Loner

by Georgina Young

  ‘You can be a train driver with me,’ Tab offers.

  ‘I honestly can’t tell if you’re joking.’

  ‘Neither can I.’ She cackles, and then sighs. ‘I’m going to break up with Nick.’ She says it like a premonition, like an oracle, like there’s no way she can stop it.

  Lona doesn’t know what to say. She feels suddenly, unexpectedly sorry for him and his not-knowing.

  ‘He’s so nice to me, Lone, and I’m so nice to him.’ She leans backs against the railing, eyes half shut. ‘I’m unhappy and I need to get my shit together.’

  Nick’s lounge room

  Tab goes to the loo and Lona wanders back inside. The party’s dead, just Nick sitting in one chair and George in the other. Lona feels the cascading progression from surprise to elation to panic. Her nose prickles with the smell of pot. George has the joint pegged lazily between his knuckles. ‘Hi,’ he says.

  ‘Hi,’ she says.

  The longing is a swarm of wasps: painful, buzzing. His gaze on her is like peroxide. She can feel the surface of her skin begin to peel.

  She glances at Nick, wonders if he knows that Tab’s thinking of ending things. She wonders if Tab will even go through with it. Tab says these things. She makes pronouncements, pledges, vows. Cuts her metaphorical hand with the metaphorical blade and swears Outlander is the greatest TV show she’s ever seen. Everything is absolute until it suddenly isn’t. Until she stops watching Outlander three episodes into the first season. Lona never knows how seriously she should take her, even about the serious stuff.

  ‘Tab’s tired,’ she tells him. ‘She was heading to bed.’

  George passes Nick the joint and Nick takes a slow, savouring drag before handing it back. ‘Yeah, cool. I’ll see how she’s doing.’

  He gets up and leaves them alone. George is staring at the blank television. He is just this side of: pleasantly baked. Lona is unfortunately just this side of: feeling the alcohol whatsoever. She waves a hand at the armchair Nick vacated. ‘You mind?’

  He shrugs.

  Lona sits, crossing her legs at the ankle like a proper lady. She checks her phone and thumbs at the screen like she’s dealing with something important, not just opening and closing Shazam repeatedly. George says, ‘I thought you must’ve left.’

  She nods. ‘I was about to head off.’

  He looks at his watch. ‘Shit, it’s only 10.15. This party sucks.’ He grins at her and even though he’s cooked and that’s probably the only reason he’s being nice to her, it makes her insides swim with affection.

  ‘I’m sorry, George,’ she says. ‘I’d never done it before, so I didn’t know how to do it so it didn’t hurt.’ She frowns, hearing the words back. ‘To be clear, I’m talking about breaking up, not sex.’

  He laughs groggily. ‘Lona, it always hurts. But yeah, you did a shit job.’ He takes a small nip at the burning nub. ‘To be clear, I’m talking about sex, not breaking up.’

  She rolls her eyes, approximately 82 per cent sure he’s joking. ‘Jerk.’

  Nick comes back into the room, barefoot, carrying a black electrical cord that he tosses at George. ‘Try that. I used to use it with my MIDI keyboard, but I think the connection is the same.’

  George looks at the plug. ‘Hm, yeah. Thanks.’

  ‘Bad news is, we’re hitting the sack, so…’ Nick glances between Lona and George, says, ‘What’s that song? Closing time, time for you to leave…’ He not only butchers the lyrics, but also the melody, in a voice that Lona finds satisfyingly lacking. ‘Unless you want to crash,’ he offers. ‘Which is a-ok.’

  ‘Nah, I’m going to head home,’ Lona says, standing.

  She half-expects George to get up beside her and declare: me too. She half-expects them to slip backwards into being with each other. Half-expects him to get into the Uber with her, to wait until they’re standing on her front porch to kiss her. To stand there groping each other so long that the sensor light goes out and then it’s just them in the dark until she says, ‘You want to come in?’ And then there would be the being with him. She half-expects it to be like that, easy like there was never anything in between.

  But he says, ‘I might crash if that’s all right.’

