Please Don't Leave Me Here (24 page)

She walks across to open one of the two windows, leans on the sill, and watches a pair of police officers arrest a shirtless man in front of the commission flats. Matt comes over, stands against her back, and wraps his arms around her. Her body melts into his. Gone. So gone. They blow smoke down over the rooftops of Fitzroy. The noise from the street and the corner pub drifts in: bottles breaking, junkies arguing, dogs barking.

When they finish smoking, she turns to face him, and he tangles his fingers in her hair. ‘God, you're so beautiful.'

What happened to very clever? She doesn't complain as he kisses her and leads her to his bedroom. A navy curtain hangs in place of a door, above mustard-coloured carpet. The room is neat: a double bed, made; two wooden side tables; black, bell-shaped lamps; a pine chest of drawers; and a makeshift wardrobe fashioned from a curtain rod, holding his shirts on hangers.

As she lies beside him, the noise from the street disappears, and she is aware only of his breathing. She rests on an elbow, kisses him, and then cautiously pushes up his T-shirt. He's watching her face, with something in his eyes — is it trust?

‘Matt!' She recoils, pulls her hand away, and is immediately sorry for her reaction. His chest is covered with small scars — complete versions of the half-moon under his eye.

He starts to pull down his T-shirt, but she stops him. ‘What happened?'

‘My mother. When I was little.'

‘Your mother did this to you?'

He nods. A siren screams over the sound of empty bottles being dumped into a bin.

‘You don't have to stay,' he says.

‘What?'

‘The look on your face.'

‘Shh.' She places a finger against his lips, wanting to regain his trust. She kisses the scars, works her way down to his stomach, undoes his jeans. She sucks him until he reaches down for her and slides her up his body. They fuck again, slowly, gently, this time, while Nick Cave sings about letting love in.

Sex was always something to try to avoid, until you ran out of excuses at the end of the night — cold, rough, awkward, often painful, sometimes tainted with fear. This is so different: warm, safe, smooth. Velvet. She wants to do everything to him, with him, and for it to never end. She closes her eyes, holds his hands, and moves her hips faster when she feels that wave rippling, surging through her body again.

Afterwards, she lies back in his pillows. The sheets are pilled, but they smell clean. He massages semen into her thighs. She reaches down for his hand, pulls it to her mouth, and sucks his fingers: the taste of him and the taste of her, combined. He kisses her so he can taste it, too. Salt and earth.

They smoke another joint, and she feels drowsy. Her eyes are heavy as she traces the outline of the serpent tattoo on his shoulder blade: its spiky back and tail.

‘The first time you came into my class I couldn't stop looking at your long fingernails. Fantasising about them scratching my back.' His voice sounds like it's coming from far away.

The serpent tattoo seems to breathe as he breathes; blue-and-green scales rise and fall with every inhalation and exhalation. He rolls over, wraps his arms around her, and slides inside her again, but they're both too tired to move anymore. She falls asleep with her face against his chest.

She dreams that Kurt Cobain is sleeping beside her. The puppy with the red dog collar rests its head on the pillow next to him. Tentatively, she pushes the dirty-blond hair off Kurt's face, ready for the horror of his dead eyes. But it's not a dream; she looks into the ocean of Matt's eyes. She reaches for his hand, curls her fingers between his, and falls back to sleep.

The beep-beep-beep of a reversing truck wakes her. Sunlight floods through the window. Maybe she's still dreaming because the dream puppy's here. She rubs her eyes.

Matt places coffee on the bedside table. ‘Good morning.'

She stretches and smiles. The dream puppy moves, and she jumps. Matt sits on the edge of the bed and lifts the fat ginger cat onto his lap.

‘I thought that was a dog.'

‘She's as big as a dog. This is Di.'

She laughs, ‘Your cat's name is Di?'

‘What's so funny about that?'

‘Who calls their cat Di? It's hilarious.' She reaches for her shirt on the floor, pulls it on, and props herself up against the pillows.

‘My grandmother named her. She had another one called Charles. But Charles died just after Gran did.'

It's not that funny, but she can't stop laughing, and he hits her over the head with a pillow.

She reaches for her coffee, still laughing, and almost chokes on it. It's in a mug illustrated with three rows of butterflies, their names listed under the illustrations: Dark Green Fritillary, Monarch, Swallowtail, Marbled White, Adonis Blue …

‘Di's going to be a mother soon. Gran said she was spayed. But last month I took her to the vet's, and they said she was pregnant.'

‘Poor thing.' Brigitte pats Di's head. ‘I thought ginger cats could only be males.'

‘That's a myth. The gene for ginger's carried on the X chromosome. A male cat has only one X chromosome, so if he carries the gene he'll be ginger. Females have two X chromosomes, so they need two copies of the ginger variant to be ginger, and that doesn't happen very often.'

What?

Matt lowers Di gently to the floor, lies down next to Brigitte, and she rolls into his arms. She tells him to be careful of her sore knee.

‘Old football injury?'

‘Something like that.'

Brigitte can't find any bubble bath in Matt's cupboard — only shaving foam, razors, paw paw ointment, a bandage, toothpaste. No prescription medication. No meds at all, not even Panadol. What is wrong with him?

She places her clothes on the washing-machine lid, and pours some of his shower gel under the running bath water. The scent of cinnamon and bergamot fills the room. The scent of Matt. She calls his name.

He's reading the papers in the living room. ‘Yes?' he calls back.

‘Where do you buy your shower gel?'

‘It's not shower gel. It's body wash, from a shop down the other end of the street, near Mario's. It has no sulphates.'

‘That's good. Sulphates dry your skin.'

