a damp patch on the wall. Hotpunk’s teapots had attitude.

  ‘How’s the latest range going?’

  ‘It’s crap, darling. That’s why I’m here. I need to reconnect with my inner muse. Something just came into my consciousness and I thought… Lighthouse Bay, that’s the place.’ Djennifer’s phone plays a techno beat. ‘Mwah, mwah.’ She purses her lips. ‘Lovely to see you, Edie.’ She picks up her phone. ‘What is it now?’ She waggles her fingers at me and rolls her eyes as I go.

  At home, I wish with a vengeance I had not agreed to go to the fancy-dress party. Why do people like fancy dress so much? I think girls like it because they get to dress up as tarts without being taken for one. Halloween party means sexy witch, seventies means minidress and a celebrity theme is always Paris Hilton in a bikini.

  For guys, it’s different. Guys can never resist an opportunity to dress up as a woman. It shows how jealous they are of the primping and preening that is a woman’s right. False eyelashes? Yes please! Lipstick? Of course! Fishnet stockings? Bring it on!

  In some cultures it is the men who get all the gewgaws and make-up. I’ve read about an African tribe where the men court the ladies with the aid of lipstick, face powder and feathers in their hair. I wonder if the women of this tribe harbour a secret desire to snatch the powder and feathers off their men. Perhaps they do.

  Being a hippy offers none of the satisfaction of dressing up as a tart. I look in the mirror and wonder where to start. If I mess my hair up a bit it looks long and shaggy, like Janis Joplin’s , but I’m not sure about any of the rest of it.

  I go downstairs. Dad and Rochelle have been surfing all morning and are now stretched out on the couch, flicking through ski brochures. This is another shared passion of theirs. When they are not surfing, they are thinking about skiing. They look like salt-streaked bookends, Dad with his feet on Rochelle’s lap and Rochelle with her feet on Dad’s.

  I wasn’t here when Dad and Rochelle met but I imagine it as being like two oppositely charged magnets coming together. While I am cynical about the concept of The One, it was obvious when I met Rochelle that there was no other way of describing the way they are together.

  I am happy for Dad, how could I not be, but it also makes me feel strange. As if, in a parallel universe where we all meet our soul mates at exactly the right time, Dad and Rochelle are breeding a tribe of surfing champions. In this parallel universe there is, clearly, no place for me. I am my mother’s daughter. As Rochelle is only thirty-six to Dad’s forty-five, I suppose the option of a troupe, if not a tribe of surfing champions is still out there.

  ‘Hey,’ I say.

  They both look up. ‘Hey Eddie,’ they say, simultaneously. It’s a little spooky.

  ‘I’m going to a fancy dress tonight as a hippy. Have you got anything I could wear?’

  Dad and Rochelle look at each other, then back at me and I already wish I hadn’t said anything. The sparkle in their eyes suggests they are latching onto this project with way too much enthusiasm. They jump to their feet. ‘Let’s have a look,’ says Rochelle.

  Dad and Rochelle’s room is upstairs, like mine. Rochelle has two built-in cupboards and Dad has one. They pull open their cupboard doors in a ta-da way, as if they expect to see a hippy costume hanging there, waiting.

  Rochelle’s cupboard displays Quiksilver T-shirts, Roxy shorts, Billabong bikinis and Volcom jeans.

  Dad’s cupboard reveals Rip Curl T-shirts, Mambo shorts and Quiksilver jeans. There is, also, an embroidered waistcoat of unknown ethnic origin. ‘Ah ha.’ He pulls this from its hanger. ‘That’s what you need.’

  Rochelle presses a pair of white flared pants and a long silky scarf on me. ‘You’ll look great, Edie. Fancy dress is so much fun.’ Unlike her brother, there is no hint of irony.

  I go upstairs, put on the pants and waistcoat and knot the scarf around my head so that the ends trail down my back. If I cross my eyes, put my head on its side and don’t go too close to the mirror, I look like Janis Joplin might if she was halfway through transforming into Jimmy Page. ‘Far out, man.’ I hold my fingers up in a peace sign. I suspect it’s not going to get any better, so I take the outfit off and put it in a pile on the bed.

