by Jessie Tu
I pull on her shoulder straps. ‘Come for one, please?’
‘You guys go ahead.’
We perform an awkward three-person farewell. I watch her walk away looking down at her phone.
‘Shall we?’
I turn. The conductor is looking at me. Untrimmed brows. Deep brackets around his mouth.
My body shivers with familiar anxiety. A need to smile without showing too many teeth. The faint narrowing of my eyes. Performing desirability. An involuntary response to a male gaze. I do it so well.
‘Okay.’
As we walk across the forecourt to the bar, he asks about my playing, what I’ve been doing, America, my mother.
We join some musicians sitting at the outdoor bar and he pulls out a cigarette. I excuse myself and head to the ladies. I decide there’s no reason for me to stay. There is no one in the orchestra I want to fuck. No one with anything interesting to say. Instead of going to the toilets I make my escape.
The following evening, the conductor makes his debut to a full house. He does not look at me once.
Afterwards, I ask Olivia if Noah is picking us up as he usually does on weeknights. She’s loosening her bow and staring vacantly at the wall in front of her. She shakes her head.
‘Everything okay?’ I ask, pausing between sips of water from my water bottle.
‘Yeah, I just told him not to. Let’s get a drink.’
We head to the Australian Hotel in The Rocks to avoid the musicians at the Opera Bar. Inside, a young couple are seated at a table, a larger group near the back. A few suits in a booth, their table scattered with empty glasses and bottles, their faces smeared by an oblivious joviality. We sit on wooden stools drinking beers and crunching pistachio shells. As she talks, I stare at her face, which is always bare, no make-up.
We talk about the conductor and his forceful style. I make wild, flamboyant gestures and imitate his heavy breathing, the exaggerated movements of his torso. She laughs until she’s bent over.
We try to decide whether he’s gay or straight or something in between. We hear from other players that he has a reputation for trying to get young players into bed. It was rumoured that after last year’s White Cocktails to which he’d been invited as an international guest, he took home two players from the woodwinds. The rumour is hazy on the gender of the players. The White Cocktails is a wank, we agree. An annual Sydney Symphony event held at Bennelong Restaurant in the Opera House to introduce new players to the orchestra’s patrons and board members.
‘You’d know all about it,’ Olivia says. ‘You’ve been in that world since you were a kid.’
I shake my head. ‘I was a soloist. I hardly mixed with the orchestra. They were the lowly farm animals and I was the star lion.’
She drains her beer. ‘Jesus.’
‘It is a bore, come on. We know that, right?’
‘Well I’ve never been, obviously, since they only invite permanent players, but apparently it’s a pretty big deal. Monica said she spent over two thousand dollars on her gown last year. You need to really make an impression.’
I swirl my finger inside the bowl of pistachio shells and wait for her to look back at me.
‘I bet the men don’t have to buy an expensive suit.’
‘They probably do.’
We switch from beer to wine, ordering from a bartender who looks like the bass player. They all look the same. Thick trimmed beard. John Mayer eyes. White T-shirt. Broad smile. I shift my gaze to the suits in the booth.
‘You checking them out?’ Olivia asks.
‘Those guys?’ I shake my head. ‘Losers.’
‘Losers who’ll make more money this month than we will in our entire lives.’
‘But do they have good sex?’
Olivia stares into her glass. ‘Noah is withholding sex from me.’
I slap my hand on the table. ‘What?’
‘I’ve been spending more time with my mum lately, and he thinks I’m overcompensating.’
‘Overcompensating for what?’
She lifts the wineglass to her lips and sighs into the pool of liquid. ‘I don’t know.’
As we get up to leave, one of the suits walks over.
‘You girls interested in a game of chess back at my place?’ Olivia pushes past him. ‘No thanks.’
He turns to me. ‘You?’
Outside, the suit hails a taxi. He raises one arm in the air like he’s asking a question.
In the taxi, he places a hand on my thigh, squeezing it as though testing the ripeness of an avocado. I ask him where he works and he mutters the name of a bank. Hyde Park whirs by in a blur of black and red, broken by strings of lampposts. The aircon blows straight into my eyes.
