She smiled without teeth. Calmly, as though she understood, she agreed, she accepted. She smiled in that resigned way and kept talking in a voice that was distorted by too much smoke and alcohol, and not enough water and sleep. ‘We tried. For a little while everything was normal. Well, not normal the way I used to be, when you knew me before. But normal the way you and Shelley are. We played house, lived as though we were part of the world. But when we’re together something happens. It’s like… synergy? There’s too much power, too much energy flying around. I can’t even explain to you what it feels like to love someone so much.’
Her eyes were the saddest thing Jamie had ever seen but that didn’t stop him wanting to slap her. Did she actually think he had stopped loving her? Or was she so selfish she didn’t care? Probably she was so locked up in that extra-special, extra-thick Sarah bubble that it didn’t even occur to her that bursting so dramatically into his life would be at all difficult for him. She was not so changed by love to think of anyone except herself.
The phone rang and Jamie went to answer it, knowing it would be Shelley wanting to know why he was still at the office at – he glanced at his watch – shit, at six-forty-five on a Friday night. Jamie was ashamed at how easily he lied to Shelley, but relieved his voice sounded so calm. He talked to her for a few minutes, promised to get home as soon as the damn computers came back on line so he could finish the report, told her he loved her and hung up.
‘Do you really love her?’ Sarah asked.
‘Yeah, I really do. You should see the way she’s stuck by me.’
‘Do you still love me?’
Jamie sat on the floor and took her hands. ‘I will always love you.’
She smiled and slid down off her knees, crossing her obscenely thin calves in front of her. ‘You know how you used to say it was different? How you loved Shelley and me in different ways?’
Jamie nodded, amazed that she could talk as though it was ancient history, like it could be discussed and analysed without any immediate or personal pain.
‘I understand that now. You love her because she’s safe and that was attractive to you because you needed protection from how you felt about me. I feel like that now, I feel like I need to be sheltered from how I feel about Daniel.’
Jamie fought the wave of self-pity. ‘Sarah, the situation is not the same at all. Daniel loves you. You didn’t love me and that is why I needed protection from you.’
Sarah put her hand on Jamie’s knee. ‘Who says I didn’t love you?’
Jamie’s heart stopped for several long seconds and then started again with another painful jolt down his left side. ‘Yeah, it was different though, right?’
She nodded and the expression on her face told him that it was so different she couldn’t even articulate it. What she felt for Daniel Carr and what she had felt for Jamie were not even in the same category. It was impossible for her to even imagine feeling for Jamie the passion, and desire and devotion she felt for that other man.
Jamie covered her hand with his own. ‘So you came here because you needed someone to protect you from yourself?’
‘I guess so, I… I don’t know what I’m doing.’ She drew in her breath and the tears flowed. ‘My life wasn’t supposed to be this way. It wasn’t meant to be like this.’
Jamie couldn’t have agreed more. When the little dark haired girl had boldly met his eyes across the classroom in year seven Geography and smiled in a way that made his throat hurt, he had known instantly how it was supposed to be. He was supposed to take care of her and make sure she was never hurt or sad or scared. In return she would love him forever and never make him hurt or sad or scared. If Jamie had taken better care of her, neither of them would be in this position. It had all gone so wrong.
Sarah had retreated. She had her arms wrapped around her knees and her back against the wall, crying enough to break his heart. If it hadn’t already been blown into a million pieces, that is. He watched her and she didn’t seem to know he was there; her eyes were opened but focussed on something Jamie couldn’t see. He couldn’t stand thinking about what she might be seeing, what images danced in her mind when she gazed off like that.