  Lona orders an Uber and Tab appears in her Golden Snitch pyjamas with her hair in Pippi Longstocking plaits like she’s worn to bed since she was seven. She pulls a face when she sees George. ‘You good?’ she whispers to Lona.

  Lona nods but she is secretly devastated because she half-expected that George would beg her to take him back and she half-wanted to agonise over taking him back. Nick pulls the bed out of the folding couch and George goes to the bathroom and Lona’s Uber arrives and Tab walks her to the front gate in her ugg boots, all the while Lona looking back over her shoulder.

  ‘You can’t have it both ways, Lone,’ she says.

  Lona says, ‘Neither can you.’

  Tab hugs her and Lona hugs her back.

  The worst advice

  Sim turns Frank over in her hands and then passes it to Rach. ‘It’s cool,’ she says. Rach leafs through the pages, running a finger over the twisted masking tape and the paint spills. ‘Very…cool,’ Sim repeats.

  ‘It’s shit, isn’t it?’ Lona says, dismayed, hope deflating, the indifference as scalding as a blistering critique.

  ‘No, it’s not shit,’ Sim says quickly. ‘It’s just…what is it?’

  Rach turns the book upside down and says, ‘Ooh, Fred Basset!’

  Lona slumps down onto the couch. ‘I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what it’s for. I just made it and it’s pointless and stupid. Do you think I would make a good train driver?’

  Sim takes the book back from Rach and flicks through it. ‘No,’ she says. ‘I think you should make more of these.’

  ‘You said it was cool,’ Lona argues.

  ‘Cool is a good thing.’

  Lona shakes her head. ‘Cool is what I say when I can’t think of anything nice to say.’

  ‘That’s because you’re a shit person,’ Sim says. ‘I say cool, I mean cool.’ She hands the book back to Lona. ‘Just do what you want to do.’

  Lona groans and leans her head back into the couch. ‘That’s the worst advice I’ve ever received.’

  A spattering of banter

  It starts with something like a throwaway:

  the matrix s on 11

  SWITCH ON UR TV NOW

  She messages:

  Way ahead of you Specs (SMIRKING FACE) Do you think I could pull off a full-length leather jacket?

  It’s a spattering of banter throughout the film about Hugo Weaving’s sunglasses that turns into something like a conversation, or whatever passes for conversation when people interact through the tapping of thumbs.

  They’ve been going on-and-off for four days when Sampson messages:

  going to a bar tonite thats got games n pinball

  dont know if ur interested

  Sampson types fast at the expense of grammar and punctuation. She hopes this is also the reason he spells like she used to on RaNdom Gurrrl, the blog she made when she was ten years old.

  Lona looks at the invitation and gets a squirmy gut feeling that’s the usual swill bucket of anxiety and anticipation.

  She knows that Sampson has a girlfriend. She knows that and she would never do anything. Not unless he did first. She’s not the kind of person who’d get between people. Not unless he made it clear he and Melanie were done. Which he won’t and so she won’t, and therefore the verdict is: it’s fine.

  It’s all morally and emotionally fine.

  She replies:

  I’m interested.

  Commodore 64

  The bar is in Collingwood, which is further north than she’d usually trek, and she spends the entire train and then number 86 tram ride telling herself it’s not just because of Sampson.

  She reminds herself that she has never been in love with Sampson, and that love is just a strong like, and she finds it difficult to s
trongly like anyone for an extended period of time.

  The bar is called Commodore 64. It is essentially an arcade for people who can legally consume alcohol. There are screens and hoop machines. There are chess boards and a giant Jenga set and blink-182 on the sound system. Lona finds Sampson down the back hunched over a Lord of the Rings: The Twin Towers pinball machine with half a dozen other sweaty, excited young men. She recognises a couple from the Buffy trivia night. One she doesn’t remember says, ‘You’re the girl who passed out at Sampson’s.’

  Sampson gives his friend a shove. ‘Lona, you’re here.’

  Melanie is not here. This feels significant, but it is probably not. Lona makes sure her hopes are kept at a base minimum. Keeping her hopes at a base minimum has sustained Lona for many a year now and she’s not about to change tack.

