Atomic City

by Sally Breen

  STATE OF PLAY

  The machines drag down the strip. Pushing the decibel limit. Screaming centimetres past slowly moving skins, held back by concrete slabs and inverted cages. Black-and-white checks, corporate boxes, scaffolding, children in trees. Necks craning for a glimpse of heralded steel angels, moving, almost too fast to see. Fireproofed men guard the edges, while everyone else hyperactively anticipates an accident. In the sky helicopters weave between buildings and terrified birds stuck in the vortex. Three times today three super-slick jets will scorch the sky with methane, rocking the foundations of the city. A coastal earthquake delivered from up high. It will take the F-111s only seventeen minutes to fly the length of the eastern seaboard stopping only for a five-figure refuel at each end for the thrill of a ten-second flyby. One jet will twist its way between the people in the towers. A little boy will reach out of a window to touch the surreal grey bird of his console dreams, and his tiny body will shake in its savage aftermath. The smell of methanol. The crowds will scream. Bring it on, bring it on, bring it on. Messages will litter the sky, written in smoke. Slogans will compete for pole position until every inch of this carnival is subdivided by big guns. Watch the corporate Catherine-wheel pirouette. Lock the brakes. Chop off a full second. Laugh at the guy who feels stuck on the periphery yell: Yeah, talk on your little two-way, fudge packer.

  THE DEALER

  I get the impression Jade’s party is about to move. The races have wound up for the day and the punters are piling on to the edges of the streets, beachside, riverside. The track lies empty, coiled around the pumped-up suburb like a tired black snake. Thousands of people are swarming en route to another scene. In the late afternoon the onset of night takes them out of the race zone and into the avenues. Tedder Avenue for the tamer scene or further into the bars and strip clubs of Orchid Avenue for the chase. Not once has Jade tried to call me. Several times she has stood alone on the western side of her balcony, as if trying to signal me. She knows what building I’m in. I watch her and Harvey making moves, clearing tables and emptying drinks. I head downstairs to follow them.

  From inside the darkened plate-glass walls of Mano’s I can safely watch her seated alfresco on the pavement opposite me. I like the fact she’s outside and I’m inside protected from the high-strung antics of the sidewalk brigade. Harvey and Jade are joined by Harvey’s partner Anton, his third wife and another high-rolling couple I don’t recognise. Jade is facing the street and me. For the first time all day I can see her face unmagnified.

  Having not eaten, I decide on the oysters Kilpatrick and steak. My waiter is sensitive to the fact I am alone on a night like this and doesn’t engage in small talk. He seems embarrassed when he delivers me a drink, compliments of the well-oiled race-day ladies at the table behind me. I send it back. In the plastic-surgery capital of the southern hemisphere I’m in no mood for the cheap charity of its demi-goddesses. I stick to the soothing comforts of my young merlot instead.

  It gets late.

  The closed-off streets of Main Beach fill with drunken people. It becomes increasingly difficult for me to see past them to Jade. The pavements and the streets are thick with bodies. Every now and then I catch glimpses of her: quick flashes of her face, her arms raised over her head, or her hand reaching for Harvey’s leg. His head leaning into her neck, hers thrown back in laughter. Anton’s hand on her elbow, her kissing his wife. At ten o’clock a live band starts up on the Avenue and Jade drags an unwilling Harvey on to the street to dance. I watch her wind her hands around his neck then I can’t watch anymore. I can’t watch out for someone who has stopped looking for me.

  On my way back down from the toilet my path is blocked in the concrete stairwell by one of the women from the table behind me. She’s having difficulty negotiating the stairs. When we meet to pass, she laughs. Her eyes roll back slightly as she steps up towards me, her sinewy arms bracing the narrow walls for support. There’s a slight sweat on her stretched-back forehead. She grabs my crotch and pushing past her I tell her to fuck off. There and then I decide to blow Jade off and this whole damn avenue and head for the chase.

