Praise (19 page)

I spun around. It was reversing, throwing up dust into the headlights. Then it roared off, back up the road. Someone yelled out the window. It sounded like Cynthia.

‘Hey,' I called, ‘anyone left up there?'

No one answered.

‘They'll be back,' said Rachel.

‘Let's see if they left anything to drink.'

The cask was still on the slab. We sat down and drank a little. It was very quiet. For a while we could hear the car, but then the sound of it faded. There was only the wind. And the gravestones.

We sat on the slab.

‘Don't leave me, Gordon,' she said.

‘I'm not going anywhere.'

We drank.

Ten years before I'd dreamed of situations like this. ‘Alone with Rachel in the Graveyard.' ‘Rachel Getting Scared in the Graveyard.' ‘Rachel Seeking Comfort from Gordon in the Graveyard.' ‘Gordon Giving Comfort to Rachel in the Graveyard.' ‘Rachel Being Very Very Grateful to Gordon ...'

I said, ‘Any men on the scene?'

‘Who?
Me
?'

‘Do you ever miss the sex?'

‘I don't have much to miss.'

‘What about what you had with Gerald?'

‘It only happened a couple of times. At the end. When it was over. I loved him. I wanted to do it before he left.'

‘Was it any good?'

‘It was love.'

‘What'd you do?'

‘Do?'

‘I mean, what'd you do? With Gerald.'

She laughed. ‘None of your business.'

‘C'mon, was it straight sex? Was it in bed, on the floor, did he tear your clothes?'

She was still laughing.

‘Did he tie you up, did he fuck your arse?'

‘Gordon!' she shrieked. ‘Shut
up
.'

‘What's wrong with it?'

‘It'd hurt!'

‘That's half the point, Rachel.'

We sat there. I thought about Rachel thinking about a prick up her arse. I thought about Rachel thinking that it'd hurt. I thought about Rachel thinking about
pain
.

Rachel said, ‘I'm not necessarily against pain. I think I'd like to be tied up one day. I always thought that'd be fun.'

Jesus.

But we were sitting on opposite sides of the slab.

There was no way to reach across.

There was no point in reaching across.

‘Death gets in the way of everything,' I said.

Later Rachel said, ‘Can you hear voices?'

I listened. It did sound as if people were shouting, a long, long way away. I couldn't make out the words.

‘Maybe the others are trying to scare us?'

‘Could be.'

We waited. The shouting seemed to get closer, then it stopped. Silence. Rachel lay down on the slab. I looked at her in the dark. I drank my wine.

Then I could heard Frank yelling. ‘Gordon! Rachel!'

I stood up. It'd come from up the road. ‘What?!'

‘Where the fuck are you?'

‘Down here!'

We waited. I could hear voices. Frank and the girls. Eventually I could make out the three of them, walking down the road towards us.

‘Where's the car?'

‘I crashed it,' said Frank, ‘not badly, but it's stuck in a ditch. We couldn't push it out.'

‘Could all five of us get it out?'

‘Maybe. It's not that far back along the road.'

Cynthia stared at Rachel and me. ‘I thought you two might've finally got it together by now. I thought you'd be
doing
it.'

Rachel sat up.

‘Me? With
Gordon
?'

We trudged back up the road. Maybe a mile along we came across the car. It was stuck nose first in a deep ditch. I crawled around it. The headlights hadn't smashed, and running my hands over the ground I couldn't feel any oil or water or petrol.

‘Does the engine still go?'

‘It does,'

‘Okay.'

I got in and turned the ignition. It started. I revved the engine for a minute or so, listening.

‘Rachel?' I said.

Rachel was probably the lightest of us. We put her in the driver's seat and the rest of us got in front of the car. Rachel engaged reverse. The wheels spun on the gravel. We pushed. The wheels gripped. The car rose back onto the road. Rachel gunned the engine. We loaded up. Frank took the wheel. I sat up front. The girls took the back.

‘Okay,' I said, ‘let's see how it goes.'

