Smoke in the Room

by Emily Maguire

  She snorted and flipped the page of her magazine. NICOLE’S SHOCK WEIGHT LOSS said the headline. The woman in the pictures was insect-thin. If her blonde hair was a little longer and her nose a little narrower she would look just like Eugenie. He half-closed his eyes, blurring the picture, scraping a nail over his scabby heart.

  The girl across from him clicked her tongue.

  ‘Ah, I . . .’ Adam waited for her to look at him. When she didn’t, he cleared his throat. ‘I just wondered if you knew of anywhere around here I might find, ah, some work?’

  She slammed her magazine closed as though it were a hard-covered book. ‘I thought you sold shoes. Gran said you sold shoes. She said you wouldn’t be around in the daytime. You’re supposed to be selling shoes.’

  ‘Yeah, I used to, but . . . but I don’t right now.’

  ‘You’re telling me you lied to Gran?’

  ‘I needed someplace to stay.’

  She picked up her magazine. ‘So go back to the shoe store.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why?’ She flicked a page over. ‘Did you get fired?’

  ‘No, I . . . the shoe store is in San Francisco.’

  ‘So go back to San Francisco.’

  ‘Listen, Katherine –’

  ‘It’s Katie.’

  ‘Katie, I –’

  ‘Not because we’re friends.’

  ‘What?’

  She tossed the magazine on the ground and leant forward. Her small dark eyes met his and she sighed. ‘You’ve got a look on your face like we’re friends. Katie is my name. For everyone except my grandma and the government. It’s not like, “Oh, call me Katie, all my friends do.” It’s just my name.’

  Adam took a breath. ‘Katie. I’m sorry I lied. I need a place to stay while I earn enough money to get back to the States. If you know of anyone who might need, like, a kitchen hand or janitor or something, then I would be grateful for the information. If not, I’m sorry to have bothered you. I’ll understand if you feel the need to tell your grandma that I’m not working. I hope you won’t but I surely do understand if you –’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s enough. I won’t dob on you if you don’t dob on me, all right?’

  I’ll dob, Eugenie had said to him that very first day. She caught him stealing a chocolate chip cookie from the mailroom tea table. You’ll do what? Adam had asked. That was the start.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Um, if you mean before, when you – you know, in the hall –’

  ‘Oh, that! That was just me stuffing around.’ She winked. ‘I’m always misbehaving. You’ll see.’ She grabbed his hand in both of hers and smiled widely, revealing a mouth full of baby teeth. ‘So you’re alone in a strange land, hardly any luggage, unemployed, lying to old ladies. Are you on the run, or what?’

  ‘Of course not.’ He looked at her red knuckles and inflamed nail beds, confused by the softness of the skin wrapped around his cold hand.

  ‘So what then?’

  ‘It’s complicated.’

  ‘Fine, be mysterious.’

  Adam flexed his hand, but she held tight. ‘Um, so, do you know . . .’

  She stood up, pulling him with her. ‘Come on.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Trust me.’

  The building’s elevator was plastered with posters for open mic nights, sex clubs, dollar drinks and dating hotlines. The NO BILLS POSTED sign was partially obscured by postcards advertising SWEET ASIAN PRINCESS, MAN TO MAN EROTIC MASSAGE and SWEDISH TWINS WHO WANT TO MAKE YOU SMILE. If this was San Francisco, Adam might assume the posters were an artwork commenting on the dehumanising effects of advertising: a cartoon barmaid showed through the white space between a lingerie model’s open legs; a stripper’s torso was torn down the middle revealing a hot pink microphone which seemed to be melting into a glass of pale yellow beer. The centrepiece was a still-glossy poster featuring a collage of shiny tanned body parts. Basketball tits held in red-taloned hands, oiled thighs with muscles straining, two pairs of red lips smashed together, an armless hand squeezing a bodiless arse cheek. NUDE GIRLS LIVE! was printed top and bottom.

  Katie nudged him. ‘In my head I always read LIVE so it sounds like liv. Makes that poster kind of funny. Like they cut the nude girls into all those parts and still they live.’

  Adam felt faint. He felt he’d been in here for hours. He undid his top button and concentrated on the light above the door that told him they were moving towards the open air.

