How it feels (35 page)

‘Hello little baaaa-beeeee. Shall we call you Couuuuuuurtney?' she said, her voice squeaking up into the thin cold air.

‘What baby?' I asked her. ‘What's this baby?'

‘Our baby, our new baby.'

‘What new baby?'

‘Shut up,' she said.

I looked out the window and a red bus passed by with passengers in it. Could they see inside this bathroom of hell, did they wonder what it was like for us, or were they just hungry for dinner and a sit on the couch.

‘Courtney,' she asked again. ‘Do you like that for a girl?'

I would have answered, but the bath began to change.

‘Swanna, what's going on?' I said, red and pink filling the spaces, expanding and deepening in sections of dissolution.

I fucking freaked as Swanna blankly watched the blood exit herself and fill the tub with colour, like grenadine, like any cordial did. She touched it, lifting out a small bit of red congealment, and held it up to me as I pushed back onto the taps.

‘I think we are to be punished,' she said to me, as if this was exactly what she expected, as if this was the next bulleting point.

‘Swanna, what are you saying? Why is there all this blood?!'

‘I think God is killing our children for all the stupid art we have made. He killed our first one, now he is killing this one, then he will kill us.'

I stood up in the bath and looked down at her, once the most calm and gracious girl, at one with nature and free as a bird and brilliant too. Now she looked utterly possessed, her eyes insane, peering up at me as I held onto the shower curtain in fear. Even through the murk of drugs I could see just how far we had gone, and how close to the edge of each other, and death, we both were.

‘Bye bye, baby Courtney,' she said to me in her baby voice.

‘Courtney's not dead, Swanna, she's not our baby and she's not dead. You need to centre yourself, she's not dead…'

‘She
lives
!' Swanna laughed maniacally at this. ‘Oh, but how silly of me! Ha ha, of course! She lives indeed, she is inside your heart, she always has been, and she treks down your heart into your balls and you blew her out your dick – you shot her right up into my womb this devil girl – this devil girl grows into a little baby Courtney and because little baby Courtney hates her mother Swanna, she kills her from the inside and she –' Swanna dunked her mouth in the bloody bath then spat the red water at me, a line of pinkness dripping down her scabby chin. ‘You could have told me but then you never tell me and this is how it feels.'

‘Swanna, I don't know what you're talking about, there is
no
demon, and I said sorry, we were reaching out, I thought I had lost you.'

‘You killed me,' she said. ‘You killed all of us. You and Courtney and your pretty little beach, run away to her, you are with her now – oh you are, under umbrellas in the sun, aren't you? Planning your next quest, to slaughter girls from other towns.'

‘Swan, I think I should call a doctor for us now.'

‘There is no phone in hell, Neil, you should know that.'

And with that she stood up straight in the bath and, facing me, she held out her hands. I took her hands in mine but I didn't squeeze for they felt so frail.

‘Baby, I love you, but you're scaring me,' I said.

‘I will go now, to Sri Lanka, I've never been home before,' she said, and climbed out of the bath, dripping blood and water on floor.

‘Don't stop me,' she said as she went, and that was the last time I saw Swanna. Another girl walking naked away from me past mirrors across tiles.

The door opened and Courtney was in the bathroom and she had not seen me yet. She went to the toilet and was about to pull her pants down when she noticed me, pipe still smoking, in a linen suit in her new bathtub.

‘What the fuck!' she squealed.

‘Hey,' I said, waving with my free hand.

Courtney rushed to the door and slammed it shut and lock ed it.

‘You locking me in? Nice,' I said, grinning at her from within my buzz.

‘What the fuck are you doing in my bathroom? Are you on drugs?'

‘Meth.'

‘Fuck, Neil. Gordon will eat your head if he sees you in here with that.'

‘Tasty,' I said, and laughed.

She looked down at her skirt with dismay. ‘I was about to take a shit right in front of you!'

‘I know, right? How fucked up is
that
!' I laughed again and she almost did, but instead she turned stern and pointed to the door all confused now. Why had she locked us in here?

‘You have to get out of here now, please.'

‘Ok.'

‘I can't have you in here.'

‘Neil Cronk is exiting the renovated bathroom!'

