Smoke in the Room E-Book

Emily Maguire

• Herausgeber: Lightning Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

'The understatement of its writing and its tenderness and unsentimentally give Smoke in the Room a compelling and convincing energy that holds the reader absorbed, then gently lets her go.' AUSTRALIAN BOOK REVIEW Summer, Sydney, and holed up in a tiny flat off Broadway are idealistic American Adam, weary activist Graeme, and wild, misunderstood Katie. Each is searching for answers to life's biggest questions – why are we here? what is love? what constitutes betrayal? – and thrust together, over an intense two-week period, they begin to form answers. In doing so, they must first confront their darkest demons, both within and without… Provocative, honest, brimming with sexual tension and crackling with intelligence, Emily Maguire's sensational novel cements her place as one of Australia's hottest talents. 'At the heart of ... Emily Maguire's work lies an urgent need to pull away at the interconnecting threads of morality, society and human relationships.' SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

Leseprobe

Published by

Lightning Books Ltd

Imprint of EyeStorm Media

312 Uxbridge Road

Rickmansworth

Hertfordshire

WD3 8YL

All rights reserved. Apart from brief extracts for the purpose of review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without permission of the publisher.

Emily Maguire has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as author of this work.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Is there smoke in the room? If it is slight, I remain. If it is grievous, I quit it.For you must remember this and hold it fast, that the door stands open.

– Epictetus

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 1

Katie’s last flatmate was taken away by ambulance at the end of November and, despite a Sydney-wide housing shortage, the spare room stayed empty until the first week of January. Katie was irritated by her grandmother’s assertion that it was worth going without rent for a while if it meant finding the right tenant. As though it had been the past tenants who had mucked everything up for Katie and not the other way around. Katie knew that Gran’s re-writing of history came from love, but it frustrated her all the same. Blind love was one thing, being seen and loved another.

Katie watched from the window as the chosen one came up the front path. He wore a long-sleeved business shirt even though it was beach weather and Saturday. The shirt was tucked into dark blue jeans which had creases ironed down the front of each leg. A child’s yellow backpack bounced on his shoulders as he walked.

‘So what’s wrong with him?’ Katie asked her grandmother as the man disappeared into the foyer below. ‘Is he autistic or something?’

‘For god’s sake. There’s nothing wrong with him. He’s American.’

‘He doesn’t look American. Oh. Unless … Gran, he’s not a Mormon is he?’

‘I didn’t ask him his religion, Katherine. If you’d met some of the weirdos who applied for the room … Believe me, this bloke’s a prize. Steady job in a shoe shop. Doesn’t drink or smoke –’

‘Oh, god.’

‘And he looks fit. Strong. I worry about you here alone. There are some real boofheads in this building.’

‘Harmless boofheads. Anyway, I’m safer with boofheads down the hall than some religious nut-job muscle man in the flat with me.’

‘He’s not a nut-job. He’s a nice, quiet bloke who wants a nice quiet place to live. I’ve got a really good feeling about him. Think he’ll be good for you.’ Gran reached for the door handle. ‘So, please, try to be nice, okay?’

Up close he was no more attractive, although he was more interesting. His teeth were toothpaste-ad-white but his eyes belonged to a man in a drink-driving commercial. White scar tissue squiggled down past his left ear ending with a pea-sized blob on his chin. His sandy hair was slicked back with enough oil to fry a bag of potatoes and its ends kicked out over his buttoned-down collar. When he wriggled his backpack off, his shirt threatened to tear across his chest and around his biceps.

‘You must be Katherine.’ He flashed his big smile, placed his cardboardy suitcase on the floor and extended his hand. ‘I’m Adam.’

Katie glanced at his smooth, pink nails and clasped her own hands behind her back. ‘How d’ya get the scar?’

‘Katherine!’

‘This?’ He covered it with his palm.

‘I’m sorry,’ Gran said, picking up his suitcase. ‘Excuse my granddaughter.’

Gran took off down the hallway towards his room and the American skittered along behind her saying It’s fine and I can take that and Please, Ma’am and It’s heavy.

Katie followed them, and stood in the doorway of his bedroom as Gran demonstrated how to operate the Venetian blinds, ceiling fan and window locks, as if these were high-tech devices he would never figure out all on his own. He said Mmm and I see and Well, thank you which made Katie wonder whether he was stupid or just a big suck-up.

