by Jessie Tu
I make another round of miso spag bol, listening to the excerpts as I squeeze miso paste into the cold mince. Mozart. Beethoven. Singing along to the violin line.
I plate up, grate parmesan on top, light a candle.
‘It’s ready!’
My voice cuts through the empty house. Hollow.
I reach for my phone: 9.45 pm. I shove a few mouthfuls into my mouth, then realise I am not hungry at all. I thumb a text to the bass player, holding my finger over the blue arrow, but I don’t press send. It’s too early for a booty call. Too late for a satisfying fuck. But he was never satisfying.
Screen off. A sombre face stares back at me from the grey reflective surface. How does anyone survive alone?
I press on Val’s name.
She picks up after the second ring. ‘Are you dead?’
‘No. What? How could I call if I was dead?’
‘Are you in hospital?’
‘No.’
‘Why else would you be calling me?’
‘You said the other night that you might be looking for a new place to live.’
‘Yeah,’ she says slowly. ‘Are you thinking of moving out?’
A few seconds after we hang up, I text Geordie because he is reliable, and because it’s the right amount of time since we last saw each other. As I’m clearing the dishwashing rack, I feel that old sense of euphoria return. Waiting for my lover to come. I check my face in the bathroom mirror and readjust my hair. When he texts that he is outside, I go to answer the door. Inside, I let him do what he wants to me because I don’t want to spend another night alone. I need someone’s breath to distract me from my anxieties. I need a shawl over my gaze to prevent me from looking too closely at my small, defective heart.
12
The hand physio calls to ask about my wrist. She is interested in the way mayors are interested in their constituents; at a distance. We are allocated four appointments each season and this will be my last. She has a spot at three in the afternoon. I arrive half an hour early to lift weights at the gym next to a rehearsal studio. I forget how quickly I sweat, even when I’m just lifting dumbbells, and end up embarrassed by my collar of sweat on my T-shirt when I arrive for my appointment.
She squeezes my wrists gently.
‘Are you over-playing?’
‘I’ve got an audition coming up.’
‘Stop after an hour. You can’t play more than an hour at a time. You’ll damage the ligaments around your fingers.’
‘I played six hours a day for more than a decade.’
She stills her face, a mother to a child.
‘You’re not young anymore.’
Olivia comes over for a practice session after dinner. She brings a bottle of red wine.
Two weeks out from the auditions, she’s had to take a week-long break from playing after spraining a finger playing netball. We argue about the dangers of sport for the hundredth time. She insists netball is the safest sport for violinists.
‘There are plenty of other sports that don’t involve the potential of losing a finger,’ I say.
She pushes the sleeves of her sweater up and follows me into the kitchen, red-cheeked and frowning.
‘I’ve done it for so long.’
‘That’s no excuse.’ I pull two wineglasses from the cupboard. ‘Why do you play with only girls? Women’s sport is so … catty.’
‘You’re such a sexist.’
She opens the bottle and pours herself a glass of wine.
‘There’s some strange competitive thing happening when there are only women on the court.’
‘What about men?’
‘Well, all-male spaces are inherently bad.’
‘You don’t really mean that.’
I take a moment to think about it.
‘No, I really do mean that.’
We return to the lounge room and pick up our violins, play a few scales, go through the excerpts at half the speed. I sense her lagging half a beat behind. I pull her up on it. She asks for the metronome.
‘Ninety,’ she demands.
‘That’s too slow.’
I thumb the dial in my hand, the lever jumping from the low tens to three digits.
Olivia picks up her glass of wine and readjusts her music stand.
‘Before I forget, Noah said he needs a second player for his show in September. You know, the one he’s been roped into by his school friends?’
I nod my head to the click of the metronome. Place it on the stand quickly and begin playing along. Olivia follows and we continue playing, applying less pressure to our bows at the phrase before the big climax in bar 127.
Later, as she’s clipping on her helmet and mounting her bike, she mentions Noah’s concert again.
