Losing It

by Moira Burke

  Busy busy all night crowds of people cars banked up in the drive-thru a thousand-dollar rush hour legs aching now you have to clean, cold fries brown thickshake puddles, pickles on the windows and the walls, there’s melted sundaes ashtrays more than full and rubbish spilling out of the bins. A group of guys come in, think they’re tough think they’re gangsters. You look again you know them that’s okay but you’re not giving any free food away, you nearly got sprung last time so they better not ask or give you that look, you hate it when they expect it you never give it to them when they do. You serve Johnny and Turgut and sure enough they want free stuff but you tell them the manager’s watching. Then there’s this guy standing at your register. He’s watching your hands move over the counter making you notice yourself and him at the same time. You can’t take your eyes off him. You smile you blush you say can I take your order please? and he says don’t I know you? serious I mean and you go yeah we went to school together for a year you’re Nick Jarvis. He goes what’s your name? you go Josie, he goes Cregan, you go yeah and he goes wow, right and you’re looking at each other, you’re bouncing all around inside frozen and hot at the same time and he goes wow and laughs and says it’s good to see you again, do you always work here on a Friday night? you go usually and he says wow, right. You serve him his food you give him extra fries extra topping on his sundae and only charge him for the Big Mac. It’s quiet again he’s sitting down you have to mop the floors, the water slopping, steam and suds and hot on the tiles. Nick comes over you keep mopping you start talking together you ask him what he’s doing now. He says he’s working he’s boning at the Sunbury Meatworks his cousins are boners there too that’s how he got the job, you talk about school what everybody’s doing now and who you still see, his family have just moved back to Fawkner, it’s really nice talking to him you’re really nervous but it’s all right his jeans are really tight you keep looking at them you can’t help yourself as you’re mopping away your knees are getting twitchy you mop harder then he says I’ll do that for you, he’s really close he takes the mop he starts doing the floor not too much you’ll get in trouble if the manager sees, you keep talking and it feels right, so right to have him there and then he says you’re Stretch’s girlfriend aren’t you? and you say no way, not for ages then he doesn’t say anything there’s just the sound of the mop on the orange tiles sloshing. Then he says if you like, maybe we could go out some time and you go oh yeah, that’d be good and you’re so happy and he’s smiling back you’re so glad your hair is blonde now and you’ve got make-up on tonight too and he says well, good, we’ll go out some time and you go yeah, yeah great and Johnny comes over and says come on we’re going see ya Josie thanks for the food we didn’t get and you go don’t be such a scab and Nick says good seeing you and you go me too and you watch him leave, seeing the way he walks, the way he turns around and gives you a wave and the rest of the night is bliss.

  You don’t see him for about three weeks after that, you keep hoping he’s going to come into McDonald’s on a Friday night so you swap shifts to make sure you’re there but he doesn’t come in. You’re walking down Anderson Road with Tina one afternoon doing nothing, Johnny’s station-wagon slides up beside you the tinted passenger window rolls down and Nick sticks his head out and says hey want a lift? and you nearly die. You haven’t stopped thinking about him for three weeks it’s been Nick Nick Nick in your head you’ve written his name over and over practising what your new name would look like if you were married to him even though you know you’re never getting married you can’t help thinking what if you were and had kids and what they’d be called and you’re so horny for him and now, here he is. You and Tina get in the car, Johnny does doughnuts in the paddock swinging round and round dirt scrunching gravel wheels and dust. You’re sitting in the back seat directly behind Nick, it’s getting later everything is softly darkening you see the way his hair curls itself to his head the way his T-shirt sits on the back of his neck across his shoulders you want to just lean over put your arm around him all warm and kiss his ear he’s so beautiful, but you don’t, then he turns around and gives you the bong that he’s packed for you. You go to Edwarde’s Lake in the bumpy EH you’re all laughing you’re all talking shit. You feel yourself going a bit shy especially now you’re a bit stoned you’re glad Tina’s here she’s good at talking she’s really funny so you don’t have to say anything and anyway it feels more important to say nothing. Then, suddenly, you all go quiet, all at once, and everybody stays in the silence. You see Nick look out of the window and up, up. You wonder what he’s thinking as you let yourself ride on his thoughts, the thoughts you don’t know, to the stars to the dark travelling from him with him to up there and back again and you know that you know him and he knows you and that it really means something and at that very moment he turns around to look at you. You’re there, in time, looking like that in the knowing of each other in Johnny’s car at Edwarde’s Lake in Reservoir with Tina next to you, the lake outside and a breeze.

