by Nick Earls
Yeah, I share with a couple of people. A couple of girls. It’s good, but they’re away a bit. And so are their boyfriends. Which means that when they aren’t they keep me awake all night bouncing on their squeaky beds. So when I say it’s good, I mean it’s good in theory. There are moments when it’s good.
We park outside her house, a wooden place with a leadlight porthole window next to the front door and a lawn dominated by tall, slender weed-stalks. The house looks about the same age as mine but it’s painted a colour that might be peach. But none of this helps me. I’ve been working hard to think of a plan, but I’m about to lose my chance. I’m about to blow it, and to have to reconstruct a strike out later on as an honourable choice.
I’ll probably get my new glasses in the next few days, she says. I’ve got a spare pair I can get by with till then.
Oh, yeah. Here, I’ll give you my card. Send me the bill. Okay? And do let me know if you’ve got any other problems. I feel very bad about this. This isn’t typical of me, you have to believe that.
She takes the card and laughs.
Okay. Maybe I do.
And she puts the card in her purse next to her head injury instructions and gets out of the car. I watch her go past the old rusty gate and up the three concrete steps. She stops and waves to me as I drive away, watching her in the mirror the whole length of the street. And she doesn’t go inside yet, doesn’t go until I’ve turned the corner.
I start driving towards town. My knee is really beginning to ache as the local anaesthetic wears off, and I must smell very bad by now. I am sure all I can do with the Singapore visitors in this state is cause offence.
So I go home. I shower and call work, and Deb is clearly worried about me. I tell her I’m okay. Hillary comes on and says, Thanks for the shoe buddy.
I’m sorry, I tell her. I’m sorry. You wouldn’t believe what happened.
That’s probably true.
How’s it been?
Fine. Well as fine as you’d expect. I covered it.
I tell her I’ll fill her in on the details of the emergency in the morning, so this gives me all night to come up with the right version of the story.
And I don’t give it a moment’s thought.
44
In the morning I keep it simple and I tell her I was running back from the shoe repairer and I collided with a wheelchair, and that explains my limp (which for the purposes of the story is really quite bad).
And I even had to get stitches in my knee, but the x-rays were okay so that’s a relief. The doctor said I should have a couple of days off to rest it, but I knew I was needed here.
Stitches? she says. You got stitches? Show them to me.
What?
It seems everyone’s interactions with me now start with the assumption that I have no dignity at all.
I won’t believe you unless you show them to me.
Fortunately I can roll the leg of my trousers above my knee, so I give her the proof she demands and she makes a face and says, That’s a very unattractive wound Rick.
So I seem to be forgiven.
I go back to Broadway at lunchtime, completely without meaning to. I just set off walking and it’s where I am, soon enough.
And just when I wonder if I might see Rachel Vilikovski there, I see the security guard instead.
Hey doc, he shouts, as though we go way back. How’s that girl?
I think she’ll be fine. Dehydration. I made sure she got some fluids in her.
He looks improbably thoughtful. Oh, you know doc, I’ve seen ’em drop like that before, and you know what I reckon it might be? A pituitary tumour.
A pituitary tumour.
Yeah. When I had my back op there were a couple of fellas in the ward who’d dropped just like that, and they had pituitary tumours.
Yes, I thought about that as a possibility, but when I examined her in my rooms a few specific tests were negative.
Like the old red-tipped pin, eh doc? And he laughs knowingly.
The red-tipped pin. Yes, she failed on the red-tipped pin.
It’s a good test that one. Bugger me if the blokes in the neurosurgical ward didn’t have markedly constricted visual fields when they were tested with the red-tipped pin.
The ones with the pituitary tumour?
Yeah.
Yeah, she wasn’t like that at all.
But you did the CAT scan I suppose. I mean, the pin’s good, but these days you don’t rely on the pin.
No.
So what did the CAT scan show?
Haven’t got it back yet.
He nods, and then says, Oh, right, ethics, gotcha. Say no more. And he smiles. Hey, you don’t think it’d be worth my while carrying a red-tipped pin around with me on the job, do you? Just as a quick screening test, you know?
Sure.
You couldn’t write a note to centre management could you? It’d have a lot more clout coming from a bloke like yourself. Rather than me just hitting ’em for a red-tipped pin I mean.
Sure. No problem. I can do it on letterhead paper and send it across.
Beauty, good on you doc. And he sticks both arms out to the side and wobbles his index fingers. Hey, which finger’s wiggling? Just kidding doc. Remember that one? You’d do that one all the time, wouldn’t you? The old wiggly finger?
Sure.
People are looking at us as though the security guard has caught me in the performance of an uncommon sexual practice. Or perhaps is trying to encourage me to engage in one with him.
I tell him I’m late for afternoon surgery, and he gives me a last playful demonstration of the old wiggly finger as I back away, adding Broadway to the growing list of places in my home town to which I can never return.
Mindful of Jeff’s dietary advice and my increasingly uncomfortable commitment to constipation, I buy a bean enchilada for lunch, and I ask for double beans. And when you’re used to a diet of Tim Tams and barbecue chips, a bean enchilada is a real let down. Still, I must move beyond this focus on immediate gratification, and think of the great comfort it shall bring me soon enough.
