Saving from Monkeys (14 page)

"Of course she did."

"In fact, she told me that's how she wants to go. Death by slingshot." He settled himself in the far corner of the sofa and kicked a game controller onto the floor to make room for me. "She said it would make for an interesting obituary."

Nan and obituary in the same thought made me uncomfortable and I sank down onto the leather next to him without replying.

"She has a nurse now, you know," he said, speaking more seriously as he obviously picked up on my uncharacteristic silence.

I knew he was trying to be all solemn, but this comment actually made me laugh a little bit as I replied, "Yeah, I know." I dug in my bag for my phone and started scrolling through the received messages. "She sent me a photo, see?" I found the text I was after and turned it to show Elliot.

"…and that would be a picture of Chase's arse," he said with a sigh and I grinned.

"What did you expect?"

"I bet mum's putting aside money for the sexual harassment payout as we speak."

I laughed again and then we both paused to take a pull at our drinks. It was only then, as my eyes followed the line of the tipped up
bottle, that I twigged to the paused image on the stupidly giant TV that loomed over us.

"Nice," I said, gesturing towards what looked like a leg being blown off by a landmine. "Video from your holiday, is it?"

He followed my gaze to his TV and grinned. "Homework," he explained, "for my Experience of War class."

"Experience of W
ar?" I repeated incredulously. "That's a course?" Unable to keep looking at the gore, I looked at Elliot instead. This turned out to be a bad idea as I found myself suddenly fixated by the little freckle up by his eye. I'd seen it before, of course, but this time it seemed somehow...rakish.

Monkeys, I should’
ve stuck with the leg being blown off.

"That's got to be an easy subject to pass," I snatched up the loose reins of the conversation. "Surely you just answer every question by repeating one word – bad. The experience of war is bad."

"War is bad?" Elliot asked in mock surprise, although the way he was looking at me showed that the weird pause when I'd got stuck looking at his freckle had not escaped his notice. "Wow, that clears that up then."

The idea of Elliot doing homework tickled me, and I looked around the room again, this time imagining him pacing up and down in an academic fervour. What was sensationally odd was that, the more I thought about it, the more I could actually kind of see it. There was a pile of textbooks on his desk, and his laptop was humming away on the coffee table in front of us, rows of dot points showing the notes he'd been typing up when I'd arrived.

"You're studying history, right?" I'd heard him mention as much to Abi during that first 'get to know you' lunch that had been so spectacularly unnecessary. "Why's that?"

"Because any fool can make history, but it takes a genius to write it," he said grandly, adding, when I looked at him in astonishment, "Oscar Wilde."

"...OK," I said slowly, "leaving aside for a moment the fact that you just quoted Oscar Wilde to me, what I really meant is
how
?"

He shrugged again and I knew straight away that he was going to deliberately misunderstand what I was trying to ask. "Books, internet, American war movies where the Germans have English accents, you know."

"Sinclair," he was frustrating me now, "you know what I mean. How are your parents letting you get away with this? Aren't you supposed to come out of uni and become a captain of industry; high powered, well paid and all that jazz?"

"And are you suggesting my Bachelor of Arts with a major in history isn't going to get me there?" There was a brightness in his eyes that I recognised from years of watching him thoroughly enjoying rebelling against his parents. Clearly seeing my exasperation at his childishness, though, he turned slightly on the couch and fixed me with a level look.

"In grade 11 my history teacher asked me to stay back after class," he said, seemingly apropos of nothing. "I'd had sex with Emily Simons the week before and had spent the whole class regaling Henderson and that lot about every detail. I thought I was so cool, but Mr Wagg gave me a look, pretty much the look you're giving me right now, and said 'you, my boy, are the dictionary definition of smart, but lazy'. Then he pointed at my history book and told me my homework was to find one person in there who gave a damn that I'd had sex with Emily Simons."

I smiled, impressed with this Mr Wagg's style.

"So I rocked up the next day and showed him the Captain Cook quote," he continued. "You know, the one where he said he wanted to go '
... farther than any man has been before me, but as far as I think it is possible for a man to go
.' I said that I thought old Jimmy Cook would've known exactly what I was thinking when it came to Emily Simons."

"Ewgh," I groaned. "Trust you to take a quote about the boundless spirit of adventure and turn it into a comment on your sex life."

"Yeah," he grinned, clearly pleased with my reaction. "Mr Wagg said pretty much the same thing. By then, though, after spending all night trying to find some smartarse response, I'd kind of got into the whole thing. History became my favourite subject and I decided to study it at uni; nothing to do with my parents, just natural progression."

"But-" I started to protest and he cut me off with a quiet,

"Hey." As I obligingly closed my mouth, he fixed me with a serious look and added, "What I do with my life is my choice, not theirs."

He sounded so sincere, as if he genuinely believed what he said, but I knew that it wasn't true. How could he be in control of his own life when his parents were the ones paying for everything?

I don't know why thinking about his parents financially supporting him freaked me out so much. It wasn't as if it was coming as some great surprise, but I suddenly really,
really
didn't want to talk about it. To this end, I gestured jerkily towards the TV and said awkwardly, "I didn't mean to interrupt your studying. You should go back to watching."

"Nah, it's alright," he said offhandedly, but I shook my head.

"Get on with it," I commanded him. "I'll just sit here quietly and see if I can help you with any words beyond 'bad'."

"You?
Sit quietly?" He paused in the act of draining his drink and looked at me out of the corner of his eye. "I didn't know that was in your repertoire."

