by Hugh Breakey
She smiled bitterly. ‘I’m not saying it’s the same for me as for you. Just that I understand. I’ve felt that loss, or some of it, at least. I should have thought about how it must be for you, but I didn’t. I’ve been too wrapped up in my own feelings.’
‘That’s why I need to know everything,’ I said. ‘When you said yesterday about knowing the good and the bad of it, about being able to make a decision—an informed decision—it made sense to me. That’s why I promised.’
Silence fell. Julie’s eyes searched my face. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I understand.’
‘If you really do understand, then you’ll know there can’t be any more secrets. Nothing left untold. If I can’t make a real decision, with knowledge of all the good and all the bad, then everything we’re doing here today is pointless.’ I swallowed. ‘If I know everything, then it’s my choice—like the work you did on the dominoes this morning. If I choose it, then it’s a part of me.’
‘I get that now. I do.’ She reached forward to clasp the top of my hand, fixing her eyes on mine. ‘Knowledge of all the good and all the bad. That’s what today is about. I promise.’
‘The truth. All of it. Good and bad.’
‘I promise.’
‘Okay.’
She swallowed. ‘There was something yesterday. Just a little thing, but if we’re doing full disclosure then I guess it needs to be said. When we were talking about the smoke bomb, I told you I’d thought of everything. That wasn’t completely true. Remember how the vibration from the alarm felt so strong that we checked the walls and floor to see if it might topple the dominoes? That possibility had never occurred to me. I really panicked then, for a moment, at what I might have done. What a disaster that would have been.’
‘I guess no one can think of everything.’
‘And poor Mrs Davis stranded there with her furniture delivery. I actually did feel a bit guilty about that.’
‘Okay. Thanks for telling me.’
‘Always.’ She leaned back, releasing my hand. ‘Do you want to go back now?’
‘Not just yet.’
Julie seemed to have taken the message to heart, and that was all I could ask for. No need to spoil the afternoon.
Our spot of shade grew deeper as the sun shifted westward, and the breeze off the river strengthened. We sat in the quiet for a while. Normally, silences made me feel awkward, but this one was different. People walked by, and the boats and ferries shuttled across the river.
‘I suppose you just used his uniform shirt,’ I said. ‘Mr Lester’s.’
‘He loaned it to me for the Tuesdays. It wasn’t a great fit, was it?’
I smiled, remembering how it had hung sack-like across her shoulders when she arrived at my door.
‘What are you smiling at, you jerk? Fine, so my disguise had one or two little wrinkles.’ She snorted with laughter. ‘One or two tiny, imperceptible flaws.’
Then we were both laughing. At Julie’s ridiculously oversized disguise. At how completely I’d fallen for it. At everything.
Eventually, we pulled ourselves together and decided to head back home, and by the time we arrived at the apartment most of the afternoon had drifted by. Julie was in charge of the evening. She had plans to take us out, I knew that much, but she’d provided no details. I wasn’t sure whether to feel anticipation or wariness.
I took the first shower and pulled on my nicest pair of pants, then let Julie take her turn. She hummed in that musical way of hers and let her gaze wander over my shirtless chest as she passed.
I felt my face flush, embarrassed that she might think I’d been showing off when in fact I was trying to work up the courage to put on the shirt. It was academic really: nothing else in my wardrobe of age-faded T-shirts was remotely suitable for a dinner date. The good shirt, with its rich crimson-purple sheen, looked as if I’d bought it yesterday. I sighed, pulled it on and felt it slip like warm liquid over my shoulders, down my arms.
Searching for something to keep me busy while Julie got ready, I went to put away the dishes in the kitchen. But doing chores just didn’t seem right in the fancy shirt; it was as if I’d put on a new persona. I went into the dominoes room and began work on the remaining platform. The upper work on the platforms now looked almost complete. The end was approaching, in more ways than one.
I soon became engrossed and was unprepared when Julie appeared through the kitchen archway, dressed in a slim dark dress, her hair sculpted into a neat wave.
