Drift

by Penni Russon

  ‘No. I turned eighteen last month.’ There had been a party, family only at Undine’s request, and Stephen had worn a paper hat and made a funny speech and Lou had tears in her eyes when she talked about the first time she saw Undine, tiny and slippery and naked and new, and Jasper had led the singing and Mim had been there and Trevor-Trout had come later and Undine had smiled so much her face had hurt from not being able to stop.

  ‘Well, good to hear my days of leading you astray are over.’ But Richard’s voice sounded slightly regretful. He poured each of them a glass and then brightened. ‘Though I shouldn’t really be drinking, since Lucy could go any minute.’ As if she were an unexploded bomb, thought Undine. ‘So it is you leading me astray.’ And he raised his glass to Undine, as if it were a toast.

  Undine didn’t want to be associated with leading Richard astray when his very pregnant girlfriend lurked somewhere nearby, and she was also aware of Dan, watching them from a table with narrowed, judgemental eyes. She sipped her drink quickly without acknowledging Richard’s toast and looked around fiercely for Trout.

  But as Undine feared, Richard suddenly turned serious. His eyes grew urgent as he spoke quietly and desperately: ‘Do you ever wonder what might have happened, how differently things might have turned out if we—?’

  ‘No!’ Undine said, alarmed.

  Richard searched her eyes fervently, then he dropped back into a joky stance. ‘You mightn’t have run away from your parents in Greece,’ he offered in his lazy, uncaring way. He winked. ‘We had fun, didn’t we? I might have been an incentive to come back’

  ‘I didn’t run away!’ she protested.

  Her tone of voice seemed to spark something in him and he grabbed her arm. ‘Don’t you ever think about it?’ Richard pressed. The intensity had returned. ‘Us, I mean.’

  ‘No. I don’t,’ Undine said weakly, feeling ill.

  ‘I think you’re lying.’ Richard still clutched her arm, but he loosened his grip and merely held her.

  Undine pulled her arm away angrily. ‘We weren’t … we didn’t … have fun. Don’t you remember?’ Undine hissed. ‘Don’t you remember how awfully we treated each other? How close we – I – came to … to hurting you? And then you just … you wouldn’t even look at me. It was bad. It was a bad thing.’

  Richard looked genuinely bemused. ‘No, that’s not what I remember. We went to the pub. And that day at your house, when we nearly … but I stopped. Because of Lucy.’

  ‘That’s not how it happened,’ Undine said. ‘You didn’t stop. Lou walked in.’

  Richard frowned.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Undine said to a passing waitress. ‘Can you tell me where the toilet is, please.’

  ‘Sure,’ the waitress said.

  ‘Undine—’ Richard said in a low voice.

  ‘Follow me,’ the waitress said quickly, and took her to a door. ‘Past the door to the kitchen, to the left.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Undine gratefully.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ the waitress said. She smiled into Undine’s face, tilting her head as if trying to place her, then kept walking back towards the bar.

  ‘I just met a girl who reminds me of you,’ Liv said to Phoenix as she wiped down the bar.

  ‘Really?’ Phoenix sat back in his chair.

  ‘I think she’s with the launch. She was having a very uncomfortable conversation with someone. I saved her.’

  ‘And she looks like me?’

  ‘Well … not exactly. But there’s something about her. She’s just gone to the toilet, but she’ll be out in a minute. What do you think of my new artist?’

  Phoenix looked lazily at the walls. ‘I’ve never really liked photography.’

  Liv laughed. ‘That’s a very expansive statement.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Phoenix smiled, pleased with himself for being scandalous.

  ‘I like it,’ Liv said. ‘It makes me happy, all these bright pretty things on my walls. I’m thinking of buying one.’

  ‘Well, if it makes you happy, it makes me happy.’

  Liv laughed again and flicked the wet dishcloth towards Phoenix before turning away to serve another customer.

  Undine locked herself into a cubicle and sat down on the closed toilet lid, burying her face in her hands.

  A voice carried over the cubicle door as people entered the toilets.

  ‘I wish this baby would get off my bladder. Get out! Get out! Didn’t you get the eviction notice?’ God, it was Lucy. Undine scrunched in further.

  Someone else laughed sympathetically. ‘It’ll all be over soon.’

