by Les Zig
‘What are we doing here?’ I say.
Julie puts a hand up to her ear.
I lean in to her. ‘What’re we doing here?’
‘I seed a lime shout!’
I frown at her. What?
She stands on her toes to holler into my ear. ‘I need a time out!’
‘Here?’
I don’t know if she hears me but she must know what I’ve said, because she cocks one shoulder, then drinks from her beer. She’s so relaxed, standing there, that I can’t help but wonder if these are the sorts of places she might visit regularly. I take my own beer and sip. My eyes adjust to the light and I start to make out faces. The bouncers at the door may have prejudiced me to expect a rough crowd, but the patrons are like us—twenty- and thirty-something people having a casual night out. The music itself is pop, but so loud that whatever’s currently playing is almost indecipherable.
Julie’s face is stoic as she drinks her beer. I put my arm around her. She holds up her almost empty glass of beer to me and I toast it, but what I see now in her, in her eyes, in that small, wry smile, is immeasurable sadness—or at least I think I do. I don’t know how accurate I am, whether it’s something I impose on her because of what little I know about her. It happens.
The music fades and something else kicks in: a raw guitar intro, followed by an angry monologue—it’s something I should know, but I can’t place it.
Julie finishes her beer and deposits the empty glass on the bar. ‘Come on!’
I’m just in the act of lifting my beer to my mouth when she grabs it from my hand, takes a gulp, puts the glass back on the bar, and drags me out to the dance floor.
Julie puts her arms around my neck, like we’re going to waltz, looks me in the eye, then drops to her knees, before whirling back to her full height. I’m not a great dancer at the best of times—usually I’m the idiot who’s swaying and hoping his arms are waving in time with the music, but now I’m too stunned to do even that as Julie continues to dance around me, gyrating against my body while glaring at me like she wants to incinerate me.
The other dancers give her a wide berth, before they abandon dancing altogether to form a circle around us. Julie struts and twirls around me, and sometimes grinds herself against me. People clap now in tempo with Julie but she’s oblivious to them as she hooks one leg around my hip and arches back until her hair drapes the floor.
She pulls herself back up and some yahoo—a bearded guy in a leather jacket—dances up to her, grabs her arm, yanks her towards him, and cups her butt in both hands. I reach instinctively for him, but I’ve barely moved before Julie’s locked her right leg behind his right ankle and thrust her hands into his chest. The yahoo sprawls across the dance floor, but bounces up, face red, fists clenched. I leap between him and Julie as he throws a punch. Pain explodes in my cheek, my head rocks back and for an instant everything is black. Arms circle me and I recognise Julie’s scent, Julie’s warmth around me. Then it’s the behemoths, one of them shoving me in the back and pointing to the entrance, while the other wrestles the yahoo.
‘You throw that prick out!’ Julie says.
The behemoth is unmoved, and I know there’s no point arguing with security, so I urge Julie towards the door. She pushes against me, shouting at the behemoth about what they should do to the yahoo. I shepherd her from the behemoth, arms out wide to stop her from getting around me and taking another shot at the yahoo—but through it all, the behemoth, following closely, remains implacable.
We stumble into the night. The behemoth stops in the doorway and folds his arms across his chest.
‘So you toss me out because that prick paws me!’ Julie says.
‘Nothing personal,’ the behemoth says.
Julie starts towards him but I throw my arms around her waist.
‘This is fucking unfair!’
‘It’ll be taken care of,’ the behemoth says. ‘Move along.’
‘Come on,’ I say, almost picking Julie up to set her on another path.
‘Fucking unfair!’ she says.
The behemoth remains impassive.
We start away, Julie initially a few steps in front of me, but when she spins—probably to offer another comeback—she sees me rub at my cheek. Her lips draw thin.
‘You all right?’ she asks.
I open and close my mouth as a test of the flexion in my face, then massage my face, almost expecting half of it to be caved in, but everything feels intact.
‘I’m sorry,’ Julie says.
I don’t know what to say.
