The Slap

‘What’s awful about it?’ Anouk winked. ‘He looks about the same age as Rhys.’

  ‘How is Rhys?’ She wanted to talk about her friend, hear about her life. She had made up her mind. She would talk to Rosie. She knew she would, she had just wanted to articulate it to Anouk. Once said it would need to be done. But she was shocked by Anouk’s response.

  ‘Fuck it, Aish, I need to end it.’

  ‘What’s wrong? What’s happened?’

  Aisha wanted to touch her friend’s cheek, to caress her, but she did not dare. Anouk would hate that. She would feel pitied, and thus even more shamed. Sourly, she couldn’t help thinking of Hector. If she hadn’t had to think about him all the time now she would have known something was wrong in her friend’s life.

  ‘He’s still a child. That’s the whole bloody problem.’ The moment of vulnerability had passed, Anouk was once more mocking, sardonic. ‘He thinks we can have it all. Children, independence, travel, world peace.’

  ‘You can have a child.’

  ‘What makes you think I want one?’

  The two women stared at each other. Is this our unbridgeable difference, Aisha wondered, is this a separateness we cannot overcome? This tension, this stand-off, this dare, did not exist between herself and Rosie. Being a mother was a fact, not a question.

  ‘I don’t know if you necessarily want one. I’m just saying that you can have one.’

  ‘Well, I don’t bloody want one.’ Anouk beckoned the bartender over. ‘Is that table free yet?’

  He apologised and brought over a bowl of cashews for them, and refilled their glasses. Aisha brought the rim of the glass to her lips and realised she was getting drunk. It was a good thing she hadn’t driven. She rolled her shoulders, concentrated on keeping her back straight. The wine didn’t seem to have affected Anouk.

  ‘Rhys has a good friend called Jessica. She’s a nice kid.’ Anouk popped a cashew in her mouth and swallowed. ‘She’s a lesbian. They’re talking about having a baby together.’

  Aisha drew in a sharp breath. Choices, so many choices available. She envied how the young manoeuvred so casually through them all.

  ‘Well, I think that’s great.’ It was mortifying, she was stammering. ‘I mean it,’ she rushed through her words. ‘I think it’s fantastic.’ She took a pause. She was being ridiculous. Anouk would not judge her. ‘It’s fantastic for them,’ she added. ‘But how do you feel about it?’

  ‘It’s their decision. I’m not involved.’ Aisha was about to interrupt her but Anouk bowled straight through her friend’s objection.

  ‘I’m right, it has nothing to do with me. We’re not married, we’re not like you and Hector. You made a decision together.’ Anouk ran her finger along the rim of the glass. ‘I’ll be happy for Rhys if he has a child with Jessica. I’m happy to play Auntie on weekends and public holidays. But if I want to go off, I will. If I want to spend a month just concentrating on writing my book, I will.’ She pushed the glass away. ‘I will not be a mother.’

  Aisha could find no words to answer the finality of that statement. Something stung about Anouk’s casual and easy reference to her relationship with Hector. As if marriage foreclosed adventure, as if in marriage there was no risk.

  ‘I got an email from Art.’

  ‘The Canadian?’

  Aisha nodded guiltily, but was unable to suppress a triumphant smile. She had not intended to say a word about the email. It had arrived at work yesterday, a simple two lines: I haven’t been able to forget you. Do you feel the same? It was an email that demanded an answer. She had not answered it. She had left it in her inbox but throughout the day and into the evening she had returned to look at the words, thrilled to see them—so explicit, so enticing.

  ‘What did he want?’

  Aisha repeated the words in the email.

  ‘Don’t answer it.’

  Anouk sounded vehement, so sure of the decision she should make. Was she imagining it? Was her friend a little angry with her? Aisha made no answer.

  ‘You’re married, Aish. Don’t answer him.’

  The words were so old-fashioned, the tone so outraged, that she assumed her friend was joking. Aisha laughed out loud.

  Anouk swooped on her. ‘I mean it. You’re married.’

  I know I’m fucking married. This was just a fantasy, a game. Art was fun. How dare Anouk assume a moral rectitude?

  ‘Don’t lecture me on marriage.’ She badly wanted a cigarette. She would not ask for one. As if reading her mind, Anouk lit one and blew the smoke at Aisha.

