Love and Other Perishable Items (5 page)

When I think about her life in Perth, I feel jealousy like a sickness. I can taste it in my mouth and feel it pulsing through every cell in my body. It expands my capillaries. It thuds in my ears. I don’t mean just jealous of Brad. That’s not casting the net
nearly wide enough. I am jealous of her family: her parents, sisters, uncles, aunts and cousins, who see her all the time, who get to celebrate with her every Christmas and birthday. I am jealous of all her mates, who get to go for walks on the beach with her after class, who play soccer with her on Sundays, who drink with her at the session afterward, who come over to watch campy movies every Monday night. I’m jealous of the bus drivers whom she buys tickets off, for their moment of proximity when she dips her bus ticket into the ticket reader. I’m jealous of the salesclerks who get to sell her packs of chewing gum and newspapers, for the momentary greetings and brushes of skin when she hands over her money. I’m jealous of the hot water from the shower that slides over her skin and soaks into her hair. I’m jealous of the mirrors that reflect the brilliant brown warmth of her eyes. I’m jealous of the pillow on which she lays her cheek at night. Bastards, all of them. They have so much and I have nothing.

Did I mention that I have Tom Waits playing as I write? I do. It’s certainly not hosing down the fire. And I’m not going to be wrapping this up anytime soon, let me tell you.

Her shoulders. That collarbone.

Brad gets to kiss her shoulders at will. He can have an all-you-can-kiss buffet of shoulders anytime he likes, and I can’t bear to think about it. But suddenly I can’t think of anything else.

That’s why I can’t be friends with her—as she dared to suggest at the airport, and by letter, and now by phone. The gall of her!
I really miss you, Chris. We were always such great mates, Chris. Let’s at least salvage one part of what we had, Chris
. She’s just trying to salve her own conscience.

How does she think it would work, this friendship gig? So, Michaela, my friend, my buddy, tell me, how did Brad fuck you
last night? Mmmm-hmmm, mmm-hm. Yes, and tell me more, old pal—tell me from the very beginning. ’Cause you know, mate, I just can’t stop visualizing a variety of scenarios. Were you sitting on the couch together watching TV after all the other roommates had straggled off to bed? Maybe you were curled up together on the couch and the program you were watching finished. As the credits rolled, he turned your beautiful face to his and kissed your soft, perfect lips. Maybe then he raised the remote up over your shoulder and turned off the TV. You climbed the stairs to his room with your arms about one another. Did he undress you on the bed, lying down, helping you struggle out of item by item of clothing, a painstaking but delicious process? Or maybe it was too cold for that and you both just quickly took your own clothes off standing up and then dived under the covers. No, come on, Michaela, you can tell me, we’re all friends here! Give me the details, go on! Think of me as one of the girls. What have I been up to? Um, let’s see now, bit of this, bit of that. Going to uni, going to work, jerking arhythmically like a fish on a jetty, suffocating in the vacuum left by your departure, having half-waking dreams about the time we made love for three days, hallucinating that your lips just touched my neck … The usual.

So messy. Holding the pen is not as easy as it was. And I’m crying.

Michaela. It costs me a lot of what I used to consider my manhood to say this, but your pleasure was more of a pleasure to me than mine. Shit, if someone had taken me aside a year ago and told me that sex could be more than the relentless search for somewhere to get off, I’d have laughed them out of whatever seedy twenty-four-hour bar they’d found me in. And then you come along with your perfect skin, your freckled shoulders, your
glorious laugh, and you lay my entire life to waste. Ignorance suited me fine.

You spoke like me.

You got my jokes.

You got
me
.

You fucked me senseless.

Then you left.

The shadows on your face are flickering in the light of that candle we bought in Leura.

I see them every day.

So don’t ring me up from your boyfriend’s house on the other side of the continent, bursting with contentment from your great life over there, and ask me to be friends. You’ve made your decision; that’s the end of it. I will never, ever want your friendship. I want only to possess you completely. Like it was for those three days at Leura. Nothing went bump in those nights. Nothing.

My hand hurts.

I pass out now.

Michaela.

Where are you?

I know where you are.