She’s not parked far, her car in a side street under a tree that’s all shadows. We get in and sit there; she doesn’t start the engine. I open my mouth and rotate my jaw. Her eyes are wide, her face taut, and she bites her lower lip.
‘What was that about?’ I ask.
‘Isn’t it obvious?’
‘Obvious?’
‘You saw what he did to me,’ Julie says.
‘Yeah, fine, but … shoo him away.’
‘Shoo him?’
‘Yes, shoo him.’ The words sound unimaginably stupid, but I’ve chosen them, so I stick by them.
‘He wasn’t a fly.’
‘So your response is to knock him to the ground? Why?’
‘Cuz I can.’ Julie sniffles, but there are no tears. ‘Okay?’
I see her now as small and frightened—the young girl whose stepfather molested her. But then I realise it’s even more than that. She’s no different to me—the horrors of her past shape her responses in the present. I wonder if that’s something that can ever be escaped.
‘He had no right to grope you—I don’t know what that’s like, but I have done dumb, destructive things.’ I clench my right fist. ‘But getting angry like that can’t be your way to handle things.’
‘I …’ Julie shakes all over, like she’s trying to shed all the rage that’s taking hold of her. ‘I get so wound up sometimes. I need that release. Don’t you know what that’s like?’
‘No, I tend to brood.’
‘How’s that working out for you?’
‘It’s not. How’s that release working out for you?’
‘It’s not.’
‘Then I guess the truth lies somewhere in between.’
Julie edges over to me, and puts an arm around me. She melts into me, her body relaxing, and I run my hand up and down her arm. ‘We should get going.’
‘You okay to drive?’ I ask.
Julie nods and starts the car.
We don’t talk on the drive back to my place, and when we get there, I don’t ask Julie if she wants to come in—it’s a given she will, because that’s us now. In the lounge, she hugs me longer than I expect to be hugged, then kisses me long and slow on the lips, although it doesn’t feel like a sexual kiss, but one of connection. I run my hand up and down her back and she rests her face on my chest, her breath loud and hot, even through my shirt. She sniffs, and I’m sure she’s crying, but when she leans back from the embrace, I see no tears. She smiles a small, tired smile and we go to bed. There’s no sex. It almost feels like we’ve been together long enough that there’s none of that wanton lust of an early relationship, nor even the expectation—nothing but the wholeness of being with somebody and knowing it’s right.
Julie runs her hand up my chest and to my face, where one finger traces the outline of my cheek. For a second, I have to replay being punched to remember which side was hit. There’s no pain now—just the memory and embarrassment of it.
‘How’s it feel?’ Julie asks.
‘It’s fine. I think the shock of it hurt more than anything.’
‘Don’t tell me you’ve never been punched?’
‘Never.’
‘Really?’
‘I’ve never done anything.’
‘You must’ve done something. What about that picture on your table?’
‘Picture …?’
‘Your ex? And your son?’
‘Straight out of scho
ol, worked shitty jobs for a few years because Gen and I had to pay our own way once Mum and Dad were gone, met my ex, we were together a couple of years, engaged a year later, then married, then a kid, then domesticity. My ex had a very clear idea of the life she wanted. I fell into the slipstream of that. It’s all I’ve ever known.’
‘It’s still something to try to build a life with somebody. To have a son. To build a family. It might not rate up there with the glamour of seeing the Great Wall of China or the excitement of disarming a bomb, but it’s up there. I wish that’s what I had. I always wished for it. But you can’t change what was.’
‘No.’ I wrap my arm around Julie. ‘But …’ How much do I tell her? Do I go into the stuff I struggle to face myself?
‘What?’
‘Just about … everything, really,’ I say—I divert, although it’s rooted in a general truth that’s always with me now. ‘Where I am in life. That sort of thing.’
‘Do you ever see yourself as—at the very least—adequate in anything you do?’
‘Whining?’
‘Anything else?’
‘I guess not.’
‘Why? Or, maybe to be more precise, why not?’
‘Just the way things turned out.’