I stood up and met the meth. It was punchy and big and it made my body quiver with every ripple of breath. Courtney unlocked the door for me and I went to leave but instead I craned my neck towards her and kissed her on the mouth. She kissed me back for 1.8 seconds, her tongue featuring then retreating swiftly into the turtle shell of its fucking conscience. I had my hands tight on her arse and pulled her towards me again but this time she pushed me off into the doorframe and I laughed at the scuffle.

‘You kissed me back!'

‘Get the fuck out of here, Neil.'

‘You get the fuck out of here!'

‘Neil, you're on drugs and you are scaring me. Please leave the bathroom, get your things and go home.'

‘What home?' I asked, moving towards her. ‘What nice big home do I got? What nice big renovator's dream? Bring a paintbrush! Rear lane access! Ocean glimpses!'

‘Nelly, it's me,' she said, pathetic with fright.

I was inches from her face, following her round the mega bathroom, smiling sharp and cocksure into her eyes and soul.

‘You have a say in the renovations?' I asked, pointing at the tiled walls.

‘Neil, I'll fucking scream.'

‘Or did Gordon do it all?' I whispered to her mouth.

‘Leave,' she said, backed up against the shower, her legs long and languid in the pink tights that extended from the cave of her tartan skirt. ‘Leave!'

‘I
did
leave!' I screamed. ‘You never did! Eh, Cronulla girl? Look at you, in your stupid skirt in your stupid bathroom…' I cupped my face in my left hand and reminisced, ‘She had so much inside her, that girl I met in high school, that Courtney Gonzales girl with the big green eyes and the curious, brilliant mind. She's all but given in for a house on the beach and a Woolworths shopping card. I asked her to fly with me but she cut her wings off and played it safe in the suburbs, what a pathetic little chicken, what a disappointing waste of a girl.'

‘I'm going to scream in ten.' And she started counting down but it did not vanquish me, I was so sad for her.

‘You die here, Courtney. Fat and white and bored, you die.'

She was at five with her head turned away.

‘You look for this in me,' I said. ‘Don't you? You look for elsewhere.'

Four.

She was at three when I said, ‘At least Tommy went somewhere else.'

She slapped my face so I grabbed her by the hair and I twisted it in my hands. I held her mouth against the mirror and saliva came out of it.

She screamed and Albert rushed in with Graham. I was carried down the stairs, across the foyer, through the door and onto the lawn, where Albert hurled me onto the path and then kicked me in the middle of my back. I lunged at Albert from the gutter, but he pushed me down again, and then punched me in the neck and my face smacked on the street surface. He was about to kick me again when Gordon came running out and crash-tackled Albert into the car.

‘Leave him!' Gordon cried out. ‘He's not well.'

‘You got that right,' said Albert.

‘Come on, Cronk, we're going for a drive.'

‘I didn't finish my salad,' I said, crawling under the car.

‘There's lots of salad where we're going,' Gordon said. ‘Lots.'

There was a break in the speeches now, a contentious issue throughout the planning process, of which Courtney and I shared much conversation on our walks around Bundeena and our weekly little meets for coffee and cake. While Courtney thought it a good idea to push through the speeches and simply ‘get it done in one fell swoop', Gordon disagreed, citing a much better ploy to split the night up in two parts. Have the MC (Rocky) pump out an intro then bring up the father of the bride (which, due to Eric feeling slightly out of place having only recently returned to their lives from New Zealand, was to be written and spoken by both mother and father of the bride, which was more appropriate, I thought, as Nina was the closest to Courtney after all; she was the reason Courtney had stayed in Cronulla – she was, in my opinion, the reason we were all here tonight, inadvertently, for if she hadn't laid on the Catholic guilt after Tommy's death and Eric's disappearance, and rolled around the house all depressed making fruit whips like a psycho fruit-whip machine, then Courtney could have flown away freely, to find herself, find her place, and possibly find me in this process), then Albert and Shoes were going to do a little bit of character assassination on Gordon for all the men and blokes to relish, and then a forty-five minute break for drinks and dancing, followed up by the best man's speech (how I got that title I had no fucking idea; I nearly killed his fiancée in their renovated bathroom while loaded on crystal meth, nearly fucked her at their engagement party too) then Courtney was to make a speech about Gordon, and Gordon a speech about his wife, his little wife; signed, sealed and delivered in white lace.

