Smoke in the Room (2 page)

Katie stood behind Gran and looked down at the car park of the building next door. ‘Could be worse,' she said. ‘The bathroom has a view of the bins.'

Gran sighed and leant back into Katie. ‘Guess I should get started on this mess.'

‘You've got enough to do, Gran. Leave it to me.'

Gran saw the magazines as garbage and wanted Katie to put them in garbage bags, whereas Katie thought of them as historical records and real-time accounts of unfolding lives. She'd tried to explain this to Gran once, but she called her silly and sentimental, which was funny coming
from a woman whose house was stuffed with wedding invitations, theatre programs, birthday cards, dinner menus, newspaper clippings, faded holiday snaps from the sixties and baby pictures of every member of the extended family, most of whom Katie had never even heard of.

Funny, too, that Gran nagged about the magazines even as she tried to turn Katie into a ‘reader' by bringing around novels and short story collections and dragging her down to Glebe Library to sign up for a card. Katie had tried Gran's books and a few others that different flatmates had left around. She enjoyed the reading part but hated the way they ended. She hated that they ended at all. People got married or divorced, they arrested the killer or they died of a terrible disease; they won the race or bought the house or moved to France and then nothing else ever happened or if it did no one ever knew.

But magazines –
Who
and
Celebrity
and
Famous
and
New Weekly
– followed the story for as long as something was happening. Weddings were followed by babies and divorces and second or third weddings, and the babies grew up and got in trouble with the police and then fell in love and had babies themselves. Illnesses went on for years or got cured and then came back, but even when someone died it wasn't over, because someone else had set up a charitable fund or climbed a mountain and the memory of the person was reignited. The biggest star with the greatest happiness would soon enough be down-and-out scrounging for work and love; the D-list starlet whose sex tape had made her an international joke would, in time, have a hit movie and three adorable adopted babies. Nobody was safe and nobody was doomed.

Katie's phone beeped and she glanced at the screen. Gran.
How's the clean-up going?
She looked around the room which seemed messier than it had been an hour ago.
Almost done
she replied.
Taking bins out now
.

She carried armfuls of magazines into her room and stacked them inside the walk-in wardrobe. She had to take out most of her clothes and all of her shoes, but the clothes were easily heaped on top of the dresser and the shoes piled on the floor under the window.

She closed the wardrobe doors feeling fizzy with accomplishment. Next, she would drag the old desk and bookshelf out of the study and vacuum the carpet using that vanilla powder from under the sink. She would clean the windows with Windex and the sills with Mr Sheen. She would wipe down the furniture and put it back in place. She would make the room so clean that Gran would slap a hand over her mouth and say,
Katherine! You've outdone yourself!
and would not think to ask about the magazines and whether they had taken up all the room in the wheelie bin.

It took Adam barely ten minutes to unpack: five shirts, three pairs of long pants, a couple of T-shirts, underwear, socks. He carried his toothbrush, toothpaste, shaving cream, razor and deodorant down the hall to the bathroom and placed them on the shelf he guessed had been left clear for him. Above sat a bottle of Dove moisturiser, an open packet of disposable razors, a tube of Clearasil and a jar of hair gel. The shelf below his held antiseptic cream, cotton balls, more hair gel and a supersize bottle of Brut aftershave. On the edge of the basin was a green toothbrush, its bristles worn down to a single mat. The antiseptic and bleach in the air made his eyes water.

Back in his room, he crawled under the bed and placed the yellow backpack up against the wall, under where his head would be each night. Then he lay down and listened to what might have been furniture being dragged down the hallway until he fell asleep.

He woke in silent darkness. Sitting up, his head met wood and his heart slammed in his chest, his throat closed over. He forced a breath and remembered the new flat, reached behind and felt the soft fuzz of his backpack. He lay back down until his breathing slowed, then rolled out into the room.

He rocked back and forth on his heels, one hand on the door frame. His new flatmate was two quick steps away, scrunched into the corner of a rust-coloured sofa, a magazine in front of her face. Her pale, skinny legs were bare, a tiny denim skirt just covered her arse. The pink tank top with a rainbow across the chest was something his ten-year-old cousin would wear.

More magazines were scattered over the white laminex coffee table and piled up on the lamp table next to the armchair. A game show played silently on the TV behind the girl's head. There were no books or photos; the only thing on the pale peach walls was a framed watercolour print of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. If not for the haze of cigarette smoke, he could have been in a doctor's waiting room.

‘Ah, hi,' he said.

The girl sighed and tucked her feet up under her thighs. Adam swayed in the doorway to the count of three and then cast himself across the room, landing on the edge of the armchair across from her. He was close enough to see the blonde down on her forearms and the stiff, tiny hairs sprouting on her calves, but still she did not look up.

‘Um, hi, Katherine, do you have a minute?'

She snorted and flipped the page of her magazine.
NICOLE'S SHOCK WEIGHT LOSS
said the headline. The woman
in the pictures was insect-thin. If her blonde hair was a little longer and her nose a little narrower she would look just like Eugenie. He half-closed his eyes, blurring the picture, scraping a nail over his scabby heart.

The girl across from him clicked her tongue.

‘Ah, I . . .' Adam waited for her to look at him. When she didn't, he cleared his throat. ‘I just wondered if you knew of anywhere around here I might find, ah, some work?'

