Smoke in the Room (18 page)

He asked his fellow dishpig Arj to turn the radio to a news station, and told Arj's uncle that he was willing to work any extra shifts that were available. He asked the men to explain to him again the rules of cricket and half-listened to them while he tried to remember the sound of Eugenie's laugh. He asked intentionally stupid questions about innings and underarm bowling, dhal recipes and spice suppliers. He wondered how it was possible to miss a scattering of fragments so much.

He walked home from work along glistening streets. The air was cool and damp. Twigs were scattered over the clean sidewalk. It had rained at last and he had missed it.

When he reached the humid, smoky flat, Katie was waiting for him. ‘You must need a drink,' she said, handing him a beer.

‘What I need is a shower.' He sat down in his stinking kitchen clothes and drank the beer while Katie rubbed the back of his neck.

‘Gran came around before. I told her where you were and she got all suspicious. Doesn't know why you'd wash dishes when you're already working in a shoe shop. Said you're probably out dealing drugs or picking up girls.'

Adam held up his wrinkled hands. ‘I wish.'

‘Ha, I know. She came over because my mum broke her leg and needs help with the housework and cooking for the husband and kid.'

‘So you'll be spending some time with your mom. That's great.'

‘God, no. I'd be in a locked ward by the end of the week.' Katie chopped her hands across his shoulders. ‘Gran's going; flying up to Rockie in the morning. But like, five minutes after she left I went down to check on Phyl. I was standing at the window over her sink rinsing tea cups and I see Gran and bloody Graeme having a big D and M out by the mailboxes.'

‘D and M?'

‘Deep and meaningful. You know, huddled together nodding and patting arms and shit.' Katie stopped chopping his shoulders, draped herself over them instead. ‘The rain started and Phyl hollered that all her windows were open so I had to bolt around closing them and when I get back, I see Graeme jogging up the walkway to the foyer, dripping wet. So I told Phyl I had to go and I charged out and caught the bugger just as he was getting into the lift.'

Adam yawned. ‘And?'

Katie slapped his arm. ‘
And
I asked him what the story was and at first he was all “Story? What story?” you know, but I just asked him straight out then – because I know Gran, right – I just asked straight out if she'd told him to keep tabs on me while she's away and he couldn't deny it.
He said he'd agreed just to set her mind at rest, but that I shouldn't worry because he had no intention of keeping more of an eye on me than I wanted him to.'

Adam craned his head to look at her. ‘What does that mean? Why would you want his eyes on you at all?'

‘He didn't mean it like
that
,' Katie said. ‘He just meant he's on my side.'

After his second night of work at the Indian restaurant, Adam came home and found Katie and Graeme on the sofa together, her legs on his lap, wine glasses in their hands.

‘Good night, babe?' Katie asked.

‘Fine. How was yours?'

‘Quiet.'

‘How about you, Graeme? Good night? Cosy?'

‘Mmm, past my bedtime, though.' Graeme lifted Katie's legs, nodded at Adam and scurried from the room.

A couple of nights later, they were there again. This time, Katie was lying down with her feet on Graeme's thighs. They both looked up at Adam, and then, when Katie began to speak, Graeme's eyes returned to her face.

‘Adam, did you know Graeme's a war hero? You should hear the stories.'

‘Really? What war? Because I remember you saying you weren't in Vietnam.'

‘Right,' Graeme said, without looking up. ‘I've never fought in a war. I was only talking about my aid work.'

‘Only! You should hear the stuff he's done. It's not just like Angelina Jolie or Bono or someone popping in to say
hi, Graeme lived in these amazing, dangerous, scary places for months and years and –'

‘Sounds fascinating,' Adam said.

‘Oh, it is. Graeme, tell him about the little boy in Somalia!'

Adam leant against the front door, arms folded.

‘Another time. It's late.' Graeme squeezed Katie's foot, a signal, evidently, to allow his escape.