  I now have five hours before Sally will pick me up. Five hours to think of reasons why I can’t go to the fancy dress anymore. I pull my notebook towards me. These will have to be good reasons; Sally is not easily deterred. I start a list.

  1. I am sick

  I chew on my pen. This will only work if I have evidence, for example, a temperature. Still, there are ways…

  2. I have nothing to wear.

  I suspect Sally will not take any notice of this one. She will be expecting it, and will already have an answer prepared, maybe even a spare outfit.

  3. I am too busy.

  I am already scraping the bottom of the barrel and I am only up to number three. What can I be busy doing? Could there be a crab larvae emergency of some kind?

  This brings me back to Professor Brownlow. I wonder how Sally is going. I am keen to hear her opinion of Professor Brownlow’s hotness. Now, why would he be having life coaching? One of Sally’s flyers is on my desk. I pick it up and glance through the eight steps.

  Career direction, life purpose, self-expression, business coaching, mentoring, relationships… I stop there, remembering Professor Brownlow and his wife the other day. Is he having relationship problems? Maybe there is an opening for me to comfort him? No, Edie. Bad karma.

  I fling the flyer back on the bed. It falls face down. I stare at the back. There is some typing on it. A sentence jumps out at me, ‘Take me now,’ she cried, ‘you sexy fiddler crab.’ I don’t understand why there is pornography on the back of Sally’s flyer.

  Then I realise; it is my pornography. My mind flashes back to Sally and I printing and folding the flyers. I see one of her hands taking the paper from my recycled paper pile and putting it in the printer while the other holds the phone to her ear.

  No, it can’t be.

  But I already know what has happened. We have printed off the flyers on my recycled paper. My erotic story has been strewn all around town. I feel like I am falling off a high-rise building. I am about to vomit.

  I do vomit.

  Chapter Thirteen

  No mortal can keep a secret.

  SIGMUND FREUD

  I run out into the street. I have tucked my hair up into a baseball cap and put on my biggest sunglasses. I am incognito. I am not Edie McElroy the pornographic writer, I am…Anonymous.

  Feverishly panting, I trace the route Sally and I covered this morning. Flicking my eyes sideways, I slide my hand in through the slot of the first letterbox. I feel around. It is dusty. Something scuttles away from under my fingers. But otherwise…

  It is empty.

  It is empty.

  It is empty!

  Our flyer has been taken inside. My sinful words have entered the bosom of an innocent Darling Head family. I am tempted to rend my T-shirt and wail, but I must press on.

  The next letterbox is empty and the next and the next. Now I do wail momentarily and claw at my chest in a deranged way, before pulling myself together. On the fourth letterbox I score. Slipping the flyer back out through the opening, I offer up a silent prayer to God, Allah and Gaia as I unfold it and turn to the back. Please let the flyer at home be a black sheep and the rest as pure as mountain dew.

  ‘Like the brine from the Sea of Japan,’ he murmured, tasting with his dexterous tongue. The words jump out at me like a psycho killer in a horror movie. I clutch my heaving chest. My mouth opens in a silent how
l. I probably look like that painting The Scream by Munch. A seagull flies overhead, depositing a shit on the letterbox. It is clearly a metaphor.

  Summoning reserves of emotional strength I didn’t know I possessed, I stuff the flyer in my pocket and stagger to the next letterbox.

  It is empty. As is the next. Then… ‘That’s a particularly fine pair of plumose hairs,’ said a melodious baritone voice behind her. I crumple the paper in my sweaty hands and run on. My crab-fetish pornography has spread like a plague through Darling Head. I am tainted, tainted…a scarlet woman, doomed to be shunned by all upright citizens. Damage limitation is all I can hope for.

  I slip my hand into the next letterbox and touch the sharp edges of the flyer. A horrible black dog barks at me as I pull the flyer out through the opening.

  ‘Hey,’ says a woman’s voice behind me. ‘What are you doing in my letterbox?’

  I don’t turn. I hold the flyer scrunched in my hand.

  ‘What’s that?’ A hand reaches out for the flyer. ‘That’s my mail.’ She grasps it.

  There is a short tussle before I pull away, stuff the flyer in my mouth and chew rapidly.

