House of Sticks

by Peggy Frew

  ‘Come on.’ His fingers were touching her, lifting her chin. ‘I’ve been watching you. Working that guitar. Doing your thing. Don’t you know how beautiful you are?’

  Bonnie didn’t answer. She looked at him, his angular features, the dark of his eyes. What are you doing? sounded the warning voice.

  ‘Bonnie.’ His hands were either side of her face, on her hair, cupping her ears. Everything went muffled and close. She kept her eyes open as he kissed her, as he took her lower lip between his teeth and gently bit it, pushed his tongue into her mouth, but still — with her ears blocked and his face right there filling everything, and his body looming over her and moving even closer — still it didn’t really feel like it was happening to her. Their teeth clashed. She wobbled, and the guy took her shoulders, steadied her.

  She stared over at the shed, its one unlit window like an eye. ‘I can’t …’

  ‘Let’s get out of here.’ He ran his hand down her arm, took her hand. ‘Where are you staying? Have you got a hotel room?’

  She slid her eyes around the garden, the inky ruffles of the vine-draped fences, the spread of grass, the yellow windows of the house, the black shapes of people standing with arms folded, drinks catching the light. ‘Okay,’ she heard herself whisper.

  And so together they were walking back into the house, through the rooms, the noise, the faces and figures and smoke in the air. Out again, the front this time. Down the narrow street, his arm around her, their steps moving in and out of time. To the main road, and before she knew it another taxi, another door opening. There was no thinking, no control, it was happening and she had nothing to do with it.

  His hands on her. Their two bodies in the back seat. His mouth, his tongue, the air cool on her wet lips and chin when he pulled away. His fingers at the crotch of her jeans, working at the zip. His fingers inside her, the sting of her not-ready flesh catching, embarrassment dim and faint at how dry she was, at the legacy of three births — could he tell? — a distant voice, his, hers, or maybe it was both, whispering, ‘Sorry.’

  His breath tickling her ear. His murmur, ‘Oh, Bonnie, Bonnie,’ warm and close. The awful urge to laugh. He was putting it on. He was a bad actor. She didn’t even find him sexy. What are you doing?

  Him trying to kiss her again.

  Then blankness, nothing.

  ‘Bonnie?’

  Or an echo of blankness because it was gone again, finished, she was coming straight back out of it. And down she came, rushing, sliding, hurtling dizzily, and — slam — like leaping awake to an alarm there she was back in her body.

  ‘You okay? Bonnie?’

  Lights through the car window, haloing his head. His arm across the seat back, across her shoulders.

  ‘Bonnie?’

  ‘Yeah. I’m okay.’

  The feeling of his arm behind her neck, her hair pushed up at the back. Her jeans open, the scraped feeling in her vagina. The night flying by outside, whipping past, faster and faster. She gripped the door handle and tried to fix her eyes on the seat in front, to hold something still, to hold herself steady.

  ‘Have you got a card?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think we need a card to make it work.’

  The bank of buttons hung lifeless. A finger jabbed at one of them, kept jabbing. Bonnie watched it. The nail had purplish polish with a big jagged chip out of it. She closed her eyes and opened them again. The wall, the rows of buttons bulged towards her, wavered, and then smoothed out. She watched the finger and its hand drop and looked down at herself, her boots, her jeans, her top. Heard her own voice, thick and slow. ‘Oh. It’s me.’

  Beside her the guy laughed. She turned to him. There was a mirror behind him, smoky glass. The lift. They were in the lift.

  He laughed again, but then his face went serious. He bent towards her and frowned. ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ he said. ‘I didn’t realise you were so …’ He dropped his eyes. ‘I think maybe I should just help you up to your room and then go.’

  In the mirror Bonnie saw him reflected, his long back, the worn strip of his leather belt, his shirt half tucked in. And, peering out from around him, her own bleared empty face. She closed her eyes, shook her head, tipped forwards on her toes and pressed herself to his chest. She felt his arms go around her. Fuck it, she thought. Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it.

  ‘Bonnie?’

  She straightened up, let her bag slide down her arm and started digging through it. ‘Got a card here somewhere.’

