Malcolm and Juliet (2 page)
Juliet wasn’t the type to panic easily. Nor did she normally respond to threats. Still, there was no mistaking, this was serious. The defrauding of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, scoring for herself straight excellence in the level one maths exam when her ability rarely crept as far as merit, was something she preferred to keep to herself. Her academic future would be cut off at the knees. Her father would disown her. She wondered for a moment whether it wouldn’t be best to come clean and plead reduced responsibility.
After all, there had been pressures. Like the unreasonable promotion to the top-stream class, when her father rang and complained. She should have resisted, but her father was forceful, so she had given in to his false vision of her ability and spent the rest of the year struggling to keep up. In a way it was his fault.
It was the arsonist’s fault too, Juliet realised, now that she was looking for people to blame. The arsonist who burned down the hall at the absurdly expensive private school Juliet attended. A school where people like her father paid to have their daughters’ ignorance hidden from the world. And because the hall burned down, only a week before the final exams, alternative arrangements had to be made, arrangements that presented Juliet with her opportunity. And that wasn’t her fault either.
Then there was her name. Her father’s fault again. Juliet never asked to be a Zambesi, the only Z in the class, last on the alphabet and so assigned to the overflow room. The only girl to sit with the eight extra boys from St Patrick’s: boys who had no idea what Juliet Zambesi was supposed to look like.
Finally, Juliet decided, her school had to take some of the blame. They were the ones who panicked, terrified the disruption might affect exam results and dent their precious reputation. They were the ones who explained the arrangements a full four days in advance. Four days. Plenty of time to recruit Madeleine, a Year 11 student from another school who fitted Juliet’s uniform and needed the money. Two hundred dollars it had cost. It had seemed such a bargain, at the time.
No, it really wasn’t Juliet’s fault at all, but knowing it didn’t cheer her up much. She understood the world wasn’t much interested in causes; it would just want somewhere tidy to lay the blame. She looked at the letter again. It couldn’t have come at a worse time, just when her father had cut her allowance and forced her to work two nights a week at the local supermarket.
So you’ll never want to do
that sort of work again
, he had explained.
So you’ll
realise how important it is to continue this excellent
run of results. You know I’m so proud of you.
And he had kissed her on the forehead. She had looked away from his fatherly stare and now, remembering this, Juliet knew she could not tell him.
Juliet tried to be calm and rational. She tried to consider the options. Who had she told? Nobody. She hadn’t whispered it to herself in a public place or written about it in a diary. She hadn’t even discussed it with Madeleine, not once the deed was done. Could it be a dirty double-cross? No, it made too little sense. Madeleine was a top student who couldn’t afford the publicity. Maybe one of the St Patrick’s boys recognised Madeleine that day, and had been biding his time. That was a lot of patience though, for a Catholic boy. So whoever it was, and however they had found out, they were staying hidden for now. Hardly a fair fight at all.
Juliet pulled on the second of her gloves, did a last stretch of her back (it always tensed when she got angry) and attacked the heavy boxing bag which hung from the basement rafters. Left, right, left. Kick high, kick low, back, bounce, clockwise step, left, right, left. Within a minute she had a sweat up; within four the bag was well beaten and she had all but forgotten about the letter. Perhaps her blackmailer would have been feeling a little less confident if they could see the dents she was leaving.
Kevin stood back and admired what was at this stage little more than a dent. In this light he could see the possibilities. The sun was low over his backyard. The tyre tracks, where a month before a large truck had backed up to deposit the two large chunks of sandstone, were still visible in the grass. A month of work, of quiet chipping away, and this was all he had to show for it; a sizeable hollow in the first block, halfway up. But that was the thing Kevin loved most about sculpting: there was never any hurry. Somewhere in amongst those two pieces of stone his work was already complete. It was just a matter of uncovering it, slowly, one chip at a time.
If you are ever given the choice between talent
and patience, Kevin
, his mother had once told him,
you must always choose patience. At the end of the
day talent all comes down to perception. Talent can
be faked. But patience, patience is a true gift.
