Addition (5 page)
I divide each of the 2 pieces at the crust end lengthwise into 3. So far so good. 6. I divide each one of these into 4, crossways. 24. Then I peel the short crust pastry away from the filling of the two top corners on the outside of the slice. Eureka. 38. I eat piece number 1.
The whole time he’s watching me. His eyelashes are inordinately long.
‘No, I’m not an anthropologist. Are you a surgeon?’ He’s still smiling. The dent in his lower lip is gone. His eyebrows are raised.
‘Grace. Grace Vandenburg. At the moment I’m resting between assignments and considering my career options. With assistance from the generous taxpayer.’ Up to piece 6 now.
‘I work at the Kino. In the box office.’
Whoa. Behind the counter. In a cinema. Two large popcorns please. ‘That sounds exciting.’
‘I don’t mind it. I love movies.’
‘Not working today?’ Piece 12. Luckily there’s little chewing involved, because they’re such small pieces.
‘Day off. I’m going to the tennis this afternoon. Men’s semis.’
He takes another sip of his coffee. He really has the nicest arms.
‘You must be pretty hungry.’
Piece 14. I gesture to the tart. ‘Starving. I’m on an all-lemon diet.’
A herd of mothers pushing prams come in. There’s a huge pram-centred disruption, chairs and tables being moved. Down to my last 2 pieces now.
I stand up. The tart is finished. The chocolate is only half drunk but I can leave it. The chocolate isn’t actually part of it.
‘Okay, well thanks for the seat.’ I put my 9 dollars and 40 cents on the table. Exact change. ‘I might see you around.’
He stands. I’m 2 steps away when he speaks. ‘When?’
I turn to face him. He’s standing next to me. I can see his neck. The shadow under his chin. The beginnings of a wrinkle in front of his ear. I refuse to step back. ‘What?’
‘When might you see me around? I can’t predict when you’ll next need a banana or a seat. So I’m not sure when I’ll see you again.’
This makes me smile, I can’t help it. God knows I don’t want to encourage him, but I can smell his breath and it’s warm and faintly musky and it’s been inside his body. I can’t speak for a moment.
‘Look Grace, I know you don’t know me. And I don’t know you. But there’s a great Italian place up on High Street. We could have dinner. Tomorrow night.’
I deliver my sternest look. He continues. ‘Only it doesn’t have to be dinner. It could be just drinks. Or dessert. Or I could have dessert.’ He tilts his head to catch my eye. ‘You could have a piece of fruit.’
I have stepped into a parallel universe. Things like this do not happen to me. ‘Are you asking me out?’
‘Sometimes I amaze myself. Look, I don’t make a habit of asking out women I’ve only just met, but yes. I am.’
‘You can’t be serious. Some people find me a little…abrupt.’
‘I put that down to the all-lemon diet.’
I wipe the smile as soon as I can. ‘Are you implying I’d be free tomorrow night with such little notice?’
‘Sunday night?’
‘Busy. Teleconference.’
‘Monday night?’
‘Finishing
Ulysses.
’ ‘Tuesday?’
‘Washing my hair.’
‘Grace Vandenburg, I love a challenge but this is ridiculous.’
I sigh. Best get it over with.
‘I tend to cut my food into little pieces.’
‘I noticed.’
‘This means I’m not always scintillating dinner company.’
‘Well, I see it this way. I think you’ve got a lot going on in your head. That’s not true of most people I meet. Here…’ He takes a few steps to the counter where there is a pen lying next to the credit card machine. Back at the table, he scrawls on a paper napkin. ‘This is my mobile number. Friday night then. Say yes. You can always call if you change your mind.’
He hands me the napkin. So in my hand, right now, is his number. I glance down—I can see a 2—then I quickly fold the napkin over and look away. He smiles at me with those pretty hazel eyes.
Generally I don’t surprise myself. Generally I know myself pretty well. I have my rules and I stick to them. Who knows what could happen if I start making arbitrary decisions and upset the synchronised pattern of the universe?
‘Yes,’ I say.
On the walk home from the café not only do I count but I also fill myself with other thoughts so there is no room left, none at all. I don’t think Nikola ever had a date. Apparently he was fond of Anne Morgan, the daughter of the industrialist J. Pierpont, even though she grew into a fat ugly militant feminist. Nikola wasn’t the type to marry for money, but considering the way things turned out, that would have got him out of trouble later.
