Slights (34 page)

  There was a poor cartoon of someone gambling. Most unlikely.

Dougie Page wouldn't leave me alone. "Be careful, Steve," he said, like he knew. Be careful of who you talk to. He said he understood my Dad, he said, "It's the ones who are guilty, but who figure they did it for a reason. That it was justified – they only killed those who deserved it, wife-killers, baby-killers. Those who would have escaped justice otherwise."

  Anyone who thinks they can justify murder is dishonest. It's a self-serving thing; you do it for yourself. Anything else is a lie.

  "You should go away, Steve," he said.

  "I did. It didn't work out."

  "Try again. Find a lover. Go with someone who loves you," he said, as if that was an easy thing to find.

Adrian acted like a man having an affair, and organised a weekend away for us in the mountains. I pretended we were married; he liked the idea we weren't.

  We lay in bed with candles burning and he told me how wonderful I was.

  "Do you take after your father or your mother?" he said.

  "My father," I said. It was true. A moment of realisation and acceptance that I was my father's daughter.

  "I wish I'd known him," Adrian said.

  "So do I. So do I," I said.

  At dinner all he could talk about was his wife. I drank a lot so I couldn't hear him. I fell asleep in a chair in our room. I woke up to find him watching me.

  "This isn't going to work, is it, Steve?"

  I looked hard at him for a sign of regret. None.

A journalist came sniffing around, looking for Peter's back story. They like him. They're all looking for his story. I told him about my job, and how I dealt with the patients, and that got me the sack, didn't it. Bastard printed it, and everybody saw it, and they sacked me.

Fuckem.

at thirty-four

When Samantha, my high-school friend, arrived at my doorstep, I wasn't happy to see her.

  "I've been thinking about how much fun we had when I lived here," she said. I could see her knapsack around the corner. "Thought I'd drop in, say hello."

  "I've just had the place fumigated. Won't be able to go in for another week. I was going to stay at the Hyatt, but maybe I could crash at your place instead," I said.

  She had no idea what she'd done wrong, why I wasn't all over her. I knew how little she thought of me.

  "Well, actually, I've left Murray again."

  "For good this time," I said, in her voice.

  "Well, I think so."

  "So, coming to the Hyatt then?"

  "Oh, it's not the money or anything, but I might drop in and see Peter. It's been ages."

  "Good idea," I said. Peter and Samantha flirted an awful lot for friends; Maria would hate it. Then I relented. "Actually, it should be okay, if we leave the windows open." And so I had a housemate again. I felt differently about her this time. Hers hadn't been the face near mine, either in the room or when they saved me again.

  "God, it's dark in here," she said, throwing open the curtains in the lounge room. "I didn't want to go home to Mum, she's all weepy still about bloody Perry."

  Samantha's brother was dead after lying on his bed getting fat for fifteen years, then he drank a bottle of scotch and killed himself. It was totally hushed up. Their mum put it about his heart had always been weak, and that he had lasted as long as he did through pure bravery.

  Then one night, after she'd been with me for three weeks, I was all set to watch TV, eat a hamburger, but she came home with a bottle of vodka. She wasn't paying any rent, because I couldn't ask my oldest friend to pay. She brought home booze, shit to eat, to make up for it.

  "What are we celebrating?" I said.

  "Just being friends, I suppose. Sticking together. Old piss-heads sticking together."

  The smell of vodka was like a fist to my stomach.

  "Come on, girl, let's get pissed," she said.

  I had been drinking too much lately. The smell of any booze frightened me; the fist was a reminder. Don't talk, don't say it all. I said it all to my friend, Bess, old pink tracksuit, and I scared her off. She was a good friend even though she was old. I could remember that night very clearly, although it was out of my control. Like those first moments, when I'm leaving my body, it's all so clear but I can do nothing.

  I'm not in control.

  "Let's go out," Samantha said. "Come on. We'll have fun, like last time."

  Last time we went out, this guy comes up and says, "What're you girls drinking?" and I made a joke no one got. Samantha ended up going home and fucking the guy and I was left to get a taxi on my own. They always know, too, if you've been dumped.

  She didn't meet anyone this time.

  She hitched her tight black dress up around her thighs to piss on the front lawn when we got home, too needy to wait until I regained my night vision and opened the door, and she did not tug it back down again.

  We drank Dad's whisky and the vodka and she says, "So are you going to tell me?"

  "What?"

  "You never told me. You can tell me. What happened with your Mum. What happened with the accident?'

