by Steve Toltz
Anouk was confused, though I wasn’t. I’d seen Oscar Hobbs at the hall, and it wasn’t hard to see his fingerprints all over this thing. What did I make of it? It was no more than amusing. The gods can step down and salivate over the mortals like the rest of us, can’t they? Anouk had one of those bodies that demanded, as a man, your rapt attention, and Oscar Hobbs was just a man, after all. As I said, it was amusing, nothing more, and while I enjoy watching the befuddlement of my family, friends, and peers, I can’t hold on to secrets for very long. So that night, after Anouk hung up the phone at the end of a long argument with the play’s producer, I told her.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she screamed.
“I just did.”
She scrunched up her face so her eyes, nose, and mouth were no bigger than a mandarin.
“What the hell does he want?” she said quietly.
I gestured at her body and said, “Take a guess.”
“But he can get anyone he wants!”
“Maybe because of something you said to him in the casino. What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
“Come on.”
“All right,” she said. “I told him his soul’s got one of those stains on it that smudges when you try to wipe it clean.”
Two days later I was at work, standing outside the building smoking a cigarette with my boss, Smithy, and I was thinking I’d have to leave the job soon and I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t announce my coworkers’ faults on the way out. I was wondering whether they’d give me a quitting-in-a-huff party when I saw a Porsche Spyder drive up to a no-stopping zone and stop there. It was the kind of car James Dean died in. It was a nice car. I’d die in there too, if I could afford it.
Smithy said, “Feast your eyes on that.”
“I’m feasting.”
Oscar stepped out of the car and walked up to us. “Jasper.”
“You’re Oscar Hobbs!” Smithy said in shock.
“That’s right,” he said back.
“That must be the problem with being famous,” I said. “Everyone tells you your own name.”
“Jasper. Can I talk to you a minute?”
“Sure,” I answered and, turning to Smithy, excused myself. Smithy nodded at me enthusiastically, still wearing that shell-shocked face, the one that looked as if he’d just found a vagina among his own genitalia.
Oscar and I stepped into a small patch of sunlight. He looked nervous.
“I feel kind of funny coming to see you about this.”
“About what?” I asked, sensing the answer.
“Anouk came into my office and really let me have it for that review.”
“She did?”
“I also made sure the media reported an environmental demonstration she went on. But she was furious. I don’t understand it. She really hates me, doesn’t she?”
“It’s not personal. She hates the rich.”
“How can I get her to like me?”
“If you could demonstrate that you’re oppressed in some way, that would help.”
He nodded rhythmically, as if to a beat.
“What do you really want with Anouk, anyway? It seems that you’re making a lot of effort here. I’ve seen the women you go for. Anouk’s nice, and she has her own style of beauty, but it doesn’t really make any sense. You can rake in the über-women anytime you like. What gives?”
“The thing is, Jasper, the world is full of ordinary people. Some are beautiful, some are not. What’s rare is extraordinary, interesting, original, and creative people who think their own thoughts. Now, while waiting for this extraordinary woman, if I have to spend my time with an ordinary woman, do you think I’d be with a beautiful ordinary woman or an unattractive ordinary woman?”
There was no need to answer that, so I didn’t.
“Women like Anouk are rarer than you think.”
After he left, Smithy said, with forced nonchalance, “How do you know Oscar Hobbs?” and I said, “You know, from around,” and because I’m as pitiful as the next man, with the same howling ego, I felt for the rest of that day like someone important.
Still, I was confounded. This man wasn’t just running after Anouk like a snorting dragon, he was actually infatuated with her, and she was shooting him down! Power may be an aphrodisiac, but one’s own prejudice is a turnoff, and evidently the more potent of the two. I remember her dragging me once to a rally where the speaker said the media barons were in the pocket of the government, and then a month later to another rally where this speaker said the government was in the pockets of the media barons (she agreed with both), and I remember trying to explain to her that it only looks like they are, because by coincidence the government and the newspapers just happen to have the exact same agenda: to scare the shit out of people and then to keep them in constant freezing terror. She didn’t care. She decreed her everlasting hatred for both groups, and nothing could persuade her otherwise. I began to think of Oscar’s rich and handsome face as an amusing test of the strength and vitality of her prejudices.
I arrived home around sunset and walked dreamily through the advancing shadows of the labyrinth. It was one of my favorite times in the bush—the edge of night. As I approached my hut, I saw the Towering Inferno on the veranda waiting for me. We hurried inside and made love and I studied her face vigilantly during it, to make sure she wasn’t thinking of anyone other than me. To be honest, I couldn’t tell.
Half an hour later a voice was at the door. “Knock knock,” the voice said.
I grimaced. It was Dad this time. I climbed out of bed and opened the door. He was in a bathrobe he’d bought months earlier, and the price tag was still hanging off the sleeve.
“Hey, tell me something about that girlfriend of yours,” he said.
“Shhh, she’s asleep.” I stepped onto the veranda and closed the door behind me. “What about her?” I asked.
“Is she on the pill?”
“What business could that possibly be of yours?”
