Sex, Lies and Bonsai

by Lisa Walker

  We look at each other, smiling. Our strange, shared history hangs between us but there is no way to put this into words. I break away first.

  As I drive off I am nostalgic already for the fun times I have had drawing crab larvae with the beautiful and mysterious Professor Brownlow.

  My working day has distracted me a little, but not enough. All day ‘Creamy Tuna Pasta’ has been rising to the surface of my mind. Each time, I have pushed it back down with a huge mental effort. What was I thinking? I may as well have lain naked on his bed with a bunch of parsley tucked between my legs. And it wasn’t even meant in that way. I just wanted to remind him that I exist, that we had a connection once. Or did we?

  I climb the stairs to my room and freeze when I get to the top. A folded square of paper is sticking out from under my door. I know immediately it is from Jay. I can hardly bear to look. I bend down, unfold it. Nausea grips my stomach. There aren’t many words on the page.

  Doing a gig at the pub tonight — 8 pm. Jay.

  I read it about ten times. While scanty in words, it is big in meaning. The only trouble is I don’t know what the meaning is. In what way is this note an appropriate response to a week of not-talking followed by an erotic missive? I give him a fantasy roll in olive oil and tuna and in return he gives me his gig guide. Why? My shot in the dark seems to have produced something, but I am not quite sure what. I begin to wonder if I really gave him the ‘Creamy Tuna Pasta’ story at all.

  Writing can be good, but sometimes talking provides more clarity. I go downstairs in the hope that:

  Jay will be there;

  We can exchange words;

  We will understand each other; and

  We will make up.

  That’s a whole lot of hoping; way too much as it turns out. His door is closed. I knock but there is no reply.

  I ring Sally. I decide not to tell her about the creamy tuna pasta. I feel this may cast me in a bad light.

  ‘Well, duh,’ she says. ‘He wants to see you there.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘Should I go?’

  ‘You like him, right?’

  Like. Has ever one word had to encompass such a range of meanings? I like apple pie. I like hot baths. I like puppies and kittens.

  For Jay, I feel a mixture of:

  Pain,

  Longing,

  Empathy,

  Sadness,

  Hate, and

  Joy.

  ‘Yeah, I like him.’

  ‘How are you going to play it?’

  It has never occurred to me to play it any way other than straight. I like you. You like me. Can we please hold hands and talk again, because that’s about the only thing in my life that makes me feel sane, real and whole? ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Edie,’ says Sal, in that pitying way she has, ‘you don’t get it with guys, do you?’

  ‘No, I guess I don’t.’

  ‘It’s a game. You don’t let them know how you feel or they’ll run a mile. It’s the caveman instinct. They have to chase you or they’re not interested.’

  I think it may be too late for that. Girls who know how to play hard to get probably don’t share tuna fantasies with their love interest. But perhaps I can recover lost ground. ‘How can I act like I’m not interested and still turn up?’

  ‘Difficult.’ She pauses. ‘Not impossible though. Turn up late and act bored, like you just happened to wander in. Be cool.’

  I try to visualise how this would work. Fail abysmally. My heart rate accelerates at the thought of it. ‘I don’t know how to be cool.’

  ‘You’ve seen the movie with John Travolta, haven’t you?’

  ‘Be Cool? Yeah.’

  ‘Well, there you go. Ask yourself what Chili Palmer would do.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Sorry Ed, gotta go, I’ve got a client waiting. Remember the golden rule of dating: don’t let him know you care. And dazzle him with your conversational skills; you’ve been practising, right?’

  ‘But—’

  ‘You could try the wink. That worked well last time.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Byee.’

  Chili Palmer. Don’t let him know I care. Be cool. It’s a game. They have to chase you. None of this makes any sense, but Sally is the expert on these matters and my relationship history says I’m not. Maybe if I’d learnt these rules earlier, things would have worked out better in the past. Maybe if I’d learnt these rules earlier, I wouldn’t have given him the tuna fantasy. I try not to think about that. Cut my losses. Move on.

  Dazzle him with your conversational skills. Was Sally being ironic? There is no way I can wing this. Preparation is required. What I need is a script. I turn on my computer.