He looked at her legs instead. These legs used to fascinate him because although they were short, they could move really fast. Sarah was always winning races at school against girls with longer, stronger legs. In year eleven she started to wear these tiny black sports shorts that barely covered her arse, and when Mr O’Grady told her off for not wearing the correct sports uniform, she got all teary and said it wasn’t easy supporting yourself through school, and if he wanted her to wear the stupid sports uniform he would have to buy it for her himself, or would he prefer her to go without groceries for a few weeks. Mr O’Grady apologised for the misunderstanding and Sarah was allowed to wear the shorts. Jamie knew that the shorts actually cost more than the subsidised school skirt, but Sarah liked the way all the boys, several of the girls and many of the teachers looked at her when she wore the shorts. That was a good memory about Sarah’s legs.
A bad memory about Sarah’s legs was the mixture of blood and beer and semen that Jamie had wiped off them after she was raped. That was about six months before the sports shorts incident. He remembered gagging as he cleaned her while she lay still and silent, and when he went into the bathroom to rinse the washcloth he had vomited into the sink and the combination of his vomit with the mess coming off the cloth was the most horrible thing he had ever smelt. By morning the bruises had come out and her legs were no longer white at all, they were speckled brown and black and blue and purple, with a red streak here and there. When he walked her home an old lady walking a Shitzu stopped to see if Sarah was okay. When Jamie assured her that they were fine, the old lady looked at Sarah’s legs and stared at Jamie in a way that made him glad she wasn’t walking an Alsatian.
Another good memory: during his affair with Sarah she had thrilled him with all the different things she did in bed. She loved to give head, to get on top, to have him take her from behind and to do it standing up. None of which was exactly deviant, but you would think so if you were married to Shelley. Jamie and Sarah must have done it in just about every position there was, but the one he liked most of all was when she was below him and she would wrap her legs around his back and squeeze like she was trying to crush his bones.
Today her legs, like the rest of her, were skeletal, and he was sure that if she squeezed him he wouldn’t feel a thing. Her skin looked as though it might tear if he rubbed it the wrong way. It was tissue with blue veins showing through, like old people’s skin. She had seven bruises that Jamie could see. Most of them were turning yellow already and so must have been at least a few days old, but there was a big blackish splotch on her right shin that looked swollen and fresh. Jamie placed his palm over the bruise and could feel the heat coming off it.
‘What are you doing?’ she said, startling him.
‘Does this hurt?’ He pressed the dark spot with the heel of his palm.
‘Yeah.’
‘How did it happen?’
She stretched out her legs and Jamie’s hand slid with the movement and landed on her knee, which was much colder to touch than her bruised shin had been. ‘I’m not sure. I find these marks and I can’t remember how I got them.’ She lifted her skirt and pointed to a red mark at the top of her right inner thigh. ‘See this. It’s been hurting me like hell, and I can’t remember how it happened.’
Jamie pressed the mark with his fingers and she flinched. This was not just some little scratch or bruise. It was an inch long, shiny red, raised up welt. Someone had burnt Sarah’s precious flesh and she did not recall this happening. There was something so pitiable about the way she had revealed this to him, as though she wanted him to congratulate her for proving that she too could be scarred by love. It was like the way blokes compared football injuries or mothers showed each other their stretch marks. He was always excluded from those conversations, but this was something he could re
late to because Sarah knew about how he broke his arm and ribs once. And that was nothing if not a love related injury.
‘Does he hurt you like this a lot?’ Jamie did not look at her face. He continued to stroke and press the welt and although it clearly hurt her, she did not stop him.
‘Oh, yeah, I suppose. But it isn’t… it isn’t like I’m some abused woman or anything. We both do it. We both forget that the body has certain limits. We get all… lost in each other. I broke two of his fingers the other day. I didn’t realise I was squeezing his hand so hard. He has big hands. Strong fingers, with really… big knuckles and I just… he told the doctor that the car door closed on him and the doctor said that it must have been a heavy door.’ Sarah made a choking noise. ‘I’m scared of killing him. He left his family for me, before he even knew he could have me. And now… he got fired from his job, his job that he just loved. He kept going in late, or not at all, or with… he’s given up his whole life for me, and I’m killing him.’