Well Kevin had patience, outstanding patience, the sort of patience other patiences talked about at parties, when the time was right. He had optimism too, quiet patient optimism, and in its own unexcitable way that could be a formidable weapon. It was why one day he would reduce the stones in front of him to things of arresting beauty. It was also why, he was sure, he would one day realise his unspoken dream. One day, Brian would be his.
Kevin didn’t know where his love for Brian had come from. He was not the questioning type. It had arrived quite unannounced, a gift, and so he had received it. To do otherwise would be ungrateful.
Other people, less patient, less optimistic people, might have seen only the obstacles ahead and given up on the spot. They might have noted that Brian, like Kevin, was only sixteen, and relationships at sixteen are difficult, fickle beasts. They might have pointed out the problem of Brian’s undoubted attractiveness, drawing in an army of would-be competitors. His skin, perfectly smooth, hot chocolate in summer, by winter faded to a flawless latte. His fine light hair, his dimpled smile, his athletic grace. Other people might have been scared off by the enormity of the task, but not Kevin. His optimism and his patience were such that he was even able to see past the biggest hurdle of them all, the awkward fact that up until this point in time Brian had not shown himself to be anything but boringly, depressingly, heterosexual.
It needn’t matter, Kevin decided. Life is a sculpture, chip, chip, chip. In good time, with good patience, even the most formidable rock can be shaped. And Kevin had a plan. Already he was inching forward, tiny step by tiny step.
Very subtly, over the past six months, Kevin had been working his way into Brian’s life. So subtly that if you asked Brian he would say they went way back, even though half a year before, Kevin had been just another face in the corridor. Stranger to acquaintance, acquaintance to friend, friend to mate, mate to good mate, it was progressing well. Kevin had watched Brian carefully, and learnt his ways. He saw early on that Brian liked to lead, and so Kevin had taken to following, always half a step behind, in his shadow, laughing at his jokes and taking his advice.
From here, Kevin believed, it was all just a matter of patience. One day Brian would realise Kevin was more than a mate, more than even a best mate, that he had become indispensable. And then? Well it wasn’t unheard of, men coming to understand, late in life. It was hardly as simple as it looked, this sexuality thing, and with Kevin always there, chip, chip, chipping away at Brian’s defences, it had to be possible. Possibility, the only fuel Kevin’s obsession needed. One day Brian would be his. One day, Kevin would cure him.
‘Kevin!’ Kevin’s mother’s voice interrupted his thoughts. ‘It’s Brian, on the phone.’
Kevin’s heart gave the now familiar flutter as he raced to the extension in his room.
‘Bri man.’
‘Kevy!’
‘What’s up?’
‘Party tonight. Charlotte’s place.’
‘Who’s Charlotte?’
‘You can’t have forgotten Charlotte. You know, Chaaaarlotte.’
‘Oh yeah. Mate.’
‘Mate. Might have a crack there tonight.’
‘Might beat you to it.’
‘You’re a sly one Kev boy. You’re a sly one.’
Malcolm had a plan, a very sly plan. Last year he came second. Second in the National Secondary Schools’ Science Fair, with his photo in the paper and an award ceremony at the Wanganui Town Hall. The year that followed had been a year of pain and frustration because second place doesn’t mean a lot when you know you’re capable of first. Second place isn’t a prize, it’s a torment. It is an award of might-have-been, of should-have-been.
Malcolm knew where he went wrong, he had the official judges’ report to tell him. Brilliantly researched, they said of his study of genetic mutations in fruit flies, but weak on visual punch and lacking the all-important topicality. The winning entry, from Spotswood College, had both in spades: a continuously flowing, underlit volcanic eruption and lava stream, in the very year that Ruapehu went and blew its top again.
Well not this year. This year there would be no second places. No bravery in the face of unsolicited condolences, no smiling for the cameras when all he wanted to do was vomit. This year Malcolm had a plan, and the plan was sex.
Sex was topical. Sex lent itself to visual presentations. Malcolm had borrowed his auntie’s hi-def camera and tripod, and had arranged for the use of the school’s iMacs for the editing. The school was very keen to see him succeed. He hadn’t told them what his topic was of course, that too was part of his plan. Although his research was still in its early stages he had already discovered sex to be an area that aroused strong and often unexpected reactions.
