Raw Blue (4 page)

5

sugar

Marty crouches down so he can see through the window and dings the bell five times in succession. I’m standing at the end of the pass where I’ve got the mixer set up with the dough hook attachment on it. I’m making a batch of biscotti and I’ve just added lemon zest. The
Official Franchise Recipes
folder is lying open on the bench and I check the biscotti ingredients again, finding my place with a floury finger. I’m following the recipe because I haven’t made it many times. There are confidentiality clauses on every page in the folder.

When I don’t pay him any attention, Marty dings the bell twice more. ‘
Pssst
.’

‘
What
? What do you want?’

He remains hunched down, looking through the window, but doesn’t speak, just widens his dirty-green eyes into an intense stare. His lips are apart, revealing the slight overlap of his two front teeth.

I look down in the mixer bowl at the pasty white blob being pummelled by the dough hook.

He dings the bell again.

‘What?’

Without blinking, he runs his tongue over his lips. Marty is one of those guys who likes to leer. It gets to me, makes my skin prickle. There’s something both exciting and horrible about it.

As usual, he’s not wearing his Café Parisienne cap. Emilio’s at him all the time about that. He keeps it tucked in the back pocket of his black pants. He’s got light brown curly hair that would look stupid if he brushed it.

Emilio’s voice floats in from out the front somewhere. ‘Marty? How about you use the downtime to stack those beans?’

Marty ignores him and keeps staring at me. I shake my head and hope my face isn’t turning red. I feel acutely stupid.

Emilio’s voice again. ‘Marty?
Marty
. Come on, mate.’

Emilio has zero control over Marty. When they’re on a shift together Marty drives the coffee machine, which is usually Emilio’s territory. Emilio retreats to the register and does his worried-brown-eyes act with the customers. Marty talks dirty to the regulars while he’s pulling shots.
You want me to put sugar in it for you? Stir it up? You like sugar? Everybody needs a bit of sugar sometimes
. I think Emilio’s a little jealous of him. Poor Emilio takes it all day long: from Michael, the owner, from customers, from uncontrollable staff like Marty.

All of a sudden Marty drops the leer. ‘Nah,’ he says. ‘I made you a latte, eh.’

He places a tall glass with a serviette sleeve wrapped around it on the windowsill and disappears. It’s dumb but I’m flattered. I haven’t asked him for a latte. He probably just got an order wrong. I take a sip. It’s heavily sugared.

I drink way too much coffee on Marty’s shifts.

Roger walks in and dumps a tray full of dirty crockery on the bench beside the sink.

‘They got you bussing tonight, Roger?’

‘No,’ he says, without turning around. ‘Dish pigging. Kylie’s bussing but she’s on a break.’

‘Kylie?’ I stare at Roger’s broad back. The elastic waist on his black pants is stretched and they sag down, showing his bum crack crisscrossed by his apron strings. I’ve seen this so many times I don’t even feel embarrassed looking at it any more. Kylie is my equivalent during the daytime. She does the kitchen stuff. She’s twenty-two and from Wagga or Dubbo or somewhere – a small town girl. She followed her boyfriend to Manly and it’s not working out for them and she misses home, and all of these things are affecting her physically. She’s starving herself.

Kylie shouldn’t be doing a double shift. Her body doesn’t have the energy to spend.

‘Do you know when she gets off break?’ I ask Roger.

He ignores my question, slamming the lid of the dishwasher up and sliding the steaming tray of plates inside across to the cooling bench. Roger’s an alcoholic, although you wouldn’t necessarily know that from looking at him, and he’s not a big communicator. He works hard as a dish pig. I think Emilio pays him cash in hand. Tonight he’s sporting a three-day growth and it suits him. You notice his eyes too much when he’s clean shaven – they’re a bloodshot pale blue and seem riveted by things in his head, not the things they see.

‘Hi sweetie,’ Kylie says, coming through from the front, handbag on her shoulder and her cap and apron in one hand.

‘You’re working a double shift?’

She stops at the end of the pass and I can see the angles of her. When I first started I thought she was just really slim, but after a while even baggy black pants can’t hide the sharp edges of bones.

‘Yeah.’ She tilts her head to the side and blinks her toffee-coloured eyes. She’s got freckles the same colour. But her face gets more skull-like every day. She looks like a little girl trapped in an old person’s body.

‘You gonna be okay bussing? Do you want to swap?’ I wouldn’t make this offer to anybody except Kylie. I hate bussing – cleaning tables and bringing the dirty stuff in to Roger. People like to sit with their chairs pushed right back and they never move for you, even though they can see you there, struggling with a heavy load, trying to get through. It’s the pits.

