Zigzag Street (24 page)

My palms sweat in the air-conditioning.

I'm going to fuck this up. I know I'm going to fuck this up.

She has the reasonable expectation that we will buy glasses because her old ones are broken, and I'm behaving as though my life depends on it. So I've fucked it up already. I needn't worry about it. I've already put Jeff's greatest fears about me into practice. I have already lived the fantasy of intimacy with Rachel Vilikovski a million times, and in the real world all I've done is injure her.

What a dickhead. I should live my life knowing that harm will come to me.

She's at Eyewear Now at one-thirty. She's wearing a short black dress and I'm fighting off the emergence of a speech impediment.

I say Hi.

Hi
. She looks at me as though I might be kind of comical and she smiles, but only by lifting the right half of her upper lip.

Technically this may be no more than a quarter of a smile, but it kills me. I'm lucky she didn't use any more.

And she has a large irregular swelling between her eyes, and her broken glasses arranged so that she has good vision from the eye with the lens. Why is she wearing that short black dress? She looks far too good in it. The short black dress is a well-known weakener of
weak men, and I'm as weak as they come. This is hardly fair. And she has such a shape under that black dress, such a cruel, slinky woman kind of shape. And still the quarter smile. I'm still copping the quarter smile.

I had to wear these glasses
, she says.
My spare pair doesn't fit because of the swelling. So it's probably not a good day to be buying new frames, but I think I know what I want
.

I follow her in and I'm thinking the people in the store will be thinking we're together. That this is the way it works with us. I'm buying her glasses. And maybe she bought me this tie for my twenty-eighth. And that lint in the shirt pocket? Maybe it's one of her tissues. I never use tissues.

Black dress.
I think I know what I want
. She is a very powerful woman.

Vilikovski, Rachel
, she's saying.
You'll have my prescription on file. I had an accident with the glasses
.

The next fifteen minutes are a joy as Rachel, who might know what she wants but clearly wants something very specific, tries on frame after frame, as best she can. And says things like,
So, does this go with my eyes? Is this right with my cheekbones? How does this make me look
? Before ending up with frames very like the ones I broke, but three times the price. And that doesn't bother her at all.

The glasses will take twenty minutes, so she says,
How about we go for coffee
? And the nearest place is the Koffies I usually frequent with Jeff, and that's where she walks.

And of course the girl who thinks I'm a hero is behind the counter again. I try not to make eye contact but she says to Rachel,
You must be very proud of him
, and looks at me, smiling.

Sure
, Rachel says.
Who wouldn't be
? And she pays for the coffees, saying,
You only owe me glasses
.

We sit in a booth.

So why am I proud of you? Not that I'm not. Not that I'm sure there aren't a thousand reasons, but why
?

Who knows? Because I just won some big dermatology award? She must have thought I was somebody else.

Really
?

Yeah.

Maybe there's more to you than meets the eye
, she says and shuts the eye on the lensless side of the frame to study me more closely.

And I'm sure it's all of the highest quality, I tell her.

She smiles and goes and gets herself a glass of water. She takes two Panadol when she sits down again.

Are you sure you should be taking that?

Hey, my Head Injury Card says paracetamol is fine
.

Your head's still sore then.

Well, yeah. But with an egg like this what do you expect? I'm sure it'll go down in a day or two. This is not my normal look you know
.

Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm really sorry about all that. Shit. I don't think I even apologised before. I think I knocked you out twenty-four hours ago and it didn't occur to me to apologise till just now. That's so bad. I'm sorry. Really. That's terrible. You had me worried yesterday, you know. I had these fears about you bleeding in your head and your brain getting crushed, and all that. I was sitting there last night thinking, if she goes to bed and her brain gets crushed I'll feel like shit.

She laughs.
Well, I thought about it, but I really didn't want to make you feel like shit, so I thought I'd live
.

Good choice.

