The Slap (12 page)

The next morning Rhys came over before she awoke and she rose to the smells of eggs and bacon being fried. She ran to the bathroom and vomited again.

‘You must have got hammered last night.’ He was kneeling beside her, wiping her brow.

‘That I did,’ she groaned ruefully as he helped her back into bed. ‘Sorry, Rhysbo, I’ve got no appetite.’

‘You girls can drink us guys under the table.’

No we can’t, she wanted to answer, not because we’re women but because we are no longer twenty-five. It takes days for us to recover. She thought about saying, Rhys I’m going to have a baby. Will you take time out of your career to help me raise it while I write my novel? She looked at him as he reclined alongside her. He’d probably say yes. He’d probably be happy to do it and wouldn’t start resenting her till years later.

She tickled his nose. ‘Aish asked me last night if you could sign some photos for Connie and Richie.’

‘Are they her kids?’

She rolled her eyes. ‘You smoke way too much pot.’ God, she did sound like a mother. ‘Aisha’s children are called Adam and Melissa. Which I’ve told you a dozen times. Connie was the teenage blonde girl at the barbecue, a cute kid, a nice girl. Remember?’

‘Vaguely.’

‘Richie was her boyfriend.’

‘Yeah?’ The hint of doubt in Rhys’s voice intrigued her.

‘What?’

‘I just thought he was gay.’

Gay? She thought it preposterous. Richie was just a normal, boring kid.

‘My God, you are vain.’

Rhys looked wounded. ‘I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just a feeling I got.’ He looked up at her, teasingly. ‘My generation has got a good gaydar, you know, not like you uptight old baby-boomers.’

This made her laugh. ‘Watch it, I’m not that old. Anyway, I don’t think it’s true, but just in case, get them both a photo of you topless. Unless your gaydar is telling you the girl’s a dyke?’

He rose, laughing as well, and headed to her kitchen. She heard him put on a coffee. She threw the sheets off her and looked down at her stomach. It was flat, it seemed impossible that life was commencing inside there. Rhys and I would make great parents for a gay kid, she mused, they’d be lucky to have us. She patted her stomach. But that’s only one chance in ten, kiddo, and only one chance in twenty if the God-botherers are right. I just don’t like the odds, she whispered to her belly.

 

She went to the clinic on her own. She returned on her own. The taxi driver was a Serb and he was a grandfather. He was delighted that she could remember a few Yugoslav words from her time in Zagreb and he made her promise that one day she would visit Belgrade. He was a gentleman and seeing that she was pale and unsteady, he walked her to the door. Inside her apartment she glanced at a photocopy the nurse had given her on things not to do after a termination. She scrunched up the sheet and flung it in the bin. She found that she could not stop thinking of the taxi driver she had insulted the week before. She stripped, slipped on her robe and switched on the television. She could not forget his face. She muted the volume, rang the taxi service and waited for a human voice. She gave the details of the fare and asked if she could have the address of the driver. The woman on the other end sounded stern.

‘We can’t give you those details. Do you have his plate number?’

‘No.’

‘Do you wish to make a complaint?’

‘God no, I want to send him an apology. I’m afraid I was terribly rude to him and he did not deserve it.’

The woman’s voice softened. ‘I’m sure you weren’t rude.’

‘No, I’m sure I was.’

There was a pause and then the woman said that she would make enquiries, she would get an apology to the driver. Anouk gave as many details of the fare as she could—the time, the date, the pick-up, the destination—and when she was finished, she asked shyly, ‘Will you make sure he gets my apology?’

‘I’ll try.’

‘Do you want my name?’

‘No,’ the woman replied firmly. ‘That’s not important.’

 

She slept soundly and awoke with her head pounding and what felt like a laceration in her abdomen. She could not bear the thought of breakfast or of a shower. She slipped on a pair of track-pants and a shirt and she rang Rhys. She left a message on his phone for him to come over that night. She turned on the computer, put on a coffee and sat down at her desk. She wrote her letter of resignation quickly and efficiently: she said all she wanted to say in four lines. She then opened up another Word document. She looked at the terminal screen. The cursor blinked. She sipped her coffee and lit a cigarette. The cursor was still blinking.