“Is she?”
“As it happens, she’s not. She has an allergic reaction to it.”
“Great!”
I took a deep breath, determined to bear him with as much patience as I had stored in my depths. His grin drained the pool.
“All right. You win. I’m curious. Why is it great that my girlfriend is not on the pill? And this better be good.”
“Because that means you use condoms.”
“Dad. So fucking what?”
“So—can I borrow some?”
“Condoms? What for?”
“To put on my—”
“I know what they’re for! I just—I thought prostitutes brought their own condoms.”
“You don’t think I can sleep with anyone who isn’t a prostitute?”
“No, I don’t.”
“You don’t think I can attract a regular citizen?”
“As I said, no.”
“What a son!”
“Dad,” I began, but I couldn’t think of an end to that sentence.
“Anyway,” he said, “have you got any?”
I went into my bedroom and grabbed a couple of condoms from the bedside table and took them back to him.
“Just two?”
“All right, take the whole pack. Have a party. I’m not a pharmacy, you know.”
“Thank you.”
“Wait—this woman. It is a woman, isn’t it?”
“Of course it’s a woman.”
“Is she in the house now?”
“Yes.”
“Who is she? Where did you meet?”
“I can’t see what business that could possibly be of yours,” he said, and walked off the veranda with a slight lilt in his step.
Strange things were afoot. Anouk was being pursued by a man dubbed by Guess Who magazine as Australia’s most eligible bachelor, and Dad was sleeping with unprofessional person or persons unknown. New dramas were stirring in the labyrinth.
The morning birds, those litt
le feathery alarm clocks, woke me around five. The Towering Inferno wasn’t in bed beside me. I could hear her crying on the veranda. I lay in bed, listening to those little deep gulping sobs. It was kind of rhythmic. Suddenly I knew what she was up to. I leapt out of bed and ran outside. I was right! She had her little mustard-sized jar pressed up against her cheek and she was depositing a new batch of tears. It was almost full now.
“This is no good,” I said.
Her eyes blinked innocently. That pushed me over the edge. I stepped forward and ripped the jar out of her hand.
“Give it back!”
“You’ll never get him to drink it. What are you going to tell him it is—lemonade?”
“Give it back, Jasper!”
I unscrewed the lid, gave her a defiant look, and poured the contents down my throat.
She screamed.
I swallowed.
It was awful-tasting. I tell you, those were some bitter tears.
She looked at me with such intense hatred that I realized I’d done an unforgivable thing. I thought it had the potential to curse me for life, like disturbing a mummy in his tomb. I had drunk tears that were not shed for me. What would happen to me now?
We sat in our respective corners watching the sunrise and the bursting of the day. The bush began to seethe with life. A wind picked up and the trees whispered to themselves. I could hear the Inferno thinking. I could hear her eyelids fluttering. I could hear her heart beating. I could hear the ropes and pulleys lifting the sun into the sky. At nine she rose wordlessly and dressed. She kissed me on the forehead as if I were a son she was duty-bound to forgive, and left without a word.
Not ten minutes later I sensed something, a disturbance. I strained my ears and heard distant voices. I threw on my bathrobe and left the hut and wove my way toward them.
Then I saw them together.
Dad had locked the Inferno in a conversation. Dad, a labyrinth within a labyrinth, was talking at her as if he were engaged in some vigorous activity like a tree-sawing competition. Should I do something? Should I stop him? Should I scare him away? How?
He’d better not be asking her about her allergy to the pill or about her preference for ribbed over flavored condoms, I thought. No, he wouldn’t dare. But whatever he was saying, I was certain he was doing me more harm than good. I watched them anxiously for a couple more minutes, then the Inferno walked away while he was still talking. Good for her.
That night we were in a pub. It was a busy night, and when I went to get the drinks, I kept getting elbowed. Everyone crowded the bar, trying to get the bartender’s attention. Some pushy customers waved their money in the air as if to say, “Look! I have hard currency! Serve me first! The rest of them want to pay with eggs!”
When I returned to the Inferno, she said, “We need to talk.”
“I thought we were talking.”
She didn’t say anything to that. She didn’t even confirm or deny that we had just been talking.
“Anyway,” I said, “why do you need to preface talking by saying we need to talk? You want to talk? Talk!” I was getting worked up, because I knew more or less what was coming next. She was going to break up with me. Winter had entered my body all of a sudden.
“Go on,” I said. “I’m listening.”
“You’re not going to make this easy for me, are you?”
“Of course I’m not. What am I, a saint? Do you think of me as an especially unselfish person? Do I love my enemies? Do I volunteer in soup kitchens?”
“Shut up, Jasper, and let me think.”
“First you want to talk. Now you want to think. Haven’t you thought this out? Didn’t you at least compose a speech in your head prior to coming out tonight? Don’t tell me you’re improvising! Don’t tell me this is something you’re just winging on the spot!”
“Jesus Christ! Just be silent for one minute!”
When I sense someone is about to hurt me emotionally, it’s very difficult to resist the temptation to act like a five-year-old. Right then, for example, it was everything I could do to stop myself counting down the sixty seconds out loud.
