Smoke in the Room (11 page)

Graeme began cleaning his shaver with a small brush. ‘I didn't know he was married.'

‘No, no. She died. It's why he's . . . well, the way he is.' Katie rubbed oil into her scalp. It stung a bit where she'd cut herself. ‘God, his wife's dead and I shave my head. Real helpful, Katie. Jesus.'

‘You know in many cultures it's common for people to change their appearance when someone dies. Women wear black. Men grow their beards. Some cut their hair. It's a way to show that things have changed.'

‘I like that idea. It makes sense. But it doesn't apply.' Katie wiped her oily hands on the front of her T-shirt. ‘Adam's the one in mourning and this was just a whim. I do stuff like this all the time. It doesn't ever mean anything. I'm not that deep, if you want to know the truth.'

‘Well,' Graeme said. ‘I better get back to bed. I need to leave for work in a couple of hours.'

‘We haven't had a chance to get to know each other properly, have we? You're a lawyer, right? Must be so interesting.'

‘No, actually. It's very dull.'

‘I bet it isn't. Most people's jobs are fascinating if you really get into the detail of it. Gran works in a tollbooth, and you wouldn't believe the stuff she sees. The things people do and wear in the privacy of their cars not thinking some old lady in a tollbooth is going to be able to
look right down and see! And then tell everyone and his dog, of course. I reckon a lawyer is like a tollbooth attendant, because people do all this weird embarrassing stuff not thinking anyone will ever know, but then suddenly something happens and there's a lawyer looking right inside of what they thought was a private place. Man, you must have some stories. Tomorrow when you get home you can tell me some. Don't worry – I'll keep it confidential. Maybe I'll make dinner or something.' She touched her head. ‘To thank you.'

He smiled. ‘Goodnight, Katie.'

‘Goodnight.' She kissed his cheek. He flinched as though stung. ‘Oh,' she said. ‘Sorry, I just . . .'

He smiled again, but it was a funny kind of smile. It reminded her of the smile her mother gave when she was telling her she'd be living with her grandmother
for just a little while, until we're better settled
.

‘Sorry,' she said again, but he was gone.

Katie sat in front of the muted TV and smoked. There were infomercials on all three commercial channels and soccer on SBS. She didn't try the ABC because all it ever showed was news and documentaries about Hitler or brain cancer. She settled on a skincare infomercial because the presenter on the soft rock one looked like he was about to rip open the last three buttons of his shirt and growl (who wants to see that at three in the morning?) and the presenter on the Pilates one looked like a newborn foal. Every time she bent backwards Katie felt her bones snap.

She liked the presenter in the skincare infomercial. She had bouncy auburn hair and large white teeth and her
cheeks were rosy. She was talking to a bunch of teenagers, who were nodding seriously, then smiling, then nodding again. If she had turned the sound up she knew she would hear about cleanser and toner, so she left it muted and imagined the rosy-cheeked girl was giving the teenagers advice about life.
Be brave
, she was saying,
be wild
.
Pretend you're a bear or a Tasmanian devil. Roll in the mud and dig up food with your hands. Climb trees and throw rocks and fight anyone who tries to take what's yours. Forage and scavenge and scream
. The girls nod and smile. One leans forward and asks a question. The presenter touches her face and replies,
My rosy cheeks? A result of drinking the blood of cosmetic peddlers. How do I keep my teeth so strong and white? I grind the bones of bullies and wowsers and then polish with vodka
.

Katie remembered that another girl used to do these. Or maybe it was a different skincare range? Anyway, it was an American singer with long blonde hair and a Southern accent and she used to say how her skin was real bad until she tried this product and now look how
purty
she was. And she was, Katie thought, even after she shaved off all her hair. She'd been on the cover of all the magazines and they wrote like it was some big tragedy but Katie had thought
yes
. Like the girl was finally saying fuck you to the people who needed her to be pretty so she could sell their anti-acne crap.

She had never considered that the singer may have shaved her head because she was sick like the magazines said. It had seemed such a strong and powerful thing to do. But Graeme had made her wonder about shaved heads and the reasons behind them. She ran her hand over her own baldness. She had done things before, thinking it was
for one reason and then found out later it was for another altogether. But she felt happy without hair. She wished the bald singer was talking to those teenagers instead of the rosy-cheeked girl. She was sure the bald singer would say the things Katie imagined and she would mean them.

