Holier Than Thou (9 page)

‘How’s uni going, Frank?’ I ventured, noticing Liam’s jaw was still clenched.

‘Oh great, great, I’m at uni part-time and at my cadetship the rest of the time. It rocks.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Hey, Holly, I just wanna say something to you.’

‘You do?’ I placed my hand on his forehead. ‘Are you feeling well?’

He grabbed my hand and clasped it earnestly.
Uh-oh.

‘I wanna apologise for how I treated you in high school.’

Now it was time for me to glare, and Liam to bristle in my defence.

It all ca s"3"e to glarme back to me in a grotesque montage. The night he left me in Hyde Park after breaking up with me. Mum and Paddy were in Queensland visiting my aunt. I was alone in the city. I was alone in the fucking universe. That Dadless, lonely place. I was sixteen years old.

‘I was never in love with you,’ Frank continued, blazing with disinhibition, ‘I just said that to get you to sleep with me.’

‘Yes, Frank, I worked that out all by myself,’ I said evenly.

‘I just, you know, I felt I needed to be this certain kind of person, and um, I thought that if I—’

In an almost involuntary movement my right arm shot out and I slapped him across the face so hard that he was knocked clean off the armless plastic chair and onto the red gravel.

‘Holy shit,’ said Liam. And he laughed.

Frank, sprawling, was chemically incapable of anger, and he laughed too. A roar went up from the throng under the canopy where the band was playing.

‘Omigod, they’re playing the song!’ cried Frank leaping to his feet, his smarting cheek forgotten. ‘I
have
to dance to this.You guys coming?’

‘No and no,’ Liam said.

We watched him rush off.

‘Bloody hell,’ I said, shaking my hand. ‘I think I sprained my wrist.’

‘That was surreal. No it was just real. Cheers.’ Liam raised his glass to mine, and I realised then that all of my vodka had flown out of my glass when I’d slapped Frank. It had spilled over my skirt and down my leg in a wide rivulet through the red dust.

‘Shit. That was a fifteen dollar glass of vodka.’

‘He slept with Ffion you know,’ Liam said suddenly.

‘What? When?’

‘Last year.’

‘Who told you?’

‘She did. We’re
friends
you know. Mates.’

I did know that.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I thought it would upset you.’

‘It does.’

Five years later and I still kept an ear to the ground about who Frank slept with. Subtle-like, but still. Just, you know, for my own records. I hated Ffion. Hated her. She knew . . . She knew how much her every move insulted me. She knew she could just casually take all the things I wanted. You should have seen her in the Union Bar with her drama soc. cronies s some. She kn. All dressed in black, with red lipstick, and sunglasses even into dusk, sitting out on the balcony, smoking in unison.

‘Well,’ I said, rubbing my smarting wrist, ‘then that slap was for you too.’

‘Thanks, honey.’

He laid his head on my shoulder, his eyes glistening.

Perversely, I loved it when he cried about Ffion. Because I got to hold him.

People were really ‘going off’ to ‘the song’, but he and I were in our own zone. We just existed together. Liam crying, still crying, over Ffion. I would never, or almost never, allow myself that kind of luxury. I am not given to displays of emotion. Except when I throw punches.

The next morning, Liam and I were the first awake. We came wandering out of our respective bedrooms within minutes of one another.

‘I’ll make it,’ he said, when I reached for the kettle.

I sat on a banana chair in the shade of the awning and waited until he brought the plunger of coffee and two mugs. We both drank it black with none.

‘You know which
Seinfeld
moment
I
keep coming back to?’ I ventured quietly.

We both took our first sips of coffee and moaned our relief.

‘So gruntled,’ he murmured. As in the opposite of disgruntled. Gruntled and shevelled (the opposite of dishevelled) were house words.

‘The one where Jerry and Elaine are sitting on Jerry’s couch, channel-surfing, and Elaine goes
Ooh, the naked channel
and Jerry looks away and says
No, no, I don’t want to look at any naked people, don’t want to look at what they’re doing
.’

‘I know the one.’

‘And Elaine looks at him with that smile and says,
Been a while?
’

‘It has been awhile.’

‘Not just for you, you whinger.
Poor me, Ffion dumped me and now I don’t have the will to get laid with anyone else
. . . ’

‘There’s no one
around
, Holly. It has nothing to do with my will.’

