How it feels (37 page)

‘We can make a home together,' she said, her hand on my crotch, stroking the length of my burgeoning cock through my trousers. Sex is family, sex is tomorrow, sex is security, sex is contractual, sex is death.

‘Kids and a house,' I said, biting her ear, and rubbing my forearm between her thighs.

‘You're with me now,' she said, and I kissed her flabby left tit, lifting it out of its strappy home. Her nipple between my teeth, I sucked hard and narrow until she cried out.

‘Be gentle,' she said, ‘I'm just a little thing.'

You're all sturdy netballers down here reared on baked beans and sausages in a can, don't play coy. I grabbed the front of her neck and forced her back into the shower recess wall, her eyes opened in fright as I scooped my arm down under her hem and further, beneath the tightly wound pantyhose. I found the outskirts of her knickers and they were wet so I slid my hand inside and pressed the top of her clitoris with two fingers – I'm going to fuck you against this wall until the future comes.

‘Neil,' she said to me, ‘we can't here.'

‘We can do anything, Sarah. Isn't that what you said?'

As I pushed my fingers inside her pussy and coiled them up inside her, she rocked back, cracking her head against the brick wall. I tightened my grip on her throat; her windpipe worked hard between my thumb and fingers for breath and this was the magic place, this was the perfect oblivion, this was danger and I didn't care where it went from here.

‘Neil, you're choking me,' she said, and for School Prefect I thought she would come up with something less obvious.

‘I know,' I said, and I closed my hand tighter around her larynx.

‘Neil,' she said, ‘you're scaring me!'

‘I'm scaring
you
?' I said, and for a second I blacked out then light returned.

Her neck was pungent now, a horrid cocktail of White Musk, baby spew and acrid sweat. I slammed its flimsy flesh back into the wall as the rest of my hand rose up inside her, she tried to scream but my nose and cheek were in her mouth, her legs tightened on my hand and her body froze as she went, quivering like milk, a foot above the ground, neck bent across the shower head, which fell across her crown like a metal fascinator. She looked dumb so I released her.

‘Fucking hell, Neil,' she said, pulling herself together and reaching for any available air the sea or wind was willing to proffer.

‘It's all good,' I said, and the rain fell like a tissue would fall, soft and wavy in the air, then to the ground without a sound, just as it did last night, when Courtney called me from the hotel and asked me to meet her down by the sea.

We were halfway through a Crowded House mega-mix when the Nokia 8210 Gordon had bought for me rang out beneath the folk. Gordon was on acoustic guitar, I was on vocals, and Albert and the rest of the boys were on percussion (saucepan and chopsticks). The groom and his men were all thrown in together, shacking up at Gordon's massive waterfront home, two miles from where the bridal party were gathered at the Rydges hotel in North Cronulla.

Albert had picked me up from the ferry wharf and driven me to Wanda Beach that afternoon, Gordon handing us a cold beer from a bucket full of cold beers the moment we stepped onto the balcony. I had intended to stay the night, as the restaurant we were heading to was across the road and there was no point travelling all the way back to Bundeena, plus the ferry wrapped things up at 10 pm and I had assumed the pre-wedding dinner would kick on till at least the small hours of the big day. Gordon loved a drink, and he loved to drink lots when he was proud, and he had never been more proud. The dinner was good, I had the lamb shanks, though it was the red wines I still remembered, and even though we were fuck-eyed and full as fuck, Albert still ordered six racks of Rib-a-licious ribs on return, which was when my phone rang, a landline number, from around this 9523 part of town.

‘Hello,' I said, beneath the second chorus of ‘Mean to Me'.

‘Neil, it's me – it's C .'

I stepped away from the band, Gordon asking me who it was with his eyebrows. I waved him off with an ‘oh just someone' gesture and tripped into the palm with a whisper. ‘Courtney… wassup?'

‘Can you come and see me now, please?' she asked, sniffling.

‘What's wrong? Something wrong?' I asked, too pissed to hold the thing.

Gordon had stopped playing guitar and was watching me, intrigued by the way I hid the phone in my hair and neck. Albert was still beating the chopsticks on the pan though, which was annoying, the man had so little rhythm that even Crowded House's 4/4 ballads were a battle.