Jamie could see that she was wearing white underpants with daises the exact same colour as her dress. His hand was already on her upper thigh and so it wasn’t much of a move to brush a fingertip over the yellow border. Just a millisecond of contact, so swift and light that she couldn’t have noticed, but it was enough to make him feel hot all over. He edged his hand over another millimetre, so his palm remained on her thigh, but his fingers hovered over her flowery crotch. He didn’t touch, just felt the air above her, and imagined, remembered, what she felt like.
As he stared, and hovered, and listened, he was surprised by an erection. It had been months since this had happened without considerable manual effort. Shelley had been good about it, blaming it on the Zoloft he was taking and working tirelessly to bring the sad little fellow to life, but he was rarely able to manage anything past half-mast. If he thought about Sarah and masturbated he could sometimes get really hard, but coming took so long that he couldn’t be bothered.
Sarah told him how when Daniel tried to withdraw from the madness of their life together she had gone crazy. On that night, she said, she had broken Daniel’s nose, cheekbone, and four of his ribs. She had made a hole in his cheek that had never completely healed. She would’ve killed him – yes tiny Sarah would’ve killed him – if he hadn’t managed through his drunkenness and despair and concussion to stop her. He didn’t hurt her. He just held on to her hand until she calmed down, and then he went to the hospital.
Jamie heard all this but it was beyond him to care. This was not only the first erection in as long as he could remember, it was the most insistent he had ever experienced. He pushed his hand between her thighs and moved her legs apart so he could touch her properly. She looked down at his hand and her face crumpled, but she kept talking and let Jamie stroke her through the daisy pants. He knew she would, because she always let men do whatever they wanted to her.
‘When he came out of the hospital, he was different,’ Sarah said. ‘He said that I had proved to him that resistance was pointless. He said that there was nothing left to protect us from each other anymore. We’ve crossed the line.’
The anguish in her voice pricked him, and he was disgusted at himself for taking advantage of her. He withdrew his hand, pressing it hard against the other, concentrating on Sarah’s swollen eyes. ‘That’s crap, Sarah,’ he said. ‘There isn’t a line, and even if there is, there’s no rule to say you can’t cross back and forth as many times as you like.’
She closed her eyes and pressed her lips together, inhaling deeply. Jamie’s heart skipped a beat. He recognised that she was gathering her strength, calling up her inner resources. She was hearing him, and thinking it through and preparing herself to do the hard thing. Jamie grabbed her hands. ‘He’s convinced you that you don’t have a choice, but that’s not right. You’re Sarah Clark! You’re stronger than him, stronger than love or passion or… you’re the strongest person I know. You can’t forfeit your life because you fell for the wrong bloke. Fight this, Sar. You can get over this. I’ll help you. You’re going to get away from him, and have the life you deserve. I’ll give it to you, Sar, I will.’
‘That sounds great.’ She opened her eyes, bringing his hands to her mouth and planting a dry kiss on his knuckles. ‘But the thing is, if I’m away from him, I don’t want any kind of life at all. Deserved or not.’
Jamie realised he could never save her. He would never be able to save Sarah Clark from herself, and the harder he tried the more he would fuck himself up. It was futile to be the nice guy. It was her destiny to fuck and be fucked by every single last arsehole in the country, and she had done that and gone back to the start with the very first arsehole who had used her.
Sarah kept on talking. She was glad she had come because she missed him, but also, talking about Daniel had helped her to clarify the situation. After a year with Daniel she had felt trapped and afraid of the future, but now Jamie had offered her an escape and she knew that she didn’t want that at all. She wanted relief from the madness of her love affair, that was true, but if that meant not having Daniel at all, well, she would endure the insanity. Endure? No, embrace.
Jamie dropped his hands to her thighs, opened her legs wider and knelt between them. She stopped her pathetic rambling. ‘Jamie?’
‘Lean forward.’ She did, and he peeled off her cardigan. Her dress was sleeveless, held up by a bow on each shoulder.
‘Jamie?’