  ‘Easy for you to say. This baby has appropriated every square inch of me. Even my eyelids are puffy.’

  ‘You look beautiful.’

  As Undine leaned her head to one side and peered under the cubicle door at a swish of silver dress and feet that were stepping out of shoes, she realised the other person was Reina. She seemed to be stretching her toes, pointing her feet and straightening the arch of her foot as if her shoes hurt her. ‘You look like one of those Botticelli paintings.’

  Lucy harrumphed. ‘I can’t believe he was talking to her. Bastard.’

  ‘Does he know her? Oh of course he does, she lived next door to him too.’

  ‘They had a thing. I don’t really know what. It didn’t last very long. I don’t think he took it very seriously at the time. She made cow eyes at him once at the pub. Yes Richard, no Richard, three bags full Richard.’

  ‘She seems all right.’

  ‘I don’t like her,’ Lucy said matter-of-factly. Undine’s stomach lurched.

  ‘Really? I thought she was harmless.’

  ‘Don’t trust her,’ Lucy warned. ‘She’s treated Trout very badly over the years. She’s so quiet, she comes across as nice enough. The boys all like her because she seems mousy and sweet and she’s pretty, but she’s really twisting them around her little finger. She did something to Richard. He was quite shaken after his fling with her, though he wouldn’t tell me what happened, of course. And just the way she snuck around with him behind my back – ugh. She’s a piece of work. And now she’s trying it on again.’

  Undine burned at the unfairness of Lucy’s remarks. Was that really how people saw her? She hadn’t even known about Lucy when she and Richard were seeing each other. Part of her desperately wanted to defend herself to Reina, but she stayed where she was.

  ‘She’d have to be pretty awful to try and take up with Richard when he’s about to have a baby,’ Reina said reassuringly. ‘And he wouldn’t anyway. He wouldn’t leave you.’ Undine squirmed uncomfortably, remembering Richard’s intense words.

  ‘Maybe.’ Lucy flushed the toilet. Undine could hear a falter in her voice, even through the dividing wall. ‘But she’s so … unfettered, uncomplicated … thin …’ Her words were drowned out by a brief spurt of running water.

  ‘Trout seems pretty shaken up by her coming back too,’ Reina said sadly when the water had stopped.

  Undine listened more eagerly now. Was he?

  ‘Where’s she been anyway?’ Lucy asked. ‘I thought she was supposed to be dead.’

  ‘Trout said missing. Missing at sea.’ Reina sounded confused. ‘I guess she must have run away. He didn’t seem … shocked that she was back. You know. Considering she was supposed to be dead. That’s what people mean when they say missing at sea, isn’t it? Not just that they’ve run away.’

  Lucy snorted. ‘Swum away. How childish. And selfish!’

  ‘Trout said her dad died while she was gone. It’s sad.’

  ‘If she was my daughter …’ Undine didn’t hear the end of Lucy’s sentence because the door opened and closed and they were gone.

  She stood up on shaky legs and slid the lock open. But it was only when the cubicle door had swung open completely that she realised Lucy’s words hadn’t disappeared because Lucy and Reina had exited, but because someone else had entered, interrupting them, and was now using the other toilet. Reina was waiting for Lucy to
reapply her lipstick. They both caught Undine’s reflection in the mirror. Undine saw it too, her own mortified face staring back at her.

  Lucy raised her eyebrows unapologetically when she saw Undine, smiling a blank, sabre-toothed smile to stretch her lips so the lipstick glided on smoothly. But Reina looked as embarrassed as Undine.

  ‘Wait, Undine,’ Reina said.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Undine muttered, and she left the bathroom as fast as she could. The café was even more crowded now. She couldn’t see Trout, not that she stopped to look. She pushed her way past a group standing near the doorway, heaved the door open and ran out into the sultry night.

  ‘That’s her,’ Liv said. ‘Oh, she’s off. Crikey, look at her go.’

  ‘She’s nothing like me,’ Phoenix said.

  ‘She is! Look.’

  ‘I am looking,’ Phoenix said, but he had turned away from the departing figure of Undine and was looking back down at the tiled bar.

  ‘She’s a bit like you. It’s more … an energy. No, that sounds kookie. It’s the way she holds herself, her face a bit. Something. You just can’t see it, ’cause you’re you.’

