Atomic City

by Sally Breen

  I make a move to leave and notice a vase full of oriental lilies by her bed. I hadn’t registered that their bright magenta was real. They’d slipped into the colour scheme.

  From Harvey?

  No.

  I turn over the card. James Weston. A name I don’t know. Someone not in our scene. Underneath, a message of love.

  Who’s this guy?

  No one special. Just someone from home.

  I catch the lilt in her voice. The longing. Probably some old boyfriend. I’m not really that interested.

  Must be annoying. Someone pestering you.

  She shrugs. I study the card more closely. Is she trying to get me jealous?

  Jade sighs, looks away, reaching over and touching the petals of one lily, falling open and soft like a melting flute. She fingers the deep orange of the stamen.

  Annoying flowers really, their pollen stains.

  Jade shows me the burnt orange bruise on her fingers. I’m not happy about the bruise, about the flowers and the snag of sadness, the catch in her throat. This fallout puts an ugly spin on things. It conjures Camille and her warning and more than anything it conjures frailty. The frailty scares me. I need Jade to be strong. I don’t move to touch her or kiss her goodbye, as if her secret distress is contagious. Instead, as I close the door to her room, I tell her to keep me in the loop.

  And I mean what I say, now and tomorrow and always. Don’t fail me. Keep me in the loop, Jade.

  HARVEY

  Basically, the overview. A girl came to work here, nothing special at all, very plain Jane, dressed down. Dressed as if she knew she had come from money, you know? Carried herself well, very well brought up, very quiet and just got on and really did her job and, in fact, she was the best telemarketer in her particular project that we’d had in ages. She saw the job in the paper, she came to the interview. I don’t actually remember her in the interview, we do group interviews; she didn’t sort of stand out at all. Took her on and she stuck around which was unusual. The young ones get bored. Out within the week, they can’t hack it. But Jade just seemed to settle in quick, one of these people that work hard, head down and just does very well.

  The first time I really remember her, apart from that, was she came to me here one morning at eight o’clock; it was only about a week since she’d started but it felt like she’d been around for longer. She had that kind of part-of-the-furniture thing about her. I’m normally the first in, and she said she was in a panic, she was flying to her sister’s graduation, could she borrow eighty dollars ’cause there’d been a muck-up on her flight, she had to go from Coolangatta to Sydney. Um, she got paid the next day so it wasn’t a particularly risky thing for me to do, you know, so yeah I lent her the money.

  What stood out was the next day she came in, told me she had flown down, the flight back had been full, so she’d hired a car to drive back and she came in with the money and a thankyou card. Right? So she did all this in twenty-four hours. Yeah? You know, she’s left here at eight o’clock in the morning, flown down to Sydney and she’s driven back at seven o’clock at night, got back at seven am and come into work at nine. Okay? But with the money and a thankyou card and, sadly in this day and age, not many people operate like that. You know I lend money all the time to people and it rarely comes back the next day and never with a thankyou card. So I thought, this girl’s really nice, you know? And didn’t think anything of it, just carried on working.

  THE DEALER

  The seduction of Harvey is not subtle to the trained eye, but then, he isn’t a subtle guy. Jade’s working on building edifices of trust. She’s very patient at living out that double life. Her persona at work is gentle. I meet her before my shifts either in the early hours of the morning or for a late lunch in the afternoons. We always go to her place or to Main Beach so there’s no chance her workmates will see me. Sometimes when I meet her, there’s still some gentle residue like she’s another girl, her voice tempered with a slight lilt not there most of the time.