I’m annoyed I didn’t get her number. There are no Vilikovskis in the phone book, and I don’t know where she works. I thought about writing to her or leaving a note in her mailbox, but nobody does that now. She’d think I was stalking her. There must be some acceptable way.
Whether there is or there isn’t, I’m now annoyed that I could begin to obsess about a woman who probably has only a patchy recollection of me as the man who decked her. I expect she wants me terribly. I expect she can’t live without me. That she’s been up all night wanting me, bugging her housemates in the middle of intercourse and saying, See this lump? See this lump? I want that guy. He knocked me out with a woman’s shoe and that makes me so horny.
What a dickhead. What a dickhead. I’m loading the rest of this therapeutic double bean enchilada into me and thinking, what a dickhead. And why do people eat beans now? How could people possibly eat beans when there are Tim Tams in this world?
I expect that in a few days I’ll just get a bill for an exorbitant amount of money, and I’ll pay for her glasses. I’ll send her the cheque with some faintly foolish note that she will ignore, and that will be that.
I want to call Anna and tell her how well I’m doing. I want to tell her about the opportunities she has opened up for me. In just the last couple of weeks I’ve turned down a sixteen year old, fucked my boss and knocked out a babe. Had fantasies about all three and more. This is not how I had envisaged my late twenties, but maybe that’s just me.
At work there are several messages on my desk. Two from Sydney, one from Jeff. One in Deb’s writing that just says, ‘Rachel (???) called. Said she’d call back later’.
My outburst of glee is silent and private, and tempered quickly by the realisation that she’s probably just bought the glasses and she’s telling me how much I’m up for. Stay calm, I tell myself, stay calm.
Twenty minutes later she calls back.
>
Hi, she says. I just wanted to thank you for looking after me yesterday.
Well, it seemed only reasonable.
No, it was more than reasonable. You gave up your afternoon to get things sorted out.
Hey, I knocked you unconscious.
Yeah, I guess. But thanks anyway. I think you did more than a lot of people would.
So how’s the head today? I wanted to call you. To find out how you were. But I don’t have your number.
Have you got a pen?
And she gives me her work and home numbers, just like that. She impresses me immensely.
I thought I’d come into town tomorrow, she says. To get the glasses. I thought, since you were sponsoring them, I should give you the chance to come along and be involved in the choice. I wouldn’t want you to buy glasses you hated.
That’s very generous of you.
I’m a very considerate person.
Yesterday you wanted me to go to prison.
Yesterday I wasn’t myself. I was just some victim of a flying shoe. Far from my best. How about meeting at the place you decked me? You should remember where that is.
Broadway’s not so good for me at the moment.
Okay. Eyewear Now, Albert Street, say one-thirty?
Sure. Sure, I’ll be there.
Okay. See you then Richard Derrington.
Yeah.
And she goes. Leaves me with my whole name and goes.
45
So I’m thinking, how do I handle this?
I have between now and one-thirty tomorrow to come up with a plan. To have some idea that will be cool, manageable and successful. Whatever successful is. If it’s what I want.
I call Jeff.
So, what are you looking for here? he says, treating my ramblings with all the respect due a hare-brained scheme. I mean, have you thought this through? You sound a bit dangerous to me.
But she’s great. Really.
Okay. Let’s just get some perspective on this.
I’ve got the perspective.
He ignores me. Okay, this would be at least the third or fourth time in the last few weeks your trousers have had the better of your brain, not that it’s a very good brain at the moment. That was okay not long ago when they weren’t very good trousers either, but clearly they’ve made progress. And you worry me with that.
But she’s great.
Sure. I’m sure she’s great. This is a town full of great women. They don’t all require mugging as a means of seduction. Are you sure you’re ready for this? I don’t think you’re very stable at the moment.
No, I’m not. But …
I just want you to be careful, okay. You make whatever decision you want to make, but it would be good if you could be careful. It would be nice if things could just calm down a bit for you, and you could work a few things out.
But what if I want to do things with her?
Well, that depends on the two of you. But, look, less than a week ago you were fucking your boss, and two days ago that was presented to me as something that was intimate and special, but a little misguided. Now you’re beating other women to the ground with her shoes as the prelude to some completely different elaborate fantasy.
There’s no elaborate fantasy. And if there’s any fantasy at all, who’s to say it’s different? What if I just want there to be a babe in whose company I can do things? A special female babe friend to have coffee with and things.
Rick, never. You couldn’t do it. You’d be sitting there at Aroma’s and she’s calmly sipping a cappuccino, thinking platonic thoughts, thinking isn’t it nice to have a male friend who doesn’t want to get into my pants. And all you’re thinking about is how you do want to get into her pants, and you’re wondering if everyone in the place can see the fearsome action going on in yours. And don’t pick me up on this. I’m not saying men and women can’t have platonic friendships, even if the women are babes and even if the men are single, and vice versa I suppose. What I’m saying is that you can’t. That right now, with what appears to be happening in your head, and what appears to be happening in your pants it would be foolish to embark on anything with that kind of notion. And that’s because of fantasy, Rick. Because there’s always an elaborate fantasy. Nothing is normal for you. You’ve probably visualised all kinds of relationships with this woman already. You’ve probably already asked yourself whether or not marrying her is a possibility.