  ‘I can’t see it because she doesn’t look like me.’

  ‘Okay, don’t get huffy.’

  ‘I’m not huffy.’ Phoenix leaned over and picked up Liv’s arm to look at her watch. ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Since when have you developed a sense of time?’

  ‘Since now.’ He kissed Liv’s wrist, underneath her watchband. ‘Thanks for the cake.’

  ‘The pleasure was mine,’ Liv sighed. ‘It’s always mine. But I wish you would stay.’

  ‘I know. I like you wishing. That’s why I go.’ He traced a finger along her arm, imitating the second hand of her watch. ‘Tick tock, tick tock.’

  ‘Goodbye, mystery man. Do you think I’ll ever get a normal boyfriend?’

  ‘Am I your boyfriend?’

  ‘Do you want to be?’ Liv teased.

  Phoenix mimed thinking about it.

  ‘Too late,’ Liv said, waving her watch. ‘Time’s up! You took too long.’

  ‘You don’t know the lengths I would go to to make extra time with you,’ Phoenix said, suddenly serious. ‘I wish we could live our whole lives in a day.’

  ‘Ah …’ Liv blew him a kiss. ‘You’re sweet.’

  ‘Not as sweet as you.’ Phoenix pushed himself up on the bar, leaned over and put his hand on the back of her neck, drawing her to him. In her ear he whispered, ‘Tick tock, tick tock. Stop all the clocks. Tick tock.’ She giggled as his breath tickled her ear. ‘Tick tick tickety tock.’

  ‘Come on,’ Liv said. ‘I thought you said you had to go.’

  ‘Well. For this one moment, I think I have to stay,’ Phoenix said, and he kissed her. For Liv and Phoenix it did seem that, somewhere between tick and tock, time itself had stopped.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Trout didn’t actually see Undine leave. There was a general feeling of flurry in the room, a sudden quick whispering darting around, a few laughs, a jeering shout – ‘Are you right?’ – catcalls, whistles, and scattered applause from a group of people standing near the door.

  Trout looked around, blinking in surprise. He’d been caught up. He had been all night. It was his night, everyone was saying it, and he did feel as if he owned it, at least here, in the Silver Moon Café. At first his photos on the wall had seemed jarring and conspicuous, as though someone had pinned up his most personal items, his underwear or something, for his family and friends to see, like those dreams where he was naked in public and no one seemed to notice and he was waiting in dread till they did. But after a while his eyes got used to seeing them here, in this space, and he began to enjoy their presence. Was this what being exhibited was all about? Exhibiting a part of himself he usually kept hidden, laying himself bare, showing what was underneath. And for what? Approval? Enjoyment? To offer a glimpse into his own inner workings, or to learn more about himself as others told him what they saw?

  ‘Oh, Trout, there you are.’ Reina pushed her way towards him. ‘It’s Undine. She’s left, I think.’

  ‘Left?’ Trout asked, uncomfortably. He hadn’t realised at first that he’d been actively avoiding her. And then when he did realise … well, he kind of avoided the fact that he’d been avoiding her. And then there’d just been this whole avoiding thing going on, and once that started …

  But Reina wasn’t blaming Trout. ‘It’s my fault,’ she said. ‘Mine and Lucy’s. We were talking about her in the bathroom, and didn’t realise she was in a cubicle.’

  ‘What were you saying?’

  ‘Oh nothing, just idle gossip, speculation. It was really nothing but she ran off before I could say … Lucy saw her talking to Richard before, and you know how jumpy Lucy’s been since …’

  ‘Forever.’

  ‘Well yes, there is that. But especially now. And I can’t really blame her. You didn’t tell me Undine and Richard had a past.’

  Trout snorted. ‘There didn’t seem any point. Until a couple of days ago, I thought Undine didn’t have a future.’

  Reina recoiled. ‘Ugh. That’s a horrible way of putting it.’

  ‘I didn’t mean …’

  ‘Then what did you mean?’ At Trout’s non-reply she said, ‘I’m trying not to ask questions. I don’t want to intrude. But I can’t help being curious. It’s all so … it’s odd.’

  ‘It is odd,’ Trout sighed. ‘It is. And I’m sorry. But I just …’

  ‘What?’ Reina demanded. She tilted her head, looking Trout directly in the eye. ‘What?’ she asked again, more softly this time.