‘No, I’ll
be
fine.’ Kylie’s got a scratchy voice that goes up and down when she speaks. She smokes, so it could be from that. ‘What are
you
making?’

‘The biscotti. What do you think?’

She puts her head over the mixer bowl and has a good look. Her shaggy red-brown hair looks like a wig, too big for her pointed little face.

‘Looks good.’

‘I’m going to put extra stuff in it. I’m thinking pine nuts, toasted hazelnuts … maybe some nutmeg.’

‘
That’s
the way,’ she cackles, grinning.

It’s a point of honour between the two of us that we deviate from the official franchise recipe with everything we make – on the generous side.

She gives me a hug. ‘That’s what I like
about
you. You make everything with love,
like
me.’

And she really means it. She’s a hearts and flowers girl. Two weeks after I started she gave me this naff card that said
You’re so very special
on the front of it. It had a picture of a little cat holding a balloon. It was to thank me for doing the close properly, making things easier for her in the mornings. Stu, the guy who works the kitchen on my nights off, leaves things looking like a shit fight after every shift, apparently.

The bell dings and Emilio appears at the window. His brown hair is sweaty at the front and he looks tired. I’m expecting a food order but all he says is, ‘Hello, Carly, how are you?’

I smile at him. ‘Good thanks, Emilio. How are you?’

I do have a soft spot for Emilio. Not least because he’s a walking franchise manual:
Make sure you greet every staff member as soon as they arrive. A good manager makes employees feel that their contribution to the running of the hospitality operation is important
.

I finish off the biscotti dough, shape it and put it in the oven. Then I lug the mixer bowl over to Roger. As I approach I see him wolf down the remains of a steak sandwich and my stomach turns over. He eats food scraps all the time and everybody pretends not to notice. Whenever I ask him if he wants me to make him something for dinner he says no. A couple of times I’ve pretended to get an order wrong and made an extra dish and then asked him if he wants it, and he’s still said no. He likes to eat other people’s leftovers. Maybe because he thinks it’s a secret. Like Kylie thinks the fact she doesn’t eat is a secret.

‘Behind, Roge,’ I say, leaving the bowl on the floor next to him.

We get hit about half an hour later. The line for coffees and food stretches out the door. The little printer sitting at the edge of the window spews out food orders faster than I can get through them so that eventually the line of dockets almost reaches the floor. I don’t understand these people. Why don’t they go to a nice place? One of the funky restaurants in the back streets away from the Corso, where they can sit down and relax while some nice waitress comes and takes their order. Why do they like queuing to order, then carrying the coffees they’ve waited for around with them while they fight to find a seat in a faux French bistro? It’s the final proof that location is everything. We’re on a corner block. We’re a big café with a cavernous wooden interior and an expensive floral arrangement. People see the queue forming and rush to join it in case they’re missing out on something.

Things quieten down at around eight-thirty. Marty comes out and stands behind me while I’m slicing the baked biscotti, pressing the whole of his body up against mine.

I twist around. ‘What do you want, Marty?’

‘You, Carly … Nah, biscotti.’

He takes the end slice, pushing it in his mouth so his cheeks balloon, then grins at me. ‘Nah, can you make me some scrambled eggs?’

‘Does Emilio know?’

Emilio’s got this thing about staff paying a token amount towards the food they eat. Probably to help cover the cost of the food they steal.

‘Come on, Carls.’

‘Emilio.’

‘It’ll be cool, Carly, Carly, Carly.’

He leans in and blows against the side of my neck and a wave of goose bumps wash over me. I clear my throat to say something light – what? – but he’s walking off towards the office. In his aftermath, I feel like I do when I paddle out and I haven’t caught a wave yet. Like I’m out of my body.

We keep a jug of beaten eggs and cream in the fridge. I pull it out and heat a pan on one of the hobs, spraying it with oil. Using a ladle, I portion out a double serve of eggs. When I ding the bell, Marty’s out front making himself toast in the grill. He carries it out the back in his hands and plops it down on the plate with his eggs, along with five sachets of butter.

‘Thanks, darlin’.’

As he walks out to one of the tables at the side of the café, I can hear Emilio saying, ‘Did you pay for that, Marty?’

When Kylie brings in her next load, I stop her on her way back to the front. ‘Hey, do you want me to make you some dinner?’

Her eyes lose focus. She’s doing that more and more and it worries me. Brains need fuel to work, too, don’t they?

‘Like ah … Greek salad or something?’ I say, trying to reach her. ‘Or how about a Caesar salad?’ I’m thinking if I use the magic word ‘salad’ she might say yes. As far as I can tell she’s surviving on four skim milk lattes and fifteen Marlborough Lights a day.