‘Well, fucking write then,’ she said out loud.

So she began to write.

Harry
stood on the verandah, naked except for his Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses and his black Lycra Speedos, looking over on the flat calm waters of Port Phillip Bay. The setting sun painted the horizon in swirls of red and orange and the spires and flat-topped skyscrapers of Melbourne were just visible through the late afternoon smog that sat over the city. Harry’s body glistened from the suntan lotion and sweat; the day was still scorching hot and there had been no breeze since the early morning. He could smell the meat that Sandi was sizzling in the kitchen and he rubbed his hand over his stomach, anticipating dinner. Cars were crawling slowly, bumper to bumper, along Beach Road. Fuck you, losers. Harry smiled to himself. From his newly finished verandah he had a clear view below to the sand and water. Four young girls in thin strips of bikinis were showering in the park. They had pert adolescent tits, they were blonde and lithe. Grinning, he pushed his crotch hard against the dark tinted glass of the balcony wall. He breathed long and hard, his eyes still focused on the girls below, who were now giggling and squealing, splashing water at each other. His penis lengthened and hardened, stretching against the Lycra. Slowly, he rocked back and forth against the glass. Come on, bitch, he mouthed to himself. One of the girls had bent over and he let out a small groan at glimpsing her full, toned buttocks. Wouldn’t you want my cock up that hole, you little whore.

He stepped back from the glass. The girls were now drying off, collecting their towels and bags, but his interest had waned. He took one more look at the world below him, and then turned and dived into the pool. He smacked the water’s surface and entered the blissfully cold world beneath; he emerged for air, grinning. He dived once more beneath the surface and then rolled like the seals Rocco loved watching at the zoo. He turned on his back and stretched his limbs out over the water. ‘I am the king of the world!’ he shouted to the sky.

‘Is his majesty hungry?’

Sandi was standing at the edge of the pool, her skin tanned a rich honey. She too was wearing a bikini, but whereas the girls’ swimsuits had seemed sluttish and vulgar, his wife seemed to him to be as exquisite as the elegant European models on the covers of the magazines she read. He had bought the bikini for her. The pearl-coloured fabric straps were held in place with small coils of gold. He looked up at her and regretted having wasted time fantasising over the cheap floozies on the beach. Sandi was a real woman. She was wearing one of his old denim work shirts over her bikini and she still managed to look spectacular. I am the king of the world, he repeated silently.

‘I’m famished.’

‘Then dinner is served, your majesty.’

The television was on in the kitchen and there was catastrophe on the screen. A bomb? An earthquake? A war? He didn’t fucking care, let the towelheads and the yids wipe themselves out. He punched a button on the remote control, found images of nature and colour on one of the cable stations, and turned down the volume. He poured wine for himself and for Sandi, lit a cigarette and sat on a stool watching her prepare the dressing for the salad.

‘Where’s Rocco?’

‘Watching tele in the lounge.’

Harry belowed out his son’s name and waited for a response.

‘What?’ Rocco yelled back.

‘Get in here.’

Rocco, as if in childish defiance of his parents’ ease with their near-naked bodies, was wearing track-pants, a baseball cap and an over-sized black T-shirt with some garish gangsta insignia on its front. He had his socks and runners on.

‘Aren’t you hot?’

His son shrugged and carefully lifted himself onto the stool next to his father. ‘What’s for dinner?’

‘Chops.’

‘With chips?’

‘You eat too many chips,’ his mother warned.

‘You can never eat too many chips.’

‘Thanks for the support, your majesty.’

Rocco, quizzical, was chewing on his bottom lip. Harry resisted the urge to tell him off. Rocco made himself ugly when he did that.

