‘Where’s the girl?’ she said
‘With Belinda. Are her parents coming?’
‘No.’
‘Did you call them?’
‘That would be a breach of confidentiality.’ Her voice was husky, her eyes puffy. Her hair was sticking up all over her head.
‘She’s a child.’
‘She’s sixteen and she’s not your concern.’
‘Aggie, a troubled girl is my concern. Her defenceless baby is my concern.’
Aggie closed her eyes. ‘Luke, please don’t be difficult. I’ve had a really bad day.’
‘I’m very sorry you’ve had a bad day, Aggie, but I’m not going to hand a girl over to you so you can assist in the murder of her child. We can talk this through and work out –’
‘I didn’t come here for a discussion. I told my client I would drive her home, and I intend to do so. If you interfere, I will call the police and then I will call a lawyer.’
‘Aggie, please –’
‘No. Go tell my client I am here.’
Luke stood and looked out the window. The oak had no answers for him. He looked, instead, to the sandy brick wall of his apartment. If he leant out his office window, he could touch the wall with his fingertips, and sometimes when he was working late at night, he’d imagine crawling through the window, rather than making the long, cold trek around the block to the door of his little home. Today, he looked through his bedroom window and saw the room as Aggie would see it: bare, grim, cold. He thought of her home with its burgundies and golds, its rich velvet curtains, and deep shagpile carpets.
‘Fine. I’ll find her myself. Thanks for nothing.’
‘Wait!’ Luke turned from the window. ‘Don’t be angry. It’s too much, really. Your passion and fortitude in the face of . . . I find you distracting at the best of times, but when you’re all . . . I can’t keep track of anything. I just don’t . . .’
‘Fuck.’ Aggie put her head in her hands. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,’ she said into her hands, and then looking up with red-rimmed eyes, she said it again, with extra emphasis.
‘Stop saying that.’ Luke sat on the floor, the wall supporting his jelly-like spine.
‘Fuck you.’
‘No, Aggie, fuck you.’
She gasped, putting a hand over her mouth. ‘Did you just say fuck you?’
‘I’m sorry.’
She started to giggle and he looked up at her sharply. She came and sat beside him. The series of movements that resulted in her head being on his shoulder, his arm around her back, her hand on his knee, happened without him consciously deciding that they would.
‘God, Luke, why the hell can’t I accept the impossibility of this?’
He sighed.
‘I have to go.’ Aggie did not get up, but her body stiffened as though she was preparing to.
‘Please try and understand. I can’t be unequally yoked. I’ve turned it over in my head a million times, but I can’t –’
‘I’m going.’ She lifted her hand from his knee, her head from his shoulder. ‘I’ve had enough Christian shit thrown at me for one day.’
‘I don’t mean to throw anything at you. Just let me . . . Let me explain, please?’
She met his eyes, challenging, waiting.
‘I think of you as a very dear –’ he began, then changed tack. ‘We all have our cross to bear, Aggie, and I always thought mine was my loneliness, but it turns out it’s you. How I feel about you. Do you see?’
‘Do you care about me, Luke?’
‘Oh, Aggie! Care? I care so much, it’s just that –’
‘Every time you talk like this, it hurts me. Every time you talk like I’m not good enough for you, like I have some deep, moral flaw that stops you from – I love you, and I know you know that and when you act as if my love is valueless, it hurts me.’
‘No, no. Not valueless. Not that.’
‘No, a burden. A fucking cross. I have to go.’
‘No! Look, I want to kiss you, Aggie. Okay? I really do, but – oh!’
Hot breath, dry lips, shock of a tongue forcing his lips apart, surprise at how wet and warm the inside of her mouth felt, kissing back without fear or awkwardness. One of her hands was massaging the back of his head, the other tickling the side of his neck. His own had somehow ended up tangled in her curls. The hand on his neck slid to his shoulder and he became aware that she was trying to end the kiss.
‘Luke,’ she whispered into his open mouth. He silenced her by forcing his tongue back in her mouth. She reciprocated, moaning softly, increasing the pressure on the back of his head, squeezing his shoulder hard. Then just as suddenly as it had all started, it stopped.
