An Isolated Incident

  ‘And a particularly needy boyfriend by the sound of it.’

  Chris rocked back on her heels. The sun through the front windows made her hair look auburn, her skin glow. May raised her camera and took what she guiltily, excitedly, thought of as the cover shot. ‘Not particularly, no. Pretty nice guy. Maybe he did have allergies. I don’t know. I find myself thinking the worst of everyone these days.’

  With the site visit, the apartment clean-out and several hours of home interviews, May knew she had enough to close the deal with Women’s Weekly. She spent the evening working on the pitch package, sent it off at 8 pm. Called Chas and told him she was in the mood to celebrate.

  ‘Yeah? They arrest someone?’

  ‘Oh, no. It’s just . . . It’s stupid. A small work victory.’

  ‘How small? Champagne or beer?’

  ‘Beer. But the good stuff.’

  ‘Right, VB it is.’

  May laughed. Craig wouldn’t have even got that joke, the elitist prick.

  *

  ‘Did you hear anything about the fight Nate Cartwright got into the other night?’

  ‘No offence, darl, but your pillow talk could use some work.’

  ‘Sorry. Oh, baby, oh, baby, you’re the best I’ve ever had. Did the earth move for you too, etcetera?’

  ‘Cold, cold woman.’

  ‘Well, if you don’t want to talk . . .’ She sat up, made to get out of bed. He dragged her back down with one arm, not opening his eyes or changing position.

  ‘We off the record?’

  ‘If you insist.’

  ‘I insist.’ He wriggled his arm so she was tucked in against his chest. ‘Word is that the Giggler –’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The bloke got his head beaten in. Everyone calls him the Giggler ’cause that’s what he does, but like, not when something’s funny, just randomly. Nervous tic or something.’

  ‘Well, that’s creepy.’

  ‘S’pose. Anyway, he thought Chris was his, which is fucking stupid because everyone knows she’s Nate’s and –’

  ‘Chris is a grown woman. She doesn’t belong to anyone but herself.’

  ‘It’s just an expression. Don’t get your knickers in a knot.’

  ‘Not wearing any, so there. And it’s a shit expression. Say what you actually mean.’

  ‘Chris does her thing and that’s fine, a good time is had by all but everyone knows that’s all it is. At the end of the day, she’s Nate’s girl and always will be.’

  ‘Even if he’s with someone else now.’

  ‘Not saying it’s good, just telling you how it is. Look, you’ll hear some shit talked about Chris because of how she handles herself, but I reckon she goes about it just right.’

  ‘Can we cut the coyness? She takes money for sex, yes?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He stretched the word out. ‘That’s my point. I mean, however good a time you have, however sweet she is to you, if you’re paying her, it’s pretty fucking clear she’s not your girlfriend, you know?’

  ‘I’m not your girlfriend and you don’t pay me.’

  ‘What do you call a six-pack of Coopers? Speaking of . . .’ He slithered his arm out from under her, crawled to the end of the bed, gave her an eyeful as he leant down to the bar fridge and pulled out a couple of beers.

  ‘So you’re telling me that Strathdee rules are that if a woman has sex without accepting payment it means she’s betrothed.’

  He knocked her arm with the icy bottle. ‘It’s a little more complicated than that and that’s exactly the problem in this situation because the Giggler is not a complicated man. One might even say he’s simple. So, right, word has it that Chris let Giggler have a go without charging. Not unheard of. She’s got her fuck buddies like anyone else, just usually they’re blokes who know the difference. Like I said, though, this one’s bright as a two-watt bulb. He got a freebie and thought it meant something. Chris took him around to Nate so he’d get the message that it didn’t.’

  ‘You ever been with Chris?’

  He let out a small burp. ‘Years and years ago. Pre-Nate.’

  ‘Why not post-Nate? You and her would get on well I’d think.’

  ‘We get on great, yeah. She’s a top bird. Just a bit old for me, to be honest.’

  ‘You’re the same age.’

  ‘And when I was twenty-five, that was fine.’

  ‘Ugh.’

  ‘It’s biology. Men are drawn to youth. Not my fault if I’m not attracted to women over thirty.’

