Peter met him once by mistake, when he stayed the night at my place and Peter came by to pick up some things the kids left behind. It was an excuse; he wanted to see me to bitch about Maria.
And there was my boyfriend Scott, asleep on the couch in front of the TV. His shirt was hitched up over his belly, he snored, his hair stuck up. I woke him up to meet Peter.
"This is my brother, Peter, 'member I told you about him?"
He stared, scratched. "Nah," he said.
Peter snorted. "Good one, Steve." He didn't see how different the guy was to Dad, not that that's why I picked him. But they were different.
Dad was always neat and polite. Scott hardly ever showered, he farted while people were eating, he told everyone to fuck off.
Dad was smart, committed, career-minded. Scott quit school early, gave up as soon as he had an excuse to, and never had a job. I wouldn't like to think about it too much. I just carried on, niggling on him, trying to get a reaction. I cut his jeans up once and he just left in his undies. I fucked his best mate and made sure he found out. None of it even made him blink.
I cringe to think of how I behaved. When I think about it, I should have killed him, because his room must have been as big as a mansion. Instead, I tried to be what he wanted. He likes them feminine, so I acted like a girly. I looked ridiculous in my delicate clothes, all white lace and high heel shoes. No one who knew me ever saw me like that. I felt peculiar, silly; I couldn't hold a conversation with anyone. Samantha rang once when I was dressed that way, and I couldn't string two words together. I agreed to everything she said.
But he liked me that way, clean and sweet like a lady. He wouldn't touch me if I was wearing jeans.
At work, Ced told me he had to move out of his place because his housemate's girlfriend was moving in. "And she hates my guts," he said. "I can't live that way. And they take advantage of me, use up all my food and never buy more."
"Sounds like you'd be hard to live with, Ced," I said.
"Me?" He looked shocked. He wasn't used to criticism. Everybody loved him.
"I'm kidding. You can come stay with me for a while, if you like." I didn't mind Ced. He thought I was smart and funny. If he hadn't been around at the same time as Scott, I might have paid him more attention. He seemed pathetic in comparison to Scott. Too weak, too nice, too dull. He was one of those people who make a personality out of a name. He hated Scott.
Poor Ced. The patients love him, cos he's funny with them, you know, calling them "young lady" and that stuff that idiot old women like. He calls the dying men "chum" and for some reason they like that. He moved in one weekend. Good stuff, too. A big TV, heaps of music.
The last time I saw Scott, he came around at five AM to tell me that he was getting married. I thought it must be the girl who went down the coast with us, but he said, "No, mine's a teacher." He had been on his buck's night and his mates dropped him off at my place. Like I've got a red light on my door. Like I'm one last dirty fling. I never knew anyone who made me feel so bad.
I went to the church to watch him be married. I didn't want to slight anyone; I was very careful. I smiled at them all, was very quiet. I wore one of Mum's old dresses, mauve, and a pair of her pantyhose. My clothes are office or slut.
It was fucking boring. I read the prayer book, crossed my eyes, counted the candlesticks and was first out the door when it was over.
Standing outside, I realised I was the only one without a sprig of baby's breath on my person.
"And how do you know the happy couple?" the photographer asked. He was the only one who spoke to me.
"I used to root the groom." I even smiled at the groom's friends, to let them know I didn't want trouble. They didn't smile back. I left before the happy couple emerged, climbed into the welcome of my car and drove home. Sometimes I forget how repellent people are; I think it will be okay.
Then I'm reminded.
Scott was my chance. My chance to save myself. I returned from the wedding to find a message from Dougie Page: "We need to talk about your father."
No, we didn't. We wouldn't. I wouldn't talk about that.
Ced was supposed to be away for the weekend, but he came back early. I didn't care, though; I had made my preparations and was not willing to hide them from him. I was dressed in my cat suit, a number Ced always admired. A scalpel on the table. A fresh bottle of rum too. Just to put him off the scent.
"I never know what you're drinking," Ced said, smiling at my unpredictability.
"Whatever sings out in the shop," I said. I poured him a drink. I didn't feel like talking, or being talked out of what I was about to do, so I asked him how his things were going.
"Oh, you know," he said. I laughed. This was a man who bit his tongue sometimes, he talked so much.
"No, tell me," I said. I felt a terrible tenderness for him; he didn't need to be forgiving, because he was never angry with me. He never judged me or blamed me.
Sometimes I felt like I was two people, twins living in one body.
"Come to terms with your sexuality yet?" I said. He recoiled. His ambivalent sexuality was his loudest, proudest feature. Some long-clawed beast burst out of my heart.
"It's just that it's a bit hard to take a man seriously who masturbates to the afternoon soapies, Ced."
I'd caught him once and never told him, and he was never sure.
"Nothing wrong with that."
"Oooh, no. Whatever. You know, sickness is only in the eye of the beholder."