My eyes widened. ‘Wow, you look—’
‘Oh!’ Her exclamation cut off my words. ‘Of course.’ She smiled wistfully in an I-should-have-known sort of way, and came over to me. Her hands reached to my collar, popping a button open, and then straightening it. ‘I always liked that shirt on you.’
So the shirt did come from my earlier life. Perhaps I’d been wearing it when the third forgetting struck, and Julie and I were torn apart. That would make sense. But did that explain how different it was from the rest of my wardrobe? Or just make the difference more perplexing?
Julie had stepped back to survey me, smiling, but her eyes stopped at my shoes.
‘Where are—’ She broke off, shaking her head. ‘Have you got some other shoes? Something with smooth soles?’
‘No.’
‘Nothing else at all?’
‘No.’
Julie looked at her watch and stomped her foot in frustration.
I bit my lip. As much as I had no reason to buy nice shoes, it was hard not to feel a bit embarrassed. The sneakers were old and scuffed up. ‘I guess they don’t look too fancy.’
‘What?’ Julie frowned.
‘The shoes. Is it a fancy restaurant? They do look a bit crap.’
‘I don’t care what they look like. Do they even fit you?’
‘Sure,’ I said. Not defensively at all.
Actually, they could have been a better fit. My predecessor must have just grabbed them at the local op shop or something. It had never mattered much before, though I had noticed it on the long walks I used to take. But it did seem a little strange they were my only pair. Wouldn’t I have had shoes from my earlier life as well? Something that would go better with the shirt?
I shuffled my feet nervously. Maybe going out wasn’t such a great idea.
‘Let’s not worry about it,’ Julie said. ‘You look great. Shall we go?’
I nodded, glad to see the back of the issue.
On our previous walk, we’d headed north towards the city. This time we turned west, following Dornoch Terrace as it snaked its way through the hills towards West End. The day darkened as we walked. This city didn’t do twilight, especially in summer. Night fell like a theatre curtain.
Julie had picked a Greek restaurant near the end of the long street. Clean and friendly, but not at all fancy. No one noticed my shoes, as far as I could tell. It just wasn’t that sort of place.
I breathed a little easier at the informal bustle and loud chatter. It was hard enough keeping my thoughts straight around Julie in unflattering daylight. Heaven help me if I’d had to face candlelight and ambience.
The food was great. Julie knew what I liked and she ordered confidently: souvlaki, haloumi with lemon, Greek salad; lemonade for both of us. But as I ate, the looming decision weighed on my thoughts. Eventually the evening would end. I would have a choice to make.
Despite its occasional bumps—maybe in a strange way because of them—the day had been a delight. But the choice wasn’t whether I’d want to live this day, or something like it, over and again for eternity. I would choose that in a heartbeat.
The question was what would happen to a new me—the infant me, devoid of any life knowledge—being brought up in Julie’s world. What would happen to my ability to form my own hopes and plans in the face of hers? The day had brought some reassurances on that front. The fact that we worked and ate and talked together so well suggested that Julie wouldn’t need to shape me radically in order to recreate the marriage she h
ad lost.
I couldn’t be a hundred per cent certain on that score, of course. She could have temporarily shelved any of her desires to change or improve me. And some questions still nagged at me. My predecessor hadn’t just rejected her, he’d gone to all the trouble of getting a lawyer to start divorce proceedings. That seemed an overreaction. But Julie had looked me in the eye and insisted that she was telling me everything, and that she understood the importance of letting me choose with full information.
She smiled at me now, catching my thoughtful gaze. If a similar worry about my looming decision was gnawing at her too, she did a good job of hiding it. She looked pleased, enjoying the moment.
‘You said earlier I could ask you about my past.’
‘Sure, shoot.’ She finished her mouthful. ‘Oh—except what your job used to be. We’ll get to that later.’ Her smile was loaded. Mischievous. I hadn’t been thinking about that question at all. But now I was, of course.
