Review of Australian Fiction, Volume 4, Issue 2 Read online

  Volume 4: Issue 2

  Paddy O'Reilly & Laurence Steed

  Imprint

  Published by Review of Australian Fiction

  “Friday Nights” Copyright © 2012 by Paddy O'Reilly

  “A Thousand Miles” Copyright © 2012 by Laurence Steed

  www.reviewofaustralianfiction.com

  Editorial

  There is something unsettling about encountering an organised writer. Something uncanny about encountering two organised writers in close proximity. That is not something that naturally occurs.

  Our usual model, which you will all be familiar with by now, involves inviting an established writer and asking them to choose an emerging writer to be paired with. For the current issue, however, this model was reverse-engineered by our emerging writer, Laurence Steed.

  He initially approached us, and then he went out and found an established writer―Paddy O’Reilly―to endorse his ‘invitation’. If that isn’t enough, by the time I managed to put the previous volume to bed and start contacting and formalising arrangements with contributors for the current volume, both O’Reilly and Steed had already completed and submitted their respective stories!

  Writers, take note.

  Paddy O’Reilly’s most recent novel is The Fine Colour of Rust (2012). Her short story collection, The End of the World (UQP) was released to critical acclaim in April, 2007. And it was chosen as one of the year’s best books in various publications from Australian Book Review to The Financial Review. It was also shortlisted in the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards and commended in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. A novella “Deep Water” was published as one of four in the novella anthology, Love and Desire (2007). And Paddy’s debut novel, The Factory (2005), was also in the best books of the year lists in Australian Book Review and the Sydney Morning Herald and was Highly Commended in the FAW Christina Stead Award for Fiction.

  Laurie Steed’s writing has appeared in various publications including The Age, Meanjin, Westerly, Kill Your Darlings, and The Sleepers Almanac. He is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Western Australia and a 2012 Emerging Writer in Residence for the Fellowship of Writers (Western Australia). His story “The Lost Podcast” was shortlisted for the 2012 Bridport Prize, and he recently returned from the Graduate Fiction Workshop at the University of Iowa. He currently lives in Perth, Western Australia.

  Enjoy.

  Friday Nights

  Paddy O’Reilly

  On Friday evenings we gathered before dark in the cafe. In March the twilight came at about seven thirty, with the heat from meats and pasta and sauces already steaming up the cafe windows. The dusky neon and streetlights made the world through the glass light up like cinema screens. People passing by could have been actors, extras in a movie, seen through a mist, a window in Paris, the curtain of a noodle bar in a futuristic Los Angeles.

  Emma and Shannon and I were the only ones who never missed a Friday. It had been two months already, and we were always the first to arrive. I ordered a martini, ‘Because I like a bit of spirit.’ That was the line, the ritual to set the mood. I would sit on that martini till nine, the hour we set out. Emma and Shannon preferred wine. They were served by a new waiter who smiled shyly, glancing at Shannon as he poured her twice the normal amount.

  ‘What about me?’ Emma complained. The waiter blushed and topped up her glass before hurrying back to the kitchen.

  The cafe was kitted out in the kind of misshapen wooden chairs and tables that meant the wine would be twelve dollars a glass instead of seven, and the floor was polished concrete. Moisture condensing on the window glass formed into tiny rivulets that had seeped into the timber sill and caused the varnish to blister and crack. I found myself picking at the crisp flakes of varnish as we waited, the same way I used to pick at sunburn and scabs, feeling the creepy satisfaction of the dead parts of my body peeling away and leaving that pink baby skin, all soft and new and yet scarred at the same time.

  Each time someone entered the cafe, their presence was announced by the squeak or clatter of shoes on that concrete and the shift of air that happened because everything in the cafe was brittle and there was nothing to absorb sound or sensation except our human bodies. We felt the room swell and subside anytime someone moved. Perhaps that added to the jittery excitement that built as we sipped our drinks, waiting to see who would arrive, and what they would be wearing. By nine o’clock, six of us were sitting together, ready.

