The True Story of Butterfish

by Nick Earls

  He had picked up the corkscrew, ready to open the second bottle of wine, but instead he set it back down on the table, its arms folded in to its sides. I wanted to tell him there were spas all over the suburb happy to swing like it was the seventies at Hef’s place. I had no idea if it was true, and suspected it wasn’t, but I liked the line. It was very Kate, in a way that Derek had no prospect of appreciating. He was welcome to the cleanest colon in LA, the best biscuits and all the strippers he could fit into his Romance Two.

  ‘I’ve said my piece,’ I told him, just to let him know I was finished and there would be no haranguing. ‘This is me trying to have balls, trying not to be the shit communicator. You will regret this. That’s what I’m telling you.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Yeah, okay.’

  And he turned away from me and looked out towards the road, following the ducking, weaving path of a large pale moth as it flew away from the light.

  I made Derek French toast again for his final breakfast.

  He sat with his phone flipped open in his hand saying, ‘Are you seriously telling me there’s no one I can phone to get some bacon? In LA I could make a call and there would be bacon.’

  ‘There would not be bacon. You have never called anyone in LA for bacon.’

  He groaned. Mineral water fizzed in the glass in front of him. ‘But I know I could. See?’

  He seemed to have forgotten that we had lived together in Malibu for months when we were recording the last album, and stayed in perhaps ten LA hotels at other times. I was not some groupie who would be impressed with boasts about dial-up bacon. I whisked the French toast mixture, though it was probably ready to go.

  ‘Hey, neighbours sometimes have bacon, right?’ he said. He pushed his chair back and stood up.

  ‘This’ll be fine without bacon.’

  But there was no stopping him. ‘I’m going to go and knock on their door,’ he said. ‘In tried and true neighbourly fashion. Then some time they can come to you for sugar, or whatever.’ He was already moving, heading towards the driveway.

  ‘Take the short way,’ I told him. ‘Go out the back and through the hole in the hedge. Everyone does at one time or another. If you’re going to be neighbourly, you might as well get it right. And time’s a-wasting. We’ve got to start thinking about the airport.’

  I put the bowl down and started to make myself a coffee as I watched Derek stride out across the yard, the well-honed beefy triangle of his upper body carried along by his unworked legs. Tight pants, tight T-shirt putting it all on show, in a place where there was no one to appreciate it. He pushed through the hedge at a point where I couldn’t see a gap, and I saw him go up the front steps towards the door. He was out of the house again in a minute, and turning towards me with a bacon rasher hanging from each hand, proud as a boy who had just landed two small fish.

  I dipped the bread into the mixture, and I oiled the pan.

  ‘They’re good people,’ he said as he came in the back door. ‘You know, I think they liked it, the whole neighbour thing.’

  It was a performance, still, for him, like everything else. On the table, his phone buzzed as he presented me with the bacon. He picked it up, looked at the number.

  ‘Hey, it’s Pia,’ he said. ‘Do you hear from her much?’ She was the band’s Sydney manager, and he wasn’t looking for an answer. He was already taking the call. ‘Hey Pia, what’s happening? ... No, no, it’s only a brief visit.’ I could hear her voice, explaining something to him, but I couldn’t make out the words. ‘Okay, yeah. I’ll talk to Curtis. I’m at his house. We’ll give you a call back in a few minutes.’ He flipped the phone shut and put it down on the table. ‘Someone’s sent Who a photo of us buying groceries yesterday. They want to give it a run.’

  ‘Since they don’t give groceries anywhere near enough coverage, obviously.’ I could have done without it, but it was his last day here and we had only been buying food. That could be public, if they wanted it to be.

  ‘And, naturally, they want to know if the band’s getting back together.’

  ‘So, what do we say? Only for the purposes of meal preparation?’

  ‘Yeah, why not?’ His hand reached down to the phone again, and he gave it a spin on the table. ‘I’d happily tell them I was missing your French toast.’

  ‘Good. So, no band. And they’ll push a bit harder and we tell them we remain friends and that you just happened to be in town on a flying visit. And, guess what, you’ve already flown. Nothing parental.’

