Touching Earth Lightly (8 page)

‘Will he bring her on Sunday, d’you think?’

‘Yeah, so we can all have a good perve,’ said Dane.

‘Or would we be too lower-middle for her?’ Chloe said, and then shut her mouth determinedly.

‘He might, I guess. Her name’s Rachel. Nice name, isn’t it?’

Dane looked at him wide-eyed. ‘Think I’d better warn him to leave Rachel at home, if he wants to keep her.’

Nick grinned without looking up from the grating. Chloe thought they were both disgusting.

On Saturday Janey didn’t turn up at El Bahsa’s, so Chloe went to fetch her.

She heard the television yammering a football game as she rounded the back corner of the house, and the kind of loud honking boys did together, trying to impress each other with sheer noise and profanity. The noise stopped her, and she stood in the yard assessing how many of them were in there, and listening for Janey’s voice.

The potato woman came out of the laundry with her endless basket of washing. She nodded at Chloe. ‘Been a bit of a party in there.’

‘Sounds like it.’

‘Going all night, that nonsense was. I’ve had to throw my weight around a bit.’

‘I’m sorry about that. Janey gets a bit crazy sometimes.’

The woman looked wry, lugging the laundry down the steps as if it were an enormous child. ‘Doesn’t bother me. I’m up all night anyway—I’m not the sleeping type. Some of the others get a bit narked, though. You might tell her.’

A cheer went up in Janey’s room, part televised, part real. Chloe groaned inwardly, then squared her shoulders and opened the door without knocking. No one turned. Chloe waded through them to the television, pulled the plug from
the wall, turned to face their roar. One of the bigger ones staggered upright and bleared at her, shouting. She clapped him on one meaty shoulder.

‘You want to be here when her dad gets here? Fine. You don’t? Clear out.’ Chloe began to tidy up pizza boxes and drink cans.

‘Her old man’s comin’!’ The mob galvanised itself and began to funnel out the door. ‘Let’s hit Rizzetti’s place!’

‘Move it,’ said Chloe to a few stragglers, kicking one awake. ‘If you value your life. You don’t want to get caught here.’

‘Shit,’ the sleeping one said groggily, and crawled away.

Most of Janey was behind the bed, but her head and white shoulders were visible, rocking. Chloe recognised Bass’s voice being forced up from beneath her.

‘Your dad’s on his way, Janey,’ Chloe called out, for Bass’s benefit. Janey went on rocking, eyes closed and mouth slightly open. Her face was slack with exhaustion, white, with spectacular purple rings under the eyes, a patchy rash reddening her jawline and neck. Around the bin at the end of the bed was a litter of torn condom foils.

Chloe tidied as she waited, gathering everything—bin contents, shoes, bottles—into a shiny fresh garbage bag. ‘Come on, Bass. Her dad thinks she’s a virgin. He finds you here, he’ll string you up himself, with one hand. He’s bigger than about five of you put together.’

She was really talking to amuse herself, but Bass began to carry on. ‘Come on, let me up, you mad bitch. Jesus. Come on. I’m all done.’ His voice sounded squashed and desperate.

Chloe smiled, hoving into his view over Janey’s shoulder. ‘Oh, but Bass,’ she purred. ‘It’s polite to let the lady finish, don’t you know?’

‘Fuck off.’ Bass, naked, was no bigger than a ten-year-old, with preternaturally old eyes shining between bed and wall. His body was like some kind of small utensil forking beneath Janey, his white legs splashed with bruises, nervously kicking at Chloe. She bent down and tickled his foot-soles and he
flailed and swore. Janey continued to pin him and to move evenly, as if in a trance. Bass was almost crying with rage.

‘Her dad won’t be lo-ong,’ Chloe sang. ‘Five minutes tops. And boy, is he mad.’

She wandered away with her bag to deal with the smaller rubbish, bubble-gum wrappers, olives and pineapple chunks from pizzas, cigarette butts and ashtrays. She took the bag out and put it in one of the wheely-bins, then sat on the veranda breathing the fresher air.

