“Fucking ads,” he says.
“What do you mean? They might tell you something important.”
“When have they ever done that?”
I am not in the mood to argue. It is a hot December evening and the ceiling fan is pushing around clouds of sweat.
“Do you want to do something?” I ask.
“Ok. Come here.”
I sit down on the couch next to him. He slips his arm around my neck and I can feel our sweat congeal. I slide my hand along his thigh until it is saturated. Then I rub the sweat across his chest and guts. I watch his erection unfurl, but his eyes remain glazed with the reflection of the blond mother in the red cardigan.
“I think we need milk,” I say finally. I don’t know if it’s true.
“We should be fine without it.”
“Do you actually want to achieve anything useful tonight?”
He peels himself from the leather and pushes his lips then his body into my own. My fingers feel sticky in the grease of his thick Greek hair. His fingers ripple across the back of my t-shirt.
“I’m going to get milk,” I tell him.
“Alright; the keys are in the front door.”
“I’m going to walk.”
“Ok then.”
He kisses me once more and I pull myself off him. My clothes are moist and smell of BO. I leave him as I found him; his eyes drawn the bright colours which faintly ripple across his skin. His erection has subsided into nothingness.
It is his parents’ holiday house in Sorrento
“I’m a teller at the Bendigo Bank headquarters on Elizabeth Street
“I’m a school teacher. I look after ten year-olds at Northcote Primary. I love it. It’s like having 25 children of my own and I love them and want the best for all of them. Well, maybe not all of them. Some of them are little shits. It hurts me to see them and know what they could grow up to become and how I was partially responsible for it. You know, ADD wackjobs and kids who come to school with their nostrils stuffed full of passive smoke from their parent’s special roll-your-owns; poor souls. There aren’t enough aids for all the children so already they are being taught to fend for themselves. I just don’t know what more I can do but make sure I take the pill and try not to get too attached.”
“I met your father at a nightclub in St. Kilda last night. He bought me drinks and put on this really sweet charm. He told me about his daughter and how much he loves her. I told him my biggest regret was not coming across some children of my own. We danced to John Farnham and he held me close, secure. I saw all of the trust and loyalty of his soul. I saw it through his eyes in his mind. I felt safe and superior in his arms, in his bed. Do you have decaff?”
My father knows the truth of life: that throughout all our lives we are getting old. When Mum died, we mourned dutifully. He bought a new mattress and the house fell into a new but regular rhythm. I returned to classes and he returned to the law firm. I finished school with prizes for academic achievement, public speaking, debating and was dux of politics. I met John in through Johnny Walker’s amber spyglass. By the end of the night the bottle was empty and I could see him a lot clearer. He was articulate, opinionated and atheist. Fuck Gadaphi,” he told me. “And the Tea Party and fuck the liberals and Goths and the radio shock jocks whispering into people’s ears.” We kissed between shots of Bailey’s; milky, almost natal, kisses. One day he told me he loved me. I loved him too.
Evening. Sorrento Sorrento
The supermarket is only a ten minute walk away, but I take my time and poke around the darkened streets. It is early December, before school holidays. Each street I walk along is dark and empty. Empty spotlights descend from the stars and every so often there is blooms of light squeezed through squares of glass. I am walking through a fable; existing only in memories where coffees are sweeter or darker or frothier, and it never rains because the TVs turn on and nobody wants to look at Sorrento Sorrento Sorrento
I walk down the centre of the asphalt as if it is a tightrope and with a lazy step I may fall into the aggregate darkness. I swing my arms and drop my toes in front of each other. No cars can pass me, but no cars come.
