by Nicki Reed
‘So. Ruby and Mark have been doing it.’
BJ snorts a chip, gags. When she finishes laughing: ‘Well, you left him and she is an adult. Can we talk about important things?’
‘Like?’
‘Like, when was the last time we had sex?’
‘Two days ago. Remember? We went to bed early?’
‘That was five days ago.’
‘Mayonnaise and chips are gross, BJ.’ I think about it. ‘I’ve been too tired. You can’t expect a library to run itself.’
‘That thing? It’s a stupid pretend library. You don’t even have a reference desk.’
I hate it when someone else spells out my fears.
‘It’s not stupid.’
Will not cry about my library.
‘I’m sorry, Pete. You know how if you ever talked about your marriage, it was always about how he spent too much time at work.’
‘And?’
‘I could say the same thing. You are never home. It’s boring here without you. And it’s not my place if you’re not in it.’
‘It is your place, BJ. Look, there are your books.’ Her desk didn’t make the move so we’ve turned the dining room into study central. ‘The hallway cupboard is full of your bike gear and you have more hair products in the bathroom than I’ve had in my life.’
‘I don’t want room, I want you. It was better when we had no time and no space. Toilets, back seats, McDonald’s. I had your attention then.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Spend time with me. Talk to me. Do all that stuff you were doing before we became official.’
She wants to talk? I dust the salt off my hands. ‘Tell me about Serena.’
‘Are you deflecting?’ BJ says. ‘Don’t deflect with a deflector. We’ll be here all night and I’ll never get your clothes off.’
‘Serena. She was a big deal.’
‘Okay. She was married. She looked a little like you. So I have a type? She went back to her husband, said I’d been an escape hatch, a misadventure, a folly, and she didn’t need me anymore. It fucken hurt. I threw out everything she gave me and screwed every girl who looked twice in my direction.’
‘Did you love her?’
She rolls her eyes. ‘Did you love Mark?’
BJ loved a married woman who looked like me.
‘I don’t love her now. I hate her guts.’
I hate her guts, too. Escape hatch, misadventure, folly. Wanker. I fold the fish and chips paper into itself, squash it into a hard, flat ball.
‘Let’s go to bed. I’ll make it up to you.’
The first Friday of September, four weeks after Ruby told me she and Mark have been sleeping with each other. I call Mark from an empty conference room and put on the voice I’ve practised.
‘May I speak to Mark Boyd, please?’
I’m informed he’s in a meeting and he’ll be back at ten-thirty. Would I like to leave a message? I squeak that I’ll try again later. My hands are shaking. I’m glad of the reprieve; it gives me time to change my mind and leave it alone.
‘May I speak to Mark Boyd, please,’ much better the second time, ‘this is Susan Hilton of Gallagher and Granger.’
‘Hello, Susan?’ That voice.
‘Hello, Mark.’
‘Oh, it’s you.’ The edge to that voice, not that there’s been much edge lately—he seems to have accepted his impending divorce. ‘What do you want?’
‘Why are you fucking my sister?’
‘Before I hang up, did you have anything real to talk about?’
‘Just tell me, why are you having sex with Ruby? Is this a you-can’t-have-Peta-Wheeler-so-you’ll-have-Ruby- Wheeler thing?’
‘You were much nicer before that little deviant got her hands on you, Peta. You had humility.’
‘And you have half of the cutlery, my sideboard and armchair.’
‘I’m hanging up now, Peta.’
‘Please leave Ruby alone, Mark. She’s too vulnerable.’
‘Yes, but Peta, she’s such a good fuck.’ Clunk.
Clunk all right. I’m going home. I want to organise an evening’s entertainment for BJ. I’m thinking an expensive takeaway, some home decoration, and leaving her so exhausted she’ll have to cancel her ride on Sunday. I pack my bag, turn my computer off, wave bye to JJ&T.
Trish’s head turns down and a little to the right. She’s checking the time in the corner of her screen.
‘Where are you going?’ She likes to know what’s happening on her end of the floor. I was hoping to keep my mood to myself.
‘Home,’ I say. ‘I left the washing machine running and I think the plug is in the trough.’
