Touching Earth Lightly (7 page)

Then again, it might be boring. There’d been plenty of straight, steady people to hang out with at school, but they’d all seemed timid beside Janey. Teachers had warned Chloe that Janey was ‘not a good influence’, and their warnings had been like a signpost:
INTERESTING THINGS COULD HAPPEN HERE—STICK AROUND
. Chloe had watched in a kind of awe as Janey met life head-on, knocking aside doubts and hesitations like so many plywood stage-flats. She’d been grateful to be rescued from her own timidity, her own steadiness. She’d felt herself change, gaining courage and curiosity and some of Janey’s weird sense of humour.

But Janey was so undiscriminating—that was what got to Chloe sometimes. Janey was probably quite happily letting Bass bully her into seeing the Van Damme movie instead of the Daniel Day Lewis one. It was only when Chloe and Bass
were there together, and going for each other, that Janey suffered. Otherwise it was perfectly fine for her to be with Bass or Chloe separately. Couldn’t she see how much of herself went to waste, was lost on a person like Bass? Couldn’t she hear how leaden and boring the conversation had to become to include him?

‘Come on, Clo,’ said Pete when she appeared at the top of the stairs. ‘It’s our turn and I’m desperate.’

‘Brmfskg,’ she said. ‘Qltwrdl. Chmplnk. Any of those.’

‘Because I miss you, turkey,’ Janey had said on the telephone.

‘As long as you don’t bring Bonzo.’

El Bahsa’s windows and door were steamed up. When Chloe opened the door the cappuccino machine was gasping and shushing desperately to keep pace with all the customers.

Janey sat right down the back eating chocolate-powdered milk froth. She looked up and gave an ashamed smile. ‘He had nowhere else to go,’ she insisted as Chloe slid into the seat opposite.

‘You pop-head—where’s he been for the past three months, then?’

‘All over the place.’

‘Yeah, I’ll bet he has. Keep moving, keep running away.’

‘Well, it was a bit like that. You know what happened to him in Coffs Harbour?’

‘Let me see now.’ Chloe’s eyes ran along the pyramids of biscuits and pastries.

‘He was raped.’

‘It must’ve been
pitch
dark,’ said Chloe. ‘Cappuccino, please,’ she said to the passing waiter.

‘It’s true! Like, he went to a bar and this guy, this accountant, said he had a bottle of Jim Beam in his hotel room—’

‘Don’t tell me,’ Chloe jumped in. ‘He woke up in the morning bleeding, with about fifty metres of blue toilet paper up him.’ Janey looked stunned. ‘He was too ashamed of what had happened to come back and talk to you, and
settle up the
motel bill
. He got this idea in his head that the guy was after him. He just
went
, man, he was
so freaked
.’

‘When did he tell you?’

Chloe fixed Janey with a look. ‘He didn’t. It was all in Saturday’s paper. It happened to a guy called Matthew Barnum two years ago.’

‘What, the same thing?’ Janey looked horrified. ‘What, the guy’s still on the loose? After two—’

‘Don’t you get it?’ Chloe grabbed Janey’s hands. She made herself speak gently. ‘Bass runs out of friends. Bass finds paper in garbage bin. Bass reads about Barnum. Bass sees Janey. “Ah, free accommodation. Maybe even some money,” thinks Bass.’

Janey pulled her hands away.

‘“What happened up the Gold Coast, you fleck?” asks Janey. Bass opens mouth—Barnum story tumbles out. “Poor Bass,” says Janey. “Come on home with me.”’

Janey stared at the shortbread crescents drenched with icing sugar. ‘You really think?’

‘I really think.’ The cappuccino came. Chloe sugared and stirred it. ‘Monkey see, monkey do. You’re lucky
you
didn’t end up stuffed with blue toilet paper.’

Janey looked startled. The laughter hit them at the same microsecond. Chloe’s cappuccino froth flew off the cup, giving her a white goatee and snowing to the table. They shook and swayed about, their faces red.

‘Oh God, what a dreg,’ Chloe moaned when she could.

‘Who—him or me?’

‘Him, of course.’ After some more sighing and giggling, she asked, ‘Will you
please
give him the boot?’

‘Oh, Cole. You know me. I’m so weak. He won’t hang around long.’

‘Has he been okay to you? Can’t see any bruises.’

‘Oh, he says things, that’s all. Just words.’

‘Water off a duck’s back, eh?’

‘Yeah, I can handle it,’ said Janey, averting her eyes.

Chloe leaned across the table and stared at her.

‘I know. It’s bad,’ Janey finally admitted. ‘It is. If I could meet you here sometimes … ?’

Chloe pressed her lips together, but the words burst through them. ‘You
dip
, that was supposed to be
your
place!’

‘I know. I know. I know. I know. I’m sorr— It just hasn’t worked out that way, okay?’

