Shutterspeed (7 page)

‘Is it?'

Nugget pauses and the bag sways. He hands Dustin the gloves. ‘Try it.'

‘Not my thing, mate.'

Nugget stills the bag with the palm of a hand. ‘Don't you ever want to hit someone?' he asks, seriously.

‘Yeah, I guess.'

‘So what do you do?'

‘I get over it.'

‘Shit, mate, sometimes you just gotta hit something. I'd go mental if I didn't play rugby.'

‘You
are
mental,' Dustin tells him, turning to leave.

‘Hey, wait,' Nugget pleads. ‘I need your help. Well, your advice.'

Dustin stays, curious. Nugget's his best mate, after all.

‘You know those two new exchange students, Eva and Hilda? I scored a date.'

‘Geez! Which one?'

‘That's the problem — I don't know. I chatted 'em both up and then this morning I get a note in my locker saying that “she” wants to “get to know me” on Friday night. It's signed by Eva, but which one's that?'

‘You don't know?'

‘Do you?'

‘Does it matter?'

‘Are you mental? One's much hotter than the other.'

‘You mean the one with the longer hair?'

‘Hair? I mean the one without the bushy eyebrows.'

Dustin scratches the back of his neck. He'd never noticed eyebrows.

‘You've got to find out for me,' Nugget tells him.

‘Why me?'

‘Get Jasmine to, then. She's …' Nugget slows down, struggling for the right word. ‘She's … charitable. You can't leave me turning up to a date not knowing who I'll be
meeting. Especially if her eyebrows remind me of John Howard. Sick!'

Dustin laughs at his hairy, beefy mate. ‘You're scared of a German chick?'

‘Shit, yeah! They're full-on, aren't they? The note she left was real up-front, you know. “I would like to observe your accessories.” She's going to jump me! You're not taking this seriously.'

‘Mate, cancer is serious. A German chick throwing herself at your massive agates is not serious. What do you want me to say?'

‘You must have some kind of wisdom to share with me. You're the ladies' man after all.'

Dustin snorts with amusement until he realises Nugget's not joking. He's been called a number of things in his life — a lazy bastard, a selfish prick, a waste of space — but never a ladies' man. ‘Since when?'

Nugget turns back to the punching bag and hits it with soft, swift hooks. ‘Well … you must be …' right hook ‘… to score with Jasmine.'

Dustin grabs the bag with both hands to still it.

‘You know what I mean, dickhead,' says Nugget, pulling his shoulder blades back. ‘It's okay, she's a cute chick.'

‘She's not my —'

‘Whatever you reckon. I'm just saying what it looks like.'

‘But you're
wrong
. Geez, you're my mate, you're supposed to know that.'

‘I just know what I see.'

The bag sways between them and Dustin shakes his head.

‘Well, you're more of a dickhead than I thought,' Nugget tells him.

Dustin walks out of the rec room into the great wash of daylight, and the school oval snaps into focus. He just wants to chill out under the peppermint tree, where things make sense. He buys a pie and walks to where Jasmine sits, drawing.

‘Where you been?'

‘With Nugget. He's lost the plot. I think his testicle's stolen blood flow from his brain.' Dustin's glad he can laugh about it — Jasmine has that effect on him.

She licks pistachio salt from her fingertips. ‘I reckon Mrs Clark's pregnant. Do you think so?'

‘Which one's she?'

‘My drama teacher.'

‘The hot one?' he says, his mouth filled with meat.

‘The married one. She rushed out of class again today and I reckon she's got morning sickness. When she came back she smelt kind of like spew.'

‘Jaz, I'm eating.'

‘Wouldn't it be weird? Being pregnant?'

‘It would be for me.'

‘It'd be weird, I think, but kind of nice,' she says rubbing the turtle-bump under her school shirt. ‘Pregnant women look so happy. You know, when they're not throwing up. They just glow.' The bump moves, like something out of
Alien
.

‘Gross. Why are you still carrying that thing around?'

‘What do you expect me to do?'

‘Umm … put it back where it came from? That would be normal.'

‘I'm not a deserter, Dustin.'