I’m curious to know what kind of bed this man owns. The colour of his sheets. If he has paintings on the wall, or just cheap pretend art for a pretend life. I’m not sure what compels me. An insatiable thirst for thrills? Danger? All I know is that I am desired in this one, particular way, this one, particular, familiar way, and it has nothing to do with what I can do on the violin. I don’t want it to go to waste.
When the taxi pulls into a driveway, I peer out the window. Large birch tree. Bush out the front. Low metal gate, locked. Built-in letterbox in the wall. At the front door, he plants a kiss on my mouth. Dry, no tongue. I keep my eyes open. He moves a white piece of plastic in front of a black keypad. The door clicks open.
‘No key!’ he beams.
The light turns on slowly. Marble dining table. Bamboo lampshades hanging low above the sink. Large pot plants in each corner. The floors, grey pebble mosaics. A real estate agent’s office.
I walk towards the huge windows.
Before I reach the view, I feel a tug on my leg. I look down to see a white rope around my calves. The rope tightens. I’m yanked off my feet. I fall and land on my bad wrist. I hear a small crack. The slap of flesh on tiles. It’s violent, and then painful, and then—my hands are being tied behind me.
‘Wait!’ I scream, and he pauses, stepping back.
‘What?’
‘I just—I need to pee.’
He thinks for a moment, then releases my hands. ‘On your right.’
As I step past him, I reach for my bag and bolt for the door. I don’t stop running until I reach a main road. I stand under a streetlight and raise my arm, waiting for a taxi.
10
A postcard of a Barnett Newman painting is stuck on the fridge door as inspiration for Mike and Jacob’s latest works. Concord was painted in 1949, during the artist’s most prolific year. Sometimes, I’d get milk from the fridge, close the door and stand there staring at the image; its pair of golden bars like handles of a door into a fancy New York City loft. The colour always reminds me of the ocean. Mike and Jacob have spent months working on a show inspired by the American mid-century abstract expressionist. The pepper-dotted canvas that spent weeks on the floor of our lounge room will now be on display. Sometimes, as I’m practising modern pieces by Copland, Stravinsky or Glass, I think about Newman’s paintings. The colours. The lines. The shadows. The suit from the other night had something like this on the wall. A single piece. Minimalist.
The opening of their exhibition falls on a Friday night, usually a concert evening, but the program is baroque so they don’t need a full orchestra. It will be Mike and Jacob’s first exhibition as a couple. I help them set up at the gallery in Redfern, a suburb that has been colonised by young white couples who work in design or law. Mike and Jacob are expecting more than a hundred people. Old college friends. Folks from the National Art School who come for the free craft beer and spend their Centrelink payment on tattoos and Status Anxiety tote bags. Mike and Jacob both graduated from there several years ago and tell me each opening is an excuse to bitch about other artists and find new people to fuck.
Four large canvases hang in the front room of the gallery—black, with a white vertical brushstroke. The line is marked at different points on each canvas. The idea is for the fo
ur paintings to be acquired together as a set and displayed in a small room facing each other.
In the second room, Mike hands me gaffer tape and scissors. ‘Make sure the corners are flat against the wall.’
I’m sticking cardboard cut-out signs onto the walls. I stop every now and then and tug at the sleeves of my denim jacket to cover my wrists. Nobody knows about the other night. How close I came to starring in a white man’s midweek fantasy.
A young woman walks into the room holding a stapler. Her hair is bleached blonde, witch-like, her eyes the only giveaway to her ethnicity.
‘You an artist here?’ she asks.
I look at her nose ring. Single white stud. ‘I’m Mike and Jacob’s housemate.’
She nods coolly. ‘I’m Val. You look like someone famous.’
Her Drew Barrymore mouth is painted blood orange. She smells expensive, a blend of musk and jasmine.
‘I played the violin well once.’
She stares at me, tiny head stilled. I’m tempted to tell her I know who she is, regurgitate all the things Mike and Jacob have let slip about her in my presence. She’s the latest artist to sign a six-month lease on the spare room at their studio. She graduated from the Victorian College of Arts last year and moved to Sydney to be with her boyfriend of seven years, only to be dumped a few weeks later. Her mega-wealthy parents live in Shanghai and got her an apartment in Bondi Beach.