Lots of beautiful and talented women had him in their sights. Sarah Bernhardt. Nellie Melba. Who wouldn’t? A towering six feet six inches—198 centimetres—with large hands. Piercing blue eyes, staggeringly handsome face. Electric, pardon the pun. There were the usual rumours that he was gay but I don’t believe it. Not for a minute. It’s just that he had a number of, well, quirks.
He hated jewellery. Pearls especially would make him recoil and he couldn’t be in the same room with them. Neo-Freudians take this as proof of his abhorrence of women because pearls represent breasts. I don’t buy it. Sometimes a pearl is only a pearl. He didn’t hate women. He believed that society would collapse as soon as women became educated. He wasn’t one of those men who think we don’t have the brains for it. He often spoke about the genius of his mother Djuka, who ran the farm and the home and was famous in the village for her invention of a better kind of loom. His photographic memory came from her and he felt the waste of her, this country mother of five who had never been to school but could recite entire books of Serbian poetry.
Nikola knew that when we became educated like men and joined the workforce we wouldn’t be interested in families or babies. As he wasn’t. So there’s none of his genes left now, because he had no children. Like there’ll be none of me left when I die.
The air is heavy and hot. I try to imagine how many people have walked this way, ever. This is a number you could never know, because it goes right back before this century, and before the last. It goes back tens of thousands of years. So many people. Uncountable.
Don’t think about it. What kind of name is Seamus, anyway? It’s like a joke name. And he works at the cinema, for God’s sake. He’s a pathetic movie nerd, one of those gormless idiots who wear white short-sleeved shirts carefully ironed by his mother (with whom he undoubtedly still lives) with a super-silky non-silk tie with cartoon characters on it. Probably recites the entire script of
The Blues Brothers
. Orange whip? Orange whip? Three orange whips. Probably owns an English/Klingon dictionary. Don’t think about him, and do not think about the napkin, folded inside my purse, numbers etched by his hand.
Instead think about how many feet have been here. Think about the air. How often has this heavy air been through other people’s lungs? If elements are neither created nor destroyed they must be recycled. This air has been sucked into wet membranous cavities, young and pink, black and cancerous, held for an instant to effect the exchange then blown out again through noses of all shapes, colours, sizes. Threaded through hair and snot, waiting for me to breathe in.
Focus on each breath. Each thought. Categorise. File. He asked me out. I’ve been on dates before. Not for a while, but I used to have lots of dates. I can remember…5. Anyway I can always cancel. Or not show up. He doesn’t have my number or know where I live. I never have to see him again. Of all the sad rituals in this inconsequential life, dating must be the saddest of all. Oh we have so many things in common. We both eat, shit and have a fear of commitment. Our parents used to yell/ignore/smother us. All this just to get laid. I’d respect him more if he’d been honest and said he wanted to screw me right there in the coffee shop. If he’d stood close to me and lifted up my skirt and grabbed my bottom and shoved me on to the table. If he’d pushed me down so I could feel the table cold against my back and ripped my undies with his hard fingers there and then, letting the cup with my chocolate smash against the ground and…
Categorise.
File.
I might go on this date after all.
Tonight I focus on making dinner. Making dinner is a beautiful example of the world falling into order. I begin at 6.05 p.m., immediately after checking the time. Tonight it’s chicken and vegetables, being a Friday. Actually every night is chicken and vegetables. At 5 o’clock I marinate the 2 chicken thighs in the juice of half an orange, one clove of garlic (finely chopped), 10 millilitres of olive oil and 10 black olives. At 6.05 p.m. I put the chicken in a tray (presentation side down) and slide it under the preheated-before-I-checked-the-clocks griller. Then I cook my vegetables in the cast-iron fry pan, black and round as if designed for banging a recalcitrant husband on the head.
The potato goes in first, peeled and cut into 5 slices in another 10 millilitres of olive oil, because it takes the longest time to cook. This takes 15 minutes. Carrot next: 1, peeled and cut into 10 slices. Onion: 1, also 10 slices. This is difficult with onions so I cut it across the middle to make 2 hemispheres, then 4 cuts on each half downwards because attempting to make 10 equal rings is close to impossible. My knife is very sharp, professionally done at the butcher’s shop in Glenferrie Road every 100 days. They think I’m a diligent but incompetent chef.