  ‘You want a drink?’ Sampson asks. One of the others produces a jug of beer and a grotty glass she is 99 per cent certain was just swiped off a nearby table.

  ‘I might check out the bar,’ she says.

  Butterbeer

  Sampson buys her a Butterbeer, and a couple of drinks down the track she buys him a Malteser Falcon. ‘It’s like a milkshake with burning in it,’ he says. They play chess while they’re still sober enough, and then clamber in and out of whatever arcade machines are free.

  She drags Sampson into the photo booth. ‘First one, nice one. Second, stupid. Third, freestyle,’ she instructs. When it spits the photos out it’s just three indistinguishable frames of them cacking themselves.

  It’s sweltering inside the bar and after a bit Lona needs water. She sits by herself on a padded bench seat, waiting for an attractive nerd to spot her and decide that she is: the perfect girl. Sampson joins her after a bit, sitting close enough she can feel the heat radiating off him. He’s got sweat at his temples. Lona wants him so much it hurts.

  ‘Where’s Melanie?’ she finds herself asking.

  Sampson frowns and his cheeks get hot. ‘Home.’

  ‘Why isn’t she here?’

  ‘Lona.’

  She realises she has hit a nerve. She wonders if she feels vindicated, or even happy. Mostly, she feels the Butterbeer. ‘Come on,’ she says. ‘I want to play Dance Dance Revolution.’

  Every Thursday night

  Going to Commodore 64 is apparently something Sampson and his friends do every Thursday night. Lona soon finds herself among the people who are weekly called, messaged or a barrage of both, until she confirms that she’s coming. She doesn’t stay out as long as the others, because she’s the only one who lives south of the river. The train ride home is always an adventure she is too tired to enjoy. She Ubers home from the station, or walks if the night is clear enough and the vibe pleasant enough that she isn’t afraid she’s about to be blamed in tomorrow’s paper for her own murder.

  What she finds is that she enjoys being with Sampson, because it is easy. It feels good to be friendly and all the things that being a friend entails: the smiles and nudges and stories. She thinks: this is enough. And it is, mostly. She misses the closeness she had with George, but the thought of being that close to Sampson, to anyone else, still nauseates her.

  She gets to know Sampson’s friends and their degrees and their favourite television shows. She develops feelings for approximately 55 per cent of them.

  When they start calling her Ramona Flowers, she is so happy she could die. Tab would say: the manic pixie dream girl is a male fantasy. But it feels so good to wear black chokers and pink tights and tight denim shorts and have boys look at her. It feels so good to believe the things they believe about her.

  She can be her over-analytical, self-defeating self anytime. She’s not going to waste an opportunity to be someone else.

  Smith Street

  Sampson follows her out of the bar, stumbling slightly on the step. She pretends she hasn’t seen and he pretends he doesn’t know she’s pretending.

  ‘Argh, I can’t be bothered getting home,’ she complains.

  ‘Stay at mine,’ he says.

  This should never have been said and both of them are aware of this and so it is no big deal. She just says, ‘Argh, I hate that you make me come all the way over here.’

  She’s thinking she’s just going to Uber home. She has the app up and she can see all the drivers in their black cars whirling around in her hand.

  She catches the toe of her boot on the pavement and trips slightly. Sampson catches her arm and this time they both pretend that they can’t feel the hot of each other’s skin.

  ‘Four minutes until Arjun arrives,’ Lona announces, looking at her phone. Sampson’s just standing there now, at her side. He’s blushing, or drunk. Lona looks at him and his hair and his face and his daggy t-shirt and she finds herself saying, ‘I like you, Sampson. As in I’m into you. You know that. I mean, you know that, right?’

  He blinks and says nothing, which is probably the appropriate reaction. He finally says, ‘Oh.’ Arjun is pulling around the corner. Sampson’s eyes are going from side to side like he’s doing some sort of equation in his head and then he ducks his head slightly and Lona wonders what he’s doing and she realises he’s about to kiss her and she steps back.

  He stares at her. ‘Oh,’ he says again.

  There is too much drink, too much blood, too much night in her head. Sampson is pulling at his shirtsleeves and avoiding her eye and she doesn’t know what she wants. She remembers: this is what you want.