Frank pulled the column shift into drive and we started. We picked up speed. I was watching the speedo. Ten, twenty, thirty. The engine revved higher, then higher, then higher.

‘Whoa,' I said. Frank slowed down. ‘Are you sure you're in drive? Not second or low?'

He jiggled the column shift around. ‘No. I'm in drive.'

‘Try it again.'

He tried. By the time we reached forty the engine was screaming. He slowed down again.

‘It's the transmission,' I said. ‘We're stuck in first gear.'

‘Fuck,' said Frank. ‘I'm sorry, I'm really sorry.'

‘Don't worry about it. It was due to go anyway.'

We crawled home. By the time we hit Brisbane it was almost dawn. The engine was overheating and the wine was all gone. We drove to Frank and Maree's house and parked.

‘A cab,' I said to Cynthia.

We went inside and dialled. Frank and Maree went to bed. Rachel settled down on the couch. Cynthia and I went back outside and sat on the front steps. Cynthia nuzzled her head into my lap. I looked at the Kingswood. It was depressing. The only thing, perhaps, that I truly loved without question — and there it lay, dying in the cul de sac.

The taxi arrived. The driver was in a cheerful mood.

‘Had a good night?' He had an Arabic accent.

‘Not so bad,' I said.

‘I love the morning!' He started humming.

The sun was rising now.

‘What's your accent?' Cynthia asked him. ‘It sounds Middle Eastern.'

‘I am Persian.'

‘Prove it. Sing something Persian.'

‘I will.' He started singing. He wailed. I couldn't believe it. Five thirty in the morning and I was being sung to.

Cynthia leaned over. She unzipped me.

‘Cynthia.'

‘Shut up.'

She had my penis out and in her mouth. I looked at the taxi driver. He was singing, really singing. I looked out the window. At the sun rising, the early Sunday morning Brisbane traffic. I could feel Cynthia's head moving against my legs, but there was no sensation. I couldn't even tell if I was erect or not.

But the singing was fine.

Cynthia pulled her head up. I looked down and saw a vague half erection. It looked tasty, like that. Warm and soft and suckable. Cynthia looked up at me and whispered, ‘Can you come?'

‘I don't think so.'

‘Fair enough.' She lay her head on my thigh and took it back in her mouth, but didn't do much. Just held it there, rolling her tongue around. I still couldn't feel anything. I was too drunk.

‘You like the song?' the driver asked.

‘Yes. Do you know any others?'

‘I do.'

He started up again.

Cynthia kept sucking.

The singing got us home.

That afternoon I called up Morris, from the Capital. He knew about cars. We chatted about life since we'd left the bottleshop. He was living on Social Security, the same as me. We agreed it was a good life.

Finally I said, ‘I think the transmission on my car is gone. Could you take a look at it?'

He drove over, picked me up, and we headed out to the car.

‘So you and Cynthia are living together now?'

‘We are. It's good.'

‘I've left Karen. I've just started up with someone new.'

‘Really?'

‘Her name is Hillary.'

‘How old?'

‘Sixteen.'

‘Sixteen?!'

‘She
looks
about twelve.'

‘Jesus.'

‘Take a look at my mouth, go on, look at it.'

I looked. His lips were scratched and puffed.

‘She did that,' he said. ‘She's an animal. On our first night she tied me up and started whipping me. I've got cuts all over the place. I couldn't believe it.'

Neither could I.

Other men had it all over me when it came to things like that. I'd learnt that at the bottle shop. The staff had been exclusively male and all we'd ever talked about was sex. There seemed to be a lot it of going around.

And in various ways. One of my co-workers, a weightlifter called Arthur, was obsessed with sex in the cold. He lectured us at length on the topic. Had any of us ever been sucked off by a woman with icecubes in her mouth? Had any of us ever fucked in a freezer?

We hadn't

‘It's great. The air's so fucking cold your prick's about to drop off, and then she wraps her mouth around it and it
burns
. Fucking amazing.'

‘You do this a lot, Arthur?'

‘Every chance I get.'

Morris and I made it to the Kingswood. There was a new dent in the right front panel, but otherwise it looked fine. Dents were no problem. They gave a car dignity.