‘Shit.’ Aggie was back beside him, her head against the wall, her hands pressed between her knees. Her hair stuck right up at the back of her head where he had been tugging at it. He reached out and smoothed it down, which made her close her eyes and whisper ‘shit’ again.
‘I thought it was nice, although I have nothing to compare it to.’
‘It was nice.’
‘So when you say shit –’
‘I mean it was really nice.’ She looked at him with narrowed eyes. ‘When you say nothing to compare it to, you mean, not much?’
Luke brought her hands up to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. ‘I mean nothing. No one. Never.’
‘Shit,’ she said. ‘Why –’
Luke kissed her again.
‘I really have to go,’ Aggie said.
‘Yes.’ Luke drew back and stared at her, red-faced and glassy-eyed. Then he kissed her again, laughed and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘We better get up.’
Aggie nodded toward the door. ‘Ready to face the world?’
‘Yes,’ he said, but then grabbed her by the shoulders and kissed her some more. ‘Sorry, I can’t seem to stop,’ he said, pushing her against the wall, then, ‘Sorry,’ as his tongue invaded her mouth again.
‘Are you going to apologise every time you kiss me?’
He kissed her. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered, barely pausing. ‘I really am very, very sorry about this.’ His lips, his tongue, his bitter-sweet coffee breath, his hands in her hair, on her neck, on her shoulders, pressing her against the wall.
Aggie was coming apart. Whatever kept body and mind together was dissolving, so that when she was thinking Stop I have to go What is happening to me, what came out of her mouth was ‘I never knew I could want somebody this much.’
He moaned and pressed his body hard against her, kissing behind her ear, sliding his hand from her shoulder to her left breast. ‘I love you, my Aggie, my beautiful, incredible – oh, you feel so amazing, how can I –’
There was a sharp rap on the door. ‘Luke, you in there?’
‘Oh!’ Luke jumped backwards with his hands held out as though they’d been burnt. He looked from the door to Aggie’s breasts to his hands to Aggie’s face. ‘I didn’t mean to –’
The door opened. Belinda and Honey stood staring at them.
Luke shook his head at Aggie. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘What did you do?’ Belinda said.
Luke frowned at Aggie and then turned to Belinda and Honey with a smile. ‘I swore. We were discussing the people who broke the window and I got so upset that I said something I shouldn’t have.’
Relief washed over Belinda’s face. Honey, on the other hand, was looking at Luke as though he had just told them he’d been abducted by little green men who’d performed experimental surgery on his brain. ‘You swore?’ she said. ‘You’re apologising to her because you swore?’
Luke nodded, shrugging at Belinda.
Aggie felt like slapping his face. ‘And I’m grateful for the apology. It’s not like I’m defending the people who did it, I think they’re total bastards, but saying that they’re motherfuckers who should be held down and anally raped with a red-hot crucifix – well, that’s going a bit too far.’ She turned back to Luke and smiled. ‘So thanks for the apol
ogy.’
Luke looked like he was about to throw up. He smiled, nodded at Belinda and walked quickly out of the room. Aggie tried not to scream.
‘Gosh, he must have been so angry!’ Belinda shook her head at the doorway. ‘He’ll torture himself over this. He’ll probably fast for a week.’ She turned to Aggie. ‘He’s very devout. Once he caught some kids from group calling out insults to a little Muslim girl walking through the park. He went nuts at them. You could hear him yelling from across the street, then afterwards, when I reminded him about James 1:19, he –’
‘James 1:19?’
‘Sorry, Aggie, I forgot. James 1:19 tells us to be slow to anger. Something dear Luke forgot when he was scolding those boys.’
‘Ha!’ said Honey. ‘Sounds like they deserved it. I would have kicked their arses for picking on a little girl.’
‘So anyway, Luke felt so bad about being quick to anger that he didn’t talk for a fortnight.’
‘Remarkable.’