  She reaches and gets his jaw and she kisses him. Lona mouth on Sampson mouth. They’re still too-warm and clammy from the bar. A couple of nerds making out on the footpath, and he’s not very good at it, or she’s not very good at it, but then no, that’s just how it is at the beginning. Just the way it is when you’re working out how to be with someone else, how to get inside someone else.

  She can feel the want between her legs and she pulls away for a second and there he is, Sampson, and for a moment she’s horrified about the fact she’s got Sampson’s spit in her mouth. And she realises: this is not what you want.

  Lona’s phone buzzes. It’s Arjun calling, wanting to know where she is. He is idling at the kerb. She is idling at the kerb. There’s a part of Lona that wants to go with Sampson, even as she’s realising a whole lot of her doesn’t.

  ‘Lona,’ he says.

  She doesn’t know how to tell him the truth. That she wants to fuck everyone she ever meets. That she doesn’t want to fuck anyone.

  ‘Goodnight,’ she says, and gets in the car.

  Next week

  Sampson doesn’t call or message. Thursday swings around again and there’s no invitation to Commodore 64. She’s glad and hurt.

  She finds herself wanting him again, the way she always does. It’s easy when he’s not there, when no one is.

  It’s just feelings though. Effervescent, unremarkable feelings. It’s just feeling lonely.

  The following Thursday she gets a message:

  u in fr the commie?

  Commie being slang for the most un-political bar that ever existed. Lona stares at the message and thinks she’s probably going to fuck it up eventually, but if that philosophy stopped her from doing things, she would have a thoroughly Emily Dickinsonesque existence.

  She goes and they don’t speak about it and it’s weird, but it’s not the worst.

  ‘I’ll see you next week?’ Sampson says at the end of the night.

  She says, ‘Yeah, why not.’

  Youth Saver

  Lona hasn’t checked her bank account in a couple of weeks. She has been applying the if I can’t see you, you can’t see me rule to her balance. Rach hands Lona a post-it note like she always does when it’s that time of month.

  One post-it note for Sim and one for Lona. One ball-busting number on each. ‘Gas has gone up,’ Rach tells them. Lona looks at her post-it note. An amount of money she doubts she can cover and a smiley face. She brings up the dreaded Youth Saver account on her phone. She has $758.43. It is enough to cover this mo
nth’s rent, but that’s about it.

  Lona transfers Rach the money and a fist of anxiety grasps the back of her throat. She knows there’s only one thing she can do.

  Out in the lounge, Sim and Rach are having dinner. Lona hovers at the edge of the room divider, watches them. These girls she has so very little in common with. Rach with her horoscopes and her granola. Sim with her MDMA stashed in her sock drawer.

  ‘Hey,’ Lona says. ‘I’ve got some bad news.’

  Moving back out

  Dad drives around with the station wagon and helps Lona load all her things into the back. Rach makes him goji berry tea and sits with him while he drinks it. She laughs at every second thing he says. Lona has the distinct feeling that Rach is angling to be her new mummy. She says, ‘Dad, we’ve got the bed left and that’s it.’

  ‘Lucky you didn’t buy a new one,’ he remarks.

  Lona looks at her bed, sitting stripped at the end of the room. It can fit on the roof of the wagon, which is a plus. It can fit almost anywhere.

  Rach and Sim have a new girl moving in next week. It feels like the end of an era. Everything feels like the end of an era.

  There are hugs and nice things said.

  In the car on the way home, they listen to the Beaches: Original Soundtrack Recording that has been stuck in Dad’s car stereo for almost three years. He says, ‘It’ll be good to have you home.’

  Hipster cafe

  Ben gets a promotion at work and wants to take the family out for lunch. He chooses a hipster cafe in Bentleigh. Lona orders hot chips and they come out under a glass dome. The waiter lifts it away with a flourish and sets the wooden board down. There was smoke inside the dome and it curls up into the ceiling. The chips taste like she’s sticking her mouth into the ash of a bonfire. The world is, undeniably, insane.

  Harriet says, ‘To Ben!’