The Near Miss (20 page)

Eddy sighed and reflected that Sundays were too long. He looked around. His house disgusted him, but there was also a wild freedom in being able to cut his fingernails on the carpet, in letting the spray from his whiskers build up, shave after shave, on the vanity basin, in being able to fart with abandon, or reach down at any moment and do a thoughtful, caressing stocktake of his
testicles.

His phone rang and he stepped across the lounge room to reach it, skidded on a pizza box and knocked last night's can of beer, luckily empty, off the table. ‘Hello?' he said, sounding squeaky after his trip.

‘Well, hello. Is this Eddy? A female voice, sexy, in a gentle way. Kindly sexy, if there were such a thing. Familiar. But not Romy.

He steadied himself, reached for a more manly note deep within. ‘This is he.' He turned down the sports channel.

‘It's Laura here. From the kindy, yesterday?'

‘Oh!' He rescued the image from his mind; the young, nicely plump woman with dark, smiling eyes and dark hair. Had her voice been this sexy, and he just hadn't noticed? But this woman was a god to forty young children, and a figure of great respect to their parents. She could not be sexy. ‘Oh,
Miss
Laura!'

‘Well, you can call me Laura. It's really only the kids who call me Miss Laura. Makes them feel like they're in school.'

‘Oh! Well, thanks.' Now he was thanking her for being promoted from pre-school. He was a buffoon.

‘I hope you don't mind me calling. You did leave your number in case there was a problem with . . . the cubby-house door.'

‘Well I was a bit worried those hinges might be a trap for little fingers. You should really get some rubber to put around them. I mean sorry, I know I told you that, I don't want to go on about it . . .'

‘It's fine.' A trace of laughter in her voice. A flirtatious being had invaded the body of the
kindergarten teacher. He should alert someone, this wasn't right. ‘Actually, I hope you don't mind me calling you, but I'm just . . . Well, I've discovered I've got nothing in the fridge . . .'

‘Oh no! Can I . . .?' Maybe she was poor and hungry.

‘Just too slack to shop, I'm afraid. I tend to eat out more than at home. Anyway, nothing in the fridge . . .'

‘Oh, me too! I mean, nothing in the fridge . . . and love to eat out . . .' Could she be asking him . . .? No, surely not.

‘. . . and I was thinking of going out for dinner and I was wondering whether . . . I'm sorry, but Grace said you lived on your own . . .'

‘I do! I do!' He almost shouted. That much at least, he knew. Okay, he had an engagement ring, he hadn't completely given up on Romy, but no one, no one could deny the truth of the fact that he was not married, and he, now, lived alone. He started to face that reality with more anticipation than ever before. ‘Would you . . . maybe I could join you for dinner? I mean, we could go somewhere?' Oh God, had he got this all wrong?

‘Have you eaten?' she said.

‘I've had a really disgusting pizza, to be honest.' Oh no! Why had he said that! ‘But I could fit in a little bit more. In fact, I'm still starving.' And then he burst out laughing, from sheer terror and hope. Who would have thought? Someone would ask him out. A woman. A nice woman. Asking him out.

‘Well, great! Do you know the Italian joint, on Fairbrick Street?'

‘Yes! I love it!' Oh, cool it, man, stop leaping down the phone at her.

‘Seven o'clock.'

Eddy consciously lowered his tonal register, took a deep breath and slowed his voice.
‘Great. See you there, Miss Laura.'

He hung up. Shit. Had he really called her Miss Laura again? Laura, Laura, Laura. He gazed around himself at the pizza boxes, the wobbly piles of DVDs, the beer cans. It all looked different from how it had a few minutes ago. It looked like an offence to his eyes. He had a date! A date! Back in business, he hummed, flinging clothes out of his wardrobe. He ran to the bathroom and turned on the shower, ran back to the bedroom again. Quirky op-shop shirt, nice-boy Pierre Cardin, no, maybe an open-necked business shirt with jeans. God he had to shave. Did kindergarten teachers do sex?

Eddy met Miss Laura in a small Italian restaurant, where she waited in her faded jeans and sneakers and a T-shirt. She was friendly in an uncomplicated way that unnerved him a little, and at the end of dinner she kissed him on the cheek and said ‘Are you free Friday?' and he stuttered nervously ‘Sure!', and she said ‘I'll call you, we'll work something out', and then she smiled and turned to walk home. He watched her go, and he felt good. He was just about to walk away when she turned back and caught him looking, and she laughed in a way that told him she liked him looking. He smiled and waved. Back home, he glimpsed his face in the mirror; he was smiling, stupidly, at nothing. Jesus. He felt happy! He saw he had a text on his phone. From Grace, Tom's ex, Lotte's mum. Did she need more furniture moved? He hoped so. It was nice to be needed.

