Loner

by Georgina Young

  Tab laughs.

  ‘What?’ Lona demands.

  Tab points at the television. ‘Cop with the pornstache is back on the case. I thought you said this was meant to be a good movie?’

  Lona rubs her eyes. ‘I said I’d heard of it, I didn’t say it was meant to be good.’

  Tab puts down her phone and pauses the film. ‘Hey, what’s up?’

  The question makes Lona’s hackles rise, like always. As if any enquiry into her state of mind is an accusation. She presses her lips together tightly. ‘Nothing.’ It’s been a while since Tab dated anyone, since she’s even been interested in dating anyone. And back then it was always just someone they both knew from school, some boy or girl who’d be around a bit and then wouldn’t be. Lona had other things to do then: trigonometry, art projects, slog through set texts.

  But it’s been almost two years since they graduated. Something has happened to Lona since then. Tab’s not just her friend anymore, not just her best friend. She’s the only person Lona ever wants to see, the only person Lona thinks will ever want to see her.

  She takes the remote and unpauses the movie. ‘I’m fine,’ she says. ‘Really.’

  Bombed out

  Lona realises she hasn’t seen Tab in two weeks. Usually it’s Tab who contacts Lona when it’s been this long. Lona has a tendency to go for extended periods of time before realising she can’t remember the last time she interacted with another human being. Tab’s usually the one who jolts her out of it. This time, it’s a lack of Tab that does it.

  Lona much prefers being the contacted than the contacter. Being the contacted means feeling wanted, whereas there is always an inherent neediness and self-consciousness to being the contacter. Even with Tab.

  She finds herself irritated with Tab for putting her though this. Tab knows how she feels about these things. At least, she thinks she does. It’s not like they’ve ever talked about it. It’s not like Lona has ever said: this is how I feel. Or even: I appreciate it when you call. These are the things she thinks are implied. These are the things she wants Tab to know instinctively, even when Lona struggles to articulate them.

  She sends a message. A big chunk:

  Hey, how have you been? Are you free tonight? Coffee in Oakleigh?

  Three times question mark, three times hesitation. Tab messages back straight away as if there’s not been all this time and metaphorical, existentially examined space between them:

  i’m bombed out after uni

  sorry

  Lona endures this first knockback gracefully. She replies:

  Do you want to go to the Winter Night Market at the Queen Vic on Wednesday? (CLINKING BEER MUGS) (STEAMING BOWL)

  Tab says:

  woulda loved to lone but i’m going out with nick!!

  Tab uses exclamation marks to convey a wide variety of emotions. Here, Lona assumes, she’s going for regret or excitement. Potentially both. At that exact moment, Lona decides that people spend way too much time on their phones. She turns hers off and throws it in her bag.

  The double date

  Despite not registering for a seminar on Nick’s Personality And Life, Lona finds herself attending one when she finally manages to pin Tab down for afternoon tea. They sit on the floor of Tab’s bedroom like they always have, a plate of Tiny Teddies on the carpet between them. There are scarves hanging from and draped over every possible surface. The entire front of the wardrobe is covered with pictures of women reading books or holding random objects (pot plants, kitchen utensils, a lampshade) over their faces. As Lona fidgets and switches from cross-legged to legs-stretched a hundred times back and forth, she learns that Nick is a fan of the double date. From what Tab says, Lona would go so far as to describe him as an avid disciple of the double date.

  Tab tells her that’s she’s already been out with Sam&Dan and Anna&Beth and Jules&Hugh. She talks about Nick’s friends in pairs, like their names and extremities are stuck together with hot glue. Like they are some sort of unfinished craft project Lona has thrown back into her drawer, bits of string and wool and balsa wood entangled, never to be restored to whole parts.

  They are always Nick’s friends. Nick apparently has an endless supply of happy, loved-up friends. Tab and Lona have no happy, loved-up friends. ‘They’re all virgins or weirdos,’ Tab says, shrugging, and Lona can only nod.