‘Bullshit. Anyway we are not talking about you.
I
am like Jerry in this scenario.’

‘Oh you do alright.You do fine.’

‘Where have you been?’

‘You don’t do badly at all.’

‘
What?
’

height="0em" width="0em"‘What about Ross?’

‘Ross was a fuckwit.’

‘But you got laid. That’s what we’re talking about, isn’t it? What Jerry and Elaine were talking about.’

‘Well, kind of, but it’s more than that. It’s more than being horny or lonely . . . I mean I’m not lonely; I have you guys, and if I’m horny I should be able to take care of that by myself, right?’

‘Er, I don’t know Hol, you tell me.’

‘But I just have this hunger sometimes. It’s not for food. It’s . . . I feel it when I get into that bed alone. The thought of masturbating just upsets me, you know?’

‘No.’

‘Just . . . it reminds me what I’m not getting. I don’t like to look at couples on the street.’

I lapsed into silence and we slurped our coffee.

‘We’re low on coffee beans,’ I said forlornly. ‘Did you notice?’

‘I’ll get some today.’

Sadly, Lara’s family returned from their trip in mid-February and the share house disbanded. Liam, Abigail, Daniel and I all packed up our swags and slunk back to our parental homes for another year of university. We were still as one though. It was a given that every Saturday night we would do something together and have brunch on Sunday mornings. Friday afternoons we would all mooch up to the chemistry building where Daniel shared an office space because he was doing Honours. His office-mate was a guy called Tim Espie, who was handsome in a clean-cut kind of way. We’d head off to the uni bar for a few hours, where Abigail would join us, before hunger pushed us up toward Newtown.

I always hated stuvac. It was a limbo time. I was supposed to be studying. I didn’t feel like it. I felt like sleeping. So I slept, waking to find that my exams were fours hours closer. Liam called me as the sun was setting on a chilly June day. Thank goodness.

‘I’m getting nothing done,’ I whinged.

‘Oh, honey.’

‘I’m going to fail.’

‘Bullshit, Hols; you couldn’t fail an exam if you were trying. Now. If we study for another two hours can we reward ourselves with a refreshing ale at the Royal?’ he asked.

‘Yes, please.’ The Royal was equidistant from our respective houses. ‘Meet you there around seven.’

‘No, it’ll be dark. I’ll walk via your house and pick you up.’

‘There’s no “via” my house. It s hoiv height=217;s out of your way.’

‘I’ll pick you up.’

Things were very casual at the Royal. I dressed in jeans, one of my dad’s shirts and one of his woollen cardigans. My hair was really long back then, well past my shoulder blades. No make-up except my nutmeg-and-vanilla lip gloss. I remember what I was wearing that night so clearly. I remember us walking up my street together, both wearing beanies and crossing our arms against the cold.

We did have that refreshing ale, and then another, then we had ten-dollar steaks.The pub was crowded. We played pool, as was our custom. He had beaten me every game since we first played together at Cue Ball in high school, except for once many years ago. It was usually close – I was a ball or two behind him and we often come down to just the black. But he always potted that black. I wondered if he consciously refrained from streaking ahead so it seemed like an interesting game. I hope not. I like to think that we were actually competing.

I beat Liam that night. It was down to the black, and somehow I managed to not only line up the shot, not only hit the white firmly and in the just the right spot, but hit it so hard that the black flew into the pocket, circled the rim in a blur and dropped hard inside the table.

‘Huh!’ I was incredulous.

‘Well done Woman-of-Steel.’ he said, looking impressed.

‘Yay, me.’

Two older guys put a coin on the table to challenge us. We held that table for three more games and could have held it longer if we didn’t get bored. On our way out I pocketed a coaster to remind myself of that, and then our, triumph.

‘How come you always dress like this?’ said Liam, as we stumbled down the road to his place at some time approaching midnight.

‘Like what?’ I said defensively.

‘In those clothes . . . like a bloke.’

‘This cardigan belonged to my father. You’d better not be knocking it.’

‘You cover everything up, even though you’ve got, you know . . . ’ ‘What have I got?’

‘A good body.’

‘Ah . . . ’ I tripped on a raised section of footpath. ‘Whoops!’