‘Are you ok?' I asked.

‘Just come.
And don't tell Gordon
,' she said, hanging up. Like in the American television shows, I stayed on the phone long after the call was over.

‘Who fuck dat?' Gordon asked, strumming the first chords of ‘Better Be Home Soon'.

‘Ahhh, it's just someone from the thing…' I said.

‘What thing?' Gordon asked.

‘The Bundeena thing. Just to do with some…
kids
I'm working with.'

‘What kids?' Gordon scrunched his fat face.

‘You got a coat?' I asked, pointing inside.

‘Hey, ya can't go out now – it's fucking belting with rain!'

‘And we just ordered the ribs,' Albert added. ‘Rib-a-licious!'

Albert kept tapping the saucepan as Gordon strummed the guitar with reckless funk.

I spun around in the kitchen, drunk as I could remember not remembering. I grabbed a North Face puffer jacket off the hook and turned to see Gordon in my face, wielding a beer and staring at me as I zipped up the puff.

‘Where you going, Cronk?' he asked, eyes cracked and red.

‘Got to do something.'

‘Something what? It's the night before my wedding.'

‘Yes, exactly. And I've got to go do a thing.'

Gordon shook his head at me, somewhere between pissed off and bewildered. ‘What, man? Fucken spill it.'

‘I can't tell you.'

‘You
are
telling me.' Gordon held me there.

‘Can you just let me go?' I pleaded.

‘Just tell me where you're going. Albert and me were going to light a joint, get into some jam sessions – eat some ribs. My last night as a single man!'

‘I really… G-Man, I will be back so soon, I just have to do something and it's not important… I just can't tell you because it's a surprise.' I lied well and he bought it better, chuffed his broken friend was coming good at this special time.

‘I love you, Cronky,' he said. ‘You know that.'

The ribs man was running from the car as I left, Albert banging on the pan in delight.

I bailed out the back door and into the sleeting rain to see my first-ever girlfriend.

The Rydges was big and there were many parts to it; you took one wrong stairwell you ended up in the staff car park, or the hotel kitchen or just some weird inexplicable bit. It was late and I was afraid of being spotted by the women, so I edged round the hotel foyer into the restaurant, where I ran into all of them enjoying Cosmo's beneath a rotunda. The women all screamed and waved, smoking like fuck.

Nina stood up instantly, concern flitting across her beautiful profile; she knew there was a reason for my presence. I told her, in a whisper, that Courtney had called me. She said Courtney had gone to bed an hour ago. I nodded as she gave me the room card, then I kissed her on the cheek and pretended to leave via the front door, waving to the bridesmaids and associated women-types, then darted behind the reception desk to the elevator.

The bridal suite was on the seventh floor. I slid the card in and opened the door and a warm rush of blood went up then down me. Heart-shaped pillows, white linen, an Arthur Streeton on the wall. Next to the bed were two side tables with matching ornate reading lights. On Courtney's side were her thick-rimmed reading glasses, Marlboro Light cigarettes, a Samsung mobile and a copy of
The Lovely Bones
by Alice Sebold. I snuck further into the room, and there it was. Hanging by the window, before a landscape of chunky, uncompromising rain and waif-thin bolts of yellowy lightning, was Courtney's wedding dress, swinging lightly in the frame of the large window like it had all but gone and hanged itself on its own. I could picture her in it, swaying and smiling like the pale angel she was. I stumbled towards the dress and held it to my face; it smelt like life. I moved my arm up inside the dress as far as it would go. I took out my cock and wanked it, feeling up the inside fabrics and textures of the gown. It didn't take long, there were layers of joy to aid me here; within a minute I let out a deep, primal moan, jacked on the carpet and left the room.

