Smoke in the Room (5 page)

Graeme felt like an intruder as he let himself in. He called out
hello
but there was no reply. A haze hung over the living room. He put down his bags and picked up the ashtray on the coffee table to check that a cigarette had not been left burning. It was overfull and ash spilt out the second he moved it. He carried it through to the kitchen and emptied it into the garbage bin, then rinsed it in the sink and set it to drain on the windowsill. As he left the kitchen he heard a low moan from the other side of the wall.

Back in the living room, he opened the window and stood for a minute watching the street below. He knew that come late February, the area would be infested with uni students, but for now the footpaths were quiet. A woman in a post office uniform sat at the bus stop, a phone to her ear. Across the road, two teenage boys lounged against the wall outside the kebab shop, drinking from giant Coca-Cola cups. An old man walked past them, a small white dog trailing behind him.

The road was busier – a bus or delivery van or 4WD passed every few seconds – but it wasn't as congested as it would be in a few weeks' time when the suburbanites returned to their city jobs and the school buses re-started for the year.

He shivered as another moan – louder and longer this time – sounded. He could make out rustling and urgent murmurs. He crept down the hallway, stopping outside the door on the right. After years of accessing sex only through the simulations of paid performers, he was surprised at how moving the sound of real lovemaking could be. Eyes closed, his forehead against the doorframe, sweat trickling down his neck, he could have been twenty-five
again, in some African backwater listening through paper-thin walls or hastily hung curtains as new recruits screwed loudly and indiscriminately, desperate to drown out the sounds and stench of death.

This place did not smell of death, but neither was it suffused with the freshness and energy one might expect of a lovers' retreat. It was as musty with defeat and apathy as an old-aged home. Still, it was better than the other places in this price range he'd looked at. At least here, he'd have a room to himself and an indoor toilet.

Graeme did not see his new flatmates that night. After unpacking, he checked the kitchen but found only a cask of moselle, a jar of vegemite and container of margarine. He went to the 7–11 across the road and bought bread, cheese, coffee, milk and orange juice. When he came back, the flat was silent. He ate a cheese sandwich in front of the late news and then went to bed.

Some hours later he woke to footsteps thundering past the bedroom door.
I'm gunna be sick
someone choked out. There was the sound of glass breaking, a thump on the wall by his bed, then a cry that could have been pain or ecstasy. Graeme covered his head with a pillow and reminded himself he'd been in far less comfortable waiting rooms than this one.

In the five days since he'd moved into the flat, Adam had slept twelve or thirteen hours a day. Katie had asked him if he was still jetlagged or if he felt sick, but he just rolled over and said that he was tired. He rarely answered her questions and so she didn't know much more about him than she had the day he moved in. She'd found, though, that he loosened up after he came; and for the ten minutes or so before he fell asleep again he spoke to her as though they were friends.

As dawn broke through the blinds in her bedroom on Thursday morning, Adam seized Katie's hips and held her still. She had been bouncing up there for what felt like hours and her thighs and lower back ached, but that sound he made, like a sigh that came from deep in his belly, and the way his forehead smoothed out and his mouth fell open made it worth the effort.

‘Thank you,' he said.

‘Please, like I'm doing you a favour.'

She went to climb off him but he held her steady. ‘What
is that?' he asked, running his finger over the tattoo on her right hip. ‘A cockroach or something?'

‘It's a fairy!' A muscle in the back of her left thigh twitched. She resisted the urge to stretch. ‘Geez, when have you ever seen a hot pink cockroach?'

He almost smiled. ‘Why a fairy?'

‘Dunno. I don't even remember getting it. I just woke up one morning about three years ago with blood under my nails and this itchy, scabby mess on my hip. Once I realised what it was I tried to pumice it off, but no luck, obviously.'

‘Mmm. Colour's really strong still. Good quality work.'

‘Yeah. Pity it's a bloody fairy.' Katie shifted her hips forward to stretch her lower back and felt Adam slip out of her. ‘Do you regret any of your tatts?'