  ‘I’m not lecturing you on marriage.’ Anouk’s frown disappeared. ‘I wouldn’t do that, Aish, you know that. But you’ve come back from Bali concerned about Hector and his mental health. You keep telling me how worried you are about him.’ Anouk leaned on the bar. ‘I don’t care if you slept with a dozen men in Bangkok. Good for you if you did. But that was a conference fuck, a fantasy, not real. What’s real is you and Hector. Do you want to be with Hector?’

  Aisha did not answer.

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I think so.

  ‘You don’t sound sure?’

  ‘I am sure.’

  I don’t fucking know. That’s what you people who are not married don’t ever understand. When can you ever be sure?

  ‘Then don’t answer the email.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  I might.

  They lapsed into silence. Aisha grabbed the cigarette from Anouk and took two quick puffs. She handed it back.

  ‘How’s the book going?’ No more talk of men. Or at least, no more talk of Art.

  Anouk groaned. ‘I’m writing words, what seems like millions of fucking words but I don’t know if any of them are any good.’

  Aisha couldn’t imagine that this was the case. Anouk was good, Anouk was smart and talented and funny and sharp and inspired. Of course the book would be good. She couldn’t say this to her. Anouk would snap her head off.

  ‘Can I read it now ?’

  ‘It’s not finished.’

  ‘I’ll read what you’ve got.’

  ‘It’s not ready.’

  Should she push it? She should push it. ‘You’ll never be ready. I want to read it.’

  The bartender was trying to grab their attention. The two women slipped off their stools and Anouk butted out her cigarette.

  ‘We’ll have another bottle,’ she barked out to the young man.

  ‘Please,’ insisted Aisha.

  ‘Please,’ repeated Anouk, her tone fake and sickly sweet. She sculled the last of the wine in her glass and banged it on the counter. ‘Okay,’ she said sullenly. ‘You can fucking read it.’

  Hector and the kids were asleep when she got home. Tipsy, she flew through brushing her teeth, combing her hair, getting ready for bed. She slipped under the blankets next to her husband and his arms automatically closed around her. You’re cold, he complained. Warm me up, she urged, and pushed her arse hard against him. She groped behind her with her hand and started rubbing his soft cock, playing with the wrinkled folds of his foreskin. He pushed her hand away. I’m asleep, he mumbled. She lay there, listening to him breathe. She had wanted him to fuck her so she could close her eyes and pretend he was Art. She lay there, hoping for sleep. After ten minutes she rose and headed for the bathroom. She took a Temazepam and headed back to bed.

  The next morning was a Sunday. Hector had, so rare for him, risen before her. She staggered out of bed and the first thing she did was ring Rosie and arrange to meet for a coffee in Queens Parade. She could not shake off the grogginess from the sleeping pill, even after her shower. Hector had made breakfast for her and the kids and she feasted ravenously on his cheese and tomato sandwiches, enjoying the buttered toast, the thick, gooey, sticky cheese. He made her seconds and she was late getting to the Q Café. Rosie was sitting at the table reading the Sunday paper. She jumped up and rushed over to Aisha, hugging her tight, all the time calling out her name.

  ‘It?
??s so good to see you, it’s so good to see you,’ Rosie sang in a deliberately high-pitched little girl’s voice. Though this was exactly like Rosie, though this was what Rosie did, Aisha wanted her to stop. She pulled away from her friend and sat down.

  Rosie looked tired. There were blue-grey bags under both her eyes, almost like bruises against her pale skin. Her friend’s hair was unwashed, a long greasy blonde lock refused to rest and arched aloft, an unfinished bridge, above her friend’s scalp. Aisha fought the temptation to straighten it, then surrendered. She patted down Rosie’s hair who laughed at her friend’s attention. She grabbed hold of Aisha’s wrist.

  ‘Forget about my bloody hair. It’s just that I’m not showering on weekends. We’re teaching Hugo about water restrictions.’ She quickly swiped at her unruly hair. ‘I want to hear more about Bangkok and Bali. It’s been years since I was in Asia. Was it fantastic?’