‘Yeah,' he admits, ‘I know you're not. What do you know about eyebrow shapes?'

‘You mean cosmetically or spiritually? There's a facial analysis chart at my parents' shop you could check out if you want.'

‘Enough, forget it,' he says, throwing his empty pie wrapper at her. ‘Nugget can shag John Howard for all I care.'

Jasmine grins and pats her turtle. ‘You're a strange boy.'

He glides into Fremantle after school, tyres silent on the bitumen. People and traffic let him slip through, all the way to the cinema. He buys a ticket and sinks into a red seat, the same one as yesterday. Terri Pavish isn't in the theatre — he
hadn't really expected her to be — but when he looks to her seat in the eleventh row, it's as if he can almost catch a glimpse of her; as though the silhouette of her remains.

The film about a musician's life rolls out on the screen. Near the end Dustin reaches for his bag and quietly, slowly, edges along his row. He walks down the aisle to the eleventh row, where he slides in. Looking at the screen, he can sense — with the hairs on his skin — her sitting beside him. And it's the best feeling he's ever known.

Dustin wakes up groggily on the couch to the sound of his father washing dishes. His watch says it's past 8:00pm. Slinking to the kitchen, he fills a glass at the sink and drinks. Ken moves around him, organising clean crockery into the correct places.

‘Big day at school?'

‘Must've been.'

‘There's fish on a plate in the fridge.' ‘Okay.'

‘Do you have homework?'

‘Done it.'

‘There's a movie on TV tonight I want to watch.'

Ken sits in the lounge room with a bowl of ice-cream and a cup of decaffeinated Nescafé coffee. He flicks through a newspaper as he waits for the movie to start.

Dustin picks at the crumbed cod on the plate, watching the opening sequence before giving up on the movie and taking the plate to his room. He sits on his single bed, surrounded by plain walls the colour of sand. There's nothing superfluous here except the three photos of Terri Pavish on the corkboard above his desk. Lying back, he gazes at her again. One day soon he'll walk right up to her. What will he say?
You're something different. I want to know you.

Looking at each photo in turn, he sees everything he wants. Speed. Independence. Freedom. He wants her; he wants to be like her. He admires the impermanency of this woman — blink and she's gone. Like vapour. Like a memory.

But he won't let her disappear the way his mother did. Dustin recalls Mrs Blackler's advice — that some things are too important to let slide:
That's why we take photos, Dustin. So people don't disappear.

And he knows that if it wasn't for these photos on his wall, Terri Pavish wouldn't exist to him either. She'd be as transient and meaningless as air, slipping past him on night roads, and dissolving into crowds in Freo. Without these
photos, Terri Pavish wouldn't be real. That's why he must keep them on his wall, letting her breathe, making her permanent. She's too good to disappear.

He tilts the plate until the cold fish slides into the bin. The room is too small for him and he's anxious for fresh air.

When he goes out the front door, his father says nothing. The lights on his bike are dim, but he pushes off anyway, leaving the stuffiness behind. He has the suburbs to escape to, and there is a woman who's waiting for him to find her.

He rides on the bike path beside the railway line, then weaves through the streets of Mount Claremont until he sees hers. His bike already knows the way. He has no plan, no clever monologue to deliver. He doesn't feel that words will be necessary anyway. Just to be here will be enough. To say hi. To approach her as an adult.

He'd expected to see the red Ducati in the driveway but it's not there. The house is unlit and quiet. He'd braced himself for knocking on her pale blue door, but now he doesn't bother because he realises the empty house will once again answer with silence.

Is she never home? He wonders where she is now. Out at a pub? Covering a story or working late at the office? With a boyfriend? No, he's seen her personal photos, and he's sure there's not a man. Besides, there's something about her eyes that suggests she doesn't need anyone.

He retreats to the bus shelter across the road from her townhouse. He leans his bike against the perspex ad for Pepsi and stands in the dark cover of night. The wind is cool against his skin. He wishes he'd worn a jacket over his T-shirt. He shivers. This is exactly where he wants to be.

A bus slows down but he waves it on. He sits on the bench and brings his long legs up to his chest, resting his chin on his knees.