She slammed her magazine closed as though it were a hard-covered book. ‘I thought you sold shoes. Gran said you sold shoes. She said you wouldn't be around in the daytime. You're supposed to be selling shoes.'

‘Yeah, I used to, but . . . but I don't right now.'

‘You're telling me you lied to Gran?'

‘I needed someplace to stay.'

She picked up her magazine. ‘So go back to the shoe store.'

‘I can't.'

‘Why?' She flicked a page over. ‘Did you get fired?'

‘No, I . . . the shoe store is in San Francisco.'

‘So go back to San Francisco.'

‘Listen, Katherine –'

‘It's Katie.'

‘Katie, I –'

‘Not because we're friends.'

‘What?'

She tossed the magazine on the ground and leant forward. Her small dark eyes met his and she sighed. ‘You've got a look on your face like we're friends. Katie is my name. For everyone except my grandma and the government. It's not like, “Oh, call me Katie, all my friends do.” It's just my name.'

Adam took a breath. ‘Katie. I'm sorry I lied. I need a place to stay while I earn enough money to get back to the States. If you know of anyone who might need, like, a kitchen hand or janitor or something, then I would be grateful for the information. If not, I'm sorry to have bothered you. I'll understand if you feel the need to tell your grandma that I'm not working. I hope you won't but I surely do understand if you –'

‘Yeah, yeah, that's enough. I won't dob on you if you don't dob on me, all right?'

I'll dob
, Eugenie had said to him that very first day. She caught him stealing a chocolate chip cookie from the mailroom tea table.
You'll do what?
Adam had asked. That was the start.

‘Thanks,' he said. ‘Um, if you mean before, when you – you know, in the hall –'

‘Oh, that! That was just me stuffing around.' She winked. ‘I'm always misbehaving. You'll see.' She grabbed his hand in both of hers and smiled widely, revealing a mouth full of baby teeth. ‘So you're alone in a strange land, hardly any luggage, unemployed, lying to old ladies. Are you on the run, or what?'

‘Of course not.' He looked at her red knuckles and inflamed nail beds, confused by the softness of the skin wrapped around his cold hand.

‘So what then?'

‘It's complicated.'

‘Fine, be mysterious.'

Adam flexed his hand, but she held tight. ‘Um, so, do you know . . .'

She stood up, pulling him with her. ‘Come on.'

‘Where?'

‘Trust me.'

The building's elevator was plastered with posters for open mic nights, sex clubs, dollar drinks and dating hotlines. The
NO BILLS POSTED
sign was partially obscured by postcards advertising
SWEET ASIAN PRINCESS, MAN TO MAN EROTIC MASSAGE
and
SWEDISH TWINS WHO WANT TO MAKE YOU SMILE
. If this was San Francisco, Adam might assume the posters were an artwork commenting on the dehumanising effects of advertising: a cartoon barmaid showed through the white space between a lingerie model's open legs; a stripper's torso was torn down the middle revealing a hot pink microphone which seemed to be melting into a glass of pale yellow beer. The centrepiece was a still-glossy poster featuring a collage of shiny tanned body parts. Basketball tits held in red-taloned hands, oiled thighs with muscles straining, two pairs of red lips smashed together, an armless hand squeezing a bodiless arse cheek.
NUDE GIRLS LIVE
! was printed top and bottom.

Katie nudged him. ‘In my head I always read
LIVE
so it sounds like
liv
. Makes that poster kind of funny. Like they cut the nude girls into all those parts and still they live.'

Adam felt faint. He felt he'd been in here for hours. He undid his top button and concentrated on the light above the door that told him they were moving towards the open air.

‘One second,' Katie said when they reached the ground floor. She jogged across to the door opposite the elevator and rapped three times. Adam peered at his distorted reflection in the elevator's shiny silver doors, smoothing down his hair and straightening his collar. He didn't need a mirror to tell him his skin was pale and his eyes puffy.
He blinked and slapped his cheeks to create the appearance at least, of a wide-awake, eager employee. The door creaked open and he turned towards it with a smile, vowing to accept whatever the inhabitant had to offer.

An ancient woman, wrapped in what looked like a grey sleeping bag and bent almost double at the waist, peered out. ‘Oh, it's you, love. I thought it was those bloody phone company people again. I had my stick ready.'

‘They're persistent, aren't they?' Katie said. ‘I just pretend I don't understand English.'

‘Sometimes I wonder if
they
understand it. Don't understand “piss off” anyway. Oh, hello.' The woman nodded at Adam. ‘You new?'

‘Um, yeah.' He quickstepped to Katie's side. ‘I'm Adam. I'm, ah, after some work.'

The woman looked him over, head to toe and back again. ‘Hmm. Let's see. My bunions need filing. That'll be a few hours right there. Then I s'pose you could help me with my bath. So many bits I can't reach these days. Christ knows they need a good scrubbing.'

‘Phyl!' Katie said. ‘You'll scare him back to America.' She squeezed Adam's arm. ‘How about you wait for me out the front? I'll just be a minute.'

Adam hurried outside and sat on the low brick wall housing the building's mailboxes. Within seconds, his neck was damp with sweat. From the colour of the sky he guessed it was after six, yet the sun had all the heat of noon. Each day he expected this place to feel less alien and for minutes, even hours, at a time it did, and then . . . Then this, this wave of breathless, stomach-clenching disorientation. He closed his eyes and began to count backwards from one hundred.