Kylie blinks and comes to. ‘I ate in my
break
.’

Kylie’s always just eaten. And she does eat, she just eats ‘healthily’ – Georgina repeated this to me like a truism the other day. Emilio’s eyes skip over Kylie when he asks her if she’ll work a double shift. Marty doesn’t leer at her. Nobody says anything. It does my head in. Can’t they see she’s committing suicide?

Me, I know she’s killing herself. And I also know that me making her a salad isn’t going to stop it. That’s because a while ago I recognised something in Kylie. It’s the need to be alone. Kylie is alone all the time. She doesn’t want to know how you are or what you did yesterday because she’s completely preoccupied with calories consumed and calories denied.

I recognise this in Kylie because I can relate to it. I’m not interested in saving her or anybody else. I’m only interested in a beautiful saltwater skin; in the next time I’ll be thrumming across it. I have to surf every day, sometimes until I’m so physically tired I can feel muscles ripping in my upper back. That way I’m too tired to think or remember, too tired to hate myself, too tired to be angry. Because when I’m angry there’s no telling what I’ll do, especially if I’m driving a car.

But that night, driving home, I don’t want to crash. Instead I’ve got the radio up loud and the front two windows wound down so that air rushes through the car. I’m thinking about Marty, what it would be like to have his hands on me.

Surfing’s the only sex I get. Board fins come in small, medium and large. They’re stiff and give you rides that are smooth and fast. Wax sounds like pornography: Sex Wax, Quick Humps, Mrs Palmer’s, The Five Daughters. Surfer chicks like a stick between their legs.
Gettin’ a few?
Getting any?

6

Six purple fish

I wake with their voices in my head.
You want a crack? Aw yeah, good one, mate, leave me the sloppy seconds. Are you up for it or what? Yeah, righty-oh then – nah, not with you watchin’ me. Go on then, get into it
. Their stupid, slow Australian-male voices.

I can’t make their voices stop.

My disgrace, oh God, I want peace from it. This is why people kill themselves, they can’t get away from the things they carry in their heads. Shame isn’t a quiet grey cloud, shame is a drowning man who claws his way on top of you, scratching and tearing your skin, pushing you under the surface.

I curl up into a ball. On the ceiling of my bedroom there’s a square of moonlight and in it the shadow of the palm tree outside my window. The wind is making it move so that it bows and lifts itself over and over, looking like a restless hand with too many fingers. It’s hideous.

I wish I could bury this, but there are reminders everywhere. Stories in the media: a football team and a woman; drink spiking; packs of males picking up girls at train stations. All different, but the same. Men doing it, women taking it. Same as it ever was.

This is how it is for me: every time I meet a new guy, I listen hard to his voice, wondering if it’ll be one of the voices I carry in my head. I don’t roam much on the internet because I’m terrified one of them might have had a mobile phone and taken photos of me as it was happening. I’ve let my hair grow long since it happened so I look different, so even if I turn up somewhere in cyberspace no one will ever match that girl to me.

Rape is the perfect crime because the victim is the guilty one. I did not fight back; I did not say ‘no’; I did not make a sound.

My top sheet is twisted around one of my legs like a tentacle and I kick it off in a panic, fighting my way out of bed. Then I stand there, breathing hard, not sure what to do, just sure that I have to do something, because this is unbearable. There’s crap all over the floor and I stare at the shadows of it, wondering how these things came to be strewn around my bedroom.

I pat around for my shorts and pull them on. Resolved now, I switch on the light and gather up my doona and a pillow. I find my keys on the kitchen bench and lock the glass sliding door to the deck behind me.

After I’ve knocked on Hannah’s door, I wait. I knock another three times, getting louder and louder, and I’m just about to give up and go back downstairs when I hear footsteps on the other side of the door.

‘Hannah, it’s me. Carly.’

The outside light comes on. I hear the sounds of her unlocking the door then it swings open and she’s standing there, her white T-shirt billowing in a gust of wind, hair all sleep-mussed, face creased.

‘I’m so sorry, Hannah, for waking you up, but I … This is a bit weird, but can I sleep on your couch tonight? I just feel really horrible.’

She squints at me, sees that I’m about to cry. ‘But why … You are … Yes, yes. Come in.’

When dawn comes, the ocean looks bruised. I can see part of it framed by trees through Hannah’s lounge room windows. Being higher up she’s got a better view than me. The sky is a feverish yellow and completely clear except for six small purple clouds just above the horizon. They look like fish. When I see them I say ‘Oh’ out loud. They’ve surprised it out of me. After the night, six purple fish seem like a promise that there will be something better soon. It’s fragile, but there all the same.

I go to sleep.

