Zigzag Street (15 page)

As arranged, Hillary turns up in a cab around seven-thirty in the morning.

She's not quite her usual self, not quite as I'd expected her to be. She's not looking great. She's pale and wearing dark glasses and a big leather jacket, as though she's off on some adventure, or maybe flying to face the Red Baron one to one. And she seems to be in a strange mood. She keeps calling me buddy.

I try to recall if she's been like this when we've flown before. Then I realise we haven't flown before. It's usually only one of us who goes, and she usually leaves it to me, telling me it'll be good for me, good exposure.

In the cab I think I notice the smell of bourbon. The cabbie talks on and on and the smell doesn't go away. When we're stuck at lights and he turns around to crap on, as he invariably does, I try to catch the smell of it on his breath. He's starting to slur his speech, I'm sure of it.

I think the cabbie's been drinking, I whisper to Hillary. Bourbon.

Fuck
, she says.
Him too
?

There is a strangeness in her eyes and the smell of bourbon as she speaks is overpowering. And I can see a silver hip flask in one of her pockets.

At the airport she says,
I think I should warn you. I get a bit tense when I fly
.

So she paces, and slurps bourbon nervously by holding the pocket up to her lips and tilting it. She probably thinks it's discrete.

It's a very small plane
, she says, breaking out in a sweat as I buckle her into her seat.

It's not. It's a 737. It's quite big. It's at least mediumsized. And it's a good plane. The 737 is a good plane. No-one ever got killed on a 737.

How do you know that? You're making it up
.

Well, probably very few people have been killed on 737s.

What? People have died in these things? You're taking me up in this thing people have died in
?

No. No. This is fine. No-one died. I read it on the weekend. I remember now. Okay? In an aviation magazine somewhere. No-one died.

No-one
?

No-one.

Was it a reputable aviation magazine
?

The best.

Good. That's good. I feel better now
.

And she grips the arms of her seat, squeezes her eyes shut, gnashes her teeth and hyperventilates.

When we take off she goes crazy. Totally crazy. Crazier than a cat in a flea bath.

She bites her pillow and screams into it. She cries. I try to help her and she accidentally lashes out, drawing blood from my left cheek. And she vomits and vomits and vomits, all with her big jacket over her head. She uses her sick bag, and mine, depriving me of its advertised opportunity for cheap photoprocessing (but then, my life isn't exactly filled with photo opportunities). Other passengers seem to form a human chain to deliver sick bags to us, and the flight attendant takes them away in a bucket. Several people in our vicinity decline breakfast. This is something I have never seen on a plane before.

Hillary goes quiet. I pat her on the back. I rub my
hand on her back in slow, soothing clockwise semicircles. I don't know why. It seems the thing to do.

Are you okay? I ask her.

I feel her head nodding under the jacket.

She surfaces somewhere well beyond Armidale. She looks very bad now, and she gives me a white-lipped smile. She has a small chunk of vomit on her forehead, just below her hairline. I make her sit still while I remove it with a tissue. She thanks me. Perhaps past events have made us more comfortable with her vomiting, though how she manages to get a chunk of it on her forehead is beyond me.

Was that a problem do you think? Did a lot of people notice, or am I okay
?

I'd say you're okay. A couple of people might have worked out that things weren't easy for a while, but no-one made a big deal out of it. And it's probably better to have got rid of that bourbon too.

Yeah. Good point. Hey, your cheek, you're bleeding
.

I think it must have happened when I was shaving this morning.

But you were okay in the cab
.

Yeah, it must have opened up again with the drop in pressure.

She glances out the window and says,
Fuck it's a long way down
. And she starts to look edgy.

Pretend it's just a picture. It's a lot easier that way.

Is that what you do
?

Sure. And I find it's better to distract myself with other things. Could I perhaps interest you in the in-flight mag? It has a fine story on La Paz, the capital of Bolivia, and another on miniature vegetables.

Read me one
.

Read you one. Okay. La Paz is at quite a high altitude, so I might read you the one about the little vegetables.

So I read, slowly and quietly and clearly. Slowly and quietly and clearly because I think I have decided to treat her like a mad person and I am striving, above all
else, for a sense of calm. She reclines the seat and shuts her eyes.

At the end she says,
You read well
. And then,
Hey, are we descending
?

I think so.

I'm much worse with descents, I have to tell you that
. This does not make me feel good. Then she smiles.
Just kidding. Descents are fine
.

So we get through this with nothing more than seatgripping and teeth-gnashing, and only a small amount of toying with the latest sick bag, rather than loading it with vomit. The combination of bourbon and hyperventilation does make her a little dizzy when we land though.

We stop across the road from the offices of Shelton's for Hillary to eat a breakfast she can hold down, and to have a couple of cups of coffee. She goes to wash her face and comes back wearing new lipstick.

There
, she says,
fine
.

And she almost is. She is perhaps a slightly pale ghost of fine, but that's a big improvement.

So we meet and lunch and meet again, and she is competent throughout. Maybe not as enthusiastic as usual, but, as she said, fine. After her pregnancy it's likely that she will never again be fazed by any amount of vomiting, a very useful attribute.

At the end of the day the senior legal counsel asks if we have dinner plans and Hillary says that, to tell the truth, she has a bit of a headache, so she might have to make it an early night. She leaves it open for me, but I'm keen to avoid it too and we take a cab back to the hotel.

I couldn't face any more time with them
, she says.
All day today and more of them tomorrow morning. As if we'd want to have dinner with them too
.

Yeah.

I was actually going to suggest that we eat somewhere near the hotel, but I guess there's a remote chance they'd turn up, and it wouldn't look good
.