Hi Eddy, Wondering if you'd like to go out for dinner and a movie this Friday night, just you and me? Dressed For Success is on at the Nova. Let me know!!! xxx

He looked aghast at his phone and dropped it like it was hot.
Dressed For Success?
He'd never heard of it, but he hated it already. He could see women in power-suits and female solidarity and some hapless male who hadn't yet moved out of home, maybe being the subject of a makeover
by the power-suits, and possibly there was a musical number involving Greek peasants. And, even more disturbing,
Grace?
Asking him out? Kiss kiss kiss? He hadn't felt the faintest pulse of sexual tension between them; in fact, he would have said he irritated her. He distinctly remembered she had crossly slapped a tissue box in front of him when he had sniffed too many times the other night. It was confounding. He wasn't sure he'd ever had a female advance that was unwelcome to him in his life. He certainly didn't think he'd ever had two dinner invitations from two women in the one night. Exhausted, he stripped off down to his jocks and went to bed.

The peal of the phone cut through his sleep later, and he dragged himself upright, and squinted at his clock. 2:43 am. Who on earth. Maybe Miss Laura? he thought hopefully.
Eddy, my body is on fire for you. Come over right now and peel my jeans off my hips and lift my T-shirt over my shoulders
. . . He snatched up the phone.

‘You never let me look after you.' A woman. Another woman! He was momentarily bewildered. But it was Romy's voice. Truly her! She must be speaking to someone else. Maybe she had accidentally pressed the automatic home-dial on her mobile phone. He was eavesdropping on a conversation. He sat up and switched on his bedside light. In the mirror opposite, he looked like some squinting old bum. He held his breath, hoping to hear more.

‘Eddy?'

‘Romy?'

‘Why aren't you talking?'

‘I wasn't sure you were actually talking to me.'

‘Why not?'

He sighed and leaned back on the pillow. ‘Well, you sort of skipped a few of the social
niceties, like
Hi, Eddy, how are you? Sorry I haven't come home for the past nine months, except for one day when I had to be a rabbit, but I've been
—'

‘You never let
me
look after
you
.' Was she crying?

‘Romy, are you drunk? What are you talking about? Where the hell are you?'

She was either crying or breathing heavily.

‘You always wanted to look after
me
, and I think I just got sick of being . . . the hopeless one. The one who needed looking after.'

‘That's ridiculous!'

‘It's not. We felt closest when you were doing things for me, and the more of a wreck I became, the more you rescued me. But it was
bad
for me.' Romy gulped for air, and he sat naked on the edge of his bed and stared down at his bare thighs. She went on. ‘I tried a few times to reverse the order, I tried to bring you tea and toast when
you
were sick. You'd say thanks and then you'd get up and get dressed and bring the tray back out and eat at the table. It just seemed to make us awkward.'

‘Romy, are you somewhere safe?'

‘When we came home from places, I couldn't even get my house key out before you. You would bring the shopping in before I could, you'd get to the steering wheel before I could. You were always the strong one. You disempowered me. You made me into a . . . child.'

‘Is that so . . .' Eddy shook his head. He wasn't sure whether he should feel grateful she'd called, or affronted at these claims that he had been too, as far as he could understand, nice. ‘Romy, you just take off, all your stuff is here . . . Are you ever coming home? Can I come and pick you up from somewhere? I could come now?'

She was crying again, talking over him. ‘Just once, just once I wished I could have held
you
while you cried, told
you
that everything was going to be alright. But you could never give me that, could you?'

‘I'm sorry Romy . . .' He was crying, his nose blocked, his eyes streaming, his body aching and feeling like he had swallowed a rock. Just as he suspected, it had all been his fault. He hadn't been lovable, had done everything wrong, he had made her run away. ‘Romy . . .' he wept, but she had gone; just a dial tone now in his ear. He put down the phone and curled up on his sheets, touched his forehead to his knees and cried.

The next morning he texted Grace and said tersely that he had prior commitment that Friday night. He wasn't sure he had ever said no to a woman in his life.

‘Librans, you may be feeling uninspired at present due to the weak position of your ruling planet. But this is an opportunity for you to think deeply about what it is you want. If love is your goal . . .'

Melody glanced over at a monitor, and there was her reflected self, reading a script, a miniature figure in a long crimson dress. It was an Alannah Hill, the wardrobe woman had said, whoever that was. And this gorgeously fluid dress did feel like that mellifluous word: alannahill, yeah. They had spent forever getting her ready; twitching at the dress, pushing her pale breasts up to expose more of them in the low neck-line. ‘Do ya mind if I just . . .?' wardrobe had said, prodding at Melody's small cleavage as thoughtfully as an obstetrician checking for cancerous lumps. The hair man said ‘Ooooh' when he saw Melody's dreads, and he had to try a few things, like a child with new play dough. Coiled up on her head? No, no, no. Part pulled to the back, princess-style? Impossible to evenly separate at the roots, Melody could have told him. Finally, he sprayed some pomegranate-scented mist to gloss them up, arranged them fussily around her shoulders, and propped a couple of plastic reflective stars on one side. Makeup lady muscled in and painted her
up, wet brushes stroking over her cheeks, alongside her nose, gently pushing the skin. Melody remembered crouching with Skip in the Tuntable River, painting each other's faces with fingerfuls of wet ochre. Hair man hovered at the side, murmuring bits of advice to makeup lady, who sighed heavily each time he did and said ‘Yes. Thank you, Kevin' in a louder voice than his. Behind her, a large screen was lit blue, and speckled with planets and moons.