Please Don't Leave Me Here (2 page)

‘Be careful.' He doesn't hear her over the music.

She frowns and folds her arms across her chest. Everybody else is laughing and dancing. She looks around for Manny. He's busy with a frothy pink cocktail in one hand and Heath Ledger in the other. She may as well just go home, but one more drink first. She tightens the halter ties of her dress, pulls her breasts up higher, and goes to the bar for another glass of champagne.

After a third glass and not enough finger food, she heads to the balcony for some fresh air.

The cigarette smoke outside nauseates her. She leans against the rail; the lights of the cityscape swirl like a kaleidoscope. Kurt Cobain is talking to Princess Diana in the corner. Brigitte sits — falls — on a bench seat. When Diana goes inside, Kurt removes his white sunglasses, smiles, and walks towards Brigitte.
Oh, God.

‘Hey, Marilyn. Great party, huh?' A tall guy in black jeans and a flannelette shirt unbuttoned over a T-shirt — not even dressed up — pushes in front of Kurt. Kurt turns and decides to follow Diana.

‘You OK?' the guy in the flannelette shirt says. His voice is deep, soothing.

‘I'm not feeling so good. Would you mind getting me some water?'

‘Sure.' He puts his beer down next to her on the seat and goes inside.

She swallows, and has breathed away the nausea by the time the flannelette-shirt guy comes back.

‘You look like you've seen a ghost.' He must have been thinking of that line while he was getting her glass of water. But she finds it funny — stupid, but funny — and, even though she feels like crap, she can't help laughing.

‘How do you know Manny?' He has a crooked smile, one side higher than the other. She can't decide if it makes him look clever or smug.

‘He's a friend of my husband.'

‘Where's your husband?'

She sips her water. ‘He left.'

He sits next to her.

‘How about you?' The skyline has stopped spinning.

‘Same. Separated. Nearly a year now.'

She should clear up his misunderstanding about her marital status, but she doesn't.

‘Any kids?'

‘No.'

‘You're lucky.' She finishes her water. ‘I mean lucky because of the separation, not …'

‘It's OK. What's your name?'

‘Brigitte.'

‘I'm Aidan.'

‘How come you're not dressed up?'

‘I am. I'm Jeff Buckley.'

She turns to look at him, and realises he's wearing a wig. He quickly lifts his gaze from her chest, city lights in his dark eyes. Did he notice her scars?

‘Smoke?' He holds out a pack.

She shakes her head.

‘Me neither. Given up.' He puts the pack back in his pocket.

‘It's a bit cold out here, Aidan — I mean Jeff. And I'm feeling better, so I think I'll go back inside.'

All the tables are taken, so she sits at the long, polished-timber bar. Aidan follows her, takes the next bar stool. Down-lighting glints diamond shapes on the hundreds of bottles lined up on the shelf behind the bartender, who's making a show of mixing a drink in a cocktail shaker.

‘Feel like a cocktail, Marilyn?' Aidan says.

‘Sure, Jeff. Maybe a Margarita.'

‘How about a Slow Comfortable Screw Against the Wall?'

She narrows her eyes at him.

‘What? It's a drink.' He laughs as she snatches the cocktail menu from his hands. His high, squeaky laugh doesn't suit him.

The bartender winks and places two orange-coloured drinks in front of them.

They both drink quickly and order a second cocktail.

‘Take off your wig, Aidan.' She reaches for it, he ducks, and she laughs.

‘Why? Not a Jeff fan?'

‘Go on, take it off.' Perhaps he's bald under there.

‘I'll take it off if you'll dance with me.'

‘Deal.' She sips her drink.

His dark-brown hair has been flattened against his head. It's the same as the wig, just shorter.

‘Come on.' He runs a hand through his hair and fixes it.

‘What?'

‘Dance.'

‘Changed my mind.'

‘You can't, we had a deal.' He takes her hand and drags her, giggling, to the dance floor. Manny has stopped bashing out his dreadful renditions of Rolling Stones numbers. A Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue song wails through the sound system: ‘Where the Wild Roses Grow'.

‘I love Nick Cave!' she says.

‘Me, too.' He stoops to drape his arms around her shoulders.

Most people have left the floor because the song is too slow to dance to. Brigitte and Aidan don't mind — slow-dancing, not even dancing, just holding each other up and moving slowly, out of time to the music. She sings the words, and he pretends to know them. On the shiny timber wall, a lean figure towers over a Tinkerbell shape: their silhouettes reflected by the dance-floor lights.

Has she let this go too far? How's she going to get out of it? Maybe she doesn't want to get out of it. They're not doing anything wrong — just dancing — until he pulls her closer and bends down to kiss her. She turns her face away, and he whispers into her ear, ‘Come back to my place?'

She can't, can she? Of course not. ‘No.'

‘Just as well. I don't really have a place anymore. Can we go to yours?'

‘Be quiet and dance.' She rests her face against his flannelette shirt. It's so soft, and the faint scent of citrus — perhaps bergamot — cologne takes her back to another time. She closes her eyes, and loses herself for a while.

3

‘Sorry I'm late. Phoebe was being difficult at kinder — just for something different.'

Ryan's at a window table, his coffee finished. The café is full of retirees with expensive shoes and fluffy little dogs, and forty-year-old mothers with
babies in designer grow-suits.

‘God, Little Sis, you look how I feel.'