  When we stepped outside, I noticed that the night had a strange sharpness. A full moon and a clear sky lent a fine hardness to the autumn air. Emma hugged herself.

  ‘I should have brought a coat.’

  She wore the dress we had seen in the window of Dangerfield. It was a sack, shapeless and army green with massive pockets sewn on the outside and a ragged hem. Urban guerrilla girl chic, the shop assistant called it. ‘You should wear bright stripy tights or knee socks with it,’ she said. ‘And platform shoes. Maybe even a bow in your hair, Alice in Wonderland style.’ That’s exactly what Emma had done. She looked crazy, dangerous, fun.

  Shannon was in pink. She played demure better than any of us. Pressed jeans, a relaxed pink t-shirt, darker pink cardigan. Her auburn hair brushed straight, thick and soft over her shoulders. A clean face with a hint of blusher. Bree had gone moody and Goth with black clothes and dark wine lipstick and Ozlem was the opposite, all frothy in light-coloured flounces and ribbons. I wore my usual: black skirt above the knees, tight fluffy green jumper cropped at the waist, black tights, low heels, hair in a bun.

  That was the only thing you might question about us. Other girls who went out in a group looked more alike. Arty types with arty types; girls who knew how to pick up wearing the uniform of short tight skirt, skyscraper heels, mascara and lipstick; anxious country girls in a giggly bunch trying too hard with their top buttons undone but the jeans too loose and complexions that sang of fresh air and cream. We were a mixed-up crowd, sometimes mistaken as a hens’ night or a victorious netball club, out on one of those occasions when different kinds of girls come together to celebrate.

  ‘Did you hear Suze got into medicine?’ Shannon asked as we pushed out through the cafe doors into the street. ‘They gave her a supplementary exam.’

  ‘I always knew she would.’

  In our final year of high school Suze and I sat beside each other in Biology. I’d lean over and copy whatever she was writing because she understood it in a way no one else in the class did, as if she was a witchdoctor reading entrails. She’d look at a diagram and where I’d see blue and pink splotches and dense topographic maps, she would see the anterior vena cava, an aberrant squamous cell, the deep mysterious structure of the body. The shimmying fishtails under the microscope told her things I couldn’t fathom, even with the study notes at my elbow. I knew she would end up studying the human body.

  Emma had said she’d like to try the Kale Bar, so we tripped along the footpath talking about our studies and jobs, parting like a flock of birds to allow other pedestrians through and re-forming to take up other conversations, other chatter. When we reached the roped entrance to Kale, the bouncer smiled as if we’d arrived only to cheer him up.

  ‘Ladies, you are very welcome tonight,’ he said. ‘Too many men inside. You’ll balance out the room nicely.’ He unhooked the tatty velvet rope from its brass stand and waved us through, bowing as if he was a gentleman escort instead of a huge bull of a man who could move and punch at terrifying speed when provoked by a drunken idiot. ‘Here, on the house for you lovely ladies.’ He handed me a wad of free drink tickets. Once we were inside I shared them out amo
ng the girls and once we had collected our drinks from the bar, we fanned out through the room.

  One wall of the bar had booths fitted out like a railway carriage with sliding doors and benches either side of a fixed table. The booths were lit by heavy iron lamps slung just above head height that gave out a dim yellow light. Shannon and I slid onto opposite benches in one of the booths and arranged our handbags and drinks before turning to look around. Bree and Ozlem perched on stools at the serving bar and Emma and Lu had chosen a round table on the far side of the room. In the gloom, the only way I could recognise our girls at the distant table was Lu’s silver sequinned top catching the faint light and rippling like a fish flank in dark water.

  You never know who will come up and talk to you at these places, or why. Sometimes they pick demure Shannon, sometimes one is drawn to the shiny girls like Lu, sometimes a guy will even turn up at my side, maybe because I look somewhere in between, the under-confident one, the one who might be grateful.

  Not tonight though. Shannon and I weren’t left alone, but I couldn’t sense the necessary hard urgency in the first boys who came to chat us up. They were anxious, skittish, too conscious of their looks and unsure of what to talk about. I could read where things would go because I knew the introduction lines so well, the angles they used, the uncomfortable way they leaned on the doorway. Shannon looked pointedly at her phone a couple of times until they finally took the hint and drifted away.