Liam put his arm out to steady me and somehow we ended up walking with our arms about each other.

Back at Liam’s house, the lights were out and Ingrid was most likely asleep. We paused inside the front door to take our shoes off, and my heart beat faster in anticipation of the best part of coming back to Liam’s place when his mum was asleep. There was nothing new about us arriving drunk at the Keller residence, to continue the evening in Liam’s room where we would drink, talk, listen to music, watch DVDs, s wae Keller or all of the above, with the door closed so as not to wake Ingrid. After we took off our shoes inside the door, Liam would turn off the light, take my hand and guide me down the hall in the dark until we reached his room. Ostensibly this was, and had genuinely begun as, an exercise in me not tripping over any of the furniture or stumbling down the two stairs at the end of the hall. The light was off so as not to disturb Ingrid. I could have found my way down to Liam’s room blindfolded, but we’d continued to make the journey together holding hands. Tonight, I moved my thumb over the join between his thumb and forefinger. He squeezed my hand back.

Once inside his room, we sat on the carpet and Liam produced a bottle of tequila and a shot glass out of his desk drawer.

‘Now,’ he said, pouring out a shot, ‘we should . . . be careful . . . because this will get us really . . . tanked.’

‘’kay. You’re right.’ I smiled at him and drank the shot. ‘Jesus Christ that’s disgusting. Down the hatch, Leigh-mond.’

I watched as he tipped his head back to drink his shot, his beautiful white throat glowing in the lamplight. I fought the urge to reach out and touch it.

‘Sometimes,’ I said later, as we lay side by side on the floor with our feet near the heater, ‘I think God put me on this earth to listen to this song. That’s why I’m here, you know?’

‘Could be. ’s not impossible.’

‘It makes my heart tremble.’

‘Mine too.’

‘The way these strings go down and down . . . no,
cascade,
and then, and then when they can’t go any lower they just rise up so triumphantly and take you with them.’

‘Mmmm.’

‘Can we hear it again?’

‘Honey, we can hear it all night if you want.’

I loved to hear him call me honey. I’d always loved it.

‘Who said something about . . . god I’m so drunk . . . said something about how, um, sheep guts rubbing on each other can um, heave . . . uh . . . make . . . ’ ‘Heave men’s hearts out of their mouths?’

‘Yeah, som’m like that.’

‘
Much Ado about Nothing.
Benedick.’

‘Yes!’

We lay in silence, listening to the song.

‘You’re the best thing in my life Leigh-mond.’ I said, when it finished. ‘You get me through the days.’

‘Likewise.’

My right and his left hand found each other and squeezed so hard I might have registered pain if not for the percentage of alcohol in my rushing bloodstream.

Hindsight is 20/20 isn’t it? That was the moment just before it all went out of control, before my memories become fragmented. What I wished more than anything the next day, and all the days after that, was that I could remember who started it. Did he kiss me first? Did he reach for me? Did he pull me on top of him? Or did I force myself on him, like some kind of tequila-fuelled Klingon female, and he was too drunk or too polite to push me off?

Either way, in the next section of memories we are kissing passionately and somehow I’m on top of him. I think with all our clothes on, but I remember pulling both of our shirts upward, and laying my belly against his. Skin to skin. I remember – I think I remember – him kissing the palm of my hand, and saying, ‘You are so beautiful, Holly, so beautiful and sexy.’ I’m amazed I wasn’t sneezing at any point because I am allergic to dust and Liam rarely vacuumed the floor of his room. Then his hands inside my shirt, his palms flat and warm on my shoulder blades.

Anyway.

The next hazy memory is of dozing next to him on his bed when I felt his fingers stroking the side of my face. I think it was almost dawn, but I kept my eyes closed. It could well have been a dream. I had so many dreams about him doing that, and I always woke alone in my own bed to crashing disappointment.

It was definitely daylight when I was woken by nausea, accompanied by a splitting headache. I saw a ceiling not my own, but knew almost instantly where I was and what had happened. I turned to look at Liam asleep beside me. Or at least pretending to be asleep. I panicked, hoping that I could get up and leave and never speak of that heinous, friendship-ruining act.

Now he knows; now he knows that I have been ... lying to him for years, pretending to be his friend while secretly harbouring this, this . ..and now the cat’s out of the bag.