By eight-thirty it"s getting quite crowded.
Jacq, who at seven-thirty was pacing the empty verandahs and
smoking a lot, now has champagne in one hand, wine in the other and
several conversations going at once. Naomi is working on a spur-of-the-
moment punch in the kitchen. Burns is gripping a beer as though it"s a
mother"s hand, and looking even more out of place than me.
Phil Borthwick turns up in a tie and Burns gives me a look that
suggests he feels a little better about himself. Phil (and I admire this) seems
to have no idea that he"s the only person in a tie, and says, with some glee,
Great, dancing, when he works out what"s going on in the loungeroom, and
why the furniture is all outside.
At least he hasn"t tried anything silly with food. He"s brought a
carton of full-strength beer, and there will be plenty of people here who think
this more than makes up for the tie.
I don"t actually drink it myself, he says sheepishly to Jacq and
me. I"ve got an enzyme thing, so I can"t really touch alcohol. But I thought I"d
bring it for the party.
Thanks, Phil, Jacq says, already touching alcohol as though she
and it are at least close friends, and with a smile that I haven"t seen before. A
lazy, uncomplicated smile, a drinking smile, buckling under the weight of its
own bonhomie. But you"d have just the one, wouldn"t you? It"s a party.
Oh, I really shouldn"t.
For me, Phil? You"d have just the one for me, wouldn"t you, Phil?
Oh, just the one then, he says, and stares right down at the floor.
But, really, only one. And I"ll have to take it slowly.
She leads him to a nearby esky of ice, and he notices that the
verandah light is off and I hear him say, I"ll have to get over and sort that out.
No, it"s fine, Jacq tells him. Party atmosphere.
Oh, so it"s working?
Well, no. But we would have had it turned off anyway, like the
others.
People keep arriving, probably all uni people. And the darkness,
the party-atmosphere darkness, is yet another thing I hadn"t expected. My
parents have parties with all the lights on, but this is more like the way
Naomi and Jacq watch TV. The kitchen light is on, and one or two others, but
that leaves the verandah and the loungeroom—the places where most of the
people are—catching the edges of the light and nothing more. And I probably
look less school-age in the dark, so it"s not a bad thing.
I meet the singer and the keyboard player from Jacq"s band, and
one of them is wearing a jacket that, even in almost no light, looks shiny, as
though it"s made of the skin of an exotic fish. She has hair quite like Jacq"s,
and I know I"m out of my league.
Burns, predictably, drinks too quickly. He tries to persuade me to
have another beer while he"s taking his third or fourth, but I tell him I"m pacing
myself. I should tell him he could think of slowing down. I want to tell him no-
one"s spotted the butterfly buns, but I"d have to shout, and maybe then some
of them would.
I tell him that I think pacing yourself is a good idea, and he says,
Yeah, I am. I"m going to dance with a girl now.
This, I can tell, is bravado, nothing more. There are no girls in
evidence. He dances off into the loungeroom and I lose sight of him in the
dark.
I seem to be spending quite a lot of time doing slow laps of this
party, not talking to many people. Wondering how Naomi"s going and
catching glimpses of her occasionally. Talking, dancing, getting a drink, but
with different people each time. And Jacq is dancing with someone from her
band and laughing. Phil Borthwick is nearby and bouncing up and down in a
way that could hurt his brain, his tie flapping, beer sloshing out of the stubbie
he"s holding over his head.
Why is Phil coping with the party better than I am? How can Phil
not care much more about being so odd and out of place? I"ve tried to do
better. Tried to be more than a Naomi-focused loser. I"ve noticed one or two
girls I"d quite like to talk to, but how do you start? You can"t just walk up and
launch into it. I think all my plans involved finding myself face to face with
someone who was expecting conversation. Someone who would kicks things
off, lead me to an opportunity to create the right impression, use my best
stuff: the browns, species names, Frøken Smilla"s fornemelse for sne, if it
isn"t too Danish-girl specific.