No, it probably wouldn't.

What about just getting room service? Do you want to come round to my room and we could have something there
?

Sure.

I might have a shower first. I'm still not feeling the best. So how about seven-thirty
?

Fine.

I have a shower, but this creates the dilemma of what to wear. Do I put on tomorrow's shirt? Do I put on today's shirt, when it clearly smells like it's done a good day's work already? Even though I usually sleep naked, I have brought a pair of shorts with me, so in a way that increases my options. Clearly I'd have to wear something with them though.

Why did I bring shorts? I'm only starting to think about that now. I packed them automatically. I think it's a parental thing. Shorts, and sleeping away from home in combustible places. Like clean underwear and being struck by public transport. A habit you get into, despite wanting to resist it because its basis is a pointlessly secondary concern. The man ran naked from the burning hotel, so they sent him back in? The victim was left to die by the roadside when ambulance officers noticed his underpants appeared to have been worn the day before?

So, old shirt, new shirt, shorts, suit?

Why am I standing here in my underpants staring at my clothes on the bed and working out that there are sixteen wearable combinations when Hillary won't be giving it a moment's thought? I think she must be much more normal than I am.

Or possibly at this very moment she could be deciding between ball gown and spurs, or fez, negligee and pumps. But I don't think so. I expect that in her room something very straightforward is happening.

So I go new shirt, today's pants, no shoes or socks.

She opens the door wearing a Gatorade T-shirt and running shorts, and she says,
Hey, semi-formal, nice
.

Unlike you I didn't think to bring a casual wardrobe.

I brought it in case I go for a run in the morning. You mean you aren't going for a run in the morning
?

Not unless there's a fire. However, I did bring shorts with just that possibility in mind.

You don't want to have to bail out in your PJs
?

No PJs. I might habitually go to bed early and sleep alone, but I am naked. I take it as a sign that I haven't given up hope entirely.

She offers me her mini-bar and I take a beer. She takes the tiny bottle of bourbon, tips it into her hip flask, and drinks the vodka.

She smells fresh from the shower and her hair is still damp and messy.

We sit down to peruse the menus and we have a minor dispute about the merits of two different wines.

We'll get both then
, she says.
We'll compare. You're being far too casual in your dismissal of the Margaret River
.

I wish I didn't find this appealing. I wish I wasn't sitting here with someone who was married and my manager as well as being very desirable.
You're being far too casual in your dismissal of the Margaret River
. I bet she doesn't know how much I like this sort of game. How, in different circumstances, it could be such a good sign. I wish I wasn't having to sit here trying to persuade my pelvic region that an erection is really very inappropriate at the moment.

There is, of course, an argument that says that even the possibility of an erection should be a thing of joy, since that area has been unresponsive for quite a while. But this is a joy that cannot be shared. Hillary, great news, I think I can have erections again. Not a good idea.

Dinner arrives and a thorough comparison of wines begins. Hillary drinks a glass of each quickly and then pours us both more.

Don't you think mine's livelier
? she says, being quite lively to make her point.

Well, maybe, if you're into lively. I'm still a fan of the oak. Call me old-fashioned if you like, but give me some oak. American or French. I can take it either way.

You're a very sophisticated man
.

That's what I thought.

I watch her in her detailed study of the wines, a glass in each hand now that dinner is over. She's frowning and sniffing with some gravity and communicating her dilemma with her eyebrows. And even the way the light from the table lamp passes through the wine in the glass and makes a yellow shape on her Gatorade T-shirt really appeals to me. Now that's crap.

I'm not against oak you know, she says. I'm not against all sorts of things. They just need to be considered appropriately
.

You'd have to be against sparkling burgundy though, wouldn't you?

I think there are some things it's never appropriate to consider, and maybe sparkling burgundy is one of them
.

Fashion at its worst. The wine industry equivalent of the safari suit. I expect that in just a few years it'll be regarded as the fruity lexia of the mid-nineties.

So our positions are in fact closer than we realised
.

We leave the tray outside the door and we sit on the sofa with our four glasses and two bottles.

I might put some music on
, she says.
If that's okay
.

Sure.

I've got a tape that I play in my Walkman when I run. I might just put that on
.

Fine. Well, depending on your taste in music I suppose.

She puts her tape on and before she's back at the sofa, the room is full of Nick Cave, ‘The Ship Song'. I immediately notice a poorly-focussed feeling of concern.

She's sitting closer to me now. She drinks a mouthful of wine and sits back and leans her head against my shoulder.

You sang this at the Christmas party
, she says, as though I might not remember.
And, until then, well … It was the first time since Daniel was born that anyone did anything that suggested I might be … not just a mother. That I might still be desirable. In some way. It was really nice
.

She kisses me, right on the mouth.

This is only half the problem. The other half is I kiss her back.

I put my arms around her and she's breathing quite heavily and this feels very good.

Oh God
, she says, but in what way I'm not sure.

I'm feeling very strange myself, as much with the intimacy of it as anything. I can feel her cheek against mine, her body turned against mine, her undried hair under my right hand.

We kiss again, this time till the end of the song and beyond, and she moves so that she is kneeling over the top of me and my head is tilted backwards.

And wine moves through me, slips lightly into my head so I'm drifting, but I'm intensely aware of what every single part of me is feeling, though in a surreal detached way.

My hands are on her skin under her Gatorade T-shirt now and when she moves back the T-shirt lifts up. She pulls it off over her head.

And she looks at me, as though she's still wondering.

She says,
Come on
, and we move to the bed and turn out the main light.