  He kept a hand on her elbow as if she was an old woman. ‘I’ll just come up with you and then I’ll leave,’ he said. Even through the blur she could hear the edge of embarrassment in his voice.

  Fuck it. ‘No — stay.’ She caught hold of the card, drew it out and fumbled with it at the slot. ‘One more drink.’

  ‘Bonnie?’

  She opened her eyes. Tiles. Her elbows on her knees. Her head heavy in her hands.

  ‘Bonnie?’ A tapping at the door.

  ‘Hang on.’ She lurched to her feet and pulled up her jeans. Flushed the toilet and ran the tap in the basin. Liquid ripples of black hung at the edges of her vision. She felt huge, loud, her body crowding the tiny room. Her boots crashing on the floor. She tried to look in the mirror but she couldn’t see her whole self, only bits at a time — her chin, her mouth with its traces of lipstick. Her hair, an earring. She leaned in, got a fix on one eye, right up close so it floated, enormous, the threads of red veins like a web dragging to the centre, the glaring pupil. I hate you. Her forehead touched against the cool surface.

  ‘Bonnie?’

  She scrabbled at the lock, wrestled the door open.

  He stood uncertainly in the small dark hallway. ‘I think I’m going to go.’

  ‘Oh no — don’t.’ She saw her hand reach out, for his sleeve, clutch at it. ‘Come on.’ The weight of his flesh as her hands tried to turn him, manoeuvre him in the direction of the kitchenette. ‘We’re doing this now. Let’s just have one more drink. We can sit out on the balcony.’

  He stood still, resisting. ‘No, look, I really think I should go.’

  ‘Come on.’ She left him, went past and opened the bar fridge. ‘Let’s see.’ She watched her hand touch the bottles. ‘We’ve got Crown Lager or very nasty white wine. Or UDLs that cost a frightening amount of money.’

  He moved forward, near to the main door. ‘This was a nice idea, Bonnie, but I think I should go.’

  ‘Why?’ She straightened up with a beer in each hand.

  ‘I just — I think you’re way drunker than me. I don’t want to take advantage of you.’

  ‘Oh, come on.’ She went towards him, held out one of the bottles.

  He kept his hands by his sides. ‘No, really.’

  ‘I promise it’s okay.’ She could hear her voice, slurring, brash, the words bouncing around the small room. Shut up, she thought, but there was something there, making her do this, pushing the words out, some flattened need that came from somewhere, she knew, that had some reason but she’d forgotten it, lost it in the fog.

  ‘Thanks, anyway.’ He went to the door. ‘See you next time.’ He went out and the heavy door swung and sighed shut behind him.

  ‘Fuck,’ she said. One of the beers slipped from her fingers and smashed on the floor. ‘Fuck.’ She shuffled away from the mess. Put the other bottle down on the bench. Found a tea towel — pristine, folded in a perfect rectangle — and knelt. The overhead light sparkled on the pool of beer, the glitters of glass, the lace of foam, the whole mess of it. She tried to pick up some of the glass and felt a piece push into her finger. A delayed intake of breath and a childish sob sounded, faintly, as if coming from elsewhere. She put her finger to her mouth, tasted the blood, warm and sweet.

  She woke up sometime around dawn. The curtains were open,
and the sky showed pale and pinkish. Birds were calling, rough, loud and exotic-sounding. A call she’d never heard before. Bonnie thought of claws gripping, solid bodies hung upside down from branches, big, curved beaks.

  Her breasts ached, pushed against her bra. She could feel her pulse in them, and in her splitting head, her throat, her throbbing finger. She looked down at herself under the covers. All her clothes still on. Without sitting up she undid her jeans and wiggled out of them. Kicked them off the end of the mattress. She groped at the bedside table but there was no bottle or glass of water. She closed her eyes again, tried to ignore the dry of her mouth and the insistent fullness of her breasts. Breathed shallowly, drifted in and out of a hot, queasy doze. Started awake, turned to the other side, drifted again.

  ‘Bonnie?’