‘That’s our Luke.’ Belinda beamed. ‘Honey is feeling a lot better. Unfortunately she is a bit blinded by all that pro-choice propaganda that you – that some people around here disseminate, but it isn’t really my place to try and change her mind. Luke says that we aren’t to interfere in what you – sorry, what the clinic over the street does and so even though I really believe that what you – what they are –’
‘Thanks, Belinda, that’s very tolerant of you. Honey, ready?’
‘Please.’
Aggie and Honey walked fast, pretending not to hear Belinda calling out to them to stay and have a cup of tea.
‘How are you?’ Aggie asked when they were safely across the street.
‘Fucked.’
‘Sorry you got caught up in all this. I’m going to organise another appointment for you, and I’m going to pick you up at your house and drive you to the surgery myself, okay?’
‘Thanks.’ Honey was quiet until they were sitting in the car. Then she turned to Aggie with a sly smile. ‘Luke’s kinda hot.’
Aggie carefully checked the position of her rearview mirror. ‘I suppose.’
‘Nice guy too. I mean, for one of them.’
‘Sometimes.’
‘I suppose he’s already taken, though. Probably engaged to that Belinda chick.’
‘Ha! She wishes.’
‘You’ve got the hots for him.’
Aggie started the engine. ‘Seat-belt please.’
Honey fastened her belt. ‘Come on, Aggie, it’s so obvious.’
‘You better tell me where I’m going, because I have no idea.’
Honey gave her directions to what was the worst street, in the most violent housing estate, situated on the wrong side of the railway tracks that cut right through the roughest suburb in the district.
‘Give me your number and I’ll call to let you know when the appointment is,’ Aggie said outside Honey’s house. Fibro, tin roof, chipboard for windows. Not bars. Chipboard. And grass so overgrown its blades could conceal bodies. An uprooted letterbox lay across the concrete driveway.
‘It’s 9 6 3 – oh.’ Honey looked out the window. ‘Actually, the phone isn’t working at the moment.’
‘No problem. You can pop in and see me after school tomorrow and we’ll sort it out.’
The back of Honey’s head moved up and down. Aggie could see in the side mirror that she was crying.
‘Is anyone else home right now?’
The blonde plait swung side to side.
‘You live with your parents?’
Honey cleared her throat, but when she spoke, her voice was still thick with tears. ‘Mum and her husband. Muzza. He’s not my father. Thank Christ.’
‘You don’t like him?’
She snorted. ‘He’s a junkie. And a pig. Last year he went to jail for a couple of months. God, that was nice.’
‘Does he hurt you? Is that why he went to prison?’
‘Nah.’
‘He doesn’t hurt you?’
‘That’s not why he got locked up.’ Honey sniffed, pressed her forehead to the window, cleared her throat again. ‘This is how stupid the man is. He reckoned a supposed friend of his, another dealer, had sold him some dodgy crack. So after he’s finished yelling at me and mum about it, he grabs the crack and a steak knife and heads off down the TAB to confront his mate. Of course the manager at the TAB calls the cops, because there are these two stupid junkies swiping at each other with knives. And – duh! – not only are they both arrested for disturbing the peace or whatever, but Muzza – the idiot! – has a pocket full of crack. I’ve never met anyone so stupid.’
‘It must be tough having to see your mum with someone so dumb. You must wonder why she married him.’
The girl shrugged. ‘I don’t care. She can do what she wants.’
‘You want to know why Luke was apologising to me?’
‘Not for swearing?’
‘Nope.’
‘What then?’
‘He grabbed my tits.’
‘What?’ Honey spun around, her thick plait whipping the window. Her cheeks were wet. ‘Just out of the blue?’
‘Well, he was kissing me at the time.’
‘You!’ Honey slapped Aggie’s thigh. ‘I knew there was something going on there. Sucked in, Belinda. The whole time she was lecturing me about morals and her precious Luke was . . .’ Honey gave a short laugh, and then the old haunted look returned to her eyes. ‘I’ve never known a man who would apologise for that. Or for anything.’
‘You’re only sixteen. You haven’t known that many men.’
‘You’d be surprised.’
‘I’ll see you tomorrow, right?’