  She looked at me like a lady. She was a friend of mine, o'mine, she took me out to celebrate and no one else. Now she stared down at me, she wanted to know.

  I lay, my shoulders propped against the couch. I had borrowed clothes of Samantha's to wear out, so there was a stranger's body attached to my head. Yellow sandals, with heels, torn brown pantyhose. My legs stretched out before me.

  Samantha stood over me. Her hands were on her hips. Her hair fell forward.

  I could see the crotch of her black pantyhose, and she had folds around her ankles. Her eye-liner was in drips down her cheeks.

  "Tell me. Tell me what happened." I don't know where her need came from Whether she needed to be better than me, after all these years. Or if she was looking for a reason to hate me.

  I told her anyway. Blah blah blah, out it came.

  I didn't cry, though. I never cry.

  "I wasn't drunk. But she was shitting me, really shitting me, and I couldn't bear to look at her. She was a pain in the arse. I was driving, fantasising I was thirty-five and Mum was dead, only just. Peter shared the house. People kept thinking we were married and we laughed at them. Mum gasped. Opened my eyes. Kid on road. Not a kid; coloured box off a truck. Swerve. Wall. Not my fault. What if it had been a kid? Mum would rather die than let a kid die. Mum screamed, screamed, going somewhere she didn't want to go. Going away. Take it back, I thought. I still had the smile on my face from pretending to laugh. Take me instead, I said. But all I got was a scar. Oh, God. Did Mum go to a dark room? Is that why she was screaming? Has she been there ever since? Please let her be safe. She must have known what was going to happen. It must be what she wanted."

  We drank vodka. More vodka. I can't remember how much.

  Now I'm writing I'm finished writing the vodka fuckin Samantha on vodka mad she kills me I should kill her she said what she said fuckin cunt she's a fucken cunt.

In the morning, my head was full of pin balls which rolled and crashed each time I moved.

  Samantha was in the shower. I stood at the door and said, "I thought vodka didn't give you a headache." No response. I opened the door enough to put my lips through, said it again.

  Samantha appeared, towel wrapped loosely, wet, shower still on behind her. "You want the shower? It's yours." She walked, wet feet slapping like a seal's, to her room.

  "No, I don't. I just wanted to say about MY HANGOVER." I shouted the last words because she slammed the door in my face. Peter loved doing that, too, when he lived here. I can trace cracks across the door with my finger.

  The shout hurt my throat.

"Did we sing last night? My throat is killing me."

  "You were talking in your sleep," she said through the door.

  "Did I say anything interesting?"

  She didn't answer. She was putting things together
smash crash
. A wash of cold came over me.

  "What're you doing?"

  "Nothing. Go put the kettle on."

  "Are you cleaning up?"

  "Make some coffee, Stevie."

  I did as I was told, because my head hurt, my throat was sore, I was scared she was going to leave me.

  She came down with a fat garbage bag.

  "Where's my keys?" she said. They were under the couch. She took off one key, laid it beside her coffee cup.

  "I made you coffee," I said.

  "I don't want it. I'm moving out," and she swept the fat bag over her shoulder and disappeared like magic.

  Her car didn't start; it never did.

  I watched her through the front window, pulled a chair up, sat and watched the show, drinking my coffee.

  First, she threw her stuff in the back, banged her knee on the door, slamming it.

  Then she got in, started it, already looking behind to see who was coming, as if she was going to be taking right off. She didn't. The car farted like a bottle of flat lemonade being opened, and she lay her head on the steering wheel. She got the horn, lifted her head. She cried. I could tell it from my front row seat. She got out, looked at the house. I waved. She stared. Lit a cigarette, staring. I got out of my chair, thinking, I'll go down there and we'll laugh about it.

  I opened the front door. "Hey, good one," I said, and she threw her cigarette down, didn't stamp on it, ran next door to the Oakes'. They hate me because my tree overhangs and drops leaves. She banged on the door. They weren't home. I stood on the front step, now. She ran across the road to the Meyerfeldts'. They hate me because their dog eats my rubbish.

  "You can call from here, Samantha," I called from the front door. "Or you can stay till tomorrow and I'll see if I can fix it again." Her body was ready for a star jump. I started to walk down the path; she ran to Jody Morris'. We were friends for a while but I ignore her, now.

  "Don't go there, Samantha. She's a bitch."

  She banged on the front door. It opened. She pushed in, slammed the door. A moment passed, then the curtains parted, and I became the show.