  ‘This must’ve been really hard for you then. I appreciate the effort you’ve made to hide your lack of attraction.’

  ‘You’re not over thirty.’

  ‘I’ll be thirty-one next month.’

  ‘Yeah, well, Sydney thirty-one is like Strathdee twenty-five.’

  ‘I’m so flattered. No, wait, I mean, appalled and offended.’

  ‘Sorry. What was it? Oh, baby, oh, baby, you’re the best I’ve ever had . . .’

  ‘Alright. So tell me this: you live in a small town, you work your way through all the women in their twenties – then what?’

  ‘Long as people keep having daughters there’ll keep being women in their twenties.’

  ‘So you have no problem with sleeping with the daughters and then granddaughters of former lovers? You are really, really gross, you know that?’

  ‘I’m honest.’

  ‘And what happens when the twenty-somethings start screwing up their noses at the gross old man cracking on to them?’

  ‘Come on. Can you imagine saying no to me? At any age? Never happened, never will.’ He got to his knees, shook his dick in her face. She drank some beer, faked the lack of interest he deserved.

  ‘I don’t believe for one second that nobody has said no to you.’

  ‘Well, okay, yeah.’ He fell back against the pillows. ‘My wife says it a fair bit.’

  ‘Maybe she’s attracted to young flesh.’

  ‘Don’t talk about her, okay?’

  ‘You’re the one –’

  ‘Bella.’

  May’s breath caught in her throat. ‘What?’

  ‘Bella said no.’

  ‘Um. Wow. What happened?’

  ‘No “wow”, no big story. She was a good-looking girl, of course I tried it on with her. She was sweet about it. Told me she thought I was lovely but she was seeing someone.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘I don’t know. A year ago? About that.’

  ‘Did she say who she was seeing?’

  ‘Nah. I think she was making it up, to be honest. Not a good feeling, having a girl lie to let you down easy, like you’re some sensitive little . . . Anyway, there you go. My story of shattering sexual rejection. Happy now?’

  ‘She was seeing someone, I think. He was married so she couldn’t say.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Chas took a long swig of his beer, shook his head. ‘Good for my ego if that’s true, but, gotta say, a bit disappointing. Married man. Didn’t think she was like that.’

  ‘Like me?’

  ‘Don’t take it personal. If you’d ever met her you’d understand.’

  ‘And yet you, a married man, hit on her and was upset she knocked you back.’

  He scrunched up his face. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘It’s always different when it’s you.’

  ‘S’pose.’ He sighed. ‘I should go home.’

  May kissed her way down his chest and belly. People who knew her would be surprised at what she was doing. Or no, not what, but to whom. People who knew her would say what Chas just had about Bella, she was sure. Nobody had known about Craig and nobody would know about this and so May got to go through life unscorned (except by the man she was doing it with) and she guessed that was why she didn’t feel like she was the
kind of girl who screwed married men.

  Or maybe this was exactly what being that kind of girl felt like. It felt like being lonely and uncertain and excited and anxious about enjoying the company of a man who speaks frankly even while finding some of the things he says a bit upsetting. It felt like wondering if you were a bad feminist because the scent of a man’s groin sends blood to your cunt and the way he grips your hair and groans gets you dripping wet and knowing you are a bad feminist and a bad person because there are more important things than wanting a man and wanting a man to want you, things like dignity and sisterhood and not wanting to cause harm in the world but you feel that there’s something wrong with you that you can’t help because when it comes to making the choice the hands and the voice and the smell and the cock, yeah, be honest, the cock makes you ignore all that, wilfully just put it out of your head and that doesn’t mean you don’t know it all, wouldn’t say it all to some other woman thinking this was an okay way to live, but it’s different because you know it’s not okay you just can’t help it and that – this – climbing on a man who’s begging you in the filthiest, most un-respectful way to do exactly what you want to do anyway while also thinking I hate myself but then coming so hard that the hate is replaced with certainty that there isn’t actually any better thing in the world that you could be doing and knowing this is why you keep on doing it because this is it, the whole fucking point of all of it – and then that’s over and you’re sticky and shivery and he’s closing the door behind him and you get up and shower and get on with your bloody day.