"Come on, Steve, knock it off." He sounded flippant but he was pleading with me.
"You know what everyone calls you, don't you?"
"What everyone?"
"Everyone who comes here, everyone I speak to. They all laugh about it when you're not here."
"What?"
"The Faker. They reckon you fake the lot, orgasm, desire, personality. They reckon you're a joke, that if someone greeted you dressed as a tomato, before long you'd be holding your breath so you can look like a tomato too."
I had thought fast to come up with that one. No one ever said a bad thing about Ced.
"And what about you? What do you think?"
"I think you only want to be liked," I said.
He smiled. "That's right," he said.
"And I think that's fucked."
I asked him to move out because his hound dog face was depressing me. I said it would be best if he left straight away.
I waited a week, to make sure he was gone, then I sat in the bath and cut my wrists.
He came back, though; said he had a feeling. He has feelings at work, but he doesn't tell everyone about it. Sometimes he'll be heading to a patient in the east wing, and have a feeling, and he'll make it to the west wing just in time to say goodbye to someone. Farewell forever, mon cherie. He had one about me, and he came back, and he found me. It might have been the letter I sent him; I don't know. He just had a feeling to come back. I'm glad it was him, though the sight of me still wasn't enough to make him hate me. I knew what it felt like on the inside; I hated myself.
I hadn't eaten in a week. No one had fed me, no one brought me a casserole to tide me over. I drank vodka, bottle-style, and I smoked until I could no longer breathe.
I sat naked in the armchair with the television on, and I shat, I pissed, I vomited, I spat, until there was a moat of my fluids protecting me.
But Ced had a feeling. A wishful feeling. He wanted me to need him. He wanted to arrive and I'd say, "Thank God! You are the only one who can help me." I think he's as clever as me with his what-should-have-happeneds.
He has no need to lie about his life. His father didn't die a hero. He didn't kill his mother in a car accident. He has many friends and admirers. People love him; I could care less. Perhaps he finds that intriguing. He rang me to say he was coming. I said fuck off. Then I let the blood run and sent myself to the room. Mmmm, sweet smells, sleep, a sea, the dead sea. Red, dead sea, and my blood pumps, pumps, balls together. I can smell shit. Shit and mothba
lls.
I learnt some lessons in the dark room. I heard snip snip and there was a hairdresser. It took me a while, but she was the one who red-headed me years ago just before mum died, and I knew then why she was so thin, almost transparent.
I knew why the people were in the room and who they were; each and every one had been slighted by me, and each slight, by me or anybody else, snapped up a bit of their soul and sent it to the dark room of some unknowing person. Or to my dark room.
I went back to the room to look at those faces, try to identify who they were, where these people had come from. Why did they wait for me to wake up with such anticipation?
I feel no warmth from the bodies which stand around me where I lie on a hard bed. And bodies there are; leaning over me anxiously, waiting for my eyes to open. I can smell them. That mixture of shit and mothballs you smell sometimes on old people. Decay and the fear of decay.
They surround my bed, more of them each time. There seem to be hundreds of them now, on my fifth visit.
The smell of them stays with me each time I returned from the dead. The smell was the indication that I had gone too far. There was love in the hatred. Because they only existed for me. You love your creator.
And Mrs Beattie waited in the cold, dark room, with the others, waited with her fingernails growing, growing, and Darren was there, the stink of milk about him.
One small cry: Kelly, little Kelly. What could have slighted her? Sensitive little shit. Perhaps the fact I do not have lollies on tap. Orphaned, here, because I could see neither Peter nor Maria. Confused. Why was she there? She loved me. Her hand shook as she came towards me. A pin, long as her forearm, and she pierced my ear drum, a buzz, a scream, but the whisky numbed me, I could feel its magic.
Strangers, strangers, a loser with a side-parting, I needed that job, and two waiters in white coats, Asian, I'd only been to one restaurant since last time.
Then I saw Scott, at the back of the room, taking time out to be there for me. I had got to him, then. I meant something. It must have been the time I pretended I was pregnant to him. I really did think I was, for a minute or two.
But he did not approach. He did not care I was dead. He was there against his will. My elation was gone, and the local librarian, not Auntie Jessie or Lesley, a bitch, slithered up to my feet. She climbed onto the table, between my legs. I tried to close them but strangers held them open, faces I didn't know, Pookies looking for their Nookies, perhaps.
The librarian grew, she was huge, and she hawked up a lump of mucus which must have come from her rotting lungs.
She opened up my chest like it was a book and spat into it.
Pookies pinched me, pinched tiny bits of my flesh like piranhas. I saw a woman with three children, nodding, yes, yes, yes.
Workmates, biscuit hogs, shoving biscuits into my mouth, holding my nose with their bony ice fingers and I couldn't breathe, I can never breathe.
They began to circle, and there were hundreds of them, like children making a tidal wave in a backyard swimming pool. Around, around, and I did not move to touch my bleeding because they had forgotten I was there.