‘Out of the way, Katherine. Let me show Adam the rest of the place.’

Gran backtracked through the living room to show him the kitchen and bathroom, and then returned to the hallway to point out the door to Katie’s room. As they walked in single file towards the study, unused since Katie had dropped out of secretarial college two years ago, she placed her hands on Adam’s arse.

He spun around. ‘What are –?’

‘What’s wrong?’ said Gran from the doorway of the study.

Adam looked as though his lunch had been ground into the dirt by a bully’s heel.

‘Sorry,’ Katie said, feeling like both the bully and the sandwich.

He smiled like he was about to break bad news. ‘It’s fine.’

‘What’s fine? What happened?’

‘Nothing. Just a little collision,’ he said. But she knew it wasn’t nothing. That look in his eyes: like she’d hurt him very, very badly. Like he wouldn’t recover from this terrible injury for a long time.

But maybe she hadn’t hurt him, maybe he was already hurt but super good at covering it and her touch had caught him off guard. That look probably had nothing to do with her at all. Most things didn’t have anything to do with her. This was something she needed to remind herself of often.

Gran narrowed her eyes. ‘This is the study, Adam. Come on in and have a look.’

‘What are you studying?’ Adam asked.

‘Nothing,’ Gran said. ‘This room is wasted.’ She gave Adam an apologetic smile. ‘I’m planning to turn it back into a bedroom. I did mention there’ll be another tenant moving in, didn’t I?’

‘Maybe, uh, I don’t remember. It’s fine. I keep mostly to myself, anyways. Speaking of which, I might go and …’ He gestured vaguely in the direction of his room.

‘Yes, go on and get settled,’ Gran said. ‘I’m leaving in a sec. But give me a call if you have any problems. My number’s on the fridge.’

‘Another tenant?’ Katie asked when he was gone.

‘Yep.’ Gran had already started clearing the piles of old magazines off the desk and placing them by the door.

‘What? You just decided, did you? I suppose I don’t get a say at all? I’m the one who has to live here.’

‘Yes, and I’m the one who has to pay. It’s not just the mortgage, either. Council rates and utilities keep going up. Everything keeps going up. It’s not easy doing it all on my own. It wouldn’t kill you to show a bit of gratitude.’

Katie stepped in between Gran and the doorway. ‘And it wouldn’t kill you to let me have some say over who lives here.’

‘You know Josie from work? Her husband’s an estate agent and he says I could be renting this place out to a family for five hundred a week. Maybe five-fifty. Reckons I’m mad not to.’

‘So go ahead and rent it out. I can find somewhere else.’

Gran dropped a stack of magazines onto the floor at Katie’s feet. ‘Your name’s magically off the rental blacklist now, is it? Or were you thinking of going back to one of those junkie slums without running water? Maybe you could find a nice little out-of-the-way bridge to sleep under? Should be comfy enough, at least until autumn.’

Katie wanted to get up and go and not look back, but she was old enough now to see the future as a real thing that must be protected against. She was frightened of ending up shoeless and mindless, picking cigarette butts out of gutters and shouting at people on buses. She felt in her pocket for her smokes, then, not finding them, she took a deep drag of the study’s stale air instead.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to be ungrateful. I was just surprised.’

Gran twisted her thick black hair up in a bun, held it there for a second and then let it fall over her shoulders. ‘The other solution – money wise – is to sell my place at Bondi. I could move up north. I never see Sue anymore and your brother must be –’

‘Half-brother. Gran, come on. Mum doesn’t need you; I do.’

‘I’d still pay the bills, don’t worry. You can do all that over the internet now, you know.’

‘That’s not why I need you.’ Katie put her arms around her grandmother and pressed her cheek against her neck. It smelt like backstage at a school play. ‘I need you for lots of things.’

‘Such as?’

‘You know, all the things people mean when they go on about family being important.’

‘Silly girl.’ Gran shook free, crossed her arms and looked around the room. ‘I’m going to have to invest in some new furniture. A bed and lamp table, at least. Curtains, too. The view from in here’s awful, if I remember right.’ She went to the window and leant out, her hands on the sill, her masseuse sandals barely touching the floor, denim shorts riding up her thighs. From the back, and ignoring the chunky purple veins clustered behind the knees and dripping down the calves, the body hanging out the window could have belonged to a teenager.

