Indelible Ink (45 page)

He felt himself yielding again, not to George who evidently didn’t want him, but to an old desire that now floated beyond both of them. He wished George could have been seduced by him. He was like a hitch-hiker tired of waiting, hefting his bags onto the same old truck.

‘Mum was looking quite well,’ he said. ‘Then she had a bad reaction to the chemo so they kept her in for a few days.’

‘That’s a bummer. Hopefully they’ll get the mixture right next time.’

‘So you don’t reckon she can beat it?’

‘I really can’t say.’

‘But generally what is it with stage-four stomach cancer?’ Leon insisted.

George inclined his head sympathetically. ‘Generally it’s end game.’

Leon spooned more rice onto his plate. He wanted to swear or throw something. He could feel George watching him.

George said quietly, ‘Are you moving back to Sydney?’

‘Why’s everybody think I’m moving back to Sydney?’ Leon said with a bitchy lisp. ‘This town’s a dump.’

‘Feel loved, matey.’

‘I left too quickly to pack my stuff up.’ Leon watched four guys at the next table pay their bill and leave. White, Arabic, Asian, all muscle-bound, short-haired, in designer t-shirts. George forked food into his mouth and looked up through his brows, nodding.

‘What’d you do for Christmas?’ Leon asked him.

‘You won’t believe it.’ George grinned. ‘I spent it in Villawood.’

‘What?’

‘My uncle’s been chucked into Villawood. They want to deport him. He’s been here since ’69, married with three kids, but he never got it together to get proper papers.’

‘Fuck that,’ Leon fumed. ‘This whole fucking
country
’s a dump. Poor bastard.’

‘He’s a bit of a fuckwit, actually. Homophobic Leb, you know. Which doesn’t mean I don’t feel sorry for him. We took loads of food in and had a pig-out Leb-style. We’re getting a barrister for him, but apparently his chances aren’t good. Most of the people in there are Chinese.’

‘Oh yeah?’

George laughed again, partly to himself. ‘Y’know, Leon, I hate to sound cheesy, but it’s not such a dump as all that here. I mean, where else would you be? Jordan? Where they torture us?’

‘I don’t know. That’s what I’m gonna figure out over the next while.’ Leon reached for the water. George wasn’t drinking: part of the fitness regime maybe. Leon was dying for a beer but didn’t want to drink alone. ‘Been going out much?’

‘No.’

‘Gettin’ old, are ya?’ Leon said in Strine.

‘Ancient.’ George smiled. He was forty-five, twelve years older than Leon for this half of the year, eleven years older when Leon turned thirty-four in August. ‘It’s pretty dead anyway. The sniffer dogs are everywhere and if I get caught with so much as one joint I can get struck off. You haven’t missed anything being away, y’know.’

Leon wondered if George wasn’t being a bit melodramatic. Those medicos were the biggest party animals he’d ever come across. Drug pigs, the lot of them. Hard to imagine them stopping just like that. ‘I was thinking of going for a quick beer. You want to?’

‘You go ahead. I have to turn in.’

They said goodbye out on the street. ‘It’s gonna be a long haul, mate.’ George rubbed his back. ‘If you need anything, just give me a ring. Okay?’

Leon walked down to Oxford Street alone. He felt like a tourist: disoriented, out of place, faintly excited. He went into a bar and ordered a beer, for which he was charged seven dollars. He stood against a wall watching the crowd. It seemed to be all clean-cut young men, fresh out of high school. He bitched to George in his head:
I felt like I
’
d stumbled into a Young Liberals convention.
The music was Cher on a video screen above the bar; there was no DJ booth. Leon wandered into the room adjacent and found two walls of poker machines attended by three people. He went back into the bar. A couple of preppy guys in the corner were eyeing him off, but Leon ignored them. It was cold beneath the air-conditioning so he moved along the wall and picked up a gay paper. There was a column about the scourge of gay bars titled
Female Arse Crack
, which made him laugh. He looked around the room and saw a couple of straight girls sipping cocktails, but they were standing, so he couldn’t see their arse cracks. He couldn’t see any safe-sex packs either. It all began to feel ominous: the shiny steel and pine finish, the expensive drinks, the loud hollow music. The young perfection. He probably just needed to have another beer and loosen up. He pulled all the coins out of his pocket and counted them. Not even enough for a middy. He left.

Up at Taylor Square he saw four cops on foot patrol. Their uniforms were baggy trousers, army boots and baseball caps. They looked like riot police or kids pretending to be. Moving away was supposed to cure the disappointment in what his home town had become. But sights like this still riled him.