Adam didn't think Katie and Graeme were sleeping together and wouldn't have cared if they had been. He would have been relieved to have less of Katie's attention. She told him constantly that she loved him and then rushed to add that she knew he didn't love her and that was fine and she was just happy he let her love him. She was still as aggressively sexual as she had been the night he met her. If he was too tired or drunk she'd go ahead and get herself off using whatever bit of his body she could take hold of. When he was up for it she was embarrassingly generous. If not for her lack of skill and grace he would have thought she had been trained as an elite callgirl so tireless and cheerful was her dedication to his orgasm. Regardless of his intentions at the beginning of the night, he always ended up saturated with her.

He wasn't jealous, but his discomfort grew. On a Saturday at the end of his second work week, he woke early to an empty bed – not an unusual event given how little Katie slept. He went to the bathroom and then to the kitchen for a drink of water. It wasn't until he was climbing back into bed that he realised he had walked the length of the apartment without seeing her.

He checked the apartment again, then went to the living room window, last night's korma bubbling in his gut. There was nothing to see – a sidewalk under a grey dawn sky. He remembered Graeme and jogged down the hall, threw the man's door open and flicked on the light. Katie's stubbled head appeared from behind the bulk of her bedmate whose pin-prick eyes blinked fast.

‘You're awake,' Katie said.

‘Obviously. What's going on?'

‘Nothing, babe. Just chatting.'

‘Hello,' Graeme said, sitting up. He was wearing a blue striped pyjama shirt like someone out of a child's story book.

Adam pictured the striped pants scrunched at the bottom of the bed. ‘I'm not like
judging
or anything,' he said. ‘You can do whatever you like, really, I don't care. But I'd just like to be, you know,
in the loop
. So if it's not too much trouble could you tell me what the fuck you two are doing?'

‘Chatting, like I said.' Katie slithered from the bed and came to his side. She was wearing sweatpants and one of Adam's T-shirts. ‘Come on, let's get you back to bed.'

Adam looked at Graeme who was covering his mouth with his hands. ‘Is something funny?'

Graeme shook his head.

‘Babe, you're naked,' Katie said softly.

‘You're pissed off at me,' Katie said, closing Adam's door a few minutes later.

Adam yanked the sheet over his groin. ‘No. Katie, I couldn't find you. Then I found you in there and I don't know what's going on.'

‘Nothing's going on.' Katie lay beside him and closed her eyes. ‘It's nice to have someone to talk to.'

‘What's wrong with talking to me?'

‘Nothing. Just . . .' She squeezed his arm and sighed.

‘Yeah? Just?'

‘When I'm with you I feel like nothing will ever be wrong again.' Her eyes fluttered open. ‘But there are things I can't say to you.'

‘What kind of things?'

‘The kind of things that would make you pity me. Like you'd want to follow up by saying,
Oh, honey-pie, you can still live a satisfying and fruitful life
.' Her accent was obnoxiously American. ‘You wouldn't get it and I don't want you to. I just want us to have fun together. You
need
fun, Adam, for real.' Her skin had a yellow tint, except under her eyes where it was dark amber. The three burn scars were, in mocking contrast, a glowing, healthy pink.

‘You look so tired. Do you think you can sleep now?'

‘I'll sleep when I'm dead,' she said and, just like that, she was up and moving towards the door. ‘I'm going to have a shower. Get dressed. I want to take you somewhere different.'

While she was in the bathroom, Adam put on some clothes and went to Graeme's room. He was sitting up in bed, his briefcase open across his knees. Adam stood in the doorway so he could hear when the shower stopped running.

‘Look,' he said. ‘I'm sorry if I went off before. It's just kind of weird.'

‘Is it?'

‘Well, yeah, she's much younger than you for a start.'

‘She's quite a bit younger than you, too.'

‘Not young enough to be my daughter.'

‘Fair enough,' Graeme said. ‘But I'm not sleeping with her and I don't want to, either, in case you were wondering. I don't see the problem.'

‘That's it, sort of. If you
were
sleeping with her it would be creepy, right, but understandable. But as it is . . . I mean, I think you're a nice guy and you seem smart, well-travelled. And she's . . .'

‘What?'

Adam didn't know how to say it without sounding nasty. Katie talked all the way through the evening news, because – Adam suspected – she didn't understand most of what was said. She read
Famous
magazine but not the newspaper. She hardly showered and seemed to think that resting your clothes on the floor for a couple of days was as good as washing them. She was comfortable climbing into bins and eating whatever decaying crap she pulled out even though she had never heard of freeganism or the Wasteless Society Movement.