"T
his is going to be a very exciting time for you then," I said sarcastically. "Now get back to work."

He looked at me for another couple of seconds
, as if making sure, but I just lifted my eyebrows as if to say 'go on then' and he eventually leant forward to pick up his computer.

And then, oh dear, he pressed play on the remote and within minutes any naive thoughts I had about humanity being honourable were stripped away.
It was like watching a horror film, but worse, so much worse, as it was all based on things that had actually happened. For every solider that had his face shot off, for every woman dragged from her home to have unspeakable things done to her, there was a true story behind it. It broke my heart and made me feel dirty.

I curled myself up into a tighter and tighter ball as horror upon horror flashed up on the massive screen. My fingers gripped my drink heedless of the fact that it was cold enough to make my hand go numb. I wanted to go numb...no, I wanted to go deaf and blind. It was so horrible!

After what felt like forever, but according to the clock on his DVD player had only been about half an hour, the screen went suddenly blank and I blinked in surprise. Looking at Elliot I saw him put the remote back down on the table and glance over at me, a little furrow in his brow.

"What are you doing?" I croaked. "It's not finished yet."

"Rox," he released my name on a whoosh of expelled air and shook his head. "You're dying over there."

"No I'm not," I sniffled. "I'm fine."

"You look like a trampled puppy." He reached over to his desk and snagged a tissue out of a box before passing it to me. "I feel like some evil scientist trying to brainwash you into being a serial killer or something."

I rubbed at my wet cheeks, embarrassed at having been reduced to a snivelling wreck in front of him.

"It's just so
sad
!" I tried for that not to come out as a wail, but failed miserably. "One minute you're just living your life and then the next second your neighbour is trying to torture you to death, and your daughter is raped and the guys trying to save you accidentally bomb your house, then your son becomes a spy for the enemy and-"

"
OK, no more experiencing war for you." He plucked a couple more tissues out of the box and pushed them into my hand, pressing his fingers briefly against mine in what I could only translate as a reassuring squeeze. "The world is a bad place, I'm sorry."

"Not your fault," I blew my nose and then, remembering who I was talking to, added, "not all the time, anyway."

"Atta girl," he said gently. "So…" he looked around, as if for inspiration and then finished, "who's Jason?"

The mention of plain old Jason, after all the awfulness I'd just witnessed, seemed so thoroughly out of place I stared at Elliot blankly.

"The guy whose penis you can't stop thinking about," he prompted and my brain finally caught up.

"He's my ex," I said glumly, not sure this topic was any great improvement over the indignities of war. "I was out with him and a bunch of other people tonight, but his penis kept getting in the way of conversation."

"I hear they can do that," he said gravely.

"And it's not that I want to get back together with him or anything!" I burst out passionately. "Nothing like that, it's just..."

"You know what it looks like," he finished for me and I gaped at him, stunned that he knew what I meant.

"
Yes
," I said fervently, "that's exactly it."

He nodded sagely. "This Jason guy, he wasn't the tall one with the glasses and the thing for cardigans, was he?"

I looked at him oddly, then nodded slowly. "Yeah, that's him. How do you know that?"

"I saw the two of you together sometimes." He shrugged as if this was no big deal, but then, as I continued to stare at him, he added, "What? As if you weren't keeping tabs on me to report back to your mum? You probably remember my girlfriends from first year better than me."

"Dark hair with small nose, Asian girl with shiny jacket, blonde haired giant, hippy girl with see-through shirts," I reluctantly reeled off the girls I'd seen him with. "You certainly couldn't be accused of having a 'type'."

He seemed proud of this appraisal, but I ignored his Cheshire cat smile to add, "You went all monogamous in second year, though. Every time I saw you, you were with the girl with the red hair."

"Sophie." His smile disappeared. "Yeah, get ready for this, we were together about 8 months."

I blinked, genuinely surprised. I'd just been joking about him being monogamous. "That's huge," I said, begrudgingly congratulatory. "So what happened?"

"She got back with her ex."

Ouch.

"That sucks." I tucked some of my hair behind my ear self-consciously. I was perfectly comfortable calling Elliot a moron to his face, but talking about his past relationships? That was awkward.

"Can't fight history, I guess." He shrugged, but I could see it was a deliberate attempt to hide that having this Sophie girl nick off with some other guy
had
hurt. "So what about you and this Jason guy? Not the greatest love affair of the 21st Century?"

"Definitely not," I snorted. "I mean
, he was fine and everything, but it turned out everything about him was irritating so I walked away."

He snuck a sideways look at me and then laughed softly and ran a hand through his floppy hair, saying, "He would have enjoyed that at least."

“What does
that
mean?" I asked, actually a bit hurt. "That any guy would be happy to break up with me?"

"No, that's not what I meant." He was still smiling and I felt the traditional 'Elliot is near' ire start to rise.

"Well, what
did
you mean?" I pushed him.

"Nothing, it's nothing."

“No.” I chucked my, now empty, bottle across at him in frustration. "You can't just say something like that and then not back it up."

"Fine."
He easily batted away the projectile and held up his hands in surrender. "You have a nice arse, OK? I just meant he would have enjoyed the
view
of you walking away."

My mouth was already open to keep arguing, but now it just hung slack with astonishment.
What
had he just said?

"I have a nice arse?" I checked, sure I couldn't have heard him correctly.

"Yeah," he smirked at my shocked expression. "Don't you remember the arse currency guy?"

"He was crazy," I pointed out, "so he doesn't really count."