Unzipped (13 page)

Ruby has Mark. She doesn’t need me. But that doesn’t mean I don’t need her. I miss her antic style mode and the pronouncements she makes about life.

I sent her forty-five texts in a week. It’s nothing she wouldn’t do for me. And nine emails. She isn’t blocking them but perhaps she can see by their diminishing length that I’m tiring.

The day before BJ leaves for Paris we sit in her black Honda up the street from Ruby’s house and wait. We’ve got books and music, food and each other.

Two hours in, we’re bored, the books remain unread— they’re not stake-out books. BJ opens her door.

‘Where are you going?’

‘I’m going to have a wee in her garden. If I don’t, I’ll piss in the car,’ she says.

I wait and try not to pick at the scab on my knee.

She returns two minutes later. ‘She’s bloody home. In
the kitchen. Emptying the teapot, I think.’

Three knocks on her front door and Ruby and I are face to face.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I could ask you the same thing,’ BJ says, sticking her foot in the door.

‘I live here.’

‘Well, why don’t you answer your fucken phone then?’ BJ steps past Ruby and into the hallway.

Ruby scowls and stalks into the kitchen.

‘Listen,’ BJ is making herself at home, ‘tomorrow I go away for a month, and you two need to sort this out. I can’t leave Peta like this. Cups?’

Ruby points to the cupboard above the fridge. ‘Where are you going?’ she says over the rumble of the kettle filling.

She hasn’t read my emails or my texts. How much backstory do I have to give her? I don’t feel like reliving the last few weeks. I still have grey areas. Too afraid to ask, I haven’t determined where BJ spent her lost night.

‘She’s going to Bangkok and Paris.’

‘All in one day?’ Ruby prepares the teapot.

‘Yeah and back in time for dinner.’ BJ gives me one of those would-you-hurry-it-up-and-say-something glances. I shake my head, not ready.

‘Where’s Mark?’ BJ asking the question I want an answer to.

The teapot sweats on the kitchen table. I sweat in my chair.

‘Playing golf with Ravi.’

‘Oh, you’re a golf-widow. I’ve heard about them.’ BJ turns to me. ‘It’s a hetero thing.’ BJ picks up the snow
dome Ruby has on the windowsill, shakes the Golden Gate Bridge into a blizzard. Ruby takes it from her and puts it back.

‘No, I’m a golf flatmate. Theresa’s the golf-widow and Ravi Junior is the golf-orphan.’

‘So, you’re not…’

‘No, Peta.’

‘Sorry. Clarification required.’ BJ holds her cup of tea in both hands, blowing a willowy bend into the rising steam. ‘You’re not an item?’

‘God, she’s worse than me.’ Two sugars stirred in and an incredulous look when I have none. ‘No, BJ, we are not an item. I think…And we haven’t fucked for a couple of days. He’s been away.’ She stares at her tea. ‘It’s starting to do my head in. I don’t know what he wants.’

‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘Don’t say anything, Pete.’ Ruby carries her tea to the lounge room. We follow her. ‘At least he’s improved. He used to sit here on the couch and cry, or stare at nothing, and say nothing. Now we go to bed and he comes into mine. I think we’re just taking our frustrations out on each other.’

‘Oh, Rube.’ I put my cup down and take her into my arms. We cry at each other. ‘Why didn’t you talk to me? I could have helped.’

‘What could you have said? You were pissed off we were having sex and I don’t know if it was at me or him.’

‘If you read my emails…’

‘I didn’t have to. I know you, remember? You wouldn’t have wanted your little sister on at you about how she was fucking your ex and getting her head fucked as well.’

‘You’re right. I wouldn’t have had the maturity.’

‘And you were looking after me,’ BJ says, passing round slices of the cinnamon bun we brought for the stake-out. She hands me a slice, buttered, extra icing.

I take it, smile. ‘Who’s been looking after whom?’

‘Okay. I’m leaving you to it. I’m going for a ride and I’ll be back in an hour or so. Peta’s bound to want to tell you how ace I am in bed and how you should give chicks a try. I’ll only stand about getting embarrassed.’

‘You’ve never been embarrassed in your life.’