  She was not going to tell her about Art. It felt disloyal, but she knew it was also exactly the appropriate thing to do. By the end of their coffee together, Rosie would be furious, would lash out anyway she could. So she did not speak of Art, only of the conference and the temples in the city. She described Ubud and Amed and brought forth two gifts out of her handbag; an elephant wallet for Hugo and a small, nuggety Buddha statue for Rosie. She also told her friend about Hector’s shocking outburst, the crying that had terrified her, appalled her, moved her; his profound, unfathomable unhappiness.

  Rosie held her friend’s hand. ‘What do you think it’s all about?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ She wished Rosie would let go of her hand. She did not deserve this tenderness.

  ‘Sandi’s pregnant,’ she blurted out and at the same time she drew her hand back. Rosie let it slip out of her grasp and Aisha rushed through the next words. ‘I’m going to see her next week, next Sunday. At her place. The whole family is going.’

  Rosie was staring somewhere beyond her, over her shoulder. Aisha followed her gaze.

  Her friend was examining her reflection in the café’s window. ‘Shit, I look awful.’

  ‘You don’t.’ And Aisha meant it. Rosie could never look terrible. She was perfect. She always had been, with her elfin face, her bewitching pale blue eyes, her almost translucent skin. Rosie was perfect.

  ‘I fucking do.’ Rosie’s lips began to quiver but then she sharply drew in a breath. ‘I’m not going to fucking cry,’ she insisted. ‘I’m not going to cry in front of you.’

  It was more awful that her friend had withdrawn from her than it would have been to see her fall apart in grief and hurt and disbelief.

  ‘I’m sorry, darling. I have to do this for Hector.’

  Rosie was staring at her, her eyes dry, insolent and condemning.

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You know what I told Hugo after the trial?’ Rosie’s fists were clenched. ‘I told him that the judge put the bad man who hit him in jail. I told him that the judge said that people who hurt children were the worst kind of scum on the earth.’ Rosie had raised her voice. ‘The fucking worst.’ A plump woman at the next table, all double-chin and headmistress cold eyes, shook her carefully coiffured matron’s bob in disapproval. ‘How can you bring yourself to talk to that animal?’

  Aisha wished she had followed Anouk’s advice. She had seen Rosie angry before. It was always the unexpected fire and strike of a cobra. But Rosie had never been angry at her before, had never lunged at her in this ferocious, unforgiving manner.

  She could only repeat herself: it was her only defence. ‘I have to do this for Hector.’

  ‘Hector’s always been a cunt.’

  It was such an ugly, brutal word. The word struck her as hard as a blow. She could not open her mouth to answer.

  ‘He’s worse than Harry. He’s an arrogant shit. He’s boring.’ Rosie had started to cry but Aisha was convinced that she was also enjoying part of her outburst. ‘He put Shamira and Bilal against us—he puts everyone against us, including you.’ Her tears were now streaming down her face and onto the tabletop. Aisha went to touch her friend’s hand but Rosie pulled back as if stung.

  ‘I’m sorry, Rosie.’ She wanted to defend Hector as well, to answer her friend that her husband did not hate her, did not want anything evil or unjust to befall her and Gary and Hugo. But heat was forming a tight ball in her belly. Was it true? Hector was arrogant, Hector was jealous of her friendship, he always had been. What was she destroying? She tried to reach out once more and hold her friend’s hand. This, all this time and memory and history, this she could not lose.

  ‘I am sorry. Believe me.’ Rosie did not remove her hand this time. Aisha felt her friend’s cold fingers. She squeezed them hard.

  ‘Don’t go and see him.’ Rosie had softened again, the viciousness had gone from her voice, the fierce hatred had disappeared from her face. ‘If you do go to that man’s house I will never forgive you.’

  The world around her seemed to have receded, only Rosie’s insistent face was visible and real. She wished she had not taken the sleeping pill last night. Nothing was clear, everything was a thick, stifling fog.

  ‘I promised Hector.’

  Rosie punched Aisha’s hand away from her. ‘I don’t fucking care,’ she yelled.