  It’s 3.36 in the morning little numbers made of bright lines red in the black flick and change stretching time right out you can’t sleep you’re too hot too cold too hot again and your mind is never-ending. Now it’s 3.37 the bed is making you itchy so you scratch. You got all dressed up tonight, your nice leather shoes your cord jodhpurs the really expensive ones your black angora top with buttons down the back and your mum lent you her earrings the special ones that she’s had since she was eighteen. Nick had rung you up during the week to ask you out, when you got off the phone you swooned in the chair and told your mum all about him. She helped you do your hair you don’t usually let her help you but tonight it was really good and she said you looked very nice when you showed her what you were wearing turning around swish spinning on your toes laughing down the hallway and she liked your make-up too. Nick was picking you up at eight o’clock you were ready by quarter-to-eight there was no way you were going to be late you didn’t want him to see you without being ready for him. Waiting. Eight o’clock. You knew he was playing footy today he probably got held up at the barbecue afterwards you tell your mum. Eight-thirty. Quarter-to-nine. You ring him up your hand trembling. He’s not home he went out a little while ago, great, he’s on his way, shit, you hope you look all right so you go to the mirror and go over your face. Nine o’clock. Quarter-past-nine. At ten o’clock you’re still sitting in your bedroom nervous waiting for him to arrive. But he doesn’t. At midnight you go to bed.

  You feel the hot skin of your tummy stretching from hip to hip under the blanket, up and over the bumps of your ribs you feel the nipples on your breasts that are too small, all you want is Nick. You throw the blankets off they’re annoying you, you get a shiver you pull them back up. You feel a sharp pin-point prickle on your back, then another one, you roll over and lie on your stomach but that prickles too. Then your feet, so you rub them. It stops a bit then starts again. Your legs are itchy too, you rub them, everything is prickly like you’re getting bitten, little tiny ant bites you’re rubbing your skin there’s ants in the bed you jump out quickly they’re on you, you throw the blankets off jump out switch on the light brush the sheet and the mattress down checking for ants, you shake out the bedclothes there’s nothing there you’re sure they were there crawling all over you but there’s nothing. Nothing. You look at the mattress you look at it again you lie down on it carefully and pull the covers up it prickles a bit but it’s okay, it’s okay, there are no ants you keep the light on just in case. It takes ages getting to sleep you try really hard but you keep going over everything, maybe you got the wrong night maybe he meant next week he said he’d pick you up maybe he meant he’d meet you there he didn’t come you’re all empty inside like you’re nothing. You’re still itchy you can’t stand it in the bed on your skin like this and sleep is never going to come but it must have without you knowing because when you open your eyes again it’s 7.42 on the clock radio and everything is green and weird.

  You’ve got th
e taste of bananas in your mouth you don’t even like them they’re very fattening. You eat chocolate even though you shouldn’t but if you don’t eat anything else the calories balance out. Maybe this taste is in your mouth because of the pill, you’ve been on it for six weeks you’d rather not be on it but it’s better that you know for sure even though you keep forgetting to take it at the same time every day sometimes you even miss a day so you end up taking two or three at once. Helen’s on the pill so it must be all right but she’s on it for different reasons she’s on it because she gets really bad period pains and she’s anaemic she’s been on it since she was seventeen. Rosie’s on it too, you found them in her drawer once before you knew what the pill looked like, seven yellow tablets lots of white ones in a circle with the days marked, you said what are these? she said mind your own business and stay out of my drawer. Sometimes you miss Rosie and Helen but not very much it’s better without them being around but you do miss driving at night with Rosie. She saved really hard to get her car, after she left school she got a job as an apprentice chef at a really good restaurant in the city, it’s an old red Austin. She’d take off her P-plates and you’d go everywhere listening to Status Quo AC/DC The Angels or Gary Glitter, all around the city the suburbs finding all these places you’d never been to before, odd streets wide streets teeny houses with no gardens big mansions great big sweeping-hill-streets factories smoke and nightly knocking noises cranking strangely in the wind coming through the car window, the brand new second-hand red Austin window that doesn’t go up the whole way lots of room in the front seat your own ashtray in the door the suspension’s not very good Rosie’s a fast driver sometimes your head would hit the roof and Tina would usually come too. Tina’s on the pill as well you both went to the same doctor. She asked all these questions like how long have you been sexually active? are you currently sexually active? do you have a regular sexual partner? how many sexual partners do you have? You felt like you had to tell her everything but you lied and told her you had a boyfriend. You got it. So did Tina. Tina reckons she wanted to go on it because she hated frangas, you’ve never used them so you don’t know what they’re like. You hope you don’t get fat on the pill, that happens sometimes.