But they"re not interested in starting conversations with me
because they"re all in conversations already, and I"m doing laps. Which
would give me something to talk about if I bumped into the sixth-best two-
hundred "flyer in Australia, but not much else. It"s like musical chairs, but it"s
as if the music stopped only once, ages ago, and I didn"t notice. All these
conversations are well under way, impenetrable. Inside, I"m getting all hunchy
again. I can feel my shoulders tightening.
Hey, hey, a female voice calls out. Are you looking at me?
The fact that I have to turn ninety degrees to see her should
suggest that I wasn"t (I don"t even know why I turned), but it is me she"s
talking to. Talking, and pointing a well-sucked Chuppa-Chup as though
there"s some accusation involved.
Are you looking at me? she says again, and drinks the last
mouthful of whatever"s in her glass.
I don"t think so.
I think you were. I think that"s three times now.
No, I think that might have been someone else.
And if it was?
If it was what?
If it was someone else?
Well, I don"t know.
No, well, you wouldn"t, my friend, she says, critically, waving the
Chuppa-Chup around, gesticulating with it, sticking it to my sleeve and the
front of my shirt. You wouldn"t. And then her mouth opens and shuts, as
though she was about to say something else, but it didn"t manage to make it
out. Oh no. I don"t know who you are, do I? I was thinking you were someone
else, like, really. Some guy I met before.
That"s okay.
No, it"s not.
No, it"s okay.
And she drops her Chuppa-Chup on the floor, picks it up and
wipes it on her sleeve, puts it back in her mouth.
Hey, want a Chuppa-Chup? I was at this party earlier and they
had a bowl of Chuppa-Chups. I"ve got more. I"m not going to give you this
one. Someone"s sucked it already. So have I.
Then she notices a piece of paper stuck to a place on my sleeve
where her Chuppa-Chup has been.
Hang on a tick. And she focuses on it really hard and reaches out
slowly with her free hand, lifts it off as though it"s fragile and says, There, in a
way that suggests she"s done me quite a favour and compensated for any
earlier confusion. Imogen, she says. Hi.
Hi. I"m Dan. Daniel. Dan.
That"s pretty complicated, she says, as I"m struggling to believe
my failure to plan the most fundamental things. I"ll just go with Dan.
Okay.
Look, I"ll tell you something, but, you know, keep it to yourself.
This is pretty much my first uni party. Well, second, but the other one was
just before. With the Chuppa-Chups. Now, I was a bit worried when I was
there. With the Chuppa-Chups. I thought it might have been a uni-party thing.
I don"t think so. There aren"t any here.
I"m not finding it easy, you know?
What?
The whole thing.
Oh. Which whole thing?
I"m still not used to it. I just started uni, right, so I"ve only been
there a week, and it"s pretty different. You would have found it pretty different
when you started, right?
Yeah.
And so, quietly, the lying begins. I didn"t mean to lie. I was being
supportive, reflecting her concerns. I was lying. Lying, plain and simple, and
with personal advantage in mind.
I just feel out of my depth, you know? Here at the parties, you
know?
I"m sure it"ll be fine.
Yeah, she says, without actually agreeing.
She looks straight ahead, at my shirt, as though she"s trying hard
to think of something to say. She really isn"t finding this easy. She looks up
at my face again.
So, are you a friend of Nigel"s?
Who?
Nigel.
Who"s Nigel?
He was in this book. This book my mother gave me about
conversations. For when you"re having trouble with conversations. Drying up.
It"s one of the questions you ask. You can ask about the cat, you can ask
about transport, and you can ask if they"re a friend of Nigel"s. Pretty good tip,
that, she says, giving me a nudge in the shoulder with the Chuppa-Chup.
Yes, but who"s Nigel?
He was in this book.
Yeah, but was he, like, the host of a party, or something?
He was in this bloody book. Don"t you get it? Now, are you a
friend of his or not?
I don"t think I know him actually.
No, neither do I. I don"t know anyone. Maybe I should just go
home. I knew I shouldn"t have come. I shouldn"t be here.
Everything"ll be fine. I"m sure you"re as welcome as anybody.
Really. Don"t go.
Thanks. Thanks Dan. You"re a good man, Dan. Did you find it
difficult at first, coming to these things?