“I think we need a break,” she said.
“A break meaning a lengthy pause, or a break meaning a severing?”
“I think we need to stop seeing each other.”
“Has this got something to do with my father?”
“Your father?”
“I saw you talking to him this morning after you left the hut. What did he say?”
“Nothing.”
“He didn’t say nothing. The man has never said nothing in his life. Besides, you were talking to him for, like, ten minutes. Did he say something against me?”
“No—nothing. Honest.”
“Then what’s this about? Is it because I drank your tears?”
“Jasper—I’m still in love with Brian.”
I didn’t say anything. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to work that out. Or a rocket scientist. Or an Einstein. Then I thought: I don’t think brain surgeons, rocket scientists, or even Einstein are that brilliant when it comes to charting the map of human emotions. And why always brain surgeons, rocket scientists, and Einstein anyway? Why not architects or criminal lawyers? And why not, instead of Einstein, Darwin or Heinrich Böll?
“Aren’t you going to say anything?”
“You’re in love with your ex-boyfriend. I don’t have to be Heinrich Böll to work that out.”
“Who?”
I shook my head, stood up, and walked out of the pub. I heard her calling my name, but I didn’t turn around.
Outside, I broke into tears. What a hassle! Now I’d have to become rich and successful just so she could regret dumping me. That’s another thing to do in this short, busy life. Christ. They’re adding up.
I couldn’t believe the relationship was over. And the sex! That fortuitous conjunction of our bodies, finished! I supposed it was better this way. I really never wanted anyone to shout at me, “I gave you the best years of my life!” This way, the best years of her life were still ahead of her.
And why? Maybe she was pissed off that I had drunk her tears and was in love with her ex-boyfriend, but I knew Dad had said something that had pushed her over the edge. What had he said? What the fuck had he said? That’s it, I thought. I don’t care what he does—he can write a handbook of crime, put in a suggestion box, set a town on fire, smash up a nightclub, be interned in a mental hospital, build a labyrinth, but he absolutely cannot touch one hair on the head of my love life.
He was a stinky concentrated form of pandemonium and I would no longer let him ruin my life. If the Inferno could break up with me, I could break up with him. I don’t care what anybody says, you absolutely can break up with family.
I went home planning to gather up all the particles of energy I could muster and release them right in his fucking face!
I marched straight into his house. The lights were off. I unlocked the door and sneaked in. I heard a strange sound from his bedroom. He must be crying again. But it didn’t sound like mere crying. It sounded like sobbing. Well, so what? I hardened myself against the lure of sympathy. I went and opened the door, and what I saw was so shocking, I didn’t have the common decency to close the door. Dad was in bed with Anouk.
“Get out!” he screamed.
I just couldn’t get my head around it. “How long has this been going on?” I asked.
“Jasper, get the fuck out of here!” Dad yelled again.
I know I should have, but my feet seemed to be as dumbfounded as my head. “What a joke!”
“Why is this a joke?” Dad asked.
“What’s she getting out of it?”
“Jasper, leave us alone!” Anouk shouted.
I stepped back out of the room and slammed the door. This was really insulting. Anouk hadn’t wanted to sleep with me and yet she had jumped into bed with my father. And ewww—with my condoms! And what was she doing with Dad when Oscar Hobbs had been trying to get into her bed? Was
some pitiful soap opera going on? Dad was a man who had spent the majority of his life absent from human relationships, who finally embarked on one with his only confidant, merely to find himself as the dullest point of a love triangle where, if logic prevailed, he would lose her.
Well, this was no longer my problem.
The next morning I woke early. I decided the practical thing would be to find a room in a share house with junkies, something cheap and affordable so I wouldn’t drain my meager savings just on shelter. I answered a bunch of ads in the newspaper. There weren’t many that didn’t specifically ask for, in capital letters, a FEMALE. It seemed to be common knowledge that men hadn’t made the right kind of evolutionary leap, the one that allowed them to tidy up after themselves. The apartments and houses that did permit males to exist there weren’t so bad, but they all had people living in them. Of course I knew this beforehand, but it wasn’t until I was face-to-face with the other humans that I realized I needed to be alone. We were expected to be civil to each other, not just once in a while, but every day. And what if I wanted to sit in my underwear and stare out the kitchen window for six hours? No, the solitude of living in a hut in the center of a labyrinth had ruined me for cohabitation.
In the end I decided on a studio apartment and took the first one I saw. One room and a bathroom and a partition between the main area and the little kitchen, which ran alongside a wall. It was nothing to get excited about. There was not one feature of it about which you could say, “But look at this! It has a ______!” It had nothing. It was just a room. I signed the lease, paid the rent and the security deposit, and took the keys. I went inside and sat in the empty room on the floor and smoked one cigarette after another. I rented a van and drove home to my hut and threw all my possessions worth keeping into it.
Then I went up to the house. Dad was standing in the kitchen wearing his dressing gown that still had the price tag on. He was whistling atonally while cooking pasta.
