Unzipped

by Nicki Reed

  ‘Loz, this is Peta.’

  A look passes between them. Red heat climbs up my neck. I turn towards the lounge room.

  Oh God, the couch. Distraction required.

  ‘So Loz. Lauren, is it? Are you studying too?’

  BJ butts in.

  ‘Loz, don’t start boring Peta with that microbiology crap, she might never come back. Don’t look at me like that. You know it’s true.’

  ‘BJ, don’t forget to study this afternoon.’ Loz is heading out the back door, her arms full of washing. She sings out over her shoulder: ‘I won’t be here to push you into it.’

  I heard that.

  ‘Yes, mother.’ BJ takes my hand and leads me to the couch. ‘Wait here, I’ll get my keys.’ Her hand is warm. When she lets go I’m still feeling it.

  The couch seemed bigger, softer and blacker last time I was on it.

  My phone rings. Ruby. Decline. If this was the other way round, if I was attempting to contact her and not getting through, I’d know she was with someone, but I’m not the with someone kind. Ruby would never believe it. I only just believe it myself.

  I have a good look at BJ.

  She is at least four inches shorter than my five foot eight, but her attitude is twice her height. I like her gunslinger walk, her sticky-liquorice, spiked hair and her leather jacket—black leather like the couch. BJ wears no make-up. She could be a pretty boy. Next to her, I’m un-exotic. A tall woman, in tall clothes, with tall, stupid things on her mind.

  ‘HEY FUCKHEAD! GET SERIOUS!’ Biro-blue capital letters on the back of BJ’s hand. Anyone could read it and assume she’s having a bad day. But does she ever have a bad day?

  Left through the roundabout, past the palm trees standing skinny in the wind, and onto St Georges Road, hard traffic. BJ pushes her way in. Gives the driver behind her a wave.

  ‘Why have you got that on your hand?’

  ‘It’s a reminder. I want better exam results this time round.’

  ‘People might see it and think there’s something wrong with you.’

  ‘I don’t care what people think.’

  I want to be someone who doesn’t care what people think.

  BJ’s keys clink and swing in the ignition. I should be listening to my own keys. Her eyelashes are impossible. Dark and long, they curve to a finish you can’t see.

  She’s perfect.

  She can’t be.

  At the intersection of St Georges Road and Holden Street. BJ turns a rapid left on the last of the green light. I close my eyes and prepare for impact. Around the corner, still gripping my knees: ‘Did you make love to me? Did I make love to you? Above the waist, I mean.’

  Clintonesque.

  ‘You think too much.’

  ‘I’m tired of people telling me that.’ I cross my arms.

  ‘Then don’t say every little thing you think.’

  ‘An orgasm doesn’t constitute sex, you know.’

  BJ looks over her right shoulder, then her left, as if she’s about to pull over. Is this going to be our first fight? Would it be the one to end it? End what? I almost hope so. I’ll retreat to the safety of Mark.

  ‘Plenty of women don’t orgasm during sex,’ I keep on.

  Turning the steering wheel with a brashness that matches her response: ‘No woman I’ve been with.’ Parked, she switches the ignition off, turns to me. ‘Look, you’re being stupid.’

  ‘I don’t know how to be a lesbian.’

  ‘You’re not a lesbian. You’re an idiot.’

  BJ opens her door into the traffic and, when a tram has passed, slips through the gap, smiles. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

  So we’re not fighting. Or if we are, it’s going better than my fights with Mark. Mark and I race each other for the keys, the winner backing out of the driveway.

  She walks away. That strut. Her jeans hugging her boyish hips.

  In five minutes BJ is back and, for the second time that morning, knocking on my window.

  ‘Let’s grab a coffee,’ she tosses the book onto the backseat. I pick it up. Tragic Ways of Killing a Woman by Nicole Loraux.

  I raise my eyebrows. ‘You sure I’ll be safe?’

  ‘Snappy title, huh? Ancient Greece is all about dead chicks.’ BJ grabs my hand. ‘Come on.’

  At a small square table, a coffee each.

  ‘BJ, I’m having a heart attack.’

  ‘Relax,’ she says. ‘It’ll be okay. I’ve been where you are, or somewhere like it.’ She stirs in four sugars. ‘Okay, I didn’t have a husband and a big job. But I did have the confusion.’