A bit, yeah. But in the end, you realise they"re okay. I mean, you
think everyone at these kind of things is going to be really on top of it. You
know, into folk art and interesting food and stuff.
Yeah, and you think they all know so much.
Yeah, like scientific names of trees and birds and things.
Exactly.
And some of them do, but it"s not a big deal. I mean, everyone
knows different things. So don"t worry.
And I don"t mind this Imogen. Her blue eyes, her dark hair, her
serious, focused look, her firm grip on her empty glass, her less firm grip on
her Chuppa-Chup.
And what about you then?
What do you mean?
What do you do at uni? she says, in a probing kind of way that
involves shutting one eye and pushing the Chuppa-Chup into my chest like a
big, sticky, pineapple-flavoured finger. I"d quite like to know.
Law, QUT, second year, I hear myself saying, after a short and
uneasy pause and just as I"m thinking that this might be the time to be
straight with her. Or not. I go on to tell her, Gardens Point, the parking sucks.
It must be bad. That"s what that other guy told me. You"d probably
know him, she says, pointing off into the distance.
I look, since I think I"m supposed to, but it"s far too dark to see
anything. When I look back at her, the piece of paper she had carefully
removed from my sleeve is stuck to her forehead.
That other guy, Chris, from QUT, she"s saying. He"s second-year
law too. I didn"t like him. I didn"t like him at all. I hope he"s not a friend of
yours.
I"m not even sure I know him.
And do I remove the paper from her forehead? I don"t know. It suits
her, somehow, but I don"t think that"s the answer.
Really? You don"t know him, and you"re doing the same course?
There are quite a few people I don"t know. You could bump into
plenty of second-year QUT law students I don"t know. We"re divided up into a
few groups.
And these lies? They"re so easy now, they hardly touch the sides
on the way out.
For tutes and things?
Yeah.
Well, you wouldn"t want to know him, this Chris . . .
Burns, I say, blundering badly, getting casual just when I
shouldn"t have.
Burns. Yeah. Hey, I thought you didn"t know him?
No, I don"t.
But you know his name.
Yeah. I"ve seen it on a list.
On a list? You remember his name from a list?
Yeah. He"s the only . . . he"s the only Chris in our year.
Wow, really? So I guess that"s why you"d remember it?
Yeah.
Can"t be too many years with only one Chris.
I wouldn"t have thought so.
How many Imogens?
None at all.
That"s what I would have guessed. We"re a bit of a rarity. You"re
so much better than that Chris guy, you know? I asked him what QUT was
like and he got weird and he gave me the definition of a bicameral parliament
and told me a few things about the Native Title Act. I"d avoid him if I were you.
He"s pretty boring. Do you know where the toilet is here?
I point her towards the other end of the verandah, and she winks
and sticks the Chuppa-Chup to me one last time. She pushes herself into the
crowd and the Chuppa-Chup is the last thing I see, as it sticks itself to
someone"s shoulder, eases out of her hand and gets left behind.
And I still haven"t worked out if we"re going to see each other
again or not (Was the toilet a tactic? Was I boring her?) when there"s a hand
on my arm, and Phil Borthwick"s beside me, telling me we have to talk. As
though it"s important, as though he"s heard me telling lies, and it"s just not
right. He has two stubbies in his other hand, held by their necks between his
fingers, and more than a little beer spilt down his front, and he"s got the look
he had when he came over to fix the tap and wetlands crossed his mind.
He takes me into one of the quieter corners and says, So how are
things here? Good?
Yeah, fine.
No, really.
Fine.
What am I supposed to say? I want Naomi pretty desperately, but
I don"t know where she is right now? As if he"d understand that. I told a few
big lies to a cute girl with a little piece of paper on her forehead, but I
managed not to define a bicameral parliament, so I should be okay? Are you
a friend of Nigel"s?
I leave it at, Fine.
He maintains fierce eye-contact. And school? Everything"s fine
with school? Doing all right?
Yeah. Some of that integration stuff is pretty complicated, but I"m
getting on top of it.
Good, good, he says, nodding and nodding, keeping the intensity
up, as though I have to give him more.
And I finished an essay about Romeo and Juliet today, I tell him,
in case that"s the kind of thing he"s waiting for. Well, one of the scenes from
Romeo and Juliet.