  The woman watches me. She has a suntanned face, bottle-blonde hair and a freckled chest exposed in a V-neck T-shirt. Her eyes meet mine. She is the mother of a girl I went to school with. Her indignation turns to pity as she recognises me. ‘Are you all right, Edie?’

  I nod. ‘Yes thanks, Mrs Mathews.’ Small pieces of flyer spit from my mouth, decorating her red shirt.

  ‘Do you want me to call your father?’

  I shake my head and stroll off, swallowing hard, aiming for an air of nonchalance. Eating paper is not as easy as they make it look in the Bond movies. I don’t dare search any other letterboxes in that street.

  As I drag my weary feet around Darling Head, a reprised version of my ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’ keeps running through my head. On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me…

  Three drug dealers,

  Two millionaire developers,

  And a writer of porn-o-graphy.

  Is this to be my fate? To be pointed at in the street? To have mothers pulling their children away from me? To be a figure of derision in my own town? Looking on the positive side, the drug dealers might still hang out with me and one of them is kind of cute.

  By the time I get home I have only collected twenty of the one hundred flyers Sally and I dispersed. I plod up the stairs, considering my options:

  Leave the country;

  Have an identity change; or

  Commit suicide.

  What would Sooty Beaumont do? She would raise one elegant eyebrow, paint her toenails scarlet and laugh about it with Sven, her Swedish lover. But, alas, I am not Sooty and I cannot live in a town where I am known as a pornographic writer. I feel as naked and embarrassed as a snail with its shell removed.

  It is just my luck Jay is sitting on the verandah strumming his guitar. Doesn’t he have anything better to do?

  He looks up as I climb the last stair. ‘Hey.’ He says this with no irony, no satire. He even smiles.

  I am so grateful I find myself blinking back tears. I run upstairs before he can see.

  In my bedroom, I pull out my notebook and upgrade my daily pain rating.

  Saturday (still): 49 days

  Pain level: 10

  Location: All over, but especially stomach

  Tips for self-improvement: Leave country and start again with a new identity.

  The bonsai gives me a disdainful look.

  ‘One word and you’re woodchips.’

  It could hardly get much worse, says the bonsai. Another leaf falls from a branch. I knew that erotic writing was a bad idea. Who do you think you are? Anaïs Nin? Wait until Daniel finds out about it.

  I sink down on the bed and emit the tortured moan of a seal in pain.

  You have no one but yourself to blame, says the bonsai.

  ‘But the erotic writing never would have happened if I hadn’t been badly affected by lack of sex. It’s all Daniel’s fault.’

  Sex? The bonsai sneers. Who needs sex? I’m perfectly fine without it.

  I eye its wilting leaves, its dried-out branches, and somehow I don’t feel reassured at all.

  I am Googling flights to Tokyo when Sally arrives at seven. I’ve heard it’s pretty easy to get a job teaching English there. Maybe I can line something up before I go. A strange Japanese influence is taking over my life. First the bonsai, then the Murakami, and now—

  ‘Peace, love and dope, Edie,’ Sally calls up the stairs.

  I have no idea what she is talking about. Then it all comes back to me. She thinks I am still going to the fancy dress. This is out of the question. I have flights to book, jobs to apply for. Japanese to practise, bags to pack…

  ‘Edie, what are you doing?’ Sally opens my door.

  ‘Wow. Big hair.’

  Sally’s hair is teased to puffy perfection. She is wearing a white T-shirt and white shorts with a polka-dotted scarf tied around her neck. White Dunlop Volleys complete her outfit. She looks both cute and trendy.

  ‘Jessica Simpson?’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘Marie Antoinette?’

  She frowns. ‘Do you see me wearing a crinoline?’

  ‘I know, I know,’ I snap my fingers. ‘Farrah Fawcett-Majors.’

  ‘Good evening, Charlie,’ she drawls, pulling a toy gun from her shorts. She twirls her gun and replaces it in her holster. ‘So, what’s the story, man? Where’s the outfit?’ Her eyes scan the room, alighting on my forgotten pile. ‘Ah ha.’ She picks up the waistcoat and pants. ‘Time to get funky.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  The mind is like an iceberg, it floats

  with one-seventh of its bulk above

  water.