‘Tell us another one, Peta.’ Jacqui is morphing into Trish. Ever since her divorce she’s been super-assertive. All part of the healing process. I don’t have a hope with Jacqui and Trish at work and Ruby a phone call away.
‘I called Mark and accused him of still wanting me—in a roundabout way—I feel a bit stupid and I want to go home.’
Jackie, the one who’s still married, stands up and walks around her partition. She pulls me into her: I’m getting a hug. I didn’t want it but it’s nice.
‘You go, Peta, sort it out. We’ll run interference for you,’ she says. ‘We’ll see you Monday.’
‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘See you girls.’
She’s a sweetheart, Jackie. She never forgets a birthday, organises the cake and candles; she runs the firm’s footy tipping; if there’s a baby or a retirement she’s usually the one who takes up the collection and buys the present. She wouldn’t say a bad thing about anyone. Sometimes she’s irritating but it is good to have her on my side.
Two hours later, my phone rings. I answer it in the kitchen. Hope it’s BJ, so she can crack some silly joke, maybe hang it on one of her lecturers—Captain YouTube, she calls him.
‘What gives you the right to speak to Mark about me?’
Loud.
‘Calm down, Ruby.’
‘You fucken calm down. I’m a big girl and I know what I’m doing.’
‘I’m not sure you do, Rube.’
‘It’s just fucking, Peta. Stress relief.’
‘Ruby, I…’
‘Save it.’
And she’s gone.
I send her a text: I’m sorry Rube.
The phone rings again a minute later. I pick it up on the second ring.
‘I’m sorry, Ruby. It’s none of my business.’
‘It’s not Ruby, Peta. It’s me.’
‘Oh, BJ. Sorry.’
‘Did you and Ruby have a fight?’
‘Yes, just a moment ago.’
‘It was about Mark, wasn’t it?’ BJ’s voice becomes softer. ‘Why do you care? So they’re fucking. He’s single, she’s single. What the hell difference does it make to you?’
‘I’m worried about Ruby.’
‘You need to ask yourself why you care so much. Since you seem so interested in other people, or your pretend library, I’m going out with the girls tonight. There’s a gig at the Tower.’
‘You don’t want me to come?’
‘No, it’ll be a little too high-octane for you.’
‘Oh, I was hoping we could…’
‘Yeah. Look, Peta, I gotta go.’
‘Yeah, see you,’ I say to the she’s-hung-up-on-you sound.
I should ring Carole Smart. See if I can get hung-up on four times in one day. I’m sure she’d oblige.
Friday nights are for something special, aren’t they?
It’s two weeks since BJ made noises about my work hours and I thought I’d been doing all right: coming home earlier, trying to talk about the library less, making sure I ask how her studies are going. Not enough, apparently.
I’ve made us a tent in the lounge room: pushed the chairs and couch into the walls, hung sheets as the sides and the ceiling, filled the inside with cushions, blankets and pillows. It’s womb-like, the colours dark orange, red. There’s not much room to
move, but we would have found a way.
This is my big romantic gesture—I’m listening, BJ. And she’s at the pub.
Five o’clock and I send Ruby another text. Press send three times: talk to me, talk to me, talk to me. I sit in the tent for an hour and stare at my phone. Six o’clock, I’m going to bed.
At eight I wake up. Toast for dinner. I go back to bed with a book. Just me and Ali Smith, but I’m in a mood and tonight she’s not funny. I turn the light off and lie in the dark, counting the minutes until BJ comes home. She doesn’t.
My phone has broken: it receives calls but it doesn’t make any sound—no ring, no beep. I check it. No missed calls, no texts. I might call the local hospital. The sun is up; it’s not too early. Hospitals would get calls like this every Saturday morning. I might have to call Carole Smart after all. While I’m at it, I text Ruby: still sorry Rube. No answer.
There’s no reason not to trust BJ. Our last conversation wasn’t brilliant, but it doesn’t mean she’d go leaping into someone else’s bed. Someone younger with more energy, who likes loud, loud music and probably rides a bike with an interesting, meaning-laden name like Spirit, or Diablo. A girl with a tattoo, a double-headed axe on her shoulder, or one like BJ’s: a yin and yang inside a chainring on her ankle. Someone she’s met at the gig, all muscles and no baggage, just the toothbrush in her back pocket.
