Slights (23 page)

I said, "What, no news? Just information?"

  He said, "This is serious, Steve. You've started something rolling and I can't stop it now."

  Cops love to talk in clichés.

  So I invited him over Saturday night, told him to bring some fish and chips, and I'd pay for the beer, because enrolled nurses get paid. Not much, but enough for beer.

  It's a good place to work. I'd do it for free, if I was independently wealthy. I love it. The staff are friendly to me, and they haven't figured out yet why I'm there. They like to make the dying feel good about death. I just want to watch the dying. Ced, who's the registered nurse above me, says I'm a natural with them. He says, "It's like you understand them at a very deep level, Steve."

  Nice guy.

  I got the beer in on Friday night, drank most of it, planned to get more the next day. But Scott came knocking on my door in the morning. Really morning; at dawn.

  "Going down the coast. Wanna come?" he said. I was in a robe, naked beneath.

  "OK," I said. "I'll just grab a few things."

  "Bring some booze. And ya got any dope?" he said, and went to wait in the car.

  I hadn't asked if we would be camping or staying in a house. I didn't know who else was going. Or how long we would be going for. I was supposed to meet Dougie that night, but he'd understand. He wouldn't mind. I can't really explain what it was with Scott. I could leave the house for longer times when I was with him. It was like the elastic tying me to my house snapped, and I didn't get tugged back. He could have helped me leave the house for good if I ever decided I wanted to.

  I didn't call Dougie. I didn't think of it. I called Ced, told him I was sick, got a day off work. That was sorted, then.

  It was a house. There were three bedrooms, ten people, which meant I had sex with another couple listening. I kind of liked that. I wish you could get hetero bars like those gay bars you hear about. (Though I never met anyone who went to one. Do they exist? Or did someone make it up, a rumour about the lives they lead? I hope it's true. I really do.) If I had a dick, I'd like to go to a bar, have a drink or whatever, then go to a room and just stick it through a hole for someone to suck on.

  There was one other girl. We were left alone a lot, as the boys went surfing, fishing, drinking. I made myself sick, staying there. She didn't speak a word to me after she realised I couldn't cook and was not interested in cleaning.

  "I'd love to be able to," I said. "I just haven't got the knack." She tried to show me simple things, like omelettes, but the smell made me sick. I just didn't feel like eating when he was around.

  I didn't ask when we were going back; I didn't want him to think I wanted it to be over.

  He dropped me off Tuesday morning without a word. Just a rough tongue in my mouth. He had been up all night drinking and smoking.

  I had a lot of time to think about Scott. I didn't see much of him, so I had time to think, and when I was with him he ignored me so I had time to think then as well. Mostly I tried to figure out why, why, when I didn't even really enjoy sex with him. I think it was mostly because I felt safe from him. He was so completely unaffected by me. Nothing I did upset him or pleased him. He would never be in my dark room. He would never be slighted by me. He was my chance to escape. To change my future and the past.

  Peter met him once by mistake, when he stayed the night at my place and Peter came by to pick up some things the kids left behind. It was an excuse; he wanted to see me to bitch about Maria.

  And there was my boyfriend Scott, asleep on the couch in front of the TV. His shirt was hitched up over his belly, he snored, his hair stuck up. I woke him up to meet Peter.

  "This is my brother, Peter, 'member I told you about him?"

  He stared, scratched. "Nah," he said.

  Peter snorted. "Good one, Steve." He didn't see how different the guy was to Dad, not that that's why I picked him. But they were different.

  Dad was always neat and polite. Scott hardly ever showered, he farted while people were eating, he told everyone to fuck off.

  Dad was smart, committed, career-minded. Scott quit school early, gave up as soon as he had an excuse to, and never had a job. I wouldn't like to think about it too much. I just carried on, niggling on him, trying to get a reaction. I cut his jeans up once and he just left in his undies. I fucked his best mate and made sure he found out. None of it even made him blink.