The first ten minutes of the twenty minute wait has been the quickest of my life, but the conversation suddenly stalls and it becomes apparent that the only common ground we've established is based on the injury I have done her. That we've spent half an hour playing the roles of two people who know each other well, and now we realise we don't know each other at all. And the next ten minutes means a lot.

I'm going to fight this. This is when I can deteriorate into nervous smiles and long gazes out the window and a lot of coffee drinking, as though my coffee is of paramount importance. But not today.

So now that you've decided to live, I say to her, what are you going to do with the rest of your life? You and your fine new frames.

This is a bad line. A seriously crappy line. It's so bad it makes me sweat.

The rest of my life
? And she thinks about this.
Bring about world peace. Bring an end to poverty
. And she's clearly despatching this with exactly the treatment it deserves.
Find a cure for all known diseases. And have my own incredibly low quality daytime TV show
.

Wow. That's great. Sort of Boutros Boutros-Ghali meets Oprah.

I'm thinking more like Boutros Boutros-Ghali meets Bert Newton
.

That's a great show. That is a great show. So, at nine-thirty you restructure the World Bank, nine-forty you talk to Arthur from Bamix about some outstanding juicing device …

Nine-fifty and I've redrawn the map of the Balkans, and they all love what I've done with it, ten o'clock and I've got a segment on decoupage that really kicks arse
.

This is a very good show. This is a show the world needs, or at the very least, deserves. You realise this could work on cable.

I'd never thought about cable
.

Sure. It's the medium of the nineties. Well, that and CD-ROM and the Internet.

She nods, as though she's giving it a second's serious thought.
Lucky I didn't go ahead with the brain crushing then
.

We go back for the glasses and I have the pleasure of loading four hundred and fifty dollars onto my Visacard.

And we stand in the street, Rachel with the broken
glasses still fitted across her damaged face, twirling her new pair in her right hand.

They're nice
, she says.
Thanks
.

That's okay.

And I'm thinking, thinking, thinking. Thinking, this is sorted out. I should let her go now, let her go and have a life. Thinking, no way.

You worry me with these headaches, I say to her, as though it's a considerate remark and not a tactical manoeuvre.

I'll be okay
.

Yeah, well, you worry me. You will see someone if they get worse, won't you? If there might be any problem.

Sure
.

Is it all right if I call you? To see if you're okay? You worry me, like I said.

It's fine. That'd be fine. You've got my numbers
.

Yeah.

I look over my shoulder when I'm back at the edge of the mall, and she's walking away down Albert Street, her new glasses in her right hand, still twirling.

You wouldn't believe this woman, I say to Jeff. You just wouldn't believe her.

And I tell him about the last forty-five minutes. The short black dress.
I think I know what I want
. The quarter smile. The most expensive pair of glasses in the world, and not an eyelid batted. The TV show idea.

Shit, Boutros meets Bert
, he says, almost in a whisper, his admiration more than apparent over the phone.
That's a great show
.

That's what I said.

I think she's a very powerful woman
.

Yeah.

Rick, you're playing the big game now. Are you up to this
?

I have no good answer. I have an obvious answer, which is No, but I have no good answer.

At home that night I think I shall invite her for dinner. I think I'll persuade her around to Zigzag Street and give her fine wine and a meal of several courses.

This plan is, of course, more comprehensively fucked than most. What would I cook? What could I do with even one course that could possibly impress Rachel Vilikovski? The pantry is now loaded with single-serve baked beans (in sauces of various flavours) and the fridge with Tim Tams. Jeff and Sal, aware of my needs, gave me a recipe book for Christmas called
Kid's Snacks and
Lunches
, and for about five seconds I actually browse through the table of contents quite seriously.

And I realise I'm planning to line the glorious Rachel Vilikovski up for a curried popcorn entree, baked beans on toast main and star-shaped Nutella sandwiches and Tim Tams for dessert. To look at this in the bluntest of terms, not even Brad Pitt would score after serving such a banquet. Besides, I have no idea which wines would go with each course.