‘So, you’re shit at the violin now?’
‘My teacher might say that.’
She lets out a blunt laugh, lifts the stapler in her hand, presses it to my shoulder.
Mike shouts from the other room, ‘Oi, Valerie Li! Watch it. That girl needs her shoulders!’
‘My fingers weren’t on the trigger, Mike, chill.’
She’s wearing a white T-shirt with FUCK ME SAFE printed in the middle, in block caps.
‘Nice T-shirt.’
She pulls her hair in a bun and asks me if I know who she is quoting.
‘No.’
‘David Wojnarowicz. A New York artist. He died of AIDS in the early nineties.’
She bends down to pick up staples off the floor and inserts them into her stapler.
Jacob calls out from the other room; he is struggling to adjust the ceiling lights. I go to help.
When I return to Val, the room is punctuated by the sound of her thunder-clap stapling. CLAP. CLAP. Pause. CLAP.
‘Why’s there no music playing?’ I ask.
Val pinches her nose. ‘Music takes me away from myself. I don’t want that when I’m painting. It’s such a distraction, no offence.’
‘But you’re not painting.’
‘I’m working. It’s the same thing. I got out of an abusive relationship with music years ago. It’s too persuasive. My parents made me play the piano. Could you pass me more staples?’
I want to please this girl, though I’ve only just met her. Is it because we’re the only Asians in the gallery?
I pass her the staples.
‘So, if I play Debussy right now …’
‘Please don’t,’ she says. ‘I’ll have traumatic flashbacks to art school. Our teacher used to put on Chopin and expect us to paint flowers and lakes.’ She makes a retching sound. ‘Mozart used to be interesting. Until he wasn’t.’
‘And if I play AC/DC?’
She twists her wrists in circular motions, looks up at the ceiling. ‘Don’t even.’
At 7 pm, a crowd amasses. A group of five enters. Then couples trickle in. I go to the bathroom to splash my face with cool water. When I return, the crowd has poured out onto the street, smoking, holding wineglasses, talking, laughing, some looking serious, like they are talking about the famine in Yemen. When I wedge myself into one of these serious-looking conversations, I find them instead discussing the merits of living in Paddington versus Woollahra. Noah and Olivia drop by. Olivia is wearing a black dress with white heels, making her a head taller than me. In ballet flats we are the same height.
‘It’s our anniversary,’ she announces. ‘We’ve got a booking at Tetsuya’s at eight so we can’t stay long.’
‘Congratulations.’
Mike slaps Noah on the back. ‘Such a good boyfriend. Maybe he’ll propose tonight?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Noah says.
Olivia smiles at the floor. ‘We’d better not be late.’ She pulls on Noah’s jacket sleeve, waves us goodbye.
Later, Mike makes a speech. People raise their glasses as he begins a long list of acknowledgements. I’m standing to the side near the speakers, holding a bottle of beer by its neck, scanning the faces in the crowd. Mike has just cracked a joke when a savage noise outside punctures the space, redirecting our attention. There’s a screech of tyres and a voice yells something obscene. Cunt or fuck or dick. I can’t hear the word, but I register the tone.
Then the eggs start coming. The first one cracks against the front window, a second and third smash against the door. Then they start landing near the feet of those who had spilled out onto the footpath. There is screaming. Some of the men shout, take off after the car. Women scuttle inside. The car disappears down the dark street.
Later, inside, Mike and Jacob are hunched and small in the back corner of a room.
‘Are you okay?’ I put an arm around Mike and rub Jacob’s arms, which are crossed in front of him. ‘The important thing is that nobody was hurt,’ I say.
Val inserts herself between me and Jacob. ‘This is bullshit. We should call the police.’
‘No,’ Jacob says. ‘I don’t want this in the papers. My mother would kill me.’
‘But think of the publicity,’ Val says.
Mike shakes his head. ‘We want it for the right reasons. Not because we got egged.’ He extracts a Juul, and begins inhaling deeply.