  But Trout shook his head uselessly. There was nothing he could say. He simply had no answers; he’d never had answers as far as Undine was concerned.

  Outside, Undine barrelled straight into someone’s arms.

  ‘Whoa,’ a familiar voice said. ‘Where are you off to in such a hurry?’

  ‘Oh, Grunt!’ Undine flung her arms around his neck and hugged him tight. She buried her face in his shoulder so he wouldn’t see she had been crying, but apparently she was damply obvious, because he pulled back and studied her.

  ‘Hey, what’s going on?’

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing. It’s stupid.’ Undine angrily brushed her tears away.

  ‘Where’s Trout?’

  ‘Inside. He’s busy. I didn’t know. I thought it was just going to be the two of us but everyone’s there, his parents and Richard. Lucy.’ She couldn’t help the way she said Lucy’s name, or the fact that saying it made her start crying again.

  ‘Is all this because of something Lucy did?’ Grunt asked curiously.

  ‘I wasn’t meant to hear … I was in the toilet when they came in. She said I was … oh, it’s stupid! I can’t believe I’m so upset.’

  ‘It does seem,’ Grunt said mildly, ‘rather trivial, considering everything that’s happened in the last few days.’

  Undine wondered if Grunt meant Undine was trivial. ‘I thought I was doing the right thing, coming back,’ she tried to explain. ‘I thought I was needed here. Wanted. But now …’

  ‘You think no one wants you?’ Grunt asked, and he didn’t sound like Grunt at all. There was a bitterness in his voice that Undine couldn’t recall hearing before.

  ‘That’s not what I mean!’ Undine declared, despairingly. ‘It’s just … everything’s so different. I don’t know how to make it better.’

  ‘Give it time, Undine! People grieved for you. You were so … gone. You coming back changes things, and people have to find a new way to be.’

  They were still holding each other. Undine looked up into Grunt’s face. Grunt stepped back, putting space between them.

  ‘Does it change things for you?’ Undine asked, gulping back tears.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Grunt said warily. ‘Maybe.’

  Undine wiped her tears away with the palm of her hand.

  ‘Do you want to come back inside with me?’ Grunt grinned a l
ittle though he still seemed strained. ‘I’ll protect you from Lucy. Or I could just give you a lift home?’

  She shook her head. As always, Grunt’s presence confused her. Just a few minutes ago she’d been thinking about Trout and now suddenly here was Grunt – why did he make her feel this way? Now this was a crush, silly and girlish. Grunt was the Great Unattainable. He was like … a priest or something. He lived at odds with the world, but within it, in its heart, like an oyster’s pearl. Undine and Grunt had never been together or anything. She’d never been able to work out how he felt about her, if he felt anything at all.

  And how did she feel about him? That was equally mysterious. When she stood next to him part of her was incredibly, utterly still – he was able to bring about a peace in her that was strange and unusual and kind of … pretty. But the contradiction of Grunt was that he also made her feel as if she was marooned on an island, sea-wrecked and storm-blown, far from humanity, torn and tossed. And, in a mundane sense, he simply made her feel small and young and foolish.

  ‘You go in,’ she said. ‘Lou gave me money for a taxi. Tell Trout I had to leave, would you?’

  ‘Of course.’ Grunt looked into Undine’s face. ‘We are glad you’re home, you know.’

  Undine wasn’t quite sure whether Grunt meant that he specifically was glad, or whether everybody was glad in general. If everybody was glad, it kind of diluted gladness, spread it out thinly amongst an amorphous, faceless populace. Undine looked for gladness in his face, but his characteristic half-smile was unreadable.

  Grunt pushed the café door open with a backward glance and a wave goodbye. Undine wiggled her fingers in response. She glanced through the café window and for a moment she thought she saw Trout – she thought their eyes met. But it was hard to see inside the dimly lit café. Where the streetlight struck the glass, her own reflection, and the reflected street, obscured her view.

  As she turned to walk away, someone else came out, she noticed in her peripheral vision. They stopped on the footpath, watching her. Undine glanced up, hoping it might be Trout, that they could slip away together into the dark night and find somewhere quiet to talk. But it wasn’t Trout. It was Phoenix.