by Lia Weston
I put my hand on her shoulder, which is about as intimate as our family gets.
‘Excuse me, Mrs Lash?’ The girl from the front desk hovers by the barbell rack. Her eyes flit between us, aware that her timing could have been better. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt. But some members were wondering if they could meet you.’
‘Of course,’ says Mum, smoothly resuming her professional face. She gets up without using her hands, something I have never been able to do without falling over. The girl casts a look towards the treadmills.
‘Would Amity,’ – tiny worried eyebrow twitch as she wonders if she’s been too informal – ‘also be free?’
‘Leave her,’ says Mum, and gives a tinkling laugh. ‘She’ll never get her ten thousand steps in otherwise and I’ll have to hear about it all afternoon.’
They head for the front desk, where four girls almost vibrate with excitement at Mum’s approach.
A staff member is wiping down the treadmills with disinfectant. Mind whirring, I wander over to Amity, still walking, a treble clef in lycra.
‘Do you believe this?’ she says in greeting, and thrusts the magazine at me.
‘Wills and Kate Marriage In Crisis,’ I read.
‘No,’ she says, ‘that. Look at that.’ It’s an ad for an holistic nutritional coach. ‘Four thousand dollars, four weeks of study, congratulations, you’re qualified to tell people that they can change the acidity of their blood by eating lemons. It’s absurd.’
‘Doesn’t changing your acid level kind of kill you?’ I say.
‘It’ll make you very sick for a start. And you also can’t do it by eating lemons.’ Amity tosses the magazine aside. ‘I remember that college. They had a blog post about dietitians being sponsored by drug companies. I had to turn off my wi-fi so I wouldn’t go on their Facebook page and scream at them.’
Her phone, resting in the drink holder, pings with a message. She ignores it.
I fold my arms over the top of the console and squeeze in so the disinfectant-wielding girl can get past. ‘You look very well.’
Amity slits her whiskey-coloured eyes at me and smiles in a way I’m familiar with. Flirting with Amity is effortless because we both know we’re all talk.
‘Mandy says you had a bit of a girlfriend episode the other night.’ Amity is the only person who can get away with calling Mum ‘Mandy’.
‘That’s one way of putting it.’
She touches my hand, temporarily sincere. ‘How are you doing?’
‘You know, you’re the first person who’s asked me that.’
There’s not a drop of sweat on her, though she’s been on the treadmill for half an hour. A tag swings from the hem of her zipped-up jacket. Judging from the material, I’d put money on those leggings having only been worn twice.
I reach over and pull the jacket’s tag off. ‘Hey, you used to model, didn’t you?’
Amity laughs. ‘Ages ago. Why? Don’t tell me you’re trying to get hold of Kate Upton.’
‘If you wanted to find someone who’s in some stock photos, how would you do it?’ I spin the tag between my fingers.
‘Not easily. If you can find the agency who owns the photos, they might give you information on the photographer. But even then, it’s pretty unlikely that the photographer will hand over the model’s details to you.’
‘Why not?’
Amity shakes her head at me. ‘You’re hopeless. Think like a woman.’
‘Because . . . it’s creepy?’
‘“Hey, this total stranger likes the look of you, so I gave him your phone number.”’
‘Yeah, I see what you mean.’
‘Maybe stick to people you can actually meet in real life.’
I lean over to punch up the treadmill’s speed when her phone rings. Chris Lash says the screen. That’s not particularly unusual. Amity, however, instantly clocks where Mum is, then glances at me. She keeps walking, her eyes anywhere but mine, while the phone continues to ring.
‘Do you want me to get that?’
‘No.’ Amity switches it off. ‘It can wait.’
If she thinks I missed her micro-moment of pure panic, she’s wrong.
I drop over the back wall of the Grace’s beer garden, as it’s faster than going through the front and I’m already late. The tables are flooded by the late afternoon sun, fresh and bright after the grey of the previous days. Despite the light, the chairs are empty, most drinkers staying in the cool dark of the bar.
Dan sits at the east end of the garden, one foot on the chair in front, one almost-finished beer in his hand, two more ready to go.