‘Why are you calling Dad “Your majesty”, Mum?’

‘Because I’m the king of this house.’

Rocco stopped chewing at his lip and Harry playfully tweaked the boy’s earlobe. ‘And one day you will be king.’

But Rocco had lost interest in the subject and instead swivelled around in his seat and stared at the television. He picked up the remote control and started switching channels.

Sandi leaned across the bench and took the remote off him. ‘Leave it till after dinner. You watch too much television.’

‘You can never watch too much television.’

Sandi’s exasperated face made both father and son laugh out loud in guilty, masculine complicity.

 

‘Have you called the lawyer?’

Rocco had gone to bed and they were watching a DVD on the new plasma television. It had cost the frigging earth but it was worth it, as large as a small cinema screen, situated in the centre of their feature wall. On either side of the screen sat granite stone slabs, lit by faint orange light, the water a constant softly burbling sheet down the surface of the stone. It all cost a bomb but it was ideal. He was paying the film little attention, some tedious rom-com; it was only Sandi’s head lying on his lap that made him put up with it. He didn’t want to disturb her by reaching over for the remote control. But it was she who suddenly sat up and muted the volume. He groaned out loud at the question.

‘Have you?’

‘I’ll do it tomorrow.’

He watched her warily. Sandi rarely argued with him. She had learned early in their courtship that he reacted to a direct confrontation by a woman with implacable stubborness. She nodded, unsmiling.

‘I’ll call him.’

Fuck. You.

‘I’ll call him tomorrow.’

Her expression was still petulant, unconvinced.

‘I promise.’

Her face relaxed into a warm smile and she leaned over and kissed him on the lips. ‘Thanks, baby.’

He ran his fingers against her neck, her shoulders. She was still wearing his shirt and he rolled it off her. But her question had made him tense, reminding him of the working week ahead, shattering the relaxed comfort of his Sunday evening. ‘Sorry, honey. I’m too tired.’

Sandi moved away from his embrace and slipped the shirt back over her shoulders.

He kissed her brow and she turned up the volume on the television and rested back on his lap. But he was now too agitated to sit still. He rose gently, putting a cushion under her head, and went to the bar and took a Crown from the fridge. He wandered through the house and stopped outside Rocco’s bedroom. The boy was curled up, quietly snoring in bed, the white sheet tangled around his body. The night was still hot and there was only the slightest flutter of a breeze coming off the sea. Harry looked up at the icon of the Mother and Child above his son’s bed and he quickly made the sign of the cross. Thank you,
Panagia
, he whispered. It once seemed likely that he and Sandi would never have a child. She had difficulty conceiving and the first three pregnancies had ended in the pain of miscarriage. Thinking of his wife’s ordeals, Harry winced and reaffirmed the promise he’d made to God. To protect her and love her always, and as he looked down at his sleeping son, he was grateful for the home and family they had made together.

And that cunt wants to fuck it all up. He couldn’t decide who he hated more: the hysterical wife who had hissed at him with unconcealed contempt, the drunk, weak faggot of a husband, or the whining little prick he had slapped. He wished the three of them were dead. Fuck the lawyer. If he had real balls he’d take his shotgun and fire three quick bullets in each of their heads. He knew these people—freeloaders, whingers, complainers. Victims. They were the clients who weasled and begged for the cheapest deals and then when it came time to pay there was no money in their accounts. It had all gone on bongs or smokes or grog or whatever filthy shit they used to fill up their miserable, ugly lives. They were trash, should’ve been sterilised at birth. He shouldn’t have slapped the child, he should have grabbed the bat off him and smashed it once, twice, a hundred times into the little fucker’s head, made him pulp and blood. Almost tasting the blood, seeing the boy’s face collapse into jutting bones and squashed muscle, Harry felt calm for the first time since Sandi had brought up the subject of the lawyer. He took a swig of beer and walked back into the lounge. Sandi was half-asleep. He switched off the television and lifted his wife into his arms.