by Lisa Walker
Sally snorts. ‘What is it with you and hidden depths? Why do you think things are better, just because they’re hidden? I mean, if something’s hidden, it’s usually for a good reason.’
‘Oh, Sally,’ I sigh. ‘Hidden depths are the most wonderful, wonderful thing. Don’t you think that having someone served up to you on a plate is boring?’
‘Uh uh.’ Sally shakes her head. ‘I like people to be upfront.’
‘God, you don’t know what you’re missing out on. Men with hidden depths are just…divine.’ I open and shut my mouth. I am, frankly, astonished. Doesn’t everyone love hidden depths? ‘It’s the thrill of peeling off layers, like an onion. You think someone’s one thing, then they let you get a little deeper and you find another thing. It’s like being an explorer, navigating your boat deeper and deeper into the uncharted jungles of the human mind.’
Sally has a very strange expression on her face. She looks like Farrah Fawcett-Majors might if she had just encountered an escaped lunatic. Her fingers toy with her gun in a way that makes me glad it’s not real.
But I don’t care; I am alight with my passion. ‘I would die for hidden depths. I would throw myself under a truck in defence of the right to have hidden depths.’
Sally adjusts her neck scarf. ‘That would be kind of pointless, Ed.’
‘But they’re so exciting, like when the geeky guy turns out to be brave or a ditzy girl is actually a brain surgeon… You’ve gotta love that, don’t you?’
‘That’s only in the movies. Peel off the outer layer of most people and you just get…‘ Sally waves her hand in a circle, ‘marshmallow’. She drills me with her eyes. ‘If you’re so big on hidden depths, what are yours?’
I think of my erotic writing, but that is somewhere I definitely don’t want to go. ‘You can’t just tell people to reveal their hidden depths like that, Sal.’ I snap my fingers. ‘They have to be discovered. It’s like an archaeological dig. That’s what makes it fun.’ Sally is making me anxious. What if I don’t have any hidden depths? What if the layers of my onion reveal nothing more than Sooty Beaumont and a vague universal angst? And everyone has that. Don’t they? ‘Do you ever feel that everything is threatening and uncertain?’ I ask Sal.
‘No.’ She screws up her nose. ‘Why? Do you?’
‘No. Never.’ I shake my head. ‘Absolutely not.’ Oh God, don’t tell me I’m the only one. ‘I need a drink.’
I have managed to put off thinking about the flyer for the time it has taken me to get dressed and walk down to the surf club. In the end, doing what I was told was the easiest course. It was either that or tell Sally that Motive 8 is now closely linked to a pornographic crab fetish. I’d send her an email from Tokyo. My guts churn with anxiety at the thought.
‘So… Ralph,’ says Sally.
‘Huh?’
‘Ralph. Ralph Brownlow. Your boss. You think he’s hot.’
‘God, yes. Don’t you?’
Sally puts her head on one side. ‘Short shorts and loafers?’
‘You really don’t think he’s hot?’
Sally shakes her head.
‘Really? He totally does it for me.’ They should write a book — Sally is from Earth and Edie is from Jupiter. ‘You should see him when he takes his glasses off.’
Sally frowns. ‘I worry about you sometimes, Edie. You have such strange tastes.’
Sally has no idea just how strange my tastes are.
‘That guy over there.’ Sally inclines her head in the direction of a guy in a Batman cape.
‘What?’
‘Wink.’
I shake my head.
‘Wink,’ Sally commands. She narrows her eyes.
I eye the guy in my peripheral vision. He has a kind, roundish face. He looks relatively friendly.
Sally nudges me sharply in the ribs.
I wink, pulling up the side of my mouth, so that my eye closes.
Batman looks alarmed; he glances over his shoulder like Catwoman might have crept up behind him.
‘Sexy wink.’ Jay hands me a drink. He is biting his lip, trying to keep a straight face.
‘That wasn’t a wink. I was just…’
‘Bug in your eye?’ Jay offers.
I nod. Down on the beach, Djennifer is now doing a headstand in the moonlight. I wonder if she has found her inner muse yet.
‘What’s this?’ Sally holds up her drink. It is the same as mine, a green concoction with an umbrella poking out the side.