We have a half-hug, the shoulder bump with no hip contact.
‘Do you know what colour mahogany is?’ he says as he sits back down.
‘Reddy brown.’ I accept the beer he offers.
‘Thank you. Guy tried to tell me it’s honey.’
‘What an idiot.’
‘Now he won’t pay for the work.’
‘What an asshole.’
A cellophane cigarette wrapper skitters across the floor and wedges itself next to a pot plant.
It’s been a bad week for Dan. A couple of customers have bailed on jobs, leaving him with two restored Edwardian chests and a Gothic set of church windows he now has to sell to recover his costs.
‘Shame it wasn’t a crucifix,’ I say. ‘You could have sold it to June.’
He looks reproachful. ‘Have you heard from her?’
‘No, but don’t worry, everyone else has. How much does Ellie hate me right now?’
Dan squints while he tries to think of a nice way to phrase ‘She wants you to die’.
To be honest, I’ve been on thin ice with Ellie for a while. When she and Dan first got together – she visited his shop fourteen times before he realised she was waiting for him to ask her out – she accepted me as part of the package deal. She never made a big thing out of the fact that I don’t know anything about politics; I never made a big thing about the fact that she dances like she’s trying to get out of a body bag. Sometimes, if she’d been drinking prosecco, Ellie would even flirt with me, just a little. So for the most part, we were fine. Until I met June – freshly returned from eighteen months in Europe – at Ellie’s twenty-fifth birthday party, and Ellie lost her best friend. I’ve been a marked man ever since.
Dan opens a bag of salt and vinegar chips and shakes it into one of the little wooden bowls that I’m sure never get washed.
I take a chip. ‘Did you know June’s parents still think I’m a photo historian?’
‘Nothing wrong with that. And it’s not inaccurate, if you think about it. There’s a long history of airbrushing. Stalin used to edit people out of official photos. Mao Tse-Tung did it, too. And –’
‘Don’t say it. Don’t say it.’
‘– Hitler.’
I bang my glass on the table. ‘You know the rule.’
Anyone who brings up Hitler in an argument that’s not actually about World War Two has to buy a round. Dan dutifully gets up and goes to the bar.
‘I’m just saying,’ he says when he returns with two more beers, ‘you could do far worse than June.’
‘Is that your philosophy now?’ I say. ‘It’s like choosing beheading over poisoning because beheading’s a faster way to die.’
‘Look, June’s kind, she’s nice-looking and she’s loyal.’
‘So is a Labrador, and it wouldn’t care what I do for work.’ I’m keen to get off the topic, because along with the guilt that I can’t shake is an irrational fear that if we say June’s name too many times she’ll suddenly appear, like Bloody Mary summoned in a mirror. ‘How’s the apprentice going?’
‘Going, going, gone,’ says Dan. ‘Apparently no one told him furniture restoration was hard work.’
‘How many is that now?’
‘Five.’ He takes a swig of his beer. ‘I should get you to sit in on the job interviews next time. You can tell me if they’re lying.’
‘I can’
t always tell.’
‘You knew when that girl was stealing from the till.’
‘Come on, that was obvious.’
‘Not to me.’ Dan takes a handful of chips. ‘And, just to cap the week off, I got a letter from the council telling me to repaint the shop.’
‘I didn’t know they could tell you to do that.’
‘They’ve strongly suggested I “reinvigorate my commercial premises”. Instead of doing actual work that pays the bills, of course.’ He drops a chip on the table. I crush it with my thumb. There’s a burst of powdery vinegar.
A girl in a floaty lilac top wanders into the beer garden, cider in hand. She circles several tables before finally selecting one in the corner.
Dan nods in her direction. ‘Tell me why she sat there.’
‘We’re playing your favourite game now?’ I glance over. ‘She’s out of direct line of sight from the door. It’s a power move. Ask me something harder.’
‘Blind date?’
The girl pushes her top off one shoulder and takes a few measured sips of her drink.
‘Nope. Second or third.’ I look at her hair. ‘Second. There may not be a third.’
Dan indicates another drinker. ‘What does that guy do?’