So I'm thinking recipes, recipes, do I know any actual recipes? Years ago my mother taught me a few French things to do with chicken and I remember one occasion when I invited a young woman around, in anticipation of intercourse, and inadvertently used the wrong amount of the wrong flour and turned my sauce into something that looked much more like rabbit turds. But she wasn't averse to the intercourse, if I recall, so the night wasn't a complete waste.

But I'm sure I'm not like that now.

And no way would Rachel Vilikovski fall for a plate of warm rabbit turds around a chicken breast.

Perhaps it's all this contemplation of food that drives my grumbling bowel closer to crescendo. Or perhaps I am almost ready to take my seat for the unread acts of
The Spanish Tragedy
.

I show no mercy. I dine on baked beans on toast. Double beans.

I lie in bed, and the activity in my abdomen reaches seismic proportions.

In the morning the earth moves, all those peristaltic waves line up and push with a brutal purpose, finally fibre wins. And I'm a little dizzy when I stand afterwards, but much lighter, and my clothes move about me with great comfort.

I want to tell people how good beans are. I want to tell the people on the bus, Deb at work, but the right moment doesn't seem to arise.

Hillary arrives late morning, after visiting Barry in hospital.

He's really not bad
, she says.
He's quite calm. Well, much calmer than he was. He said he had blinding headaches for a day and a half, but he's much better now without the chocolate-coated coffee beans. He has a theory that it was caffeine poisoning, and other than that he's fine. He's talking about coming back to work
.

Really?

I get the feeling his specialist is yet to be convinced.
She turned up while Barry was running the theory by me and she didn't say much. Oh, and he said he hoped you wouldn't feel bad about the hallucination thing
.

He's clearly a sick man. These things happen.

He did say that he was sure the hallucination did you a disservice, and that in real life you were probably a lot better off
.

Really? He said that?

Maybe. He also said that if he didn't come back here he might take up a lawn-mowing franchise
.

She leaves me with this dubious suggestion. Barry struggling and sweating in a white towelling hat, huffing and puffing and lumbering up and down lawns, leaning on his rake and crapping on and on to his customers about this change of direction for him, this lifestyle choice. But the more I think about it, the more I think he'll be back. The chocolate-coated coffee bean theory gives him what he needs, a great bullshit story that says the breakdown was caused by some external force. Then it changes from a hint of personal vulnerability to another glorious episode in the near-glorious life of Barry the Great. And in a few years time it'll be,
More than enough caffeine to kill ten men, that's what the doctor said. They were amazed I pulled through, said they'd never seen anyone get back on top of things so quickly, having been so close to death
.

This is why I will never understand Barry. We are each composed of our own stories, but in mine the crap is preserved (in mine, the crap usually is the story), and in Barry's the crap is re-worked in the hope that it can be made to shine. In my stories I am the engaging fool. In Barry's he is the hero. And the stories could be identical, but this is what becomes of us in the telling. I fall short of greatness, but I survive the fall and the inelegant swan dive of my trajectory becomes a joke at my expense. Barry falls short of greatness, and wants to make it clear how close he got, that the margin was next
to nothing, and it was only fate that turned it. I don't even know if he fools himself.

And in the end nobody likes him. Barry's no alchemist and crap doesn't shine. And I think he has some inkling of this and tries even harder, so they like him less. Maybe we should be sorry for him. Maybe now, while he's not here and I don't have to endure the bullshit I can be generous enough to be sorry for him.

Enough of Barry G., I have things to do.

I call the work number of Rachel Vilikovski.

It's a nursing home. But then, I don't know what I was expecting. I ask for her and the person says,
I think she's down at bingo at the moment, could she call you back
? So I leave my name and number and I'm left thinking bingo? Bingo? How much don't I know?

The phone rings.

Hi
, she says.

I thought you were at bingo.

Bingo's over. Some people here have no idea how long bingo takes
.

What do you do?

