The Slap

  He pushed her off him, got up, buckled his belt and zipped up.

  Kelly did not rise from the bed.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Must be the drugs. I’m not into it.’

  Kelly reached for his crotch. He slapped her hand away.

  ‘I’m not into it.’

  ‘Okay.’

  He looked down at the dresser. ‘Can I have another line?’

  ‘Sure, honey.’

  As he was leaving he looked through his wallet. He took out two hundred dollars and he handed it to her. She stared at the money. ‘Harry, I’m not a whore.’ She took a fifty from him. ‘That’s for the coke.’

  She was good. She was very good. Why couldn’t all women be like Kelly?

  Stepping outside, the night felt fantastic as it wrapped itself around him.

  He drove across the bridge but instead of heading south down Kings Way he turned north and drove through the city. He kept driving and turned into Brunswick Street. The traffic was heavier and there were people everywhere. He kept driving north and he found himself weaving across the small streets of Fitzroy. He found the street. He parked the car and sat in the darkness, looking at the house. Even in the dark the house looked ramshackle, uncared for. The grass hadn’t been mown for months, their kid could get lost in it. He took a deep breath. The creek and the river were close by—weren’t they scared of rats, mice, tiger snakes for God’s sake? He would never take such chances with Rocco and, as he thought that, he realised that he and Sandi had nothing to worry about. The people who lived in this house were vermin, no more than animals. He was a drunk and she a fool. It was no wonder the child was a brat. For the first time since the barbecue Harry felt something that was not quite, but close to, compassion. It wasn’t the kid’s fault—what could he be but what he was with parents like that? Some people should be sterilised. He turned the key in the ignition. He shouldn’t have come; one of them could have come out, spotted him across the street. On the cocaine high he had fantasised about a bullet in each of their brains. There was no need. It would be a waste of bullets. They were scum. He and Rocco and Sandi weren’t even part of the same species. They were as far above them as the moon was from the earth. There was nothing for him to do. The future would exact his revenge.

  He drove. He drove south, heading towards the water, heading towards home. He thought of his house that he loved, with the pool and the new kitchen, the double garage, the sound system, the plasma television, he thought of his barbecue and fishing lines, and then he thought of his beautiful wife and his beautiful son. He drove urgently, in silence, the windows up. Music and the noise of the world outside would only spoil his thoughts, his pure thoughts of happiness and contentment. He was a lucky man, he was such a lucky man.

  The car seemed to fly down Hotham Street and then he turned and could see glimmering lights on the dark water of the bay. He was nearly home. The moon’s rays sparkled on the water and he pressed a button, the window slid down, and he could smell the sea. He filled his lungs with the sea and the moon and the night and the cleansing air. As he slid into his driveway he looked up and saw that his bedroom light was still on. Sandi was waiting for him. She probably had a meal waiting. He would eat, he would slip into his son’s room and kiss him goodnight. He would then get into bed next to Sandi and fall asleep with her nestled in his arms. Thank you, God. He parked the car in the garage, he pressed the remote and the garage door began to roll down. Thank you, Panagia. He was home.

  CONNIE

  It was during a surprise test on genetics in her biology class, that Connie realised that her father would have turned fifty today, if he were still alive. She had just answered a question on inheritance when she happened to look down at the date on the bottom right corner of the sheet. The thought hit her on seeing the numbers, and she did her best to put it out of her mind, to try to concentrate on answering the questions in front of her. But the thought was alive now, and would not be banished. She started to etch a face on the margins of the page; it was her face she was drawing, in fine blue biro lines. Her aunt Tasha always said of her that she had her father’s features, and it was true that when she looked at a photograph of him she recognised as her own the strong, square jaw and the slightly over-sized ears that she hated about herself. But she had also inherited her mother’s thick blonde hair and large mouth. (She also hated this about herself. Her mouth was too big, her lips were too full, her teeth protruded—that was why she rarely smiled in photographs.) She turned the page and tried to concentrate on the series of diagrams, charts and data detailing the frequency of respiratory illness in four generations of human twins. She had to evaluate both the genetic and environmental factors on the inheritance of disease. Again, her eyes kept straying to her father’s birthdate on the bottom right-hand corner of the page, but she forced herself to focus and soon enough was finished and leaned back in her chair.