  Edie at the Pub: Draft One — Cool

  Edie enters pub at 8.45, sees Jay, strolls languidly over.

  She punches him lightly on the shoulder.

  Jay: You’re late.

  Edie: If you’re important, people will wait.

  Jay: You’re looking good.

  Edie (gazing over his shoulder): Cheers dude.

  Jay: Wow, Edie, you’re so cool.

  My powers of imagination break down at this point.

  Cool doesn’t seem to be within my repertoire. I decide to see what happens if I try warm.

  Edie at the Pub: Draft Two — Warm

  Edie enters pub at 7.45, sees Jay, strides over.

  She punches him lightly on the shoulder.

  Edie: Yo.

  Jay: Yo.

  Edie: So, you’re playing tonight, huh?

  Jay: Yeah, I was really hoping you’d make it.

  Edie: Of course I made it. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.

  Jay (gazes meaningfully into her eyes): I’m sorry about what I said the other day. (He steps closer, puts his arms around her.) You know you’re very special, don’t you?

  I gaze at the computer screen. The scene is going well, but the only problem is that Jay is getting all the good lines, not me. This would be fine, except he won’t have rehearsed, so it would be better if I controlled the action. I think I can manage the shoulder punching, just, but what will happen next?

  Dazzle him. Ha. I glance at my watch: seven o’clock. I still have time to work on some dialogue. Witty repartee would be good. I think Jay would go for that. But witty repartee is not one of my stock in trades. If only I was one of those old-time romantic comedy queens like Katharine Hepburn. I must have been asleep when the sparkling-dialogue gene was handed out.

  I tap my fingers on the keyboard, then in a sudden flash of inspiration or desperation, type sparkling dialogue into Google.

  I take it all back. Google is terrific. Way better than a three-day horse trip to a library. One of the references is a software program that provides examples of dialogue for any situation. It only costs twenty dollars and offers 101 dialogue techniques.

  One hundred and one dialogue techniques! I had no idea there were so many. Why hasn’t Sally ever told me this? I bet she knows and she’s holding out on me. She thinks I can’t take it. Well she’s wrong. I grasp my mouse and click on Buy Now.

  Five minutes later I have downloaded Have Fun with Dialogue. I scan the list of techniques. The meaning of some is obvious from their titles — avoidance, backhanded compliment, blurt and retract — I think I might be pretty good at that one. Others are mysterious — antithesis, bait and switch, breaking the fourth wall.

  I wonder if everyone else knows about these techniques. That would explain a lot. For most of my life I’ve had the feeling others are playing by conversational rules unknown to me. But now, mastery is within reach.

  Half an hour later, I am deep in a morass of conversational possibilities.

  Edie at the Pub: Draft Three — Blurt and retract

  Edie: Jay, I’ve been feeling this thing about you. I can’t keep it to myself anymore. I just sense somehow we’re meant to be together, like it’s fated. Don’t you feel that too?


  Jay: No, I don’t actually.

  Edie: Me neither. Not at all.

  Edie at the Pub: Draft Four — Bait and switch

  Jay: Edie, I’ve had this feeling…

  Edie: Yes, Jay?

  Jay: It’s becoming very strong.

  Edie: I feel the same way.

  Jay: What, you want to throw up too?

  I am so involved that by the time I come up for air it is eight pm. I should be at the pub. But I still haven’t cracked the right tone with my dialogue. Besides, like Sally said, I should be fashionably late rather than too-keenly early as is my usual practice.

  A knock interrupts my thinking.

  ‘Yeah?’ I look up, sighing. I really need to get this dialogue sorted.

  Dad peers through a gap in the door. ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hi.’

  He coughs. ‘You busy?’

  ‘Mmm, kind of.’ I gesture at the screen. ‘Just, you know, writing.’

  ‘I was wondering how your set-up is here. Do you need a new desk? I could build you one.’

  ‘No, I’m fine. Thanks.’ I eye my dialogue, a rising anxiety in my stomach.

  His eyes flicker to the computer. ‘Going well?’