Honey smiled and looked ten years old. ‘Can’t wait,’ she said.
16.
For the first time in his life, Luke could not pray. He didn’t even try.
If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear.
His penis and testicles were in agony. For fifteen years he had resisted the urge to touch himself, but the pressure in his genitals was such that if he didn’t get relief he would have to cut the darn things off.
Oh Lord, why have you forsaken me?
He sought out the only person who could possibly understand. Greg was slouched in a beanbag watching a game show in the rec room, but he turned the volume down and sat up straight when Luke asked him for a word.
‘Hey, Luke, listen, man, it was all Belinda’s idea. We told her to leave it alone.’
‘Leave what alone?’
‘The thing about Aggie. Didn’t Belinda talk to you?’
‘Yes, she spoke to me. I didn’t realise she’d spoken to everyone else first. I don’t appreciate secret meetings behind my back, Greg. I have never been anything but welcoming to you guys when you want to talk.’
‘I know, Luke, really, it wasn’t like a secret meeting or anything. Belinda just asked us all if we noticed that you seemed to be kind of hooked on Aggie, and we all said that just because you hang out a lot doesn’t mean you’re hooked.’
‘I’ve been trying to witness to her. I’m called to save her.’
‘That’s what Leticia said. Exactly that. And Kenny said that we shouldn’t even be talking about it. He said that no good comes of gossiping and guessing. And I, well, like I told you, man, I said just leave it alone, it’s none of our business.’
Luke leant forward, keeping his voice low. ‘Greg, if you saw that a member of our community was sliding into sin would you think it was none of your business? Would you turn your back and leave them to it?’
‘Course I wouldn’t, man, but –’
‘But I’m different? I’m somehow less human, less prone to weakness and temptation? You think I am above sin, or am I below your concern?’
Greg held up his palms. ‘Luke, come on. If I saw you losing your way I would totally call you on it, but I haven’t seen that. I’ve just seen you making friends with Aggie, who’s a really nice lady, and if you –’
/> ‘I love her, Greg. I’m half-mad over her.’
‘Oh.’ Greg dropped his hands to his lap.
‘What do I do?’
‘Oh, man . . .’ He shrugged. ‘You should talk to Leticia, she’s better at this stuff.’
‘But you understand, right? You know about this craziness; you’ve explained it to me before, but I never understood. Leticia won’t understand either; only someone who has suffered this way could know how it feels.’
Greg shook his head, his eyes wide. ‘I don’t know about love. Not a thing. I just know about the other. The non-love, remember? You told me that, Luke. Lust is the opposite of love. Using someone for your own pleasure is a form of violence, an expression of contempt. I was addicted to the sex, but I’ve never been in love.’
‘Right.’ Luke put his head in his hands. Lust is the opposite of love. He had said it a thousand times – lust being a great topic among teenagers – but now it seemed laughable. ‘Greg, I think I was wrong, maybe. I think . . .’ He looked up. Greg was working a hole into the floor with the toe of his shoe. ‘I think that maybe you can love a person and feel lust for them. Maybe the problem is in acting on that lust?’
Greg kept watching his foot grind into the lino.
‘What do you think?’
‘I don’t . . .’ Greg looked up at Luke. ‘You gotta pray about this one.’
‘Yeah. I am, don’t worry.’ Luke forced a smile and stood up. ‘Can we keep this between us?’
‘Yeah, course.’
Luke headed for the door but was stopped by Greg’s hand on his shoulder. ‘Ah, Luke? Can I tell you something? It’s sorta embarrassing.’
‘You know you can tell me anything.’
‘It’s just . . . Sometimes my own . . . my feelings of lust come back and I want to pray about it but I feel too . . .’
‘Too agitated?’
Greg nodded, his face turning pink. ‘So anyway, I head to the park and I run and I run and I run until the only, ah, urge I have is for a hot shower and eight hours of sleep. Then I pray.’ He bit his lip. ‘I just wanted to let you know what was going on with me. You know, if you were wondering.’
Luke wanted to hug him, but patted his shoulder instead. ‘Good for you,’ he said. Then he went for a long, long run.