  Numbers fly through your mind zooming by and swooping, you match them together adding subtracting dividing and multiplying, big numbers can mean nothing at all and little numbers can be enormous. Everything’s made out of numbers tonight dancing in your mind. You’ve got nine letters in your middle name Patricia and six in your surname, that makes twenty-three and two and three make five, if you don’t count your middle name it makes fifteen, one and five is six divided by two is three, in your family you’re third out of five, your parents had five children in seven years. They’ve been married for twenty-one years that’s three times seven. Together their ages make up ninety-two, that’s seventy-one years altogether that they didn’t know each other. Seventy-one is a prime number, nothing else fits into it. You’ve just opened up your third packet of cigarettes that makes it over forty that you’ve had today. You’ve had thirteen cups of coffee thirteen is a prime number too. You’re up to two hundred and fifty situps twice a day that makes it five hundred, three thousand five hundred in a week and still you’re not skinny. You’ve fucked with twenty-three guys and you’re seventeen, they’re both prime numbers, your dad is forty-six he looks like he’s seventy. Two years ago you were in Year 10 now you’re not in anything. You first met Nick three years ago and you didn’t even know each other, now you’ve known him three months and it feels like forever. He’s got fourteen letters in his full name Nicholas Jarvis, one and four add up to five, the same number as your first name, he’s the oldest out of three. He came around to visit you at five-thirty yesterday smiling saying sorry he went out with the boys and got really out of it he felt really bad the next day for doing that to you, you said that’s okay Nick, but then you say but you could have rung, he says I know I know I’m really sorry, he’s here right in front of you saying these things, he does really like you. He comes in you make him a coffee and you sit in your room and you start to talk, you talk and you talk like you always do when you’re together you show him some of your drawings you never show them to anyone he says they’re really good, there’s one of a man smoking there’s one of trees at night there’s one of your hand one of your foot and one of your face in the mirror, there’s another one of a window with all these hands trying to come in with a border of spiders around the edges. It’s a record cover you say to Nick, you did it as a project for art when you were at school.

  You go up to his place he dinks you on his bike the boy’s ball bar underneath your bum uncomfortable, hanging on to the handlebars, his arms keeping you in the warmth of him, close, the footpath bumpy the evening wind wrapping around you moving. At his place you go into his room and play his singles, Swingers Stray Cats Madness and then some Patti Smith. He says I really like your drawings, you go really? He says I do drawings too, you say show me, he goes nah, they’re stupid, you go come on, he goes really? you go yeah, he says okay and gets a book out from under his bed. You tell him they’re fantastic, they’re mostly tattoos he says. They’re all done in black ink, swirls and swords and skulls, there’s one of a heart not a loveheart it’s a real heart with flames coming out all around and three daggers pointing inwards, there’s one of the sun the sun’s an eyeball rising through clouds that become chains and another one of a rose with its petals being plucked by a black swallow, the thorns of the stem are dripping blood, it makes you sad you say oh, that’s sad, he kind of laughs and says you reckon? and you go yeah. He says a mate of mine’s a tattooist he might pay me, you go that’s great, Nick says maybe, but I wouldn’t know what to charge, they’re like a piece of my mind or something and you go yeah, I know what you mean. You stayed there for ages talking smoking listening to records, then he dunk you home again it was after midnight you’d been with him for nearly seven hours and there’s only four more days until Saturday, you’re really going to go out this time.