The supermarket is abandoned by the darkness. Inside, rows of butter yellow lights direct me through the emptying shelves selling sales and bargains. I have always been daunted by supermarkets, where I am forced to appraise the temptation of taste by words and colours laboured over and stamped proudly to a product’s skin. The Dairy Milks are 2-for-1 and the Smiths are half price but who gives a fuck because the world is about to end and money won’t mean a thing. I choose the biggest, proudest, most arrogant milk carton from the pageant. It is premium, high calcium, low fat and the colour of perfect teeth. There is no one in the store except for me and the cashier. He is a greasy young dropout in a black Woolies button up, flattened and creased by the strokes of his mother’s iron. I watch him through the pasta sauce as he tries each key on the manager’s ring to unlock the cigarette pantry. By the time he has finally stolen his first drag of a Winnie Blue I am standing in the middle of the empty car park. Around me are empty white lines, like chalk outlines, and scattered shopping trolleys parked at awkward angles. I snap the neck on the carton and take a swig. I feel sick suckling at the cow’s premium low-GI teat, like I’m barbaric; bestial. I close the milk and make for the Liquorland next door.
One Friday, after lectures, John took me home with him. I was his, with my fingers locked up between his own. He walked me down escalators and through the crowded subway station. On the train to Sandringham , I tangled my ankle around his thigh so we could not let go. He smiled into my lips and latched his arm around my shoulder. I wedged my head beneath his neck and lost the smell of his deodorant in the labyrinth of my lungs.
“Are you thinking about me?” I asked him as the train rocked into North Brighton .
“Are you worried that I might not be?”
“No, I just want to know what you’re thinking.”
“I was. And I was thinking about my print journalism essay, and hockey tomorrow night and how long it takes to get home.”
“I don’t mind the journey.”
“I’d love to live closer, though.”
“Like right near the city?”
“Yes. I reckon that would be great.”
Then I told him about the house we would share; a run-down, fucked-up 1860s terrace house on Elgin Street Carlton
He smiled. I could feel the muscles of his jaw pull up then drop. He clamped his fingers onto my knee.
“So you’ve seen this house.”
“Yes,” I lied. “It’ll be tricky but I think I can set it up and get the place fairly cheap.”
He didn’t say anything but I knew he was inside the house. I nuzzled my head deeper into his shoulder and absorbed the squeak of worn mattress springs.
The man behind the counter has worked hard on cultivating his gut so that now he can display it proudly, pressed against his sweaty Bintang t-shirt. I place the Smirnoff on the bar-mat and smile. Around me, pinot noirs and sauvignon blancs are aligned in rows like a missile armoury.
“I’m going to need to see some ID,” he greets me.
I flip him my driver’s license and try to mimic its smile. It is a smile of relief and joy, of pure passion. I am unsure if I can fully replicate it. He is bobbing back and forth behind the counter like a hand puppet. It is pissing me off.
“Busy night?” I taunt him.
“Is this license legit?”
“Yes. I slaved hard over a wheel for 120 hours to get this license to drink.”
A big wide smile weaves through his stubble.
“Are you having a party?” he asks.
“No. Am I allowed to buy my drink?”
He scoffs loudly. He hands me back my licence and opens the cash register.
“What sort of night do you have planned with a carton of milk and a bottle of vodka?”
“I stole the milk,” I tell him; “from the Woollies next door; while the cashier was pinching cigarettes. I don’t even want the milk.”
His fat face smiles at me with its fat mouth.
“But you still drank about half of it.”
“No. I tipped it out.” I realise we are both correct. He gives me my change while I fondle the licence freely between my fingers.
“So are you going to tell anyone?” I ask him.
“Tell who? Tell them what?”
“I took milk without paying for it.”
“So what? You’re just an arrogant kid with a cutsie smile and a couple of tits who one day will know better. You didn’t steal from me and there are bigger crimes going on out there right now.”
“Does that justify what I have done?”
“No.”
I lean my belly into the counter and lower my cleavage into his eyes and mouth. “And how do you know I haven’t stolen from you?”
“Please kindly fuck off before I call the police.”
“And report me for what crime?”
