Smoke in the Room

  ‘Let’s go home, hey? There’s plenty of beer in the fridge.’

  Katie shook her head, smiling at the group across the floor. ‘I like it here. But I reckon the fat one has the hots for me. Probably thinks he could bend me over and have his way before I managed to squeak. Goddamn bully, he’ll get a shock, I tell you. Oh, goody, here he comes!’

  The man walked towards their table slowly, his legs splayed, his groin thrusting with each step. He nodded at Adam and Adam nodded back. He wasn’t sure what this meant. He hoped it meant everything’s cool, but he felt like maybe it meant I’m gonna kick your ass. He had never been in a fight. He had never so much as thrown a punch. He didn’t think being half-wasted with a bald, deranged mouse on his arm was a good starting position, but by the speed with which the nodding man was coming towards him he thought he may not have any choice.

  ‘What the fuck are you supposed to be?’ The man had what Adam used to think of as an Aussie accent. Since coming here he had only heard accents like this on the television, usually from someone wrestling a crocodile. But the accent was beside the point. The dude was leaning over Katie and he was clearly pissed.

  Adam stood, relieved to find he had the advantage of height. ‘Listen –’

  ‘That’s a deep question.’ Katie stood and stepped forward until her forehead was level with the top of the man’s beard. ‘I’ve been asking myself that for years. At one point I thought I was supposed to be the Messiah, but turns out I was delusional. What about you? What are you supposed to be?’

  ‘Me mates and me been making some bets.’ The man stroked his beard. ‘The boys reckon you’re a dyke, but Mel and me think you gotta be one of them skinheads. Little Miss Nazi, or something, eh?’

  ‘Listen, buddy. She’s just –’

  ‘Hush!’ Katie clamped her hand over Adam’s mouth. She laughed. ‘I got in an accident. See the scars?’ She stood on her toes and tilted her face up as though inviting the thug to kiss her goodnight. ‘Motorbike crash. Burnt my face and legs and smashed my skull. They had to shave my noggin before the surgery.’ She made a slow turn, showing off the scabby back of her head, before looking up again with an apologetic smile. ‘Skinhead only in the most literal sense, see?’

  The man stepped back. He nodded at Adam without looking away from Katie. ‘This your old man?’

  ‘Nah, Adam here’s my buddy. He’s a Yank, but don’t hold that against him.’

  ‘So he won’t mind if his buddy hangs out with me and mine then?’ The man moved in closer again, put one hand on Katie’s waist, the other a finger’s width above her arse.

  Adam looked across at the bar; the girl behind it was intent on wiping the counter. He glanced around the room, but the only eyes watching them were from the meathead’s table. ‘Look, we were just –’

  ‘Yeah?’ said the man, pulling Katie’s body against him, her face forced into the drum of his chest.

  ‘Steady on, dude,’ Katie said, ducking out of his grasp.

  ‘Me mates were right, then? You’re a fuckin’ dyke.’

  ‘Nah, just not in the mood for a random grope, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Yeah?’ He reached out with one hand and squeezed her left breast, grimaced and shook his head, then turned and stalked back to his mates.

  Katie grabbed Adam’s arm, pulled him down to sit beside her. ‘Did ya see how yellow his teeth were? And that feral beard? God, as if, right?’

  Adam watched as the men leant into each other, beards blending into beards. He watched the blonde woman roll her eyes and light a cigarette. He watched the four of them get caught up in a game of darts at the back of the pub. The adrenaline that had flooded his body at the man’s approach was bubbling in his veins. His hands made fists and so did his chest and stomach. ‘I should’ve done something.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Defended you.’

  She snorted and took a swig of beer.

  ‘What? You don’t think I could?’

  She touched his face, smiled. ‘Sure you could. But I didn’t need defending, did I?’

  Adam knew what men like that saw when they looked at a girl who advertised her damage with shiny scabs. His rushing blood filled with knowledge of what could happen with a girl like her and a table of men like that and a pub where nobody paid attention.

  ‘Come here.’ He pulled her to him, kissed her on the mouth, slid a hand up her skirt and ran his fingers under the leg of her underwear. She pulled back, emitted a whoop, her eyes shining white in the gloom. She blinked, looked over her shoulder at the man who had groped her, smiled painfully at Adam and leapt at him with more passion than he could ever pretend.