‘How did we first meet?’
‘You remember the story of the fire, the cigarette in the bed? All true. Except that I left out that I’d been drinking that night.’
‘Okay.’
‘Your workplace was just across the road, and I’d seen you there before. You were working late that night, and when my smoke alarm went off, you arrived first on the scene.’ She grinned. ‘You didn’t kick the door down and charge into the burning building, if that’s what you’re thinking. The fire alarm had woken me, and I’d managed to stagger out onto the front lawn—half-awake but still half-drunk, and pretty shaken up. You put your arm around me and asked if I was okay.’ Her grin eased into a wistful smile. ‘There’s more than one way of rescuing someone.’
‘So you thought you’d try it again. The whole fire-alarm rescue thing.’
‘It worked once.’
‘And that’s what made you give up alcohol?’
‘I wish.’ Julie sipped her lemonade. ‘But that was… the beginning of the end.’
‘Because you nearly died from it?’
‘More that I’d found something that tasted good without a splash of Jack.’
Her eyes pinned me like a rabbit in headlights. I squirmed. ‘Was your drinking much of a problem back then? When we first met?’
‘Apart from almost killing me in the fire, you mean? No. I had zero problem drinking.’ She nursed her lemonade, holding it in both hands before her, elbows resting on the table. ‘That turned out to be my problem. I was a happy drunk. Everybody loved me. I could drink until sunrise and you’d still have to wrench me off the dance floor. The next day I’d be ready to go again. Shiny as.’
‘What got you addicted in the first place?’
‘Three words: bourbon is fucking awesome.’ She paused. ‘Four words.’
‘That’s it?’
‘That’s it.’ She shrugged. ‘There wasn’t a part of it I didn’t love. The taste. The buzz. The fucking colour of it. Like burnt amber. And that sound when you’re pouring from a new bottle.’ She did a musical guckguck-guck from the back of her throat.
‘Then why quit?’
‘I didn’t quit because of what I did when I was drinking.’ She smiled at the thought. ‘It was when I sobered up that was the problem. I wasn’t functioning in normal life. I’d always done well at uni, but in the last year my marks began to suffer. And I’d started wanting it every day, itching for that first drink, as if there was no other way to have fun.’ She bit her lip. ‘It’s frightening when you realise you’ve lost the ability to enjoy anything else—even a conversation over dinner.’ She raised her glass. ‘By the way, you’re welcome to order a wine if you want. It’s no problem.’
‘Did I used to drink around you, while you were quitting?’
She sighed, shaking her head. ‘You said you’d lost the taste for it. I got the impression that if you live with an alcoholic for long enough you start to see the bottle as the enemy.’
‘Do you think—if it was you who had the forgetting instead of me,’ I wondered aloud, ‘—do you think you could leave all that behind? That you could stop being addicted by forgetting that you were addicted?’
‘No. It’s like wondering if a forest fire could burn away a volcano. I might get to forget a few of the stupid things I’ve done while drinking. That’d be nice.’ She paused. ‘But I think the urge would still be there, beneath it all.’
It was hard to trace her tone. Her words had started off regretful, but they finished almost hopeful. Which made no sense, given the topic.
Before I could puzzle it out, she began talking again. ‘Maybe there’d be some things that would change. The part of me that wants to drink. It’s not just an urge, it’s like a person sometimes. And she thinks and plans and speaks and lies. You wonder why I’m so strategic? That’s what it takes to beat her. The voice. So maybe the urge would still be there, but the little personality inside me might not be the same.’
‘Would you miss that part of you, though, if it disappeared? After all, she’s part of you. That voice in your head. She’s what made you smart. Without her—’
‘Fuck that. Erase the bitch.’ Julie skewered a piece of haloumi with her fork. ‘Maybe that seems harsh, but you don’t know her like I do.’
I pasted a smile on my face. But it was hard not to wonder what parts of me might face the same fate, if Julie was in charge of the forgetting.
