Waiting (23 page)

OK. I am a thin stick of a fella, glasses and an academic air. Something missing in here where my heart should be. Broken.

He thumps his chest.

The barman grins: Mr Benjamin looks fine to me. I can't vouch for his heart…

Jasmin has moved forward.

Angus, stop it!

She grips his arm and orders two glasses of her usual Yarra Valley pinot. The two men behind the counter sway and shrug and now they smile, all good entertainment for them, and as quickly forgotten:

For you Jasmin, anything – and your bee-eautiful smile, yes. Why not park your friend out… in the courtyard. Yes?

She turns him away from the bar and guides him past the two men who have been standing there. After his initial smile Jim has turned aside and Mr Benjamin has his hand poised in front of his chest like an orator who has lost his lines. She nudges Angus harder this time, towards the courtyard. He thinks he is a Zen-nish kind of working class, does he, calls Benjamin. These men are not her colleagues, she doesn't know them or care about them, about this Jim (retired) or that Mr Benjamin (on active service), she cares for the bell-clanging of her instincts.

Once seated in the courtyard he folds his hands and says – nothing.

Well, that was embarrassing, she says.

Embarrassing?

Like your mate in the hills?

Realising he is being bracketed with Stan surprises him.

His shorts and boots are not dirty with actual work, but they signify work. The difference is in the kind of work. Physical vs intellectual. Or is she the one who is being obvious? As they had entered the courtyard he had suggested they all looked more than a bit precious (he had whispered it to her more loudly than if he'd said it).

Sorry, he adds, your scene more than mine. I might not look it but I'm thoroughly human.

Now she finds herself worrying they are listening. Of course they are. And the women here, he suddenly adds to break the silence, the women are so unsexy. Even the lookers. That takes some doing.

He is scratching at his whiskers like a man with an itch, delaying as he sees her eyes widen. This really is a Stan comment. She wonders if he is drunk. Worse, she sees Benjamin approaching them, then place his glass of wine down on the table next to them.

Ignoring your rudeness, do you fancy yourself as a psychic of some sort?

He is addressing Angus. Who feigns deafness. A wriggle of his eyes gives him away. The man is just standing there. So he looks up and sighs. Rather obviously.

A badly-dressed psychic? In a University drinking hole? Then he grins: I don't think so. He keeps looking at Angus with serious intensity. In academic terms this could mean he is angry. He pulls back a chair and sits behind his glass of white wine in the manner of a man who is still standing and nagging at something.

You believe it's possible to see what isn't visible? It's quite ridiculous. It's fairytale stuff.

Now I'm a badly-dressed fairy! It was a joke.

A joke!

Think of it as head not heart.

I can see you are not…

Jasmin notices the change of tone. She scrapes her own chair back but Benjamin is blocking her way out. And he is staring at the gingery man of her (she had thought) smoky dreams. No longer sure about that.

Not what?

The man is squinting at Angus's boots.

Angus seems annoyed at first, then lets out a very slow smile, and opens his lips with it longer than is altogether necessary.

Mate, I stagger around just grateful if I can find my way home at night. I have trouble getting my wine into my mouth. Why are you shouting?

Stop it Angus, Jasmin hisses at him, but she is getting interested, despite herself. She notices others listening while pretending not to. A man walks through from the front bar and comes up to Benjamin and suggests he comes back inside, but when he shakes his head, returns inside.

I am not shouting.

Neither of them says anything for a few seconds. Jasmin makes a helpless gesture at him, trying to step forward and get past the man but he will not moving aside, he is completely ignoring her, he is looking serious if perhaps less angry:

I want to know how you knew.

Does she actually hear this? Angus stops smiling.

You hardly looked at me. I've had a double by-pass.

She sits down. Her man has some work to do.

I didn't know. I was just being facetious. He glances at Jasmin when he adds:

But suppose I did…

He shrugs and keeps looking up at the man. Who stares back in silence. Who takes his glass and walks back inside without another word.

