Sex, Lies and Bonsai

by Lisa Walker

  ‘What do you think about when you think about me?’ asked Edaline.

  Jason looked at her for a long time, his brown eyes steady, but he didn’t speak.

  Edaline blushed. ‘What were you thinking about just then?’

  ‘I was thinking your lips are the colour of crushed strawberries.’

  ‘Why don’t you kiss me?’

  ‘And then we’ll see how important you are?’

  Edaline nearly swooned with delight. He was paraphrasing Sylvia Plath. She had never met a man who had read Sylvia before. She nodded.

  Jason leaned over and brushed her lips with his. ‘Mmm, you are clearly very important.’

  ‘How important?’ Edaline’s lips were tingling.

  ‘Foreman material.’ Jason smiled.

  ‘I think we need to try that again.’

  Jason put his hands on her shoulders and brought his face close, so their noses were touching. Inclining his head, he brought his lips to hers.

  Edaline closed her eyes, lost in sensation. Her lips parted and she pressed her tongue against his. Time passed. She wasn’t sure if it was seconds, minutes or hours. She was only conscious of his lips and the thumping of her heart.

  When at last they separated Jason looked dazed, like he had woken from a long sleep. ‘I was wrong. Presidential material,’ he said. ‘Definitely.’

  ‘Still not erotic,’ says a voice over my shoulder. ‘Intimate, but not erotic.’

  Chapter Twenty-five

  The poor ego…has to serve three

  harsh masters.

  SIGMUND FREUD

  I jump, swivel in my seat, almost scream at the sight of Professor Brownlow. Oh God. Sprung. My road trip has hit black ice and I’m spinning wildly off course. Is there any way I can make writing erotic fiction on Professor Brownlow’s time seem like a reasonable thing to do? Maybe if my scene was crab larvae related, but I do not even have that weak and ridiculous excuse.

  I close my file, blush hotly and try to think of something to say. ‘I…I needed to strike while the muse was hot,’ I stammer.

  Professor Brownlow looks stern. I wish he wouldn’t. It makes me feel bad. He folds his arms and looks me in the eye. He is waiting for a better explanation.

  ‘I’ve got a tight deadline.’ Oh, I wish he wouldn’t look at me like that. Professor Brownlow is my friend. We have history. I feel like I have betrayed him.

  His eyes flicker to the beakers of crab larvae and back again. ‘I do too. I’ve got a paper on the Japanese Brine Shrimp due next week.’

  Japanese Brine Shrimp? Is this a coded reference to my erotic writing? If it is, what is he saying? Suddenly I feel sleazy and tainted. How have I managed to avoid realising what I am doing is tacky and wrong? Subconsciously I’ve known all along, but I’ve been like a frog in a pot of water. The temperature has been raised degree by degree and I haven’t noticed. Why didn’t I jump out before the water boiled? How did I let it get to the stage of Sally pimping my pornography around the town? And now the quality of my crab-drawing work, which I didn’t think could get any worse, has.

  Tears spring to my eyes. I want to be washed clean, redeemed and forgiven. The priest with his church signs was right. I need to run from sin.

  ‘I’m sorry, Professor Brownlow.’ I forget I’m supposed to call him Ralph. ‘I’ll never do it again. I don’t want to write erotica anymore. It’s making me feel dirty. I’m so sorry.’ I resist the temptation to fall to my knees and kiss his feet.

  Professor Brownlow looks taken aback. ‘It’s not that bad, Edie. I like your erotica. I’d just prefer it if you wrote it in your own time.’

  But there is nothing he can do to make me feel better. ‘No. It’s all wrong.’ I pull at my hair. ‘I don’t know what possessed me. I’ve been going through a difficult phase. I’m not like this usually. It’s Sally’s fault. She made me.’

  Professor Brownlow makes soothing noises. ‘There, there.’

  Perhaps he’s a saint.

  Just then there is a knock at the door. Professor Brownlow and I look up. A man steps into the lab. He is fortyish, overweight and wearing a tweed jacket over blue polyester pants. His stringy black hair is combed over a pale, balding scalp.

  ‘Can I help you?’ asks Professor Brownlow.

  ‘I’m looking for the crabsexinstute.’ The last word comes out in a muttered rush. The man’s eyes shift from side to side.

  ‘Pardon?’ replies Professor Brownlow.

