Those Pleasant Girls

by Lia Weston

  Even through a singlet, the muscles across Phil’s back were impressive. Evie admired them from the condensed view his helmet gave her. She had tried to refuse it, but Phil wouldn’t let her.

  ‘No helmet, no ride.’

  ‘Just like a condom,’ she’d said without thinking, and received Phil’s lazy grin in response.

  Her rescuer kindly took the back roads, finally pulling up in the alleyway next to the Pleasants’ house, out of view of the primrose curtains on Cherry Orchard Way. Trying and failing to retain some style, Evie slid gracelessly to the ground and pulled off the helmet. ‘I can’t thank you enough. I don’t think Sturn would’ve been happy if I’d borrowed a tractor.’

  ‘How’s the car?’

  ‘Immobile. I keep forgetting to get it fixed. It’s basically a very expensive metal paperweight.’

  ‘May as well take a look at it.’ Phil parked the bike and opened a compartment to pull out a tool kit.

  ‘I’m guessing you don’t have a spare radiator in there,’ said Evie.

  ‘Nope,’ said Phil. ‘No skirts, either.’

  ‘Ah, yes, right,’ said Evie, remembering she was still half-dressed. ‘Car’s in the garage. Excuse me for just a minute.’

  Hopping over a pile of leaf litter on the way to the back door, she realised Phil hadn’t even asked what had happened to half of her outfit.

  Upon reflection, it didn’t say much for her reputation.

  Phil worked amid the garage’s dried-out paint tins and mechanical flotsam while Evie trotted out plate after plate of things she thought he’d like to eat, and tried not to feel like a cat presenting offerings of beings caught and slain. The double chocolate muffins disappeared almost instantly. This was a man with a sweet tooth. Good to know. She never entirely trusted people who said they didn’t eat chocolate; it was like people who said they didn’t like dogs.

  Her father did not like dogs.

  The Mini crouched in the corner like a wounded beast, its wonky headlight at half-mast. Phil had already jacked it up, so it looked even more reproachful.

  ‘I feel like apologising to it.’

  Phil removed a bolt. ‘To the car?’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind so much if it was a trolley or a vacuum cleaner, no one cares about them, but a car’s different. Cars have personalities. Well, I guess my washing machine has a personality, though really I’m probably just worried about offending it because I need it to keep working and I’ve just realised I sound insane.’

  Phil continued drilling and removing bolts while Evie stood by the paint tins and quietly died.

  ‘I talk to my van sometimes,’ Phil said eventually.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘When it’s playing up.’

  ‘You swear at it.’

  ‘It counts.’ He threw another bolt into the lid of a paint can. ‘And usually works.’

  ‘Does it have a name?’

  Phil pulled off the front panel of the Mini. ‘Not one it’ll tell me.’

  There was a ding through the kitchen window, indicating the readiness of Evie’s blueberry pastries.

  ‘You aren’t allergic to nuts, are you?’

  ‘Only cats and yodelling,’ said Phil.

  ‘No yodelling cats, check,’ said Evie, retreating. She checked her hair in the hall mirror. Not quite Vivien Leigh, but not bad, either.

  The nausea triggered as soon as she walked into the kitchen. Mary had left a banana next to the fridge; the blackened skin had collapsed, drenching the room with its cloying perfume. Evie’s gut registered a connection before she remembered what it was.

  Lisa.

  Lisa had butterscotch hair and a face which was unremarkable until she smiled. She and Evie were university classmates, bonded through the mutual loathing of their drama lecturer, who had never forgiven the world for failing to recognise his talent and enjoyed taking his frustration out on his students.

  Like many failed actors, Lisa ended up behind the camera. She and Gabe collaborated on several projects; Evie had spent more than a handful of dinners smiling through shared jokes she didn’t understand. Then one autumn afternoon there was Lisa at their back door, the butterscotch hair rising in the wind. Evie ushered her inside, fearing the worst: death, divorce.

  In a way, it was both.

  Lisa ate half a bundt cake and took the last of the tissues. She had been torturing herself, Lisa said. Many sleepless nights, she said. Felt so awful, so awful.

  ‘It’s Gabe.’

  Evie stared at her and wondered what she meant.

  ‘It’s been going on for ages.’

  ‘What’s been going on?’ Evie said.