  15.

  ‘Ouch! Fuck, Katie.’ Adam jerked his hand back. His elbow hit the edge of the kitchen table and he swore again.

  ‘Sorry.’ Katie was on her knees in front of him; water seeped out of the cotton balls onto her bare legs. It was hard to be gentle; her blood was on fire. She would have done him in the pub car park and to hell with the police, but he’d mewled like a child, and insisted on coming home. She was anxious to get him cleaned up, into the bedroom, out of his clothes.

  ‘What happened?’ Graeme was in the doorway dressed in his stripy pyjamas.

  ‘Oh my god, Graeme! You should’ve seen it! It was awesome. Adam was awesome.’

  ‘Fight?’ Graeme asked Adam.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Bad?’

  Adam nodded and closed his eyes.

  Katie stood and kissed the top of his head. ‘It wasn’t that bad. On a scale of one to ten, where one is, I don’t know, a kick in the shins with a high-heeled sandal and ten is, like, a pool cue through your liver, this was only a four or five. For a minute there I thought it might spike up to an eight or nine but the bar chick yelled that she’d called the cops and the bikie dudes scuttled.’

  ‘Bikies?’

  ‘There were three of them. Huge, right? And some skanky girl who was only as big as me, but the bitch broke a glass and started like –’ Katie held her hand out in front and jabbed the air. ‘But that was right at the end. At the start it was just Adam and this gross pig who was giving me shit. I told him to piss off basically and then Adam and me were kissing and the dude was all urgh, how about sharing Yank and Adam was all – bam ! Right in his face. And the dude hit back and Adam – oh my god – Adam didn’t even flinch, I swear. He just swung back and pounded this guy. And then this second biker came running at him, and Adam – it was like he had eyes in the back of his head – he just turned and pow right in the mouth. And this big tough fucker, right, his tooth came flying out and –’

  ‘Bullshit,’ Adam spat. ‘I hardly touched that other guy. And no one lost a tooth. Jesus.’

  ‘I saw way more than you,’ Katie reminded him, although already the sequence of events, the layout of the room and the faces of the men were becoming blurry. ‘I saw everything. It was like something out of a movie! You were this total kickarse movie hero. God, I just wanted to –’

  ‘Will you shut up? My head’s killing me.’

  ‘Got some swelling happening there,’ Graeme said. ‘Do you want me to . . . ?’ He gestured to his own face. ‘I can check if anything’s broken?’

  Adam nodded and Graeme crouched in front of him. He pressed Adam’s nose and cheekbones, then lifted his hands and ran his fingers over the knuckles. Katie wished she had a camera. She wanted to always remember how beautiful they both looked in that moment.

  ‘No breaks. You’ll be black and blue for a few days, though, I expect. And if that headache doesn’t go away or if you feel dizzy, go to the hospital. Could be a concussion.’

  Adam grunted his thanks.

  ‘How about you?’ Graeme said to Katie. ‘You hurt?’

  ‘Not at all. I feel great.’

  Graeme nodded towards Adam who was staring at the floor. ‘You should put something on those cuts of his.’

  ‘Yep, I know. Look.’ She pointed to the table. ‘Mercurochrome, cotton
wool, bandaids, got it all here.’

  ‘Okay. Take care, Adam. Goodnight.’

  ‘Night, Graeme. Thanks heaps.’ Katie squatted in front of Adam. ‘How you feeling, Rocky?’

  ‘I feel sick,’ he said. ‘I’ve never hit anyone before.’

  ‘Never would’ve guessed.’ She dabbed mercurochrome-soaked cotton balls over his face. ‘The way you went for him! It was brilliant.’

  ‘Katie, no. It wasn’t. God, how can I . . . ? Listen, there’s this tattoo artist back home with a head like yours, all shaved I mean, and on the back of it he’s had a bear’s face tattooed and his shoulders and neck and back are inked up like a bear, too. He’d do this thing to new people in the shop – he’d strip off his shirt and hat and lunge backwards at them. Now that in itself wasn’t so scary, not past the first second when you figured out what it was you were looking at. But his sincerity, you know . . . It was frightening.’