‘Yes, I have,’ BJ says. ‘You were out cold on my bathroom floor and missed the whole thing.’

Because BJ wants to be the master of her body clock we haven’t slept. She’s hoping to sleep on the plane and wake up in Bangkok like nothing happened.

I helped her pack. She was hopeless. Mopey, indecisive, she kept putting things in, taking them out. I pushed her out of the way. ‘Let me do it.’

All my favourite things of hers went in: black T-shirt, black jeans, black underwear, grey T-shirt, T-shirt with bow tie and lapels drawn on. Yes, it’s a cliché, but she works it. Two white shirts, even though she says I look better in them than she does. Oh, no, I don’t.

‘Also,’ she says, ‘I don’t want to be awake for Carole. I’ll feel less trapped on an aeroplane with my mother if I’m asleep.’

‘You could use the time to repair things. You never know.’

‘I do know, Pete. She wants her Belinda Jane back and
she thinks a different time zone is going to do it.’

I’m looking into the front yard. The streetlights glow four-thirty in the morning and everything—the trees, the road, parked cars—has a touch of deep metal-blue. Light sweeps up the street.

‘The taxi’s here.’ I hate saying it.

BJ shoulders her bag, wheels her suitcase to the front door.

‘Don’t come out, Pete, it’s cold.’ It might be spring, but the nights are still wintry. ‘Go back to bed and think of me. With your hands.’ BJ’s eyes are shiny. Mine burn.

‘It feels like goodbye,’ I say.

‘It’s see you soon. Not goodbye.’

We kiss and I don’t want to let her go. There’s a beep.

‘Send me a postcard?’

BJ turns from the front door.

‘Every damn day, you’ll get sick of it. Anyway, I have to come back,’ she says, ‘Thunder’s here.’

BJ’s first postcard arrives on Monday, postmarked Carlton. She must have sent it the Friday before she left. It’s Federation Square.

We discovered we’d been in the crowd there just metres from each other for the Apology. She was with Loz and Justine; I was with Taylor; Ruby was stuck at work but with us on the phone. BJ and I probably threw our tissues in the same bin.

The postcard says
only 698 hours to go.
Doesn’t seem too long. I’ve lived forty-eight of those hours already.

The library is busy enough to keep my mind in Melbourne. I’m taking public transport and reading, on the way in, on the way home, and I’ve got a good stack of books on my bedside table.
The Stone Gods, Tipping the Velvet, About a Girl.
We bought them at Hares & Hyenas but we could have got them at any bookshop.

I’m going to pick BJ up from the airport, early on a
Wednesday in four weeks. I’m planning to construct a sign, something I can get away with in the all-go business of the airport.
Marry me, BJ,
it’ll say, in black letters on bright red. It’ll be like we’re starring in our own movie. We can’t get married, it’s against the law, but we can want to. Carole Smart can make her own way home.

After work I come home to a quiet house, a postcard between my teeth, and grapple with my keys, laptop and a surfeit of junk mail. No music blaring. No smell of cigarettes wafting in from the back verandah.

BJ’s empty ashtray and blue disposable lighter are on the kitchen windowsill. Mrs Dalloway twists an infinity symbol round my ankles. She is always hungry. I make her wait while I read the postcard.

Hey, remember that time we ate cornflakes out of the box in the boulevard and saw the sun coming up, up, up?

I stick it on the fridge under my ‘love handles are the new black’ magnet. Pour dry cat food into a bowl and step out of the way.

‘Oh yes, you love me now, don’t you, Mrs D?’

I text Taylor:
how’s things or shouldn’t I ask. let’s catch a movie sometime. px

Less than a minute later she replies.
no you shouldn’t and yes let’s. x

I ring Ruby: ‘Want to come over for dinner? I’m making risotto.’ Not so much asking as telling. I plan to have dinner with Ruby for the entire month.

‘I’ll be there in forty.’

Ruby lifts the lid of the saucepan, peers through the steam, frowns. She hooks a teaspoon out of the top drawer. Taste test. Screws up her face.

‘Sit down, Queen of Bland, while I try and fix this.’

‘But…’ I sit.

She washes her hands, makes herself at home in my pantry.