“Listen,” he says. “I work here all fucking night injecting depressants into some of the drunkest wackjobs on the peninsula. You are an arrogant middle-class barnacle from Melbourne who has no more worth than to smile, fuck your rich boyfriend and still suck on mummy’s tits. I will have no trouble getting you out of this store if needs be.”
My eyes are fixed in his gut and a smile sweetly, like my licence photo. Then I am standing in the car park again with a vodka bottle wedged into my armpit and a milk bottle between my fingers. I take another swig.
We got off the train at Sandringham and I followed John home. At the front door I unchained our arms and fumbled around his pants until I found the key. He filled the slot with metal and twisted it into the door’s guts.
“Wait,” I tell him. “We should do this properly.”
“What?”
I placed my palms on his shoulders and draped my fingers down his back. I pressed his fly into mine so I could feel its metamorphosis. It is incapable of lies.
“Thank you,” I told him. “I had a wonderful night.” I kissed him and he smiled.
“Me too. But it doesn’t need to be over yet. Can I invite you inside for a drink?”
I watched how the dusting of pimples across his cheeks was swallowed by the creases of his grin. I fiddled with his thick black fringe until it was perfect; an indescribable perfection.
“I don’t know. What have you got?”
“More than you could ever make up. Come and see.”
“Ok,” I said, and he pulled the key from its socket. He opened the door and gestured me in ahead with the fencing of his arms. He pulled me through a hallway lined with acrylic windows and through a library of anonymous spines into a small lounge stuffed with art deco, leather couches and a stain glass liquor cabinet. I pushed myself deep into the folds of the couch until I was a part of the couch, sitting, waiting. His wobbling, bobbing arse fiddled with the cabinet’s doors until they finally creaked open with a whiff of varnish and dust.
“Oh shit,” he said.
He stood back. Bottles of sherry and port rolled out of the doors and threw-up all over the carpet. Bailey’s and cognac lids kicked helplessly on their backs. Dark rings stained into the timber showed where other bottles once stood.
“Wow,” I said. “Who went on the bender recently?”
“Shit,” he said again then dashed from the room. I found him standing in the kitchen. The draws of the sideboard had been upended onto the cork with their papers and knickknacks leaking out from beneath them like a frying egg. Upstairs, the plasma screen lay helplessly on its stomach, leaking colours and dramas through the carpet. The master bedroom was a swirl of bed sheets and t-shirts and trousers and dresses and blush and rouse so the room was awash with colour. The jewellery cabinet had dented the far wall where someone had thrown it.
“Why would he do this” I asked him.
“I don’t know,” said John slowly. “I don’t know what would make him do this. Dad was always so confident he’d get a good outcome. Something must have changed somewhere.” He ran his finger across the dent in the wall and started to cry. I held on tight around his shoulders.
“That fucking idiot,’ he shouted. “He has gone and fucked things up good for himself.”
I guided his shaking shoulders into the kitchen and poured him a glass of water that mostly dribbled down his chin.
“Its good to see that he really cared,” he said finally; “That he didn’t want to make things any harder for us all.”
I watched his shoulders rocking back and forth; vulnerable. I covered them with my body.
“I’ll help you through this,” I said.
“Fuck him. He was always a rubbish father. I wanted to live with mum anyway.”
“Don’t think about that. Think about the now. Just get all those feelings out.” His body shrivelled and his eyes remained fixed on some small generic area above the countertop where everything was the same as it has ever been. I held tighter to his body so as to be part of him and not part of the setting.
“Don’t cry.”