  As both a virgin and a weirdo, Lona can rest assured, knowing she will never find herself participating in one of Nick’s double dates. According to Tab, she misses out on a fun-filled evening of dinner&movie. Dinner is almost always Asian fusion, the movie is almost always forgettable.

  ‘I thought double dates were meant to be for when a couple gets bored of talking to each other,’ Lona says, irritated they have gotten through a whole box of Tiny Teddies without discussing a single book.

  Tab laughs. ‘Well, what can I say? Nick and me have hit dire straits early on.’

  She’s joking, unfortunately.

  Moving out

  Lona moves out with Sim and Rach from uni. They get a two-bedroom house in Carnegie. Lona is paying slightly less rent than the others. She sleeps behind a curtain pulled across half of the living room.

  She has brought all her books with her, but very little else. She uses stacks of them as furniture. She spills tea all over her original-cover-design Harry Potter collection. She calls Tab in tears: her childhood is ruined.

  Tab takes her extremely seriously. They talk until 1 a.m., Lona’s phone pressed close to her head even though she’s afraid of getting brain cancer.

  ‘This was a colossal mistake,’ she says.

  ‘What was?’ Tab asks.

  Lona doesn’t have a short enough answer. So she says, ‘Goblet of Fire is almost dry.’

  ‘You good, Lone?’

  She stares at the ceiling. ‘Yeah, pretty much. Night, Tab.’

  ‘Night.’

  The house is quiet because Sim is out and Rach went to bed early so she can get up to jog and eat granola in the morning. Lona has her reading lamp and her single bed and every book she’s ever owned except for the ones about horses and unicorns that she left behind at home. The curtain dividing her space from communal space is just a sheet pegged to a piece of string.

  Rach said: just for now.

  Lona liked that because that’s exactly how she feels. The dropping out and the Coles and the moving in with almost-strangers and the sheet pegged to a piece of string: just for now.

  Despite her understanding of the infinite nature of now, Lona has her hopes.

  The rites of passage

  It was never decided that there would be a party. It was simply assumed. When Sim asks them, ‘Friday or Saturday?’ they both know what she is talking about. The proposition that there are no rules to growing up is inherently wrong. There are many. The rules and the expectations are known, even if they are various and contradictory. New house equals a warming of said house. These are the rites of passage. You shall not pass until your house is hot with the breath of people you used to be friends with and can’t remember anymore why you liked. Lona suggests not-Friday because she has to get up early on Saturday morning for work.

  ‘Friday,’ Rach says definitively. It’s definitive even though it’s offered like a suggestion. Lona knows she will not win with Rach. She knows she will continue to know this. Living not-alone feels lonelier than it should. She does not know why anyone would live not-alone if they could live alone.

  Lona cannot live alone, not even with three jobs. Not even when she works early on Saturday mornings. Her money, stood at checkouts for, smiled at strangers for, stared through lenses for, bored to death for, is not enough to live alone in a one-bedroom flat. Lona wants to know what the rules are, the rules to being an adult. But she’s heard them, seen them embodied and avowed a hundred ways on television shows about twenty-somethings who drink too much on weeknights and never wear the same outfit twice. She’s rolled her eyes at them.

  She doesn’t want anyone to tel
l her how to live. She’s begging for someone to tell her how to live.

  Semiotics

  Tab sits on the bed while Lona dabs purple lipstick onto her bottom lip.

  ‘You kidding me?’ Tab says. ‘You brought your single bed with you? It’s time to upgrade, Lone. Come on, what’s a boy going to think?’

  ‘What boy?’

  Lona is not being facetious, but she is perhaps being hopeful. Sampson, she wonders senselessly. Or maybe there is some boy she isn’t yet aware of. Some boy who has been whispering to Tab about her, some boy who would be thinking about her bed, single or not. These thoughts are shallow dishes, the kind that wipe clean immediately.

  Tab is wearing jeans with flowers embroidered on them. Red flowers with green leaves. This is the basic flower. These are the roses held between the teeth of lovers who tango. This is the basic format of love. Red flowers with green leaves can be stamped on anything and the connotation is clear because of the semiotics. Lona learned about semiotics at university. She learned about love watching movies and staring at the legs of her friend.