  SIGMUND FREUD

  The surf club is packed with superheroes, Paris Hiltons, men dressed as women and the odd Dracula. A four-piece cover band called Cod Play is playing ‘Yellow’. The singer is nowhere near as good as Jay. I’d like to tell him this, but it seems too hard. We fight our way onto the verandah. A salty breeze blows in off the sea.

  Jay hasn’t come as a fairy dolphin at all. He is Elvis — the young and sexy version, not the debauched, fat one. He has big hair too, swept back from his face. He has abandoned black for a white suit with a black collared shirt underneath. He manages to make this look both ironic and cool.

  My hippy outfit has none of the sex appeal of Farrah Fawcett-Majors and none of the cool irony of Elvis. I am both sexless and nerdy. I suspect Sally and Jay would prefer I wasn’t here, so they could get on with what is obviously on their minds. They are bantering and flirting like two doves in heat. I am extraneous to their needs. It is nice of them to pretend they like me though. I wonder if Jay will rate a tattoo and, if so, what sort. A guitar, perhaps.

  Sally keeps giving me looks when Jay’s head is turned away. I am familiar with most of Sally’s looks. The ‘slight eyebrow raise with widened eyes’ look falls into the ‘pay attention’ category. This look was useful in school for a whole range of things; generally to indicate couples whose actions suggested they had started to go out.

  Now, however, I am unsure what I am supposed to be paying attention to. Sally touches Jay’s arm and gives me ‘the look’. She runs her tongue over her lips; again, ‘the look’. She tosses her hair and giggles. At last I get it. She is teaching me how to flirt.

  ‘Got all that?’ she asks, as Jay leaves on a mission to buy drinks.

  ‘Yep.’ As Elvis’s hairdo recedes into the crowd, I try to think of a way to distract Sally from enrolling me in flirt school.

  ‘Right, let’s get you—’

  ‘Lisa-Marie wasn’t exactly a big success, was she?’

  ‘Lisa-Marie who?’

  ‘Presley.’ I incline my chin towards Jay. ‘Imagine being the daughter of the king. Almost as bad as having Jesus for a father.’

  ‘That’s pretty random, Ed. No
w, about flirt—’

  ‘What do you know about Lisa-Marie?’

  ‘She was married to Michael Jackson.’

  ‘Exactly. She’s put out a couple of albums but all anyone is ever going to remember is that she was married to Michael Jackson.’

  ‘Tragic.’ Sally’s eyes roam around the bar.

  ‘Hey, there’s Djennifer.’ Down on the beach in front of the surf club, a plump figure in a black unitard is spotlighted in the moonlight. She holds her hands up, as if worshipping, then bends forward into a yoga pose. ‘I used to work for her in Sydney.’

  Sally rolls her eyes. ‘I’ve never seen the point of yoga. Sex is way better for you. Speaking of which, we need to find someone for you to practise your flirting on.’

  ‘I think I need another demonstration first. And a drink, definitely a drink.’

  ‘Okay, watch this.’

  Along from us on the verandah a guy and a girl are leaning out over the railing. The guy is blandly handsome: swept-back brown hair, athletic. As the girl turns away to talk to her friend, Sally catches his eye. She doesn’t look away, holding his gaze. His eyes widen slightly. Sally gives him her résumé wink. He smiles, his eyes give a guilty flicker sideways, then he winks back. I’m almost convinced he’s about to abandon his girlfriend until she possessively takes his arm.

  Sally looks back at me. ‘Easy, huh?’

  ‘Sally. That was very naughty.’

  ‘Harmless fun. He got a kick out of it.’

  The guy keeps looking over at Sally. He is hoping for another wink but she has lost interest.

  Sally watches Jay’s back as he somehow glides to the front of the pack at the bar. ‘He’s cool, isn’t he?’

  ‘He seems cool.’

  Sally cocks her head. ‘What do you mean?’

  I shrug. I don’t know what I mean. Partly it was just something to say and partly it is a feeling I have about Jay. I can’t put this into words. It is intangible, just out of reach, a vibration too low to hear. ‘He has hidden depths.’