Then there was the turn of a doorknob somewhere down the hall and the long squeal of a door. A man’s skewed reflection skittled towards us along the varnish. He was young and drunk; dressed in black from his shoes to his greasy black hair, with a bottle of Smirnoff wedged tightly into his grip. His face was unsettlingly pink, as if the outermost layers of skin have been shaved away. Suddenly John’s pushing past me and the black man is running. He clawed open the front door and skittled down the driveway, tossing earrings and necklaces clear from his pockets. But John was gaining, He slapped each foot in fury along the concrete grunting terror, anger, adrenaline; in each burst from his nostrils. The man hesitated at the nature strip, pockets empty, and was wrenched from the air by the heavy embrace of John’s arms around his belly. John pinned down his arms and legs and imprinted him deep into the unmown grass. The man bloodshot eyes grew wide. His mouth hung dumbly open, unable to lift his jaw from his chin. His head lolled back and forth as if trying to run free of its body, then the fine hairs of John’s fists embraced his cheekbone in an expression of pure passion. The man yelped helplessly. His voice was higher than I expected. John swung again and the man’s crying blood and salty tears from the drunken red spider webs splayed across his corneas. His arms and legs kicked into the grass. I watched on from the driveway, on the line where the fine aggregate pavers met the greying footpath. I didn’t say anything, just watched. I don’t know if I wanted him to stop. As the man whimpered and kicked, John pulled a kitchen knife from his belt. Suddenly I was running forward and the ochre driveway and green grass and blue sky and red blood are a smear in front of my eyes.
“John! What the fuck are you doing?”
“Please don’t,” said the man. Spittle and blood reeled from his mouth and drooled helplessly down his chin. “I’m homeless,” he whimpered. “I have nothing. I live in a sleeping bag under the railway line. I have given you everything back; see.” He pulled out his trouser pockets like two helpless pathetic wings. John squeezed a huff of emotion through the mucus in his nostrils then tossed the knife into his garden.
“Thank you. Thank you so much,” the man exhaled. “I have nothing, I shouldn’t have done this, I shouldn’t, you’re a good man and I shouldn’t have done it.” His bloodied eyes tumbled back and forth and his mouth wobbled across the peaks and folds of his cheeks. “Shit. I didn’t fucking think. I didn’t mean any harm. I didn’t–”
But John’s elbow had thudded into the man’s face that dents his cheek. With a cry, the man fell onto his stomach and filled the gutter with cognac and sherry and port and sauvignon blanc and gin and contreau. John stood back in shock until his feet were off the lawn. Then the man was suddenly alive and on his feet, staggering wildly along the nature-strip and up the empty street. I watched John watch the man disappear.
We cleaned the house together, tidied the rooms and wiped the floors. He snapped the key in the liquor cabinet lock while I crawled through the compost and grass shavings to find the carving knife. We rebuit the house except for the dent left by the jewellery box in the fibro.
“I’ll cop shit for that.”
“What will you tell them?” I asked.
“I’ll tell them I lost my cool. And then I’ll tell them I love them.”
I decide to walk home along the beach. In the annihilation of the apocalypse I feel it may be comforting to watch the endless falling of the waves. I click across the abandoned main road towards the breath of the sea. I follow the path and warning signs and the mismatch of timber and dirt clod steps until I can kick my thongs into the surf. Tiny pricks of sand light up under the stars then burn out under the long shadows off the saltbushes. I walk until I can no longer see the esplanade and Sorrento
It’s a hot night but when I sit down the sand is cool against my legs. I kick until my waist comes up to the hight of the sand and my sweat glues a thick glaze to my skin. I am the sand, looking up at the sky and out to sea. Each wave looms up to blot out the night and then trips over itself to rest at my feet. They are performing for me. I watch dutifully; I’m not sure for how long. I feel that I am sitting atop a giant hourglass and at any moment I may fall through to the other side. I watch the falling whitewash; my throat is clogged with salty breeze and I swig endlessly at the warm milk. I can taste the curds sliding along my tongue and down my throat. The carton feels light and I can’t tell how much milk is left inside; maybe a half, a quarter. I drop it into the sand and then let my consciousness rise and crash on a pillow of white water. I am not sure I could ever get bored of the sea. Time is frozen still in the perpetual loop of the waves and as long as I keep watching then the apocalypse will never come.