Julie bookends my face with her hands and kisses me. Her tongue fills my mouth and she grinds her crotch down on me. I cup her buttocks, run my hands up her back. It enters my mind that my left hand would be on her tattoo—the first thing that attracted me to her, and I still haven’t even seen it. How can that be? And then I realise it’s because while the tattoo was the hook, I’ve grown enamoured with her to the extent it’s overridden everything else.
She breaks the kiss, runs her hand down my chest and belly and into my pubic hair. I’m still not ready. I want to shout. This is ridiculous.
‘I’m—’ I begin.
‘Are you gonna apologise?’
‘Um, yeah.’
‘Don’t. At least not for this.’
‘It’s frustrating.’
Julie rests her head on my shoulder and runs her hand up and down my chest. ‘We’ll find a way.’
I’m not sure who’s asleep first, but I wake to her hand around my erection, the first shades of morning seeping into my room, and some birds chirping. She smiles and kisses me. My erection is so hard it’s painful, and it’s not losing it I worry about, but being premature.
Julie hikes one leg over my stomach, but I roll her over and she laughs in surprise. ‘What’re you doing?’
I kiss her, run kisses over her breasts, suckle her nipples until she hisses and arches her back. Her hands knot into my hair as I run kisses over her stomach, around her belly button, then outline her small pubic tuft. Her legs come apart and I kiss the top of her crotch. Her right leg comes over my shoulder and she thrusts her hips towards me. I dangle from the end of the bed now, legs and buttocks poking out from the bottom of the covers, clueless if what I’m doing with my tongue is any good. She gasps and thrusts towards me, so I guess I must be getting it right, but I don’t know when it comes to this.
My nose anchors in her pubic tuft, which is rich with the scent of her—lavender, I think. Would she spray down here? Is that something women do? Maybe it’s not perfume. The thoughts flit through my head, odd curiosities as my tongue continues to probe. She moans once, sharply and urgently, and her breath grows short.
‘Get inside me,’ she says.
I lift myself back up over her, kiss her, tongues intertwining, and it only now occurs to me whether I’ll still be ready. My erection’s been spared my usual self-consciousness because I’ve been so worried about my oral performance, but now the timer’s on, and I guide myself into her.
My thrusts are slow while her breath is hot and measured on my cheek, and her hands tighten on my back. I slow to a halt next time I withdraw and she thrusts her hips towards me, trying to impale herself, but I know if she does, that could be it, this great performance could be blown by a short fuse.
Julie nudges me with the inside of her thigh and I slip out of her and land on my side. She rolls me flat onto my back and takes my erection in her hand. My arms splay to either side as she straddles me.
Her rhythm is slow, and every time she grinds down, her grip on me tightens. I run my hands up from her hips to her breasts, and close my eyes, because the sight of her shimmying body is enough to push me beyond the brink.
She takes my hands in her own, pins them above my head, and kisses me, her breath ragged. ‘Stay with me,’ she says.
I don’t know how I do as her thrusts quicken until she’s hammering me. It’s perhaps amazement more than anything else, and she tilts her head back, eyes closed to slits, and I can’t believe that in my ineptitude, that in doing nothing but lying here, I can bring her pleasure. It seems impossible, so I roll until I’m on top of her. She shrieks and laughs again and I kiss her and pin her hands back over her head. Her legs come up, until they’re balanced on my shoulders. She arches her hips as I find a rhythm I’ve never, ever enjoyed in my life—a perfect synchronicity of position, angle, and motion as my thrusts grow harder and faster and Julie’s moans fire away into my ear until they elongate into a single wail and her body tenses around me. I come then. I can’t help it. I come and come and come; my hips buck, wracking my body as I collapse onto Julie and bury my face into the pillow alongside her head. She runs her hand down my back and, breath heavy and hot, kisses my cheek.
‘See?’ she says. ‘There are always ways.’
We kiss and kiss and kiss again. She laughs and smiles and runs her fingers down my face. I kiss the tip of her nose, and run fingertips around her ears. I’ve never noticed them before but they’re small and elfin. We kiss again as I feel myself diminishing.