Fuck.

August 23

Jeez, take it easy, tiger. Don’t hold back or anything, Chris. We wouldn’t want you to keep the pain bottled up inside. You emotional incontinent.

Please accept my apologies for that disgraceful performance. So many f-words. What will my grandchildren think?

Probably that their grandpa had his heart ripped out, bloody and still beating, from behind his shattered rib cage by a wily Western Australian. Which is pretty much what happened.

Last night was just a temporary setback, a stumble, a blip in the getting-over-it process. I really was doing a bit better. I was dealing with the pain. Or at least successfully medicating it with ever-increasing amounts of alcohol and caffeine. When I read back over what I’d written, I seriously thought about ripping out all the pages. It was a pretty poor showing all the way through, but when I got to the bit where I was writing out the lyrics from the Dire Straits “Romeo and Juliet” song, I had to rip that out.

But then, I really want to be more honest in this diary than I have been in past ones, so everything else stays in. It’s bad enough that I present such a heavily edited version of myself to my friends and family; if I start editing my diary, it will reinforce my already overwhelming tendency to be gutless. But let us
never
speak of it.

For the record, she really did cry when we made love and said she loved me like the stars above and would love me until she died. But, you know, people say shit in the moment.

All in all, there have been better days for one Christopher John Harvey.

September 2

I’m on the bus on the way to work. It is 7:05 a.m. It is also Saturday. It’s just wrong, I tell you. So tired. So profoundly underwhelmed. Five more hours of my life spent at Coles, pretending to be friendly to customers, making halfhearted attempts to flirt with Kathy, being rebuffed in said attempts and rescuing fifteen-year-old checkout staff who have jammed their registers. My
sister, Zoe, came into my room the other night after I got home a bit worse for wear. It was not long after the disastrous phone call from Michaela. She leaned on the doorframe and did her raising one eyebrow thing. Then she said, “You’re pretty passionate about your unhappiness, aren’t you, Chris?”

I looked right back at her and said, “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.”

She just stared back, treating me to a full-strength dose of her nostril-flaring superiority. I suggested that she close the door on her way out. She banged it.

I’d better wrap up. Coles is shimmering and beckoning at the end of this block. Who can resist its siren call? It is the Land of Dreams.

September 7

I am officially struck down with the Kathy virus again. Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the staff room on your break … She’s cute; she’s smart; she’s wearing a fitted shirt; she plays pool pretty well for a girl … It’s
Kathy Virus Part IV
:
The Revenge
.

I would normally be cursing my stupidity for succumbing to yet another exercise in futility. In this case, though, if I could somehow manage to convert my Michaela angst into Kathy angst, it would be much easier to bear. Wanting Kathy but not having her is a lifestyle I could adjust to. It’s not like I hunger to inhale the amazing smell of the skin on Kathy’s neck and clavicle, because I have never experienced it in the first place. Hell, I don’t even know whether she has one.

In contrast, wanting Michaela and not having her, having
inhabited a private universe with her, as the song goes, is untenable. So there. And this evening Kathy laughed at something particularly witty that I said and touched my arm. Phwoar. I need a beer. If anyone wants me, I’ll be in the bar, plotting my next Kathy-related maneuver, twirling my imaginary mustache. And studiously avoiding study.

September 22

So much uni work looming. You can only hide from it up to a certain point—beyond which you are well and truly screwed. I was at that point at about this time in first year and vowed I would never return.

Dad was rather peeved at me, as I recall. He seemed to take it personally. I don’t know why.
I’m
the one that will have to pay off the student loan debt for the subjects I failed. I suggested at the beginning of this year that perhaps he and Mum might like to pay my tuition for me up front like they did for Zoe so we get the discount. I can’t remember the exact wording of Dad’s response, but it was something to the effect of perhaps I’d like to go fuck myself instead.

Yeah, well, you know. Guess I’ll be paying it off myself then. Assuming that I ever get a real job, that is. Maybe what Dad was really pissed off about was that he has a pansy of a son who is studying for a liberal arts degree instead of business or engineering.