Something soft and moist nuzzles into my arm. I flick around my head, full of assumptions and accusations. A bitch is sitting beside me, holding up its head aloft on my forearm. I scramble from the sand until I can feel my weight push down on my heels and I propel myself deep into the darkness. The bitch stays still with its head collapsed into the sand. It’s a German Shepard with a thick evening pelt and incisors stained in the blood of moonlight. I stumble further away kicking up a trail in the sand. Suddenly the bitch seems so much closer along the pathway I have dug. I scramble backwards until I can feel the cool water saturate my bum and the limp tassel of my t-shirt. I cannot take my eyes away from the dog sitting deep in the sand. I don’t notice the breeze falling from each wave, or the salt clogging my sinuses or the burning, noxious scent of my armpits. I just watch the bitch watch me.
I am afraid of dogs. I was five in a car park full of fluoro suits and bare skin on the foreshore at Lorne with a Rottweiler attached to my calf. I screamed at the dog, at the cars and the silent passers by and the electric blue sky. It tried to kick my leg clear but its incisors were sunk deep beneath my skin. I flailed my arms through the air and the asphalt until they were shaven and bloody. The dog’s black eyes were fixed on something in the distance, something beyond me. Some treat from a plastic bag or a car to chase or an owner to satisfy. I focused my shrieks at the dog. “Look at me,” I shouted at the dog; but the words came from my mouth as an untranslatable smear of high pitched noise as if from an animal’s tongue. Then my mother garrotted the dog and tore its teeth clear of my flesh. I screamed as I watched my leg deflate streams of blood from the two crimson puncture marks. My mother was shouting something and the dog scarpered beneath a car. She bent down and hugged me tight, compressing her skin into my own. I could see my father standing in the distance with the boogie boards still draped over his singlet and a look on his face that I could only lie about.
I am standing now. My toes have sunk small salty pools but I can imagine the slap of the sand against my heels if I decide to run. The bitch stares back at me. I compress my fingers into the milk carton with one hand and choke the slender, smooth neck of the Smirnoff with the other. I hold it as a club, simple and primitive, against my chest.
“Go away!” I shout at the dog. I don’t dare to move my arms, my legs, my neck. I am barely able to move my tongue. The dog remains still and stares back at me. The clear night lights the black of his eyes.
“Go on,” I am shouting again. “Fuck off!” It hasn’t moved except for the wind through its fur; gently caressing, stroking, patting. I don’t know what to do so I shout again.
“Fuck off!” I shout, louder this time. I wonder if there is anyone alive to hear me. “Fuck off bitch!” I realise that words are really meaningless noise when I’m so alone. Up and down the beach I see only pillows of sand and the pulsing waves performing their dance forever into the distance. I will need to escape myself. I brandish the Smirnoff ahead of me so that its butt points down the bitch’s nose. I move slowly in an arc, keeping perfect distance from where it sits, deep in the shallow well I had kicked into the sand. I edge further around, as fast as I dare. The dog’s eyes remain fixed on where I was standing, hurling white noise over the drone of the sea. I can see my arc following me in the disturbances on the sand. I drag my breath in time with the waves to calm myself down. When I reach the scrub of saltbush and brambles, thick and twisted like pubic hair, I turn my back from the bitch’s pelt, sitting quietly and staring into the cavity of each wave where the sky falls down into the white water. Then I am running, through the thick strands of branches and wiry leaves and spider webs painted onto my face and the sweet smell of moist soil and decaying earth and the grinding sand through my teeth as I trip down an embankment onto my knees and keep pushing through the fractured darkness away from the waves shouting obscenities in all directions around me until my chest is caught and held by a wire fence splitting the darkness. I push through the fence onto a shaved lawn and patio of a blackened beach shack. With my hands and knees and forehead against the cool brick wall, I vomit up my lungs and feel the thousands of invisible scratches on my naked limbs, so close together that they blur into a singular screaming ache that pulses down my limbs and along my neck to cool against the coarse brick. I smear thick sweat across the wall and rub my body up and down but I can’t feel cool or dry. I feel so alone, be that a curse or blessing. The scrub behind me is empty blackness. I close my eyes and rub myself along the concrete pavers, wiping a snail-trail of sweat and flecks of blood and mangled thoughts. Suddenly the wall has disappeared and my forehead is resting on glass. I open my eyes. Inside is a creamy laundry. A row of perfectly folded beach towels sit at odds to the name-brand highly-efficient washers and driers which neatly clutter the room. I can’t see myself in the reflection. The house has been abandoned to the winter. I lean my weight on the slender gold door handle and fall forward with the nightmare shriek of the door. Then suddenly the washer and drier are around me and I can run my fingers over the coarse towels. When I hear the click as the door closes, I can feel safe again.