For the first time, I wondered if I would have to say no to her. Really wondered. I could scarcely imagine how to do it. It was one thing to react in shock and rage, as I’d done three days ago. It was another to reject her in cold blood. The food before me suddenly looked unappetising.
‘Are you done?’ Julie’s voice pulled me out of my reverie. I wished she didn’t sound so happy. It would only make things harder. ‘We have somewhere to be.’
She insisted on paying, saying since she’d been put in charge of the evening, she had to cover the costs. I couldn’t argue with her logic, but it grated a little. As always, she was the one with all the power.
Julie led us towards West End. This area was my favourite part of the city, with its random shops and boho cafes. The people walked with a bounce in their step, and dressed however they wanted. With my lustrous dress shirt and worn sneakers, I probably fitted right in. But Julie veered us down a side street before we hit the main nest of cafes and nightspots. She too had a noticeable spring in her step. Excitement buzzed from her whole body and shone from her eyes. Whatever she was planning, we were on the verge of it.
She drew to a sudden halt. I looked around, but there was little to see. Just an ordinary inner-city street with neat brick houses cluttered up close together.
‘It’s a surprise,’ Julie said. ‘So you need to shut your eyes.’
Suspicion warring with anticipation, I closed my eyes.
Julie hooked her hand around my arm. ‘Forward,’ she ordered, and we continued down the path. To guide me, she had to pin my arm tight to the side of her body. I tried not to focus on the soft warm press against my arm, but with my eyes closed, there wasn’t much I could do to distract myself.
I took a deep breath. The nightly caterwauling of lorikeets in the nearby trees filled my ears. And something else.
A beat.
Beneath the birds’ screeching, an ordered, steady thumping. With each step forward, the sound got louder and filled out in depth and strength, until it transformed into something more than a mere pulse. Rhythm. Music.
‘No peeking.’ Julie’s grip on me tightened as she turned us around a corner, and towards the music. It didn’t sound like her type of music—either the power riffs thundering from her earbuds or the ambient instrumentals she’d played over at her house. This was a bigger band sound, with brass and strings and more. Yet it still seemed somehow familiar.
‘There’s stairs.’ Julie counted me up five of them, one by one.
After a few more steps, the music jumped in volume and the surface under my shoes became smoother. Polished wood, perhaps. My
sneakers squeaked as they gripped it.
‘Hi.’ Julie greeted someone.
A female responded—an elderly voice. ‘Twenty each.’
‘I thought ten?’ Julie queried.
‘Only on Tuesdays.’
I moved to reach for my wallet, but Julie was already replying. ‘Right, no worries.’ She kept my arm pinned hard against her. ‘I got it. My plan. My money.’
Julie leaned closer. ‘Chasing lost husbands across the country is not as cheap a hobby as you might think,’ she whispered.
We set off again. Julie manoeuvred me in front of her, and I had the sense we were navigating a doorway. As we passed the threshold, the music surged again. Meanwhile, a soft babble of voices issued from left and right, as if on either side of a large room. Was it a party? A musical? If anyone was looking in our direction, we must have seemed a strange couple. A stunning woman in an elegant dress leading a tall guy with terrible shoes and tightly shut eyes. She navigated me over to the left side of the room—I was picturing it as a large hall—and guided me down into a chair.
Julie released me at last from the warm press of her body. That was a relief. Well, I felt something anyway, at the loss of her touch, and it stood to reason it was relief.
‘Ready?’ Julie’s voice came from a little distance away. Across a small table perhaps. ‘Three, two, one,’ she counted down, her voice a whisper of enthusiasm. ‘Eyes open!’
Colour, light and movement hit me all at once and… dancing.
In the centre of the room, couples glided and turned in rhythmic harmony. Women and men moving like cogs and wheels in a living clockwork of spinning perfection. Brilliant lights shone from a ceiling rack and a nearby mirrorball, sending shining circles of colour onto the dancers’ dazzling clothes. There was no band—the music was coming from speakers mounted at the back of the room.