  ‘Too easy. Sounds like the dullest thing I’ve done in ages. Perfect. And why don’t I go back to LA and create a diversion? Just to help you settle safely back into suburban obscurity.’ He smiled a cocky smile that I had known some women to like. ‘Now, get cooking. I didn’t finesse that bacon for you to just stand there with it.’

  He left the room, finesse having not entered into his day, and perhaps life, so far. I dropped the bacon into the pan, and swirled the bread once more around in the mixture. He came back with his backpack and set it down on a chair, with his leather jacket folded over the top.

  ‘Ah, LA,’ he said, pretending to be wistful. ‘It’s already been far too long since I almost had sex with a D-grade celebrity.’ He sat down, picked up his knife and fork and readied himself for the food. ‘I’ll come back,’ he said. ‘In a month or so. When he’s doing the radiotherapy. It’ll be shitty, and I’ll be calling on you for soup. I’ll sort the tickets out today, when I get to the airport. I’ve decided. So leave the sheets on my bed, okay?’

  I turned the bacon, and dropped the first piece of bread into the pan. It hit with a sizzle and steam rose in a cloud.

  ‘I might even wash them for you. I can do fresh sheets.’

  There was mail sticking out of the box when I arrived back from the airport – a credit card bill, junk mail from two real estate agents who insisted they had cashed-up purchasers roaming the area and set to pounce on a place just like mine. On the bottom of the mailbox was a pile of folded sheets of paper, maybe eight sheets altogether. This was my fish-feeding instructions, printed single-spaced, and Mark had written ‘Thanx’ in black pen at the top of the first page. The level of detail was meticulous, and he had included several pages covering warning signs of illness and appropriate courses of action. Page one opened with the lines ‘DO NOT LET MY MOTHER SEE THIS. DO NOT LET MY MOTHER KNOW IT’S ONE PEA PER FISH OR LET HER KNOW HOW MANY FISH THERE ARE’, after which he had added, in brackets, ‘I think she thinks I’ve got about five and they eat their own weight in peas every Friday.’

  The two pages at the back were held together by a staple. On the first, Mark had written ‘A sample of my work’ in the top left-hand corner in his characteristic precise capitals. The text was double-spaced, and nothing to do with fish. It was his piece about the panel beater who bumped into the girl he had once met at art school. Her nipples were hard from the beginning, and porn ensued quickly. At one point he actually used the expression ‘gave her the old jelly necklace’. In a final flourish – though heavy with irony, I was certain – he had scrawled an autograph at the bottom of the second page.

  I could imagine him, several suburbs away in a classroom, paying scant attention to the business at hand and smiling his cracked smile to himself as he thought about me working through the instructions and finding this.

  I decided those two pages would stay at my house when I went to feed the fish in the late afternoon. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with them. Did he want feedback? Could I throw them out? If Who could end up with a photo of me buying groceries with Derek, was there even a minute chance Mark’s porn might resurface from my recycling bin in a way that would do no good? ‘It’s okay. It was just written by the kid next door. He’s very creative...’ And soon enough my hard drive would be getting a good working over, and it wouldn’t matter that there was nothing there to find, because that piece of news always comes weeks later and isn’t news at all.

  Before I put his story dow
n on the kitchen table, I folded it so the words weren’t face up. Then I put a magazine on it. Which made it look as if I was hiding it. So I pulled it out again, thought about shredding it. All of a sudden, Mark’s story and Annaliese’s clothes felt as if they were beeping like EPIRBs in some Child Safety crisis bunker.

  I went into my bedroom and found the clothes at the back of the wardrobe. I lifted the bag out and, without opening it, bundled the clothes and Mark’s story up in an old jumper that suddenly seemed as big as a bear pelt. Then I pushed it deep into an already full moth-proof storage bag, zipped it up, took my fish notes from the kitchen table, and I left.

  Kate was still in her work uniform when she opened the door. She had her ‘Kate’ and ‘Manager’ badges in her hand.

  ‘Oh, hi,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t expecting you just yet.’ Her hair looked as though it had just burst free, and she reached for it self-consciously and gathered it with her other hand. ‘Not that there’s any official fish-feeding time. Come on in.’