Zucchini: 1, washed not peeled. 10 slices. Beans: 10, trimmed and tailed. This is the order, from the longest time required to the shortest, so I prepare each vegetable after the previous one has been added to the pan. If I do it like this, accurately but with leisurely attention, I add the beans 10 minutes after I begin. Then I turn the chicken, set the table with a knife, fork, placemat, napkin and glass of water and by the time I come back to the stove everything is ready. I use tongs to plate it so that the chicken is on the left with 1 tablespoon of the cooking juices spooned over it, and the potatoes are fanned on the right. The rest of the vegetables are piled in the middle. 5 shakes of the salt. I sit down to eat. It is exactly 6.30 p.m.
I have always been a slow eater. I give each mouthful the attention it deserves. Chew each mouthful 30 times, they say, and you’ll never be sick. It’s true. I’ve never been sick a day in my life.
It’s a slow Saturday. After my normal morning routine, I go to the café to find it almost empty. I peek in the window before I walk in. Why I’m not sure. It’s not as if I can change my mind on the doorstep and go home. It’s quiet as a library inside. No trouble finding a seat today. No Irishmen. No representatives of EU countries at all, as far as I can tell.
Sunday is also routine. After lunch I read the paper, alternating with a pedicure. 3 pages, trim 1 toenail, 3 pages, push back a cuticle, 3 pages, base coat, 3 pages, one coat of polish, 3 pages, another coat of polish, 3 pages, top coat. Then the next toe. The beauty of this system is that the time it takes to read 3 pages is exactly the time required for a coat of polish to dry.
Clean out the kitchen cupboards. Read. Now it’s 8.00 p.m. 27 degrees. I am sitting by the phone, waiting for my mother’s Sunday night call. My mother is a hollow, shaken woman, with skin and bones and flesh pulled taut and at the same time bowed with flapping folds. The only part of her body that holds the tiniest bit of fat is her cheeks. They are round and full like they are padded with down. She is, astonishingly, shorter than I am and much older. She and my father were late bloomers. She wears sensible shoes, sensible hats, sensible pearls around her ridiculous neck. She is a bower bird. Her beak and keen eyes are fierce. First she collects her stories and then she tells them. Her mind is some kind of wall with hundreds of tiny cubicles like an old-fashioned mail room, little cubby holes where everything is displayed for instant retrieval. How she cross-references them I’ll never know. She has so many, there must be more than one wall, so perhaps each wall has wheels on its base so she can roll the walls together and then slide them apart. She needs as much storage space as she can get. She keeps stories in these cubicles, little tidbits that she collects. Blue stories for my mother, the ghoulish bower bird.
The phone rings. It’s 8.01 p.m.
‘Hello Mother.’
‘Hello dear. Sorry I’m late.’
‘It’s fine,’ I say. ‘How are you?’
‘Well, my hip is giving me a little trouble, but I won’t complain. I’ve been busy. I visited Liz across the street yesterday and we had scones with currants in them. Or were they raisins? And I’ve been crocheting for the stall at the community centre. The azaleas are looking beautiful. I’ve been mulching. Mr Parker has a rash on his tummy. I think it’s the heat.’
My mother’s cat must be the laughing stock of all the other pets in the street. ‘Hey, Parker,’ they must sneer at him, ‘has your Mumsy wubbed your tummy-wummy today?’
‘Perhaps he should be sleeping on the nice cold floor instead of in bed with you.’
‘That’s funny, dear. Mr Parker loves sleeping in my bed. Oh, and everyone asked after you at church today.’
Well that took 15 seconds. She often reaches the bit about church inside 10.
‘I was speaking with Sophie…You remember Sophie, my nextdoor neighbour? Italian lady? She had that mole on her face removed last year?’
‘I remember the mole…’ It had its own postcode.
‘You’ll never believe what happened to her cousin’s daughter’s yoga teacher. She was minding her own business, driving along with her baby son in the car and she was coming down this steep hill and there were red lights at the bottom and you won’t believe this, you really won’t, how cruel it all is, all of it. But at the bottom of that hill of all places was a semi-trailer parked at the lights and as she started down the hill the brakes went. Failed! And you know, mother of God, they slammed into the back of that semi and it squashed them flat as pancakes, both of them, never hurt anyone in their lives. It only goes to show you, we should all have four-wheel drives, not those little Japanese things. Oh, I’ve been meaning to ask: can sushi give you worms?’