  Is that how Bella felt when she was riding the man whose wife was at home dying of cancer? Did she fuck herself into self-loathing and out the other side again and call herself the names that no one else could because they didn’t know she was like that? Like May.

  And if May had been grabbed and pulled into a car and men did to her things that ended in police photos that scorch the brain and soul of some try-hard crime reporter, if that was happening to May would she think (she thinks it now and wishes it away no no no no) that the men had seen it in her, what she’d done, what she was, and this was what happened, what you had to expect?

  Because if Bella was like May, if the same tracks had been laid in her deepest secret self, if the thoughts that sped through unstoppably in those moments of terror were these ones, then that was the most unbearable thing of all. I am, May thought, pulling on her running shoes, because what else could she do right now with this this this in her, unable to bear this.

  Friday, 1 May

  It was getting harder and harder to leave the house. Every time I made a move to get dressed in something other than undies, pyjamas or a nightie she’d start me shivering or shaking, give me dizzy spells, make it so I couldn’t breathe right. I had to say, out loud, very firmly, ‘I’m only going to the supermarket,’ or, ‘I’m only popping across to Lisa’s,’ or whatever and then after a minute or two I’d feel normal enough to go. And the very thought of going to work or even into the pub for a quick beer and catch-up with Grey set her off something wicked. I mean, it would have been funny if it wasn’t so frightening. The second I’d picture the place my insides would start trying to get out.

  One time I tried ignoring it, just breathing and breathing and telling myself you’re fine you’re fine you’re fine just like I used to when I’d drunk too much on a night out and got worried about throwing up in the taxi or some bloke’s car. And it worked, too. I pushed myself through the feeling and made it as far as the front door. I opened it and, geez, that fresh night air, it was a wonder.

  There was quite a wind up, actually, but I’ve always loved going out when the weather was on the edge of wild. The racing heart and flipping stomach were forgotten. I stepped out, ridiculously excited about feeling the wind lift my hair and whoosh past my ears. Somewhere at the end of a street a car backfired and I guess I was a bit jumpy. I sort of skittered back into the house and from there, just inside the doorway, as I was ready to head out again, I could hear her crying her little heart out. Made me start up too, of course.

  I asked her over and over how I could help, what she wanted, but the only reply I got was dizziness and shooting pains and cold and hot flushes charging over each other every thirty goddamn seconds.

  Exhausted, I stopped asking and gave up on the idea of leaving. I locked us back up inside and put on one of her old CDs and all was calm in the house again but not in my heart. I never knew having her back with me would be so painful. That’s a terrible thing to say, I know, but I don’t mean I didn’t want her there. Only that it was so hard to know how to live with her anymore.

  We do have a couple of biddies calling themselves psychics right here in town, but even if I thought any of them had genuine abilities I wouldn’t’ve gone to them. The more my life is hung out to flap in the wind like bedsheets the more I cling to my privacy. The whole town might know every last thing about the parade of dicks through my house, about my stalking that shithead, about the drinking and Nate and all, but I was damned if they’d know I’d got desperate enough to visit a goddamn woo-woman.

  I did tell Lisa, but. I trusted her to keep it mum. She called up her friend who knew about such things and after a bit of back and forth she booked me in with someone called Lorna, up in Sydney.

  I got Lis to drive me to the station so there was no problem getting out of the house. I used to love catching the Sydney train. Used to do it almost every weekend in my early twenties. I had a bloke up there. I’d met him when he came through Strathdee on a footy trip. He hated the place. Hated it. So he’d never come down to visit me, always me up there to him. I didn’t mind, but. That train trip was time out. Nobody barking orders, nobody asking questions, nobody feeling me up. Just me and my thoughts, the cattle and canola.

  My thoughts aren’t what they used to be, though. The whole way, this goddamn loop. Bella’s poor body, Bella’s voice, Nate’s face, Nate’s voice, that other man on me and Nate on him, David Hunt’s hands and his girlfriend’s belly and back to the start again. I dozed off at one point between Gunning and Bundanoon and had one of those thick, twisting nightmares that leave you feeling hurt and haunted but unsure why.