  I cringe to think of how I behaved. When I think about it, I should have killed him, because his room must have been as big as a mansion. Instead, I tried to be what he wanted. He likes them feminine, so I acted like a girly. I looked ridiculous in my delicate clothes, all white lace and high heel shoes. No one who knew me ever saw me like that. I felt peculiar, silly; I couldn't hold a conversation with anyone. Samantha rang once when I was dressed that way, and I couldn't string two words together. I agreed to everything she said.

  But he liked me that way, clean and sweet like a lady. He wouldn't touch me if I was wearing jeans.

  At work, Ced told me he had to move out of his place because his housemate's girlfriend was moving in. "And she hates my guts," he said. "I can't live that way. And they take advantage of me, use up all my food and never buy more."

  "Sounds like you'd be hard to live with, Ced," I said.

  "Me?" He looked shocked. He wasn't used to criticism. Everybody loved him.

  "I'm kidding. You can come stay with me for a while, if you like." I didn't mind Ced. He thought I was smart and funny. If he hadn't been around at the same time as Scott, I might have paid him more attention. He seemed pathetic in comparison to Scott. Too weak, too nice, too dull. He was one of those people who make a personality out of a name. He hated Scott.

  Poor Ced. The patients love him, cos he's funny with them, you know, calling them "young lady" and that stuff that idiot old women like. He calls the dying men "chum" and for some reason they like that. He moved in one weekend. Good stuff, too. A big TV, heaps of music.

  The last time I saw Scott, he came around at five AM to tell me that he was getting married. I thought it must be the girl who went down the coast with us, but he said, "No, mine's a teacher." He had been on his buck's night and his mates dropped him off at my place. Like I've got a red light on my door. Like I'm one last dirty fling. I never knew anyone who made me feel so bad.

  I went to the church to watch him be married. I didn't want to slight anyone; I was very careful. I smiled at them all, was very quiet. I wore one of Mum's old dresses, mauve, and a pair of her pantyhose. My clothes are office or slut.

  It was fucking boring. I read the prayer book, crossed my eyes, counted the candlesticks and was first out the door when it was over.

  Standing outside, I realised I was the only one without a sprig of baby's breath on my person.

  "And how do you know the happy couple?" the photographer asked. He was the only one who spoke to me.

  "I used to root the groom." I even smiled at the groom's friends, to let them know I didn't want trouble. They didn't smile back. I left before the happy couple emerged, climbed into the welcome of my car and drove home. Sometimes I forget how repellent people are; I think it will be okay.

  Then I'm reminded.

  Scott was my chance. My chance to save myself. I returned from the wedding to find a message from Dougie Page: "We need to talk about your father."

  No, we didn't. We wouldn't. I wouldn't talk about that.

  Ced was supposed to be away for the weekend, but he came back early. I didn't care, though; I had made my preparations and was not willing to hide them from him. I was dressed in my cat suit, a number Ced always admired. A scalpel on the table. A fresh bottle of rum too. Just to put him off the scent.

  "I never know what you're drinking," Ced said, smiling at my unpredictability.

  "Whatever sings out in the shop," I said. I poured him a drink. I didn't feel like talking, or being talked out of what I was about to do, so I asked him how his things were going.

  "Oh, you know," he said. I laughed. This was a man who bit his tongue sometimes, he talked so much.

  "No, tell me," I said. I felt a terrible tenderness for him; he didn't need to be forgiving, because he was never angry with me. He never judged me or blamed me.

  Sometimes I felt like I was two people, twins living in one body.

  "Come to terms with your sexuality yet?" I said. He recoiled. His ambivalent sexuality was his loudest, proudest feature. Some long-clawed beast burst out of my heart.

  "It's just that it's a bit hard to take a man seriously who masturbates to the afternoon soapies, Ced."

  I'd caught him once and never told him, and he was never sure.

  "Nothing wrong with that."

  "Oooh, no. Whatever. You know, sickness is only in the eye of the beholder."

  "Come on, Steve, knock it off." He sounded flippant but he was pleading with me.

  "You know what everyone calls you, don't you?"

  "What everyone?"

  "Everyone who comes here, everyone I speak to. They all laugh about it when you're not here."

  "What?"