It is very quiet in the courtyard. Then people on other tables return to their interrupted conversations. A gurgle of sound. Everyone talks and laughs and only our two people say nothing. Their table is over by the wall, away from the walk-through. Angus sits back as if his brain has encountered enough intellectual tangle for the day.

Fark. That was weird.

Jasmin is a long-armed woman. She ruffs her sleeves back from the elbows and stretches her arms out to both sides in a ballerina bird-shape. Her wing-span is impressive. He'd not noticed this before, she has probably never done it in front of him. It is a stretch she enjoys for the way it releases tension from the shoulders the elbow joints and even the wrists and, to be honest, it also lifts her breasts that extra bit so that men notice. He notices. While she holds this position she waits for him to explain. He waits for her inevitable comment – or is she a silent questioner? It's odd not awkward. The fact is, they do not know each other.

So, he says, I assume an exciting night is out of the question.

And she may have to laugh.

Pretty unlikely, she says. Unless he is properly attired.

He looks around the courtyard. And if he is?

Not much hope there either.

That's pretty much what I thought. Well, I'm stuffed then. I didn't mean to embarrass you.

You must be joking.

I did warn you. If I'd gone home to change you'd still be waiting for me.

Mmm.

If that bloke had stayed inside you'd have forgotten about him immediately… Don't tell me you didn't find it interesting? It seems I'm a diviner.

Clairvoyant.

Maybe another glass of wine is interesting? And maybe you could go inside to get it…?

It takes him two more glasses of her favourite wine to unembarrass her. The crowd is doing its shift-work: the after-work drinkers are leaving and the before-dinner drinkers are taking their places. He nearly waves goodbye to the former lot. Then the slow-down, a warm night and a clear sky above them, the foliage keeping the garden intimate around them. And by now it is pheromones not volatile pinots at work.

She is talking about jogging, inspecting her knees and toes… somewhat melodramatically.

Running makes you skinny, he says.

What really embarrasses me, she says, are my knees.

Hey? What about your knees?

No no, look at them. And she stands and with her legs together she lifts her summery hem to mid-thigh and peers down at her bony knees and her shins. He sees nothing like this, he sees her elegant legs and calves and that she is lifting her skirt high enough to show him her legs. In tights.

Very nice.

Nice? Look at my ankles.

What about them? I thought you were complaining about your knees.

They should be touching, my ankles should be touching – but my knees keep them apart.

All he can do is laugh. Pinot Knee.

The perfect legs, she tells him, when standing, legs together, should have a slight gap at… the crotch, then meet at the thighs, have a gap above the kneee, below the knee and then again above and below the ankle. See, my ankles…

They both inspect her legs.

I can't tick off the first of those, he says, but I can vouch for the others.

She is about to drop her hem but suddenly flashes him a view.

Well, that clinches it.

She thinks what a strange verb, but she doesn't say anything. She knows the affect she has had on him.

Mmm… So what if your ankles are three mms apart.

But he has to say:

I'm sorry about my bluster earlier. I'm just a lump of a bloke – and this is a china shop.

A hunk of a bloke, she says. He feels a thump in his chest.

But it's your boyish blue eyes I really like, she smiles, then looks away.

They move inside for a meal and there a man in work clothes gets his come-uppance, inappropriately dressed as he sits and keeps his hands awkwardly below the table and against the starched white edges of the table cloth. He inspects, in front of him, more emphatically judgmental than any diners in suits, the heavy silver service.

But she is happy.

Then the plates are set down before them in all their trendy fragmentary art-work. Her colourful fragments are spread across the white plate as if cast from the seed-bag by the youth in Van Gogh's drawing. Plus three white columns or plinths, with Corinthian petals atop them – finished off by a slash of bright red sauce ending in a blob near her right hand. She immediately feels it would be better designed to have the blob on the left, physiologically that is, she being right-handed, left-brained. But never mind.

They have been foraging in the sandhills again, she says, and in a tiny garden full of tiny flowers… It's hilarious. I've completely forgotten what it is.