  *

  Watermelon’s juicy pink suck on it wet crunch spitting out pips. You like watermelon you’re sitting on the front porch eating a chunk of it even though it’s after one in the morning you can’t sleep it’s too hot your belly was growling Nick is in your mind. The TV’s still on coming through the windows making the concrete glow and dim in Late Movie rhythm you see the trees in the streetlights their arms up in monster pose. You’re getting bitten by mosquitoes but you don’t care maybe if you don’t care enough the bites won’t itch. Watermelon drips on your skin the moon’s out the crickets are going and stopping near and far and everything in your head just keeps going round and round and round. Then Fabio pops into your mind. You haven’t thought about him for ages. You see his face his hair you feel the way you kissed together and how you fucked that time your first time the only time with him and you wonder what would have happened if your love had come true. You see the alleyway where you all used to drink, the alleyway behind skating with corrugated iron on one side the brick wall on the other with everybody’s name graffitied on it. You see your name up there too you wrote Josie woz ere but that’s not what it said that night the last night you went skating instead it said Josie is a slut Josie is a slut Josie is a slut written one under the other. Eleven times. You didn’t know who wrote it you didn’t say anything to anyone you didn’t want anyone to notice even though everybody did and nobody said anything about it and you just went inside and stayed there the whole night rollerskating rollerskating in circles.

  Then Nick’s face is in your mind again, you want him, you don’t want to be alone but you are, you’re so sure you’re meant to be together, how can something feel so real and just suddenly not be there any more you want him with you right now, he isn’t, you can’t believe he’s got a girlfriend, you’re bursting when you see him, bursting with love, when you’re with him all the old everything just disappears there’s only him and you know he feels the same, he has
to, the way he looks at you the things he says and you know what each other is thinking and you make each other laugh and you went to Chinatown for dinner, you had wine you’d never had wine before, not out of a bottle and you made up stories about all the other people in the restaurant, you laughed and carried on sharing cigarettes you were the last ones to leave. He lifted you up and half-ran half-staggered down Little Bourke Street hot in his arms you kissed forever and walked through the city all the buildings in their familiar places in the sky purple and yellow and private at night, later on walking from his place to yours through the school oval rolling around in the grass, clothes and skin and sliding, going for it, then easy and quiet with each other and careful, and now you haven’t seen him for a month, he’s never there when you ring he never rings you, you were so happy together that night why isn’t he with you and now you hear he’s got some girlfriend they’ve been going out for over a year you hate her you’re better than her she doesn’t know him like you do. You see his face looking at you in your mind clear and beautiful and you don’t believe anything you don’t know what to believe. The concrete is suddenly still. Darkness settles on you the TV’s finally off. You stand up go onto the grass it tickles under all the bones of your feet. You take your mind into the night and think about the way you can’t tell what colour anything is. Even though you know what colour things are, at night they’re not, they become something else. Nothing is green nothing is orange, or yellow, or blue, everything is just dark, all different kinds of darknesses and you wonder how you would paint the kind of things you see if you were a painter, how would you paint the dark? You feel it move through your mind into your body getting into your breath your bones, down through your stomach into your legs your ankles into your hands making your fingers twitch from the inside, wrapping itself through your hair, colouring your blood the colour of night, all the shades of darkness making you part of it you’ve got no edges it’s filling you right up taking you into all the secret places that you never let anybody go inside you, taking you to all the secret places in the world making you know everything and nothing, you know that you are everything and nothing at the same time. Something big is suddenly happening to you, this feeling of the deep, it’s like you’re being touched by god or something except you feel really stupid saying that, it doesn’t feel right to say god you don’t even think you believe in god it’s not god you don’t know what it is, this darkness, this sudden special knowing inside you, now it’s on the outside as well, you feel like you’re being held, enveloped, soothed by the arms of the dark all around you. And then it’s gone. The mozzies are buzzing and biting, the crickets are doing their thing, you hear your dad snoring through the walls of the house and you’re just you, out in the garden after one in the morning holding a wet and sucked watermelon rind wishing Nick was here.