  A flash of that smile, directed at the tabletop.

  It was an affair. Not just flirtatious looks and daydreams but proper betrayal, with hands and bodies, hot breath and liquid, pain and release.

  The room filled with a heavy sugar scent that stuck to Evie’s skin while Lisa described at length how Gabe had seduced her. During the confession – which felt more like watching an actor’s reel – Evie realised Lisa was only tossing her a grenade because Gabe had moved on to greener pastures.

  Lisa finally left, looking much happier now her conscience was eased, and Evie took a bottle of wine and Gabe’s laptop into the study. Gabe’s hidden files were unearthed without difficulty. Evie’s fingers, rusty from disuse, chattered across the keyboard, skills she hadn’t used for several years shaking themselves awake. His remote email was simple to hack, his password almost insultingly easy to guess.

  Almost worse than the affair itself was its dull predictability. Initially Evie had thought it couldn’t be true, not because Lisa was her friend but because Gabe would be smarter than that, wouldn’t fall for the trap that had ensnared so many men far less charismatic and intelligent. But she was wrong, and Lisa turned out to be just another link in a startlingly long chain.

  Gabe took photos, of course, but so did they. Long bronzed legs by hotel pools, intertwined toes, tangled sheets in hotels she had never seen. A roll call of ‘missing you xxx’ selfies in lingerie in bathroom mirrors. Scrolling through the evidence, she marvelled that he managed to get any work done at all.

  Evie finished the bottle without using a wineglass, unable to stop reading. Had everyone known but her? The girls at his agency, the bookers, the magazine staff, his friends, her friends. And she and Mary in the middle, on an island of blissful ignorance.

  She would have to give it all up – their beautiful house, the luxury of motherhood without worrying about money. For a brief moment she considered her future if she stayed, if she pressed Control+Z, rewound time, pretended Lisa had never visited. Could she ever look at her husband the same way, let alone talk to him or touch him? It might be possible. Then she clicked on a shot of Gabe, carefree and beautiful, and she wanted to sock him with a brick.

  Rewinding was not an option.

  An alarm had shattered the quiet, triggered by the curls of smoke in the kitchen. Evie shoved open the windows and let the night spill in, dispersing the acrid burning, the heavy sweetness now rolling in sharp-scented waves from the oven. She pulled out the black brick that had been banana bread, the sides of the tin scorched.

  What a waste, thought Evie, and was suffocated by a wave of revulsion. She threw the tin in the sink and coughed until her eyes overflowed.

  ‘Mum?’

  Mary in the doorway, her wraith-like face, fingers curled around the frame.

  ‘I burned something,’ said Evie. ‘Everything’s okay.’

  Obediently Mary turned away. Somehow she hadn’t felt the earthquake that had hit them. Everything looked the same, but nothing was. The ground had fallen away from under Evie’s feet. She didn’t know if she was going to fly or crash or even land at all.

  The next morning she sent Mary to her grandmother’s, then drove straight to the hardware store.

  When Gabe returned from that particular trip, he found all the doors nailed shut, legal papers on the table, and, in the gar
age, a giant concrete slab entombing his beloved skateboard collection.

  Phil was crouched in front of the car, looking for something on the floor. Placing the pastries next to his toolbox, shaking off the smell of burnt banana still lingering in her head, Evie popped a 13 mm bit into the drill and handed it over.

  ‘Ta,’ said Phil, looking from the drill to the pastries and back to the drill again.

  Evie put a tea towel on the workbench, tucked her skirt underneath her and perched on the edge to watch. ‘Do you fix Nathan’s car, too?’

  ‘I fix his mistakes.’ Phil selected a screwdriver.

  ‘I guess he can’t be good at everything,’ said Evie.

  ‘Mmph,’ said Phil, looking at the headlight’s wiring.

  ‘He is good at getting hit by things, though,’ said Evie, toying with Phil’s circlip pliers. ‘Did you know he managed to get head-butted by both a sheep and a goat on the same day?’

  ‘Bad day.’

  ‘Baaaaaad day,’ bleated Evie.

  Phil stopped working and looked at her, a screwdriver clamped between his teeth.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Evie. She put the pliers back in the toolbox. ‘I think that’s the worst joke I’ve ever told.’

  Phil took the screwdriver out of his mouth. ‘Dreamt I was a muffler last night.’