‘I should clean up,’ she says.
I roll off her and she springs out of bed, like she’s coming off a diving board. Her tattoo blazes before me—a mishmash of reds and yellows and oranges and blues and greens. I don’t have time to recognise what it is, but its existence seems neither whim nor fashion. I don’t know a lot of things, but I’m sure she’s chosen this tattoo for a reason.
Julie runs into the bathroom and I hear the toilet roll unfurling, the toilet flush, and then the shower run. I get up, see the clock radio is only going 6.00am—still too early by my standards—and follow her into the bathroom. She has her back to me, her skin creamy and glistening from the water. The tattoo is stark now.
Absently, I pull some toilet paper off to clean myself up, but my attention doesn’t leave the tattoo: a fiery bird’s head, risen up in mid caw; wings outstretched and glorious as it soars from flames predominantly orange with red tips, but also with threads of blue and dashes of green—it’s a phoenix. The details are exquisite.
Julie turns off the shower, grabs a towel, and steps out while she dries her hair. She shivers exaggeratedly, her whole body shaking. ‘It’s cold,’ she says. She comes up to me, kisses me. ‘I need to get going.’
‘Oh!’ I say, remembering. ‘Um, Ronnie, my friend who I work with, he’s having birthday drinks tomorrow tonight. You should come, meet my friends. You don’t have to, though, if you don’t want to.’
‘So your friends tomorrow tonight and your sister and her family Monday night?’
‘Too much? Too fast?’
‘No, it’s nice. It’s nice to belong—I haven’t felt that for a long time.’ Julie slings the towel over my shoulder and heads back into the bedroom where she retrieves her clothes and begins to get dressed. ‘What time?’
‘About six, I guess.’
‘Where?’
‘Palladium. Know it?’
‘Yep.’ Dressed now, Julie comes over to me and drapes her arms around my neck. ‘Sounds good. I really need to get going—I have to get home, then school, work, then some more school, then work. It’s insane sometimes.’
I follow her out into the lounge. ‘What’s going to happen with Don? After last night, I mean?’
‘He probably
didn’t even notice we left. Of course, when I kick him in the crotch, that might remind him.’
‘You wouldn’t …?’
Julie is all innocence, eyelashes fluttering. ‘No …?’
‘You’re joking, right?’
Julie smiles. ‘I am taking this, though.’ She picks up the first three quarters of my book, which has sat neglected on my coffee table since I began to focus on the play.
‘What for?’
‘Don offered to read it—he’s a blowhard, and he’s part literary idiot—which you’ll work out if you read his book—’
‘I read one paragraph of the blurb,’ I say.
‘I wrote the blurb,’ Julie says. ‘All he did was add formatting to it, even when I told him not to. Anyway, he knows people. Maybe he’ll even show your book to his publisher.’
‘I don’t want to make it—if I make it—because of who I know—’
‘What, are you an idiot? It’s a possible break.’ Julie files the book under her arm.
‘Let me at least give you a clean copy.’
‘This is fine. And I really need to get going.’ Julie kisses me one final time. ‘I’ll see you later.’
Then she’s gone.
I’m half an hour ahead of my morning schedule, and although I should be tired due to the lack of sleep, all I want to do is get moving, so I shower, have breakfast, and leave for work, just like I would any other morning—only half an hour earlier.
It’s not my intention to visit the community theatre, but when I get to the station, there it stands, that old stone building shrouded in gums. I cross the street and head up to the doors. The theatre shouldn’t be open. It’s only 7.30am. But when I grab the doorhandle and pull—the piston of the door rattling so loudly I’m sure I’ve broken it—the door swings open with alarming ease.
There’s a small foyer, with a set of doors leading into the theatre itself where rows and rows of chairs extend towards the stage. A single door by a small counter is closed, while a stairwell in the corner winds up to god knows where. On the walls are framed posters of plays—Amadeus, Death of a Salesman, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Rainmaker, and others I don’t recognise.