Did his mother realise what lay ahead? he wondered as he walked the laneways to his ute. George had told him more tonight than he had learnt in weeks of conversation with his family. Had Dr Wroblewski been clear with Marie and told her everything she needed to know? If he had, why did she say she could beat the cancer? It seemed to Leon that all of them, let alone his mother, were sitting ducks, and he didn’t have the strength to move out of the way. Indeed it felt right to receive the impact straight on. His two and a half weeks home seemed longer and more eventful than the two and a half years he had spent in Brisbane. He searched for a memorable incident during his time away and nothing came to mind. He realised that everything he had tried to escape — his family, George, his vexed relationship with Sydney — had never been more than cursorily buried. And that he had rushed down here not just for his mother but for himself. Even while writhing with hatred for the place, he couldn’t keep away.

He was woken the next morning by a phone call from Clark.

‘Are you picking up Mum on Sunday?’

‘I thought you wanted to.’

‘Something’s come up. I can spend Monday with her instead. I’ll bring groceries over and cook some meals and freeze them,’ Clark said excitedly. ‘I’ll fix up the house.’

‘Okay then, but give her a ring so she hears it direct from you. Oh, and Blanche has been looking for places for Mum. And she’s emailed some links to us and we’re supposed to check them out and get back to her.’

‘Yep, will do.’

Clark put down the phone and punched the air. He danced into his bedroom to shadow-box the mirror. He let his heels fall to the floor and watched his flab wobble then pinched it. Not too bad. He kissed his mobile, containing Sylvia’s latest text:
Sweetheart I
’
m free! All weekend! xo.
On Tuesday night, in Clark’s car at Gordons Bay, they’d had two hours of amazing conversation followed by gut-wrenching laughter imitating the characters from
Summer Heights High
; then, completely unexpectedly for Clark, half an hour of loud, urgent sex squashed in the back seat. He went into his inbox again to look at Sylvia’s message. He caressed the bruises on his knees.

They were back on.

He went down to Hall Street for food, candles, wine and flowers. Took the narrow walkways that ran between the streets, exulting in the pink frangipani and weathered paling. On the steep path above Forest Knoll, he heard a rustling and watched a blue-tongue lizard slink through a crack beneath the wall of a house. He hadn’t seen one for about ten years. On his way back up the path forty minutes later, labouring beneath a backpack full of groceries, Clark opened his Opinel knife and cut two leaves from a copse of bananas then carried them carefully home.

He changed the sheets. He remembered Sylvia saying she hated cleaning so he left his flat dishevelled and went to the beach for a swim. He began to cook at four o’clock, listening to Nina Simone’s
Baltimore.
He made cucumber raita with mint, and spinach raita with fenugreek, cumin and black mustard seeds. He made pappadams and a coconut, coriander and green chilli paste to dress the fish with. Sylvia arrived as he was wrapping the last piece in its banana-leaf packet. She had been at a conference at Macquarie Uni all day and her skin was hot and sticky from the drive. She gave him a bottle of wine and flopped into his arms.

‘Mmm,’ he said. ‘Your neck’s salty.’

‘Can I have a shower?’

‘Down the end of the corridor. There are towels in the cupboard.’

‘Can I take my bag to your bedroom?’ She looked at him shyly.

‘Yeah. Second room, past the study.’

‘Great flat, cheaptart,’ she called back to him.

It comforted him to hear her moving through the rooms after she had showered. To know she was naked in his bedroom, drying herself on his towel, surrounded by his things. He had wine poured and candles lit when she returned in a clean singlet and sarong. Dusk had turned to night.

Sylvia shook out her wet hair. ‘It’s gorgeous being in a house full of books.’

‘You don’t have any?’

‘Yeah, but most of them are in my office.’

‘My mother’s coming out of hospital tomorrow.’

‘Great. How is she?’

‘Not so great.’

‘I’m sorry. Are you picking her up?’

‘No, Leon will.’ Clark placed the pappadams before her. ‘I’ve kept the weekend for us.’

‘Good. So have I. Yuuuum.’

He felt her watching him as she ate; he felt like a god in his shorts and t-shirt, crossing the worn lino to the refrigerator. ‘Did you have a good week?’

‘Oh, the usual.’

‘Do you actually
like
your job?’

‘Am I being a whinging academic?’

‘Not necessarily. I’m curious.’