In bingo? Well you have these cards. Someone calls out numbers
.

Yeah, thanks.

You asked
.

Yeah. So how are you today? How's the head?

Getting there. In a couple of days I think my very attractive new glasses might actually fit. In the meantime I'm getting used to seeing everything through one eye. It's very annoying you know, getting new glasses and going to the trouble of having a spare pair, which I do, and then swelling in a way that means you can only wear the ones that are extra bendy in the middle because they're held together by surgical tape. And you know what? Just about nobody notices here, as long as you keep the energy up. So how are you
?

Relatively calm today. Hardly any inclination to hurl footwear at all.

I think I have to go. They keep me busy here
.

So what's next? After bingo?

World news
.

World news?

Sure. Me, the
Courier-Mail
and an enthusiastic discussion group. The issues of the day. How a president might be elected in a republic, which is controversial since the republic is not widely in favour here. What will happen in China when Deng dies. Remaining obstacles to a lasting peace in Northern Ireland
.

So this, in the end, is all equipping you for your future career on both the world stage and the small screen.

Exactly. You're smarter than I thought
.

And with that deliberate ambiguity she goes. I call Jeff and he makes me recount every detail of the conversation (not that I put up any kind of struggle). He says,
She is a very powerful woman
, and tells me we should talk.

We meet at one-thirty at the usual place.

This is where I came yesterday with Rachel Vilikovski, I tell him.

I could tell. There's something different about the place. I could tell she was here
. We get coffee and he says,
What about lunch
?

I grabbed a double bean enchilada on the way over.

Hey, you took my advice
.

Sure.

I don't think you ever actually took my advice before. I thought I just gave it. Obviously I've misunderstood the process. I thought I was merely contributing to an established discourse. I didn't realise that you might ever actually take my advice. I'm going to have to be much more careful now. Much more circumspect
.

So what am I going to do about Rachel Vilikovski?

Are you kidding? I'm not sure I can handle this now. Suddenly you reveal to me that you might actually be paying attention. You put this load of pressure on me and you go for the bean enchilada, and now you think I'm
going to give you advice about someone like Rachel Vilikovski
?

Yeah. That's exactly what I think.

Someone who sounds cool talking about bingo? I can't give advice about a person like that
.

But beans, you told me about beans and I'm shitting again. Just today, and you don't know how good it feels. I'm just so peaceful abdominally now. I think I'm ready. Maybe.

Hey, shitting is good, but one thing at a time, okay? But don't think I'm not proud of you with the shitting
.

Later, back at work, I'm thinking about her. And I don't think I've done this much fantasising since I sat up the back of physics in grade twelve, during the almost fatally tedious module on the Propagation of Waves in Fluid.

And the fantasies are wide-ranging, from the recollection of the way she says my name, as though she might mean it, to the wild and physical all over number thirty-four Zigzag Street. I imagine us up against the loofa'd wardrobe, then on top of the loofa'd wardrobe. And then she stops and says,
I can't here, not on this trash
. So in the end, it's my loofa art that brings me undone, and who could have thought that it might have such consequences?

Jeff calls, just when I'm at a low point because of the loofa art. Just when I'm realising that it symbolises the deep truth in crap, that it's a long way back for me, and maybe Rachel Vilikovski is a symbol of danger, an agent of destruction.

I tell him I've got to change. I've got to stop being this emotional yo-yo. I've got to stop being defined in terms of my relationships. That this is the worst kind of weakness. I've got to exist as an individual.

And he says,
But this is Rachel Vilikovski
.

Exactly.

So what are you going to do
?

I'm not going to call her. I'm going to sort myself out.
All this relationship stuff has to be crap. I have to be okay when it's just me.

Yeah, great theory, but for god's sake get over it, okay? When did that Just Me shit ever work for you? You think it's working now? Don't misunderstand me, it's fine if it does work, but right now I'm not easily convinced that you're enjoying a life of quality as the solo man
.