I went and knocked on Maree and Frank's door. No one answered. Morris was on his back under the car. ‘Look at this,' he yelled.

I went over and peered under.

‘See?'

I looked. I knew very little about the underside of a car. I could see a hooked metal rod hanging down.

‘This is the problem.'

He pulled it up, affixed it to a spot I couldn't see, and crawled out.

‘That's it,' he said.

‘What? It's fixed?'

‘Sure.'

I drove home, tired and confused. I knew nothing about my car. I neglected it. I drove it badly. I let drunken fools do what they wanted with it. And yet it kept on going for me, mile after mile. Year after year.

It's love, I thought.

Again.

Fucking with Cynthia got harder.

There was less and less of me there. I went through the motions. Cynthia could tell. Sometimes she'd stop in the middle of sex and roll off me. She'd be crying. I didn't know what to do.

Then the Kingswood got stolen.

I went out one morning and it wasn't there. The day had come. It left a wide gaping hole in my heart, but I wasn't suprised. Cars got stolen all the time.

The loss was worse for Cynthia. It was her car as much as it was mine. Now she had to walk to work. Every night I walked up to the pub around closing time to meet her. I found it depressing. I took it as a sign. We'd lost our mobility. We couldn't get further away from each other than walking distance.

It was finally happening. We'd been together for four months. In all that time we'd barely been apart. I was faltering at last, running down. Life with Cynthia was good, it was better than anything I'd ever experienced, but things were starting to close in. I was all she had. Her family was two thousand miles away in one direction, her own friends six hundred miles away in the other. I couldn't replace them all. There wasn't enough in me.

And somewhere in my mind I was beginning to realise that I'd always assumed that she would
see
there wasn't enough. That sooner or later she would pack up and leave me. Go back to her real life in Darwin or Sydney. Write me letters and call me on the phone.

But there was no sign of that. She wasn't happy with the way things were going, but she wasn't going to leave. And I wondered how long I could go on fucking when the spirit was finally all gone, and Cynthia was still there.

Two weeks passed without the car.

Cynthia and I were lying in bed.

‘Cynthia,' I said, ‘I don't know if I can go on with this.'

‘With what?'

‘With us, the way we are now.'

‘I don't understand.'

‘I can't really explain. It's getting hard. Do you think we could stop fucking at least? For a while.'

‘Jesus, Gordon.' She sat up. ‘
Jesus
. Don't say things like that.'

‘I'm sorry. Look, I still feel the same about you. I'm not going to leave you or anything. I just need a break. From the sex at least. It's killing me.'

‘Why? What did I do?'

‘You didn't do anything. It's not you.'

‘Just
tell
me. I'll stop it, whatever it is. It's because I'm so ugly, isn't it. Because I'm so fat.'

‘Cynthia, no, you're not ugly, it's nothing like that.'

‘Then what?'

‘I'm just ... tired. I need a rest.'

‘But why?'

‘I can't say. I don't know. There's no reason for it.'

‘Oh fuck.' She choked, lit a cigarette. ‘
Fuck
! It's happening again, it's fucking happening again. Just when I'm happy, just when I think I've really found someone, they start taking it away.'

‘It's not over. It's not forever. I just need a while.'

‘How long is a while?'

‘I don't know.'

‘You can't just say you don't know. You have to tell me how long. You have to tell me why.'

I wasn't sure what to say. It was a matter of self-preservation. I wanted her to stop re-arranging the way I sat. I wanted her to stop playing with my hair, opening my shirt. I wanted her to stop picking the blackheads out of my shoulders. I was sick of the mothering. I wanted her to let
go
for a while.

I said, ‘I'm feeling owned, Cynthia. And I don't enjoy it any more.'

She didn't buy it. Cynthia wasn't into graceful acceptance of the truth. She got angry. She accused me of wanting other women, of playing power games, of being sadistic, of lying to her.

She said, ‘Why all this sudden concern about sex? You said it never did much for you anyway. You said it didn't matter. And now you say it's not good enough?'