  ‘Sincerity is disturbing, it’s true. Here, let me put some of this on your knuckles.’

  ‘No, no, listen to me.’ Adam held his hands palm out. His eyes were bloodshot but he sat steadily. ‘I spent hours with this dude while he did my back piece. He used to go on and on about how important his bear art was. He said he was descended from Berserkers, these Norse warriors who wore chopped-off bear heads into battle. Everyone was terrified of them because the masks allowed them to almost become animals, to forget they were human. They had no mercy and no sense; they loved inflicting pain and never seemed to feel any themselves. They ripped flesh from bone with their teeth. They mutilated while they raped and took baths in blood. They –’

  ‘They were brutal, I get it. God, you’re as bad as Graeme with all your massacres and rapes and mutilations.’

  ‘Graeme? What? No, look, these Berserkers, right? People who’d seen what they could do said they must be half-god, but they were just men who’d given themselves permission to be monsters.’

  ‘Yeah, and?’

  ‘And . . . and . . .’ Adam clutched at the air. ‘I don’t know, Katie. I don’t know.’

  ‘I do. You’re doing that self-mythologising thing again. It was only a bar fight, man. You hit someone and it felt good. Accept it and move on.’

  ‘You think I’m talking about me?’ Adam looked like he wanted to spit. ‘Jesus.’ He snatched the pack of bandaids from her, got up and left the room.

  16.

  ‘Graeme. Can I get in? I’m cold.’

  Graeme blinked at the floating red numbers: 3:19. ‘Katie?’ She was in bed beside him. The white of her T-shirt curved away; he sensed her buttocks an inch from his belly. ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘I was lonely. I didn’t think you’d mind.’

  ‘Where’s Adam?’

  ‘In his room. So, do you?’

  ‘Do I what?’

  ‘Mind?’

  He wasn’t even sure he understood the question.

  ‘I know you were sleeping, but I really need some company. Adam won’t speak to me. He went off on some rant about Norse warriors going crazy in battle then locked himself in his room. Drama queen.’ She rolled onto her back and stretched her arms over her head. ‘Leaves me all worked up.’

  Graeme closed his eyes. He ran her words through his mind, grappling to make sense of them. Her breath was loud beside him. ‘Er, the Norse . . . Was it, um, was he talking about the fey?’

  ‘Don’t think so. Maybe. Were they the dudes who wore bear heads?’

  ‘No, no. Fey was a word the Norse used. It meant doomed.’ He yawned. ‘If a warrior got into a fey mindset he lost all fear, became crazy-brave or just stupid and reckless because he knew it didn’t matter what he did, he’d die anyway. Now if you called a soldier “fey”, people would think you were calling him weak or effeminate or something, but I’ve never come across a better word to describe it. It’s something we still see sometimes in refugees from war zones, child soldiers, especially. Feyness.’

  ‘I think you may be the smartest person I ever met. How do you know all this stuff?’

  He laughed. ‘I read a lot.’

  ‘You don’t have any books.’

  ‘I used to,’ he said. ‘I gave most of them away.’

  ‘God, this place is too small for you, isn’t it?’ She rolled over, facing him. ‘You can store stuff in my room if you want or in Adam’s. He’s never in there, anyway. Just, please don’t move out. I like having you here.’ She flopped onto her back and Graeme let out the breath he’d been holding.

  ‘It’s so nice to have someone to do this with,’ she went on. ‘Lie in the dark and talk, like little children. Not that I ever did this. Mum went apeshit if I breathed too loud in the night. I was so jealous of the kids at school who had brothers and sisters. I imagined they cuddled up in bed at night and whispered secrets to each other. Did you ever do that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Were you an only child or were your olds really strict?’

  ‘I had a brother,’ he said, feeling even as he said it that it was not true, that he was inventing a brother the way he used to invent parents to describe to his classmates. He could not conjure up a face or a voice to identify his brother from all the other boys he’d known as a child. ‘I didn’t really know him. I mostly grew up in foster homes. There were lots of kids around.’

  ‘Gran used to threaten me with foster care. What was it like?’

  ‘Have you read Lord of the Flies?’

  ‘Nah. Not really into books.’