So I think about this, the solo man. The solo man, but no kayak, no rapids, no biceps, no soft drink down the chin. The solo man, the man alone, the man comfortable within his own vacuum. Non-ogamous.

I think I've got to take the time to sort myself out, I tell him, but we both know I hate the idea. We both know I'm wavering.

Sure. Sure. It's a good theory. You know I endorse it. If it's working out that way. But sometimes, maybe that time is a luxury you don't have. How sorted out do you need to be? How sorted out are you going to be? What ghosts are you trying to lay to rest here? This'll always be a risk. It'll never be totally safe. You will never be invulnerable, cause if you ever are this all means nothing anyway. I'm not saying call her or don't call her. That's not what I'm saying, okay? But some day, I think, you're going to be calling someone, or they're going to be calling you. And just because Anna left, doesn't mean that's what happens every time. Trust me. Whatever happened with Anna doesn't mean it'll never work out
.

But what if it's me? What if there's something about me? Something about me that means it doesn't work.

Something about you? Rick, there's nothing about you that isn't about everybody. Your biggest mistake at the moment is over-thinking this to buggery and convincing yourself it's anything but totally normal. The standard life involves quite a number of relationships, all but the last of which don't work out. That's what happens. Just do the maths. You have n relationships, and n minus one of them end, unless you're polygamous
.

But right from that girl at uni. Remember that girl at
uni? Remember? I basically blew my university days in the pursuit of one girl, and I'm no better now.

Uni. The girl at uni. Rick, that's bullshit. Take it from me. The only thing in the world that hasn't changed since the Girl at Uni Fiasco is my hairstyle. As if we haven't all been losers. If I took some of my early luck as representative of my future, I'd be nowhere now. I wouldn't've called anyone, ever. In grade twelve, the first girl I went out with, she impressed me so much I got really tense and vomited on her. We didn't go out again. And you know what? I've moved on from that. And if I'd met Sal then, I'd have fucked it up. But I didn't. I met her years later, when I knew I could do things differently. You should be grateful. You should just be grateful you didn't blow it with Rachel Vilikovski years ago. That at the age of twenty-eight, when you can handle things a little better, that this is when you get your chance
.

So are you telling me something here?

No
.

Are you telling me to do something?

No. I just don't want you to rule out any possibilities today. What's the worst that can happen? You get trashed again? Maybe. But maybe the worst is working out in a couple of months time that you should have given it a go. And by then she's changed jobs, moved house, fallen wildly in love with some arsehole and the moment's passed. Don't get me wrong, if you get trashed again it's going to be really boring for the rest of us, but we can live with that
.

But why is it like this?

Like what
?

Like this. What about just dating? Why isn't it that simple for me?

Because it just isn't. You don't ever let it be that simple, and I don't think that's going to change
.

What if I want to change?

Change, I think, is just another of your fantasies, as though there's some major problem at the moment and if
you can work out what it is, things'll be fine. If you can work out what you did wrong with Anna, maybe you'll have an answer. But maybe you did nothing wrong with Anna. Maybe it was just one of those things. Maybe you can even stop dwelling on it now, and trying to work it out. Maybe you don't need to change. And at heart, you're a ruminator, a fantasiser. It's part of you. In fact, you're so good at it you sometimes have fantasies that you aren't. That you're some hard-nosed pragmatist, or some cool Lothario. And Rick, I've got news for you, that's not you. And it doesn't need to be. If you want to change your commitment phobia, fine. If you want to change your complex and irrational notions of guilt and redemption, fine. But small changes, okay
?

But other people just date people. Other people just have sex with people and no-one gets hurt.

Yeah, I'm sure that's true. And I'm sure that sometimes people get hurt anyway. And this is your biggest fantasy of all, this is the house with three nineteen-year-old babes. This is the fantasy that things can be casual for you. That somewhere out there is a life with an abundance of inconsequential sex. And there probably is. But it's not your life. Your life is an abundance of consequences. And that's fine
.