  ‘One second,’ Katie said when they reached the ground floor. She jogged across to the door opposite the elevator and rapped three times. Adam peered at his distorted reflection in the elevator’s shiny silver doors, smoothing down his hair and straightening his collar. He didn’t need a mirror to tell him his skin was pale and his eyes puffy. He blinked and slapped his cheeks to create the appearance at least, of a wide-awake, eager employee. The door creaked open and he turned towards it with a smile, vowing to accept whatever the inhabitant had to offer.

  An ancient woman, wrapped in what looked like a grey sleeping bag and bent almost double at the waist, peered out. ‘Oh, it’s you, love. I thought it was those bloody phone company people again. I had my stick ready.’

  ‘They’re persistent, aren’t they?’ Katie said. ‘I just pretend I don’t understand English.’

  ‘Sometimes I wonder if they understand it. Don’t understand “piss off” anyway. Oh, hello.’ The woman nodded at Adam. ‘You new?’

  ‘Um, yeah.’ He quickstepped to Katie’s side. ‘I’m Adam. I’m, ah, after some work.’

  The woman looked him over, head to toe and back again. ‘Hmm. Let’s see. My bunions need filing. That’ll be a few hours right there. Then I s’pose you could help me with my bath. So many bits I can’t reach these days. Christ knows they need a good scrubbing.’

  ‘Phyl!’ Katie said. ‘You’ll scare him back to America.’ She squeezed Adam’s arm. ‘How about you wait for me out the front? I’ll just be a minute.’

  Adam hurried outside and sat on the low brick wall housing the building’s mailboxes. Within seconds, his neck was damp with sweat. From the colour of the sky he guessed it was after six, yet the sun had all the heat of noon. Each day he expected this place to feel less alien and for minutes, even hours, at a time it did, and then . . . Then this, this wave of breathless, stomach-clenching disorientation. He closed his eyes and began to count backwards from one hundred.

  At twenty-two he felt a slap on the arm. ‘Hey. You meditating or something?’

  He opened his eyes and slid off the wall. His skull felt tight and overcooked but his breathing was regular again. ‘No. Hi.’

  ‘Sorry about that. I just like to check in with Phyl from time to time. She’s on her own since her – uh, her wife, I guess, although she wouldn’t use the word, she’d just say “Carol” – anyway, since she died last year, Phyl’s on her own.’ Katie hooked her arm through Adam’s and began to walk. ‘She’s super with-it still – mentally, I mean – but the old body’s going to shit, as she’d say, so I just give her a howdy-do now and then to make sure she’s not lying on the bathroom floor with her knickers around her ankles calling for help.’

  ‘That’s nice of you. Did you know her, um, her wife?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. She was fierce.’ Katie brought them to a stop at the traffic lights and danced from foot to foot. ‘Carol was like the door bitch for the whole building. She’d sit out the front – right where you were a minute ago – and give the stink-eye to anyone she didn’t recognise. She was always giving me advice, too. Like how to deal with dead-end dudes and nosy cops and empty pockets. Come on, let’s go.’ She tugged his arm, pulling him into the intersection packed with cars moving at an inch a minute.

  ‘Nosy cops?’ he asked when they reached the other side.

  ‘Yeah, Carol was tops with them. Hey, so here we are.’

  Gold lettering over the dark wood double doors said KING’S TAVERN. Above the tarnished gold doorknob a sticker promise
d he could WIN UP TO $100,000 WITH DAILY KENO.

  ‘They’re hiring here?’

  ‘Probably not. They just laid off two barmen last week.’

  ‘Look, I really need –’

  ‘Adam!’ Katie unhooked her arm from his and placed both hands on her hips. ‘Relax, okay? Have a drink with me. Then we’ll talk employment options.’

  The pub was dark and musty with gold chandeliers overhead and poker machines lining the walls. They sat on wobbly stools, their forearms resting on a wood laminate bar sticky with long ago spilt beer. She ordered schooners of Victoria Bitter and whisky chasers.

  ‘So, the last tenant before you was – ugh, actually let’s not talk about him. Let’s pretend he never happened. So, before him there was Carrie who worked at the Golden Cat – that’s a brothel if you didn’t know – but Gran thought she was a nurse, which she was studying to be and when she graduated we had this party and she wore the slutty-nurse outfit from work which was pretty funny. Before her was Ken, he was a student, too, but not a part-time hooker student like Carrie, just a regular one. There have been a few international students. Japanese, Norwegian, English. When I first moved in, there was this Spanish girl, Marie, and she was so sweet, she was like a big bag of fairy floss. I was sad when she left. Hey, you’re lagging. Drink up!’