Romeo and Juliet, hey, he says and sighs. Now there"s a play for
you. Which scene?
The one with the fish tank.
There"s no fish tank in Romeo and Juliet.
You and Jacq should get together on that one.
Oh, but that landlord-tenant thing makes her so unattainable.
The reason they went for the fish tank, I suggest to him (realising I
could be on the brink of knowing something I really don"t want to know), in
the Baz Luhrmann version, well, there could be lots of reasons, but the way I
think it works is that through magnification it brings their virtual selves closer
together, while it separates their real selves completely. This is its strength
as a visual metaphor for the whole situation.
Oh, and isn"t it just like that? he says, and he stares across the
room with a very what-light-from-yonder-window-breaks look. I want her
desperately, but I don"t know where she is right now. She"s somewhere
though, somewhere in these rooms. So near and yet so far. Oh, she"s
glorious, isn"t she?
Jacq?
Oh, yes.
How can I tell him he"s got it all wrong? Yes, the house has a
seriously attractive tenant, but he"s thinking on the wrong side of the hallway,
surely.
Look, there, he says, suddenly seeing her in the loungeroom
crowd and pointing her out to me. She"s quite dynamic. And she"s got those
awfully dark eyes. And look at her. She"s so poised.
Jacq, now quite drunk, drunker than I"d expected, is dancing
slowly. She is looking at the floor. She is clicking her fingers, but only when
they want to click and not in time with the music. And I like her a lot, she"s
my favourite relative, but there"s no poise.
Now that she"s been sighted, Phil is stuck watching her, and our
conversation"s over. I give him a pat on the shoulder. I"m not sure why, but he
looks as though he could use it. Thinking back to my first conversation with
Jacq when I got back from Europe and the part about patting vomiting people,
I wonder if I"m just getting in early.
Thanks mate, he says, his eyes still on her.
I want to see Naomi now. I"m feeling quite gloomy about her, not
seeing her, seeing people coupled in the dark corners. I shouldn"t even look.
I"m so out of this. I"m still on my second stubbie, which is half-full and at
room-temperature. Even the reasonably sober people are at least dancing
and having a good time. Most of them anyway. The woman in the fish-skin
jacket doesn"t seem to be having a great time, so I"m not completely alone.
She"s in a corner with another woman, a woman with blonde wavy hair and
tight shiny pants, and they"re talking and she"s looking sad. Maybe I
shouldn"t assume that, since I can"t see her very clearly, but it"s how she
looks from this distance. The woman I don"t know stands close and puts a
hand on her arm and nods.
Someone grabs my ankle when I"m walking past, and I nearly
drop my beer. I look down to see three men sitting on the floor against a wall,
and it"s so dark down there that I don"t work out that it was Burns who
grabbed my ankle until he starts talking.
Banger, he says, as he pulls himself up the wall to a lazy
standing position. How is this, hey? How is this?
It"s pretty good.
Pretty good? Come on. Let it go, will you? This is excellent. Just
lighten up. Like, the people here, the uni people, the uni people as well as
you and me I mean, they"re pretty excellent. Like, these two guys. You might
not have met them yet. They just know about the best software.
What?
Software. The best. All kinds of games and shit. Pirated mostly.
And these guys have got high scores like you wouldn"t believe. And there"s a
new version of Netscape and I didn"t even know, he says, incredulously.
You"ve met two guys, and you"re talking about computers?
You bet. And they"ve got proof of over-eighteen. They can get
anywhere. And it"s only sixteen-ninety-five US for the ID check. As though a
whole new magical world is opening up before him, but he"s probably just
thinking of access to nastier porn. And one of them, I can now see, is playing
on a Game Boy as we speak, with the other watching. Who are these guys?
Burns goes on, How good has this been? I"ve met all these people, plenty of
excellent people. Like the Danish girl. Have you met the Danish girl? She"s
excellent. Doesn"t speak much English though. A few words of Danish and I
reckon I would have been in there. Did you meet her? She"s gone now, I think.
No.