  Jade is making me tea, telling me about her day. For a few moments we could be a couple just like any other – both tired of routine and relieved by sensitive ears – but as the traffic builds on the streets another Jade surfaces; her talk moves inevitably from small to strategy. Stories about people become stories about codes. She changes out of her work uniform and her headspace shifts. The long shorts and linen shirts she wears to hide her skin from Harvey morph into the clothes she wears for me. Always tight, always black. I’m not confused about the clothes. Jade’s just bluffing, playing her charm down to give herself time. To make him feel comfortable. Like the change for me, there’ll be a change for him and it will be timed to perfection. There’ll be another voice, a different gait and a few hasty drinks. Just like tonight. Except our association has never led to sex. Later we’ll meet at Aces, if I’m free; if I’m not Jade never tells me her plans. Sometimes this bothers me. I’m getting itchy for a sting. Jade’s dangling all this potential in my face but we haven’t made a big move yet. So far it’s all been set up, prep, and I know more than anyone waiting can be dangerous. A time when you can lose everything to the flippancy of a second guess. One too many moments to think she might be small time. When the hours and the days roll out calmly and without any real incident, it’s easy to forget what she’s capable of. I’m hungry for action and Jade’s got me on tenterhooks. I’m the instigator. She’s the tease.

  STATE OF PLAY

  Harvey has screwed fifteen women on his desk. Laid a high turnover of staff. A stream of backpackers on cash. He’s not paying much attention to Jade. Jade talks all day into the receiver. She sells squares of space; advertising for community newsletters. She’s good. The sale always happens in the first few seconds. It is the voice she uses. She knows how to coax. There are totals every day and Jade always wins. Jade likes talking to strangers, the managers of small businesses struggling so much for dollars they get sucked into newsletters. She has never seen the newsletters. She doesn’t even know if they exist.

  Every second Jade is in two spaces. She is there live in her cube, talking down the line, but inside she is calculating. Thinking through her manoeuvres. Watching too, for opportunity. There’s a gaggle of old ladies in the cubes; they have sold for years, big-hearted women with outsides all crusted and hard. They’re tired of lying to people for a living, tired of the endless pressure of persuasion. Jade wins them over gradually, these queens of the cubes; she knows she must be sweet, that she must not gloat over her commissions and her victories, she must convince them she’s not a threat even though she beats them. So she offers small things every now and then, coffee, the emptying of a bin, sweets. She listens. She makes peace.

  Jade is not like the other young girls, distracted by the constant stream of young male muscle in the room, the temporary prospects. She feigns shyness with the men and refuses invitations to drinks. The queens of the cubes come round to her.

  Jade is playing on hearts. A slow and steady trust. Tomorrow she’ll buy a present for one of the queens’ daughters who has taken ill and word of her thoughtfulness will start to spread. When she holds the queens and the hearts Harvey will not be immune to her strategies of kindness.

  THE DEALER

  Jade is getting ready for her end-of-financial-year Christmas party. Paradise Holdings has it in the early spring because, like so many businesses in this city, there’s too much going down in summer.

  I don’t know why I’m here in her bathroom, watching her. Is it that tonight I know she’ll sleep with Harvey? That tonight he’ll be some kind of king in his arena. Buying drinks for his workers and touching the women up. I want Jade to listen to me and scope with me. I’m clinging because I know when this thing starts to open up between them I’ll be on the periphery; that time between us will contract. She is too close. She is taking too much pleasure in the small things aligning her to Harvey. And she is enjoying my unease.

  Jade has put on a red dress, one she has never worn for me. Tight an
d thigh-high. The Gold Coast is hot even in spring and he will see how long she is and how when her hair is down her face is less severe.

  In her bathroom Jade leans towards me and lets me feel the softness of her hair. I take a handful and twist the strands in my fingers. She looks me in the eye, smiling at how well the conditioning has worked and how for a moment I want to kiss her. For real. She sees the shift, the change from how I usually am, and I drop my hand. Nervous. She turns back to herself in the mirror. I’m perched rather uncomfortably on the ledge separating the bath from the shower, surrounded by all the products it will take to shock him, my cock getting hard in my pants. Squirming, I tell myself to snap out of it; only the impending reality of another guy coming in on our scene is making me want her like this. To possess her like I never have. We’re alone in the apartment filled right now with Jade’s collection of electronic beats and bad lyrics. Pop about Friday nights and long-lost Saturday mornings. She will not be home tonight.