The landlady was hanging out a row of trousers upside down, their flat legs pegged to each other like paper people’s. She looked out over a crotch. ‘What’d you use—tear gas?’

Bass charged out, shirt flying, jeans not done up, clutching his shoes. Chloe smiled sweetly at him. ‘Fear gas,’ she said. He curled his lip at her and ran away around the corner.

Chloe went inside. Janey was a wrapped lump on the bed, her breathing sleep-deep and clear in the carpeted quietness. Her hot-metal odour thickened the air. Chloe opened the French windows and the outside air began to roll in, cold and slow. She re-made the brick-and-plank shelves, stacked the spilt books, took a clean towel to the wet patch behind the bed and stood on it soaking the wet into the dry. Heat rose from the floor, banked up as if in a sun-warmed wall. Chloe leaned down and touched Janey’s rasped cheek, the slightly scaly heat of it. She clicked her tongue. ‘What I do for you, you nong.’

She stood there, moving from foot to foot on the towel, hands in her coat pockets. Her friend’s hair sprayed across the pillow; her friend’s face scowled slightly, pouted in sleep.

‘Yer, I’m hopeless, I know.’

Chloe hit Janey’s arm. ‘Will you
stop
that? You just need to have somewhere that’s yours, that’s all, where no one else’s got the right to barge in. I mean, how many of those guys are going to come tooling around now, any time they’re feeling itchy?’

‘I know. I wasn’t thinking, was I? I never do.’

‘No, but if you think
beforehand
, and make rules, so that when you’re not thinking you’re not letting some little dreg do your thinking
for
you …’

Janey raised her eyes to the traffic. Every few vehicles someone stared at them, or whistled, or shouted. She gave them all the same dogged stare. She was showered and wore make-up; the face-rash had become powdery plateaus that only Chloe was close enough to see. Her eyes were clear and wakeful, the whites clean white; her dreadlocks sprang damp into the cold air. She looked almost skinny, tight-jeaned and in a new black top that showed a semicircle of cleavage from shoulder to shoulder, the skin white and fine-grained, with a small tuck taken in between her breasts.

Chloe sighed. Janey turned to her, and a half-apologetic, half-triumphant smile lit her face and made Chloe feel mean for trying to rein her in, damp her down,
control
her.

‘I’m hanging out for some caffeine and sugar, mate,’ said Janey’s black-rimmed carmine lips.

‘Proper food first,’ said Chloe, steering her past El Bahsa’s.

‘Aw, don’t be such a
mother
.’

‘Oh, that’s a term of abuse, now, is it?’

‘Those guys last night were all saying it,’ Janey giggled. ‘To each other, not to me.’

‘I hope you told them where to go.’

‘I didn’t hear ’em until now. It just sank in. “Such a
mother
,” like it was the
worst
thing—’

‘That is so off.’

‘Only because you’ve got a brilliant mother. The rest of us, who’re just trying to forget …’

‘Maybe.’ It wasn’t healthy to think about Janey’s mum for too long—about any members of Janey’s family, in fact. Even about Janey, sometimes.

She sat Janey down in a café and made her eat soup and salad and a bread roll. The afternoon sun fired straight down the street, and the gold reflections off every cruising bit of
chrome and car trim slid like dance-floor lights around the café walls.

‘Ah, what’d I do without you?’ Janey sighed after the first few mouthfuls.

‘Starve.’

‘Like, I’d never even
think
of doing this for myself.’

‘I know. You’d have cake and coffee five times a day until you thrushed yourself off the planet.’

Janey chortled. ‘I like that,
thrushed
yourself.’ Chloe could hear the soup doing Janey good, the cells crying out their thanks.

Two spoonfuls later, Janey sighed again and sat back. ‘What a night,’ she said, stretching, her eyes vaguely stroking through the traffic.