  STATE OF PLAY

  Inside the club on the strip the Dealer leans into a woman a bit like Camille, not a lot like Jade. A big-event weekend equating to anonymous sex. Strangers on strangers. Locals high on the interstate. The interstate hell-bent on lasting the distance. The Dealer temporarily relishing his plethora of never-to-be-seen-again mates. Bodies revved up and motors charged. On Orchid Avenue everyone’s a driver. Drunk on frivolity, on this city, on the fine edge between sarcasm and fashion. Tonight thousands of people in a diminutive space entwine. A number that includes the four bodies wrapped up in this story. Harvey and Jade. The Dealer and the Girl. Simultaneous stroking. In a penthouse, in a hose-down room.

  See Harvey pressing Jade against an expensive wall. Her hand reaching for his thigh as if about to play a card.

  See the Girl slipping a hand into the Dealer’s, on a walk that takes them from the club to the street. The loaded stroll home just happens.

  Harvey’s running his fingers through that hair he likes down. Jade, his good secretary, his nice girl, unravelling in his hands. Her practised looks sliding from coy to naughty as he takes her dress over her head and her pants underneath them until she is naked in his territory, in front of him. In the bright light of his cream apartment he rolls on the balls of his feet. Holding his arms out, watching the moon-chromed waves on the water, feeling her tongue.

  The Dealer finds himself in a room with a stranger. With other girls and other strangers. So many, the Dealer calculates, there aren’t enough beds. They get to the pretence of drinks but all hardly touch the sharp juice in their warm cans. Instead the newly-mets commune on a veranda watching other parties and wonder, now the talk is not so one on one, if they have made the right choice. The Girl is on the Dealer’s knee, laughing in the faces of her friends, laughing and throwing her head back and touching his legs, her fingers lightly brushing his crotch every time her hand touches his jeans.

  Two blocks away Jade watches Harvey’s face in the mirror set above the table he has her on. Watching him fascinated by the spread of her legs and his own rear-view entrances and exits. Fucking her hard from behind. Watching herself buck up against him thinking of the Dealer and how long it will take for him to give in, to come inside her.

  In either space no one’s looking into any eyes.

  Couples start to peel off the balcony. The lights go out. The Girl turns around on the Dealer, leans on to him, so over her shoulder he notices the empty beach. The flat packed sand. Their hands make their way into each other’s laps. They fuck sitting up on a li-lo advertising paradise and, even now, the Dealer thinks of Jade, meeting the Girl on top of him, her thrusts, with a passion not transferable. Fucking her hard, not imagining she is Jade but seeing her as she is. Neither Jade nor the Dealer are in pursuit of happy endings, or false starts; each of their lovers is just a means to an end, a gesture seemingly thrown into the night but actually well timed and squarely aimed at the other. A bluff, a comeback, a see-you-and-raise-you. But Jade knows what’s coming and the Dealer doesn’t. Such a fatal difference between them. And the Girl and Harvey? They’re just birds, as they say in casinos, just suckers who seem to enjoy giving themselves away.

  THE DEALER

  Indy Carnival. Sunday. Day Three. I wake up on the floor of a racetrack hotel next to a beautiful woman. I can’t remember her name and am not sure if I ever even knew it. I lean down to kiss her goodbye and she smiles, half asleep, and reaches for me. I think for a minute about fucking her but my heart is pumping no longer with lust, only panic. I watch the door, ease myself out of her embrace and the room that reeks of us, and not until I’m well outside the apartment do I realise I’ve been holding my breath. I turn back to steady myself, taking in great gulps of the salty air whipping into the exposed corridor of the hotel, staring at the number 11 on a red door.

  Somehow I get stuck in the basement
and a cholesterol-clogged family let me out. On the esplanade, with no sunglasses on, I badly need a Coke.

  Horizontal on the fluffy carpet of my hotel room, the clamour on the last day of racing is now unbearable and relentless. I lie stuck in the white noise disengaged from my life in this anonymous beige-walled box. Waiting motionless while contracts in speed continue to be played out around me. Every twenty minutes or so I check to see if Harvey and Jade have returned. Their rooms remain the same. I look along the track corridors to see if I can spot her; the outline of that tall frame I know so well does not appear. I draw closed the heavy glass door, which is sucking on to its seal, and the room is without wind again. The race rolls on, wave after wave, lap after lap. The fan above my head spins and I watch it, counting down the seconds. I have lost her. By the end of the day I’ve endured too many false alarms and false hopes. Finally the machines stop.