‘Thought we’d kick off with some cocktails. They’re pretty inventive with the names here. These ones are plumose hairs. Don’t know where that comes from, but it sounds cool. Cheers.’
I am halfway through my first sip as he says this. I splutter. The drink sprays from my mouth across Jay’s white jacket.
Jay’s eyes flicker from the green splatter back to me. ‘Mmm, very abstract technique, the mouth painting. Do you want to do the other side too? Even things up. Maybe I should have got you a mandibular palpus instead.’
I drain my drink in one gulp and shake my head. ‘Sorry.’ I leave Jay and Sally standing on the verandah and push my way towards the bar.
‘What’s in the Electric Eels, mate?’ says the blond-haired surfie dressed as a Spartan standing next to me.
‘Vodka, orange, Galliano.’ The barman is a weatherbeaten fiftyish man. A blackboard menu behind his head is titled Crab Cocktails to Make You Hot. He turns to me. ‘What’ll it be?’
I open my mouth but only a croak comes out.
‘Can’t hear you, darling.’
‘Fiddler crab. Three of them.’ Only then do I see the bar is littered with the flyers. Someone has been photocopying them. I snatch up as many as I can. Standing at the bar, I drain my fiddler crabs one by one. They are pretty good. I am about to order three more when someone takes my arm.
I don’t know how it happens, but I find myself sitting on a couch on the verandah next to Elvis. He gazes out to sea like he is thinking maybe he shouldn’t have wiggled his pelvis so much in his last concert.
I follow his gaze, expecting to see Djennifer in warrior pose, but she has gone.
Elvis is looking pensive. I decide to cheer him up with some of his own music. Unfortunately my memory is a bit rusty. ‘A little less da da da da, a little more traction please, all this dum de dum dum ain’t satisfactioning me,’ I sing, but he doesn’t join in, so I stop.
‘What’s up?’ he asks. A lick of hair has escaped his bouffant and is sliding over his eyebrow ring.
‘What’s up with you?’ I wish he would sing for me. ‘You ain’t nothing but a ground hog,’ I try, gesturing with my hand for him to join in. He doesn’t appear to be in a singing mood, which is a shame. Perhaps he doesn’t recognise the song the way I sing it. I adjust my head scarf. Perhaps he doesn’t like hippies.
And then it occurs to me that there is a reason I am sitting on the couch with Elvis. I am supposed to be practising flirting. Sally must be watching me. I look around but it makes my head spin so I stop. There is a large pot plant a few metres away. She is probably hiding behind that.
I try to remember what Sally did earlier. I lick my lips and toss my hair a little. The verandah tilts in an alarming way. I stop tossing. What next? Oh yes. I pull the side of my face up into a wink. It seems harder than usual. I try again and think I succeed this time. I look at Elvis, waiting for him to wink back.
Elvis chews his lip. He has a very strange look on his face. Perhaps he is shy. I am not shy at all. I think I am getting quite good at this flirting. I smile in the general direction of the pot plant. Look at me, Sally. See me flirt.
Elvis eyes the crumpled flyers in my hand. ‘Can I?’ He reaches for one.
I open my hand. ‘Sure. Why not? Everyone else has one. Have several.’ I lick my lips and fiddle with my hair in a seductive way. Much safer than tossing.
I watch him as he reads. The fiddler crabs have done the job nicely. I don’t feel embarrassed at all. ‘You ain’t never bought a c
arrot and you ain’t no friend of mine,’ I croon.
Elvis laughs.
I haven’t heard him laugh before. I stop singing and inspect his face. It is crinkled up with amusement.
I can’t believe he is laughing at me. I try to snatch the flyer back, but he holds on to it. He is still laughing.
‘Did you write this?’
I wonder if it is too late to deny it.
‘You did, didn’t you?’
I shake my head, which is a bad idea. It was Sooty.
‘It’s fantastic,’ he says.
Chapter Fifteen
Dreams are often most profound when
they seem the most crazy.
SIGMUND FREUD
I am nude hiking again, but this time it is not raining. The clouds have lifted to the tops of the mountains. Rainbows dance along the hill tops.
The same man walks towards me. He still doesn’t seem to notice my nakedness. ‘Seen any poss’ms?’ he asks in a New Zealand accent.