Being at a wedding is like being inside a pinball machine; one bounces from trivial conversation to polite conversation to incomprehensible conversation to utterly awkward conversation, ending up somewhere near the corner of the room with a chubby auntie angling for more drinks and a melba toast with smoked salmon and a bit of green something leaf popped on the thing – then WHACK away again.

Flung from corner to corner, beyond all control, I wondered where Sarah Kirkwood had gone. I needed her now so badly – to save me. I hadn't seen her since she went to breastfeed Dylan halfway through Albert and Shoes's compelling tale of Gordon spewing on an old woman in a wheelchair when they were drunk at a Malaysian restaurant in Cockle Bay last April. Michael Shoes and his girlfriend Natalie (senior regional air steward for Virgin Blue) had me surrounded and I couldn't escape for the life of me. Shoes was weighed down with drunkenness and kept repeating himself, which would have been fine if what he was saying was not so reprehensibly earnest. His girlfriend remained quiet the whole way through, she seemed thrilled just to be
with
someone, as if that was enough to get through today, tomorrow, and possibly the rest of her life.

‘Cronk, thing is, now you're back here, in the Shire…'

‘Yep,' I said, moving his wet hand off the back of my neck.

‘It's the right place for you. Wanna know why?'

‘Tell me,' I said, looking around for Sarah, for Courtney, for someone.

‘Shire is about friends and family.'

‘Yes,' I agreed, and I did.

‘That's what you need right now – see when you go away, when you leave the Sutherland Shire…'

‘Shoes, buddy…'

‘Nah, mate, listen!'

‘You've said all this!'

‘No mate…'

‘Ok, mate. I'm going to get a drink now.' I tried to duck under his arm and find some free space up the sideline but he had me back in his clutches before I'd even arched my neck.

‘No, fucken listen to me, Cronk. Nah, nah, nah, mate, thing is you gotta listen to Shoes now cos he knows, he fucken knows! You go away and get all fucken artsy and shit with drugs and shit overseas, not good for you, mate, and you know why not good?'

‘Why not good, Shoes?'

‘No friends and family to hold you up. Friends and family, friends and famileeeeeeee.' He blew beer breath in my face and I didn't know how she kissed him on the mouth, which she would do again tonight after a garlic sauce kebab on the way home. ‘Friends and family are everyfink – they everyfink! And you can fucken travel to any joint, but you'll never get happy proper cos it's here –' he pounded his chest ‘– here in the Shire, the fucken Shire, mate, it's all about friends and family!'

‘That's beautiful, Shoes, thanks for that, you're so right.'

‘And go the mighty Sharks, mate, we got to get to some Sharks games. They're a tough team to follow, mate, forty fruitless years,

but serious, come down to Shark Park with me and Nat one night, it's an experience, mate, an experience! Shark Park in the cold and the dark!'

Eventually Michael Shoes required a cigarette to go with his load and he and Natalie made their way outside – to my enormous relief. My brain was pushing against the front of my skull; I needed to put a litre of vodka in it now. Ideally, I would be lying on my bed, drinking from the bottle and listening to the birds of Bundeena, away from people and their need to tell me what I was missing. I was missing the divine reclusion.

I took a tall plastic cup off the drinks table and filled it with vodka, looking around to see if anyone had noticed this, bar staff or civilian, but as far as I could tell I was safe. I didn't really care if they did notice this act of blatant alcoholism, their thoughts of me were already painted with thick black strokes, it was more that I wanted to be alone while I drank it, and for a moment I was. Leaning on the bar I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and swallowed the clean liquid, and for seconds there was the calm I had come to depend on. Then I was tapped on the shoulder and spun around to face Nina and Eric, awkwardly arm in arm, smiling at me with some grotesque plea of desperation, as if I was the one who would make them feel comfortable again, the only one in the room who could take all the spikes away. Sometimes just looking into someone's eyes could be worse than death, when we got this close, when we got this far apart.