Must go and finish writing my essay on Stalinist Russia. In a surprise cameo by my tear ducts, I felt moisture crowding behind my eyelids the other day when I was reading about the purges. I can’t imagine. I don’t want to.

11 p.m.

Sometimes I think the only reason Stuart is angling for Kathy is that he knows I am too. He’s a smooth bastard. All reserve and broad-shouldered strength. He may well be my nemesis.
And
my antithesis! How about that?

Harvey out.

P.S. I have puny shoulders.

P.P.S. And I’m okay with that.

P.P.P.S. I’m not really.

October 5

Exhausted and a little in my cups. Worked four to nine this evening, training a New Little on the registers. She’s one of the more interesting New Littles out of the bunch they just hired. Her name is Amelia, and what a funny little youngster she is. She demonstrates an advanced-level single-eyebrow raise. She’s amusing—all frizzy-haired and fiery. I suspect she can, like, construct sentences and read books. Here’s hoping she will go a little way toward Amelia-rating the vacuousness of her chain-smoking fifteen-year-old cohorts. (
Ameliorate
—get it? Oh, there’s nothing like your own jokes, is there?) She’s a healthy mess of contradictions. Sense of humor? Check. Very articulate for a youngster. She hasn’t developed the ability to see past her own nose yet—takes everything
seriously
. Oh, adolescence, how much I don’t miss you. She’s smart and has reason to carry herself well. But she has this way of crossing her arms, gripping her elbows and looking down and sideways that screams “ill at ease!” to the world. Maybe all she
needs is a good sensei to instruct her in the ways of, like, stuff. Maybe I’m the man for the job. Or maybe I couldn’t be bothered.

I went back to Ed’s after work. We missed the last bus and had to walk all the way, cutting across the park and freezing our arses off. Living the dream.

Kathy continues to lead the Field, and I am considering whether to bump sociology seminar Lauren from the list, as I’ve seen her walking around campus holding hands with a guy. Georgia from the deli is still a possibility, and probably up for it, and I may end up sleeping with her just to get Ed off my back. If he’s so keen for Georgia to be put on her arse, why doesn’t he do it himself?

“Time to break the drought, Chris,” he said tonight. “Do you good.”

“I’m working up to asking Kathy out,” I protested.

He gave me the one-eyebrow raise—an advanced practitioner, like Amelia.

Yeah. The chances of Kathy ever having sex with me are slim to none. Ed reckons he’s going to make sure Georgia comes out with us after work tomorrow night.

Harvey out.

Later

When my sister and I were little, Mum would read us a book called
Amelia Bedelia
. The title character was a housemaid who kept getting herself into “scrapes” because she was a bit of a literal thinker. She’d get really upset when she got into trouble and would run away. Actually, no, I think her employer got really angry at her and sent her away. Eventually and after much adventurous
soul-searching she would come home. Her employer would greet her warmly, his earlier wrath forgotten, and ask her to make him some soup.

October 7

Last night I drank too much and bedded She’s-big-she’s-blond-she-works-in-the-deli Georgia at her place. Conversation was slim pickings afterward. I asked her if she liked Tom Waits. She said, “Tom who?” Enough said.

October 12

The timetable for exams and final essays is out. Six weeks until I’m all finished. It’s going to take a superhuman effort to get all my work in on time and keep the credit average I need to graduate with honors in my new second major next year. Interesting. I’m going to work as many shifts at Coles as possible over Christmas break in the hopes of saving enough money to cut back to twelve hours a week next year. Maybe then I could put a little more time into actual study. Doing honors sociology and all, it would be nice to give that priority.

So, another year of school and then what? Too scary a topic. New paragraph, please.

Mick, Rohan and Suze will be waiting for me at the uni bar. It’s almost dark out here on the lawn. I’d better go soon. I’m getting along quite well with a couple of the newer youngsters at work, both of whose knowledge of fruit and vegetable has blossomed under my firm but fair tutelage.

Donna is a very old soul indeed. She’s fifteen going on
thirty-five and has a pretty fucked-up home life. Always keen for a drink after work is young Donna. She is Bianca’s new girl pet; they’re becoming thick as thieves, taking smoke breaks out the back together and all the rest.