  ‘No, not really. And I’ve got a deadline.’

  ‘Oh.’ He backs out, the Dad-look on his face. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No, it’s—’ It’s too late. He’s already shut the door.

  I stare at it for a moment, wondering what he wanted, but there are more pressing matters at hand. Plunging back into my dialogue, I continue to search for the perfect note.

  Edie at the Pub: Draft Five — Cry from the heart

  Edie: Jay, Jay. You’re tearing me apart.

  Edie at the Pub: Draft Six — Hard-boiled dialogue

  Edie: Okay, Jay, we need to get one thing straight.

  Jay: You’re not playing that old record again are you?

  Edie: Show me the money or I’m getting out of here buddy.

  I try my hand at curt, double-dutch and formal and then come to climactic speech.

  Edie at the Pub: Draft Ten — Climactic speech

  Edie: Jay, I love the way your fingers are rough at the ends but soft in the middle, I love how your hair looks when you’ve slept on it, I love how I never know what’s going to happen next when I’m around you, I love how you look at me like I’m the funniest thing you’ve ever seen, but most of all I love the way you make me feel like it’s okay to be the crazy, weird, shy, awkward geek I am.

  I pause after I’ve written this one. I don’t think it is going to get any better. There is a reason Sally has chosen not to induct me into the 101 dialogue techniques; she knew I’d be crap at all of them. There is only one thing to do: wing it.

  I read back over my climactic speech. This says what I want to say. What I can never say. And certainly not in the Darling Head Pub. Because it is true. For a little while there Jay did make me feel it was okay to be the strange and crazy person that I am. That is a very scary thought. Daniel only rejected a sanitised and well-presented version of myself, but I think I might have let Jay see who I really am. Was it enough? Was I enough?

  I glance at my watch. It is nine-thirty. I can’t believe I am so late. I can’t believe I have been wasting my time fiddling around with dialogue when Jay is playing at the pub. When I could be there listening to him. Why aren’t I there now?

  I pull on jeans and a T-shirt and rush for the door.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  The goal of all life is death.

  SIGMUND FREUD

  I have my car keys in my hand and am almost out the door when I hear the phone ring. I hesitate, thinking that Dad will get it, but then I hear the shower running. I pick it up.

  ‘Yo.’

  ‘Edie, is that you?’

  ‘Yo.’

  ‘It’s Ralph.’

  For a moment I am flummoxed, then I realise it is Professor Brownlow. ‘Hi, Ralph.’

  ‘Do you normally say yo?’

  ‘Sorry, no, it’s a new thing I’m trying out.’

  ‘There’s a bit of an emergency here, Edie.’ His voice sounds strained.

  I immediately think of Belinda. ‘Belinda hasn’t hit you with the tennis racquet, has she?’

  ‘No, no, it’s work…’

  ‘A crab larvae emergency?’ An image of a rampant crab larva massacring its beaker-mates springs to mind. That’ll teach you to say my telson’s fat.

  ‘Yes. My Japanese Brine Shrimp paper, it’s due tonight. I had your drawings in a pile ready to scan in. They’re very strict about submission deadlines…’ His voice trails off.

  ‘You spilt coffee on them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Your dog ate them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘They disappeared. Not all of them, just the Pyromaia tuberculata and the Stimdromia lamellata.’

  ‘Oh, no, not the Pyromaia tuberculata, that was one of my favourites.’

  ‘Yes, I was very fond of it too,’ says Professor Brownlow, missing my irony. ‘I think they were stolen.’

  ‘But, who would do that?’ I try to sound mystified, but my mind springs to the sleazy crab man. I wonder if he lives at home with his elderly mother and hides his crab larvae porn under the bed with the Playboys.

  ‘I have a rival; one of the other professors. He’s out to stop me getting departmental head. I think it must have been him. If I don’t get this paper in, he’ll have had more publications than me this year and that will sway the balance his way.’

  ‘I didn’t realise academia was so cutthroat,’ I say. I still think it was the sleazy crab man though.

  ‘That’s nothing. You should see the staff meetings; lucky to get out alive half the time.’