  Adam took a large gulp of beer. It tasted like chilled vinegar but with every mouthful he could feel his chest relaxing a little more. Swallow by swallow his sense of displacement eased. He knocked back the whisky in front of him and when the burning in his throat subsided he felt almost good.

  ‘All right! Now we’re grooving.’ Katie drained her whisky and motioned to the bartender for two more. ‘So, Adam, you have the privilege of being my first Seppo.’

  ‘Your first what?’

  ‘Seppo. You’ve gotta learn to speak Aussie, man. You’re a Yank, so –’

  ‘No, not a Yankee. I’m from –’

  ‘The You Ess Ay. Makes you a Yank. Yank rhymes with septic tank. But we like to shorten names and then add an O at the end – but only if we like you. So Yank is kind of neutral. Septic tank is rude. But Seppo, well, it’s affectionate. Get it?’

  ‘No.’ Adam drank more beer. It was starting to taste pretty good.

  ‘You’re so quiet. I didn’t expect that.’ Katie slid around on her stool so she was facing his right side. ‘I don’t mean that as an insult or anything. I just kind of thought all Americans were loud and arrogant. And I bet –’ she kicked his calf with her steel-toed boot ‘– I bet you expected Aussie girls to be all easy-breezy, sun-loving, beach-ball-bouncing, sweetie-pies.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because that’s not true. I, for instance, avoid the daylight. And the beach.’ She waved a stumpy-nailed hand in front of her face. ‘I am easy, though. Ha. Let’s do a shot. Tequila or sambuca?’

  ‘Neither.’

  ‘Nonsense. Joey!’ She raised her arms and clapped until the bartender turned their way. ‘Two sambucas, black.’ She slapped a twenty on the bar. ‘Oh, and another coupla whiskies.’ She turned back to Adam. ‘I suppose you think I drink too much, but if you stick around awhile you’ll see that everybody in Australia drinks this much or more. Sometimes lots more.’

  ‘Now, I know from personal experience that that’s not true.’

  ‘Personal experience, eh? Do tell.’

  Adam looked at the cluster of glasses in front of him. He picked up the closest and tossed its contents down. Molten liquorice filled his throat and brought tears to his eyes. ‘I think I better go home.’

  ‘Not yet.’ She leant in, grasping his upper-arm for balance, and kissed his neck just below his ear.

  He shrugged her off. ‘Cut it out.’

  She grabbed his wrist. ‘I was hoping I’d be your first Australian, Adam.’

  ‘My first Australian what?’

  ‘Friend.’

  ‘We’re not friends, remember? Katherine.’

  She sank her nails into the soft skin of his wrist. His arm shot out, sending her toppling off her stool. ‘Woo!’ She righted herself and stood behind him, wrapping her arms around his chest. ‘You’re really sexy for a Mormon.’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  She bit his ear. Not in a sexy way. More like she was testing the firmness of his earlobe. Like she needed to know how much pressure could be applied.

  ‘I have to go,’ Adam said, standing.

  His sudden movement threw her off balance again and she skittled to the side, knocking over a nearby stool. She latched onto his arm and said, ‘Stay, stay.’ He moved steadily towards the exit, dragging her behind him. Someone shouted taxi as he pushed open the door.

  The street was dim and cool. Everything smelt like whisky. He stumbled past several closed shops and across a mercifully clear street to what appeared to be a small public park. ‘Where we going?’ Katie said, still clinging to his arm. He shook her off, and sank to his knees, then his side, grateful for the soft, cool grass under his cheek.

  ‘Oh, no.’ Katie sat beside him and pinched his ear. ‘No sleeping, Adam. Not here and not yet. Come on. Get up!’

  He swatted at her hand. ‘Lemme rest a minute.’

  ‘Geez, what a lightweight.’ She rolled him onto his back and kneeled over him, one leg either side of his thighs, and put her hands inside his pants.

  ‘Hey, no, no. Don’t.’

  She stopped mid-tug. ‘Oh, shit. You’re not actually a Mormon, are you? Man, I was kidding!’

  ‘What? No, no. I . . . Just don’t, okay.’