  But I have understood. This has something to do with my erotic writing. I don’t know what, but I know I am right. I am horror-struck. Why is he here? It is like my debauched and sinful alter ego has turned up to accuse me. This is one car I don’t want on my journey. The man must be dispatched before Professor Brownlow catches on.

  ‘Gideon Building, G8. Over there.’ I point out the window towards the rest of the university.

  The man frowns. ‘No crabsex here?’ Again the word escapes him in a guilty rush.

  ‘Definitely not,’ I say.

  The man backs out the door.

  Professor Brownlow, bless his pure unsullied heart, looks bewildered. ‘What did he want?’

  I flap my hands. ‘God knows. I just wanted to get rid of him. He looked like a sleaze.’ I am having the most awful sensation that my life is turning into a disaster. ‘I’d better do some work.’

  I draw crab larvae for the rest of the day as if paying penance. A pilgrim crawling on their knees to Rome could not be any more humble. When Professor Brownlow is ready to leave at five o’clock I am still at it.

  ‘You can stop now, Edie,’ he says.

  ‘No, no.’ I mentally smite my forehead in the dust. ‘They’re not done yet.’

  Professor Brownlow pauses at the door. ‘Don’t beat yourself up, Edie. I know it’s not the most exciting job in the world.’

  I can practically see his halo glowing. ‘I just want to finish these few.’

  After he leaves, I enter a strange place. It is absolutely imperative that I make amends. I can no longer stand the fact I’ve been doing my job in such a slap-dash fashion. Professor Brownlow’s reputation could be ruined forever by my sloppiness. I finish the larvae I am working on then run to the cabinet where he keeps my drawings.

  I pull out the first one, then find the glass slide with corresponding larvae on the shelf above. Slipping it under the microscope, I double-check it against the drawing.

  Two maxillipeds and three plumose hairs are missing. I fix this with a few pencil strokes and move on to the next. And then the next. A strange exaltation strikes me around the tenth drawing. I am washing myself pure in the formaldehyde of the crab. I will be reborn.

  I don’t know what time it is when my phone rings, but it is dark outside.

  ‘Where are you?’ Sally asks. ‘I just went round to your place.’

  ‘I’m at work. I’m busy.’

  ‘Writing erotica I hope.’

  ‘I’m not doing that stuff anymore.’

  ‘What? But we have a deal. I need it. I’ve got clients waiting.’

  ‘I’m going to be good from now on.’

  ‘But your erotica is good. It’s very popular.’

  ‘I mean good – as in moral, upright and conscientious. People shouldn’t need erotica. They should just get over it and only have sex when they really need to.’

  ‘But Edie—’

  I hang up and turn my phone off.

  The lab is quiet after talking to Sally. I turn on the radio and tune it to the university radio station. The stoned-sounding DJ is ranting again. Or perhaps it is a different one who is also stoned.

  I pull out the next crab larvae and check it against my drawing. Several errors leap out immediately. Strangely, now that I have put my mind to it, I am finding this crab-drawing thing quite engrossing. Perhaps I have found my true vocation after all. What a blissful thought. I have been called, not by God, but by zoology. Perhaps I will become a crab-drawing nun — a singing nun even. High on a hill was a
lonely larvae, I hum. I am lost in telsons, maxillipeds and plumose hairs when I hear Jay’s voice. I stop humming.

  You looked at me

  As if I was the answer

  Though you didn’t know the question…

  I stop drawing and look around — it is just the radio. I sigh, feeling an achy tug in my chest. And other places. I would, of course, have to renounce these sorts of carnal feelings if I was to become a singing nun.

  His voice reminds me of how little I really know about him. How can I feel like I understand him at all, when he has told me practically nothing? And yet I do.

  I return to my drawing while Jay croons about being in love — with someone who isn’t me. I think about all the topics we discussed on the couch and somehow this wasn’t one of them. Our conversation was like a spiral, going around and around an unspoken centre.

  And now love and pain are the only things I want to talk about. But because I made such a mistake with asking Jay about his scars last time I am scared to go there again. Perhaps we can get there slowly, circling nearer and nearer until we are so close we hardly notice the moment of touchdown.

  ‘Hey.’

  I am thinking about Jay and hearing his voice on the radio, so it doesn’t register that he is now talking to me in person.