‘It’s not a matter of working out. Just tell the little gnome to
shove off
!’ Chloe watched Janey on the pin for a moment, those slow, helpless limbs moving, suffering. ‘Okay. I’ll be here same time, same place, every day—except Wednesday; I’ve got a fitting then. I’ll bring a book, in case it’s hard for you to get away. And don’t tell Bonzo it’s me you’re coming out to see.’ Janey looked up, the gratitude in her eyes ready to spill out of her mouth. ‘And
don’t
say anything!’

Walking home with sadness all through her as if her blood was aching, Chloe found herself walking a block behind Isaac. She recognised the calf-length coat, solid black with never a hair or speck of lint on it (
What a lovely coat!
she remembered Joy saying.
Look at that lining
—
teal, I’d say that colour was
), and the scarf, a black and emerald tartan with a single red cross-thread. Lucky, clean, steady, tasteful Isaac with his mission in life. In the pale winter sunlight, he skirted the scrabbled callistemons crowding the footpath, and probably didn’t feel the least cramp of his heart in his chest, the least twinge of the poignancy of … of it all—of this scene with himself in it and Chloe following unnoticed behind, of the bigger things, the thoughts and fears that pressed on her out of this apparent peacefulness.

‘Ee oop.’ She was at the gate as he lifted his hand to the doorknocker.

‘Oh, hullo.’ He stood back while she unlocked the door.

In the past Chloe had sometimes disobeyed the unspoken rules between herself and Isaac, just to disquiet him. Like meeting his eyes for more than the barest polite second. Like standing just slightly closer to him than he was comfortable
with. Now she stood aside from the door and he passed her with a distracted half-smile and went up the stairs two at a time. She heard him say ‘Howdy’ at Nick’s door. ‘Brought you back those books …’

She leaned against the door, and could have cried. Walking away from Janey (and away from Bass, of course), Isaac walking away from her—she was hit by the loneliness of it all of a sudden, by the solitude of her own figure in the street, in her house. Everyone else’s lives seemed so populated and busy, Mum’s and Dad’s at work and socially, Pete’s at school, Nick’s with Isaac and everyone they knew at uni. Hers had only Janey, and Janey took up all the room in it and more when she was there, but she left a whole lot empty when she wasn’t.

A loud knock on the front door startled Chloe as she was coming downstairs for tea. When she opened the door, Janey’s brother Nathan leaned there, one broad shoulder against the frame. He had grown. He had muscles; he’d never had muscles before. Chloe kept her eyes on his face, but she could see them lower down, on display in the tight windcheater with the sleeves torn off.

He was chewing. He chewed at Chloe. ‘Shitface here?’

Something ground to a halt inside her. ‘Beg your pardon?’

‘My sister, bitch. She here?’

‘No. She’s not.’

He stopped her closing the door with his boot toe. He sniggered and chewed. ‘I’d tell you to get fucked, ’cept I know no one’d ’ave ya. Frigid bitch.’

Chloe pulled the door open and kicked him hard on the shin with a Blundstone. He snatched his leg back, swearing. She slammed the door and he started to kick it. She hopped back onto the bottom stair. The door shuddered—she was sure it wouldn’t hold. Joy came hurrying from the kitchen. ‘For heaven’s sake, who is it?’

‘Nathan. Don’t open—!’ Chloe’s hands flew to her face.

Joy opened the door. Nathan froze with a leg raised. ‘What seems to be the problem, Nathan?’

He lowered his boot. ‘Nothin’. Lookin’ for my sister.’

Joy examined the kick-marks on the door. ‘No you’re not. You’re damaging my property. Not to mention threatening my daughter.’

Nathan shrugged and began to turn away. Chloe marvelled at her mother’s power.

‘Janey’s not here,’ Joy went on. ‘If she hasn’t said where she is, she obviously doesn’t want to see you, so just get off her case. Go and get on with your own life.’

Nathan looked back at Joy with dislike before she closed the door again. They listened for his footsteps on the front path. ‘What a goon,’ murmured Joy. ‘Poor girl hasn’t got much of a chance with
that
following her around.’

‘You should see this girlfriend he’s got,’ said Nick. ‘Phwoar!’

He and Chloe and Dane were making pizza. Dane dug in the fridge for ingredients. ‘Bit of all right, is she?’

Nick appeared not to know where to start. Chloe, slicing salami thinly, waited for him to speak, but he continued to grate mozzarella.

‘How’d they get together?’ she said finally.

‘Oh, some Bellevue Hill bash. Parents all in attendance, throwing the young people into each other’s arms, totting up the inheritances.’

‘Oh, so she comes with a good big herd of cattle?’ The sourness of Chloe’s voice surprised her, as did the faintly de-stabilised feeling.

‘Prestige cars,’ said Nick. ‘Her father’s an importer.’

‘So’s he
madly
in love? Isaac, I mean,’ said Chloe.

Nick stuck out his bottom lip. ‘Dunno. He’s the kind of guy keeps it all under his hat, that kind of thing. He’s not stupid about her. God, I’d be.’

Dane let a capsicum, a paper bag of mushrooms and some tomatoes spill from his arms onto the bench-top. ‘Yeah, but
you’re stupid about most girls, briefly.’ He grinned at Chloe; after a second she realised she was supposed to smile back, and did.