Sarah stopped to stub out her cigarette and light another one. She didn’t look at Daniel but she could hear him breathing.
‘Jamie managed to get them out of the room. He got smashed up though… Poor bloke. He was bawling his eyes out, but once it was over I was completely calm. He kept saying that I was in shock, but I wasn’t; I don’t think so anyway. I was just amazed that I was still alive, that I felt thirsty, that I wanted a cigarette. Jamie cleaned me up and I felt embarrassed at him seeing me like that and at him touching me, doing everything with one arm while the other one was, like, limp at his side. He was holding a towel between my legs, and he was crying and carrying on and I just felt like, why did they have to go and do that? Why did these arseholes have to come along and ruin a perfectly good night? I was going to give Jamie his first ever blowjob and now my mouth was so smashed up it would be useless. I said that to Jamie and he just howled. It was the worst thing I’ve ever heard in my life and it made me feel like crying, but I couldn’t and so I vomited instead, and that gave him something else practical to do so he stopped making all that noise.’
Daniel cleared his throat. ‘Did you call the police?’
‘Didn’t occur to us. I spent the night in Jamie’s room, with the door locked, and the next day Jamie and Brett got a bunch together and went and belted the shit out of the guys who did it. They smashed them up really bad, broke bones and all. I was happy. It felt like justice.
‘Anyway, Jamie walked me home in the morning. It wasn’t far. He wanted to come in with me but I felt bad enough about what I’d put him through. I didn’t want to subject him to what I knew would be another ugly scene where he would feel obliged to defend me. Plus, I could see he was hurt badly; I told him to go to the doctor and I’d call him later.
‘I walked into the kitchen and the three of them were sitting around the breakfast table, each with a section of the Sunday paper and a bowl of cereal. And I thought, what a perfect little scene. What a perfect little happy family this is and I am this mess. I was wearing Jamie’s jacket and that covered all the damage to my arms, but my legs and my face were fucked up. I knew, before anyone even looked at me or spoke, I knew that I was no longer part of that scene. Or really, I knew that I had never been part of it, I had always been too messy for them, even without my busted nose and knocked out teeth.
‘They all freaked out, but I was cool. I told them what had happened and asked Mum if she would please drive me to the hospital. She said no.’
Daniel whistled. ‘She said no?’
‘She said no. She said that she was so ashamed that she couldn’t even look at me. Dad said that I would be going to boarding school. I asked him if going to boarding school made you rape proof and he told me to stop being so melodramatic. Kelly said that it was impossible I had been raped because everybody knew that I didn’t say no to anyone. Mum asked me if that was true and I…’ Sarah snorted. ‘I said it was true that I had a lot of sex, but that I thought an old school feminist like her would know the difference between being sexually permissive and being forced to take it up the arse while you got your face smashed in.’
Daniel laughed in a shocked sort of way. ‘I worship you, Sarah. I really do. You are the classiest woman in the world. A Goddess.’ Sarah and Daniel talked all afternoon, sitting on the bench, walking along the water and then lying on their backs and looking at the clouds. She told him how Jamie’s mum took her to the hospital and wrote herself in as next of kin and paid all the medical bills, and how Brett and Jamie helped her find a flat and a job and some second hand furniture. She liked it that Daniel called Jamie a hero, and that he said it was noble of her to leave home rather than stay and be degraded by small minded people.
It had been dark for hours by the time he drove her home. She was dizzy from the entirely new experience of speaking what was in her heart and not being met by dismay or disgust. If she had needed reassurance that her attraction to Daniel was more than just sexual, then today had been it. It was more than sexual, but it was still fundamentally physical. Even connecting with him on an emotional level made her skin prickle. Whenever he laughed at something she said, or nodded in a way that denoted complete understanding, her muscles twitched in recognition. She needed him physically, but it wasn’t the base lust she felt around other men. It wasn’t about getting off; it was about making one beast with two backs.