  The next two boys who sidled up to our booth loitered at the carriage door in silence for a few seconds before offering to buy us drinks. We invited them to sit down. They edged in, one each side, and shifted around until their bodies settled into an awkward stasis. The boy next to me, tall and skinny, had hunched so far over his drink that he had to look backwards to talk directly to me and even then it was through a flop of clean private school hair. His friend sitting next to Shannon was jiggling his left leg so hard the whole booth shuddered along with it.

  At eleven, after we’d got rid of those two and had a drink with a lone boy who quickly lost interest in our conversation and wandered back to his group of friends at the bar, we decided to leave.

  ‘I parked in the station carpark,’ Shannon said. We hurried along the street, heels clattering on the empty footpath, shivering in the cold that had descended in a chill mist while we were inside. My new shoes were rubbing my small toe. I could feel moisture there, perhaps a broken blister or a smear of blood from the chafing, and I thought again of Suze passing the entrance exam for medicine.

  ‘It makes it seem like everything will be all right, doesn’t it?’ I said to Shannon. ‘That Suze will be a doctor, I mean.’

  ‘Yeah, it does feel like that.’

  The streetlights were blurry in the mist and the shops we passed were as dark as a blackout. The street with its wide verandas stretched ahead in an overhung corridor of shadow, but no one had followed us from the bar, so we had no reason to be afraid. The only thing to make us hurry was the cold. At the carpark Shannon beeped open the lock of the Kia. We flung our bags inside and jumped in and started the engine so the heater would come on.

  ‘Guess what? I thought ahead.’ Shannon leaned over to the back seat and pulled a big canvas bag onto her lap. She extracted a thermos and two white melamine cups from the bag. ‘Hot chocolate and there’s real chocolate as well. A block of organic dark. I don’t know why I never thought of this before.’

  ‘You are fucking brilliant, Shann.’

  A couple of times we’d bought hot chips and gravy from the stand in the petrol station on the highway and taken them back to the car, but they had made us feel sick. They’d stunk out the car for days.

  I looked at my watch. ‘Probably not long now anyway. It wasn’t much of a crowd.’

  Once we’d snuggled into our seats, with the hot chocolate warming our hands and the car windows fogging up, Shannon turned on the radio. The upbeat voice of the DJ brought a skip of happiness into the car. I loved the first song that he played.

  ‘This is “our song”, Steve and me.’ I laughed, embarrassed. ‘How corny is that, having a song.’

  ‘No!’ Shannon rested her cup on the dashboard while she broke three squares of chocolate off the block and handed them to me. ‘Eat this before it melts. You’re a romantic. It’s a byoodiful thang.’

  ‘Ha ha.’

  ‘Is Steve okay with you doing this?’

  ‘He thinks I’m at a support group for Suze.’

  ‘Well, we are.’

  I nodded and slipped my shoe off. It was too dark in the well of the passenger seat to see if I was bleeding. The loud alert of a text coming through on our phones made us both jump.

  Bree and Ozlem clear.

  ‘I’ll do ours.’

  I tapped out our message. Bec and Shannon clear.

  ‘Hope we don’t go too late tonight,’ Shannon said through a gluey mouthful of chocolate. ‘You want any more to drink?’

  I shook my head. The warm cocoa was making me sleepy. I pulled out a tissue and wiped away the steam from the windscreen and the passenger side window, and passed the tissue for Shannon to clean her window. She took it but made a mock face of dismay.

  ‘I quite like the foggy windows. When you can’t see out it’s like you’re in a strange tiny world, car world. Cheap upholstery and farty smell world.’

  ‘I haven’t farted, and if you’re going to then please let me know beforehand.’

  ‘Like when people fart in lifts and there’s no escape.’ She moaned. ‘It was me once. The shame factor was pretty heavy.’

  Another text came through, this time from Lu. Emma and I have split. I am clear.