  As I twirl the car keys in my hand, I already know what he is going to say next.

  ‘Can you come in and re-do them?’

  I think of Jay and I wish I had got there earlier, that I hadn’t been so stupid spending time writing dialogue I can never use. A tug in my chest pulls me towards the pub.

  ‘The paper has to be in by midnight but, of course, I’ll understand if you have other things…’

  I think of Professor Brownlow and how kind he has been, the crab larvae cake, the allowances for my slackness. And part of me is relieved not to go to the pub — the social anxiety, facing Jay, the chance of rejection, the attempts to use my stupid dialogue.

  I bite my lip. ‘I’ll be right there.’

  It is a little strange meeting up with Professor Brownlow again so soon after our fond farewell. It could have been awkward, but he smiles when he sees me and puts on a fake German accent. ‘So, ve meet again.’

  This is sappy, but it breaks the ice. It is only then that I realise how this will look if Belinda turns up. Alone. Together. In the lab. At night. I hesitate at the door.

  Professor Brownlow tilts his head.

  ‘Is Belinda…?’

  ‘Gone to the movies.’

  I sigh with relief and take my place at the bench. By the time I slide my first zoea under the microscope I am already over my nostalgia for this job. What was I thinking? It is worse than watching March of the Penguins. Despite my boredom, we work together happily for a couple of hours, me drawing, him typing and then sending off the completed paper. The Pyromaia tuberculata and the Stimdromia lamellata are nowhere near as much fun the second time around.

  ‘Okay.’ I hand him the drawings. ‘Guard them with your life.’

  He is suitably grateful.

  Our farewell is more stilted this time as we have already used our best lines. We end up just waving at each other in the car park, hesitating for a moment with the possibility of another kiss on the cheek hanging in the air, then jumping in our cars.

  Professor Brownlow beeps as I drive off.

  On the road I am, once again, nostalgic for the fun times we have had.

  It is twelve-thirty by the time I reach the Darling Head Pub. It is closed. A
few drunks loiter on the verandah like discarded wrappings. I get out of the car and peer in the window in case Jay is still there, ignoring their oh-so-tempting mumbled invitations to have a fuck. What would they say if I turned to them and said, yes please, I’d love a fuck, thanks for asking?

  The stage is empty except for a microphone and drum set. Up until now this has been about me, but now I think about him. Perhaps he really wanted me there? I imagine Jay holding the microphone and I hope the crowd was friendly. If only I wasn’t so incompetent with these personal interactions. Why didn’t I at least pop in to say I couldn’t make it? Why did I listen to Sally and turn this into some kind of adversarial game? Do I want Jay if I have to play games to keep him interested?

  I already know what the answer is. I get back in my car.

  I am surprised to see the lights still on when I get home. I imagine Jay is there, winding down. I’m not sure what I will say, but I run up the stairs. I will make it all right between us somehow. I will be honest. I won’t play games.

  Dad and Rochelle are sitting on the couch outside holding hands. There is no sign of Jay.

  ‘What’s up?’ I ask.

  Rochelle waves her hand in a manner meant to be dismissive, but due to its jerkiness, has the opposite effect. ‘It’s Jay.’

  I slide onto the couch next to her. ‘What happened?’

  Her hand tightens around Dad’s. ‘It’s my bloody father again. He waltzes in, waltzes out, talks big and forgets us once he’s out the door.’

  I wait.

  ‘He was supposed to line up some record company guy to hear Jay play at the pub tonight. You’d think Jay would have learnt by now.’

  ‘Did you go?’ I ask.

  ‘Yeah, I went,’ says Rochelle. ‘Jay was great. There weren’t many people there, though. I think he might have been hoping you’d come.’

  ‘I meant to.’

  Rochelle looks at me as if I am not the person she thought I was.

  I want to explain it’s not like she thinks. I’d leap tall buildings for her brother, swim through shark-infested waters, wrestle a minotaur if necessary. If only I knew he wanted me to. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘He’s gone out,’ says Rochelle. ‘I tried to stop him, but he said he needed a walk.’ She is a bundle of repressed emotion.