Well, yeah. But you always do that. Just so you can rule out the ones where it isn’t a possibility early on.
I don’t suppose you realise that’s a totally fucked idea.
No.
So, will you just admit to me that when this woman called and mentioned going shopping for glasses, things other than coffee and friendship occurred to you?
Maybe.
So, is this a good time for a relationship for you?
Maybe not.
Okay. And are you over Anna yet?
No.
I try, therefore, to put it out of my head, which of course I don’t. I try not to fantasise. I fantasise.
I go through a complex process of negotiation with myself that allows me, most of the rest of the day, to fantasise endlessly about intimacy, but not about sex.
But by the time I’m lounging around on the couch at home flicking through the Monday night TV with the remote, I’m totally unaware of how I came to draw that line. Why the intimacy fantasy is fine, and the sex fantasy isn’t. Maybe I’ve forgotten the arguments, and it was meant to be the other way round. Maybe the sex was fine, and the intimacy was dangerous. Right now that makes more sense. I’m quite sure that any fantasy involving both sex and intimacy would be incredibly dangerous, but maybe just sex would be okay.
Then I worry that, much as the sex idea appeals, I’m also a sucker for the intimacy.
And I think about the things I miss. Sure, until last week sex was one of them, but there was only a short period between the resolution of my Post-trashing Impotence Syndrome and the misguided events of Sydney.
I miss the sounds of another person about the house. I miss the theft of sheets in the middle of the night. I miss rummaging through tampons in the glove box to find the video store cards. I miss having tissues appliqued to my business shirts in the washing machine when I never use tissues. I miss big stupid arguments over small stupid things. I miss two smart people never accepting the responsibility for finishing the toilet roll, or the milk. I miss coffee that’s completely the wrong strength but made with the best of intentions. I miss the ends of days when you’re both too tired to talk and you sit in front of bad TV with your shoes off, and you just do nothing.
Why? Why isn’t it happening for me?
46
My palms sweat in the air-conditioning.
I’m going to fuck this up. I know I’m going to fuck this up.
She has the reasonable expectation that we will buy glasses because her old ones are broken, and I’m behaving as though my life depends on it. So I’ve fucked it up already. I needn’t worry about it. I’ve already put Jeff’s greatest fears about me into practice. I have already lived the fantasy of intimacy with Rachel Vilikovski a million times, and in the real world all I’ve done is injure her.
What a dickhead. I should live my life knowing that harm will come to me.
She’s at Eyewear Now at one-thirty. She’s wearing a short black dress and I’m fighting off the emergence of a speech impediment.
I say Hi.
Hi. She looks at me as though I might be kind of comical and she smiles, but only by lifting the right half of her upper lip.
Technically this may be no more than a quarter of a smile, but it kills me. I’m lucky she didn’t use any more.
And she has a large irregular swelling between her eyes, and her broken glasses arranged so that she has good vision from the eye with the lens. Why is she wearing that short black dress? She looks far too good in it. The short black dress is a well-known weakener of weak men, and I’m as weak as the
y come. This is hardly fair. And she has such a shape under that black dress, such a cruel, slinky woman kind of shape. And still the quarter smile. I’m still copping the quarter smile.
I had to wear these glasses, she says. My spare pair doesn’t fit because of the swelling. So it’s probably not a good day to be buying new frames, but I think I know what I want.
I follow her in and I’m thinking the people in the store will be thinking we’re together. That this is the way it works with us. I’m buying her glasses. And maybe she bought me this tie for my twenty-eighth. And that lint in the shirt pocket? Maybe it’s one of her tissues. I never use tissues.
Black dress. I think I know what I want. She is a very powerful woman.
Vilikovski, Rachel, she’s saying. You’ll have my prescription on file. I had an accident with the glasses.
The next fifteen minutes are a joy as Rachel, who might know what she wants but clearly wants something very specific, tries on frame after frame, as best she can. And says things like, So, does this go with my eyes? Is this right with my cheekbones? How does this make me look? Before ending up with frames very like the ones I broke, but three times the price. And that doesn’t bother her at all.
The glasses will take twenty minutes, so she says, How about we go for coffee? And the nearest place is the Koffies I usually frequent with Jeff, and that’s where she walks.
And of course the girl who thinks I’m a hero is behind the counter again. I try not to make eye contact but she says to Rachel, You must be very proud of him, and looks at me, smiling.
Sure, Rachel says. Who wouldn’t be? And she pays for the coffees, saying, You only owe me glasses.
We sit in a booth.
So why am I proud of you? Not that I’m not. Not that I’m sure there aren’t a thousand reasons, but why?
Who knows? Because I just won some big dermatology award? She must have thought I was somebody else.
Really?
Yeah.
Maybe there’s more to you than meets the eye, she says and shuts the eye on the lensless side of the frame to study me more closely.