‘Oh, yes. You said before. What is it, a charity concert?’
‘Sort of. It’s an alumni event at Newington. Can I put you down?’
‘What about you?’
‘I can’t. My mother needs me on Monday nights.’
I fold my arms, feigning irritation.
‘I hate Noah’s friends.’
Olivia puts her arms around my neck. In that embrace, I know I have lost.
‘You’re a godsend,’ she says.
‘I know.’
‘And don’t forget it’s Noah’s birthday this weekend.’
As she rides away, I turn to shut the door behind me and glimpse my own reflection in the glass panel. For a moment, I think there is somebody inside the house, standing in the hallway waiting for me. My heart stops. And then I step inside, untie my hair. I walk to the bathroom and use the toilet.
Later I check my phone, hoping for a text from Val. I’d sent her three messages earlier in the day, asking whether she’d thought any more about moving in together. I even told her I’d started looking at places, which is a half-lie. On the toilet seat, I scrolled through real estate pages of apartments in the Eastern Suburbs.
My heart leaps at a text banner, but it’s just Olivia reminding me to pick up a present for Noah.
What to get for your best friend’s boyfriend? A book? A sex toy? A subscription to GQ? Nobody reads magazines anymore.
I stare at the phone, willing Val to text me. I’m sure she would never make me go to her boyfriend’s birthday party. She would never make me do anything I didn’t want to do.
13
Noah turns twenty-five and Olivia insists on throwing him a party at his parents’ penthouse in Cremorne, a white wealthy suburb that hugs the shores of Sydney Harbour on the north side of the bridge. His parents are in Croatia for a month on sabbatical, so the place is free all of April. I invite Val as my plus one because she’s relatively new to the city and wants to widen her circle of friends. We arrange to meet at her place to get ready. The sculptor has moved out, she tells me. She still eats out most nights.
Her apartment is on the top floor of a renovated art deco building on Campbell Parade. I knock twice on the metal flyscreen and she comes to the door almost immediately. I follow her into the lounge. There’s a smell of wet cardboard and jasmine. Delta blues play from her laptop.
Her eyes are ringed with heavy black kohl. She’s wearing denim overalls over a white T-shirt, camel-coloured socks with pink spots, black boots, kitten earrings.
‘I thought you said you wanted to get—’
‘I know, sorry. I got excited.’
A lady is singing about her lover who has run away to Chicago.
‘Is this Bessie Smith?’
‘Memphis Minnie.’
We sit on a three-seater, green retro couch in the open-plan living area. Against the far wall opposite, the kitchen is one long bench and a large two-door refrigerator. The furniture is sleek and grey, discreetly expensive. There are framed sketches on the walls; pencil drawings of a man’s face, a typewriter, a willow tree.
‘This place is nice.’
She shrugs, indifferent.
‘The fridge is too big. I don’t cook.’
She says ‘co
ok’ the way one might say ‘masturbate’ in public.
She walks over to the fridge and opens the two doors. ‘See? Nothing.’
Empty except for a carton of long-life milk, a can of tuna and a bottle of Diet Coke.
‘You weren’t kidding.’
‘I never cook. I don’t know how. Anyway, you still haven’t seen the view.’
I follow her onto the balcony.
The expansive line of blue ocean. Seagulls dot the blush-red sky, wheeling in an invisible wind.
‘Must be nice to live here,’ I say. ‘Why don’t I just take the sculptor’s room?’
She wrinkles her nose. ‘This place reminds me of Damien actually. He was here a lot.’
The gum-snapping scat of Memphis Minnie’s voice jives in the background, a third party to our conversation.
‘Come on, I need to finish my make-up.’ She walks back into the apartment.
In Val’s bedroom, there are jars of scented candles scattered on top of books. It’s a tarot-reader’s room. Lamps in each corner. A large frameless mirror by a bookshelf, a scarf rack.