  The only thing worse than the sound of the cars is Jade’s silence. Nothing worse than waiting for my phone to ring and thinking of her with him. I pour myself a drink, neat. Check for messages. I step out on to the balcony carrying an empty message-bank in my hand. The city is full of detritus. Jade’s partying somewhere with VIP status while I remain uninformed. Erased but not forgotten. Purposely ignored. She knows what this is doing to me. She knows it’s a challenge. Jade’s testing me to see just how much I’ll allow her to take. She’s acting me out of the game. Stealing the scene. She’d never admit it but having me sit here alone would be what she wanted. My presence would reassure her. The epitome of a big carnival winding down.

  Fuck that.

  I drain my drink and decide to head into Surfers. If I could only just see her. Catch her in action. Not blow my cover but get in close enough to remind her the party’s over.

  STATE OF PLAY

  The Dealer walks along the track already being disassembled. He breathes in the still-hot, scorched-rubber smell of the race aftermath. Trucks bank up on the streets, orange lights flashing. The sounds of things in reverse. Bands of men cut wire, haul steel, shift concrete, unpinning the puzzle that transforms the city into a playground. The illusion taken down, taken away in the night, so tomorrow evidence of a circus come to town will be scarce. Skeletal grandstands, ripped flags, piles of fencing. A discarded armband. A party months in the making taken down, like all things, faster than it ever goes up.

  The Dealer picks his way through the rubble, past the empty tents knocked about by a southerly on-shore wind. Inside he sees mounds of wasted food, half-emptied drinks and barely touched platters. Spoils discarded, left out in the open. Glassware and china piled hastily against dormant mobile refrigerators. Vendors and customers not so long gone, but eerily miles away. The only people who share this trek with him are small groups of wasted men walking into the strip, and paired-off people walking out. Young punks on skateboards take advantage of the cordoned-off area to bust tricks. Their wheels squeal, taking over this playing field in its abandoned state of emergency.

  On Orchid Avenue the Girl of last night walks past the Dealer and cannot believe his indifference. Right now his eyes are full of Jade. The Girl consoles herself with the fresh arm she’s on. The Dealer stops in every bar for a drink. He small-talks with the Sunday-night collection of those who don’t have to work tomorrow but doesn’t stay long once the people start throwing their arms around him. He scours, he haunts, but Jade is all the time absent. At four and five in the morning the Dealer keeps lapping the strip, refusing to acknowledge her chequered flag.

  THE DEALER

  Just before sunlight I get a cab. Every new move I make starts off a chain reaction; unwittingly I engage in another set of hopes, another strategy to try and see her. I can’t bring myself to small talk. I pay the driver and get out without waiting for my change. I take the lift up to my rented room knowing at the end of this ride is another slim chance, another moment when she might be there, might have come to find me.

  The place smells stuffy and faintly of burning rubber. I swipe the binoculars off the glass table as I cross the lounge towards the windows. I train a line to Harvey and Jade’s rooms. The sun is rising now. My eyes squint to ward off the glare, the mockery of this shiny morning, surfacing cleanly, out of the ocean and over all these buildings. In their rooms there’s been another party. The veranda doors are flung wide open, a white curtain flaps outside, caught by the wind. There are empty glasses on the tables and the general litter of good times. I refocus the binoculars. I can see one bare leg hanging off a couch. Female. Not Jade’s. I can tell because though the rest of her is hidden from me by the long length of the chair, the hair peeking over the closest armrest is blonde. There are other feet too, attached to a pair of naked legs. Male. Too fit and too thin to be Harvey’s. I can’t see the rest of this guy, hidden by furniture and a bad sightline. There are just these feet and what appear like strong calves splayed out on the floor about a metre away from the blonde. I shift the view to the next room.

  There he is.