  Behind her, Jenna had finished as well. ‘How’d you do?’

  ‘Alright,’ whispered Connie, furtively looking over to where Mr De Santis was standing. He had his hands behind his back and was staring out of the window. What could he be looking at? The empty basketball court? Her eyes drifted across to the clock next to the whiteboard. Ten minutes to go. He was probably as bored as she was. Ten minutes—six hundred seconds—left before the bell rang. Beside her, Nick Cercic was still frantically writing out his answers in his rough scrawl. His tongue was sticking out of one corner of his mouth; he looked feverish, anxious. He was one of the best students in her year but unlike herself, it did not come easy to Nick C. He wasn’t naturally smart; everything was an effort for him. He was now scratching at his mop of unruly red hair, sending flickers of dandruff onto the paper and across his desk. He must have played football over lunch—she meant soccer, but she had never been able to bring herself to call the sport by its Australian name—and he smelt of boy, a pungent male stink. She fought back the urge to lean over and whisper an answer. De Santis had turned and was facing the class, his hands still behind his back. Probably still bored. Four hundred and thirty-one, four hundred and thirty.

  She would not think of Hector. She would not think of Hector. She wished she hadn’t finished so quickly. One hundred and twenty-six, one hundred and twenty-five. She did not give up on her backwards count and when the bell finally did ring it gave her a jolt. De Santis walked up and down the aisles of desks, picking up the tests. Chairs scraped back, everyone rushed to the door. Jenna had ear phones on and was scrolling through her iPod. Most of the students were checking their mobile phones or already shouting into them as they pushed into the hallway. Connie was back at her desk, slowly packing her bag. Nick hadn’t moved and he looked over to her with a sad, puzzled smile.

  ‘That was hard,’ she lied.

  He was rocking back and forth on his chair, his hands behind his head. There were dark sweat stains on the armpits of his white school shirt. The sight offended her.

  ‘See ya.’ She swung her bag over her shoulder and marched out.

  The tram was packed with schoolkids—from her school, the girls’ school up the road, the Catholic boys’ school—and she and Richie pushed their way through the crowd and sat on the dirty steps of the emergency exit. Richie was leaning his elbows on the sportsbag on his lap. He was humming a song.

  ‘Hey, faggot. Shut it.’

  Richie fell silent immediately and slumped over his bag. Connie turned around and gave Ali the finger. His dark, sharp-featured face broke out into a grin. He simulated the motions of oral sex.

  ‘Gross.’ She turned away in disgust. ‘He’s such a pig,’ she called out loudly. She could hear Ali and his mate Costa laughing behind her but she pretended to ignore them.

  Richie still looked hurt, but suddenly he straightened up and winked at her, leaning across to whisper in her ear. ‘Yeah, but he’s such a sexy pig.’

  It still shocked her, to hear him say things like that. She tried not to show her discomfort. ‘You reckon?’
>
  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘No way.’ She shivered in mock horror. ‘He’s a totally sexist creep.’ She screwed up her face and pretended to vomit. Richie started to rock back and forth with laughter. His loud chortle rang through the tram.

  ‘Faggot, you sound like a fucking horse.’

  An old woman sitting behind them coughed and then said something sharp in Arabic. That shut Ali up.

  Connie turned around and peeked at him. He was good-looking, pretty hot, really; the bastard had smooth skin that seemed untouched by the blemishes and insults of adolescence. His hair was cut short, thick coils, jet black. Costa caught her staring and whispered something to Ali. She blushed and turned back to Richie.

  ‘What was that you were singing?’

  ‘Just a song.’

  ‘Duh, but what song?’

  ‘Jack Johnson.’