  ‘So what did you do?’ I lean forward.

  ‘I did what you’re doing. By the way, that’s a great top.’

  I know. Mark comments every time, suggests we should take things to the bedroom. I stay on topic.

  ‘You had sex on some stranger’s couch?’

  I smile at my first recognition it was sex.

  ‘No, you dickhead. I asked questions, tried a few things out, drove my mother mad. I called Homoline.’

  ‘Homoline?’

  ‘That’s what I call it. It’s like Lifeline for queers.’

  BJ’s hilarious, clever.

  She smirks. ‘I used to ring them up and try to get them to do my homework. You could do what I do. Decide everyone’s queer until it’s proven otherwise.’

  ‘You think everyone’s homosexual?’

  ‘No, but it doesn’t hurt to try. I mean, you’re here.’ BJ puts her hand on top of mine: HEY FUCKHEAD! GET SERIOUS!

  Good advice.

  ‘I’m thinking about sex all the time. I’m having dreams where I’m almost kissing girls. Last Friday I knocked a bike courier off her bike.’

  Is she trying to suppress a grin? Her smile spills into laughter.

  ‘Did you give her a lift into Bourke Street?’

  ‘How’d you know?’

  ‘I work with Justine.’

  The sugar is in long cylindrical packets and BJ’s building an Eiffel Tower with them. I’m attempting an Arc de Triomphe.

  ‘How small is this town? I saw her again during the week in the cafe across the road from my building. I think we might be friends.’

  ‘I might know you better than you think.’ BJ picks up my hand. ‘Babe, can I call you babe?’

  ‘Well, it’s better than bitch.’

  ‘You seemed to like it.’

  She’s laconic, sexy, twenty-two. I want her.

  ‘Maybe…I’m meant to be at work.’

  ‘You work weekends?’ Her keys are in her hand. Lisa Simpson is my favourite Simpson too.

  We haven’t moved. The table is small, the distance between us isn’t great but it feels like it’s closing. Her lips, eyes, the way the hair on her nape seems to crest

  like a wave. I give up trying to put down the urge I have to be with her.

  ‘I’m only saying that. I want to go back to your place. And not to help you study.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Our walk back to the car is swift.

  I have my seatbelt on first.

  Some questions asked, some questions answered.

  It was sex.

  New questions.

  What’s she wearing under her leather jacket? Will her hair be sticky, like it looks, with its ‘Don’t be Cruel’ shine? How will our skins feel pressed together?

  9.

  The front door bangs shut. BJ’s phone rings. I find the bathroom. There’s a glass on the bench, I rinse it and fill it. See the shake in my hands.

  I can’t be with BJ if my husband is kicking around inside my head, shocked and hurt and angry. A couple of years ago, at a team-building workshop, I learned a visualisation technique. I’ll put Mark in a box.

  I line the box with paper. Strands of shredded pink, like fireworks bursting. Inside the box, he is safe and out of the way. A good imagining.

  Straighten skirt. Reapply lipstick.

  I can’t wait to unzip her out of that jacket.

 
; Unzip.

  There is no sexier word.

  She’s in her bedroom. ‘Mum, I said I’d be there. Bye.’ She switches her phone off and dumps it in a drawer. ‘God, what a control freak.’

  Books everywhere. She may have more books than I do. Book towers, buildings, a city of literature on her desk. There’s a dirty bike leaning against a wall.

  The jacket is second-hand, scuffed, worn, blue-black at the edges, softer than it looks. The zip-pull is thick, thumb and forefinger polished. The chrome teeth shine.

  I push it off her shoulders. It lands on the floor, staying in its just-shed position. A question answered: white singlet, no bra.

  BJ sits me on her bed, unbuttons my blouse, leaves me in my bra and skirt, walks to the window and draws the curtains. She plugs her iPod into its dock and turns up the volume, big guitar thumping and a beautiful voice.

  ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘Regina Spektor, “That Time,” she says. ‘It’s our song.’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  She undoes her top jeans button, and saves the rest of her buttons for me. She smiles a come-and-get-it smile. I have a small second of worry. Can I do this? Can I touch her there? Kiss her there? And, what if I’m bad at it?