  ‘Oh, okay,’ said Evie politely, wondering if he was having a muffin-induced stroke.

  ‘Woke up exhausted.’

  He was so deadpan it took her a moment to register.

  ‘Okay, you win. That is absolutely terrible.’

  Phil grinned and saluted her with the drill.

  Phil promised to return with a new radiator, seeing as Evie had done such an excellent job stoving the bejeesus out of her current one. He refused to take any payment, but accepted an apple pie, six caramel scrolls and a plate of butternut snaps.

  ‘Gonna need a longer belt.’

  Evie, who had already assessed Phil’s shoulder-to-hip ratio, disagreed. ‘Thank you, again.’

  ‘No worries.’ He notched the motorcycle’s kickstand up. ‘Say goodbye to the Mini for me.’ One sleepy eye winked at her through the visor.

  Evie stood by the gate, watching Phil disappear, until the twitching of the primrose curtains sent her inside.

  Search: Gabriel Pleasant, Images

  A collage of photographs, portraits and magazine shoots filled the screen. Gabe at parties and launches. His official headshot, laughing at someone off camera, Roman nose in profile, mouth curved like sculpture. Mary stared at the photos, some of which she knew, many of which she didn’t.

  Search Tools > Any Time > Past Month

  Women, women, more women. Arms around shoulders and waists, leaning into them, being leaned into. Mary clicked on the third, which brought up a caption: Photographer Gabriel Pleasant with girlfriend Sabine Cohen. The date was yesterday.

  Mary smacked the laptop screen closed and snatched her shoes from the window seat.

  Cherry Orchard Way was deserted. There was no wind to stir the leaves. Her shadow was the only thing that moved. Between the motionless trees, the night was blacker than she’d ever seen, the stars in the thousands, thrown up in handfuls of glitter that stuck to the sky.

  Gardens lay in unidentifiable masses, bushes reaching out over gates and fences. She kept her hands inside her pockets, her fingers wrapped around her tools. Houses passed, footpaths rose and fell, and in the distance the ridges with the pine trees grew clearer.

  The bakery wall was smooth and pale. The marker left a pleasing black line. When it was finished, she moved on without stopping to look at what she had done, away from Main Street, tracing a circuitous route. She left a trail of black, and backtracked again.

  Silently the tops of the trees began to stir. Home was still three streets away when it found her – an unfamiliar scent, hooking her nostrils and turning her head. It filled her skull with syrup, essences of heat and nectar and decay distilled into a single strand. No saucepan could produce that aroma. It was a plant. Mary snuffed the air, trying to absorb the fragrance and place the source.

  The wind died again, taking the scent with it.

  She stood in the middle of the road, pirouetting, frustrated.

  When a front light snapped on, she withdrew again to the shadows and slipped home, her head still full of perfume.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘Hail, Queen Mary!’

  Mary shrieked and dropped her book.

  ‘One does not simply bellow at newcomers,’ said Travis, not bothering to look up.

  A short boy scurried forward to greet her at the door to the underworld, scooping up the text and handing it back. ‘Oops, sorry. Didn’t think you were a twitcher.’

  ‘Mary, this is Dean.’

  ‘People call me Mini D,’ said the boy. ‘Can’t think why. Can you sit over here?’ Without waiting for an answer, he led Mary over to a desk and began rearranging her as if she were a mannequin. ‘Apologies for missing your debut last week. Home sick. Could you just hold this book . . . yep, that’s it, yep, great.’ After tweaking her position, Mini D jumped up on the opposite desk and began scribbling in a sketchpad.

  ‘Dean, this is Mary,’ continued Travis, who still hadn’t looked up.

  ‘You’re probably the only student besides Trav who’s made it through Anna Karenina,’ said Mini D. ‘No wonder he lured you here.’

  ‘I wasn’t lured,’ said Mary, holding her book over her head as instructed. ‘I followed. You don’t like Tolstoy?’

  ‘Mini D doesn’t read. He draws,’ said Travis in a tone that indicated there was much more to it than that.

  ‘Bet you were the one who wrote Quoth the raven on the side of the butcher’s,’ said Mini D. ‘No one around here knows cursive.’ His eyes flicked constantly between the paper and Mary. With his nut-brown hair and quick movements, he reminded her of a squirrel.