‘No. Why do you want possums?’
‘You git one hundred dollars a kilo for poss’m fur.’
‘How many possums does it take to make a kilo?’ I ask.
‘Fifteen.’
I wake up. In Jay’s bed. Wearing only a T-shirt, the embroidered waistcoat and knickers — at least I am not naked with a possum hunter. The nude hiking dream is getting stranger and stranger. I wonder what will happen next. My head hurts. I turn it, being sure not to rattle my brain any more than necessary.
Beside me, under the same sheet, is a sleeping Jay. He is still wearing his black Elvis shirt and — I peek under the sheet — boxer shorts. These are silky and have a red pattern. His Elvis hair has flattened into a squashed bird’s nest. He doesn’t look cool or ironic now; he looks vulnerable. I gaze at his face, feeling a strange desire to stroke the top of his nose.
I have no memory of how this set of circumstances came about. I’d definitely remember if we’d had sex.
Well, I think I’d remember… Actually, I’m not at all sure about anything that happened after my second fiddler crab cocktail. I prop myself up on one elbow and examine my bed mate.
Jay’s cuffs are undone and as he rolls over one sleeve slips up, exposing his wrist and a little of his forearm. I realise then that I have never seen his arms before. His wrist is white, soft-looking and marked with five angry red scars. These run lengthwise and are too straight, too purposeful to be random. I can’t take my eyes off them.
Jay moans, like a puppy dreaming, and something tugs inside my chest. But then his eyes flicker open and I look away. The first thing he does is pull his sleeves down. The second thing he does is search my face. His look is calculating; he is wondering if I’ve seen.
‘Why, fancy meeting you here.’ He looks up at me. ‘How serendipitous, to find ourselves in the same bed.’
Serendipity. Kismet. Jay, clearly, is someone who takes an interest in words. ‘Oh, I come here often. Never run into you before though.’
We both smile at the same time. I have an urge to smooth his bird’s nest hairdo into place.
‘We didn’t…’ He pauses with great delicacy.
‘Have sex?’
‘In case you’re wondering.’
‘I was wondering.’ And while I am relieved, this is soon replaced by something else. ‘Why didn’t we have sex?’ This comes out all wrong — like I’m complaining.
‘Sorry.’ Jay shrugs and smiles. ‘Most remiss of me.’
‘No, I didn’t mean…’
‘You were smashed.’
It all comes back to me: the flyers, the cocktails, Jay and me on the couch at the surf club. I think about his answer and I’d like to deconstruct it further — if I’d been less smashed, would we have had sex? I don’t think my communication skills are up to it though. In fact, I am sure they’re not. And I don’t mean that I wish we had, I’d just like to think he’d want to. Teasing out the nuances of this situation would be something best done in writing. Via a lawyer.
I roll onto my back and stare at the ceiling. I bite my tongue to stop myself asking if he finds me attractive. I bite it hard so it gets the message. While Jay and I are not touching, there is not much space between us. The air in that space seems to vibrate with an urgent hum. I think about the scars on his arm. His hidden depths entice me like a lost city to an explorer. If only I could find a way in.
‘I liked your story,’ he says.
‘Did you try to kill yourself?’ I say at the same time. As soon as the words are out I wish I could pull them back. Damn, where did they come from? They sneaked out while I was busy trying not to ask if he finds me attractive. Evel Knievel strikes again. Why does everything in my head have to push itself out through my mouth? Just get out the sledgehammer, Edie.
Jay is silent for so long I start to think I only imagined saying those words. What a relief. It would have been a totally inappropriate and insensitive thing to say. If he wanted to talk about the scars on his arms he wouldn’t go around in long-sleeved shirts all the time, would he? Just when I’ve convinced myself I didn’t say it, he speaks.
‘Don’t hold back, will you, Edie?’
My stomach contracts. ‘Sorry. It’s none of my business.’
‘No. It’s not.’ He has closed up like a clam.
‘Sorry.’
He doesn’t reply. The air between us is now as dull and stagnant as a dirty pond.