The laundry opens into a display-home kitchen with all the mod-coms set in varnished ash and neatly aligned around an island bench above a sea of cork. The power is off in the fridge but I put the milk there anyway. I read the word ‘premium’ stamped across the carton’s chest and feel instantly that I belong in this house. I sit down on each of the couches in my lounge room and watch myself in the reflection on the black TV screen. I can’t stop watching. I stare at the part in my hair and the freckles stained into my cheeks. I read and reread the brand in my shirt and how the letters curl around my breasts. I look at my knees tucked neatly beneath my skirt. I flick through my bookshelves and find Hemingway and Conrad and Kamus. I sit at the kitchen bench and read the first few pages. Each book begins much the same.
The laundry opens into a display-home kitchen with all the mod-coms set in varnished ash and neatly aligned around an island bench above a sea of cork. The power is off in the fridge but I put the milk there anyway. I read the word ‘premium’ stamped across the carton’s chest and feel instantly that I belong in this house. I sit down on each of the couches in my lounge room and watch myself in the reflection on the black TV screen. I can’t stop watching. I stare at the part in my hair and the freckles stained into my cheeks. I read and reread the brand in my shirt and how the letters curl around my breasts. I look at my knees tucked neatly beneath my skirt. I flick through my bookshelves and find Hemingway and Conrad and Kamus. I sit at the kitchen bench and read the first few pages. Each book begins much the same.
“Property of John Curran.”
“Property of Nicole Curran.”
I place each book neatly back into its slot on the shelves. In the dining room, I take a crystal wine glass from the cupboard and follow the steamed cream carpets up the stairs to the master bedroom. From the door I can see the waves brood over the balcony and under the moonlight. I pull on a bleach white dressing gown from my en-suite and kick my thongs into my empty dresser. When I am ready I wade in the shallows of the bed and pour myself a glass of Smirnoff at my bedside table. Sitting on the edge of the countertop is an old style ochre telephone. One varnished cup is the speaker and the other is the receiver, I’m not sure which. I lift up the top one and hold it to my ear and am surprised to hear the hollow whirr of a dial tone calling back to me. I replace it on its stand and the room is silent once again. The phone is beautiful. Its speaker and receiver are rich veins of Australian hardwood lipped in polished gold leaf. I lift the receiver again and listen to the dial tone fall into line with the tumble of the waves. I listen to the ringing and the waves going on for ever; then I dial. I press my fingerprints deep into the keys, as if I am punching a cuss onto a computer screen. The receiver bleats and I wait, sitting calmly on my bed, until a man’s voice comes out of the old wires.
“Hello?” says my father.
I tip myself into the bed and watch the fissures sprawl from my body along the crimson sheets as his greeting echoes about my ear. “Hello,” I tell the receiver cupped to my chin. I try to bury myself in the ceremonial heap of pillows against the bed head so that I cannot be found. There is a long silence before my father speaks again.
“Who is this?” he asks.
“I’m sorry,” I tell the speaker. “It’s Nicole Curran.”
“I’m sorry, who?”
“You haven’t forgotten me, have you Arthur?”
