Atomic City

by Sally Breen

  What the fuck, she says, are you doing here?

  He ignores her.

  Where have you been, Jade?

  The Casino.

  How much?

  What?

  How much did you do?

  Jade scowls at the question, swaying on her feet.

  Get the fuck away from me.

  She tries to push past him into the apartment but he blocks her way. Puts a stiff arm out to steady her. She tries to push it back but ends up falling into him instead. Her face hits his chest.

  I don’t want you following me anymore.

  What? I can’t understand you?

  I said … I don’t want you round anymore.

  The Dealer feels a rush of panic. He knows she’s wasted but there’s a finality in her tone, a sense of statement. He tries a different tack.

  What happened with Harvey? Jade?

  This question gets her. Jade pushes off him, her hands on his shoulders. She looks into his eyes. He can see everything in there, the hurt, the ruin. He wants to hold her, to try and get her to be still, but Jade’s unfurling. She won’t stop.

  You don’t know anything, she says.

  And the Dealer knows what she means but he can’t help himself.

  I know he’s in bed with three whores.

  So what?

  But she doesn’t say it quick enough. Her head bobs down.

  Jade, it’s time to cut him loose, okay?

  Jade lifts her face up to him, trying to muster some dignity, in the over-exaggerated way drunk people do.

  Let me pass.

  Are you listening to me? Did you hear what I said?

  I said let me through, I’m going to be sick.

  The Dealer steps away. He thinks about staying inside, if he should, watching her narrow frame bouncing like a warped pinball between the walls of the hallway. Jade doesn’t look back. She gets to the bathroom.

  Just leave, will you.

  She goes in. The Dealer doesn’t move, listening for what she’s going to do. Delaying the moment of departure. He hears the shower start. The rest of the apartment is very quiet. The waitress is back in bed. Jade is gone from him. He can hear birds. Things happening in the street, some kids next door singing; just a normal morning.

  He leaves her shoe on the hall table and closes the door. It should make him happy, this thought, that today isn’t likely to be the end. Isn’t likely to be the final time he sees her. Not even last night could spell that out for him but the idea doesn’t provide any solace, doesn’t make leaving any easier because he knows last night doesn’t necessarily spell it out for Harvey either. Caught as they are by the spin of Jade, by the same restless token.

  ACROSS THE BOARD

  THE DEALER

  Jade and I play the game of not calling each other. For me the stalemate feels like an eternity; for her I’m not so sure. I don’t like the way the world looks or the way the world runs without her. I go to work. I go back to doing everything I normally do. But inside I shut down. I can’t even gamble. The knowledge she won’t be able to hold out for long keeps me going but sometimes the idea she might not relinquish her stance on us makes me panic. I start shaking and I have to sit down. I find it hard to breathe. The act of will required to not call her is exhausting; all these long drawn-out conversations I have with myself, the berated thoughts, the circles, memories and distractions, the strategies to stop myself calling, all exhausting. I start to hate the silence of my phone. I look at the unchanged screen, all the time pretending I don’t jump and flare up inside every time it rings, pretending not to sound disappointed when it’s not her. I find it hard to cope with the idea she doesn’t need me.

  And when you can’t call the person you need, it follows that you might call the person you don’t. I call Camille because she makes me feel better. I don’t think about what the gesture means to her. I think about how good calling her feels because it feels like revenge against Jade and it feels like self-hurt. Because I feel like having something to pay for. I tell Camille not to take my call as a sign that things could change between us. I tell myself being upfront with her should exempt me; that it’s not like she didn’t know.

  And of course none of this means I’ve stopped following Jade, that I don’t know what she’s up to or that she’s back with Harvey. Holed up most nights in his million-dollar shed. It doesn’t mean she knows I’m tailing her as much as I am. Tailing her is easy. Jade taught me how to wait. She taught me how to hide all the real reasons why I tail her. When it comes to Harvey, Jade’s manouevres have never been hard to trace. She’s all action; I’m better at stakeout.