A black cat crosses his path — is that supposed to be good luck or bad, he wonders before it leaps up to the seat and curls beside him. The cat purrs and he feels the vibrations. He pats it instinctively with his right hand, and its head pushes against his thigh. Its collar reads ‘Leroy', and when Dustin speaks its name, it purrs more deeply.

The night is blue-black, with only a low murmur of cars from the distant highway. This street pacifies everything in it. This is what life must be like for Terri Pavish, he thinks: blue-black calmness, composure, ease of breath. Answering to no-one.

A light flickers once in her house, then suddenly she's on the balcony. She's home! The light outlines her silhouette and Dustin's eyes adjust. She's wearing men's flannelette pyjamas and holding a can opener.

The black cat bolts to the front door and disappears through the cat flap. Within seconds, Leroy is on the balcony, pressing himself against Terri's flannelette legs. She empties the contents of the can into a bowl and stands up again, looking down at the street. She looks toward him and he feels it right in his chest. Can she actually see him in the darkness? And if she can, does she recognise him? Can she feel it too?

She moves back inside, switching on lights as she glides through rooms. She walks down the stairs and the light there comes on. A narrow slit in a curtain is wide enough to see pieces of her — her shoulder while she waits for the kettle to boil; her right hand as she opens the fridge; then her left knee hooked over the armrest of the lounge. Leroy pads across the room, before settling by the window to stare out at Dustin through the gap in the curtain.

A phone rings and Terri answers it. She kills the downstairs light and moves back upstairs, turning off lights as she goes.

In the second before she turns out the bedroom light, he
sees her smiling with the phone to her ear. He wishes he could capture that moment, lock it into a camera, keep it for later. But the room turns to black and the house is quiet again. The street resettles in the darkness.

Leroy shimmies through the cat flap and saunters across the road, springing onto the bench softly. This time he stretches out on Dustin's lap and purrs.

Love. Is this what it feels like, Dustin thinks. There's no other way to explain it. Is it this? To be drawn to a bench in the night-time and be content with a nearness to someone? Perhaps. There's been nothing in his life to compare it to. It doesn't feel strange or false at all — to sit here feels like the most natural thing in the world.

Dustin visualises Terri Pavish lying in bed. She would be on her back, eyes open, looking up at the dark contours of the ceiling fan. Soon she'll be dreaming of a guy she has yet to know, and will wake up tomorrow with the gut feeling that her life is meaningful. That she's too important to forget. Dustin cycles home slowly and the blue-black night is tranquil.

She's the first thing he thinks of when he wakes at seven. He rolls to his side and she's there, on his corkboard.

He thinks of her in the shower.

As he sits at the kitchen table to eat Weet-Bix, she's knocking about in his brain. He feels calmer today; the thought of Terri Pavish is a narcotic.

She sticks with him during the ride to school, unlodged by wind and speed.

She's in his mind in art, as he takes notes on exposure, focus and lighting. He thinks of how best to compose the photos — some with the Ducati, others with Leroy at home.

She's still with him in maths, but Mr Carey's having a shit day and he takes it out on the class. In particular he
takes it out on Dustin, who's been drawing in the back of his notebook. Carey tears out the page and critiques the sketch in front of everyone.

‘So this is what Da Vinci has achieved this lesson! Something else on your mind besides trig, eh? Well, how can I compete with legs like that?'

‘Fuck off, wanker.' There's nothing mumbled or slurred about it. Dustin picks up his bag and leaves the classroom before Carey can throw him out.

Walking down the corridor of E Block, his pulse remains steady. Carey's not worth getting upset about. Not anymore. There's more to life than taking shit from dickhead teachers. Out in the real world there's freedom. There's a world of adults and soft sea-breeze nights. And there's Terri Pavish.

He cuts through the quadrangle, littered with chip wrappers and soft drink cans. The background noise of classrooms — teenage chatter and stupid conversations — embarrasses him. He's better than all this and there's nothing here he's got left to learn. As he crosses to the bike shed, he promises himself that today's going to be his last at this school. He just wants to hit the road hard, to sweat out Carey through his pores and let his bike lead him to somewhere that matters. Somewhere real.