“Dec’s not stupid. He knows. But they get past it because they’re so close. And you have to get past it, Simon. Jesus, you really need to open up to people instead of thinking you have to deal all by yourself.”
“I know.”
She gave an exasperated sigh. “You say that, but I still don’t think you get it. You’ve been used to being single for so long that you’ve forgotten how to be part of a couple. It’s not easy, but other people aren’t as resistant to it as you are.”
“I don’t want to resist it,” I said softly.
“Well, tell that to Declan,” she paused. “When he lets you.”
“I wish he was here.”
“If it’s any consolation, I bet you he does too.”
“But does he wish
me
to be here as well?”
“I don’t know.”
I wish she could have been more sympathetic for me, but I needed the tough love. I also wondered if she was just avoiding revealing Declan’s feelings on his behalf. All I wanted was to talk to him, to stop feeling empty.
Lisa checked her watch. “Anyway, I’ve got to go. I have a meeting with the building co-op.” She looked at my puzzled expression. “Didn’t I tell you? Abe and I are buying in here.”
“That’s great,” I told her. “Really.”
We went back into the apartment and locked up, heading back towards the lift.
340 | SEAN KENNEDY
“Think about what I said,” Lisa told me as she got off on the fourth floor. I nodded. “Thanks. And Lisa?”
“What?”
“Abe doesn’t hate me, does he?”
She smiled and shook her head. “But that might change if you truly break Dec’s heart. You don’t even want to know what he planned to do to the ex.”
I truly didn’t, but the thought of losing Dec was actually far scarier.
ALTHOUGH my mad dash to the Docklands hadn’t exactly gotten me the results I had hoped for, I was in a slightly better frame of mind when I got back to the office. Nyssa and her friends were doing a ring-around, finalising catering and invitations for the opening night, and they all greeted me warmly when I walked in. Nyssa had the presence of mind not to ask me anything about what she already suspected caused my absence, although I knew she would grill me for details later. But she did stump me when she followed me into my office.
“Alice Provotna came in to see you.”
It had actually been a while since I had seen Alice. She had decided to adapt the focus of her documentary to being a “one year in the life” piece on Declan and his first year of being out, but a family wedding had kept her away from the Brownlows for which I was thankful for even before the trouble between Declan and I had occurred.
“Oh,” was all I could say.
“She said she was having some trouble getting the Devils to talk to her today about releasing some footage. In fact, she accused them of being cagey.”
Oh,
shit
. All we needed was for
her
to scent something in her newly self-anointed role of documentary-auteur. This wasn’t the ending I wanted depicted in her doco. I didn’t even want it to be the final-act storyline before the hopeful happy ending.
“She wanted to know if you could use your contacts to pull some strings,” Nyssa continued unhappily, knowing the effect it could have on me. I nodded. “Okay. I’m going to go home, Nyss, but if she calls again just tell her I’ll look into it.”
It was a brush-off; we both knew it, but Nyssa nodded. “Sure.”
“Thanks for your help, guys,” I told her friends. “Keep a record of the hours you’ve worked, I’ll make sure you get some kind of pay.”
I left them happier than I was, because Alice’s request had brought up all my fears again.
TIGERS AND DEVILS | 341
I DIDN’T hear from Declan at all, although I tried calling his mobile and his landline in Hobart again and again. I refused to give up.
Now that Nyssa’s friends had been promised pay for their services, they threw themselves into doing even more jobs for the festival, and I didn’t go in for the rest of the week. I swore that even if I had to end up paying them somehow out of my own pocket it would be worth it. All I wanted to do was slop around the house and feel sorry for myself and try to get hold of Dec. I avoided calls from my parents and Alice Provotna, too scared that they would be able to wheedle out of me that something was wrong.
On Friday an invitation for Tim and Gabby’s wedding came in the post, addressed to both Declan and myself. It was to be held in the first week of December; I filled out the RSVP to send back to them, saying we would both be attending. Doing stupid little things like that was the only thing that gave me hope. I wanted to imagine into reality the vision of Dec and I turning up at the ceremony in Fitzroy Gardens, bickering lightheartedly as I knew undoubtedly we would, more than likely because I would be wishing to be anywhere but there, and Declan would be having to keep me in line. Then later we would shock some of the more conservative guests at the reception when we slow-danced together as couples were invited to join the bridal waltz. I let my messagebank take calls from any number I didn’t recognise on caller ID. Checking later, most of them were from media sources that wanted sound bytes about the Brownlows. I ignored them. Jasper’s article caused a little bit of a stir when it was picked up by the AAP and reprinted in other papers. I dreaded the thought of Declan being contacted for follow-ups by the press when I was probably the last thing he wanted to talk about.
Returning to work the following Monday, I was in what Lisa would probably call
“shut-down mode”. I threw myself into the festival, and Nyssa and I were lost in a crazy schedule again, where I only saw my own house when I crashed into bed and then left as soon as I got up again in the morning. I had to rely upon Roger and Fran again to feed Maggie, as there was no Declan to pick up the slack.
I don’t know whether it was the insane amount of work I had to do or whether I had just resigned myself to it being over, but I didn’t attempt calling Declan that week. However, I did send an invite for opening night out to him. I scrawled across it desperately
Please come. I miss you
. I didn’t know if it would work. Just because we hadn’t spoken didn’t mean that I was in the dark about what he was up to. The news showed footage of him in Hobart one night, helping to coach the junior squad Lisa had told me about. Aware that the cameras were on him, he had his mediasmile on. Or maybe I just wanted it to be his media-smile. The possibility that he actually
was
happy was something I didn’t want to consider, even though Lisa had made out he wasn’t.