  I pull her singlet up and over her head. Kiss her. I’ve never kissed anybody shorter than me—not like this—this must be how men feel. My hands on her shoulders. I slide them down, cup her breasts, feel their weight, softness. Kiss her again. I’m shaking. I pull away.

  She’s smiling. She takes my hand from her breast and positions it on her fly. Buttons are not as easy as a zip but I have no problems. I wriggle her out of her jeans and push her down onto the bed, pull the jeans off her.

  Nipples on nipples, hips on hips, my hands between her legs, my face all over her body. Symmetry. I feel like we’ve blended. Become each other.

  ‘Why me, BJ?’ My first after-sex question. My face is sweaty and a bruise is developing on my thigh, courtesy of a brass bed-knob and adolescent enthusiasm.

  ‘Way to bring reality into the moment, babe. It was the dress and heels, and your hair, those big curls. And the “come fuck me” look on your face.’

  My chin is pressed into BJ’s stomach and my feet are poking through the cast iron uprights.

  ‘Am I that transparent?’

  She plays with my hair. ‘No, but I can pick ‘em.’

  ‘I’m thirteen years older than you. That’s nearly two whole sets of skin cells.’

  ‘Oh, that’s what that was.’

  I sit up. ‘What?’

  ‘Get back down here, I’m joking, you idiot.’

  ‘But, I was thirteen when you were born.’

  ‘Yeah, and when you’re a hundred, I’ll be eighty-seven. It’s about attraction. Age has got nothing to do with it.’ BJ waves a hand in the air, casual. ‘When I was in Year Twelve I had a massive, massive, massive crush on my English teacher. I wanted her to be my first and she must have been in her forties.’

  Jealous.

  ‘Three massives. That’s a big crush. Was she a lesbian?’

  ‘It didn’t matter.’ BJ smiles and there’s a dimple I hadn’t noticed.

  ‘You know, when you’re being filthy, you get a dimple, just here.’ I kiss the new dimple and slide back under the doona.

  BJ’s bedroom has a high ceiling, Art Deco plaster mouldings and a matching light-shade. Is the light-shade like BJ? A real original? I have never met anyone like her. Her jacket. I want it. Even though it will never fit. I’ll close it over my shoulders and wear it cape-style in bed.

  While my monogamy was round the corner having a smoke, I made love to a girl. Her lips on my nipples, her soft, hard kisses, me matching her kiss for kiss—it’s a revelation.

  In the hallstand mirror: do I look the same going out as when I came in? Pink cheeks, sweaty, a little too smiley. Not quite the same.

  BJ’s typing her number into my phone.

  ‘It’s in under Hot Lover,’ she says. She hands it back to me. She’s not joking. Up on her toes to kiss me goodbye. I push my hands into the back pockets of her jeans. I could stay like this forever but I have a husband and dinner guests to go home to.

  On the doorstep: ‘Well, you know where to find me,’ BJ indicates down the hall, ‘second on the left. Anytime.’

  Her front door closes and I jump off the porch clearing three steps at a time. Skip down the path and through the thigh-high gate. It’s been raining, but curtains closed, music up, my attention on BJ, I didn’t notice. I snag a rain-heavy branch of the plane tree on the nature strip and douse myself. A memory flares. Ruby and I on the long walk home from school, drenched. We glance at each other, sidelong, through our wet fringes, and try not to smile our ‘Sorry, Mum.’

  Does finetuning your sexuality affect the way you drive? My car feels different, the steering tighter, the leg room shorter. Mark is in his box on the front seat next to me. Is there such a word as de-visualise?

  ‘Nothing to see here,’ I say to the box.

  Tram tracks point the way to Mark, my house, my books, the space for my car. Not ready yet. I look over my shoulder, indicate, and pull into the kerb beside a new bottle-shop near home, run in, trying to remember the wine Mark likes. Search the labels, find it, Craiglee Shiraz, pay.

  With the key in the lock, I set my demeanour: I’ve done nothing wrong, certainly nothing sexual. An hour and a half until people are due.

  Mark is out of the box and in the kitchen. His beautiful smile is doing something to me I hadn’t anticipated. Cry, vomit, run like hell, I can’t decide.

  ‘Hey, you remembered that wine. Not bad,’ his hands out.