‘I don’t need to know,’ said Chloe.

‘Don’t worry. It’s all boring when you
talk
about it. Like listening to people’s dreams, or their drug experiences. What
can
I tell you, that’d be interesting?’ Janey sat forward and slurped more soup, with relish.

‘When you’re going to fall in
love,
like everyone else.’

Janey grinned. ‘Have to be a pretty
special sort
of guy.’ She wiggled her thick, black eyebrows. ‘I don’t see the point, myself. All that angst. Seems to me to be a sort of very complicated way for two people to annoy each other. Not very enjoyable.’

‘You’re talking about me and Theo. I’m talking about someone it’d
work
with, for
you
.’

‘Nah, no one’s come close.’

Chloe laughed. ‘How can you tell? You never look past their penises!’

‘I’m not a snob. I like them all.’

‘What, the penises?’

‘Whatever I see of them. It’s true. I just
like.
Like ’em all. Never anything stronger. Just, kind of, friendly, you know?’ She smiled out the window.

Chloe folded a paper napkin into a crown. ‘ “In adulthood she was a sad woman, unable to form lasting relationships,”’
she quoted dolefully. ‘I read that in the paper on the weekend. It seems to be one thing you’re supposed to be able to do, to be a grown-up.’

‘What, get past the first poke and start talking?’

‘Get past difficulties. Sustain friendships, boyfriendships. Et cetera.’

Janey shrugged. ‘It’s okay, I do
go on
feeling friendly. I don’t have difficulties.’

‘Oh, Janey.’

‘It’s true! When Bass says that stuff, for example, I’m like, it’s
his
problem, isn’t it? Just because he’s dumping it on me doesn’t mean I have to
feel dumped on
.’

‘I’d swear you had Alzheimer’s sometimes, Janey. Just a few days ago you were sitting in El Bahsa’s, huddled down about the size of a
flea
!’

‘Yeah, but it passed.’ Janey waved it away. ‘I was low myself —that was separate from what Bass was on about. Besides, it wouldn’t be
him
. Like, I wouldn’t tell him, about Eddie or anything.’

‘But think about it, if you
did
have someone you could tell about Eddie or anything. If you had a whole bunch of friends.’

‘Oh, but where am I going to find anyone who puts up with as much as you? Not just you—your whole family. You just think the world’s full of smart, wonderful people like you, but it’s actually full of sad, scared dimwits.’

‘Foof. You just move in the wrong circles.’

Janey smiled at Chloe indulgently. ‘Yeah? And where are the
right
circles, powerbrain?’

‘All around you. Everywhere. All through. I know you think it’s money and status that makes it, but it’s not.’

Janey looked sceptical and slurped more soup.

Chloe watched her, her familiar face under the fierce make-up. ‘You might think about
women
some time. The sex thing wouldn’t get in the way, then.’

Janey snorted. ‘Wanna bet?’

‘Like Mrs O’Spud, at your place.’

Janey nearly dipped her face in her soup, laughing. ‘Mrs O’Spud. She is, isn’t she? You can imagine she’s got little pink eyes all over her. Under those
smocks
.’

‘Dimples.’ Chloe waited until the joke had passed. ‘Well, she’s pretty cool. And she stays up all night, which is ideal for someone who keeps your hours.’

‘I do. I already talk to her. Bette, her name is, with an E, like Bette Midler. She’s on her own, too. Maybe
she
can’t form lasting relationships either. No, that’s not true. Thirty-five years she was married to, what’s his name? Stan. Stan,’ she added with a false-toothed whistle. ‘Bless him. He’s with the angels now.’

‘Oh no, like that, is she?’

‘No. I’m just being silly. God, look at that salad.’ She pulled the bowl towards her and beamed at Chloe.

Chloe watched her eat, feeling severe, like her Personal Nutrition Monitor. ‘So, will Bass come back tonight, you think?’

‘Probably. Can I not-be-home at your place?’