  ‘When’s everyone getting here?’ Tab asks.

  Lona shrugs, but the shrug is rendered redundant even as it is enacted because she answers, ‘Eight. I’m tired.’

  ‘You’re always tired,’ Tab says.

  Lona presses her lips together. It looks like a ballpoint pen leaked in her mouth. ‘So?’ she says.

  Warming the house

  The block is big but their house is small: old carpet, picture rails, speckles of mildew where bookshelves have sat against walls, sliding doors with yellow glass panels. Three art makers in a confined space so there are pictures, paintings, projects everywhere.

  Lona manoeuvres her way into the kitchen. There’s a big plastic bowl filled with pesto pasta on the counter. Sim made it earlier for god knows what reason. No one eats pesto pasta before a party. They only have two cereal bowls and they’re grotty, so Lona opts for a mug. She spoons some farfalle into it.

  A girl she doesn’t know pulls a bottle of white wine out of the fridge and says, ‘What’s that? Pasta or something?’

  Lona nods and chews.

  ‘What have you been up to?’ the girl asks, almost like they’re meant to be friends or something. Lona squints at her and realises they probably are, or they were at any rate. Her name is Liv, Lona thinks. Liv used to talk to the people Lona talked to at uni. Doesn’t make them friends, but it does make them people who have to ask each other inane questions when they find themselves in a kitchen together.

  ‘Work mainly,’ Lona says.

  Liv nods and sips from the glass she’s just poured. ‘Nice place,’ she says.

  Lona shrugs a: yes and no. ‘I sleep behind a sheet pegged to a piece of string,’ she says. ‘I am too self-conscious to masturbate.’

  Liv leaves her alone.

  Empty plastic cup

  Tab finds Lona in a corner, about this close to getting out a book to read. There’s lipstick bruised on the rim of Lona’s empty plastic cup.

  ‘I don’t know anyone here,’ she says. ‘How do I not know anyone here?’

  Tab pinches Lona’s shoulder. ‘I want you to meet someone.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘George, get over here!’

  A figure across the room turns and looks in their direction.

  He is tall, dark-haired. Thick-framed glasses like Clark Kent. Tab says, ‘Lona, this is George. George, this is Lona.’

  Lona looks up at him from the armchair and knows that Tab will be hoping that she will find George both interesting and attractive. She thinks about how unlikely it is that she will ever find someone both interesting and attractive. She says, ‘Hi.’

  ‘You’re the best friend,’ he says.

  She, the best friend, nods. ‘I suppose.’

  George likes that she uses the word suppose. She can tell, can see something shift in the way he holds his mouth.

  ‘This is your party,’ he says.

  Lona looks at Tab. Raised eyebrow a question: does he always speak in statements?

  ‘George is studying medicine,’ Tab says, with a wicked smile. ‘Lona’s a dropout with minimal prospects.’

  Back in a sec

  George is studying music as well as medicine. ‘Interesting combination,’ Lona says. Due to her significant lack of flirting game, Lona tends instead to engage in actual, intellectual conversation with prospective fuck buddies. She does abnormal things like get to know them and attempt to gauge what their politics are around victim blaming.

  ‘Neither was my choice,’ George says.

  ‘Oh yeah?’ she says, not entirely certain yet whether she is actually interested in anything he has to say.

  ‘I’m going to be a cardiologist. I was always going to be a cardiologist. Oldest son equals the responsible one, you know? I’m neither happy nor unhappy about it, if that makes sense. Cello was about discipline. Mum took me to my first lesson when I was six. I like it in a very Stockholm syndromey way, if that makes sense.’

  George likes the phrase: if that makes sense. Either that, or he thinks Lona is an idiot who cannot make sense of anything. He is potentially nervous. Lona is potentially making him nervous.

  ‘Rape culture,’ she says. ‘Yay or nay?’

  George stares at her, head tilted slightly. ‘What?’

  He has pulled a chair over to sit next to her. This is the most proactive thing someone has done to talk to her in years. Tab keeps sending thumbs up from across the room. ‘How long have you known Tab?’ Lona asks.