  "The Faker. They reckon you fake the lot, orgasm, desire, personality. They reckon you're a joke, that if someone greeted you dressed as a tomato, before long you'd be holding your breath so you can look like a tomato too."

  I had thought fast to come up with that one. No one ever said a bad thing about Ced.

  "And what about you? What do you think?"

  "I think you only want to be liked," I said.

  He smiled. "That's right," he said.

  "And I think that's fucked."

  I asked him to move out because his hound dog face was depressing me. I said it would be best if he left straight away.

  I waited a week, to make sure he was gone, then I sat in the bath and cut my wrists.

  He came back, though; said he had a feeling. He has feelings at work, but he doesn't tell everyone about it. Sometimes he'll be heading to a patient in the east wing, and have a feeling, and he'll make it to the west wing just in time to say goodbye to someone.
Farewell forever, mon cherie.
He had one about me, and he came back, and he found me. It might have been the letter I sent him; I don't know. He just had a feeling to come back. I'm glad it was him, though the sight of me still wasn't enough to make him hate me. I knew what it felt like on the inside; I hated myself.

  I hadn't eaten in a week. No one had fed me, no one brought me a casserole to tide me over. I drank vodka, bottle-style, and I smoked until I could no longer breathe.

  I sat naked in the armchair with the television on, and I shat, I pissed, I vomited, I spat, until there was a moat of my fluids protecting me.

  But Ced had a feeling. A wishful feeling. He wanted me to need him. He wanted to arrive and I'd say, "Thank God! You are the only one who can help me." I think he's as clever as me with his what-should-have-happeneds.

  He has no need to lie about his life. His father didn't die a hero. He didn't kill his mother in a car accident. He has many friends and admirers. People love him; I could care less. Perhaps he finds that intriguing. He rang me to say he was coming. I said fuck off. Then I let the blood run and sent myself to the room. Mmmm, sweet smells, sleep, a sea, the dead sea. Red, dead sea, and my blood pumps, pumps, balls together. I can smell shit. Shit and mothballs.

I learnt some lessons in the dark room. I heard snip snip and there was a hairdresser. It took me a while, but she was the one who red-headed me years ago just before mum died, and I knew then why she was so thin, almost transparent.

  I knew why the people were in the room and who they were; each and every one had been slighted by me, and each slight, by me or anybody else, snapped up a bit of their soul and sent it to the dark room of some unknowing person. Or to my dark room.

  I went back to the room to look at those faces, try to identify who they were, where these people had come from. Why did they wait for me to wake up with such anticipation?

  I feel no warmth from the bodies which stand around me where I lie on a hard bed. And bodies there are; leaning over me anxiously, waiting for my eyes to open. I can smell them. That mixture of shit and mothballs you smell sometimes on old people. Decay and the fear of decay.

  They surround my bed, more of them each time. There seem to be hundreds of them now, on my fifth visit.

  The smell of them stays with me each time I returned from the dead. The smell was the indication that I had gone too far. There was love in the hatred. Because they only existed for me. You love your creator.

  And Mrs Beattie waited in the cold, dark room, with the others, waited with her fingernails growing, growing, and Darren was there, the stink of milk about him.

  One small cry: Kelly, little Kelly. What could have slighted her? Sensitive little shit. Perhaps the fact I do not have lollies on tap. Orphaned, here, because I could see neither Peter nor Maria. Confused. Why was she there? She loved me. Her hand shook as she came towards me. A pin, long as her forearm, and she pierced my ear drum, a buzz, a scream, but the whisky numbed me, I could feel its magic.

  Strangers, strangers, a loser with a side-parting, I needed that job, and two waiters in white coats, Asian, I'd only been to one restaurant since last time.

  Then I saw Scott, at the back of the room, taking time out to be there for me. I had got to him, then. I meant something. It must have been the time I pretended I was pregnant to him. I really did think I was, for a minute or two.

  But he did not approach. He did not care I was dead. He was there against his will. My elation was gone, and the local librarian, not Auntie Jessie or Lesley, a bitch, slithered up to my feet. She climbed onto the table, between my legs. I tried to close them but strangers held them open, faces I didn't know, Pookies looking for their Nookies, perhaps.