  She took half a step back and I noticed she was barefoot. She put her badges in her pocket and gave her hair a practised twist with both hands and tucked it somehow into itself. She was looking at the folded sheets of paper I was holding.

  ‘Notes. Instructions.’ I didn’t unfold them, since the capitalised lines about her were at the top of the first page. ‘Mark’s ten-point plan for feeding the fish. And thanks for the bacon this morning. Derek has this thing about French toast and bacon.’

  ‘ Your French toast and bacon apparently. He made a big deal of that. It’s so nice that men can put their differences aside over the right recipe.’

  ‘Well, you know, all those fist fights get tiresome after a while. And it’s quite a recipe.’

  ‘I’ll have to try it some day. Try making it some day. I’m not expecting you to cook me breakfast.’ Her cheeks started to redden and she went ‘ha’. Her mouth was open and the sound seemed to fall out before she closed it. She turned away from me and began to walk towards the kitchen. Over her shoulder she said, ‘You’ll be wanting the peas then?’

  Her feet had high arches and her calves were toned from running. Then came the blunt line of the bottom of the burgundy skirt. It didn’t look right on her.

  ‘It’s all about the peas,’ I said as I followed her. ‘That’s what the expert tells me.’

  ‘They’re in the freezer.’ She led me into the kitchen and pulled the freezer door open, flapping the letter from school that was attached to it by a row of magnets. The largest magnet was a calendar from a local politician, and under his smiling face the letter tiles D, I, L, D and O had mysteriously taken the place of his name. DILDO, MP. ‘I’m not sure why he can’t trust me to handle a few peas.’

  She swung the door shut and handed me the half-full bag. There was a note curled around the rubber band that kept it closed, Mark’s writing: ‘ONLY FOR FISH’.

  ‘We just got talking about the fish one day. I said I’d help out, if he wanted.’

  ‘I should be grateful, if he’s putting his energy into fish instead of poo-in-the-sports-car stories. So, thanks for helping.’ She looked uncomfortable, as if caught for a moment by the wish that his life wouldn’t need all this analysis, and then she said, ‘Oh,’ and crossed the room and took a plate from the cupboard. ‘You might need this for the microwave.’

  I counted out the peas and added a few more in case any exploded or couldn’t be peeled.

  ‘They love their peas, don’t they?’ she said. She was leaning against the counter, one leg crossed over the other at the ankles. ‘Are you done for the day? Work-wise, I mean. Do you want a beer after you’ve done the fish?’

  I set the timer on the microwave and watched the plate start to turn slow circles in the yellow light. ‘I can’t think of anything better than a beer after this.’ The house had the heat of the day closed up in it and my shirt was starting to stick to me. I could feel sweat running down my back. I had nowhere to be, nothing to do. A beer seemed like a good prospect, like a thing people with lives did. A beer with Kate, late on a hot Friday afternoon.

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘I needed an excuse to get started on one. And you’ll do.’ She put her hand to her collar and rearranged it. ‘And since Mark’s away I do actually have beer in the house. I picked up a six-pack on the way home.’

  The microwave pinged. I tested the peas, and they seemed ready. Soft, luke-warm, not steaming. That’s what the instructions called for.

  ‘Well, here goes. If they’re all belly-up tomorrow you can at least report that I got the peas right.’

  ‘If they’re all belly-up tomorrow I won’t know, since I don’t get to go into the room, remember?’ She pushed herself away from the counter and stood to her full height. ‘Now, go and pea and I’ll get the beers out.’

  I opened the door to Mark’s room, bracing myself for the sight of dead fish, or fin rot, or a low-lying slow swimmer with swim-bladder disorder. I’d read my notes. All was well though. The fish danced and flared and made the kind of fuss they were supposed to. One pea after another, I split the outer case and dropped the soft inner mush into the tanks. How did these fish cope in the wild? How did they survive in the hoof prints of water buffaloes if they needed such delicate handling here? Did Thai farmers walk the fields squeezing lukewarm peas into hoof prints?