Katie stood behind Gran and looked down at the carpark of the building next door. ‘Could be worse,’ she said. ‘The bathroom has a view of the bins.’

Gran sighed and leant back into Katie. ‘Guess I should get started on this mess.’

‘You’ve got enough to do, Gran. Leave it to me.’

Gran saw the magazines as garbage and so wanted Katie to put them in garbage bags, whereas Katie thought of them as historical records and real-time accounts of unfolding lives. She’d tried to explain this to Gran once, but she called her silly and sentimental, which was funny coming from a woman whose house was stuffed with wedding invitations, theatre programs, birthday cards, dinner menus, newspaper clippings, faded holiday snaps from the Sixties and baby pictures of every member of the extended family, most of whom Katie had never even heard of.

Funny, too, that Gran nagged about the magazines even as she tried to turn Katie into a ‘reader’ by bringing around novels and short story collections and dragging her down to Glebe Library to sign up for a card. Katie had tried Gran’s books and a few others that different flatmates had left around. She enjoyed the reading part, but hated the way they ended. She hated that they ended at all. People got married or divorced, they arrested the killer or they died of a terrible disease; they won the race or bought the house or moved to France and then nothing else ever happened or if it did no one ever knew.

But magazines – Who and Celebrity and Famous and New Weekly – followed the story for as long as something was happening. Weddings were followed by babies and divorces and second or third weddings, and the babies grew up and got in trouble with the police and then fell in love and had babies themselves. Illnesses went on for years or got cured and then came back, but even when someone died it wasn’t all over, because someone else had set up a charitable fund or climbed a mountain and the memory of the person was reignited. The biggest star with the greatest happiness would soon enough be down-and-out scrounging for work and love; the D-list starlet whose sex tape had made her an international joke would, in time, have a hit movie and three adorable adopted babies. Nobody was safe and nobody was doomed.

Katie’s phone beeped and she glanced at the screen. Gran. How’s the clean-up going? She looked around the room which seemed messier than it had been an hour ago. Almost done she replied. Taking bins out now.

She carried armfuls of magazines into her room and stacked them inside the walk-in wardrobe. She had to take out most of her clothes and all of her shoes, but the clothes were easily heaped on top of the dresser and the shoes piled on the floor under the window.

She closed the wardrobe doors feeling fizzy with accomplishment. Next, she would drag the old desk and bookshelf out of the study and vacuum the carpet using that vanilla powder from under the sink. She would clean the windows with Windex and the sills with Mr Sheen. She would wipe down the furniture and put it back in place. She would make the room so clean that Gran would slap a hand over her mouth and say, Katherine! You’ve outdone yourself! and would not think to ask about the magazines and whether they had taken up all the room in the wheelie bin.

Chapter 2

It took Adam barely ten minutes to unpack: five shirts, three pairs of long pants, a couple of T-shirts, underwear, socks. He carried his toothbrush, toothpaste, shaving cream, razor and deodorant down the hall to the bathroom and placed them on the shelf he guessed had been left clear for him. Above sat a bottle of Dove moisturiser, an open packet of disposable razors, a tube of Clearasil and a jar of hair gel. The shelf below his held antiseptic cream, cotton balls, more hair gel and a super-size bottle of Brut aftershave. On the edge of the basin was a green toothbrush, its bristles worn down to a single mat. The antiseptic and bleach in the air made his eyes water.

Back in his room he crawled under the bed and placed the yellow backpack up against the wall, under where his head would be each night. Then he lay down and listened to what might have been furniture being dragged down the hallway until he fell asleep.

He woke in silent darkness. Sitting up, his head met wood and his heart slammed in his chest, his throat closed over. He forced a breath and remembered the new flat, reached behind and felt the soft fuzz of his backpack. He lay back down until his breathing slowed, then rolled out into the room.

He rocked back and forth on his heels, one hand on the door frame. His new flatmate was two quick steps away, scrunched into the corner of a rust-coloured sofa, a magazine in front of her face. Her pale, skinny legs were bare, a tiny denim skirt just covered her ass. The pink tank top with a rainbow across the chest was something his ten-year-old cousin would wear.