  ‘Not very long. I really only know her through Nick.’

  That makes sense. George is clearly from the Nick oeuvre.

  ‘She said I should come tonight. I don’t usually turn up to parties I wasn’t invited to. I just thought I should do something different for once, if that makes sense—shit, I’ve said that like fifty times haven’t I?’

  Lona shrugs. ‘Well, you haven’t not said it like fifty times, if that makes sense.’

  It takes him a moment to realise she’s messing with him, and then he laughs. His hair is straight, black, jaw length. His smile is warm and genuine. She finds herself grinning back. He gets up for another drink, the last can is empty and useless in his hand.

  ‘Back in a sec,’ he says.

  Not coming back

  Back in a sec turns into not coming back. Lona waits in her armchair but he’s obviously found something more interesting up the other end of the house. It shouldn’t make her feel shit, but it does.

  She retreats behind her curtain. Lies on her bed and jengas a book out of one of the stacks by her mattress. Finnikin of the Rock. An old favourite, but she’s so careful with it that it looks like it’s brand new. She can’t read it over the music. Her head hurts. Everything makes her head hurt. The twinge of the curtain and it being pulled back by George makes her head hurt. The embarrassment and his ‘Sorry’ at finding her horizontal makes her head hurt.

  ‘Um,’ she says, aware that from the angle George is looking at her, she would appear to have approximately five more chins than usual.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says again. He has brought her a can of hard cider. Back in a sec apparently meant back in 1200 secs. She sits up, finds herself saying, ‘I’m not feeling well, sorry.’

  They throw sorries back and forth. Lona is on the cusp of saying something stupid like: actually, why don’t you stay, I’m not actually sick, I’m just sick of everyone else out there. But it isn’t true and her head is pounding and she offers all she’s capable of: it was nice to meet you.

  ‘Yeah,’ he says, like he’s still on the fence. He nods and goes.

  Lona collapses back onto her single bed with a groan. She kneads her head and hates herself, but neither activity achieves anything, so she just stares at the ceiling until everyone leaves. Tab finds her later and squishes onto the bed beside her and says, ‘I’m amazed you lasted as long as you did.’

  If this was an American indie movie, they’d s
leep together like spoons in a tidy drawer. But this is a sharehouse in Carnegie and she is a girl who brought her single bed with her when she moved out because she wanted to make it clear that she never has and never will need anyone else.

  Tab sleeps on the couch. Lona sleeps lightly and unsatisfactorily.

  Grandpa’s birthday

  Mum makes an orange cake for Grandpa’s birthday. They have a picnic down by the beach at Ricketts Point. Lona brings tzatziki. Ben brings an excuse as to why he’s 45 minutes late.

  He and Lona sit together at the end of the table and tell each other amusing things that have happened when the other wasn’t there. They reach over each other without asking to get food, and debate which composite of Friends characters everyone at the table is. ‘Mum’s a full Monica,’ Ben says. ‘Dad’s like some kind of Phoebe-Joey.’

  ‘Has appeared in amateur theatre, loves singing in public,’ Lona agrees.

  ‘You think you’re a Chandler, but you’re a Monica-Phoebe. Offbeat, but anal as.’

  She crosses her arms. ‘Well, you’re a Ross.’

  Ben looks stricken. ‘That’s just hurtful.’

  Up the other end of the table, Mum talks about her childhood and the grandmother Lona never knew. Aunty Jas is there, and Cousin Rob. Grandpa unwraps his presents. Long socks and a pair of elastic-waisted shorts. Lona gives him her gift. An audio book CD. It’s the novel that everyone’s talking about and reading on planes: a murder-suicide gone wrong in the outback. Grandpa turns the plastic case over and looks at Lona quizzically.

  ‘I’ll help you set it up next time I’m round,’ she says.

  The next time Lona is round is two days later. She calls in at home to pick up her DVD of 10 Things I Hate About You. This is a thinly veiled excuse to enable her to lie on her parents’ couch and wish she were more motivated in life.