‘Take it that's not a compliment?' Brigitte orders a flat white, scrapes out a chair, and sits opposite him. ‘How are things with you and Rosie?'

He shakes his head. ‘Don't ask. She's vegan now.'

‘And training for the marathon?'

‘Uh-huh. Looks like a stick insect. She's gone all weird, had her hair cut really short. Something about turning 40.'

‘Well, you always had a thing for older women, so— '

‘And what's with the no-sex-ever thing?'

‘Too much information, Ryan.'

‘You're a woman. Thought you could help me figure this stuff out.'

She shrugs and yawns.

‘How come you look like shit?'

‘Late night.' She's bubbling to tell him all about it — like a silly teenager. Ryan probably knows Aidan; the Melbourne film industry is a small community. The waiter brings her coffee. She stirs in some sugar and sucks the spoon.

A woman pushes a baby in a jogger pram along the street. Ryan looks over at the cakes on the counter. ‘You and Sam still having sex?'

‘Ryan!'

‘What? Don't be such a prude, Brigi.' He turns his empty cup around on its saucer. ‘Well, are you?'

She twists her mouth.

‘How often?'

She shrugs and sips her coffee. ‘So what
is
going on with you and Rosie?'

He leans back and crosses his arms. ‘Rosie says I have to get a
real
job. I've just picked up this series of insurance TV commercials that's going to pay heaps. Not good enough for her. Says it's too hard paying off the mortgage with just her income.'

‘Well— '

‘Like I don't contribute, which is total bullshit.'

‘You agreed to the McMansion, so— '

‘I was happier when we were renting the house in Groom Street and I had that role in
Neighbours
.' He looks out the window. A man in lycra cycles past on a state-of-the-art bike.

‘That house was shit. It was falling down and— '

‘At least we had a bit of money left over at the end of the fortnight — for a pizza or bottle of wine, something.'

‘Sam's on at me to get a job, too. Not sure what he expects me to do with the twins. He has no idea what childcare costs.'

‘Maybe Maggie and Doug could babysit.'

She laughs at the idea of her parents-in-law doing anything to help her. ‘Want another coffee?'

‘I want a beer. Let's go to the pub.'

They walk past the fish-and-chip shop, the hair salon where a woman's having a blow wave, and across the road to The Royal. The bar is empty. Ryan goes up to order drinks, and Brigitte takes a table by the window.

She sips her orange juice slowly. Ryan drinks his beer quickly and gets another.

‘You and Rosie are really having problems, aren't you?' she says.

‘Think it's pretty serious this time.'

She reaches across and squeezes his shoulder.

‘Sure you don't want a beer?'

She shakes her head. ‘You know I'm not drinking. And it'll be time to pick up the kids soon.'

‘Come on — one won't hurt.'

‘No.'

‘Come on.'

‘No.'

‘You sure?'

‘OK, just one.'

The beer tastes good.

‘Ever wonder if you're with the right person, Brigi?'

‘What, like a soul mate?'

‘Suppose so.'

‘No such thing. What's the probability of finding the one right person out of all the billions of people on the planet?'

‘Thought women were supposed to believe in that shit.'

She shrugs, sips her beer, and looks up at the specials board, pretends to read it, doesn't want to talk about this anymore.

‘Brigi! You're not having an affair, are you?'

‘Don't be stupid, Ryan. Where would I find time for that?' She laughs, and finishes her drink. ‘Another one?'

She goes up to the bar, and spills beer down the front of her shirt on the way back.

‘You know, it's really fucking hard being married to a cop.' She puts the beers on the table, and sits down.

‘Try being an actor married to a project manager.'

‘Always thinking that today might be the day he won't come home, waiting for the call.'

‘That would be pretty fucked.'

‘Like when we were little — waiting for Dad to come home. Joan carrying on about her
bad feelings
, telling us all those horror truck-crash stories. That's where all the anxiety about being left alone comes from.' She shifts in her chair, but can't get comfortable.

He nods. ‘Mum had depression, you know.'

‘No shit.'

‘You ever feel depressed?'

‘No.' A lie. ‘You?'

‘Not really.'

She sighs. ‘Whatever happened to fun, Ryan?'

‘Don't ask me.'

‘Cheers.' She clinks her glass to his, and they drink.

‘Your back sore?'

She shakes her head.

‘Should go back to the quack.'

‘I'm fine.'

They drink up and order one more.

‘Brigitte Campbell, has anybody ever told you that you drink like a man?'

‘You know, I think somebody did tell me that once.' She laughs and looks out the window at the deserted street. ‘A long time ago.'

Ryan takes a big drink, and his round, lineless face clouds over. He swallows and clears his throat. ‘I saw the police are reopening that old case.' He weaves his fingers together on the table, and clenches them. ‘Sam say anything about it?'

‘Says it's a waste of time. No new evidence.' She scrapes back her chair and goes to the bathroom.

The pub's very up-market these days: organic handwash, polished stones in a bowl, a jar of fragrance sticks. Her cheeks are red, so she splashes cold water on her face. There's a reflection in the corner of the mirror. She turns. Nobody there.
Shit.
She's starting to lose it — she shouldn't be drinking. She dries her hands quickly on a paper towel, afraid to look back in the mirror.

She trips up the step. Deep breaths.
OK. OK.

‘You OK?' Ryan says as she sits back at their table.

‘Yep.'

They're too drunk to drive, so they leave their cars in Clifton Hill and catch a taxi to pick up the kids — just in time.