  ‘Do you draw everyone?’ said Mary.

  ‘Got to get them out somehow,’ said Mini D. He put a pencil in his mouth while he switched to a different one. ‘The pictshures, I mean.’

  ‘What happens if you don’t?’

  ‘Nightmaresh.’ With a few final strokes, he jumped down and handed her the paper. ‘For you, m’lady.’

  Mary, bewildered, looked at the sketch. It wasn’t the fact that she had antlers and hooves: he had taken all the parts of her that she found most depressing – nose like a torpedo, legs like twigs – and made her into something beautiful.

  ‘I can do a different one if you don’t like deer.’ Mini D ferreted in his pocket and offered her a squashed chocolate bar, as if that would somehow help.

  ‘No, it’s just . . . No one’s ever drawn me before. I’ve never looked like,’ Mary shook the page at Mini D, ‘that before.’

  ‘That’s probably a good thing,’ said Travis. ‘You’d be a medical experiment otherwise.’

  ‘I’ll swap for it,’ said Mary, rummaging in her schoolbag.

  Mini D’s eyes boggled when she handed over the bulging Tupperware container. ‘Brownies, caramel slice, lemon meringue pie . . . Holy crap. Did you make these?’

  ‘My mum did. She’s been giving me extra to share with all my new friends,’ Mary gave a half-laugh. ‘I’ve dumped like a bakery’s worth because I couldn’t tell her I didn’t have any. Even Travis didn’t want them.’

  ‘Oou’re infahne,’ said Mini D to Travis through a mouthful of lemon curd. ‘Eees are amaffffing.’

  ‘Caramel slice, please,’ said Travis, holding his hand out without taking his eyes off his book.

  ‘I thought you were diabetic,’ said Mary, taking the box over to his desk.

  ‘I thought you got them from Mrs Kitzeln. The last time I ate something she made, I found a claw in it.’

  ‘Your mum’s single, right? Okay with younger men?’ said Mini D, wiping meringue off his nose.

  ‘Poor Therese,’ said Travis, dissecting caramel from chocolate. ‘The ignominy of being ditched for pastry.’<
br />
  ‘Therese Piece? That blonde girl? But she’s . . .’ Mary couldn’t think of a polite way to finish the sentence.

  ‘Surgically attached to Zach,’ supplied Travis.

  ‘Phhft.’ Mini D pinched the box back and took another caramel slice. ‘She’ll get tired of his brooding good looks, money and crappy band eventually. Besides, no one understands her like I do. I saw her reading a graphic novel once.’

  ‘I think she picked it up by accident,’ said Travis.

  ‘Trust me, underneath that divine exterior is a geeky girl trying to get out.’

  ‘She’s not trying very hard,’ said Travis, starting on the biscuit layer.

  ‘Do you have a girlfriend?’ said Mary to Travis. ‘Or boyfriend,’ she added hastily, in case she had offended him.

  ‘Travis’s girlfriend,’ said Mini D, licking chocolate off his palm, ‘is the internet. His parents love football and his four older brothers, in that order, so he’s the neglected can of soup on the supermarket shelf. He’s cream of asparagus.’

  ‘I’m not deaf, D,’ said Travis.

  ‘Did Travis tell you his last name?’ said Mini D, ignoring him. ‘Tueller. Travis Tueller. And his brothers are called Tim, Tom, Ted and Toby.’ He bounced up and down on the desk. ‘And I heard a rumour that if his mum had another boy, she was going to call him Tarquin because she couldn’t think of any more T names, and then Mr Tueller was going to leave her. Ow! Fuck!’ he finished as the hardcover Travis threw connected with his head.

  Mary looked at the book now splayed on the ground. ‘Assaulted by Anne of Green Gables. That’s kind of undignified.’

  ‘Next time it’ll be Clarissa,’ said Travis.

  ‘Who’s that?’ said Mini D.

  ‘Someone even less likely to date you than Therese,’ said Mary.

  The magazine article called the project ‘a lovely conversation starter’. Evie looked at her version doubtfully. Like the picture on the page, her photo board was covered in white material, criss-crossed with white ribbons, and punctured with white pins. Unlike the magazine’s, however, hers was spotted with droplets of blood. Evie sucked her pin-pricked thumb and propped her board against the kitchen tiles. Why was everything white? It was like an eye test.