Adam dreamt he was sitting on Eugenie's back, pressing her face into a puddle of mud. They were in the street outside their old apartment building and the neighbour's kids were peeking through the curtains, giggling. Eugenie did not struggle and Adam held her there for a long time. When he stood up she stayed where she was and he felt impatient and frustrated. He kicked her in the ribs and walked away.

He ran the dream over in his mind, trying to recapture the feeling of Eugenie's head under his hands, the look of her freckled shoulder blades flaring like wings. He was disappointed to not have dreamt of her face or voice and wondered when he'd see her eyes or hear her laugh again.

It was several moments before he noticed the shiny skull on the pillow beside him. ‘Katie, what did you do?' She rolled over, smiled, snuggled into his chest. ‘You cut yourself.' He fingered the small scabs: one near her left ear, several above the wrinkle where her skull fused with her neck. ‘When did this happen?'

‘While you were asleep.'

‘You never sleep. Are you a vampire, or what?'

‘I was sleeping just now,' she said. ‘What do you think?'

‘I think you're mad,' he said, and kissed her on the forehead so she wouldn't know how ugly he found her. She sighed and a sickly familiar sense of protectiveness surged through him. It was this feeling that had made the years of casual sex before Eugenie so unpleasant. He'd see a former one-night stand at a club or on the street and he'd remember unevenly sized breasts or a pimply back and he'd know that other people had seen those flaws and judged them. He felt sure only he could see the beauty in those bodies. He felt sure he had let his lovers down by allowing them to expose themselves to the scorn and derision of others. He'd tried to explain this to his mom once and she had called him egomaniacal. He still didn't know if that was true or whether he had just explained himself badly.

He had sworn again last night that he would end this, but now pity kept him lying still as Katie kissed and rubbed him. She worked until he was hard and then climbed on top, all without him moving or making a sound. It was as though he was her job. With his eyes closed and his hands behind his head he tried to imagine the light, jerky girl on top of him was his dead wife. His stomach seized up with panic.

‘Hey, come down here.' He eased her onto her side and entered her from behind. He held on to her bony hips and kept his eyes on the back of her head. ‘Katie, Katie, Katie,' he said. He concentrated on the flat sound of her moans, reached around to grasp her small, high breasts, said her name over and over.

It was no good.

He rolled over on top, pulled her up to her knees and pushed the top half of her body into the mattress. He closed his eyes, imagined the feeling of his hips slapping Eugenie's arse, sensing the movement of her breasts, her nipples chafing against the bed sheets. He gripped the bed board with both hands, pushing deep inside, his eyes still closed so he could see the way her soft blonde hair was tangled about her face.

Katie moaned and said his name.

‘Sshh,' he said, and pushed his fingers into her mouth. She sucked on them and he thought about the first time Eugenie let him kiss her properly, the way her mouth had frozen when he slipped his tongue between her lips and then she all at once opened up and kissed him back and how fast her tongue moved and the way she moved her hips into him when they kissed and the colour in her cheeks and chest when she was excited and how good it was to feel her climax while his tongue and fingers were up inside her.

When he came, Katie bit down on his fingers. Before he'd even pulled his hand all the way free she said, ‘I love you so fucking much.'

The tenant was in the kitchen, gazing out the window, sipping from a novelty Christmas mug. He turned and smiled when the pair entered. ‘Ah, the swan is up early today.'

‘I'm a swan now?' Katie jabbed Graeme in the arm. ‘Last night I was a plucked chicken.'

Adam felt disoriented, unsure as to why he was standing in his underwear in a sea-green kitchen in Sydney
watching a middle-aged man and a bald-headed girl tease each other. He fought the urge to back out of the room, to leave these strangers to their morning intimacies.

Graeme rinsed his mug and placed it on the draining tray. ‘I'm off,' he said.

‘Righto. What time can I expect you home?'

‘Er, six or thereabouts. Is there something . . . ?'

‘I'm cooking you dinner, remember?'