Before she got out of his car, she asked the question that had been nagging at her for the last few hours. ‘Daniel, when I was telling you what happened… when I described what they did to me, how did you feel?’
He furrowed his brow. ‘I felt sorry for you.’
Sarah nodded. ‘But… what about…’
‘What?’
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. ‘It seemed like you maybe enjoyed it a bit. The way you enjoy it a bit when I cry?’
‘Look at me, Sarah.’ She did. His eyes were huge and wet. ‘I think what they did was despicable. I am heartbroken at the pain you suffered and at the callous treatment you received from your family. However,’ he said, touching the back of her hand with his fingertips. ‘There is nothing about you that doesn’t turn me on. If becoming aroused while you describe your bloodied thighs makes me sick and depraved, then God help me, I’m sick and depraved.’
‘That’s what I thought.’ Sarah opened the car door, bent over and kissed the top of his head. ‘God help me for loving you.’
7
Sarah lived for the day Daniel would touch her again. He took her out for dinner or picked her up from work or dropped in for a drink almost every day, but he never so much as kissed her goodnight. She started to skip classes because if she skipped work she would be out on the street, and she had to find the time to see him somehow.
Her phone rang constantly. She did not answer. There was no worry about missing a call from Daniel; he never called because he knew if wanted to talk to her he only had to wait five minutes and she’d be ringing him again. She called him in the middle of the day to tell him about the class she had been to, or the book she’d just finished reading; she called in the evening to hear his voice before she went to work; she called him in the middle of the night because if she was losing sleep over him then she wanted him to be awake too.
One night, sleepless, she watched a documentary about the deep ocean. There was a segment about a fish that mated for life, the male attaching himself to the female and surviving by siphoning her blood, giving her in return a constant stream of semen. It was the sexiest thing Sarah had heard in her whole life. She called Daniel and told him about it.
Daniel scoffed. ‘The problem with getting your information from the television is that you are fed these sexy little factoids but there isn’t any follow through. You know that one thing about this fish and nothing else. If the female fish dies does the male die too, or can he detach himself? If the male fish dies, does the female have to swim forever with a rotting corpse weighing her down? What happens when she conceives? Does the flow stop? Do they–’
‘Jesus, Daniel! Who cares?’
‘I do. I bet you don’t even know what the fish is called?’
‘I don’t give a stuff. I’m of the instant gratification generation remember? I only want to know the most interesting thing; leave all that other stuff to the scientists. Give me fast, sexy, exotic factoids.’
Daniel laughed. ‘You’re adorable. Now go to bed, it’s late.’
‘Not yet. I want to talk some more.’
‘About fish?’
‘Why not? Anything, I don’t care. I just want to hear your voice. Tell me about the ocean.’
He was quiet for a while. Thinking, or perhaps pulling one of his reference books from the shelf in his living room. When he began to speak, his voice was low and husky.
‘The ocean,’ he said, ‘is a whole world in itself: huge plains spread out across the ocean floor, long mountain ranges rise toward the surface, with deep valleys cutting through them. There are active volcanoes, eru
pting down so deep that we on the surface would never know. It’s a trap, the ocean. It’s cool and comforting and so you go in farther, you go in deeper. And then you’re dead. Water is tricky like that. If you’re burnt or hot or aching, it will heal and soothe and calm you. But also, it can freeze you to death or boil your flesh. Crush or suffocate you.’ He paused, then: ‘Am I boring you?’
‘No, please keep going.’
‘Okay, Sarah.’ Another pause. ‘Will you take off your under-pants for me?’
‘Of course.’ She slid out of her pants and he went on.
‘The great white shark has no natural predator. It has wide serrated teeth that cut easily through tough flesh and bone. Some sharks have long pointed teeth as well, so they can hold their prey in place while they cut into it. Their senses are integrated; they can hear and feel all over their body. When sharks have sex, they bite each other almost to death.’