I look at the guy’s hands, his skin, his posture, his pockets. ‘Chiropractor.’
‘What about me, if you didn’t know me?’
I give him an answer I know he’ll like. ‘Retired rugby coach.’
The breeze sends the chip crumbs between the cracks of the table. Dan’s phone pings. He glances at it and sighs. ‘Ellie’s stressed. Her sister’s convinced that her husband’s sleeping around.’
‘Is he?’
‘How would I know? I’m not you.’
‘I’m not psychic, for fuck’s sake.’ I’m uncomfortably reminded of Mum’s plaited fingers and pleading eyes.
Dan picks up his phone. ‘Tell me when this photo was taken.’
It takes less than three seconds. There’s Rosie, upside-down in her father’s arms, laughing. It’s a candid shot; normally Dan sucks in his stomach and holds his breath. (Once someone couldn’t work out the camera on their new Samsung and he almost passed out.) The people in the background are relatives on his side – there’s a common shape to the skull. Dan’s in thongs. Rosie’s T-shirt has an old stain on it. It’s not Christmas as no one’s drunk enough. It’s not Australia Day, as Dan isn’t sunburnt to hell.
I hand the phone back. ‘Barbecue for your brother’s birthday.’
‘Man, it’s almost creepy the way you can do that.’ He pockets the phone. ‘It’s a good thing you don’t use your powers for evil.’
‘Knowing when people are lying or what motivates behaviour doesn’t automatically mean you can influence them. If that was true, everyone’d be terrified of psychologists.’
‘Yeah, but if you know what scares people, you also know how to control them. Look at the mass media. Look at Trump and the Third Reich.’
I bang my glass again. ‘Your shout. Again. I think you’re doing it on purpose now.’
Dan lumbers to his feet. ‘It’s pretty hard to discuss your life without bringing psychology into it.’
‘Yes,’ I say, ‘but if you could stop comparing me to Nazis, that would be great.’
The guardrail is freezing under my gloves. I line my toes up at the bashboard and wonder if I can get a refund.
‘I thought you could skate.’
‘No,’ says Mica, hanging on to the rail next to me in a death grip. ‘I said I wanted to go skating. Totally different.’
IF’s creative department used to visit galleries or exhibitions as a way of bonding. Since Umut was born, however, Tarik has bailed, so now it’s only Mica and me. After realising a few months ago that all we’ve done for the past year is go to the pub, however, Mica insisted we try an activity. So here we are. IF on ice. Can’t wait for clay-shooting week or cheese-rolling day.
Scores of people are hissing across the rink behind us. At least, it sounds like people. They could be Death Eaters. I don’t know; I can’t turn around. ‘Does it count as going skating if you don’t let go of the bar?’
‘We’re on ice,’ says Mica, who tries to give an airy wave but hastily clamps back onto the guardrail. ‘We’re wearing skates. Ergo, we have ice-skated.’
‘Excellent. I’ll tick this off the list of things I never wanted to do in the first place.’
‘Boo. Why are you in such a bad mood? June been showing up at your window? “Tommy! Wait! You’ve still got my copy of The Martyr’s Handbook!”’ Mica does an unfortunately good imitation of June’s breathy, constricted tone.
‘I don’t think she left anything at my place.’
‘Because you didn’t let her.’
‘I never said she couldn’t.’
‘That’s very different to saying that she could, and you know it.’
I look down at her rainbow hair. Unlike the other skaters, neither Mica nor I are wearing anything with snowflakes on it. I don’t even know why you can buy snowflake jumpers in a country that gets fuck-all snow. Snowflake jumpers to Australians are the equivalent of a tan to the Scottish. ‘You’re defending her a lot lately.’
Mica’s gloves are black and shiny, like hooves. She detaches one and awkwardly turns around to face the rink. ‘I’m just interested in the machinations of Tom. I’m trying to figure out what you actually want out of life.’
‘This is not an interesting topic.’ Out of the corner of my eye, I see a dark-haired woman skimming across the ice and turn as far as my position will let me.