  "Yeah, well, FUCK YOU TOO," I said. My throat killed. I went inside. Didn't watch the rest of the show.

  Samantha ran straight to Peter to tell all. Her desire from the start. It turned out they worked very well together, and Samantha was so shit-hot with ideas he hired her to work in Public Affairs for him. She called herself PR, but it's like someone who takes ads over the phone for the classifieds saying they work in advertising. Maria was hurt. She liked to think
she
was the ideas gal. It was unpleasant for her to realise that she couldn't fulfil all of his needs. I didn't think Samantha would be very good for Peter's career; she had such a past. All her advice would be tempered with the cynicism of over-experience.

  I pulled out the diary I'd found a hundred years before, fourteen years before, kept safe all this time. She hadn't gotten any further than writing the date up to March 12, and "Today I" on January 1st. And she'd written in the inside front cover,
Diary Of The Artist Before She Got Famous By Saman
tha Cord
. There was no year marked. The temptation was too, too much. She wasn't famous; she would never be famous. I would be more famous than her, if anyone ever dug up the back yard.

  I found that writing in another hand was a genuine challenge. It made me feel like a different person. It made me feel like I could do anything, pretending to be Samantha as I wrote in her diary.

  I picked up Samantha's diary and began to write.

Diary Of The Artist Before She Got

Famous By Samantha Cord

  Today I decided to record my thoughts, because I cannot express them all to those around. Although my dear friend Steve is a trustworthy confidante and a worthy friend, she would not like to hear what I have to say. So it falls upon you, dear diary, to be my ears in my time of conflict.

  It is odd. I feel I need to speak formally to this formal, blank page, as if to speak in any other way would be to denigrate the activity. I speak so naturally in my day to day, so comfortably, and yet.

  He likes my voice. Loves it, he says, but am I to believe that? I am not a complimentvirgin. Tonight, I cleaned out my bedside drawers before I went out.

  Last night I ended up going to a party with old friends. I did not take my friend Steve because she finds their company dull. I must confess, their jokes are beginning to bore. Did not see him, but spoke to him on the phone this morning. His voice breaks my heart.

One more day until I see him.

  Work today. So much history in those two words. So much happiness. Work Today. He was there, he greeted me at the door. He had already put the coffee on. He told me his wife had scratched his face because he burnt the toast. I would cook his toast, butter it, eat it off his wonderful stomach.

  Rang Steve for lunch but she was busy. She's always off somewhere.

  His wife has her family night every Wednesday. Peter is excluded, because, as he tells me, as we laugh, his family is not good enough for hers. Moreover, he does not wish to go. He finds her family dull, insensitive and sleazy. He tells me he had to extricate Steve from the clutches of one of the MARRIED brothers. Truly disgusting. Peter has a surprising penis. For such a gentle man. It is all the more galling that he is called upon to be a considerate husband.

  Last night was wonderful. I can't tell Steve. I know how she feels about her brother, and about me as well. I'm like a sister. So she thinks Pete's like my brother. He's not. He was for a while, he's not now. Maybe she could see how perfect we are for each other. He is the only one who ever came close to understanding me. He is very proud of his sexuality, though I sense he is kinda terrified, as well. Is there some secret in his past, some pain he can't share with me?

  Went out, drank too much. I'm afraid I find it difficult to keep a civil tongue sometimes. I'm not sure whom I offended last night. Must ask Steve.

  I hate Saturdays because he's with his family, playing Daddy, playing Hubby, neither which sit well with him. I do my chores grudgingly.

  Slept till 1pm, disgusted with myself for wasting the day.

Jan 12. Monday.
 

  Work today.

  I wish I were sharing with Steve again. We were such good housemates, and I would see Peter whenever he visited her. I could even go on a visit with her to his place, see the evil Maria. See what his kids are like. They love Steve, so they can't be too bad.

  Glorious Wednesday. It has a whole new meaning now. It means love, satisfaction, music. Sometimes I try to remember when I first looked at Peter and loved him.

  Peter does this wonderful thing where he acts out Maria's family dinners. He turned into Adrian, unzipped his jeans, pulled out his penis, said, "Ya want it? Ya want it?" and Maria's Dad, weak, saying, "Oh, yes, hello all, hello all, who wants some money?" And he did Maria, did a Gestapo march around the room. Hilarious. He confessed something rather sweet to me. He said that when they shared a home, he and Steve played a game. She tried to grab glimpses of his cock, he tried to reveal himself in subtle ways. We have begun playing the same game, and for a childish game I must admit it feels rather adult.