I slide out of bed, find Rochelle’s flared pants on the floor, put them on and shuffle out. Climbing the stairs is like ascending Everest with no oxygen. I catch sight of myself in the mirror as I come into my room. The scarf is still tied around my head but it has slipped to a rakish angle, almost covering one eye. I don’t look like a hippy anymore; I look like a crazed pirate. I collapse into bed and lie there, half asleep and half awake. I feel like a pirate who has burnt her boat on the eve of an expedition.
I still don’t know why or how I ended up in bed with Jay. Was there a romantic moment? Or was it just a practical arrangement? Maybe I couldn’t climb the stairs.
And what happened to Sally? I’d thought that she and Jay were going to get it on. I probably ruined her night. And has she found out about the erotica on the back of her flyers yet? She might have a contract out on me for ruining her business with my sleazy crab sex.
This is just so typical of you, says the bonsai. I had a bad feeling about you from the moment you picked me up. This girl has no concept of refined elegance, I said to myself. This is not someone who should be put in charge of a bonsai.
I am starting to hate that tree but I am too weak to respond. I pull out my notebook.
Sunday: Day 50
Pain level: 9.5 (optimistically)
Location: Chest, throat and abdomen
Tips for self-improvement: Don’t drink cocktails
My notebook reminds me that I am supposed to start my Murakami running program. I consider it briefly. No, today does not feel like a good day for new endeavours. Particularly those involving physical effort. Tomorrow will have to do. Definitely start running tomorrow, I write.
When I get up, I Google flights to Tokyo again. Unfortunately, it is school holidays and the first flight within my price range is two weeks away. I book it. Once I have done that, I feel better. After all, what’s two weeks? I can lie low, wear dark glasses when I go out, wear a false nose if necessary…
As always, when in doubt, I check my emails. This takes longer than usual. The Send/Receive bar inches across the screen at a tantalisingly slow rate. This makes me think I have lots of emails coming in. I get excited.
Five minutes later the bar seems to have stopped all progress. Ten minutes later it reports a Send/Receive error. I re-boot and start the process again. Eventually a thrilling ting announces the arrival of the post. Emily Brontë didn’t know what she was missing out on. I rush to check.
My inbox is empty, apart from a new message from my Nigerian friend, Philip. I am pathetically grateful to hear from him. His fa
ther, the cocoa merchant, has now been poisoned to death by his business associates.
Philip’s life seems even more tumultuous than mine. Again, I feel drawn to the idea of starting an email friendship with him. I wonder how much of his story is true. Is he really Nigerian? Is his name actually Philip? Did he ever have a cocoa-merchant father? Maybe I could introduce him to Sooty Beaumont. My mother was a cabaret dancer and my father a lion tamer. I grew up in the slums of Paris. What a lot of fun we could have inventing outrageous stories for our alter egos.
Don’t be ridiculous, says the bonsai.
‘Oh, all right.’ I press Delete. I look at the bonsai. It is just a shadow of its former glory. I feel sorry for it. It is quite correct — I am not the sort of person who should be left in charge of a bonsai. ‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘That was good advice.’
Yet another leaf falls simply and elegantly from its branch to the pot, but it doesn’t respond.
I get dressed and go downstairs for something to eat. Jay’s door is open, but he is not inside. I eye his bed, remembering his bird’s nest hair, his puppy whimper. I’d like to go and curl up in there again, but even I know that would be a very strange thing to do.
The Sally thing is hanging over my head. I can’t work out what happened to her last night. Maybe she isn’t talking to me. I ring her mobile. It is engaged.
While I make toast I am thinking of Jay and those scars on his arms. I am thinking about the woman whose daughter I am too scared to Google because I already know what happened to her son. And, even though I don’t want to, I am thinking about Mum.
It is late in the evening. The sun is low, so it won’t burn our skin.
Mum and I are digging holes in the sand. We are building a trap for Dad. He is out in the waves, dancing on his board in the golden light. That’s the way I always think of it — dancing.
Mum keeps forgetting to dig. She stares out at the sea and I have to remind her that I can’t do it all by myself. The trick is to dig a tunnel and then cover up the entrances so it looks like the sand is undisturbed. I place Dad’s towel on the other side of the tunnel, so he will have to cross it. Once the trap is set I wait in suspense, trying to look innocent.