  I heard Kate walking past down the hall, and her bedroom door shutting. With the girls done, I went over to the barracks to feed the boys, and they tossed and jumped and seemed more interested in scaring me than in the slowly sinking pea mush. Kate’s door opened again, and her feet padded past along the hall. In the kitchen, she started singing softly to herself, then stopped abruptly and cleared her throat, as if that was what she’d been doing all along. The fridge door opened and shut. Two bottle tops landed on the counter, sounding like coins.

  When I went out there, she was in a navy one-piece swimsuit, with her hair in a plait and a towel around her waist. She had another towel in her hand, and she held it out to me.

  ‘It’s stupidly hot,’ she said. ‘And the pool’s right there. Might as well have the beer in it. And I figured you could swim in your shorts if you wanted to. It’s not as if you’ve got far to go afterwards.’

  I took the towel, and the ice-cold Stella. A cockatoo gave a big scratchy squawk somewhere over the backyard. In the distance, a car or two trundled along Gap Creek Road.

  ‘Why not?’ The towel was a huge old-fashioned twenty-dollar note. I’d had one of the same design in the eighties. Charles Kingsford-Smith’s head hadn’t been quite right on it, and he’d ended up looking like my history teacher, but with a squint. ‘If I was back at my place I’d sit in the airconditioning, which is in the studio. So that’d mean I’d work. Which I don’t want to do right now.’

  ‘Mmm,’ she said. ‘Good. To the pool then.’

  She undid her towel at the pool gate and hung it on the fence. Kate had the Hollywood body of another era, when women had curves rather than angles, before anyone thought zero was a size.

  She moved quickly down the three steps and into the pool, sending a wave out in front of her. She held her beer up carefully, and let the ripples hit the underside of her other hand as she held it out flat. She turned, half smiling. The sun was behind her now. High in a gum tree, the cockatoo squawked again.

  I thought of Derek and his lollipop-bodied girls, Hef, LA, the grotto and waterfall and wishing well of the Playboy Mansion. The being seen, being noticed, being there. That odd unreal world with its stone façade like an expensive private school, its own set of airs and graces and its cheap-movie-set aesthetic out the back. Everything was probably authentic, but the grotto in particular managed to look as though it wasn’t, as if it was made instead of painted plaster on moulded chickenwire, like a Disneyland ride, and would ring hollow if you rapped it with your knuckles.

  Here the stinking heat was real, the woman in the pool was real. The smell of the parched bush, the bickering birds, all real.

&nb
sp; ‘Come on,’ Kate said.

  I put down my beer and my phone, and pressed the face of Charles Kingsford-Smith between two black steel fence uprights to wedge the towel in place. I peeled my shirt up over my body and the sun glared on my white abdomen. There were whale jokes in my head, harpoon jokes, but I couldn’t make them work. Kate was sweeping her free hand idly back and forth across the surface of the water. I wanted her to look away, but I couldn’t find a way to make her.

  I almost stumbled as I went down the steps, but turned it into a kind of surge that perhaps looked less self-conscious, and my bow wave washed across the pool and slapped into the dark blue tiles on the other side. With a couple of kicks, Kate drifted towards me, and I put in some one-armed breast-stroke that sent me her way.

  We hovered at the shady edge of the pool, our bodies bright and distorted in the water. I drank a mouthful of beer, and set the stubbie on the pebbledash. We were half facing each other, maybe more than half.

  The sun fell on Kate’s errant hair as sprays of it drifted free from her plait, the end of which was now doused in pool water. She moved towards me as though to kiss me, but I was stuck where I was and she stopped, checked her move. She gave me a look as if the light had fallen a different way and she had just noticed something for the first time.

  ‘You don’t want to break my daughter’s heart,’ she said, as though she’d outsmarted me, sifted through my thoughts and found that I wanted her, but found that one somewhere in there too.

  She groaned, and splashed me, doused me with a faceful of water. She gave a wise laugh, and shook her head.

  ‘I don’t think I can explain Annaliese’s heart,’ I said. I wondered what she knew, what she thought she knew. My pulse clattered along. It rang in my head like heels on a fire escape. I was sure she could hear it, see it, and all the guilt with it too.

  ‘She’s got quite a crush on you,’ she said. ‘And you know it. And then you gave her that robe. I found it in her room. She said you gave it to her. I assume she didn’t just take it. That wouldn’t be like her.’