And that other girl. I don"t remember her name. She"s a first-year
at Queensland Uni. Dark hair. Pretty good. Might have had a few drinks
though. Gave me one of these, he says, and holds up a Chuppa-Chup.
I think I"ve met her.
She backed me into a bit of a corner with the second-year law
thing, but I think I got out of it. I think I covered it. So we"re okay.
Good.
Next to us, the woman in the fish-skin jacket and the woman
consoling her start to kiss.
Burns"s mouth opens wide and he shakes his head. This is just
the coolest party in the world.
A hand tugs at the leg of his jeans and he looks down. The Game
Boy is held up to him. It"s his turn.
Can you believe this? he says. Can you believe the time we"re
having?
And he wedges himself down between his new software friends,
and hits the start button. It"s only when I"m walking away that I realise there"s
something different about him, about the way he looks. As he fits himself in
there and completes the row of three flannel shirts. Burns, bonding with his
Game Boy buddies, is wearing his pyjama top.
Have we grown apart, I wonder? This might have been the topic of
conversation the two women were having in the corner before they
passionately reconciled, but that"s another issue. There were times, maybe a
year ago, when I thought Burns and I were practically the same person.
Lately there have been some differences. Not that there"s anything wrong
with that, but tonight has taken it much further, or at least it looks to me like
it has. I feel like a loser at this party, but I"m so far away from putting on my
pyjamas to fit in with the biggest losers here, and thinking this is the best
night of my life. I expect I will go the whole night without platform-jumping or
gunning down a single alien, how ever my luck works out.
Each to his own, Madge would say, but seriously, you can push
that only so far.
I"ve had enough of holding this warm beer. I know I"m not going to
drink it, so I go to the kitchen to get something cold. Naomi"s lifting the
orange juice from the fridge when I get there.
Hey, lapidary guy, she says and smiles. Sorry, folk-art guy.
I"m over lapidary now, you know that. I"m in a totally different place
now.
And I manage to stop before I start talking about novels and town
jobs.
And we"ve all got things we want to put behind us, haven"t we?
she says as she pours two drinks. And more recent than lapidary too, some
of them. She passes me an orange juice, and makes a toasting gesture. To
putting it behind us, she says, and moving on. Jacq says I"ve got to move on,
and she"s right. Get him out of my head. And I hardly like him at all now. I
deserve better. Jacq said that.
I think I"d say it too.
Thanks.
We toast again.
You deserve . . . good things. Very good things.
Thanks Dan.
Hey kids, Jacq says as she comes out of the darkness. Come
and dance.
And the conversation with Naomi, brief and insubstantial as it
probably was, is still playing in my mind a while later, after the three of us
have danced and I"m wandering around again, thinking that I wouldn"t mind if
people went home now.
Imogen waves to me from a distance, and comes up to me as
though we"re old friends, but no Chuppa-Chups this time.
Nigel, I wondered where you were.
I"ve been around.
So I"m Nigel now. And I think that might at least mean we"re
friends, though being called the wrong name never feels great.
Isn"t this excellent? Isn"t this such a good party?
So has she been watching stylishly dressed women kiss? Has
she gone hi-score on someone"s Game Boy? Where exactly is this
excellence? She should have liked Burns more than she did. But maybe it"s
not so bad that she didn"t.
Don"t you think uni"s great? Don"t you think things are really
good? Don"t you think the little cakes with wings are really good? We would
never get this stuff at a school thing. Last year. How do you like my hair?
Um, it"s good.
Okay, she"s taken me by surprise and I haven"t recovered
particularly well, but I"m just not up with her when it comes to conversation.
But the colour. What about the colour?
Yeah, I like it. Did you dye it?
Yeah.
What colour was it before?
Black.
But it"s black now.
Yeah. But it"s a different shade of black.
I"m not sure you"ve really got black worked out.
I just wanted to dye it.
I"m aware of the nuances of shades, I tell her, deciding that now"s
the time to show her some of the good stuff. I"m aware, because I"ve got a bit
of an interest in birds, that there are many different shades of brown, forty-
eight at least, and I"m not talking brand-names. But you could be expecting a
lot of black. Black"s pretty absolute, really.
So you like it then?
Sure.