  She opened her eyes. There was someone at the door — a shadow with dark hair. Just for a second she thought it was the guy again, come back somehow. Hadn’t he gone? Didn’t those doors lock themselves when they shut? She covered her face with her arm, felt her throat fill with sick embarrassment.

  ‘You awake?’ It was Beth.

  ‘Mm.’ She kept her arm over her face. ‘Kind of,’ she said, and the words rasped out brokenly.

  Beth’s soft English voice was apologetic. ‘It’s almost eleven. The housekeepers are here. They want us to get out.’

  ‘Okay.’ Bonnie lay still.

  Beth moved away, pulling the door shut behind her.

  She lay a moment longer in the tick of her thick pulse and the grip of her nausea and slashing headache. She didn’t want to think about anything, but her mind was beginning to creep towards it anyway, to send out tendrils. Back to last night, poking at that nerve-end of exquisite shame, the details that lay waiting in their drunk, fogged shrouds. And forward — and she threw back the covers and hauled herself up, hunched over the threatening heave of her stomach, reached with shaking hands for her jeans, her boots, her bag — forward to the flight she was about to miss, to the new flight she’d then have to pay for, to the heavy hopeless guilt of home, and Pete.

  She hobbled from the lift, pushing her sunglasses onto her face. Half dragged, half carried her luggage to the desk. Leaned at the high marble counter. Caught sight of herself in the mirrored door to the office — a drained death-mask of a face, scarecrow hair, the black lenses of the glasses with their promise of hidden damage. There was a moment of fascinated shock that registered in the receptionist’s eyes before she was able to recover her air of professional composure, and it almost brought a laugh swimming up through the churn of Bonnie’s pain.

  Her voice wavered out in a croak. ‘Can you get me a cab, please? I’m running late.’

  ‘Certainly,’ said the receptionist, picking up a phone. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To the airport.’ Bonnie sagged at the counter. She looked down at her pale wrists sticking out of the cuffs of her jacket, the bulging blue veins on the backs of her hands. She put the left hand over the right, to hide the brownish streaks of dried blood.

  In the taxi she tried to clean her hand with spit and a tissue. The cut was small and pink, swollen at the edges. Bonnie dabbed at it, and it oozed new, thin blood. She wrapped the tattered tissue around her finger, clenched it back into her fist. She kept having to stop and lean forward, hold herself taut against surges of nausea. Every movement seemed a mammoth task. Slowly and laboriously she prepared for the airport: checked the printout with the flight details, readied her driver’s licence, checked her mobile phone — no messages — and switched it off.

  ‘I’m running really late,’ she said to the driver, for possibly the third time.

  ‘Doing my best, love.’ He made no change to his driving. His left arm lay slack, the hand resting on the gearstick. Bonnie tried looking out the window, away from his infuriating calm. But the grey concrete barriers that lined the road — tall, like walls, like battlements, with their rows of rectangular holes from which the occasional plant sprouted, wildly, clawing skywards — made her feel worse, and she turned her eyes back to the safer immediate view of the seat in front, and the driver’s unsympathetic arm.

  She ran, past smokers and trolleys, through automatic doors, over the buffed floor. A thickset teenager carrying some enormous piece of sporting equipment in a soft case moved with impossible slowness in front of her, and she skittered from side to side, arms wrenching at the handles of her own baggage, elbow joints aflame, head pounding. ‘Excuse me,’ she hissed. ‘Sorry. Excuse me.’

  Past him and past one of the check-in lines, darting in while the man at the desk was still clicking something on his computer, and two wheelie suitcases blundered along the conveyor belt.

  ‘Hey — there’s a queue!’ came a voice as she hefted her gear bag and guitar case onto the belt and slapped her licence on the counter.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she panted. ‘Melbourne. Can I still make it?’

  The man gazed at her, then back at his screen. Then back at her. ‘It’s about to board,’ he said. He looked about twenty. His eyebrows appeared to have been waxed.

  ‘You can’t just push in!’ came the voice from behind.

  Bonnie tried to swallow. Her mouth was so dry her tongue stuck to her teeth. ‘Please?’

  He picked up her licence, turned briskly to the screen. ‘You’ll really have to run.’