‘Daniel, are you reading this?’ Sarah said, feeling and hearing him with her whole body, wanting to bite him to death and have his blood mix with hers and float away with the current.
‘Sssh. Imagine a crocodile in his swamp, pretending to sleep when he is actually eyeing you off, imagining the look on your face when he pounces from behind and sinks his teeth into your yielding flesh. Crocodiles thrash around when they feed; they go into a death roll. Half your bones would be shattered by the time the beast put you out of your misery by smashing your skull against a rock.’
Sarah was fevered and wanted to be in the ocean with him. In the swamp or the lake or the fucking creek. She needed coolness, wetness, hidden rocks and treasures. She needed thrashing, biting and lack of air. ‘What else?’ she asked Daniel, whose voice had taken on the qualities he described. Wet and dark. She could hear the fish splashing all around him.
‘The blue-ringed octopus is the size of a golf ball. When it bites, you at first feel nauseous. Your vision becomes hazy. Within seconds you are blind. You lose your sense of touch. You cannot speak or swallow. Three minutes later you are paralysed and unable to breath.’
Sarah felt its poison surging through her veins. Three minutes and it would all be over.
‘It’s the bigger octopuses that are really fascinating. Can you imagine all those tentacles, Sarah? Imagine the sucking and the twisting and at the same time, weeds tangling around your ankles. And all the while, the water is filling your throat and your lungs. You’re going to drown and you are glad, you hope it is soon.’
Sarah was blind and dumb. All there was in the world was Daniel’s voice and the sound of limbs crashing through water and the sensation of slimy, reptilian creatures swarming over her. The tentacles were inside her and she told Daniel how that felt. She told him about the sucking and the twisting up inside her and how the water was just gushing. He was gushing too, he told her, and she said I am drowning.
Then everything was quiet. Slowly, Sarah’s vision cleared and so did her mind. She was embarrassed to be alone in her kitchen in the middle of the night, with the phone cord wrapped around her waist and her hand sandwiched between her thighs.
‘Daniel?’ She could hear him breathing, but it seemed like hours before he spoke.
‘You had an orgasm, didn’t you?’
‘Yeah. Didn’t you?’
‘That turned you on then? Sea creatures?’
Sarah hesitated, trying to interpret his tone. Was he teasing?
‘You’re too embarrassed to answer me?’ He sounded angry.
‘I was turned on by you. Why are you being weird?’
‘You were turned on by the thought of fucking fish. That is disgusting. I feel like I’m going to be sick.’
Sarah wiped her hand on the corner of her T-shirt. ‘Stop it. You’re making me feel awful.’
‘Really, Sarah. I want to throw up. You are one sick little girl.’
‘Hey! You were getting off too! I heard you–’
‘Is that what you like? You like men to push live animals up your cunt and–’
Sarah hung up and cried and cried and cried.
The next morning there was an envelope under her door. Inside was a handwritten poem:
The Bait by John Donne.
Come live with me and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove,
Of golden sands and crystal brooks,
With silken lines and silver hooks.
There will the river whispering run,
Warmed by thine eyes more than the sun.
And there the enamoured fish will stay,
Begging themselves they may betray.
When thou wilt swim in that live bath,
Each fish, which every channel hath,
Will amorously to thee swim,
Gladder to catch thee live, then thou him.
If thou, to be so seen, beest loath,
By sun or moon, thou darkenest both;
And if myself have leave to see,
I need not their light, having thee.
Let others freeze with angling reeds,
And cut their legs with shells and weeds,
Or treacherously poor fish beset
With strangling snare or windowy net;
Let coarse bold hands from slimy nest
The bedded fish in banks out-wrest.
Of curious traitors, sleave-silk flies,
Bewitch poor fishes’ wandering eyes.
For thee, thou needest no such deceit,
For thou thyself art thine own bait;
That fish is not catched thereby,
Alas, is wiser far than I.