‘Hang on.' Adam reached between their legs and removed the condom that Katie had, for once, remembered to put on him. ‘All my tattoos are significant.' He tied the condom and wrapped it in a tissue from the box on the bedside table. ‘They're like a diary. Even when I've moved on from the moment that inspired them, it's good to remember the intensity of the feeling.'

‘Ooh, that's smart. From now on I can say that although the fairy is meaningless I remember the intensity of the alcohol-induced blackout I was in when I – shit, that doesn't work, does it?' She sighed and pointed to the ivy climbing up his ribs. ‘So, what inspired this one?'

‘Ivy is a symbol of strength. When I was seventeen, I thought I needed a little extra.'

‘What happened?'

‘This one,' Adam said, touching the red star under his collarbone, ‘I got before I went travelling for the first time. It's like the stars sailors used to find their way home.'

‘Nice. But I want to know why you needed strength when –'

‘These Chinese characters –' he pointed his chin in the direction of his left bicep ‘– say “Love begets love” and the ones on my right arm say “Justice for all”.'

‘Like the Metallica song? God, that's way lamer than a pink fairy.'

‘No. It's got nothing to do with Metallica.' He made a jerking motion with his head. ‘Get off me. My legs are going numb.'

Katie lay on her back beside him and pulled her legs up against her body, stretching the overworked thigh muscles. ‘What's the significance, then?'

Adam made a noise that was the closest to a laugh Katie had heard from him in five days. ‘They're a reminder of how crazy love can make a person. When I got them, they were proof that I was sufficiently committed to my girlfriend to have her favourite quotes tattooed on my body using her favourite language.'

‘Seriously?'

‘Yeah. She was a force of nature. I was in awe. It's a good thing tattoos are all she asked of me. There's not much I wouldn't have done for her. The feeling was not, unfortunately, mutual.' He sighed. ‘And that's what happened when I was seventeen.'

Katie turned the image over in her mind: the clean-skinned teenager gritting and clenching in the tattooist's chair; the magnificent girlfriend standing over him, her interest already waning. She sat up, cross-legged. On his chest was a silver scythe, its twin blades arcing over each nipple. ‘Did she design this one, too?'

‘Nah. I got that one a couple of years ago in Thailand.'

‘God, this is recent? You were a fully mature adult of sound mind when you chose this? Ugh. It's so violent.'

‘It's not violent. It's a traditional harvesting tool. It symbolises the natural life-cycle of all living things. It's beautiful.'

She poked his chest. ‘Trust me, that thing coming at my face while you were pounding me, I wasn't thinking
beautiful
. I was thinking serial killer.'

‘
Pounding
you? Real nice, Katie.'

She shivered at the way he said her name, like it was two separate words:
Kay Tea
. He made it sound like something refreshing he wanted to drink. She bent and kissed his closed mouth and then the tip of his nose. His eyes were shut; she kissed his eyelids, then three places on his forehead. He seemed neither to enjoy nor be disturbed by her kissing. She understood he would not resist her advances but neither would he make any move to touch her or know her. She was a puppy and he was a Persian cat.

Katie moved down the bed, clasped his left ankle in one hand, and swung his leg across her lap. ‘
This
one is beautiful,' she said, smoothing her palm over the blue-red fire that raged up his left leg from ankle to thigh.

‘The legs go together,' Adam said, allowing her to pull him down the bed and position his calves so that the flames sizzled against the blue-green water flowing from a fountain on his right hip. ‘It's about balancing the elements. Fire and water. Masculine and feminine. Spiritual and material. Never allowing one aspect to overpower the other.'

‘Wow. I have no idea what that means, but it sounds very, ah, Californian.' She lifted his legs, squirmed between them, lay on her stomach and kissed the peacock feather
floating below his navel. ‘I can guess what this one means, you kinky bastard.'

‘After a peacock sheds its feathers, new ones grow back brighter and more beautiful.' His voice was flat. ‘So the tattoo is a reminder that loss is not only natural but necessary.'

‘That's really beautiful.'

‘I thought so when I was your age, too. I found the idea comforting then. Now it's . . . it's a reminder of youth, I suppose. Of innocence.'