*

The beach roared loud from east to west, and nowhere a human, just black sky, white sand and ghostly, quivering figures in the wind, be they birds or actually wind. Wind making sand dance, or just wind. Every step I took confirmed the dumb drama of the situation. Why had she brought me out here, what game was this? She knew I was cosy with her man, nestled in booze and silliness, with our own kind, with good joy, big and good joy, and so she had to pull me out and make the night here, bring it back to womankind; weddings were all theirs, whether they wanted them or not. In this line of thought I considered returning to Gordon's place and abandoning the SOS altogether, but the memory of her voice on the phone gripped me, the weakness in it, the dislocation; that little-girl-lost sound threw me back down the shore every time I turned towards Elouera. I was all but on my knees, thumping the sand, when I heard my first name thrown out into the wetted air.

I followed the echo of that one strong syllable down the beach towards the rock pool where the sand ends and the esplanade begins. A figure formed fully in view, mingling with nature by the water's edge, yards of brown hair whipping about in the wind, hair that I had held in my hands and smelt. Hair so clean and flowing it would make my adolescent dick hard just seeing it in a scrunchie on Mondays in rollcall.

‘Neil,' she said, softly, and the weather turned, like Nirvana did so abrasively from verse to chorus. The ocean was screaming now, cut up into pieces by a new, ungracious wind. And she was right there before me, in her drenched green cardigan that gripped her small breasts like cling wrap. ‘Do you think I am doing the right thing?' she asked, tears in the pit of her eye sockets.

‘What?' I asked, wiping my eyes to see her clearly.

‘Tomorrow,' she said, pulling a length of wet hair from her mouth. The waves ripped, swung and danced behind her.

‘What about tomorrow?' I asked. ‘You're getting married.'

Her face twisted. ‘Yes,' she whispered, as vulnerable as fruit.

‘That's it, right?' I asked her, and she nodded. ‘You love him,' I said and she did not nod. She did not shake her head either; she just stood there, inches from my frame, staring at my chin.

‘I'm just so scared something bad will happen.' She started to cry and I grabbed her and held her against me, I could feel the toughness of her nipples, hardened by wind, against my ribs and I liked it.

‘Nothing bad is going to happen,' I said. ‘Not with you.'

‘How can you know?' she said, pulling away from me, but hanging onto my shirt. She banged her fists against my chest. ‘How can you know I won't have a boy and he won't go shoot his head off, or hang himself? How can I know that won't happen to me?'

‘Because your son will be strong.'

‘Tommy was strong, and he left. He's out there somewhere!'

It hit me, stupid me, why we were down at South Cronulla beach, right across from The Point and Shark Island where Tommy had surfed religiously, famously. She was about to do the biggest thing in her life, and without him.

‘Gordon is so strong and you are so brilliant, your children will know themselves so well, things like that will never happen,' I said, and she let go of my shirt, turning away like it was all so ugly she simply could not look at it.

‘Do you really think I'm pathetic for staying?'

‘Staying where?' I asked.

‘In Cronulla. For never travelling or moving to the city.'

‘I used to,' I said. ‘But now I wonder if I'm stupid for leaving. All I did was make silly shows and destroy a woman from the inside out.'

‘You did more than that.'

‘I think you're about to do all the things that life is really for, and whether you went overseas or not, this is the best thing.'

‘You look down on me, don't you? Because I never left.'

‘I could never look down on you, Courtney.'

‘I had to stay. I needed to look after Mum.'

‘I know that.'

The wind and the sea threw her hair up and with it all she knew.

‘Do you think Tommy will come?' she asked me, retreating away to the rocks, all coy now as the storm hummed and simmered.

‘ To the wedding?' I followed.

‘To watch me marry Gordon.' She climbed up onto the shelf, nearly slipping on the mossy rocks.

‘He'll be watching,' I said and she laughed darkly, turning on me now.

‘As if you fucking know,' she said. ‘You just make it all up!'

I hated her suddenly, this game was fucked and boring and I just wanted to go back and eat the fatty ribs Albert had ordered and get more fucking drunk, but instead I followed her up onto the slippery rock shelf.

‘You're a fraud,' she said, throwing a rope of seaweed at my legs. She was close to it, the creamy waves rushing up to her knees, pushing her forward and back like a reed.

‘I told you everything he told me,' I said.

‘Stop with the fucking bullshit, Neil! For one fucking second!'

My heart sank but at the same time I didn't care, I'd lost interest in what people thought of me, I was dead in that way too.