She was unfamiliar with the piece, but recognised the first lines as coming from Marlowe. It was a parody then, but was that Daniel’s point in sending it? To parody the dramatics of their love, the way Donne parodied Marlowe’s? She read it through until she had it memorised. There was a message she was supposed to be getting. There was the obvious allusion to their phone conversation, and maybe that was all he meant by it: an acknowledgement of the eroticism of the sea. An apology. But then, did he see himself as the poet and her as the baiter who had caught him while other, wiser men escaped? Therefore, he is a fool? Thou art thine own bait: did that mean he saw her seductiveness as inherent, where other women had to freeze with angling reeds? Or was Daniel pointing out the brilliance and passion that can be caught up in everyday things? The use of metaphysical conceit to demonstrate that most basic of human experiences? And there was violence in there as well, with strangling snares and shells that cut. Daniel had tangled her up without a word of his own.
She called him and told him that if he was trying to apologise he should just do it, and if he meant something else then he should just come out and say that too.
‘I thought my meaning was very clear,’ he said.
‘Donne never made anything clear, Daniel. My head’s been spinning all day trying to figure this out.’
He laughed softly. ‘I chose that poem because its theme seemed apposite, but everything I wanted to say is in the first two lines.’
Sarah looked down at the coffee-stained, crumpled piece of paper and re-read the lines although she knew them by heart. ‘Do you mean that?’ she said, feeling so afraid that he would laugh again or hang up or tell her she was disgusting.
‘I don’t say things I don’t mean.’
‘So what you said last night, you meant that too?’
‘Yes, I vomited as soon as I hung up. Then I copied out that poem and drove around to your flat. I sat outside your door all night, listening to you crying. I realised that our telephone conversation had been the turning point I’ve been waiting for. We had bizarre phone sex that made me sick, and afterwards all I wanted was to do it again. I realised that you would let me. If we can make each other ill and make each other cry, and still be desperate to be together… Sarah, Come live with me and be my love, And we will some new pleasures prove.’
‘Okay, yes, okay.’ Sarah was crying again. ‘But I need some time. I have to give notice on my flat, I h
ave to talk to my friends, I have to… well, heaps of stuff. I need at least two weeks.’
‘You’ve got one,’ Daniel said. ‘I’ll leave you alone to do whatever you have to do, and in a week, I’ll come and get you.’
8
One week passed and Sarah sorted out nothing. On the day he’d said it, a Saturday, she stared at her walls and smoked. She spent all day thinking about how they were her walls, and even if they were yellowed with chipping paint and dirty finger marks, they were hers and no one else had any rights to them at all. At nine-thirty she remembered that the flat was rented and therefore the walls weren’t hers; they were her landlord’s. After eleven hours of mourning something that didn’t exist, Sarah was manic. She dressed in nothing much and hit the skankiest bar in Parramatta.
The place was half full with bikers and wanna-be bikers, loud drunks, nodding junkies, and drug dealers who stayed perfectly sober to ensure they never got taken advantage of. There were few women and none who looked able to walk without assistance. Every person capable of seeing was staring at Sarah with hostility or desire or both. She sat at the bar alongside a biker with a greying ponytail and beard. He did not bother to conceal the fact he was staring at her breasts, nor did he hide his sneer. Sarah ordered a tequila shot. The biker paid. The knuckles of his left hand said F U C K.
‘Fuck what?’
He held his right fist in front of her face. L I F E it said.
‘Fuck life? What is that supposed to mean? You want to be dead? Because that’s easy to accomplish if you really want to. Or is fuck a positive word in this context? Like you want to fuck life because you love it so damn much?’
The biker appeared to have not heard her. He nodded at the bartender and another tequila appeared in front of Sarah. She drank it down.
‘Thank you. But do you genuinely think I’m going to screw some neanderthal who gets meaningless tough guy phrases tattooed on his big hairy hands just because he buys me a couple of drinks?’
A third drink was placed on the bar. ‘Can you speak at all?’ Sarah asked. ‘You’re not like a deaf mute or something?’