  Harvey. Sprawled out on the bed but not alone. I can see maybe three other bodies messed up in those sheets. One of them has dark hair. Please, please, please, I say to myself. I rub my eyes. Retrain the glasses. Refocus. The dark-haired girl is on the left. Her thigh hooked over Harvey’s but her face buried in the pillows and covered over by her arm, probably trying to keep out the sun. I can only see her leg because the rest of her is blanked out by the sheet. Just this one thigh is not enough for me to tell. It looks long and drawn tight like Jade’s. It could be Jade’s …

  The other two I can see more clearly. They’re on Harvey’s right. Spooning each other. One platinum-blonde head and another dirtier blonde. They’ve both got really big tits, the kind that almost seem bigger than their heads. These people don’t look at all like the set that was there on Saturday night. This is a different crowd. A trail from the Indy Undy ball? Or is this posse just another round-up, another get-together with his whores? Whatever the make-up it means surely the dark form next to him can’t be Jade. She wouldn’t do this. She couldn’t be seen to approve; a foursome doesn’t suit her, doesn’t suit the role she’s playing for him. Does it? No. Something else has happened in the course of the night. This is a long way from the happy couple. A long way from iced tea and all the politesse of Day Two. I don’t wait for confirmation. I know it isn’t her.

  STATE OF PLAY

  The Dealer is happy. He thinks he knows where Jade’s at. He drives fast with a mind made light by the scenes of the morning. He drives fast with a foot heavy and flat. He doesn’t even see the grandstands coming down, the street cleaners, the city’s tested morning traffic, the unlucky punters, the visitors walking slowly home still wearing their day passes, wishing the carnival wasn’t over. He doesn’t see all these warnings of wild-weekend fallout.

  He bashes on her door. Waits. Heart pounding with the rush of a gambler’s secret language: prospect and sleep deprivation. He hears a noise inside. The lock shifts. He takes a breath.

  It’s just the waitress. Hair shaken, eyes half open. Not impressed.

  She’s not here.

  Oh.

  You can wait inside if you like.

  No, thanks, I think I’ll just wait in the car.

  She gives him a funny look.

  Whatever.

  Sorry.

  Yeah.

  She closes the door.

  The Dealer heads back to his car, hunkers down in the seat. He can’t sleep. He keeps checking every vehicle. At every form walking down the street. He turns the radio on and then turns it off. He blasts himself with air-con. He fidgets with his sleeve. He’s been wearing the same shirt for two days now. It reeks of sweat and ash and nightclubs.

  In the rear-view mirror he sees the taxi. Turns, straining to peer inside as it rolls past him. A woman in the back seat. Dark hair. Stopping outside Jade’s place. It’s her. The Dealer jumps out of the car, jogs over to the cab. But Jade isn’t moving. The cabbie’s getting out. He knocks on the window. Jade doesn’
t stir. The cabbie sees him.

  You know this girl?

  Yeah.

  Well, give us a hand, mate. She’s not too good.

  The Dealer opens the door on his side and the cabbie goes in the back from the other. He lifts her legs up and kind of pushes her over. Jade falls to the left.

  You got her?

  Yeah, yeah, he says to the cabbie. Then he looks to Jade. Jade, wake up, he says, come on, lift your legs. That’s it.

  The Dealer hooks his hands under her shoulders, dragging her out. Her feet, one shoe missing, whack against the door frame and she falls limply into the gutter. He puts her on the footpath.

  The cabbie comes over to him, Jade’s other shoe in his hand.

  She ain’t paid me yet.

  He takes a twenty from the Dealer and gives him the shoe.

  She’s all yours.

  He drives off. An old couple out for their morning walk eye the Dealer suspiciously as they pass. He ignores them and picks up Jade, staggering slightly with the dead weight of her up the set of stairs to her front door. He puts her on the ground. Jade groans and tries to curl in on herself. All this movement seems to be waking her up. She smells like stale perfume and a bit like vomit. The Dealer rummages in her bag for her keys. He finds the right one, pushes the door open, then turns around to see Jade trying to stand up. He reaches to help her but she pushes him away. She pulls herself up on the metal railing, outside the front door. The Dealer leans back on the door frame, watching her, sweating and out of breath with his efforts. Jade turns around towards him. She looks awful. The expression on her face is not what he expected. He isn’t sure anymore what it was he did expect. Not this. Not this pain on her face, or her black-ringed eyes or her recklessness. She steadies herself.