More magazines were scattered over the white laminex coffee table and piled up on the lamp table next to the armchair. A game show played silently on the TV behind the girl’s head. There were no books or photos; the only thing on the pale peach walls was a framed watercolour print of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. If not for the haze of cigarette smoke, he could have been in a doctor’s waiting room.

‘Ah, hi,’ he said.

The girl sighed and tucked her feet up under her thighs. Adam swayed in the doorway to the count of three and then cast himself across the room, landing on the edge of the armchair across from her. He was close enough to see the blonde down on her forearms and the stiff, tiny hairs sprouting on her calves, but still she did not look up.

‘Um, hi, Katherine, do you have a minute?’

She snorted and flipped the page of her magazine. Nicole’s Shock Weight Loss said the headline. The woman in the pictures was insect-thin. If her blonde hair was a little longer and her nose a little narrower she would look just like Eugenie. He half-closed his eyes, blurring the picture, scraping a nail over his scabby heart.

The girl across from him clicked her tongue.

‘Ah, I …’ Adam waited for her to look at him. When she didn’t, he cleared his throat. ‘I just wondered if you knew of anywhere around here I might find, ah, some work?’

She slammed her magazine closed as though it were a hard-covered book. ‘I thought you sold shoes. Gran said you sold shoes. She said you wouldn’t be around in the daytime. You’re supposed to be selling shoes.’

‘Yeah, I used to, but … but I don’t right now.’

‘You’re telling me you lied to Gran?’

‘I needed someplace to stay.’

She picked up her magazine. ‘So go back to the shoe store.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Why?’ She flicked a page over. ‘Did you get fired?’

‘No, I … the shoe store is in San Francisco.’

‘So go back to San Francisco.’

‘Listen, Katherine – ’

‘It’s Katie.’

‘Katie, I –’

‘Not because we’re friends.’

‘What?’

She tossed the magazine on the ground and leant forward. Her small, dark eyes met his and she sighed. ‘You’ve got a look on your face like we’re friends. Katie is my name. For everyone except my grandma and the government. It’s not like, “Oh, call me Katie, all my friends do.” It’s just my name.’

Adam took a breath. ‘Katie. I’m sorry I lied. I need a place to stay while I earn enough money to get back to the States. If you know of anyone who might need, like, a kitchen hand or janitor or something, then I would be grateful for the information. If not, I’m sorry to have bothered you. I’ll understand if you feel the need to tell your grandma that I’m not working. I hope you won’t but I surely do understand if you –’

‘Yeah, yeah, that’s enough. I won’t dob on you if you don’t dob on me, alright?’

I’ll dob, Eugenie had said to him that very first day. She caught him stealing a chocolate chip cookie from the mailroom tea table. You’ll do what? Adam had asked. That was the start.

‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Um, if you mean before, when you – you know, in the hall –’

‘Oh, that! That was just me stuffing around.’ She winked. ‘I’m always misbehaving. You’ll see.’ She grabbed his hand in both of hers and smiled widely, revealing a mouth full of baby teeth. ‘So you’re alone in a strange land, hardly any luggage, unemployed, lying to old ladies. Are you on the run, or what?’

‘Of course not.’ He looked at her red knuckles and inflamed nail beds, confused by the softness of the skin wrapped around his cold hand.

‘So what then?’

‘It’s complicated.’

‘Fine, be mysterious.’

Adam flexed his hand, but she held tight. ‘Um, so, do you know … ’

She stood up, pulling him with her. ‘Come on.’

‘Where?’

‘Trust me.’

The building’s elevator was plastered with posters for open mic nights, sex clubs, dollar drinks and dating hotlines. The NO BILLS POSTED sign was partially obscured by postcards advertising SWEET ASIAN PRINCESS, MAN TO MAN EROTIC MASSAGE and SWEDISH TWINS WHO WANT TO MAKE YOU SMILE. If this was San Francisco, Adam might assume the posters were an art work commenting on the dehumanising effects of advertising: a cartoon barmaid showed through the white space between a lingerie model’s open legs; a stripper’s torso was torn down the middle revealing a hot pink microphone which seemed to be melting into a glass of pale yellow beer. The centrepiece was a still-glossy poster featuring a collage of shiny tanned body parts. Basketball tits held in red-taloned hands, oiled thighs with muscles straining, two pairs of red lips smashed together, an armless hand squeezing a bodiless ass cheek. NUDE GIRLS LIVE!was printed top and bottom.