  ‘It was easy,’ I say, stepping back. I leave the bottle on the kitchen bench.

  What if I smell like BJ? Sex and sweat, the sea.

  ‘God, I need a shower. I’m covered in thirteen years of dust, schools of silverfish.’

  I fake a sneeze on the way to the bathroom. ‘Achoo!’

  10.

  Mark’s barbeque is stainless steel, two metres long and he has the tools to accompany it. They’re housed in a brushed aluminium attaché. He polishes the tongs, the spatula, the trident-style fork, before he lines them up in their felt beds.

  The last thing I want to do is host a dinner. I want to be left alone to persuade myself it was someone else’s bad good wife.

  Taylor, her husband, David, and their kids, Sam, Gus and Miranda, are first to arrive. Mark and David head straight out to the deck with the two boys. Miranda, Taylor and I stay in the kitchen. Miranda is only four but she knows her place.

  ‘Hey, I got a job,’ Taylor says.

  ‘I thought you weren’t going to work until Miranda’s in school.’

  ‘We need the money. David says not to worry but I am. Anyway, it’s hardly working. It’s sitting there looking pretty. I was approached a few weeks ago at Chadstone by a woman who runs a modelling agency looking for real women. There’s nobody more real than me—I’m wrecked, I’m stained and I haven’t slept since 1960.’

  Taylor is plus size. Size ten plus a little more. She says it’s industrial strength baby-weight and she has until Miranda is five to lose it.

  ‘So, you’re doing it? Good on you.’

  ‘Going to tell me what’s going on?’

  ‘What?’ I haul the roast vegetables out of the oven, straighten my face.

  ‘You keep smiling like you’re remembering something really good.’

  ‘The Bombers won last night.’

  ‘Really? Since when do you care about the football?’

  True. The injuries, the deep media coverage, every channel, every day, discouraged me seasons ago. But the footy is easy small talk in this town.

  ‘Hope Ruby’s not late.’

  Taylor scoops the roast vegetables into a serving dish. ‘Of course Ruby will be late. She’ll have to get back home from wherever she landed last night, pick her car up from the station, get some more sleep and she’ll be here in time to sit down and
eat.’

  At the sink, beer bottles are lined up. A pair plus one of empty Heineken soldiers. BJ was drinking Heineken before the champagne at her house.

  ‘You did it again. You smiled.’

  ‘Look, Taylor, forget it. I’ve got to get the clothes off the line. Can you keep an eye out for Alex and Rob? Oh yeah, Ravi Junior and his parents can’t make it. They’re staying in, trying to get him on track. They say getting him to sleep is the hardest thing.’

  ‘Been there. Probably won’t see them again until he’s in school.’

  If Taylor has been with me for less than five minutes and noticed something is different, how long will it take for Mark to notice? Or Ruby, who may often be late but is always observant.

  Maybe they’ll get drunk enough to forget about me. I can facilitate that. I open a bottle of wine, a gift re-gifted, pour one for everyone except me. Mark and David are on their way. Stories of bunkers, lost balls, chip shots, nine irons.

  Taylor, Ruby, Alex and I sit at the opposite end of the table from the men. Miranda is on Alex’s lap. Alex sweeps a curl from Miranda’s face. ‘You’re getting big.’

  Six months into her pregnancy, so is Alex.

  At least she and Rob have stopped wearing matching clothes. Maternity wear can be difficult for a man. They met at the fireworks on the Yarra, saying good morning to 1999, wearing matching Pearl Jam Tour T-shirts. Then kept looking like their best idea of each other. Yuck.

  ‘She’s going to be four next month, aren’t you, Mirrie?’

  Miranda looks like her mum. It’s as if her mother has been photocopied at a seventy-five per cent reduction. She has the same hair, dark blonde and wavy, blue-green eyes and the I’ll-do-it-my-own-way attitude.

  ‘I wanna be five. Hannah is five.’

  ‘Hannah’s her friend at preschool. She’s not five, she’s lying about her age.’

  ‘Honey, hop off Aunty Al, go and see if we brought your Ice Age DVD with us, it should be in your backpack.’

  ‘I don’t care about age. You’re only as old as the woman you feel.’

  ‘Been feeling many women then, Alex?’