  Everyone now turned around. Everyone was looking at them. Aisha looked down at her near-empty coffee cup. She felt naked, exposed. The flush of humiliation dissipated. She looked up at her friend, whose wrathful eyes were unwavering. Aisha was being asked to make a choice. All she wanted was to comfort her friend, make things return to their rightful places, return to what had always been. She could do it. She could take back her promise to Hector. She knew since Asia that to be with him was to move forward into an uncertain future. Rosie, her friendships, they all represented life and youth, and yes, they were part of her, who she was. She could betray Hector and choose another life. She felt a growing excitement. It would be a new life in a new world, with Art, in a new country, a new city, a new home, with new work. She would make a new body for herself, a new history for herself, a new future for herself. She could construct a new Aisha. It was possible, Rosie had given her the opportunity. All she had to do was say the words. She would say them. Of course, she would.

  And from a table she heard a little girl ask her father, a long-limbed, denim-clad man with a salt-and-pepper goatee, a staid unremarkable man reading his Guardian Weekly, she heard the little girl ask him, in a hushed, scared voice that reminded her of Melissa, Dad, why is that woman crying?

  She means me.

  She could not say those words. Rosie was waiting.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Aisha said it flatly, unconvincingly. Then, with passion, ‘I am going to visit Sandi. I promised my husband.’ Aisha’s eyes were pleading with Rosie. ‘Sweetheart, let it go, it’s over.’

  Rosie looked stunned, looked as if she herself had just been slapped. Blinking away fresh tears she stood up from the table, fumbled through her purse and threw a ten-dollar bill on the table. Aisha was about to force the money back when she stopped herself.

  ‘Fuck you,’ screamed Rosie. ‘Fuck you, fuck your cunt of a husband, fuck your children, your whole perfect, middle-class family. I fucking hate you.’

  Aisha watched her friend storm off as she wiped Rosie’s spray off her cheek with a napkin.

  The matronly woman leaned across. ‘Are you alright?’

  Aisha nodded. ‘Thank you.’

  She was, in fact, overwhelmed by what she was experiencing. The light from the sun seemed overpoweringly luminous. Queens Parade was drenched in supernatural brilliance. She herself felt punched and pummelled and exhausted. She also felt blessed. She felt intoxicating relief.

  Aisha did not go straight home. She drove to work, switched on the office lights and fired up her computer. While waiting for the screen to come up she walked into the kennel room. The cages were spotless, all lined with newspaper and clean towels. The floor too was shining. Connie or Tracey must have buffe
d it after their Saturday shift. She sat on a stool and looked across at one of the drip machines. This was a game she sometimes played with herself; not only when she was sad or confused. It was a method she had come to, a way of stilling her mind. She would imagine how she would kill herself if there was the need to. She would go to the drug cabinet and fill a sixty-milligram syringe with Lethobarb. She would inject the green liquid anaesthetic into a bag of saline solution and then attach the bag to the drip. She would click the drip rate to maximum. Then she would insert a catheter in her vein, probably her left arm, and she would then connect herself to the drip. An emerald death. She would fall asleep, she would die. She still believed it was the most humane method to euthanase an animal; and what were humans if not animals? She’d seen enough of death, her work dealt in death as well as life, and she had no romance left in her for suffering. She knew that there was always a way out and she felt at peace. She walked out of the dark of the kennel room and into the office.

  The computer screen threw a throbbing silver light in the dim room. She clicked on her mailbox and retrieved the email from Art. She read it, its promise, once again. I haven’t been able to forget you. Do you feel the same? The song was in her head, the one that she had been humming to herself all week. This is a new day, this is a beautiful day. She must ask Hector. He would know it.

  She pressed delete. The email, unanswered, disappeared. She erased it from her computer’s memory.

  Aisha switched off the lights, set the alarm, locked up and drove home.

  Hector was in the backyard, mixing mulch and compost into the vegetable patch. The kids were in the lounge room watching a DVD. Aisha walked into her kitchen and closed the door behind her.

  RICHIE

  Richie, who believed the world was spiralling out of control, that it had dislodged from its axis, that the ether could not expand fast enough to contain the implosion, that it was all leading to a violent, catastrophic and, for the human species if no other, a deservedly sadistic end, was certain of only three things in his life. He had counted them down in the short time his father had left the table to go to the toilet. One, that his mother was the best mother on the planet. Two, that the American television series Six Feet Under was an alternative universe, a better universe, and the one in which he wished he existed. And three, that he was in love with his mate, Nick Cercic. These three things were the only certainty. Everything else was just bullshit, fake, a con. Everything else did not matter. Wait. He counted one more certainty. Connie was the best friend a young art-fag boy could have.