Taming the Beast (12 page)

‘Nothing to forgive,’ Jamie said, with bitter acid bubbling in his throat.

Relief washed over her face. Or it could have been exhaustion. ‘I love you, you know that?’

‘Sure.’
And Mike?
He couldn’t make himself say it. Her arms were around him, her head on his shoulder. He had her spine under his palm. How could he ask her if… ugh, he didn’t even want to think about it. But he knew he would think about nothing else unless he knew for sure.

‘Sarah? Um, I saw Mike this morning and he said–’

‘Mike. Oh dear.’ She held Jamie tighter. ‘He’ll be here soon.’

‘Sarah, no, please tell me you haven’t…’

‘Not yet.’

‘But you’re–’

Sarah broke out of the embrace. ‘Jamie,
don’t
.’

She was too much. Just too fucking much. He started to cry, which he could tell pissed her off, but… God, she was too much. Fuck.

‘Go home, Jamie.’

‘Sarah, how can you–’

‘Go home.’

The last few months of the year were always busy for Sarah. There were final papers to hand in, exams to prepare and sit for, and as many extra hours at the steakhouse as she could handle. Her only relaxation was having sex with Mike, who turned up at her house every couple of nights whether she asked him to or not. She didn’t complain; he suited her. She didn’t have the time or energy to pick up men; Mike got into it, got her off, and got gone. The perfect man for the moment.

Jamie, on the other hand, seemed determined to punish her for the huge mistake of fucking him. He spoke to her only if she called him, and even then he was cold and distant. When they saw each other in the company of others he was his old friendly self, but the minute they were alone together he found somewhere else to be. If she let herself think about it, she felt unbearably sad at the damage she had done to Jamie and at the damage he seemed determined to inflict upon the friendship. Fortunately, she had little time to think these days, and so the pain, although gut wrenching, was infrequent and fleeting.

On Christmas Eve she went to the Leagues Club after work to find some young stallion to ride, but then she got talking to a bouncer named Bob who revealed that he volunteered to work right through the Christmas period because it was better than being alone. Sarah was flattened with empathy and self-disgust. She spent all night hanging in the doorway talking to him, ignoring the disfiguring acne that covered his face and thick neck. When he knocked off work at three o’clock on Christmas morning, Sarah gave him a blowjob in the front seat of his car and he cried.

The restaurant was closed until the New Year, there was a month and a half until uni started again, and everybody she knew spent the week between Christmas and New Year’s with their families. She would have gone out clubbing but she was broke, and also, now that she had slowed down enough to notice it, remarkably tired. So she slept twelve, thirteen, fourteen hours a day, and missed Jamie, and wondered if she would ever get out of Sydney, and reread all of her books, which didn’t take that long because she only owned the twenty-three she had had when she moved out of home.

And reading this way – with no deadline, no agenda – she remembered why she loved literature so much. It was like fucking a new man and knowing that he had made other women come, but that when she came it would be an unshareable, untranslatable pleasure. She opened herself up to her books, and the words got inside her and fucked her senseless.

When she read how Emma Bovary believed ‘she was entering into something marvellous where all would be passion, ecstasy, delirium…’ Sarah remembered her own hopes of escaping her existence through sexual passion, and in her mind she saw Mr Carr throwing her across that dingy hotel room. She felt as though a layer of skin had been ripped from her body, and so pulled off her pyjama pants and fucked the corner of the hardcover book until she felt better.

For light relief she read Huckleberry Finn but the image of the pubescent white boy and the rugged black slave, naked and drifting on their raft, had her on all fours, rubbing her book-battered clitoris with her palm. Then Donne’s
Songs and Sonnets
was so unbearably erotic she had to put it aside before she did herself real damage. Next, she chose
Jane Eyre
and got through comfortably until the last few pages, which made her squirm. If there was anything in the history of literature more erotic than the moment when Jane kisses Rochester’s blinded eyes, she had yet to come across it.