I sit on her bed and watch her fix fake eyelashes on. She asks if I got Noah a present. I tell her I didn’t have the mental capacity to think about it, so I got him a gift voucher for a music store in the city. She tells me she’s bought him tickets to Boy and Bear. ‘How do you know he likes them?’ I ask.
‘Everyone likes Boy and Bear. Especially nice, white, private school boys. They’re so predictable.’
‘What are these for?’ I point to a bowl of condoms on her bedside table.
‘They stop me from making babies.’
‘Aren’t you on the pill?’
‘Damien is not the only person I’m sleeping with.’
‘I thought you guys broke up.’
She pats her forehead with a cotton ball.
‘Is it an open relationship?’
She doesn’t say anything.
I slip off my shirt and jeans and grab the slip dress I’d brought from my bag.
‘If it’s not an open relationship, isn’t that cheating?’
She walks across the room to tie the back of my dress. I feel her cold fingers brush my skin.
‘I think being in a monogamous relationship is just another patriarchal trap set by men to keep us from taking over the world.’
Only Val can make such sweeping statements.
We take a selfie and she posts it. In the picture, I look uncomfortable, like a teenager off to her first party, anxious and trying to hide it unsuccessfully.
The penthouse is on a quiet street lined with European cars and large fig trees. Lights pulse from the third floor, announcing the location.
As we approach, the door to the apartment block opens. Two men walk out.
‘Hey!’
Noah and I hug awkwardly. His cologne is thick; cinnamon and wood. The scent of affluence embedded deep into his flesh.
The man standing beside him is distracted by the phone in his hand. Face gaunt, cheeks tight below dark eyebrows. He’s wearing dark blue jeans and a black long-sleeved shirt with small aeroplanes on it. Cufflinks. He looks like Christian Bale in American Psycho.
‘This is Mark,’ Noah says.
We shake hands. His cufflinks are 747s. He is older. Maybe ten or fifteen years. He returns his attention to his screen, as if his height and natural good looks demand respect, regardless.
‘We’re just heading out to get more beer,’ Noah says. ‘You guys want anything?’
‘We’ve brought whisky,’ Val says.
‘But I’d like more.’
‘More?’ He looks at me strangely.
‘No, I’m joking.’
Noah smiles, no teeth. He waves as he turns to leave, his friend trailing behind, eyes still fixed on his phone.
We take the elevator to the third floor. The sound of beats muffled by the tiled walls. We emerge to the flesh-throbbing thump of techno slapping us in the face. The door to the penthouse is open and we step inside tentatively. At once the music is killed. A collective chorus of boos thunders across the room. People are squeezed together like sardines in the narrow hallway, drinks in hand, mouths in speech. We push through to the lounge room. It smells of chlorine, citrus and sweat, like a freshly cleaned bathroom at an upscale gym where white towels are provided and Aesop products are freely distributed.
Val sees someone she knows and disappears, leaving me alone to navigate a sea of trimmed, vacuous hipsters. I find bottles of beer and wine in an ice bucket in the kitchen and pour myself a drink. I take a quick sip, surveying the living room from the relative obscurity of a corner by the fridge.
I look around at the groups of people laughing and talking, and I am suddenly aware of my own isolation. For a brief moment, I panic. No one is going to speak to me. It feels like failure, this involuntary solitude.
I spot Olivia sitting on the arm of a couch next to a boy. She waves to me. ‘You made it.’
‘What happened to the music?’
‘Neighbour was complaining.’
She leans over, her expression serious. ‘It’s a Newington craze-fest. Everyone here either went there or dated someone there. Seems like a bit of a social decline, don’t you think?’
‘Hanging out with your high school friends?’
‘Yeah.’
She excuses herself, pulled away by other voices. She returns a few minutes later, pulling on the arm of a girl; Val comes up behind me at the same moment.
‘This is Dresden,’ Olivia introduces. ‘She went to Barker too.’
Val shakes her hand.
‘What’s your connection to Newington?’ I ask.
‘My boyfriend worked there as a sports coach for one term,’ the girl says. ‘He was also a mentor to a lot of these boys.’
