( Part I )

and then …

they were walking from South Melbourne to St Kilda, staggering with offensive intoxication and making no apologies. Theirs had been a good night but running out of things to say to each other they decided to head off. The elastic on his socks tightened as his ankles swelled and began to ache, but both his company and his liquor buzz sweetened his tolerance. The last of the rickety old trams that frequented St Kilda by day had waddled along Fitzroy St, between the now silent cafes of Albert Park and settled for the night in the South Melbourne Depot. Crossing the street he saw a taxi rank next to an automatic teller machine, but it took his mind a few seconds of fuzzy inactivity before it could construct an appropriate remark. “We should catch a taxi,” he said, but his suggestion was ignored in Amy’s usual manner. Few things impressed her less than being driven around; they were going to walk and he knew it. Walking was a luxury for the moment, this evening the heavens had opened and blanketed the streets with rain for the first time in weeks. The air was still thick with what he always thought was moisture despite being told it was something to do with pollution.

Stepping over a flooded gutter onto the sidewalk Amy tripped on a loose paving and reached for his arm, which she found with an instinctual dependence. Hanging from him, as a coat might a hanger, they continued down the street, her elbow linked tightly around his for support. Amy had fetishised limbs, hands large yet feminine, fingers slender and well spread. Her left hand slid like a tear along his bicep as she wrangled for support before she realised what might have been an awkward position and retracting it.

“I’m still feeling it a bit, this isn’t a problem for you?”

“Why would it be a problem?”

“In the past, things have been said.” These were bitter words but they were said with an innocent disregard. They vaguely soured the experience of their contact and with the emerging erection that this small yet exciting physical contact had brought about he was forced to press forward his hips with each stride in an effort to conceal it. Shirking it into an upward position, the least conspicuous, he was content with his success. Amy now pulled him by the arm with force and when he was sure she was leading him astray they, just as suddenly, approached an intersection familiar to him and continued on their way.

From the murky slime of the greasy road shuffled a rough man, dirty coat and dirty hat, reaching out to them with dirty desperation. Amy pulled up immediately and taking some coins from her purse donated them to the man. The money was received with a bitter smile of appreciation from the beggar but none from him as it distracted her attention, which he liked to believe was focused on himself exclusively. She did not again take his arm when they resumed walking, which made him wish a cold death on the man even more.

“You haven’t said anything about my coat anyway,” he said, grasping his elbow and offering it to her. It was a thin, black coat made of nylon with a short silver zip at the collar that he bought for twenty-five dollars from a short, Chinese lady who despite not understanding English managed a stall at the South Melbourne Market. Amy and he had always had an unscrupulously honest understanding and if she liked it she would say so, but it wouldn’t stop her from saying it wouldn’t even be fashionable if it were on fire if she believed it to be true.

“Please, don’t look at me like that,” she said with looking at him, knowing exactly the thought behind his stare.

“Like what?”

“Like I did what I did for the thanks.”

He didn’t admit that she was right, and decided to remain silent for the rest of their walk.

-o-

It was late when they reached Amy’s place near the St Kilda gardens. It was a large, art-deco apartment that was built near the turn of the century and cost her most of her government allowance in rent. She liked it because it was near the ocean, which had a claming influence on her and could always be relied upon. He had been to the house once before and he retraced from memory the houses interior before they reached the door. All the rooms had lacquered floorboards and cream painted walls with high wooden architraves sitting passively below a pure white ceiling. The first bedroom on the right (all rooms were on the right with a corridor running along the left side of the house) was Katie’s, the contents of which, much like the actual person, he had never seen. The next room along the passageway was Amy’s, which housed an old wardrobe, a small desk decorated with an ancient typewriter (which he suspected was not functional) a crumpled blanket in the corner as a makeshift bed and sheets of paper with archaic poetry plastered with a manic disorder over the walls. Opposite the door was a small window that let in very little light during the day as it featured a stained glass pattern of a blooming red rose in brilliant detail.

Gazing down the corridor at Amy as she walked ahead of him he fantasised about her skinny hips twitching from side to side under her clothes when, as if by design, her skirt and slip fell in unison exposing to him for a brief moment her smooth round buttocks. Exposed they remained until she could casually recover, like a striptease in reverse, pulling her skirt over her flesh and intentionally choosing to continue down the hall without looking back in embarrassment. It was easy for him to romanticise the moment and believe that she was so comfortable with him, as one is with a lover, that he wasn’t present at all.

Beyond her bedroom was the lounge room that seemed somehow circular without a television as a focal point. Three crooked stacks of CDs were piled in the corner next to a small black stereo, the portable kind you could take to the beach but never did. Amy opened a white cardboard box set and selected one of the discs, throwing it into the player as if it were of little value. The psychedelic pings of The Velvet Underground’s Sunday Morning brought him to immediate ease. It’s gentle, electric-lullaby tone always brought to mind the floating banana phallus of the famous Andy Warhol album cover.

Without his host in the room and he took the opportunity to nose through the books collected in her bookshelf. One massive shelf stood next to the door that lead in from the corridor, and another smaller one stood against the adjoining wall. Both were crammed with books although he quickly noticed that the few he recognized he had already read. With haste he scanned the shelves searching for a book he could ask her about and perhaps loan, a plan intentionally forgotten as she returned to the room, just in case she had developed the art of mind reading.