Then while reading the scene in
Richard III
where Richard seduces the newly widowed Anne, Sarah became so frenzied she fell of the sofa, overturning the ashtray and hitting her head, hard, on the floorboards. As she sat amongst the scattered ash, rubbing her forehead, she wondered whether Jamie was right. Maybe her interest in sex was abnormal, her hunger excessive. Maybe falling off the furniture while reading Shakespeare was perverse. She read the passage over:

Your beauty was the cause of that effect–

Your beauty did haunt me in my sleep

To undertake the death of all the world

So I might live one hour in your sweet bosom
.

No, her reaction was entirely appropriate. Anyone who read that scene and was not aroused must be dead from the waist down. Still, she wished Jamie was around to contradict her. She wished he was around.

New Year’s Eve also happened to be Sarah’s twenty-second birthday and the occasion of a party at Mike and Jess’ new place. Sarah would have skipped the party altogether and spent the night in the city with the rest of Sydney’s drunk and horny singles, but Jamie would be at the party and so she had to go. She would get him someplace he couldn’t get away from her, and she would make him be her friend again.

But before she could think of a way to separate Jamie from the swollen thing at his side, Mike whisked Sarah upstairs and into the spare room. He had spent the last week with his family and was, he said, ‘about to pop.’ Sarah was going to tell him that this was not her problem, but then he pushed her back on to the bed and tore her underpants right through the crotch, and she was about ready to pop herself.

‘Guess what happened at Jess’ parents’ place on Christmas Day?’ Mike said after they were done.

Sarah was brushing her hair. She looked at him in the mirror and smiled. ‘Mmm?’

‘I met the lovely Jocelyn Clark.’ Mike came up behind her and kissed her neck. Sarah stared straight ahead. ‘Had a chat with her over lunch.’

Sarah kept her face blank. She wondered how long it would take her to get the money together to disappear. Probably not long if she put her mind to it. She could go to London or France or New Zealand. Anywhere would do, as long as no one knew her.

‘How come you don’t see your mum anymore?’

She smiled at his reflection. ‘I like your shirt. Blue suits you.’

‘Because I thought she was really nice. She asked about you.’

‘You should wear blue more often, it brings out your eyes.’

‘She looks a bit like you. You have her eyes and her chin. The nose must come from your dad. I didn’t get to meet him. He was working apparently.’

‘Did Jess buy it for you? She has good taste in clothes, I’ll say that much for her.’

‘He must be a really hard worker. Imagine going to work on Christmas Day! He’s an accountant or something isn’t he?’

‘An actuary. To the best of my knowledge he has never taken a single day off in his life. Maybe his wedding day, I’m not sure.’ Sarah stepped away from Mike. ‘If I ever find out you have been talking to my parents about me, that will be the end. Not just of this sleazy little affair, but of any contact between us at all.’

Mike reached for her. ‘Sarah, they’re your parents, you–’

‘Stop!’ Sarah took several deep breaths, holding her arms out in front of her with the palms out. ‘If you ever want to even
speak
to me again, you will shut up about them immediately.’

‘Christ, Sarah, calm down. I’m sorry. Come here.’ Mike looked contrite, and Sarah allowed his arms to go around her.

‘I was just curious,’ he said into her ear. ‘Jess said they kicked you out over some scandal? Some sex thing? I was thinking maybe enough time’s passed. Maybe you could have some kind of reconciliation?’

Sarah pressed her head into his shoulder, clinging to his body. The surge of adrenalin and the violent tensing of her muscles had caused the blood to rush away from her head and she was afraid of fainting. He misinterpreted her tension and began to stroke her head. ‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘It’s okay, babe.’ Again and again he said it, while Sarah seethed and tried to regain her composure enough to stand independently.

Finally, her pulse slowed to something approaching normal. ‘You don’t know anything about me,’ she said, calmly stepping away from him.

‘Sarah?’ He reached for her. She jumped back, holding her hands out in front of her.

‘Don’t touch me. Not ever again.’

His hands flew up to his head. He gaped at her for several seconds, dropped his hands, began to reach out, then returned to combing his hair with his fingers. ‘Sarah, I–’

She dismissed him with a flick of the wrist and walked away with her head held high. She would not cry. It was beneath her.