‘This is not risotto, Peta. What you have here is a rice dish.’ Ruby at the stove, no recipe needed. ‘And I’m not coming back tomorrow night. I’ve got a date. We’re going to the movies and then I’m going to go to his house and let him have his, what I hope will be dirty and strenuous, way with me.’

She doesn’t talk like that about Mark.

‘Who is he?’

‘A guy from work. Nathan something. He works on the floor above me in Reconciliations. We crack bad Catholic jokes in the lift. He was an altar boy and you know what they say about them.’

I wait. Not even Ruby would make a joke of child abuse.

‘You know, church angel, bedroom devil.’ She sprinkles a handful of parsley across the pearly tops of our full bowls.

‘You made that up.’ I go for the salt, she stops me.

‘Taste it first. Yes, I did. It’s wishful thinking. No, it’s projection. Think it and it will be. He looks fit…’ Ruby swirls parmesan into her risotto, her fork making a ceramic scrape.

‘Do the people at work know you trawl for men in the lifts?’ I have a taste. ‘This is good, Ruby, really good, what did you do?’

‘It’s called seasoning, Pete. I know you’ve heard of it.’

‘So Mark isn’t home then?’

‘Want to go to the movies on Wednesday night?’ she says. ‘See something French?’

‘That’d be great. Want to answer my question?’

‘He’s in Chicago, he left this morning. He’s back on the twenty-seventh. It wouldn’t matter anyway. I never bring anyone back to my place.’

‘And are you still…’

‘Fucking?’

I roll my eyes. ‘Yes, Rube?’

‘Sometimes we do, sometimes we don’t. I think there may be a system, but if there is, I don’t know how it runs.’

Ruby slides a twenty across the counter to the popcorn vendor, her hand out for change that doesn’t materialise. ‘You think you got away with it, don’t you?’

‘What?’

‘Mark. You think you got out unscathed. No bandaids, nothing.’

‘I thought you were taking me out to take my mind off it. What are you talking about?’

‘I mean,’ she scarfs a handful of my popcorn, squashes it into her mouth, making me wait, ‘I mean you seem to have swapped lovers without looking back. Like you’ve changed your favourite colour. Chucked out all your blue stuff, gone on a shopping spree and filled your house with red.’

‘Are you being philosophical? Is there some meaning I’m unable to ascertain in this favourite colour analogy?’

‘Yes. You haven’t cried. You just swapped.’

‘What do you want from me, Ruby?’ I say it softly. If we have to have this discussion in the queue, I’ll try to keep it down.

‘I want you to see you haven’t got away with it.’

‘You make it sound like a robbery.’

The line is slow. We snail-pace it to the head of the queue, show the usher our tickets. I stand in the aisle, Ruby at my shoulder, nudging me: just sit somewhere. We sit. The light fades and the curtain opens.

‘It was a kind of robbery, Pete. And now you’re like Ronald Biggs laughing it up on a beach somewhere.’

‘Are you fucking mental?’

‘Sssh,’ she says with a grin.

‘What do you care? You love this type of thing. You think your life is a movie and you’re the star.’ I’m losing track. ‘I am not Ronald Biggs.’

‘She isn’t, you know,’ a voice from behind, ‘she hasn’t got the tan or the accent.’

Ruby turns towards the voice, her arm on the back of her chair: ‘Pipe down, mate. It’s got nothing to do with you.’

‘Look,’ he says, ‘you’ve got about seven minutes before the movie starts. I’m happy to listen to you fight with Ronald, but when the titles come on I want you two to wrap it up.’

I shrink into my seat.

‘Hear that, Pete? We’ve got seven minutes, or glasses here is going to clock you one. Tell me why you’re not Ronald.’

‘Six minutes,’ the man behind says.

‘You were letting your clit do your thinking for you.’

Thank God it’s dark.

‘You didn’t see all the tears before the accident.’

‘Yes, I did. And I love how you call it “the accident”. You don’t call it the big sex injury. You don’t call it, getting busted having my clit sucked. You give it a tidy, wasn’t-my-fault name, the accident.’

She’s right, of course. As usual. ‘I didn’t know about falling in love.’