  Through security, past the juice bars and coffee places, the doughnut shop, the displays of scarves and cosmetics. Dodging people, her overnight bag thumping on her shoulder, her full-to-bursting breasts shooting pain, the boarding docket gripped sweatily. The breath rattling in her chest.

  ‘Just made it!’ The woman in her neat uniform took her slip of paper and scanned it, smiling cautiously. ‘You’re the last one,’ she said, and made a stiff, open-palmed gesture towards the empty low mouth of the boarding bridge.

  Bonnie couldn’t answer. Mutely she took back the docket and willed her legs to keep going, slower now but still an impossible effort, into the tunnel and along its airless length. Through the concertinaed entryway and into the whooshing hum of the plane. Down the aisle, wading through the false calm and the piped music, keeping her face upturned to the numbers, not looking at the rows of seated people, so close, giant blurred blobs. Reaching for the headrests as she went, hands shaking. Sweat prickling cold under the air conditioning. Her seat at last, almost at the back. She edged past someone’s knees — a man, pants those light tan colour golfers wore — and sank down. Dropped her bag and pushed it under the seat in front with her foot. Clicked on her seatbelt. Leaned her head against the window. Jammed her trembling hands between her knees.

  She could smell herself: stale and boozy with an acrid, panicky edge of sweat. Behind her sunglasses she snatched a look at the passenger next to her. Older, grey-haired, big and solid. A checked shirt, a newspaper. He appeared comfortably uninterested. Calm down. She closed her eyes. A recorded voice sounded, modulated politely, outlining safety and emergency procedures. She could hear the flight attendants going through their measured, purposeful demonstrations — the clink of seatbelt buckles, the rustle of lifejackets. The engines notched up their roaring. The plane began to move. She tried to steady her breathing, slow her heart, but the panic didn’t recede. Instead a new terror rose, as if it had been waiting all along for her to stop, to sit still, to pay attention. Her heart knocked, the cold prickles broke afresh. One hour and it’ll be over. Just hold it together for one hour. But up it shot, a vicious queasy dread. She couldn’t sit still. Feverishly she shifted her legs and feet, crossed and uncrossed her arms. Twice she reached for the seatbelt, made to undo it, to get up, to barge out into the aisle and — do what? Scream? Vomit? Fall to the floor? She pictured the flight attendants rushing to her, calls for medical help or security, being led or carried back off into the airport. The rows of watchful faces, craning necks, papers and magazines lowered, whispers rippli
ng.

  The plane turned a corner, pulled out of its wobbling crawl. The sound of the engines built to open-throated gunning. She licked her lips, swallowed, took long, slow breaths. They were powering along the ground, swaying and jolting, and then with a surge they were up, climbing, the angle steep and sudden.

  PETE OPENED THE DOOR. ‘HI,’ HE SAID, HIS VOICE CAREFUL, NEUTRAL — NOT NORMAL AND NOT UNFRIENDLY — AND HE SMILED, A SMALL SMILE. Then he registered her pallor, the mess of her slept-in make-up, and his expression faltered.

  She reached out and gripped the doorframe. Time narrowed, and way off in the darkness she saw the tiny, lit-up circle of yesterday, shrinking even as she watched — yesterday, when the only thing between them was the whole business with the bet. Her legs trembled, and saliva ran into her mouth. She tightened her fingers. He’s ready to forgive you.

  ‘You okay?’

  But she was pushing past him, running to the toilet. A flash of Edie’s surprised face in the hallway, and then Bonnie was flinging the door shut behind her, lurching to her knees on the tiles, gripping the cold seat with both hands, vomiting.

  She slumped on the couch with the baby at her breast, the twins either side, jumping on the cushions and yammering at her.

  ‘Just go to bed,’ said Pete, from the doorway.

  ‘But hasn’t my mum left?’

  ‘Yeah, she’s gone.’

  ‘But don’t you have to …?’ She couldn’t look at him. She kept her eyes on Jess.

  ‘It’s all right.’ No anger in his tone, but something — or was she imagining it? — some strangeness, some hesitation. ‘Just go to bed.’