‘At least we weren’t bombed.’
Jacob stirs. ‘Mike, I’m Jewish.’
As we’re cleaning up, Val takes her phone out and snaps pictures of the cracked eggshells swimming in pools of yolk.
‘Hashtag real art. This’ll be my ten thousandth post.’
She invites me back to her apartment in Bondi Beach. We take an Uber. She is currently subletting to a Chinese artist, an old friend, though she doesn’t think he’ll last long. The man is a sculptor. He hires models and sleeps with them after. After the art. Or maybe the art is the intercourse. She laughs as she tells me.
‘The apartment smells constantly of wet clay, and in the evenings I can’t eat my dinner without the sound of a woman being pleasured. Which is why I’m always eating out. I can’t cook either. Which reminds me, I should probably start looking for a new place. Or rent out that room to someone else.’
She looks over at me, she can tell there’s something on my face I’m not expressing.
‘You’re tired, huh?’
‘Yeah.’
She takes my phone and texts herself. Yo. Val here.
‘Driver, can we just do a detour and drop off my friend here?’
She turns back to me and clasps my shoulder. ‘You can visit me some other time.’
The driver drops me off in Newtown. It’s just past midnight, though I feel awake and alert. I close the front door behind me and go to my violin. Thirty-three days till the audition. I can fit in another hour of practice.
11
The following evening, I make miso bolognaise for the boys. Mike comments on the unusual mix of Japanese flavouring and I tell him my mother showed me how to make it when I returned from Wayne. She was a good cook, but never had time. And she liked cleaning too. Typical feminine activities. Part of me was disgusted that she’d be talented at such simple, ordinary things.
The boys are still traumatised about the egging at the opening. I suggest they take a few days off to relax. Binge on Harry Potter. Go for a two-hour massage. Double jack-off to Michael Fassbender in Shame. Instead, Mike returns to the studio that night, and Jacob stays in his room.
I spend all weekend in the lounge room practising. I ea
t dry cereal for breakfast because there’s no milk left in the fridge.
On Sunday afternoon Jacob comes out of his room in his Peppa Pig PJs holding a bottle of beer and a bag of corn chips.
‘You sure I can’t do anything?’ I ask.
He slumps onto the couch. ‘No.’
‘Want me to practise in my room?’
‘No, but the scales are kind of annoying.’
I make a small noise. He returns to his room with a fresh pack of chips.
I turn to the tricky passages of Mahler’s 4th. Slowly first, then at twice the speed. Slow, fast, slow, fast. Alternating between slurs and staccato, ricochet and dolce. The bow is the voice. It’s all in the right hand. I play until the sun weakens. Birdcalls replaced by bat croaks. Sometimes, when I’m playing Mahler, I am tempted to butcher his music deliberately because of what he did to his wife, Alma. He is another man, a composer, who probably never dreamed a girl like me would replicate his melodies. But I shouldn’t be so cruel. None of that matters. They’d written the notes that once saved me, and for that, I ought to be grateful.
The following Friday, I get home from a concert to find Jacob sobbing on the couch.
‘What’s wrong?’
He tells me he’d gone to visit his mother in Vaucluse for Shabbat and they had a fight. He’d wanted to take Mike, but his mother refused. ‘She said she’d rather die than see me with a man.’ His shoulders are trembling. ‘Now she says she never wants to see me again. She’s cutting me off. And I can’t afford to live here without her help.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Mum owns this place.’
He looks at me. Eyes glassy. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘She’s said she’s selling it in a few months.’
‘Oh.’
The skin around his eyes is swollen and pink. ‘There’s no rush, though. You’ve got at least two months, maybe three.’
‘That’s okay,’ I say. ‘Don’t worry about me.’
They move out a week later.
For three days it rains without stop. The canvas chairs in the back yard collect ponds of rainwater in the seats. I take pictures of the sad ponds and Mike and Jacob’s empty room and send them to the boys accompanied with sad-face emojis. The kitchen has been stripped of all their possessions. It’s a kettle-less, toaster-less, espresso machine–less kitchen; a gallery with no art.