  Jade is dancing between applications. The twist of her hips and her lightness depress me, all this frivolity, because she’ll never be this for me, never average and carefree. She dusts the back of my hand with the leftovers of some sort of shimmer she has applied to her décolletage and I stare at the ridiculousness of my glittered fingers. I wipe the gunk off. I’m in a foul mood and body tinsel will not console me.

  By twenty to seven Jade is transformed. Her eyes are intense with anticipation. She has turned on the light inside. Her hand shakes though as I pass her a drink. And the shaking worries me. All signs that when it comes to the seduction of men, she’s betting blind. We’re now sitting in the lounge room, me sunken in the couch, her on the edge, knowing this moment cannot be delayed forever.

  The beats pump as rapidly as her heart; the delicate fabric of her red dress, I notice, is pulsating slightly across her chest. I want to cushion her, to keep her from the night and its element of ruin. But I can’t; I’m on the rail, watching not playing. I touch her knee and ask if she wants me to drop her into town. It’s a short walk, I tell her, but hard work in those shoes.

  No thanks, she says, I think I’ll call a limo.

  And I leave, pissed off she sees the pimping of herself as some kind of cause for celebration.

  STATE OF PLAY

  All over town Harvey’s people are getting into taxis, buses and limousines. Made-up in heels and ties, they peel themselves away from the day, from the back end of winter. The prospect of a night on the house leads to perfume and shrieks, and a few messy steps from pre-dinner drinks. From all over town they gravitate to the sea, with the sun setting slowly behind them, casting a lolly-pink haze on the high-rise towers. They zigzag towards the strip from the driveways of quiet suburban nights.

  Jade is in a limousine alone, looking at the water to her left and thinking about Harvey and, like all the others, thinking about the probability of flirtation and sex, of rolling out of their cocoons.

  Harvey is always thinking about the probability of sex. He is standing on his balcony, surveying the city and looking at the same water. And everything is right with the world. He has good whiskey, a big house, a big dick and a big enough bank account to prove it. He is even attracted to the idea of being a better man now he has made all this money, but thoughts like that, he thinks, can wait.

  Tonight Harvey is not even considering Jade. His mind is filled with other data entries and potentials, a more obvious catalogue of fresh skin into which she does not yet compute. Harvey racks up the possibilities that as yet do not include her. He has an absolute advantage. He knows tonight his wallet is full and that later on one or more of his people will go down on him, perhaps not as well as one of his whores but coupled with a flirty chase, always a better option. Tonight in an easy-money town, Harvey is on top.

  HARVEY

  I felt like Jade was one of these secretaries who’ve got their hair up and you always think about what they’d be like with it down, you know, maybe sexier. She reminded me of a secretary from the point of view that I felt she was a pretty girl but she didn’t have the best skin and she really dressed very manly almost, you know, nothing special. But once she came in in a tight T-shirt and I actually paid attention because I hadn’t seen her as a woman, yeah? She made no effort. Then, a couple of other nice things, she came across as a nice girl, then at the Christmas party she turned up looking stunning. She had a red sort of party dress on. She had dark hair. She won an award. I gave her a prize for doing well at the marketing.

  Anyway, at the Christmas party I’m like, you know, I really like people with good upbringing, class. I’m attracted to those kinds of people and she looked so lovely compared to what she normally looked like, plus I’d been out with a string of sort of models and that kind of thing and everyone was saying to me I should go out with a nice girl and I really thought, look, this girl’s really nice, and so I walked her where she had a limo waiting and in fact I’m to blame for some of this because I said to her something like: If only you were older.

  And she said: Well how old do you think I am?

  I said: Aren’t you eighteen?

  No, I’m twenty-one.

  Well, that’s okay then.

  We got together that night. We started dating and it was really funny because she was such a nice girl, and everything she did fitted in with everything she said, and she was really worried what everyone was going to say and things, and in fact when she told a group of friends here they were stunned. They just didn’t see the two of us together, that kind of thing, but I really went for her goodness, yeah? Her honesty. That’s why in retrospect it’s so mind-blowing.