‘Oh, sad, wise old man.'

‘Tired old man, actually. Let me go to sleep.'

‘But this is fun. One more, huh?' Katie kissed up the trail of hair to the entwined gold crowns over his bellybutton. ‘I love this one. What's it mean?'

He was quiet a moment. Katie rested her face on his belly, rose and fell with his breath.

‘It means I'm king of the world.'

‘No it doesn't. Tell me really.'

He put his hands in her hair, urged her down. ‘Really. I'm the king. Gotta be served.'

His tone was jokey, but the pressure on her head was not. She was grateful he had initiated something but surprised that it was this, now. He wasn't even slightly hard. She started sucking anyway, wanting him to know that he was as capable of inspiring unquestioning submission as that girlfriend of long ago, wanting him to know she found him magnificent.

When his cock began to stiffen he released her head, and said, ‘No, no, hey, you don't have to.' She felt a surge of pity that he thought she wouldn't want this. She tried to keep going but he wrenched his hips to the side and curled himself into a ball.

She stroked his back, kissing the eyes and lips of the gaudy goddess tattoo. After several minutes his breathing slowed and Katie smiled at the gentle gurgle he made in his sleep. She slid out of bed, got dressed, then bent over and kissed the back of his neck. ‘Beautiful man,' she whispered. ‘I'll be back before you wake.'

The government paid Katie's pension into her bank account every second Thursday. It had been Gran's idea that Katie should make her fortnightly doctor's appointment on the same day so she wouldn't forget it, and the plan had worked well so far; she hadn't missed an appointment in months. Still, Gran's text arrived at 8 am, just as Katie was lacing her boots.
Remember doc @ 9. Call me after
.

On my way worrywart
she sent back.

Passing the mailboxes out the front, she noticed that Phyl's was stuffed with envelopes and made a mental note to check in on her when she returned. She noticed too that the weeds around the mailboxes were at ankle height and tried to remember whose job it was to clear them. Carol used to do it, but someone must have taken over after she died. Katie was sure she'd never seen the weeds so long before.

At the bus stop two women in business suits sat reading magazines. The glamorous blonde on the beer ad behind them had furry black eyebrows, a cigar hanging from her lips and a dick the size of her arm. ‘Okay,' Katie said. ‘'Fess up. Which one of you did that?'

The woman closest to Katie looked up at her and then twisted to see the poster. ‘School holidays,' she said. ‘Kids with too much time on their hands.'

‘They've done a good job, though. Kind of makes me want to drink that overpriced watery shit she's holding. Who wouldn't rather party with that hairy, cigar-smoking she-male than the sulky waif underneath?'

The woman smiled but lifted her magazine in front of her face.
THE SECRET SEX MOVE HE WISHES YOU
'
D TRY
it said.

‘Hey, sorry. I know you're reading, but I have to know. What's the secret sex move?'

The woman raised her eyebrows.

‘On the cover,' Katie said.

‘Oh.' The woman glanced at the cover, sighed and began flicking through the pages. ‘Um, it's . . . Here.' She held the open magazine out to Katie.

She scanned the text and started to laugh. ‘Stick a finger up his arse? That's a secret? Even a two year old can figure out that holes like to be filled.'

The second woman made a tutting sound. Katie looked up from the magazine and saw the women making the face at each other. That face people made when they didn't want to talk or hear or notice you
and
they wanted other people to
know
they didn't want to talk or hear or notice.

‘Thanks,' Katie said and handed the magazine back. She stepped a few paces out of the shelter and stood watching the road. She checked the time on her phone. Bus was due exactly now.

A girl of six or seven wearing a yellow swimsuit and denim shorts ran towards the bus stop from the direction of the UniLodge Hotel. Behind her trudged a pale man in board shorts and a woman in an enormous sunhat.

‘Off to the beach?' Katie said as the girl skidded to a halt beside her.

‘Yep, I've never been to an Australian beach,' the girl said with an English accent. ‘Dad says they're different to English beaches. He said there'll be lots of yellow sand.'

‘He's right, there will be. What are the beaches in England like?'