“Are you hungry? I can throw something together. I’ve got some nuts or some sprouts and different things…” The idea of Amy’s vegan ‘food’ didn’t thrill him, so he rubbed his left eye and then in turn his forehead. Unimpressed she span on the spot and returned to the kitchen, without knowing how she wanted to spend the evening his plan was to just keep still, speak slowly and be patient. His throat closed prematurely, but he asked in a strangled voice which books were hers. The large one held books that she had already read, the other was for books she was going to read. Her voice coming from the kitchen had a strange, almost robotic resonance that sounded out of keep with the nature of the house and its furnishings. Flopping with satisfaction on the couch (upon which Amy had often slept as a child) he closed his heavy eyelids and could hear in the next room the sharp sounds of chopping and rustling through cupboards. Venus in furs slid through the stereo’s speakers; sound transferred into forbidden images of leather, whips and sweet punishment. Here his thoughts lingered until Amy startled him returning wide-eyed and large knife in hand to ask if he would like some wine or if it would be gratuitous given their state. Reality interrupted his stream of consciousness like the merciful strike of a masochist and while reflecting on these haunting pleasures he answered in the affirmative.

“Do you need a hand or anything?”

“I’m nearly done,” came the quick response as she disappeared once more to the kitchen like a rodent escaping its own presence.

From his comfortable position on the couch he could see the door off the kitchen that led to the linen cupboard and then to the bathroom that he previously hadn’t noticed. A collage of religious and mythical scenes of varying size, colour and cultures. Rough papers from India and smooth imperial paper like wrapping paper from China were scattered without pattern, seemingly too delicate and precious to write on and too aesthetically pleasing to discard. Throwing his head back he felt the muscles in the back of his neck cramp and relax in a pleasant way and he noticed for the first time how physically tired he actually was.

Amy returned, impressively holding a bottle of red wine and two wine glasses in her left hand and a tray with various dishes of food in the other. With her waitress skill she laid the feast on the coffee table before making herself comfortable on the floor and indicating that he should do so as well. Throwing a cushion from the sofa on the ground he flopped onto it too fast hurting the lowest of his vertebrae. Amy took her copy of The Big Issue off the table and threw it neatly to the ground near the bookshelves. She had bought this month’s issue twice finding it hard to refuse the man selling them. On the tray were two empty bowls with blue and white designs around the edge, a bowl of bean sprouts, two plates; one decked with sliced carrot another with tomato wedges, a bowl of couscous and another inedible substances that he didn’t recognise.

Loading a spoonful of each food into his bowl he concentrated on the mash of colour and texture, expecting it to miraculously appear appetizing. His stomach often managed without food, but when he was Amy’s age he was cooking more filling meals that this. Struggling to make a mouthful of his dinner, and envious of Amy happily stuffing sprouts into her mouth, he fumbled the actual words but asked how she came to be living by herself without any family to support her. He scooped a spoonful of orange mush into the air and threw it back into his bowl.

“I guess after you leave home Mum’s cooking seems that much better.”

“No, not at all. I don’t really have a mother right now. We grew up alone in the commission houses, which was awful.” Despite it being a touchy subject with her she was tired and in poor judgment exposed more than was her want on the subject. “We basically decided to avoid each other to see if that would work.” Her measured words were honest enough to engage him as an audience, passive and calm, a receiver or tension and angst. “I changed my name as a way of getting around the whole maternal thing, mentally I mean. It was a sort of rebellion thing.”

“It’s exotic sounding,” he said, referring to her name rather than her circumstances. Words of comfort usually came easily to him, and now proved useful. “It’s almost hard to believe people who tell you their childhood was that bad. When you grow up where and how I did and looking at where I’ve, sort of, fallen since, I just …”

She scoffed hurriedly. “It was intolerable. I mean she used to speak in tongues for Christ’s sake! And, I don’t know it you’ve heard speaking in tongues but it is something that stays with you, especially if you’re young.”

Amy raised her eyebrows but lowered her, as was her custom before disappointing someone, but instead she clicked her tongue neatly and attempted to imitate her mother’s low, guttural rambles…

“Gadji beri cladridi, laulita lomini lengado tro negramai. Bumbalo affalo Lauli Lonni cadora gadjam. Ei glassala tuffem zimbrabim…”

Right then, during that very real moment when he could see her clear before him, he found it difficult to imagine that she had ever been born, ever been young. Amy was adopted by the world at the age of nineteen and existed, virginal, only to share this moment with him, expose herself to him in this way. It were as though she were a part of him, carried around in his mind, only now manifested and made real; flesh and bone, inhaling and exhaling here before him, expecting a reaction.

“Alright,” he said with confusion, promoting Amy to squeal with manic pleasure at her efforts.

With pure sly, is if practiced, she raised one of her eyebrows. “Well what did you think?”

“I think these beans are pretty great.”

“Thank-you,” she said with a wide, beaming grin, her face as round as a dinner plate. She knew how to take a compliment, or rather, that they should never be ignored.

© 2003 R. W. Gordon. All rights reserved.