Katie nudged him. ‘In my head I always read LIVEso it sounds like liv. Makes that poster kind of funny. Like they cut the nude girls into all those parts and still they live.’

Adam felt faint. He felt he’d been in here for hours. He undid his top button and concentrated on the light above the door that told him they were moving towards the open air.

‘One second,’ Katie said when they reached the ground floor. She jogged across to the door opposite the elevator and rapped three times. Adam peered at his distorted reflection in the elevator’s shiny silver doors, smoothing down his hair and straightening his collar. He didn’t need a mirror to tell him his skin was pale and his eyes puffy. He blinked and slapped his cheeks to create the appearance at least, of a wide-awake, eager employee. The door creaked open and he turned towards it with a smile, vowing to accept whatever the inhabitant had to offer.

An ancient woman, wrapped in what looked like a grey sleeping bag and bent almost double at the waist, peered out. ‘Oh, it’s you, love. I thought it was those phone company people again. I had my stick ready.’

‘They’re persistent, aren’t they?’ Katie said. ‘I just pretend I don’t understand English.’

‘Sometimes I wonder if they understand it. Don’t understand “piss off” anyway. Oh, hello.’ The woman nodded at Adam. ‘You new?’

‘Um, yeah.’ He quickstepped to Katie’s side. ‘I’m Adam. I’m, ah, after some work.’

The woman looked him over, head to toe and back again. ‘Hmm. Let’s see. My bunions need filing. That’ll be a few hours right there. Then I s’pose you could help me with my bath. So many bits I can’t reach these days. God knows they need a good scrubbing.’

‘Phyl!’ Katie said. ‘You’ll scare him back to America.’ She squeezed Adam’s arm. ‘How about you wait for me out the front? I’ll just be a minute.’

Adam hurried outside and sat on the low brick wall housing the building’s mailboxes. Within seconds, his neck was damp with sweat. From the colour of the sky he guessed it was after six, yet the sun had all the heat of noon. Each day he expected this place to feel less alien and for minutes, even hours, at a time it did, and then … Then this, this wave of breathless, stomach-clenching disorientation. He closed his eyes and began to count backwards from one hundred.

At twenty-two he felt a slap on the arm. ‘Hey. You meditating or something?’

He opened his eyes and slid off the wall. His skull felt tight and overcooked but his breathing was regular again. ‘No. Hi.’

‘Sorry about that. I just like to check in with Phyl from time to time. She’s on her own since her –uh, her wife, I guess, although she wouldn’t use the word, she’d just say “Carol” – anyway, since she died last year, Phyl’s on her own.’ Katie hooked her arm through Adam’s and began to walk. ‘She’s super with-it still – mentally, I mean – but the old body’s going to shit, as she’d say, so I just give her a howdy-do now and then to make sure she’s not lying on the bathroom floor with her knickers around her ankles calling for help.’

‘That’s nice of you. Did you know her, um, her wife?’

‘Oh, yeah. She was fierce.’ Katie brought them to a stop at the traffic lights and danced from foot to foot. ‘Carol was like the door bitch for the whole building. She’d sit out the front – right where you were a minute ago – and give the stink-eye to anyone she didn’t recognise. She was always giving me advice, too. Like how to deal with dead-end dudes and nosy cops and empty pockets. Come on, let’s go.’ She tugged his arm, pulling him into the intersection packed with cars moving at an inch a minute.

‘Nosy cops?’ he asked when they reached the other side.

‘Yeah, Carol was tops with them. Hey, so here we are.’

Gold lettering over the dark wood double doors said Kings Tavern. Above the tarnished gold doorknob a sticker promised he could WIN UP TO $100,000 WITH DAILY KENO.

‘They’re hiring here?’

‘Probably not. They just laid off two barmen last week.’

‘Look, I really need –’

‘Adam!’ Katie unhooked her arm from his and placed both hands on her hips. ‘Relax, okay? Have a drink with me. Then we’ll talk employment options.’