The noise of an alarm. I fight it, not wanting to surface, feeling sick with tiredness. I remember that I’m at Hannah’s and it’s her alarm and I don’t have to worry about it. It keeps blaring. I bury my head under my pillow, rubbing my cheek against the hard seat of Hannah’s blue couch.

Hannah rolls out of bed with a thump and thuds across her room. The alarm is cut off. Then comes the quick
thump-thump
of her feet rushing back to bed. I feel bad for waking her at two in the morning.

I’m just starting to dissolve again when another alarm goes off. This one has a different noise. It’s shorter, more urgent, high-pitched.
Bip-bip-bip … bip-bip-bip
… I groan, confused. There’s a smattering of footsteps, but this time in a different pattern. From the echoing noise, I guess the alarm was in the bathroom.

Silence. I’m paralysed. Sticky with sleep.

Another
alarm goes off. This one is close, jarringly insistent. I pray Hannah will come and make it stop because it’s doing my head in. Hannah thuds into the room. Her thudding is unbearable too. I peek out from under my pillow and see the flash of her white T-shirt. She goes to the bookcase and reaches for something high. And then there’s silence again so sudden and sweet. Like a leaf see-sawing to the ground, I slip back into …

Aaargh
. Another alarm, an old-fashioned bell-ringer. Hannah’s out of bed, rushing through the lounge room past me and heading into the kitchen. I hear the scrape of her moving a chair and I sit up to look at what she’s doing. She’s standing on the chair, reaching up on top of a cupboard, bringing the alarm down and turning it off.

‘Jesus Christ, Hannah. How many alarms do you have?’ I ask, my voice thick.

Hannah looks at me weirdly as though she doesn’t know who I am and she doesn’t care either. She’s not wearing her glasses. ‘Five.’

The fifth alarm goes off. This one in her bedroom somewhere. She flashes past me, running from the kitchen to her room, then dropping to her knees and crawling in underneath her bed. The alarm stops and she re-emerges with a small travel clock in her right hand.

She comes into the lounge room and sits beside me on the couch, yawning and smelling sleep-musty.

I rub my face. ‘Why do you have five alarms?’

‘Well, otherwise I turn them off and go back to sleep without even knowing what I am doing.’

I clear my throat. ‘I’m sorry I woke you up last night. I was lying in bed and I was sure I heard a noise, so I –’

Hannah waves her hand dismissively. ‘It does not matter.’

I like that. It’s very European of her.

‘Cookie, could I ask you to do a favour for me this morning?’

‘Sure.’

‘I washed my sheets last night. Could I ask you to hang them out for me? Could you do that for me, please?’

‘Okay.’

She holds up her hand, looking stern. ‘But I will have to ask something of you.’

I stiffen. ‘Okay.’

‘It will require you to curb your messy ways. I would like you to hang them out with
at least
, at least, four clothing pegs fixed to the top of each one. That way they can’t come off and fall on the ground in the dirt and so forth. And with this wind they should dry quickly, so could you take them off for me and fold them up neatly? I will i-ron them later.’

I can’t believe she i-rons her sheets. Actually, I can believe it. This is the woman who told me she likes her own name because it’s symmetrical. What I can’t believe is that she needs five alarms. Or even one. Can’t she just set her head with a time to get up?

I think of her hotpants and the men she brings home with her from the salsa club. She’s the weirdest mix of chaos and control.

‘Okay,’ I say again.

She smiles. ‘Good. Now, I’ll make us some tea.’

Even though Hannah’s place has got a better view of the ocean than mine, I wouldn’t want to swap with her. Her front door is at street level while my place is tucked away. My deck is cool too, in amongst the trees like a tree house – the house is built on such a steep slope that I’m still relatively high up. The washing line is under the house. Going down there is like going mountaineering. Hannah’s got me paranoid about her bloody sheets so I hang them perfectly. When they’re dry – which she believes will be at approximately ten fifteen – I’ll take them down and fold them.

I get changed into my bikini and head up to my car, which I keep parked on the pavement. The carport is for Hannah’s silver Holden Barina – she pays more rent than me. It’s just past eight o’clock and traffic is streaming up and down Powderworks Road – people on their way to work and mums taking kids to school – and I’m standing there in my bikini top and shorts, loading my surfboard into the back of my car. It makes me feel free and anxious at the same time. I mean, right now I can surf every day; I’ve set my life up to get what I’ve always wanted, to live the big surf dream. But how sustainable is this? I can keep it up if I’m not worried about doing anything more than paying the bills; if I’m not worried about the future and all that. Am I worried about the future? I don’t know. When I think of the word it’s like seeing a cavity, a space where a tooth used to be.