  ‘There was a film.’

  ‘I’m not much of a movie watcher, either. Too hard to stay still. Any good?’

  ‘I suppose it is, but I asked because . . .’ He shifted onto his back. His erection pushed at his pyjama pants. ‘It’s about a group of kids stranded on an island with no adults. They turn feral, wild. Devise all kinds of cruelties and tortures.’

  ‘And that’s what foster care was like?’ Katie slithered down the bed and hooked her legs back so her smooth, cool feet touched his rough, warm ones.

  ‘Yes. No. I’m being dramatic. Some of the foster families were perfectly nice, but some weren’t. Some of the kids had been treated cruelly, had dreadful things happen to them, or in front of them. Sometimes they acted these things out. It’s not unusual, victims becoming perpetrators. Brutality breeding brutality.’

  ‘Like in that prison in Iraq. The soldiers went all terrorist on the terrorists. You know the one? Front page of all the newspapers, on every channel. Naked pyramids and growly dogs. Thumbs up and smiles. Electrocuted if you fall.’

  ‘Abu Ghraib.’

  ‘Yeah. Man, those pictures scared me. I couldn’t get them out of my head, but then I thought, Jesus, Katie, this is so not about you. Like there’s this war and all this death and pain and I was safe in bed feeling sorry for myself because the photos upset me. Self-absorbed or what?’

  He sensed she was becoming agitated again. ‘That’s normal,’ he said, speaking low and slow. ‘When something like Abu Ghraib, the war, wars . . . when something like that happens there’s more than enough pain and fear to go round. We all get our share. There’s no shame in feeling horrified, even if the horror is for yourself. Better that than apathy.’

  ‘One time,’ she said, her feet dancing over his. ‘I saw this bloke on the bus and he was so fat he couldn’t sit down. He had to stand in the aisle – right up front where it’s wide, where the wheelchairs and prams go – and when new people got on they’d have to squeeze by him and they all pulled a face like ugh, disgusting. I started feeling bad for him, thinking he must be a really sad person with no one to talk to and no one to cuddle and kids shouting lard arse when he goes by.’ She took a loud, quivering breath. ‘But then I thought, Don’t take on other people’s pain, so I looked out the window and thought about what I’d ask Gran to get me for Christmas. I didn’t even notice where he got off, which was like, hooray for me. But in bed that night I started bawling: maybe I was the only person in the universe who bothered to worry about that man and n
ow that I had stopped there would be no one.’ She exhaled heavily and then sucked her breath in again.

  Graeme pulled himself up on one elbow and inched forward. He placed his palm on the back of her stubbly head and her shoulders heaved. He lay down behind her and rubbed her back the way he’d seen mothers rub the backs of crying infants, with long, firm strokes from the shoulder blades to the tailbone and back again. She gradually quietened. When her body was still and her breathing slow, he let his hands drop. A minute passed and then another one. ‘I better let you go to sleep,’ she said, finally, slipping out of bed. She bent and kissed his forehead and then padded lightly out of his room.

  Graeme closed his eyes and saw the back of Katie’s neck as clearly as if she was still lying next to him. More clearly, in fact, since the room had been too dark to see much detail. Behind his eyelids the image was sharp: the ridge protruding at the top of her backbone, the unbroken arc of her neck.

  No – it was another girl he was remembering. She lay just like that – on her side, head bowed, arms wrapped around her knees. She was young – they both were – and he’d thought they were in love. He’d thought she would be impressed by his decisiveness, his refusal to take no for an answer, his gallant acceptance of responsibility. No, that’s what he told himself afterwards. Truth was he hadn’t thought of her reaction at all. He’d just felt and acted and then lay foggy and sated until the realisation seeped in and the rationalisations began.

  Poor kid, he thought now. Poor kids.

  17.

  As the night paled, Katie curled herself around Adam. The blankets puddled at his feet. He got feverish-hot when he slept, and so she did not need blankets either when she was pressed against him. He made her hot when he was awake, but that was just sexual. When he slept, his heat was calming, nourishing. Katie kissed the goddess, reached around and stroked his chest fuzz, circled his belly-button, followed the trail to his penis. She cradled it in her palm and closed her gritty eyes.