‘Right, yes.' Graeme glanced at Adam. ‘See you then.'

Adam waited until he heard the front door click closed. ‘What was
that
all about?'

‘What was what all about?' She spooned Nescafé into the freshly washed mug Graeme had left behind and took a second mug from the overhead cupboard.

‘All that chicken and swan stuff,' Adam said.

‘He helped me last night. With my head.'

‘He didn't do a very good job. You're cut all over.'

‘I cut myself. Don't blame him.' Katie handed him one of the mugs; he set it down on the table without looking at it.

‘I didn't think you knew him that well.' Adam walked back a few steps to escape the Nescafé steam. ‘Well enough to trust with a razor to your head, I mean. In the middle of the night and all.'

‘Are you jealous?'

‘Because he shaved your head? Ah, no.'

Katie danced over to him and wiggled her hips. ‘What then? You're grumpy!'

‘I'm not. I just don't think it's a good idea to let a strange old man cut you.'

‘Who should I let cut me, Adam?' He pushed her away. She stepped in front of him. ‘You? Because if that's what
you want I'm happy to oblige. Come on, cut me, Adam. I'll get the razor.'

‘You're insane.'

‘Yeah, no shit, Sherlock. Why do you keep saying that? It's like your only response. Be original!'

‘Fine. You're a crazy bitch.'

She swung out and caught him on the nose with her closed fist. Before he could recover and block her she reared up and head-butted his chest. He fell to the floor and she was on him, pounding his face with rigid little hands. ‘Yeah!' she hollered. ‘Crazy, that's me. I'm the crazy bitch. How crazy is this, huh? Insane, right? I'm fucking insane.'

He grabbed both her wrists and threw her off. She skidded on her back a few feet then leapt up and ran from the kitchen. Adam lay still, breathing hard. ‘Katie,' he said, but not loud. ‘Insane bitch,' he said, louder.

Rage throbbed through his body, hotter and more insistent than lust. He sat up and pounded the floor with both fists, then stood and kicked a chair, which slid harmlessly across the floor. He felt the muscles in his legs would break through the skin if he didn't kick and kick; kick something hard – a thick glass pane, a wooden plank, a skull. He stalked to his bedroom and threw on a shirt and a pair of sneakers. He could hear Katie sobbing through the wall. He kicked it hard.

Out on the street, he walked in the direction of the city. Anger propelled him past the bus stop and then past one, two, three pubs and a backpacker hostel. He could not stop or slow or even shout. He avoided people walking ahead by taking the far edge of the sidewalk, dropping down into the gutter now and again, moving towards the oncoming
traffic. Stepping back onto the sidewalk when a truck or bus got close.

At Railway Square the foot traffic thickened and he was forced to slow his pace. He heaved air into his lungs and a stitch pricked his right side. He doubled over, but kept walking. He noticed he was soaked through with sweat. When the stitch passed, he straightened and walked as fast as he could, glad that anyone who met his eye looked away quickly and got out of his way.

Adam walked through Chinatown and into the CBD, past the Town Hall and Queen Victoria Building, the sidewalk slanting ever slightly downhill, past office blocks and stores selling fluffy koalas and green and gold baseball caps, more offices and pubs and then the high-end stores and expensive hotels, on past Circular Quay and then into the Rocks and he remembered this from his former life, remembered walking this cobbled path late at night, walking up onto the grassy hill at its end, gazing out at the black water and the Opera House and then lying on the grass and looking up at the famous bridge and she was there with him, so proud of the damn city you'd have thought she built it herself.

He collapsed onto the grass and sucked air into his lungs. A light breeze kicked off the water and over his burning skin. As he watched the water, a Japanese bride in an enormous white puff of a dress floated past on board a candy pink barge. Just before she floated from view, a man in a tuxedo appeared behind her and covered her eyes with his hands.

Nothing has changed
. The thought hit him like a stroke. He'd chosen a course that took him far from all that he'd been raised to follow, and then life – or death, actually –
had spun him around and dumped him right back where he was before. It was as though the whole thing, from the first smile to the garden wedding to the hospice, was another of his extended vacations and now he was back to his real life, ready to drift on to whatever came next.