I"m glad you like it, she says, and then looks at my shoes, which
are black too, but I don"t think she"s made any connection.
Her shoulders lift with a big breath in and I watch it come out her
mouth. She looks up, throws her arms around my neck, squeezes me
against her quite hard, and then lets go.
Sorry.
Um, no, that was fine. (Particularly my reflex response to put my
hands on her, where they still are.)
Oh, she says, noticing, and noticing that things may not be all
bad.
She puts her hands back on my shoulders, links her fingers
behind my neck. Smiles. In an instant the party"s looking better for me. I"m
holding a girl now. Perhaps not the one I had in mind, but a pretty reasonable
girl nonetheless. For the first time in my life I"ve nailed the conversation
phase, and moved on. Contact.
Okay, so she"s quite seriously drunk. So she"s holding me
because she thinks I complimented her hair, when I actually pointed out a
fundamental problem in her understanding of the colour spectrum. The fact is
that I"m holding a girl now.
And, as I"m contemplating this, being kissed on the mouth by a
girl. On the mouth. By a girl. In the actual world. The world where mouths are
mouths and not just desperate dreams. Her lips are cool but soft. Maybe I"d
imagined lips would be different, but I"m not sure how, or why. You can never
quite work out how another person"s lips would feel based on your own, one
on the other.
I should stop watching this and be part of it, but I still don"t quite
believe it. I haven"t had the chance to use most of my plans yet. My pesto
failed, and it"s night, the birds are asleep. I"ve hardly used any of my stuff,
and she hated Burns"s. What kind of uni woman is this?
I"m sorry, she says. It"s a bit public here.
That"s okay.
I"m not . . . it"s a bit public for me. Is there anywhere we could be
alone?
This woman"s foot is on the accelerator and I"m hardly into the
vehicle yet. She takes me by the hand, a slightly sticky experience but I"m
not going to complain (Chuppa-Chup I can wash off later), and she leads me
into the house. I"m wondering if I should tell her I live here, but somehow it
feels like that would spoil the adventure. I"m wondering if I should suggest a
breath of fresh air, but right now that looks like a step backwards.
We could go in here, she says, indicating a door.
A door that one of us knows leads to a bedroom. Me, I know. It"s
my bedroom.
I wonder what"s in here, she says, and tests the door knob in a
way that she thinks is careful, or at least discreet.
It"s neither though. She opens the door, takes me in after her,
shuts it. And when we turn the light on, the whole thing will be blown. It"ll be
my room then, schoolbooks, a pile of postage-pre-paid mammal cards to
anywhere in the world. Burns"s air mattress and the bottom half of his
pyjamas. A complete loser, kiddie-sleep-over room. I"m gone.
Don"t turn the light on, she whispers.
Her arms are back around my neck and I feel her moving even
closer. A slight navigational error and she kisses my chin good and hard,
which means her nose is in my mouth.
Easily fixed, and soon our mouths are together, open together,
and she"s practically eating me. And her mouth tastes like butterfly buns,
mixed with rum and Coke and the sweet pretend-pineapple of Chuppa-Chup.
We sit down on the edge of the bed, and seem to be clambering
around, ending up in a position where I"m lying on my back and she"s on top
of me. The whole weight of her on top of me, moving around on top of me, her
hands all over me. Her skirt rides up her thighs and I can feel her thighs
under my hands. And in the midst of being amazed, of thinking this might be
the best moment in my whole short life, I wonder if I"m ready for it.
It"s happened so quickly, jumped from talking to this. She"s such
a uni woman really, when it gets down to it. If we weren"t dressed we"d be
having sex already, the way things seem to be moving. And I think I like her,
but Naomi keeps coming into my mind and that makes a mess of things. I
think I like Imogen, but I"m not sure about this, and she is just so drunk.
But it"s worse than that. She knows what she"s doing and I know
nothing. I don"t want to look like an idiot now. The biol book flashes into my
mind, and I don"t know what I want. And she"s a biped, goddamn it. Do I have
to back off until she omits her left leg? That"s just about all I know, almost
the whole extent of it. That and a few twelve-inch-Paddle-Pop-sucking porn
pictures—nothing that tells me how this goes. Nothing that tells me how to
hide the fact that I"ve never done any of this before.