  She sighed and placed her palms flat on his belly. ‘I thought we were on the same wavelength, you know? Have a drink, a laugh, maybe a tumble in the grass. I guess I read you all wrong. But maybe . . .’ She slid one hand into his underwear and began to stroke him. ‘Maybe if you lie back and relax, maybe you’ll change your mind?’

  He looked up at her hovering over him. Her face and torso were in shadow; the street lights fell across her lower body, streaking her inner thighs with fine lines. Her skirt was scrunched around her hips and he could see her underpants, bright pink and so tiny she might as well have not been wearing them at all. The grass was cool and her hands were smooth and his head was heavy and a motorbike roared past and his life was behind him and everything smelt like whisky. He heard himself moan.

  ‘That feels good, huh?’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah. But, Kay-ah, Katie, I drank too much. I don’t think I can.’

  ‘Maybe not, but I can. I definitely can.’ She kept stroking him with one hand, while she pulled her underpants to the side with the other. ‘Just let me do my thing, Yankee Doodle. Just let me have my Yankee Doodle Dandy.’

  He had not had sex since Eugenie, and he had not missed it. But the girl was warm and the motion calming. His body rocked with the rolling of her hips and the steady beat of her breathing. He closed his eyes.

  He drifted in and out, with little idea of how much time was passing. At some point he became aware of a desperate need for it to be finished. He reached for her hips urging them to move faster and with more force. She was panting hard, slowing down and he said come on come on and she said okay yes and moved faster for him, with him, until he came with a jolt and a groan and she laughed and said something he didn’t hear because he was already falling asleep.

  ‘Get up you filthy buggers!’

  Something hard poked him awake. White birds with yellow crowns streaked across the pale grey sky overhead. Katie was half on top of him, her head on his chest and her leg over his groin which was cold and damp. The man standing above them wore a leather apron and rubber boots to his knees. The broom he shoved at Adam felt like a dog’s head and stank of fish. Adam closed his eyes again thinking he may have dreamt himself into a Dickens novel.

  ‘Filthy scum. This is a public park.’ The man jabbed him to full consciousness, then stalked across the street and stood watching from the doorway of a shuttered fish shop. Katie stood and patted down her skirt. S
he grabbed Adam’s hand and pulled him up, then across the street, as he tried to button his pants with one hand. He tripped on the gutter and fell to one knee, pulling Katie half the way down with him. She cackled and a jogger on the other side of the road stopped for a few seconds and watched them get up.

  ‘What a night, eh?’ she said four or five times during the slow, sick-making elevator ride.

  Back inside the flat she led him to her bedroom.

  ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘I need to shower, sleep.’

  ‘Okay. We’ll shower. Let me . . .’ She unbuttoned his shirt and slid it over his shoulders, moving around to his back as she tugged the sleeves off his arms. ‘Oh!’ she said, her hands moving quickly over the skin of his back. ‘Wow.’

  ‘I have tattoos,’ he said.

  She laughed. ‘Yeah. I noticed.’

  Dreams were unreliable. Some allowed Adam to spend the night buried in Eugenie, his hands on her waist, his mouth moving over her collarbone. Or they let him lie with her on the beach, tracing dirty words on her back. Waking after a dream like that, Adam burrowed further into the blankets, knees tucked into his chest, replaying each moment, pushing the day and its dreadful knowledge away for as long as he could. Other nights the dreams were cruel: Eugenie was drowning in the ocean and the harder Adam swam, the further away she got. Or she was being sucked into a pit of mud and when Adam grabbed her arm it came off in his hand. After a dream like that, he hurled himself into the waking world. Cold shower, loud music, breakfast TV, kick the wall, slap his face.

  This morning he lay in bed waiting for the warmth or the horror, but nothing came. No dream. No Eugenie. So there was something worse than a nightmare.

  He blinked at the purple wall, remembered he’d moved into a new flat yesterday and then that he’d gone drinking last night. Alcohol killed dreams, or maybe only the memory of dreams. The relief this realisation brought had an anaesthetising effect, allowing him to climb out of bed and make it halfway down the hallway before noticing that he was naked and monstrously hung-over. He steadied himself against the wall with one hand and took several deep breaths to ward off the nausea. Through the open door to his right he saw a neatly made single bed. The room he’d woken up in was not the same one he had moved into yesterday.