I received an RSVP from Lisa and Abe saying they were coming to the Triple F
opening night; still no word from Dec. I was glad that they were making the effort, although it could be awkward on both ends. I didn’t want them to be caught in the middle.
342 | SEAN KENNEDY
It was three days before the opening of the festival when I collapsed over the paper in exhaustion with a wilting salad roll to try and find fifteen minutes of peace and found a piece on Declan buried back in the social pages.
The subheading asked
TYLER’S NEW SQUEEZE?
and the picture showed Declan walking down a set of stairs, his hands in his pockets. He was in the process of turning back to look at the guy walking slightly behind him, and they were both laughing. The reporter commented that they had been hanging out together “quite a bit” in Hobart. I choked on a mouthful of roll and had to spit it out into a napkin as there was no way I could get it down. I stared at the photo, unwilling to accept any other explanation. It was in the paper, so of course it
must
be true. The logical part of my brain was saying
Declan isn’t like that, there’s no way he would be with someone else when he hasn’t
even sorted out once and for all what is happening with you
; my emotional and exhausted self was saying
You fucked him over, why should he show you any courtesy?
And I really couldn’t think of a reason. Except that I knew Dec wouldn’t do that. But it still hurt when I got home at about midnight and found a message from my mother asking if we had broken up.
I deleted it half-way through.
WE had arranged things to be a little bit different for the opening night of the Triple F
this year, riding off the back of last year’s success and what it did to boost our reputation. The Yarra City Council had allowed us to use the Studley Park amphitheatre, and we were going to be screening the films on a floating screen in the river itself; it was going to be even bigger than Federation Square the year before. There had still been no word from Declan. I steeled myself for having to turn up with Roger and Fran, and when questioned about Declan I would just say he had other commitments. As he hadn’t made an official statement, I wasn’t going to either. There was plenty of speculation in the media, however. Declan had turned up in another picture in the social pages, standing out on his balcony with some guy I didn’t know from a bar of soap.
MORNING COFFEE
? the caption asked sneakily. I couldn’t believe that I was now accepting it; it had to be over. It had been over two weeks since I had last spoken to him, and you had to assume that anybody seeking some form of reconciliation would have been in contact by now. I told Roger and Fran that I would drive so they could drink; alcohol wouldn’t be my friend tonight when there was so much to do and so much to hide. Loose lips sink (relation)ships.
My spirits were raised when we parked the car and walked down to the amphitheatre. The Chinese lanterns Nyssa and I had been stringing up all morning in the branches above the pathway filled the air with a festive glow, and the amount of people milling around already guaranteed that the night would be a success.
“It looks great,” Fran said.
TIGERS AND DEVILS | 343
“Thanks.” I grinned.
“Yeah,” Roger said. “Where’s the bar? It’s open this year, right?”
“All class,” Fran muttered.
“Just wait for the photos first, Rog,” I laughed.
As soon as the photographers saw me, they surged forward. I knew it wasn’t really for me, just that they mistook Roger to be Declan from a distance. The flashes rapidly diminished in number as they realised he wasn’t there, and they were just stuck with the non-famous half of the couple and his doofus friends.
“Simon, where’s Declan tonight?” one of them yelled out to me. I kept my voice clear and light. “He had other commitments tonight.”
“What about the reports that have been published in the papers lately?” asked a woman holding a microphone emblazoned with a radio station logo at the bottom. I grinned; it looked far more easy and comfortable than I really was. “You should know not to believe anything—” and I gave an exaggerated
whoops
expression, “Sorry, I mean
everything
in the papers.”
There were actually a few laughs at that one, and the three of us fled to relative safety.
“That was good,” Fran said comfortingly. “You did well.”
Nyssa swooped upon me, and Roger went off in search of the bar. “Quite a lot of people are looking for you,” she said, frazzled and forgetting to even indulge in any greeting. “But the most persistent are Alice Provotna and Gigi Jones.”
Alice, I had to avoid. But what did Gigi Jones want with me?
“Where is Gigi?” I asked.
“Near the projector.”
Fran gave me a kiss. “Go. I’ll find my husband.”
As I followed Nyssa through the crowds, I couldn’t help but look for Declan, hoping he would be here with Lisa and Abe, even if he was angry and would be difficult to talk to. Because just him being here would mean
something
.
“I haven’t seen him,” Nyssa said quietly, unable to avoid seeing my transparency.
“I wasn’t thinking about that,” I lied. “I was just wondering what Gigi needs to see me about.”
IT turned out that Nyssa’s most paranoid fear turned out to be real. I had been headhunted.
Gigi Jones ran another, bigger, slightly more mainstream film festival. And she wanted me as part of the team. I would be in charge of local and national entrants, while her other team would handle foreign acquisitions. I would be in charge of five people
344 | SEAN KENNEDY
and get a rather substantial payrise. As guilty as I felt about considering leaving the Triple F (especially on the opening night of their current festival), it was a great opportunity.
But there were two things I had to clear first.
“I can’t leave without Nyssa,” I told Gigi.
Gigi laughed. “I thought as much. You two are far too loyal to each other to survive in this business!”
I looked at her blankly. “You already asked her?”
“Yes, and despite the fact that it would be a promotion for her, she said she couldn’t leave you.” Gigi gave a small, self-satisfied giggle. “She was very relieved when I said I was going to be offering you the local acquisition leader role.”
Now I had to bring up what could be the deal breaker. “I’m not being offered this job because of… well, the fact that I seem to turn up in the media quite a bit?” I had to know that if Declan wasn’t going to be on my arm for required social functions whether the offer would be rescinded.
Gigi looked at me over the rim of her glass. “I hire people because of what they can do with the job. I’ve seen your work for the past few years, Simon. I just had to wait and ascertain that it wasn’t a fluke and then make sure I snatched you up before somebody else did.”