  ‘Oh shit, shit. This could be it.’ Shannon’s voice was wobbly. She grabbed the cup from my hand, opened the driver’s door and emptied the contents onto the ground. When she had pulled the door shut she dropped the empty cups on the floor of the back seat and wiped the driver’s side window glass with the tissue I had passed her.

  Another text. He followed her into Trevvie park. Heading for bridge.

  We reached the park thirty seconds later and got out, trying to close the doors and the boot lid quietly. The locate-a-friend app lit up on our phones, showing Emma in the pagoda beside the pond. Trying to walk fast but quietly made my left shoe chafe even worse and I was certain I was bleeding now. I could feel the moisture seeping into the lining of my shoe and pooling at the toe.

  The path through the park was well lit, so we kept to the shadows on the grass, our shoes occasionally crunching stones that had drifted from the white pebbled walkway.

  ‘Shit shit shit,’ Shannon hissed. ‘We have to turn off the sound on our phones.’

  Only a moment after we’d both done that our phones flashed with an incoming text.

  Hurry.

  I pulled off my shoes and started to run down the hill to the bridge that led to the pagoda. My stockinged feet ached with each contact from the scattered stones on my tender soles. Shannon sprinted past me, the school athletics champion wearing the rubber-soled flats she’d slipped on in the car. When I reached the bridge, everyone was there. They turned and looked at me and I understood – I had never understood it quite as clearly before – that I was the leader.

  We ran silently to the pagoda where we could see Emma pressed against a pillar, squirming against the grip of a boy who was using his right arm to pin her hands above her head.

  ‘We’re here, Emma,’ I said. My quiet voice in the darkness seemed to travel through the earth and up through the foundations of the pagoda, flinging the boy backwards, away from Emma. As he swung around he stumbled on the uneven flooring and fell to his hands and knees.

  ‘What the fuck?’ the boy said, but when he raised his face we saw that he wasn’t a boy. He was a man in his thirties, or even forties. His pants were undone and his half-erect cock glistened with a droplet of clear liquid at its tip. When he saw us looking he hurriedly thrust it back into his pants and did up his fly. ‘Ladies,’ he said, rising
on his knees like a begging dog and lifting his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘No harm done here, ladies. We were just having a good time.’

  ‘No,’ Emma said. She hitched up her stripy pantyhose, which had been tugged halfway down her thighs, and struggled with her dress until it fell back down into shape. ‘No, we weren’t, you fucker.’

  ‘Did he say it?’ I asked.

  Emma shook her head. ‘No. You should have waited, like we said. I was okay.’

  ‘Say what?’ the man said. He was still kneeling. He had nowhere to go. We were all inside the pagoda now. Six women. One man. One baseball bat. ‘Look, I wasn’t going to rape her or anything. She never said no.’ He raised his hand like a beggar to Emma. ‘You never said no, right?’

  ‘I never said yes, fucker. I was struggling.’

  ‘Show me your face,’ I told the man.

  He turned his face away from me. ‘No. Why?’

  I called Suze on my phone. ‘We’ve got one.’

  Lu bent down and thrust her phone toward the man’s face. There was a flash. ‘Got it. I’m sending now,’ Lu said, pressing the button.

  Suze’s voice was a whisper. ‘Did he say it?’

  ‘No, but he mightn’t have had time. Lu’s sent you a pic.’ I could hear the beep as the man’s photo arrived on Suze’s phone. Things were shifting inside me, again.

  ‘It’s not him,’ Suze said.

  I’ll never get it out of my head, what I saw when I found Suze that morning. Two other people, the ones who found the two girls before her, probably have nightmares like me. Three months later, I saw Suze in another way I can never forget, her grey broken face in the hospital after they had pumped her stomach.

  He’s around here somewhere. This is his patch. He doesn’t realise it’s our patch now.

  Shannon tssked. ‘Oh well, never mind. We seem to have found ourselves a right arsehole though. Baseball, anyone?’ She’s always had a wicked sense of humour. She swung the baseball bat twice, hard, and it whished through the cold night air like a blade. The kneeling fucker bowed his head. He was probably praying.