No, BJ wouldn’t do that.
30.
The tallboy, empty of drawers and looking like a broken- toothed mouth, is in the bathroom. The armchair is on its side at the front door. I’m rearranging. It began with packing up the tent in the lounge room and morphed into re-assignment of the furniture.
‘Pete. Peta. Are you here?’
The front door is open but only enough for BJ to get her foot in. Her face is against the doorjamb like Jack Nicholson’s in The Shining. She didn’t come home last night and four o’clock in the afternoon isn’t early but that doesn’t stop me letting her in. I shove the armchair out of the way.
‘Where were you?’
‘I needed a break. You were busting my balls.’
‘I’d love it if I knew what you were talking about.’
‘Let’s have a cup of tea,’ she says.
At the kitchen table, BJ is hunched over. Tired? Guilty?
My stomach is sketchy, like the Scenic Railway and the Gravitron and my first job interview. I haven’t felt like this since I was sixteen and Johnny Huggins told me I was only a summer thing.
I can’t drink my tea. Neither can BJ.
She looks like she wants to say something, opens her mouth, closes it again. Her eyes are so dark they betray nothing. I never knew that about her eyes. Mine are easier to read, not as dark—the colour goes to mood or sunlight.
I stand up, push my chair in, take the two untouched teas to the sink, despatch them, rinse the cups.
‘Come and help me,’ I say. ‘Mum used to do this all the time. I’d come home from school and my wardrobe would be in the centre of my room and I’d have a brand new space. It was exciting. Maybe she couldn’t afford a gym membership. You can help me with the bed.’
We lift the bed, take little sideways steps. She’s wearing a T-shirt with cap sleeves and her muscles are taut, fine.
‘I talked to Justine,’ BJ says. ‘She reckons I’ve been giving you a hard time. Bloody hell, is this thing made of lead?’
Seeing Justine wouldn’t take all night and half the day.
The bed is in the middle of the room. Nothing else can fit in here with the bed how it is. A hatstand maybe, but if I can get BJ on it I don’t care; I’ll leave it that way.
‘She says you need the library. It’s your idea of yourself. Said imagine if you’d asked me to drop Ancient Worlds and study something practical. Can you please decide where you’re putting this? Wait.’
The bed is cumbersome, recalcitrant. She drops her end, wipes her brow with her forearm. There’s a flash of bra, the black one with the red stitching. Sweat beads on her upper lip and her hair is sticking to her temples. Mark was never sexy when he sweated, just sweaty. She licks her lips.
That’s it.
‘Beej, can you take your T-shirt off?’
The dimple to complement the musculature. ‘Say please.’
‘No. Get it off.’
She pulls her T-shirt off, whips it into the corner of the room. ‘Anything else?’
‘Nope. Leave the rest.’
Who cares where she was? Who cares I thought she was dead, or kidnapped, or had eloped with somebody more suitable. She’s here now.
‘Now what?’
‘Stand on the bed.’
She stands on the bed. Perfect. Her fly is almost at eye level. I unbutton it. My hands are shaking. She isn’t wearing underpants. Good. I slide her jeans down her hips. No patience. Hard denim against soft skin. I want to kiss her, all over, kiss her stomach, her thighs, the backs of her legs. No time. I put my mouth on her. She clutches my head. My stomach trembles. She’s whispering, fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. Her hands are pulling and un-pulling my hair and it hurts fantastically.
The bedroom overlooks the street. Anyone could see in. They’d see the respectable woman from No. 9 performing oral sex on her girlfriend. I don’t care. Not today.
Curtains open, BJ’s pants down, her breathing tattered, my jaw sore, the best ache, I’ve lost the capacity to shock myself.
Like there’s a line you’d never cross, but if you make to cross it, you get there (I mean, do the thing) and the line is further away. And the thing (when you get there) is merely a stepping stone to the next thing you’d never do and only some distance from the new line you’d never cross.
Since I got on the couch five months ago I’m all out of lines.