‘Yes, you did. You think you’ve never fallen in love? What about with Mark? You’re just too old and bored to remember it.’

‘Oh, at thirty-five I’m too old.’ Was I bored with myself? Or was it simpler than that? Somebody unexpected dropped into my life, shook it up, and here we are. Ronald and Ruby at the movies. ‘Ruby, you fall in love every second week, then nothing.’

‘I do not. Fucking is not loving.’

‘I know what that’s about. You’ve loved Mark for so long you’ve been unable to let anyone else in.’

‘You are out of your mind,’ she says.

‘Three minutes, Ronald.’

‘I am not Ronald fucking Biggs!’

It’s a long time since I’ve yelled at a stranger. I leap up and the bucket of popcorn on my lap flies. Popcorn lights the air, little yellow meteorites in the darkness, up, up, up, in a slow curve.

‘Are you happy now, Rube?’

Yes, she is. Her shoulders are shaking, she’s laughing so hard. She’s snorted her drink and it’s all over her front, a little Coca-Cola brook running down her T-shirt.

The titles appear,
From Paris with Love.
This is not a French movie, it’s Travolta, guns and blood spatter in Paris.

We play tug of war over the armrest until we’re comfortable. In the safety of the cinema, my eyes closed, I think about the favourite colours thing. I have made it look easy. As simple as changing T-shirts. Out with the worn one, although it was one of the best ones for seventeen years; in with the new. Brilliant, black leather with exciting edges.

‘Okay, Rube, I might be Ronald.’ After the movie, we pour down the stairs with the crowd.

Saturday night, bikes leaning, on bikes leaning, on bikes leaning. Months ago I’d never have noticed them. I take a photo on my phone. A Melbourne postcard for my cowboy girl.

‘What’s the collective noun for bikes?’

‘A steel?’ Ruby says.

‘A danger.’ BJ would like that.

‘Come and see my new boots.’ Ruby drags me down an arcade. She says hello to her boots through the window, her face against the glass, see you soon, love you.

‘How many pairs of black boots will be enough?’

‘I’ll know when I know, Pete. Like you and BJ. How you reckon you knew when you knew. There’s a little boot monitor inside me, one day the tiny needle will hit full on the gauge.’

‘You’re an idiot.’

‘No, I’m wise beyond my years. That’s why you don’t have to worry about me and Mark, and that’s why I know this is about more than me and Mark.’

‘It must be great to have all the answers, Ruby. Answer me this: will you have sex with Mark again?’

Sometimes I don’t know why I say these things. It’s
like I’ve got one of those conical collars that dogs have round their heads to prevent them from scratching. But they do anyway. They push themselves against obstacles, slip a clawed foot under, bend the collar. They get at it.

‘Will you?

Am I jealous? Mark and Ruby have their own jokes. She can make him laugh like I never could. Falling about the place kind of laughing that starts off as giggling and turns into tears, genuine tears, because your face knows what tears are for, even if your smiling mind doesn’t.

‘Stop torturing yourself. I told you, it’s stress relief. Your hot little leather-clad girlfriend is in Paris for the month. All those gorgeous Frenchwomen, smoking at cafes, half-lit laneways, confined spaces, small kitchens. Worry about that.’

‘Carole is with her.’

‘Oh yeah, Carole Smart. Smart Carole. She’s
so
invested in the Peta and BJ experience. She’ll probably take her to a speed-dating night, telling her, it’s just a funny little French game, you’ve got to try it.’

‘I trust BJ, Ruby.’

‘Why? You don’t even know where she was that night.’

‘She loves me. Says I’m beautiful. She makes me feel beautiful.’

‘Peta, you are beautiful. You don’t need somebody else to tell you that, surely? People are always getting us confused, you have to be beautiful.’

She’s walking ahead of me, her voice echoing under the shop canopies. I step a foot onto the back of her leg, just behind her knee; she buckles, nearly topples over.

‘And you walk beautifully.’ I thread my arm through hers. ‘There’s one.’ We run for the tram.

Trams look brilliant at night, especially when they’re empty. They’re like a party waiting to happen, a future about to be lived. Nothing doing yet but give it a minute.