‘She's young,' he said finally.

‘Yeah,' Graeme said. ‘We covered that already.'

Adam crossed his arms. ‘I don't understand what's in it for you.'

Graeme closed his briefcase. ‘In what?'

‘This . . . this . . . whatever it is with her. What are you getting out of it?'

‘Out of the friendship? Is that the word you're looking for?' He put his briefcase on the floor, swinging his legs out after it. ‘If you tried talking to her instead of just, well, doing what it is that you do, then you'd find the answer to your question.'

‘I've talked to her plenty. That's my point. She's not exactly the world's most erudite –'

‘Erudite!' Graeme stood up and waved his hand at Adam. ‘Listen, mate, if you've spent time talking to her and still don't get why someone would want her as a friend, then she isn't the one with the problem.'

The shower had stopped running. The sound of Katie's Courtney Love impersonation echoed down the hallway. Adam turned and walked out, closing the door behind him.

The bus was crammed with teenagers in beach gear and tourists with burnt noses and clumsily-folded maps. Adam and Katie stood near the back, swaying into each other with every turn. There was not enough air and too much sound. It was not even 9 am and already Adam was tired of the day.

‘Our stop,' Katie said at last, jostling him towards the door and out into the fresher hot air of the street.

Adam scanned the shopfronts: greengrocer, sushi, juice bar. ‘I need coffee.'

‘Not here. Come on.' Katie led him down the street to a schoolyard dotted with market stalls. They weaved through clusters of bony girls in face-swamping sunglasses and squeezed past prams so large that the hipsters pushing them could easily have snuggled up beside their babies for a nap.

‘Paddington Markets,' Katie said. ‘La-di-da as hell, but heaps of free food if you don't mind mixing and matching.'

Within ten minutes they'd assembled breakfast: shots of thick black coffee, a dish of Greek yoghurt, a handful of macadamias and another of raisins, a slice of Turkish bread, a chunk of cheese and a morsel of Moroccan-spiced lamb. After they'd eaten, Adam bought beers with his illegally earned dollars and they drank them sitting on a park bench, watching the weird and beautiful parade down Oxford Street.

‘Okay, so that woman there – the one with the orange skin – she was on this reality show,
Bondi to Bourke
, and all these la-la posh chicks had to survive in the bush and she was this total – Oh, wait, that bloke in the black hat – you recognise him? From that movie, you know? The one with Nicole Kidman. And that girl with the backless dress is the girlfriend of the singer from Tradge, this awful emo band but the singer is gorgeous and so all the fans hate her which is so unfair, because I think she must be a really, really kind and patient person to be with someone so angsty.'

Through the crowd of fake-tans and giant sunglasses Adam spotted an elderly man with no legs propped up in a trolley. Not just no legs, no body from the waist down. He was a head and torso with arms, but he looked happy talking with the woman pushing him along. As the trolley passed, Adam saw the Veterans' Association sticker on the back of it. A war injury, then, which meant the man might have lived like that for years. Adam thought that when it happened, the man would have been younger than he was now. He would have been fit and strong, tough as nails. But then he would have woken up one day in some overcrowded, understaffed field hospital, the sounds of screams in his ears, and he would have taken a breath of fetid air and praised God he was still alive. They would
have told him he was only half a man, and he would have wished they had let him die. He would have thought first of his farm back home, how it would have to be sold, then wondered how a man could live with the shame of being taken care of every minute. He would have thought of his sweetheart, waiting for him to return and marry her. She wouldn't want him now, and he would always regret that he did not push harder for her to let him have his way with her before he left.

Katie chatted on beside him as the afternoon sweltered by. He had never seen her in such direct, startling light; her spiky hair was fairer than he'd thought, more milk chocolate than black, and the skin covering her skull was almost translucent. A royal blue vein pulsed delicately over her left ear. Her freshly shaved legs were speckled pink and her chest and neck were flushed from the heat and beer. He felt his own skin burning and thought about moving to a shadier spot, but couldn't summon the will to speak, let alone move.