‘I know. That's what they told me at the shop.'

‘Hey Matt?'

‘Ye—es?'

‘Coming to join me?'

She smiles and lies back in the water as she hears him push the papers aside.

***

After four nights, she emerges from the cocoon of Matt's place, her thighs and back aching. She feels like one of the butterflies on his coffee mug: metamorphosed, complete. Adonis Blue.

She almost trips over a man sitting on the street.

‘Hey love, could ya help me out? I've lost me wallet and just need me tram fare home.'

She smiles, and hands the scarlet-faced drunk a twenty-dollar note, and he thinks it's Christmas.

36

Brigitte walks through the gardens instead of along the footpath so she can see the apartment from a safe distance. She holds her breath as she gets closer. Her heart pounds, her stomach churns, but there are no lights on. The windows are closed, and the blinds are shut. Eric's still away. She lets out her breath. But she doesn't go in. She goes straight to work.

Hannah says Al wants to see her. She can still smell the cinnamon and bergamot of Matt on her skin and in her hair. She thinks of the stairs, and smiles — it's a dumb, teenage-love smile, no doubt, but she can't help it — as she swaggers towards Al's office.

‘Where have you been, Pagan?' Al takes his feet, clad in brown crocodile-skin shoes, off the desk. He hasn't extinguished his cigarette properly, and the filter section smells toxic as it smoulders in the ashtray. A poster of the
Penthouse
Pet of the Year is pinned up above his desk — she used to work here. Al taps his knuckles on the desk, his fat gold rings glinting in the fluorescent light. ‘I've been calling you for days.'

‘Sorry, I —'

‘You don't have a job here anymore.'

She loses the dumb smile. ‘What?'

‘You've fucked me around too many times, not turning up for your shifts. I can't run the business like that.'

‘What am I supposed to do now?'

‘Dunno. Doesn't Eric look after you?'

‘He only pays the rent — nothing else.'

‘Not my problem.'

She bites her lip.

He softens. ‘Have you heard from Dave?'

She shakes her head.

He takes a business card from a desk drawer and hands it to her. ‘My mate Richard's business.'

She turns the card over in her hand:
Lipgloss Promotions
, embossed in gold writing on glossy black.

‘Go do some modelling. Better for your knee anyway.'

‘But I need this job.'

‘Sorry, Pagan. I can only use reliable girls.'

She turns to leave. There's no point arguing with him.

‘And another thing,' he says when she's at the door. ‘Tell Eric I won't be needing his business anymore.'

She trudges up the hill (still no sign of Eric at the apartment), through the gardens — past the Exhibition Building and the ten-metre-high sculpted fountain of white merpeople — down Gertrude and into Brunswick Street. She knocks on Matt's door. He's not home, so she keeps walking, aimlessly.

A driver in a red car going the other way beeps his horn, does a U-turn, and slows. She ignores it.
Leave me alone, I'm not in the mood.
The car pulls up beside her. Men are so stupid.

The driver reaches across and opens the passenger-side door. ‘Hey, beautiful.' It's Matt. He tells her to get in, and they drive back up Brunswick Street. ‘What are you doing in this part of town?'

‘Nothing. Just going for a walk.'

‘What a coincidence.'

He gets a parking spot in front of his place, jumps out, and takes some shopping bags from the boot. She follows him.

‘What's wrong?' he says.

She thought her sunglasses were doing a good job of hiding it. ‘I lost my job.'

‘Good.' He puts the shopping bags on the footpath while he locks the car.

‘It's not good.'

‘I hated you going to that place.'

‘What am I supposed to do now?'

‘Don't worry. We'll think of something.'

A black car with tinted windows double-parks across the road in front of the flats. Matt hands her a bag. ‘Come and have dinner with me, and we'll talk about it.'

‘Where?'

‘Here.'

‘You can cook?'

‘Of course.'

‘Too perfect, aren't you?'

While he opens the door, she glances over her shoulder to see the black car driving away. She follows him back into the cocoon, smiling the dumb-teenage smile again as they climb the stairs.

She sits on the bench in his tiny kitchen, sipping white wine and watching him prepare ingredients for paella. He fries some vegetables, adds stock, rice, prawns, and mussels, then leaves it to simmer while he brings out a tray of oysters from the fridge.

‘Just happen to have oysters in your fridge?'

‘Not usually. But I think I'm psychic, because when I was shopping I thought to myself:
Brig might be coming back, and she will like some seafood
.'

‘Really?'

‘
And if she doesn't, I'll just have to share it with the cat.
' He places the oysters, a lemon, and sea salt next to her on the bench. ‘So, you think I'm psychic?'

‘No. But very sexy.' She wraps her legs around his hips and pulls him to her. He reaches over a leg, cuts the lemon into quarters, squeezes juice, and grinds salt onto one of the oysters. She looks at the slimy grey substance in the dirty shell. ‘I don't know if I like oysters.'

‘You didn't think you liked wine either. Here.' He lifts the oyster to her mouth, ‘Close your eyes.'

She does as he says, chews, and it spurts — explodes — in her mouth. She swallows, it slides down her throat, and she screws up her face. For a second, she thinks she's going to throw up. She washes it down with a gulp of wine. He kisses her softly, slowly, for a long time. She drapes her arms around his shoulders, holding her wine glass aloft.

‘Good?'

‘Uh-ha.'

‘Want another one?'

‘Kiss or oyster?'

‘Oyster.'

‘Maybe in a minute.'

‘Kiss?'

‘Mmm.' Her body feels limp and warm and tingly.

The rice catches on the bottom of the pan and starts to burn.