  On the highway I follow a discreet distance behind them. Two or three cars back. Jade doesn’t know I’m here. I’m probably too close but I would prefer to be able to see her. It’s not necessary for me to do this – I already know where they’re headed – but I do stay in sight anyway. I don’t want to miss a thing.

  Harvey is driving the gold Mercedes Jade hired this morning. I can see her right arm draped across the space between the two seats, touching him behind the neck. Jade knows how to spoil. A flash car, a dirty weekend. Golf. Harvey’s a pig in shit. The trail to this weekend wasn’t hard to find. The hotel booking, the deposit on the car. Jade’s not expecting that I’ve got the need to know. She thinks I’m finished with her; she thinks she’s finished with me. She’s not covering her transactions. Jade doesn’t think I’d have a reason to remember the access codes to her accounts. We set most of them up together but she never trusted me enough to openly share the information. I watched her punching the codes, on keyboards and on screens. She forgets I’m a dealer. She forgets there are reasons why I get paid to have a head for fast fingers and random numbers. She forgets I have reasons not to rely on her versions of what accounts for balance.

  Jade’s been bringing in a lot of cash. Cash I’m no longer getting a cut of and this is just in the accounts I know about. Playing happy families has been good for her. Harvey must be just about wrung dry. Which is why this weekend away seems both strange and crucial. This excursion is either a wind-up or a wean-off. I’m here to make sure that, for Harvey, there will be nothing further.

  The traffic on the freeway to the north coast is steady. On this hot November morning half of Brisbane city is heading to the north coast, the rest to where we live in the south. One day these two coasts will probably meet, as Brisbane spreads, gagging to the water. Already I can see the dug-out evidence of housing developments creeping along the edges of the highway. Every year a new enclave protests its innocence on the wetlands. Sea-change properties writ large on billboards, tempting Sunday drivers to commit to the prospect of a new life. Leaving out what’s written in between: long commutes, midges and quarter-acre swamp blocks.

  But the north coast is a welcome change, the drive already so different from the Gold Coast lead-up, littered with billboards, petrol outlets that look like space stations, and too much big business. The Noosa-bound highway is narrower, the invasions less evident, the roadside attractions lean more towards honour boxes than theme parks. Of course, people do exactly the same shit in Noosa as they do on the Gold Coast; it’s just that Noosa makes people think they’re doing it better. A healthy public rivalry about lifestyle which is actually, like all things, about money. Where the Gold Coast has its two-o’clock shadows falling from the tall buildings on to the beach and a trashy 24/7 hedonism, Noosa enforces a five-storey building cap and a dead-after-ten town centre. And this image all fits perfectly into Jade’s plan. Harvey’s the king of the strip on the Gold Coast so Jade will take him to somewhere more secluded and more exclusive, somewhere she’ll convince him is more her scene; a playground for the southern rich, dangling the carrot of legitimate money, of old money, in front of Harvey’s wind-up face.

  Left and right, kilometres of government-sponsored pine plantation combine with my speed to create a domino effect of light and perspective, the sunlight running alongside me through the gaps in these symmetrical
trees. I watch the sun jump between the shadows, between the trunks, trying to keep up, and the light seems to be trailing Jade, trying frantically to stay in her line of vision, trying to tell her to slow down, to stop this charade with him.

  When Harvey pulls into the long driveway of the resort I decide to drive past, to check in later, I don’t want to jeopardise anything by being in the foyer with them. Further up the road I pull over, my heart racing. A sign next to me says Welcome to Mudjimba. So the Hyatt Regency Coolum technically isn’t even in Coolum, but I guess the Hyatt Regency Mudjimba just doesn’t have the same ring to it – the first white lie of another risky weekend. I wait fifteen minutes then drive back casually to reception.

  Behind the resort I notice a mountain looming. I have never known its name, but my eye has always been drawn towards it when taking this drive north, the largest of a series of rock formations rising curiously out of the otherwise level country. As a kid the mountain used to scare me because it looked just like an enormous gorilla, a thick giant form, curled in on itself. The head and the breadth of what I imagined were the shoulders was something part-animal, something Neolithic, something bigger than a man. And the gorilla seemed to be looking out too, like it was watching over the land.