‘Yeah?’ He avoided her eyes while he untied the left shoulder strap.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m listening to you tell me how you’re content to throw your life away for an ageing paedophile.’ He untied the right bow and ran his hands over her bare shoulders. The dress was flimsy and her breasts were so small that Jamie knew it would fall right down if she moved. The anticipation made him harder.
‘I didn’t come here for this.’
Jamie discovered that he could not stand anticipation for very long. It must be because he had been waiting for Sarah in one way or another for a decade. That would stretch anyone’s patience. He nudged the top of her dress and it slipped easily over her flat chest and came to rest on her lap. There were bite marks covering her breasts and stomach. The picture that came to mind was of Sarah lying naked in the grass while a wild dog savaged her. He felt dizzy.
‘Did you hear me, Jamie? I came here to talk to you.’
Sarah’s ribs digging into him had always been a turn on but she looked seriously ill now. Jamie wondered if pressing against her might actually injure her. He sat back on his heels and ran his fingers over her ribcage while she stared at him. He realised he must look crazy, squatting between her legs and meditating on her ribs. He realised he was crazy.
‘You hate talking, Sarah. And I hate listening to all this crap about how much you’re getting hurt and how miserable you are but how you really can’t leave him. You know how much I love you. I lost it when you went away, I lost my fucking mind, but you come here because you feel bad. Because you want good old Jamie to make all the bad feelings go away. You expect me to force a smile, wipe the tears from your cheeks, validate your stupidity, give you a friendly hug, and then go home and jerk off into a sock.’
Sarah didn’t speak or move. Jamie stood up and walked over to his desk. He removed his tie and shirt, hanging them over the back of his chair. He sat down, being careful not to lean back and crush the shirt, and removed his shoes and socks, placing them neatly next to the chair. Standing up again he took off his trousers and lay them carefully over the seat of the chair, and as Sarah watched, he took off his boxers and placed them on top of the pants. When he was naked he turned to her and beckoned. ‘Come here.’
Sarah nodded and stood up, her dress slipping all the way to the floor. She stepped over it without a downward glance and stood in front of Jamie. Her shoulders were stooped, and her arms hung loosely by her sides. ‘Do you really want to do this?’
‘Yeah, I do.’ Jamie lifted her easily and sat her on the desk
with her legs dangling. She did not fight him as he pulled off those stupid underpants and threw them in the corner on top of the stupid dress. Sarah’s body was completely hairless, and he knew he shouldn’t have been surprised. This animal she loved liked her starved and waxed into pre-pubescence while he maimed her. Jamie noticed that her hair was tied back with a yellow ribbon. He pulled it out and hurled it across the room.
‘That hurt,’ she said, as though having a few strands of hair pulled was more painful then being burnt or bitten or having hot wax poured all over you. ‘Why do you want to do this?’
‘Because there isn’t anything else to do with you, Sarah.’
She stroked his hair and his neck. ‘You could talk to me. I miss talking to you, Jamie. You were always saying that I placed too much importance on sex. You once said that you would give up sex if it meant more time talking. Remember?’
‘I remember.’ Jamie took her hands away from his head, held her arms up, and guided her down onto her back. ‘And look where it got me.’
She didn’t make a sound when Jamie pushed into her. Her eyes showed shame, helplessness and a sad sort of tenderness. She was his in a way that she never had been before. The knowledge that he could really hurt her had always made him determined not to, but now her vulnerability appalled him; it was disgusting that she would let him do this to her. And it was more revolting still, that she had allowed this to happen to her so many times with so many men. To just lie there and be penetrated like she was nothing!
The Zoloft gave him the power to go on and on. The friction was painful for him and was without doubt agonising for her. She lay still, silently staring up at him as he worked harder and harder. There was no indication she was even alive, except for the tears running down her cheeks. He closed his eyes.
‘I’m sorry for doing this to you,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry for making you hate me. I didn’t realise. I didn’t understand. I love you. I know it’s no comfort to you, but I want you to know it anyway.’