Malcolm checked his reflection in the mirror. He was wearing his favourite vibrant blue Hawaiian shirt—visual appeal again. The camera and tripod were set up at the end of the bed and after much experimenting he knew exactly where to stand. He liked having the bed in the background; it acted as a visual subtext. Malcolm ran through his opening monologue in his head. There was no real need. He could recite it backwards if he needed to. He faced the camera, eyeballed the lens, breathed in, then hit
record
on the small remote. No second takes, that was to be his director’s motto.
‘A recent survey of American women showed fifty-two percent of them would rather go shopping than have sex. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it, about American men. I’m thinking of emigrating. It might be a good place to begin my sexual career. There has to be less pressure, when all you’re competing with is the queue at Walmart.
‘Then again, England might be a better place to start. A survey there revealed that sixty-five percent of women would prefer a nice cup of tea. I don’t quite understand that. Maybe if I was a forty-three-year-old “Coronation Street” fan called Maude, trapped in a small Manchester flat with a seventeen stone football-fanatic-husband who smelt of lost hope and beer, it would make more sense.
‘I saw a programme on TV the other day, where they actually filmed the sperm from two different men, fighting it out in the race to reach the egg, pushing and blocking like Year 8 students in a corridor. It must have been a very small camera. I can’t think how they would have done the lighting.
‘On another programme I saw that all over the world there has been an inexorable and quite unexplained fall in men’s sperm counts. From Austria to Algiers, Paris to the Philippines, it is as if collectively we are losing the will to carry on. I watch a lot of television. I just hope nobody is using it to tell me lies. In the last year alone I have watched over one thousand five hundred hours of television commercials: light bulbs that last longer, stomachs that look flatter, microwave dinners that almost taste like food, so long as you eat them with the lights off and don’t have to worry about your waistline. It shows how far we’ve come I suppose.
‘But lately I’ve been wondering about that. I’ve been wondering whether I might consider swapping it all—the bottled water in the fridge, the junk mail in the letterbox, the television inside my head—for a single primitive night, in front of a simple primitive fire, with a girl who would hold me.’
‘Hi ya.’ Camille, Malcolm’s mum, and his second-best friend in the world after Juliet, stood at the doorway. She was dressed for work. The dark blue of her nursing uniform looked almost black against her short platinum hair. ‘I’m off now. There’s some meat thawing in the fridge. That sounded good by the way.’
‘Really?’
‘I thought so.’
‘You’re hardly impartial.’
‘Nothing’s impartial Malcolm. It’s what makes life so much fun.’
‘Science is,’ Malcolm replied.
‘Science is what witchcraft dresses up as, when out in public,’ Camille told him, and he would have argued but he knew she was only teasing. It was Camille who had bought him his first chemistry set and one summer camped out on the lawn with him for a whole week while they mapped the southern skies.
Frank, Malcolm’s dad, was much more of a worry. He was a travelling salesperson for a herbal remedies company and a fervent believer in the proposition that rational thought would only divert humankind from its search for truth. Much as Malcolm loved him, he despaired at his lack of faith in the scientific method, and it was probably for the best that Frank was often away on business.
‘You might need to record that again by the way, I think I might have been in-shot in the mirror. Sorry. See you later then. You going out?’
‘Yeah, there’s a party Juliet told me about. She’s not going but she got me an invite. I might take the camera and do some interviews.’
‘Okay. Take a front door key then.’
The front door was open and the sounds of shouting mixed with music as it spilled out on to the street. No sooner had Brian entered the hallway than a beer was thrust into his grateful hand.
‘Bri mate!’ someone shouted. Even the bass vibrating along the walls seemed to be welcoming him. Brian was good-looking and he was sixteen. Like his father, and his father before him had once done, Brian stood at the brink. Years of good times lay ahead, years free of guilt and empty of responsibility. He was just the man to enjoy them. Not that he was entirely without a sense of social obligation. He was after all quite prepared to take Kevin along for the ride. Kevin, who now stood half a step behind him. Poor Kevin, who really had no idea, who would be quite lost without Brian there to lead him.