She might have to take the lead here. And, after watching her with
the door knob, I figure there"s a real chance one of us could get hurt. Naomi,
it"d be fine with Naomi, slow with Naomi. I bet it would.
She lifts her body from me, kneels over me with her hands on my
chest. Light comes in the window, cast from a streetlight in the shape of the
panes of glass, onto her chest and her face.
She pulls her top off over her head and the light glows on her skin,
making her black bra look even blacker, as though even I believe, for a
moment, in shades of black. There"s a pause, and we look at each other. I
reach out to her, put my hand on her, but just on her stomach, nowhere it
hasn"t been invited.
There"s something you should know, she says, and then looks
surprised.
A muscular wave convulses through her, I can feel it under my
hand, and all I can do before she hurls vomit at me is turn my head.
And this is another totally new experience. It hits with a warm
splatter, throws itself across the side of my head, and there"s no getting
away. It blocks my ear, sticks up my eye, slides down my neck, all in a
long, slow fraction of a second. I would feel better if I screamed, I think, but I
try not to even breathe in case I suck some of it in.
Oh my god, she says. Oh my god.
And I think she might be going to cry, but another vomiting wave
hits her and she bends down beside me and throws up next to my pillow. I
slide out from under her and I wipe my head on my doona cover, but the stink
of vomit is all about me and I"m only just holding back myself. I try very hard
to think of something else. As if that"s possible when someone"s just vomited
on your head.
She climbs off the bed and she staggers around moaning. Most of
the time it"s something desperate and wordless, but sometimes I can hear,
I"m sorry. I"m sorry.
She gets to the other side of the room, grips the edge of my desk.
And throws up again. On my Romeo and Juliet essay.
I push the computer keyboard out of the way, figuring that if it can
be spared, I can easily print another copy.
She kneels on the floor, throwing up into my bin, onto all the tidied-
up balls of paper I never managed to throw in there when it counted. And I
kneel beside her. I pat her on the back, I hold her hair out of the way. If only
I"d had the chance to do the same with mine.
It"s not quite the way I"d envisaged this scene, but at least the
extent of further damage should be limited.
Vomit dribbles from the edge of the desk and drips across the
back of my hand and into her hair anyway. I move her around out of the way
and she keeps gripping the bin. I wipe my head with the last couple of dry
sheets of my Romeo and Juliet essay, but my ear stays blocked.
Oh, Dan, she says, with a weird metallic echo, her head still in
the bin, I"m so sorry.
That"s okay.
I feel like such an idiot. Said with a slow, croaky, vomity voice,
sounding not unlike Darth Vader.
I want to tell her it"s okay. At least she"s calling me the right
name now. For a second, I"d quite like to tell her things could be worse (she
hasn"t, for example, sent the forces of darkness running riot across the
universe), but I should probably let her Darth Vader moment pass with no
more indignity than it already has. I keep patting her back.
She sits up, and I pull a couple of sheets of paper out of my
printer and dab some vomit away from her mouth.
I"ve got to go home now. I feel so stupid.
Don"t. Don"t feel stupid.
I"ve got to go. My sister"s out there somewhere. She"ll take me
home.
She stands up, finds her top, pulls it on and, before I can work out
what the hell to say, walks out of the room.
My blocked ear buzzes. It feels like there"s a finger stuck in there,
and it"s making me dizzy. I fiddle around with the corner of a piece of paper,
but nothing comes out. I jump up and down on one foot, but nothing comes
out.
I"d like to find Imogen again, to tell her it"s okay. Not to feel stupid.
But what would be the point? If I were her, I"d be feeling incredibly stupid right
now, and I"d be halfway across town.
I go to the bathroom and I wash my face. I try fitting my head
under the tap to get some water into my ear, but I could get myself stuck
there, and I know that wouldn"t be good. If there was no-one here I"d get in
the shower. But there are about a hundred people here, many of them likely
to lurch in at any time. So I wash my face, rinse the vomit out of my hair, but
my ear stays blocked. At least most of the smell has gone.