‘Oh, but it is,’ says Mica. ‘You go googly over babies but you can’t commit to a girlfriend. You spend days on your street pieces but don’t mind if they get painted over. You can talk about sci-fi narrative arcs in film for hours but get bored if you have to read a book.’
‘I’m a normal person.’
‘You are many things,’ says Mica, ‘but normal is not one of them. Okay, I’m going in.’
‘If you die, don’t leave me your cat.’
Mica starts clomping gingerly along next to the railing, her feet chopping the ice, her hand hovering just over the bar, ready to clamp back on at any second.
If Mica’s parents had Photoshopped her existence, as she’d said they would have, what would they have done to her? Removed the rainbow streaks, eliminated the cartoon T-shirts, put her in heels and business casual, smoothed out her edges, reduced her to working in PR? It’s a wild guess, of course; even after four years of working with Mica, I still have no idea what her parents are like. She refuses to discuss them. She once said it was like trying to reason with a sackful of ferrets, so we left it at that. Does she have sisters? Brothers? Step-parents? No idea. Just a sackful of ferrets. I watch her glacial progress, a sherbet-coloured Shetland, and wonder what would happen if I scratched off some of her protective coating.
Come to think of it, what would my parents do to my existence? I’d be a doctor of some kind, married to June – again, that stab of guilt – surrounded by kids. We’d be one of those families who go camping on long weekends and has themed dinner nights: Taco Tuesdays, Fish Finger Fridays. Mum and I would do fun runs together. Dad and I would go hiking. Doctor Thomas Lash, no longer living above an alleyway busy with drug deals and drunken shags by people who don’t understand how acoustics work. Doctor Lash, no longer in a job his parents can neither explain nor understand. Doctor fucking Lash.
Two couples twirl with precision in the centre of the ice, their skate blades leaving razor cuts on the surface. They have the same expression that ballroom dancers do: mild annoyance. You’d think that if you had the ability to spin on your toes on frozen water you’d be excited about it. They look like they’re going through their grocery lists. Actually, I’m pretty sure the blond guy is.
Mica has almost made it halfway around the rink, being passed by children, pensioners and the last recorded syllable of time. I, on the other hand, am being beaten at this spo
rt by kids who can’t tie their own shoelaces. I scan the crowd for the dark-haired woman, who has disappeared, and wonder if Sophia can skate. She probably can. She seems to be able to do most things. She wouldn’t feel the need for meals dictated by days of the week.
Sometimes I feel as if I’m failing to impersonate a regular person. All of the other people would have proper photo albums of memories and families. Baby pictures and school portraits. Shots of uni students protesting the world’s injustices. Thirty-four year olds giving up because they’re sick of being angry all the time. Couples marrying because they’re expected to, then encountering problems because no one warned them that people change. In between them all are the ones who fit together with interlocking fingers and hips, and I envy them their ease, their joy in each other. I envy them until it’s a physical pain.
Three years later and Mica’s back. There’s a sheen under her eyes.
‘I think I’m getting better,’ she says. ‘Try it. You’re much more coordinated than me.’
‘Can’t I just stay here?’
‘If you get a head injury, you won’t have to do the Klingon honeymoon album.’
I let Mica take one of my hands in her hoof. ‘I guess breaking my legs will save June doing it for me.’
In the end, we manage a heroic two laps around the rink, and I achieve a personal best in letting go of the bar for three seconds. I buy Mica a snow cone to celebrate. The plastic benches in the kiosk are cold and damp so we sit on the steps outside under an overcast sky, shadowed by the ice rink’s giant polystyrene mountain.
‘Did you see the matching jumper couple?’ says Mica. ‘Same skates and everything.’
They were hard to miss, mittened hands joined like otters, bodies swaying like metronomes. ‘Probably brother and sister,’ I say. ‘Lots of professional figure-skating couples are.’
‘Eeeeugh. Also, why do you know this?’
‘One of my first books for IF had an ice-skating theme. I over-researched.’
She sucks up a chunk of cherry-coloured ice. ‘I wonder if people who wear matching clothes ever argue.’
‘Of course they do.’
‘About what?’
‘Imagine what happens if one jumper goes missing. Bloodbath.’