‘Wait, you’re dating Mark?’ Olivia’s mouth is open and frozen.
The girl nods. ‘He’s the one that looks out of place, evidently.’
Olivia is still shocked. ‘Noah never told me. But then again, he never tells me anything.’
‘We met him outside,’ I say. ‘He went to get more drinks with Noah.’
‘Is that where they went?’
Olivia nods with authority. ‘Noah likes to be stolen away.’
The four of us are talking about the boys. If this were a scene in a film, we wouldn’t pass the Bechdel test.
‘I’m going to go and spread my wings,’ Val says. I watch her steer through a stream of people, leaving me to pretend to care about the significant others of my best friend and a stranger.
‘Where are you guys living?’ Olivia asks.
‘Mark’s in Darlinghurst, but I’m studying in Melbourne.’
‘Long distance is impossible,’ I say.
The girl looks at me as though I’ve offended her. ‘It’s not impossible. We make it work.’
‘Of course. What are you studying?’
‘Business and finance. I’m the only child of Chinese immigrants. I suppose it was inevitable.’ She flashes her perfect teeth, satin black hair sliding to part her face. ‘I met Mark here in Sydney when I was interning at EY.’
‘EY?’
‘Ernst and Young.’
Olivia and I nod politely.
‘We got a lot of bad press because Mark was going through a divorce. That’s sort of why I left. Then I won a scholarship to Melbourne Uni. It worked out well in the end, though of course I’d rather be here in Sydney. Mark flies down almost every weekend, so I can’t complain. Oh look, they’re back!’
Noah and Mark walk in with bags in each hand. Their entrance is greeted by a soft cheer. I feel an urge to move towards them. I want to untether myself from the conversation with this perfect Chinese girl. Her perfectly delicate frame, perfect cheekbones and perfect hair. Even her name, despite its novelty, seems perfect. Who gives their Chinese daughter a name like Dresden and then makes her study finance? Who says, ‘evidently’?
‘Which one is your boyfriend?’ she asks me, narr
owing her eyes.
‘I don’t have one.’
‘Oh, are you friends with someone here?’
‘This girl,’ I say, putting an arm around Olivia. ‘We’re best friends.’
‘Oh! How sweet,’ she says. ‘I didn’t even know that was still a thing.’
‘What? Friends?’
‘Best friends.’
I walk away. I don’t know how to continue the conversation. I help the boys unpack beer, vodka, whisky onto the kitchen counter. They ask me what I want to drink.
‘Something healthy,’ I say. ‘I have an audition in a few days.’
Mark hands me a glass of clear liquid. ‘It’s nutritious,’ he says, smiling.
‘What is it?’ I bring it under my nose and smell nothing.
‘H-two-oh,’ he says, patting my shoulder and nodding like a football coach.
‘Your girlfriend is nice.’
He looks at me more closely. ‘You met Dresden?’
‘She’s very pretty.’ I keep my shoulders square to his face.
‘Smart too,’ he adds.
‘I know. She’s Asian.’
He laughs, his whole face breaking into a crinkled map of rivers.
Noah calls out from the other end of the bench where he is slicing lemons into wedges. His white shirt clings to him with sweat.
‘Don’t get too close to that girl, Mark—she’s dangerous.’
Mark raises a brow.
We watch Noah hand a drink to Olivia, who is still talking to Dresden, theirs heads dipped forward as though sharing some wild speculation.
‘I’ve got to make sure these girls are not misbehaving,’ Mark says. He walks away. I return to my state of aloneness in the corner of the kitchen.
The rest of the evening passes uneventfully, until someone spikes Val’s drink and she throws up in the bathroom for more than half an hour. Mark and I end up taking her to hospital, because we are the only sober people. My car is parked too far away so Noah insists we take his parents’ BMW.
Mark’s girlfriend wants to come but he tells her to go back to his place. She has a seven o’clock flight to Melbourne the following morning.