I’ve closed the curtains. Sex I can show, intimacy is ours. We’re still on the bed. BJ’s hand is between my legs. She pushes. I close my eyes, exhale slowly. She covers my mouth with hers, takes my breath. And pushes. It’s so slow its almost not happening. Push. I can’t kiss and come at the same time.
‘Harder,’ I breathe it, no voice, ‘harder.’
Her forearm is in my grip. ‘Come, baby, come.’
Her lips on my ear, one last push, I’m tight all over, I say fuck and it takes ten seconds to say it.
‘Pete, you’re beautiful when you come.’
She removes her fingers, wipes them across her stomach. I love that.
‘Can we stay like this for a while?’
‘Forever,’ she says.
Forever. Yesterday phoning hospitals was first on my list. I’ve no belief in forever, but if I did it’d have to be like this: quiet, close, a bit sweaty, complete. My eyes sting. She says forever and I’m crying.
‘Beej, I think we expected too much.’
She holds me, her face is in my nape, and her voice is soft. ‘Yeah. I knew there’d be blowback, but I didn’t care. I fucked you that first time, wanting you sooooo bad. God, you were sexy on my couch, your eyes wide open, a “no” on your lips that wouldn’t come out. But the second time, that afternoon in my bed, I knew it was a mistake. You had Mark and a life, a big heterosexual life, but I wouldn’t look at it. It was your smile, uncertain but so ready to find out, your skin, those curls. I was gone.’
She tugs my hair, wipes my tears with the crook of her finger.
I haven’t let go of her arm.
‘Same here,’ I say. ‘I haven’t told you this but I stole your singlet that afternoon. I stuffed it into my pocket and I slept with it scrunched up in my hand. I tried it on and Mark saw me. It was tight and stretched see-through. He loved it. But I took it off. I was afraid it’d retain my smell and lose yours.’
‘Well, we’re pretty pathetic, aren’t we?’
‘Yep, we’ve got it bad. Am I too awful now? You didn’t plan on getting yourself a conservative librarian.’
‘Pete, a conservative wouldn’t suck me in front of the neighbours. No, beautiful girl, you are not too awful. But I reckon we need some ti
me. Don’t look at me like that. I’m not saying we need to call it quits. If I felt that, I wouldn’t be having this conversation. Thunder and I’d be gone.’
‘Okay. So what do you propose?’
‘Well. It’s been a big day. Justine kicking my head in this morning, and making nice with Carole this afternoon. I have news.’
I sit up. ‘Let’s hear it.’
‘She wants me to go overseas with her for a month.’
‘A month? But…’
‘I’ll miss you too. But we have email. And a month isn’t that long.’
‘So, you’re going?’
‘I’ll visit Dad in Bangkok. I don’t know what Mum will do then—she can’t stand him. And I promise I’ll hate Paris without you. I won’t even see the Mona Lisa. I’ll wait outside the Louvre and perv on French chicks.’
‘When?’
She leans down, drags her jeans up from the floor, pulls a printed e-ticket out of her pocket, unfolds it. September nineteenth. She’s flying out in just over two weeks.
‘But BJ, your birthday.’
‘Babe, I just got my best-ever birthday present.’
That dimple, I’ll give her another birthday present if she’s not careful.
We’re walking down Station Street. It’s the first week of the finals and Collingwood is everywhere. Black and white posters, old women in scarves, kids in footy jumpers, streamers hanging off cars.
‘Well, I bet you won’t miss this,’ I point to a family of four in Collingwood regalia, head to toe. Even their Jack Russell is wearing a Collingwood jumper. ‘Maybe your mother’s decided if she can’t beat those wacky girls she’ll join them.’
‘Maybe she thinks she’ll have a month to work on me when we’re overseas. I’m taking my iPod just in case.’
‘I bet she thinks me in my job, across the road from Mark in his, will have me wanting my comfortable life back.’
BJ stops walking, there’s a tug on my hand. ‘Hey, maybe she’s right.’
‘She isn’t. Maybe she thinks you’ll fall in love with a pretty Frenchwoman. They all smoke, you know.’
‘And they’re all gorgeous.’
‘Yes, but would they do this?’ I snag her cigarette from her mouth, grind it out, press her up against the bottle-shop window and kiss her. I push my knee up high between her legs. Cars beep. Our sunglasses bump.