  Lorna’s flat was in Surry Hills, a hard walk uphill from Central. I was knackered and sweating like a pig when I got there. I wanted to stand outside a bit, catch my breath and cool off, but she must’ve been looking out for me because she swung the door open before I’d even thought of ringing the bell.

  She was about the age my mum would be if she’d lived, and she had over-bleached fairy-floss hair like Mum, too. I’d been expecting her to be dressed like Lisa, all floaty skirts and bangles, but she was in pale jeans with a crease right down the front and a lolly-pink oversized t-shirt. The room she led me too was all done up like her. Light blue carpet and curtains, pink chairs with white trim, a table draped with a pale pink-and-blue-striped cloth.

  I sat down in the chair across from where she’d sat herself, draping the jumper I hadn’t needed since Yass over the back. When I turned to face her she was looking really bloody pointedly at my cleavage. I thought about putting my jumper on, but I was sick with heat as it was. Maybe if the bitch cracked a window or, God forbid, put on the ceiling fan, I could’ve covered up a bit.

  Still looking down her nose at my tits, she told me how much and waited while I paid and then she started to give me instructions. I had to interrupt her and ask for a glass of water, I was that parched from the train and the walk uphill. Honestly, it’s like I’d asked for a three-course meal, the look she gave me. But she went out of the room and I heard a tap go on and off and then she was back with a butter-yellow ceramic jug of water and a tall amber glass.

  She waited for me to pour and gulp down some water and then refill the glass before she took up where I’d interrupted her.

  ‘Take one of those.’ She pointed to a stack of notepaper on the corner of the desk closest to me. ‘Write down the name
s of the people you want me to reach. Then cover the paper with this.’ She handed me a piece of thick black cardboard.

  ‘There’s only one person I –’

  ‘More than one,’ she said. ‘At least two. Two people is the minimum you can write. Go on. I’ll cover my eyes if that’s what you’re worried about.’

  I wasn’t worried about that. If I was worried about anything it was spewing up the water I’d just guzzled. I thought about telling her I felt sick and leaving, but while I was just sitting there she made this annoyed sound, this big sigh, and I thought, Fuck you, I’m going to stay and see what damn bullshit you come up with.

  I scribbled down Bella and Mum, thinking of the ways I’d tell this cow off, tell her what a fraud she was, demand my money back. Just to mess with her I added Rosie and Clive. Rosie was my grandmother, who died when I was two and who apparently only saw me twice before then. Clive was Nate’s dad who died last year. I saw him twice, too: on my wedding day and when he came to help Nate move his stuff out.

  Lorna slapped her hand over the cardboard as soon as I’d placed it, slid it towards her and then spread both palms over it while muttering to herself like a meth-head. Every few seconds her closed eyes would flutter half open. My guts felt like I’d binged on Maccas after a big night drinking.

  ‘Alright, love, Granny’s here. Oh, yes, yes.’ Lorna’s voice was soft, gentle. Like she was talking to someone she cared about instead of a bosom-flaunting, panting, sweating, water-wanting country sow. ‘Alright, alright. Darling, Granny says she’s sorry for leaving early. If she coulda stayed longer she would have. She thinks things might’ve turned out differently if she’d been around. Says she never would’ve let any of you get hurt. Oh, love, she’s crying. She’s very distressed. Oh, I need to leave her be for a bit. There are others coming through not on the paper. Shouty bunch around you. Wait, wait, okay, here’s Clive. He’s happy at how things’ve come out. He says . . . Oh, well, that’s not nice . . . I’m not going to repeat – Oh, go away, you nasty old – Yeah. Okay, oh, love, oh, darling, I think I’ve got your mum. Yeah, yeah, it’s her, but she’s not speaking. Oh, love, what’s happened? She’s weeping. Oh, I don’t like this kind of grief in the passed. Oh, sweetheart, something awful, something dark has happened. Her and your gran both just . . .’ Lorna started to move her head in long, slow, sweeps from side to side.