  Up close, the mountain casts a cool shadow over the resort.

  I take a villa suite. At three hundred bucks a night it’s the cheapest on offer and I don’t have anyone to impress. I easily find out where Jade is staying from the girl on the desk. I say I’m a close friend, we have just arrived together. She seems to like me, the body language, the act. There’s not much chance that Jade and Harvey will come in contact with this particular girl again.

  The girl tells me that Jade and Harvey have checked into an Ambassador’s residence, the Mosman. I tell her I’ll stick with a villa; it’s just me after all. The girl seems happy with this. I wonder if Harvey would be digging the Mosman so much if he knew he was actually the one forking out the nine hundred bucks a night.

  I’m being delivered to my suite in an oversized golf buggy. The guy driving offers to take me on a loop of the resort, to show me around. I decline, saying I’m tired and would like the suite straight away. He looks me over in the rear-view mirror. I avert my eyes to avoid any probing questions. I can see from the map that my friend at reception has placed me in close proximity to Jade and her private enclave in the Ambassador’s club area. I’m in suite 674 at the southern end of the resort. Jade is just a short walk away.

  There are no cars in the resort and everyone seems to be getting around in these complimentary carts driven by handsome tanned men in palm-tree-embossed shirts and tight navy shorts. Summer camp for rich families; not really my scene. I try and remember that Jade is catering to Harvey’s taste.

  Outside my villa I tip the guy twenty bucks and ask him if there are any gambling facilities. He gives me a knowing smile and says only of the private kind.

  That’s too bad. I really need a bet.

  And he waves me off with a laugh.

  Safely inside the suite I pour myself a drink, trying to build up the courage to take a walk.

  Two hours later, with the bar-shelf looking untidy, I’m on my way to the Mosman on foot. Several buggies purr past me or stop to offer me lifts, but I prefer to be a free agent. There are too many people of the kind I don’t like cruising around in those things. I enter the closed society of the Ambassador’s club. The ‘residences’ fan out on the periphery of an oversized cul-de-sac – a looping road that keeps them together and focused on themselves. There are no numbers on the residences; instead names appear on signs: the Brisbane, the Ballina, the Tamworth, the Killarney, the Atherton and finally I see the Mosman at the bend in the road. I pause, pretending to clean my sunglasses while working out the best way to approach it. In the centre area I notice the pool, massive and lagoon-like, stretching along the diameter, full of lush landscaping, reasons to be there and enough spaces to hide. I decide to go in. I figure this pool is reserved for the people in the white mausoleums but no one seems to register my presence or care. I leave my shirt on the ground but take my glasses with me.

  I dive in, glad of the water, despite the chlorine. I swim casually down the curved length of the pool, dodging the blurred forms of kids blowing bubbles under my body, and climb the ladder at the far end. I find a deck-lounge in a palm-treed spot not so far from Jade and Harvey’s door. I rest my head back on the cushion, re-situate my sunglasses, look sideways and listen.

  I can’t see any signs of movement in the Mosman. But the front door is open. A couple of other windows too. One upstairs, and the two glass doors that run the length of the front terrace have been pushed back. Jade and Harvey haven’t settled altogether yet and the upstairs window bothers me. Probably a bedroom. I concentrate on the feel of the sun on my face, my skin drying tight under a film of chlorine.

  I don’t have to wait too long. A buggy pulls up. I tilt my head to the side as if dozing and watch as Harvey emerges in the hall. He’s carrying something – golf clubs. His hair’s wet. He’s just had a shower. I can’t see Jade. He emerges on to the porch and pulls the door shut behind him. The guy on the drive offers to take Harvey’s clubs but he loads them in himself. I turn my head back languidly and listen to the sound of the buggy pulling away.