  ‘Yuck.’ She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘Your taste in music is as dumb-arse as your taste in men.’

  She was forcing herself to be cool, pretending to be unaffected by her friend’s recent coming out to her. But she wished he hadn’t said a thing, not yet, not when they were still at school. It had made them closer, of course, more intimate, but the fact of his homosexuality seemed to dominate their conversation, their time together. Even when they weren’t talking about it, the subject seemed to be all around them, raw, present, uncomfortable. She missed just hanging out with Richie. She missed thinking of him as her friend, not her fucking gay friend. She wondered if tolerance could be an inherited trait from a parent. If so, that was her destiny—she had it from both sides. If it was true it was a good thing, of course. But she wished she could let herself be intolerant from time to time, spew forth casual derogatory remarks like everyone else around her did. But she couldn’t, she had never been able to.

  ‘Jack Johnson is so fucking gay,’ she said cruelly, as they stepped onto the road. And then, instantly regretting her words, she linked hands with Richie as they ran across the lights on St Georges Road. Everyone thinks you’re my boyfriend, she was thinking to herself, everyone thinks we’re a couple. I will not think of Hector. I will not pretend it is Hector’s hand I am holding.

  Don’t ever get married. It makes you boring. She and her mum had been baking a chocolate cake in the dingy little kitchen in Birmingham. It was her seventh birthday and it was the only cake she ever remembered her mother baking. At the time she had thought that her mother was talking about her own marriage. Connie was still such a baby back then, the comment really had not made much sense to her. But she had never forgotten it. It was only after her mother’s death that she realised her mum was probably referring to the other man she was in love with. Dad told her about it soon after the funeral, that they’d moved to Birmingham because her mum had fallen in love with a married man, a Pakistani who would not leave his wife. And looking back, it was unlikely that her mum would have referred to her own marriage as boring. There were a thousand other words she could use to describe it—weird, infuriating, deranged—but not boring. Her father had never told her the man’s name, but she was pretty sure she knew who he was. She remembered a well-built man with a trim beard, who carried himself regally, wore a suit, and drove a BMW into which her mother would disappear from time to time. He never came to the door; she was never introduced to him. The affair must have ended because within the year they had moved back to London. Birmingham is a fucking hole, her dad had complained, and he was probably right. Though he too had a thing for South Asian men, so he probably didn’t have such a terrible time there. For herself, all she remembered was that it was bitterly cold in winter and that she was one of the few white girls at the local comprehensive. She had even picked up a few words and phrases in Urdu; that was her Birmingham legacy.

  ‘Will you marry me?’

  ‘What the fuck?’

  Richie stopped dead and dropped her arm. She giggled at the look on his face and she punched his shoulder.

  ‘Why not?’

  His tongue was doing that weird thing he did whenever he was thinking to himself, jutting out and licking his top lip. It sometimes made him look a little slow. His face brightened. ‘Sure.’

  ‘Cool.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘We’ve got to have lots of affairs first and travel the world.’

  ‘Done.’

  She filled the cat bowl with biscuits when she got home, and Lisa purred around her ankles. It was still daylight and Bart wouldn’t stop prowling the neighbours’ yards until dark. She switched on the computer and connected to Messenger. She did the maths and worked out that it was just after eight in the morning in England. Maybe Zara was online. But only Jenna’s and Tina Coccoccelli’s avatars were visible. She quickly typed a message to Zara and sent it off into digital space. She chatted with the girls for a few minutes but signed off when she heard her aunt enter the front door. She went into the kitchen where Tasha was standing, her backpack still on, rubbing her hands together.

  ‘It’s getting cold. Winter is definitely on its way.’

  ‘Guess so.’

  ‘How was school?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Have you got much homework tonight?’

  ‘A little. Why?’

  ‘I thought we could go out and see a movie and have something to eat. I can’t be bothered cooking.’