  ‘Hey,’ he says again.

  I look up from my drawing. Jay is standing in the door of the lab. Somehow I am not surprised to see him. ‘What are you doing here?’

  He shrugs and smiles. ‘I don’t know. Visiting you?’

  I smile back. My smile goes on and on. I probably look like one of his sideshow-alley clowns. With an effort, I stop.

  ‘I liked your story,’ he says. ‘Thanks.’

  He liked my story. My smile starts up again. My heart dances a happy jig.

  ‘Relinquish is a good word. I don’t know if it’s my favourite, though.’

  ‘You have a favourite?’

  ‘It changes. At the moment it’s something beginning with E.’

  I purse my lips, thinking.

  ‘E-d.’ He pauses. ‘E-d.’

  We smile at each other again as I get it.

  ‘Working late?’ he asks.

  I gesture at all my drawings, laid out on the lab bench. ‘I’ve…’ I don’t know how to describe the epiphany that has just taken place in my mind. ‘I’ve decided to be good.’

  Jay steps inside the lab. He gazes at my drawings, his hair falling across his eyes. He nods, then looks up at me. ‘Tell me about it.’ His voice is both gentle and masculine. I could listen to it all day.

  I resist an urge to smooth his hair back from his face. ‘There’s just been too much…wrongness in my life lately. The erotica, the way I’m so crap at my job…’ I flap my hand. ‘I’m turning over a new leaf.’

  Jay perches on a lab stool. ‘You’re sounding a bit born-again, Edie.’

  ‘That is exactly it, Jay.’ I nod. ‘That is what I want. To start again and do it better this time. Don’t you ever feel like that?’

  He rolls his eyes. ‘All the time. All…the…fucking…time.’

  My chest lurches. He understands. He really understands. We gaze into each other’s eyes and I get the strange sensation that I’m falling into him. Going, going, gone. Oh God, I think I might just have fallen in love.

  I hold up one of my drawings. ‘Look — five plumose hairs missing.’ I hand it to him. ‘This one, the endopodite is just wrong.’ I hand it to him as well.

  ‘This one…’ I look at the drawing in my hand and try to slide it to the bottom of the pile.

  Jay takes it from me and laughs.

  It is a crab larva in a low-cut T-shirt, which displays its most un-crustacean-like breasts. A speech bubble says: Would you like to take a look down the microscope, Professor? ‘I don’t know who did that.’ I blush and bite my lip.

  Jay puts his head on one side. ‘The plumose hairs seem all accounted for on this one.’

  ‘You’d know, Professor.’

  His eyes flicker towards me. ‘Maybe I should take a look down the microscope?’

  A tug of most un-nun-like yearning strikes without warning. I take a deep breath and slide the next drawing across to him. ‘On this one, the maxilliped’s all wonky.’ ‘Don’t you see? They might only be crabs, but they’re important. They’re important to Professor Brownlow and I’ve turned them into crap.’ I blink as tears well in my eyes. I try to stop them, but they flow on regardless.

  Jay stands up, the drawings still in his hands and walks around the bench towards me. He comes closer until he is facing me nose to nose, then wraps his arms around me. He pats my back and makes soothing shh noises.

  I lean into his chest, breathing him in. He smells like freshly sawn wood. His cheek presses against mine. It is slightly rough and makes my face tingle. I can feel his heartbeat. I want to stay like this forever.

  ‘You already are good, Edie.’ His hands run down my back.

  ‘I knew this was the Crab Sex Institute,’ says a voice behind me.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  I have found little that is ‘good’ about

  human beings on the whole.

  SIGMUND FREUD

  Jay and I jump apart, our tender laboratory moment in tatters. Mr Sleazy — my worst nightmare, my dirty secret — has reappeared.

  ‘Go away.’ I make a shooing action. ‘I’ve already told you, you’ve got the wrong place.’ I just want him out of here so I can be alone with Jay.

  But this is one car that won’t get off the highway. Mr Sleazy steps inside. He is perspiring in his tweed jacket and his eyes are on the drawings in Jay’s hands. ‘Give me a look.’ He snatches the drawings before Jay can protest. Holding them in his plump, white hands, his eyes devour the pictures. He studies them, his face lighting up. He smiles, revealing a mouth full of snaggle teeth. ‘You’ve been drawing these wrong, you little minx. You deserve a good spanking.’