‘Well, yeah, I like my job. I choose to do it. I’m lucky, really.’ She took another pappadam. ‘But sometimes I think I’ve become a boring old fart. You know, teaching north shore brats How to Steal Legally.’

‘I thought you taught Law Reform.’

‘And other lofty subjects like Contracts.’ She looked around the room. ‘You’re so
neat.
You’d go mad living with me. I’m a total slob.’

‘I didn’t clean especially for you.’

Sylvia hugged him while he continued his chopping. ‘You’re so sweet. What are you making?’

‘Fish steamed in banana leaves.’

‘Have you been chopping up chilli?’ She pulled up her singlet and placed his fingertips on her nipples.

Clark immediately moved one hand down, into her knickers. ‘Do you miss your old job?’

Sylvia slapped him away playfully. ‘I don’t know. Sometimes, I guess.’ She walked back into the living room. ‘You always go back to that one, don’t you, y’bloody perv.’

Clark grinned at the chopping board. ‘How long’s it been? Since you married Franco?’

‘Pretty much.’ She was out of sight, crunching on a pappadam. He heard her sifting through his music. ‘Can I put something on?’

‘Please.’

‘I love you, you know that?’ She said it almost absent-mindedly. Then Tom Waits strode out of the speaker.

‘
Orphans
,’ Clark exclaimed. ‘Perfect!’

‘I’ve never heard it.’

Clark brought the food out and pulled back a chair for her. She placed her hands on the back of his neck and kissed him on the lips. ‘I trust you, you know. Why’s that?’

‘Because I trust you.’

‘Okay then, so I have done a couple of jobs since I got married. A few years ago an old client rang me. He’d just been diagnosed with cancer and wanted to have a good time before starting treatment.’ Sylvia ate while she talked. ‘This is delicious.’

‘I admire his taste,’ Clark said judiciously, fighting a flash of jealousy. ‘Gives new meaning to the phrase
mercy fuck
.’

‘I wasn’t being kind. He was offering me a lot. Franco and I were going overseas and I was sick of always having less money than him so I agreed to see this guy. I really liked him, you know. He was one of my best regulars. A real gentleman and a generous tipper.’

‘And how was it?’

‘It was a hoot.’ Sylvia’s face lit up. ‘We had room service, French champagne, and he had a dominatrix come in on it.’

‘
Really?
Did she whip him?’

‘Nooo. She supervised me scrubbing him down in the spa. She was amazing, all in latex. I was like the fluffer. We were in hysterics the whole time. She fucked him with a strap-on. It was like
Satyricon
meets Benny Hill.’

Clark groaned. ‘Not for me, thanks.’

Sylvia said nothing.

‘Obviously his cancer didn’t get in the way.’

Sylvia concentrated on unwrapping her second piece of fish, hooking her little fingers out of the way. ‘It was melanoma. He was in a bit of pain. I think it was spreading.’

‘Did he recover?’

‘I don’t know. I never heard from him again.’ Sylvia looked uncomfortable. ‘Sorry, Clark. This isn’t really the best topic of conversation right now, is it?’

‘Did you tell Franco?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

Sylvia looked up sharply. ‘I just wanted to do something for myself. Anyway, I’m telling you now. Look at us sitting here eating dinner in our underwear. Don’t you love hot nights? I wear nothing at home in summer.’

Clark rued the judgement in his voice. Impulses and feelings speared from him like darts, too fast to rein in. He wanted to bless and curse Sylvia at the same time. ‘If my life was cut short, I’d pay every last cent just to have one night with you.’

‘It’s not the same, sweetheart.’

Why couldn’t he say anything right? Eyes vague, Sylvia shook her head as though trying to rid herself of something. Clark saw this gesture increasingly often and it made him uneasy. She had eaten everything on her plate and when he served her more, calmly took up her cutlery again. ‘I love your appetite,’ he said.

‘I love your food.’ Tom began half singing half talking about his first kiss in a gravelly voice. Sylvia wrinkled her nose. ‘This is getting boring.’

‘I’m going to the toilet. You can change it if you like.’

The sight of the seat down warmed him. Out the window a crescent moon had risen behind the she-oak, a dense black scribble on Prussian blue. Clark flicked the seat up, sank his chin to his chest and let the piss flow from his body. Sometimes when Sylvia spoke about clients with her pragmatic compassion, he was filled with admiration in the same way he was for field workers with the disadvantaged. He focused on this feeling, but the insecurity began to leak again.