  ‘Sure.’ She looked at her aunt. Tasha was due a haircut, and there were dark rings under her eyes. Connie kissed her on the cheek. ‘I can cook dinner.’

  ‘No, I want to take you out.’ Tasha chucked her backpack on the kitchen table and started sorting through the mail.

  ‘A movie would be great, Tash. Thanks.’ She hesitated, then blurted out: ‘It would have been Dad’s birthday today.’

  Her aunt did not look up from the bill she was examining. ‘I know. He would have turned fifty.’ She put the bills to one side and started filling the kettle. ‘You want a tea?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You know how terrible I am with dates. But I never forget your father’s birthday. Everyone else’s I forget, just as I forget faces and phone numbers. But since I could talk I always remembered Luke’s birthday.’

  ‘How about Uncle Pete?’

  ‘The fifteenth of August,’ Tasha laughed.

  ‘I reckon it’s a sibling thing. I think siblings must always remember each other’s birthdays.’

  Tasha sat down then looked up at her niece. ‘You’re perceptive, aren’t you, Connie?’

  That was a nice word. Perceptive, it sounded like a good thing to be. At school last week Mr Dennis had a go at her for not putting enough effort into a history assignment. He was right. She had left it to the last minute and had completed it while watching an episode of The OC. You’re so much smarter than the others, he said to her, just apply yourself a little bit harder. Smart, she’d wanted to yell back. Smarter? What the fuck does that mean? You think the rest of them are morons and bogans, so what’s so great about being smarter than them? She had been surly and made a half-arsed apology. But her aunt never made a compliment that did not have some insight behind it. Inheritance.

  ‘Maybe it runs in the family.’

  Her aunt looked confused, was about to say something, then her face softened, and she sank back in the chair. ‘I thoroughly hate work.’ She straightened up and smiled. ‘Do your homework fast and then we’ll catch the movie. I’ll tell you what I want to see: The Squid and the Whale, that French film Hidden and the new Jennifer Anis-ton movie. You can pick from those three. Look up session times after you’ve done your work.’

  Connie had nothing urgent to do except some Maths reading. The English report she could do the next night. She clicked on Messenger again but there was nothing from Zara so they probably wouldn’t talk until the weekend. There were more kids from school online but she clicked off without bothering to join in. She did her Maths, and then searched for information about the movies. The Squid and the Whale sounded interesting, a little art
y-farty, all about smart, educated people and divorce, and it was playing in Carlton, which she knew Tasha would enjoy. The food would be good. Hidden was French and had amazing reviews. But it sounded complex and like it needed a lot of thought. And it required reading, it would be subtitled. She knew that her aunt had picked it because she thought it was good for Connie to be exposed to challenging films. She was probably right, but after a day at school the last thing she felt like was more education. The new Jennifer Anniston was called The Break-Up and half the girls at school had already seen it. People seemed to like it. It also starred Vince Vaughn. She looked at the actor’s face. He looked like Hector, just not as handsome, but he had the same big, slightly boofy face. She really wanted to see the movie and it was playing in the city, so they could eat in Chinatown.

  She switched off the computer, zipped up her jacket and pulled on her boots. She knelt before the mirror and carefully started applying lipstick. It was her father, not her mother, who had taught her how to apply make-up. Marina never wore it. Her dad had done his own face. The secret, he’d said to her, powdering his cheeks, his chin, his nose, is foundation. You can hide any blotches, he added, pointing to a sarcoma underneath his chin, and you don’t get any shiny patches anywhere. She puckered her lips. Her dad would have wanted her to choose Hidden, he always went for the obscure, the difficult, the arty, what the Australians called wanky. Wasn’t that why he had left Australia? What would have her mother chosen? A thick-set, tall Pakistani man in a suit. He looked a little like Vince Vaughn as well. She carefully drew on the eyeliner.

  Tasha had combed her hair and changed into pants and an op-shop fifties lavender faux-fur jacket with wool lining around the collar. Connie loved that jacket. It made her aunt look so cute.

  ‘What’s the choice?’