“Um. No. No. Of course I haven’t.”
“We had dinner four Fridays ago at the Kimchi in Camberwell.”
“Yes. That’s right. That was a wonderful evening.”
“Yes; and you ordered the Ramen and I ordered the Mul Naeng Myun.”
“That’s right.” There is some foolhardy confidence in his voice.
“And then we went back to your place,” says Nicole.
“Yes.” Arthur cuts the syllable sharply from the receiver.
“And then we both had too much port on those beautiful crimson couches in your living room.”
“Yes.”
“And we were both laughing so much. And then you told me this fantastic joke about a lawyer. Do you remember what it was?”
“No. Sorry. No; I don’t think I do.”
“And then you snuck your sneaky little fingers onto my leg.”
The receiver is silent.
“And then you ran your palm along my thigh.”
Nicole hears his breath build then tumble down in a cascade of white water.
“Right up my thigh.”
I feel each hot exhalation vent from the receiver and waft deep into her ear.
“And then we had crumpets and maple syrup for breakfast with your lovely daughter. It was Laura, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“You were a good fuck.”
I listen to the silence in all the noise around me. I wait just a second.
“Why did you never call me back?”
I drop the speaker into the blankets and takes up the wine glass with in free hand. I sip and listen to the silences and stammers in his reply.
“I’m so sorry,” he concludes. But I had such a wonderful night and I want to try again; to make it up to you. Are you free this Friday?”
I reply, but the receiver is lost somewhere in the canyons of the crimson bedspread and neither of my hands are free.
“Nicole?”
With a gentle click, I place the speaker back onto its hook. I refill my glass and place it on the countertop. The room is filled with moonlight. It sprawls dark shadows across my dresser; my bed; my legs. I can hear the faint whisper of the breeze and the distant shrieks of doomsday parties. I can hear a bitch barking on the sand in an endless conversation with the waves. I lift the receiver again.
“Hello?” says a man’s voice.
“Hello John. It’s Laura.”
“Laura? Is everything alright?
“I’m feeling fine thankyou.”
“Where are you? Did you get the milk?”
“Hold on. I’m sorry; did I wake you up?”
“No. No.”
“Bullshit.”
“Alright.”
“You’re still in front of the TV?”
“So what?”
“Hey John. What are you wearing?” I lower my voice and slide my body through the sheets.
“What’s going on? Where are you?”
“I got the milk.”
“Good. Then where are you?”
“I stole it; from the Woollies in town; while the cashier was pinching cigarettes.”
“Why would you do that?”
“You still haven’t told me what you’re wearing.”
“Are you drunk?”
“No. Are you still naked?”
“Where are you?”
I look through the windows to the sea.
“I am in my bedroom,” I tell him. “I have found our dream house.”
“What bedroom?”
“It’s on the foreshore; through the saltbush. Its got a full kitchen, nice couches, Kafka and Hemingway, a queen-double, a back door that doesn’t lock and a view of the ocean.”
“You broke into someone’s house? Shit, Laura. What are you doing? Get out of there before someone sees you.”
“There is no one around to see me.”
“That shouldn’t even matter.”
“Do you want to move in with me?” I place the receiver on the countertop and take a long drink from my wineglass.
“Please come home.”
“I am home. I have found home.”
“Laura. Think about what you are doing. If you are caught you’ll get written up for trespassing. You’ll get a criminal record for the rest of your life. You might get kicked out of Uni; and everything you are working towards could fall away.”
“But I’ve found everything. And I have milk.”
“You haven’t found everything.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
“Please come home.”
He hangs up. I can see him sitting naked in front of the TV with the phone by his side and his penis in his lap. I drop the speaker roughly back into its cradle and listen the noise around me. For a second, I admit that I do consider going back; but there is a bitch somewhere outside in the night. So instead I top up my Smirnoff and kiss its bitter taste into my lips. Ahead of me I watch the waves fall again and again and again while I wait for the world to end.