The pub was dark and musty with gold chandeliers overhead and poker machines lining the walls. They sat on wobbly stools, their forearms resting on a wood laminate bar sticky with long-ago spilt beer. She ordered schooners of Victorian Bitter and whisky chasers.

‘So, the last tenant before you was – ugh, actually let’s not talk about him. Let’s pretend he never happened. So, before him there was Carrie who worked at the Golden Cat – that’s a brothel if you didn’t know – but Gran thought she was a nurse, which she was studying to be, and when she graduated we had this party and she wore the slutty-nurse outfit from work which was pretty funny. Before her was Ken, he was a student, too, but not a part-time hooker student like Carrie, just a regular one. There have been a few international students. Japanese, Norwegian, English. When I first moved in, there was this Spanish girl, Marie, and she was so sweet, she was like a big bag of fairy floss. I was sad when she left. Hey, you’re lagging. Drink up!’

Adam took a large gulp of beer. It tasted like chilled vinegar but with every mouthful he could feel his chest relaxing a little more. Swallow by swallow his sense of displacement eased. He knocked back the whisky in front of him and when the burning in his throat subsided he felt almost good.

‘All right! Now we’re grooving.’ Katie drained her whisky and motioned to the bartender for two more. ‘So, Adam, you have the privilege of being my first Seppo.’

‘Your first what?’

‘Seppo. You’ve gotta learn to speak Aussie, man. You’re a Yank, so –’

‘No, not a Yankee. I’m from –’

‘The You Ess Ay. Makes you a Yank. Yank rhymes with septic tank. But we like to shorten names and then add an O at the end – but only if we like you. So Yank is kind of neutral. Septic tank is rude. But Seppo, well, it’s affectionate. Get it?’

‘No.’ Adam drank more beer. It was starting to taste pretty good.

‘You’re so quiet. I didn’t expect that.’ Katie slid around on her stool so she was facing his right side. ‘I don’t mean that as an insult or anything. I just kind of thought all Americans were loud and arrogant. And I bet –’ she kicked his calf with her steel-toed boots, ‘– I bet you expected Aussie girls to be all easy-breezy, sun-loving, beach-ball-bouncing, sweetie-pies.’

‘No.’

‘Because that’s not true. I, for instance, avoid the daylight. And the beach.’ She waved a stumpy-nailed hand in front of her face. ‘I am easy, though. Ha. Let’s do a shot. Tequila or sambuca?’

‘Neither.’

‘Nonsense. Joey!’ She raised her arms and clapped until the bartender turned their way. ‘Two sambucas, black.’ She slapped a twenty on the bar. ‘Oh, and another coupla whiskies.’ She turned back to Adam. ‘I suppose you think I drink too much, but if you stick around awhile you’ll see that everybody in Australia drinks this much or more. Sometimes lots more.’

‘Now, I know from personal experience that that’s not true.’

‘Personal experience, eh? Do tell.’

Adam looked at the cluster of glasses in front of him. He picked up the closest and tossed its contents down. Molten liquorice filled his throat and brought tears to his eyes. ‘I think I better go home.’

‘Not yet.’ She leant in, grasping his upper-arm for balance, and kissed his neck just below his ear.

He shrugged her off. ‘Cut it out.’

She grabbed his wrist. ‘I was hoping I’d be your first Australian, Adam.’

‘My first Australian what?’

‘Friend.’

‘We’re not friends, remember? Katherine.’

She sank her nails into the soft skin of his wrist. His arm shot out, sending her toppling off her stool. ‘Woo!’ She righted herself and stood behind him, wrapping her arms around his chest. ‘You’re really sexy for a Mormon.’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

She bit his ear. Not in a sexy way. More like she was testing the firmness of his earlobe. Like she needed to know how much pressure could be applied.

‘I have to go,’ Adam said, standing.

His sudden movement threw her off balance again and she skittled to the side, knocking over a nearby stool. She latched onto his arm and said, ‘Stay, stay.’ He moved steadily towards the exit, dragging her behind him. Someone shouted ‘taxi’ as he pushed open the door.

The street was dim and cool. Everything smelt like whisky. He stumbled past several closed shops and across a mercifully clear street to what appeared to be a small public park. ‘Where we going?’ Katie said, still clinging to his arm. He shook her off, and sank to his knees, then his side, grateful for the soft, cool grass under his cheek.