Around, around the room began to whistle, and then they were gone and I was lifted by the wind they'd made, tossed, smashed, my eye pierced by my own long fingernail, my wrist bent backwards, slashes all over me, and I screamed and they snickered from somewhere and I couldn't laugh and they wanted to watch for eternity.
But Ced had his feeling, and he found me, and I felt as if my feet were covered with magnets, and I couldn't lift my feet far from the steel road. I took heavy steps in a direction I had not chosen. My life was nothing. All my choices were irrelevant, dust in the balance.
Nothing I did was of my own choosing.
I awoke from being rescued with another resolution; concentrate on my career, make it big. I also resolved, again, not to slight anyone.
I spent money on good clothes, walked carefully in the mall on the hunt. I put things properly on the hanger. I looked people in the eye when I gave them money. I got talking to one nice girl who sold me heaps of things.
"Ooh, it suits you, love your hair," she said, but I'm not influenced by that sort of thing.
"I need something to get me ahead," I said, and she understood. We talked and talked while I tried things on. I was quite bereft when she was called to the phone.
Another girl took over; she whispered in my ear, "Don't worry about her, she's an absolute bitch. Everyone hates her."
"At least she has taste," I said. "I'm not going to buy anything suggested by someone who's dressed like you."
She left me alone; my friend came back with the perfect outfit.
"Balloona!" I said.
"Balloona? I love it," she said.
I felt great, bags of clothes, a perfume girl tried to spray me but I turned my head away. "Don't ruin the day," I said. I hate perfume.
I smiled at people at the hospice. I invited myself to meetings and made suggestions.
Ced didn't tell them what had happened. And he didn't move out after all. He got two friends of his in to share with us. I don't know if he thought that would make me feel normal, but it didn't. I called them Mo and Ho.
They seemed to be okay, and as Peter took Maria and the kids overseas for Christmas, I thought I would have lunch at home, with my housemates and their friends. But they all had things to do, though, important things, with family. They had presents under their beds; I stole one from each to open on Christmas Day. I wandered up to the shop and bought some turkey roll; I would have it sitting on the front step and I'd watch the street. Ced went to his parent's place somewhere in the country. No way would you catch me there with no way to escape.
He left me a sketch pad and some pencils for a present. Like I'm an artist with inner needs.
From one housemate I got a tie. From the other I got a book about skateboarding. I wore the tie and left the book on the coffee table. I thought that was thanks enough. They never mentioned the presents I gave them: deodorant to the smelly one (in the card I said "Use it!"), because a present should be useful. And a vibrator to the girl who never had boyfriends. It's hard to judge these things sometimes.
I was on my own for New Year's Eve, too. Samantha was out somewhere and didn't get back to me in time. I had a tummy upset and spent a lot of time on the toilet, so I must have missed her calls. Ced was still in the country. Our two housemates moved out; they said it was the best time to move because the market was asleep. They told me to keep the bond to pay for bills, which put me in front, because they had just handed over money two weeks previously. I would have kept the bond money, anyway; I'd need to get his room fumigated, and she smashed three plates and two cups, having a shocking case of the shakes.
I found out later they hadn't found a place at all; they went to stay in a hostel. Fuck them. It gave me more time to dig.
I found a squeaky toy which shocked me when I stood on it, a broken doll, a Chinese food container lid and a beautiful pearl.
at twenty-five
Ced says I'm a natural at what I do, but he doesn't really know what I do at all. We had a patient, Mr 42, who was diagnosed with liver cancer six months ago and spent five months pretending it wasn't happening. This is a fairly common occurrence, especially amongst lonely types without anyone to say, "You need to see a doctor", or to pay attention to them in any way. I spent a lot of time with him, talking about the things he'd done. People he'd hurt, those he'd made cry, those he didn't even know existed.
Ced looked in and saw us talking, and later in the tea room he said, "You seem to know the right things to say to make them feel better."
I sipped my lukewarm tea and nodded. He didn't have to know what I told them. That their smiles were desperate smiles: look at me dying on the outside and the inside, I'll be brave, I'll take my punishment.
Good stuff.
I did some more digging. I found a dial for a television, a mug handle, sharp to touch, a spent light globe and a thin leather b
elt, now green with mould in places, such good quality it could still be worn.
Dougie Page came to the hospice to give me a list. He hated the place, but I was on double shifts and hard to catch. He didn't like the smell; breathed through his mouth and talked funny.
"It's a list of missing people. We're not sure if there's a connection, but it's some names which have come up in conjunction with each other. And some of the things missing along with them. I don't know if any of them mean anything to you."
I took a look at the list. Four names. Paul Harris, Chew Wang, Albert Mitchell, Chris Stepanos. The names meant nothing. But the descriptions of their items were familiar: a pipe, a cheap watch, a lighter, and an old coin.
Slights Page 19