*

Jamie saw Sarah and Mike sneak inside together, and twenty-two minutes later he saw Sarah approach a big black man with a shaved head, and press her giggly, wriggly body up against him. Three minutes after that, Sarah and the man were kissing each other
against the fence. Jamie tried to take courage from the spectacle, to let the sight of her throwing herself around so glibly harden him further. He reminded himself that he was much better off now that he knew she saw him as just another expendable dick in a never-ending line of expendable dicks.

It hurt so much he wanted to rip his fucking heart out of his chest
.

But that was good. Sarah meant pain; Shelley meant comfort. As long as he remembered that, he would be able to keep away from
her
and concentrate on being the kind of father his child deserved. And his child
did
deserve a good father – every child did. Sarah was evidence of how fucked up a person could get from having shitty parents.

‘Jamie, got a second?’ Mike slapped his back.

Jamie looked at Mike, took in the sweaty face and messed up hair, and quickly looked away again. ‘What’s up?’

‘Sarah’s pissed off at me, big time.’

‘Why?’ Jamie asked, trying to not care about the obscene performance at the fence.

‘Fucked if I know. Typical bloody irrational woman. Maybe she’s about to get her period.’

‘Sarah doesn’t get her period.’ As the words came out of his mouth he realised what a freak he was for saying them. Sure enough, Mike was looking at him as though he’d spoken the entire sentence in Greek. Jamie thought he might as well explain. ‘She manipulates her pill. She doesn’t believe in wasting five days out of every month feeling like crap.’

Mike pulled a face at Jamie and shook his head. ‘I knew you were close but I didn’t know you talked about that kind of stuff. That’s fucking disgusting, man.’

‘The point is that whatever’s upsetting her it isn’t that, okay?’ Jamie barely cared what Mike thought of him. Sarah was clearly
about to leave with her new friend, and Jamie hadn’t even wished her a happy birthday yet. He had never missed wishing her a happy birthday, not since her thirteenth when he gave her a book about Medieval Europe and she kissed his cheek for the first time.

‘Since you know every last detail of her existence, maybe you can offer some insight into what the fuck is wrong with her.’

Jamie sighed. What was wrong with Sarah was that she had some kind of personality disorder where she wasn’t happy unless she was causing pain and discomfort to herself and everyone around her.

‘What happened?’ he asked, knowing he would regret it.

‘I just tried to talk to her about why she doesn’t see her oldies, and she went schizo and stormed out of the room.’

This caught Jamie’s full attention. ‘What did you say to her?’

Mike raised his chin defiantly. ‘I told her it was silly to hold a grudge against her family just because she got busted fucking a couple of blokes–’

‘Shit, Mike. You said that to her?’

‘Not in those words.’ Mike kicked the dirt. ‘I was
trying
to be nice.’

‘Maybe, but you got it wrong. Way wrong.’

‘Well, what then? Why doesn’t she see them?’

‘That’s Sarah’s business. If she wanted you to know, you would.’ Jamie was glad to have a noble excuse to keep his mouth shut. It was not a story he wanted to ever, ever have to tell.

‘I just want to understand why she’s so… why she’s the way she is.’

That was the question which kept Jamie awake at night. Every time he thought he’d figured out the answer, he remembered something else, or she said something which changed his mind and he was left with the same old pile of
maybes
and
possiblys
and a large number of
if onlys
.

‘Sarah’s made some dumb choices in the past – she still does sometimes – but she… she’s been treated badly, had some shitty things done to her. Just believe her when she says there are things she can’t talk about. Just let her be for once.’ He didn’t want to talk anymore and it appeared he didn’t need to. Mike was visibly remorseful, staring at the ground with a face drained of colour.

‘I’ll apologise.’

‘Not tonight, okay? She’s had enough drama I reckon.’ Jamie swiped the start of a tear from his left eye. Caught it just in time. ‘Let her salvage the last couple of hours of her birthday, heh?’

Mike opened his eyes wide. ‘It’s her
birthday
?’

Jamie watched Sarah over Mike’s shoulder, watched her kissing, and laughing, and standing on her toes, and spinning around, and walking out. Every man wanting her, and trying to be near her, or talking about her, and wondering about her, and there probably wasn’t a single person in the world who had wished her a happy birthday.