‘Oh, no.’ Katie sat beside him and pinched his ear. ‘No sleeping, Adam. Not here and not yet. Come on. Get up!’

He swatted at her hand. ‘Lemme rest a minute.’

‘Geez, what a lightweight.’ She rolled him onto his back and kneeled over him, one leg either side of his thighs, and put her hands inside his pants.

‘Hey, no, no. Don’t.’

She stopped mid-tug. ‘Oh, shit. You’re not actually a Mormon, are you? Man, I was kidding!’

‘What? No, no. I … just don’t, okay.’

She sighed and placed her palms flat on his belly. ‘I thought we were on the same wavelength, you know? Have a drink, a laugh, maybe a tumble in the grass. I guess I read you all wrong. But maybe ...’ She slid one hand into his underwear and began to stroke him. ‘Maybe if you lie back and relax, maybe you’ll change your mind?’

He looked up at her hovering over him. Her face and torso were in shadow; the street lights fell across her lower body, streaking her inner thighs with fine lines. Her skirt was scrunched around her hips and he could see her underpants, bright pink and so tiny she might as well have not been wearing them at all. The grass was cool and her hands were warm and smooth and his head was heavy and a motorbike roared past and his life was behind him and the air was whisky. He heard himself moan.

‘That feels good, huh?’

‘Yeah. Yeah. But, Kay-ah, Katie, I drank too much. I don’t think I can.’

‘Maybe not, but I can. I definitely can.’ She kept stroking him with one hand, while she pulled her underpants to the side with the other. ‘Just let me do my thing, Yankee Doodle. Just let me have my Yankee Doodle Dandy.’

He had not had sex since Eugenie, and he had not missed it. But the girl was warm and the motion calming. His body rocked with the rolling of her hips and the steady beat of her breathing. He closed his eyes.

He drifted in and out, with little idea of how much time was passing. At some point he became aware of a desperate need for it to be finished. He reached for her hips urging them to move faster and with more force. She was panting hard, slowing down and he said come on come on and she said okay yes and moved faster for him, with him, until he came with a jolt and a groan and she laughed and said something he didn’t hear because he was already falling asleep.

‘Get up you filthy buggers!’

Something hard poked him awake. White birds with yellow crowns streaked across the pale grey sky overhead. Katie was half on top of him, her head on his chest and her leg over his groin which was cold and damp. The man standing above them wore a leather apron and rubber boots to his knees. The broom he shoved at Adam felt like a dog’s head and stank of fish. Katie said ‘Give us a minute, copper,’ and Adam closed his eyes again thinking he may have dreamt himself into a Dickens novel.

‘Filthy scum. This is a public park.’ The man jabbed him to full consciousness then stalked across the street and stood watching from the doorway of a shuttered fish shop. Katie stood and patted down her skirt. She grabbed Adam’s hand and pulled him up, then across the street, as he tried to button his pants with one hand. He tripped on the gutter and fell to one knee, pulling Katie half the way down with him. She cackled and a jogger on the other side of the road stopped for a few seconds and watched them get up.

‘What a night, eh?’ she said four or five times during the slow, sick-making elevator ride.

Back inside the flat she led him to her bedroom.

‘Wait,’ he said. ‘I need to shower, sleep.’

‘Okay. We’ll shower. Let me …’ She unbuttoned his shirt and slid it over his shoulders, moving around to his back as she tugged the sleeves off his arms. ‘Oh!’ she said, her hands moving quickly over the skin of his back. ‘Wow.’

‘I have tattoos,’ he said.

She laughed. ‘Yeah. I noticed.’

Dreams were unreliable. Some allowed Adam to spend the night buried in Eugenie, his hands on her waist, his mouth moving over her collarbone. Or they let him lie with her on the beach, tracing dirty words on her back. Waking after a dream like that, Adam burrowed further into the blankets, knees tucked into his chest, replaying each moment, pushing the day and its dreadful knowledge away for as long as he could. Other nights the dreams were cruel: Eugenie was drowning in the ocean and the harder Adam swam, the further away she got. Or she was being sucked into a pit of mud and when Adam grabbed her arm it came off in his hand. After a dream like that, he hurled himself into the waking world. Cold shower, loud music, breakfast TV, kick the wall, slap his face.