  I back away. Minx. I was right; he has been reading my stories. But how did he find me? Sally assured me I was anonymous.

  Jay backs away with me. He pulls his phone out of his pocket. ‘I’m calling the cops if you don’t leave now.’

  ‘You make it up as you go along, don’t you?’ Mr Sleazy is quoting from my Mount Vesuvius sex scene. ‘That was one of my favourite parts. Are you interested in metaphysics?’ he adds. ‘Take me now, you sexy fiddler crab.’

  He steps towards me. ‘You are a crab sex goddess.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ My voice is a whisper.

  Jay and I take another step backwards. Jay puts his arm around my shoulders.

  ‘I’m a big fan of your writing.’ Mr Sleazy pulls a crumpled wad of paper from his pocket. It is one of my erotic stories, stained with coffee and other stuff that doesn’t bear thinking about. He thrusts it towards me. ‘Can you sign it for me?’

  My first fan. Should I be flattered or nauseated? If this is what being a celebrity is like, I don’t want it.

  ‘What’s happening here?’ asks a voice from the door. It is Professor Brownlow. ‘I was driving past and I saw the light on.’ His eyes swivel from me to Jay to Mr Sleazy.

  I feel like he has caught me in the middle of an indecent act.

  Mr Sleazy smiles a long, slow smile. He raises his eyebrows. ‘Professor Brown, I assume? How are your volcanic eruptions?’ He cackles.

  Professor Brownlow looks appalled. His eyes move from Mr Sleazy to me. He steps inside. ‘Edie? We need to talk.’

  ‘I think there might have been enough of that,’ says another voice from the door. It is Professor Brownlow’s wife.

  I can’t believe it. This is like a French farce. Is there anyone else we can squeeze in here?

  If this was a French farce Professor Brownlow’s wife would be playing the role of the French maid. But instead of a frilly apron, she is wearing a short white tennis dress which sets off her well-toned golden legs. A small backpack is slung over her shoulder and a tennis racquet dangles f
rom one hand.

  Mr Sleazy’s eyes light up. ‘This is even better than I thought it would be,’ he snickers. ‘I’m sensing a stirring in an underground chamber. I wish I’d found this place years ago. Come on in, darling.’

  Professor Brownlow’s wife’s eyes slide over Mr Sleazy and her mouth curls. ‘Ralph.’ She steps towards him, her tennis racquet held as if ready to return a serve. Her voice is like ice. ‘I just played tennis with Jackie. She was in Lighthouse Bay yesterday morning. She saw you. Both of you. Coming out of the motel room.’ She looks at me like I am a ten-day-old piece of chewing gum stuck to her shoe. ‘I thought I’d find you here.’ She takes another step towards Professor Brownlow. ‘You said you were at the crab conference!’

  He steps backwards, his eyes on the tennis racquet.

  ‘How could you do that, Ralph? In a Lighthouse Bay motel room.’ These last words are wailed, as if the motel room is the worst part. She bangs the tennis racquet down on the lab bench.

  Professor Brownlow jumps.

  I suppose I can see her point. A motel room is sleazy. A cold vice grips my stomach. I feel like throwing up.

  ‘Hit me with your tennis racquet, baby,’ says Mr Sleazy. ‘Hit me here.’ He slaps his polyester-clad bottom.

  Professor Brownlow’s wife doesn’t even deign to look at him. She is way too classy for that.

  She saw us come out of his room. I am, of course, pure and unsullied, but who’s going to believe that? The trouble is, I feel far from pure. My Professor Brownlow fantasies are out there in the public domain. And even though I haven’t enacted them, perhaps I may as well have. After all, we did share a bed.

  Jay’s arm drops from my shoulders.

  I can’t bear to look at him.

  ‘Belinda.’ Professor Brownlow steps towards her, his eyes still on the tennis racquet. ‘We were just working.’

  Mr Sleazy cackles. ‘I want some of that work.’

  Belinda’s eyes dart from Professor Brownlow to Mr Sleazy to me. ‘I don’t know what you’ve got going on here, Ralph.’ She opens her backpack and pulls out some paper. ‘This stuff you’ve been bringing home.’ She reads, ‘Professor Brown flicked noisily through Edaline’s drawings. Today he seemed to be channelling some deeply repressed emotions.’