It's pickled octopus? Somewhere. And fleurs de la mere.

Very good, gardener. But isn't yours meant to be kangaroo?

Everything Angus heard described by the waitress is stacked before him, puréed and pressed out of a ring-mould. Bands of green, red, yellow and a strange crusty brown. He is speechless.

She reaches across the table and points to each of them.

That isn't a meal, that's the Aussie outback: the red stack is the blood of the poor kanga, but probably bush tomato. The green is just greens by the look of it, which is a bit obvious, the yellowy bit is… As for the brown…?

Don't say what I think you're going to say.

You have the national flag of Bolivia, my lad.

Angus smears the arc of yellowish sauce as a trail across the top of the huge plate:

This is a cry for help. The SOS scrawled in the beach by the shipwrecked.

They sit back smirking like children playing with food, willfully ignoring any restaurant decorum. The chef stares out through the hatch. He knows there are plenty of people who only eat because they'll get sick if they don't. And others who eat so much they get sick because they do. Neither adds to the integrity of chefs.

Soon they are eating. It isn't gustatorial wit or energy anymore, just plain old hunger directing their concentration and silence. Several older and well-dressed men and women push back their chairs and leave, only to be replaced with others who look very similar. There is a commonality of age and appearance in the place.

By now Jasmin has become serious, finishes her wine and leaves for the toilet. He assumes, a bit sadly, this is the move that precedes good night. When she returns she sees how out-of-place Angus looks. It even feels strange sitting down opposite him.

Another glass? he suggests.

No, not for me.

Sorry, I didn't mean to…

I thought, maybe at my place?

It's all she can do to smile without looking either coy or cliched.

She drives ahead very slowly so he can catch up after his ute has refused to start for several seconds. Now he squints through the unexpected rain and speeds towards her far-off tail-lights. They are a neat but fluid glow, the red and orange indicators surrounded by black. Getting closer. He is remembering years ago after a party he had driven away with a car load of girls, intending to follow the lead car down towards the harbour, but had run over the family's dog while still on the front lawn and by the time driver, dog and owners had accepted the accident the lead car had vanished. Angus had accelerated off and raced through a series of corners to catch it up but misjudged a downhill right-hander and smacked the kerb, the car pitching scarily before he steered back onto the road. It shocked and embarrassed him and every time he follows anyone he remembers his good luck compared with the horror of rolling. The dog survived.

But there she is, or the curved rear-end of her car is. Strangely seductive, driving closely behind someone who knows you are there, who slows before lights to ensure you can catch up and go through together, indicating early when corners are coming up, checking in the rear-vision you are close behind. This mood inside from the subtle glow of the dash, the waiting at lights. Jasmin leads him towards the cemetery, the roundabout, then left around the Uni­versity colleges (a few students are staggering past) and across Royal Parade, slowly curving though the newly laid chicanes: both cars weaving left then right then ahead again until the next, left, right, ahead again, slow waltzing in unison, like the space-station wheeling so gently in Kubrick's 2001, in the curving space-time of Johann Strauss.

Their wipers snip across and back and then pause for several seconds before snipping across, and back, stopping, revealing cars in front, her tail-lights. The unswept sides of his windscreen lack all class after a week near earthmoving work which has laid yellowish dust and grime over the car. There is a small trickle of trapped water easing like a wet yellow worm from top to bottom of the left side screen. Driving, her leading, him following, a sudden shower of rain, slow anticipation, timing, driving through the dark…

Her home is a brick terrace in North Melbourne with a fence of traditional wooden pickets, and real bricks, with a deep rear courtyard. The rooms are compact and handsome. Angus wants a house just like it. When he enters he cannot see signs of the boyfriend. No doubt she has rushed across the surfaces to wipe it reasonably clean of him – to un-see the boyfriend as it were – but too unthoroughly, the brain simply missing what has been there all along. The bloke's gym membership card among the hundreds of cards and collages on the poor old fridge, the donkey in the kitchen.