  Water drips over my face from my hair. I run a hand through the wet mass. Liking how the rush of liquid feels running down my neck and further as it trickles along my back. My senses heightened by the drink, refreshed by the water, kicked up by the sun. I take my glasses off and wipe the condensation that’s building up from the combination of heat and water on my face. Putting them back on I notice the door to the Mosman swinging open slowly in the breeze. Harvey hasn’t shut it properly. An omen.

  Upstairs, through the bedroom window, something catches my eye. Jade. I see just her arm at first, struggling between the heavy curtains and all the white gauze. She pulls the fabric to the side and for a moment I stiffen, aware she might notice me. I make no sudden movements that might attract her gaze. My head stays back. My eyes adjust to where she is. Knees drawn up to disguise my frame.

  I see her body from the waist up. Her hands drawn over her naked chest. She leans down on the sill of the window just for a second and I get a flash of her pale breasts. I squirm, surprised by the effect her bare skin has on me. I look around the pool area; no one else seems to have noticed.

  Jade rests her head on the ‘V’ her arms are making on the sill, head tilted away from me to the left. I take the opportunity to drape a white towel over my head as if for protection from the sun; shaded from her. She stays as she is for a long time, maybe ten minutes. I wonder what she’s doing. Her head shifts back to the right and she seems to be staring at the surroundings, at the pool and the people. Her stillness unnerves me because I want more of a sign. I want to know what she’s thinking, that she is thinking, that she isn’t just post-coital serene. I also want her to move. I want to see her hands on her breasts again.

  Jade pulls away. Too quickly. She draws the gauze curtains closed but I can still see her standing there. The outline of her tall body, the hand curled over the sill holding on tight, gripping rather than resting. She doesn’t move. Then suddenly she’s gone. I look to the vacant hall downstairs, in all the windows, anxious. I want her to reappear. Finally she does. This time in a white slip of a gown and I wonder if she has any underpants on.

  Jade is in the window adjacent to what I imagine to be their bedroom. She is throwing open the curtains on all the windows, airing the place out, but something about the way she’s flinging them open and running, it seems, between rooms makes me nervous: shoving the windows back, flinging the curtains out; Jade, full of aggressive movement, and I can’t figure out whether she’s happy or angry or drunk. My eyes search the building and she keeps surfacing in places I can’t pick. She keeps switching between floors. Downstairs now, the sight of the open door startles her. She stops. Looks around. I smile; pleased that she suspects som
ething. That’s my girl – still attuned to danger.

  Jade walks slowly down the hall towards the open door. I can see the negligee is short, shimmering slightly as she moves through patches of filtered sun. At the entrance she grabs her arms as if suddenly aware of her near nakedness. My head spins, must be the whiskey; she is gorgeous, fragile. I stare at her over the tops of my knees. I won’t make my move until she closes the door.

  When the door opens Jade is still wearing the white slip and I’m standing there with a complimentary white towel from the pool wrapped around my waist. Our mutual semi-nakedness could be commented on but we seem to cancel each other out. I tell myself it’s because we both like the view but Jade doesn’t seem surprised.

  Well, she says, drink?

  I could use another.

  She ushers me in, waits till I pass and closes the door.

  I don’t suppose this is just a case of good timing, she says to my back as I turn from the hall and survey the sweeping open-plan room.

  Not exactly.

  She comes past me, heading for an elaborate cocktail bar at the far wall, and brushes her body against mine. Maybe drunk, maybe on purpose, maybe both. As she prepares our bourbons, I watch her for signs in her face, in her hands, in her gestures, for things that will tell me where I stand. The only thing I notice is the slight aversion of her eyes. I’ve no doubt she’s just fucked Harvey: her nakedness early on and the way her hair is kind of matted at the back suggests it. Getting caught out like this shouldn’t really make her coy. She is trying to seduce me; at least that’s what I keep telling myself. I fight the converse image of her and Harvey fucking. I take small solace in the fact of her dry hair. At the idea she hasn’t extended the connection between them enough to have the post-fuck shower with him.