  I don’t know about you but when I meet someone they need to be a good all-rounder, they need to meet certain criteria of intelligence and this and that and the other, but normally there’ll be one of those things that stands out and makes them dazzling. They might be stunningly intelligent or they might make you laugh so much or they might be incredibly beautiful, but with her she was just such an old-fashioned good person, yeah?

  You know, someone you could trust completely.

  THE DEALER

  Jade calls me in the morning on the mobile she reserves for our conversations. She’s in Harvey’s house and before I can speak she’s rattling off a list of his assets and bankroll, excited that he’s falling for it, that the game has started. I’m relieved. Something ignites in me when I hear her. Harvey has gone to buy them breakfast while she wanders around his beach house checking out his value. I know she’s woken up to the idea of me. There’s an edge to her voice I haven’t heard before. She’s playing sweet but there’s something else; there’s shame, and it’s comforting to know I’m the external factor contributing to this sudden vulnerability. Jade obviously feels no guilt in response to Harvey. She wants to confess to me and she wants to make me feel that she’s not there for real, to reassure me that it is, in fact, just an act. Harvey does not threaten me but it suddenly makes sense that now we have entered this dangerous and somewhat perverted ménage à trois that she feels the need to do this. I hadn’t expected her to care and the thought consoles me, calms my need for claim, which last night I was confusing with desire.

  If Jade and I are capable of accepting each other’s humiliation, our secrets will be safe. We’ll conduct our own reparation, not obligated to anyone else and cancel out the world. Right now, Jade and I are this close to rolling full bloom.

  STATE OF PLAY

  The Dealer prefers when their talk is soft. When they know the consequences of their actions but pretend they don’t. When they act just like normal to keep things sane. They pretend, dance around the edge of knowing all this can end tomorrow, the end of the year, or perhaps the next. They talk as if the world can’t see them and never will. A benign language bereft of guilt, not touching on their secrets but made blissful because of them. To all appearances theirs is a harmless communication; to any outside ear the complex codes and derivatives come across as standard, as nothing; they play unfazed beca
use every move they make is rendered immune, its weight does not register. They test the water with each other, the limits of reference, convinced they occupy a space where such serenity will always exist. They act like there will be no retribution.

  If anyone should know about odds it’s the Dealer. He knows eventually a good run runs dry, that the house always gets the better of the player, but he’s letting his instincts on these things slide. Like a child plying an adult for a sweet, this pantomime with Jade is contained merely for the pleasure of dragging it out, of not merely coming out with it. Sometimes it’s good to play innocent with your collaborator.

  THE DEALER

  Jade tells me that I can’t ever say she’s mad. I can call her plenty of things but never ever mad. I hide my reactions well and this is why she likes me. Face to face there is never any hint of recall. Only when she turns from me do I distrust.

  The major part of my role is to follow her. To watch over her with Harvey. To tail them in downtime, when they are in public. On the Gold Coast this means long aimless strolls along shopping boulevards, parkways and beaches; endless coffees and lunches and dinners in the places to be seen. I’m always eyeing them through the chimera of the city’s commercial centres. The retail splendour: the Oracle, the Oasis, Chevron Renaissance, Marina Mirage, the Paradise Centre, Robina. I watch her weaving him around these high-roofed constructions with their shiny reflective floors, white sails and seascape details. I watch her through water fountains and bird aviaries, next to hollow monuments, trucked-in palm trees and mass-produced statues of David.

  Today, Jade holds Harvey’s hand and leads him from the Marina towards the faux classic surfaces of the Versace Hotel. Outside, the architecture is unexpectedly understated. Low-level and stretching along the narrow land of The Spit. But the opulence of the circular drive, cobblestoned and hand-paved, the crisp sound of new tyres turning effortlessly, the bellboys in their jet-black Versace suits, tell you without doubt you’re in an exclusive place. Somewhere otherworldly. In the foyer hundreds of tall white orchids rest singularly on their stems, seemingly floating in thin air held up by glass so fine it is almost invisible, save for the light bouncing off it. I follow Jade and Harvey discreetly along the curved lines of the hotel – our way outlined by trails of identical white-flamed tea lights.