Black Painted Fingernails (2 page)

Sophie has forgotten her key, again. She stands on the footpath, cursing the broken buzzer, looking up to the third-floor window. Should she shout and risk waking the neighbours? All night she’s been working at the bar, knowing her door keys lie beside his on the nightstand in the flat.

‘Carlos!’ Her voice is too loud for the early morning.

Mrs Daintree pokes her head out of the window, round glasses slipping from her nose into the window-box that sprouts petunias. A dog barks from inside her flat. Brutus is a Pekingese with two front legs and a three-thousand-dollar wheel contraption in place of his back legs. Cancer. A dog saved, instead of being left to die or put down by a kindly vet in a long white coat.

When Sophie’s grandma was in hospital, no one removed bits of her body to save her. There was no bionic solution, just lots of drugs to keep her in a morphine haze.

‘Hello, love. Forgot your key?’ Mrs Daintree brushes dirt from her glasses.

As if on cue, Carlos’s shaggy head appears from the window one floor above Mrs Daintree’s.

‘Hi, Sophie. Mrs Daintree.’

‘Hello, Carlos, what’s that music you’ve been playing?’ says Mrs Daintree.

‘Bob Marley.’

‘Ooh, I can hear it through the pipes. It makes me want to dance.’

Brutus barks again. Mrs Daintree glances quickly back into her flat, then smiles down at Sophie.

Sophie stares at both of them, wondering how long she’ll have to wait. A man on a bicycle veers down the lane and she steps towards the gutter. ‘Is someone going to let me in?’

‘No.’ Carlos isn’t smiling.

Mrs Daintree looks up at Carlos, then down at Sophie. A lovers’ tiff? She doesn’t retreat into her cocoon of morning television and crossword puzzles. Her head pokes out a little further.

‘Come on, Carlos,’ Sophie says.

‘No. Not until you promise.’

Sophie stares at the wooden double entrance doors, wishing them open.

‘I’d promise, love. He looks serious,’ Mrs Daintree says.

‘Has Brutus been fed yet, Mrs Daintree?’

‘Oh yes, no need to worry about him.’ The old woman looks up at Carlos.

Carlos clears his throat. ‘I asked her to marry me, Mrs Daintree.’

‘Ooh, lovely!’

‘She hasn’t agreed . . . yet,’ Carlos adds.

‘Say yes, Sophie. He’s a good catch.’

‘Carlos, let me in and we’ll talk.’

‘No.’

‘You want to marry me, but only from three flights up?’

‘I want your word first.’

‘What if I lie?’

Inside Carlos’s flat, Sophie’s backpack is stored in the wardrobe next to a few skirts, some sleeveless tops, a nice woollen jacket for winter. In the bathroom is the expensive moisturiser he bought as a gift. On the dressing table are a few DVDs and not much else.

Not enough to get married for.

Not to Carlos with his hairy legs that tickle in bed, his brown-rice dinners, his collection of bright green boxer shorts, his late-night pot sessions with smoke filling the space between them.

Should she turn and walk away?

Brutus barks again.

‘Brutus wants you to say yes!’

Mrs Daintree has been watching too many romantic movies where the hero always gets his wish. The morning turns sour, the wind picking up from the ocean a few blocks away and bringing the smell of seaweed and salt.

A removal truck stops near Sophie, looking for a parking space, but she doesn’t move. The driver steers around her and continues slowly down the alley. Sophie wonders who requires a truck that size to leave. All you need is two legs and a bus pass. She clutches her handbag close.

She remembers her father, vacant-eyed and glum for months after her mother left. He’d sit on the couch, staring at his big hands, Sophie beside him, the wedding photos thrown into the bottom drawer of the sideboard.

‘I’ll give you one more minute, how’s that?’

Carlos is not usually one for ultimatums.

‘I’ve had a long night, Carlos.’

She thinks of the tip jar near the register at O’Driscoll’s Bar, slowly filling with cash as she talked to the drunks, with their slow eyes, calloused hands, crooked lips.
Tell us ya name, love?
Sophie and Rebekah counted the notes at the end of the shift, pressing them flat on the bar. Rebekah took the American twenty-dollar bill, mumbling about changing it at the bank on Monday, a smile on her full lips.

Sophie has two hundred and forty-eight dollars in her handbag and a fat leering boss named Nigel who owes her another hundred and fifty.

‘You should tell her you love her, Carlos. That’s what she’s waiting on.’

Mrs Daintree fancies herself as
Dear Erica.

‘I love—’

‘No, you don’t!’

‘Yes, I do!’

The removal truck reverses towards Sophie, the driver carefully checking each mirror. He’s an Islander with tattoos stretching across his bicep and down his arm. He stops a few metres from her. Sophie steps onto the footpath, but the truck doesn’t continue. The driver looks up at the people peering down from the windows. He switches off the engine and waits. Has he seen the same movies as Mrs Daintree?

‘Can I come up and get my stuff?’ Sophie asks.

‘No.’

‘Can you just throw it down, then?’

Surely that’ll move Mrs Daintree inside.

Carlos waits, glancing at the van. ‘Did you order the truck?’

‘What, for a bag of clothes and some DVDs?’

‘Maybe you were going to take my stuff as well.’

‘It’s
your
furniture, why would I do that?’

‘Because you don’t love me.’

‘I don’t love anyone. Doesn’t mean I’d steal from them.’

‘That would be dishonest,’ says Mrs Daintree.

Carlos’s voice wavers. ‘I’ll count to ten.’

‘I’m still not saying yes.’

When Sophie’s mother left, her family ate cereal for breakfast, lunch and dinner until ten-year-old Sophie opened a recipe book and tried scrambled eggs with chives. First, she had to find out what a chive was.

She took her dad’s wallet to the grocer’s. Mrs Janus helped her buy what was necessary for a week of cooking. The plastic bags cut into Sophie’s fingers as she struggled home.

Scrambled eggs, poached eggs, fried eggs. Then roast vegetables – the trick of throwing everything into an oven and waiting ninety minutes. The stove had a timer, so Sophie could do her homework without being afraid of leaving it in too long. Sausages and ham steaks were quick and easy. She graduated to mashed potatoes, adding lots of butter. And chives – she knew what they were now. Her father got up from the couch when he smelled the roast. He helped with the washing-up, standing at the sink wearing pink rubber gloves.

Sophie’s brothers were always out at football training. And that left Sophie and her dad in the kitchen. Together they learnt how to peel potatoes and slice them thin for chips, drizzling olive oil over them before baking them in the oven.

Sophie’s favourite dish was spaghetti; they’d add lots of salt to the saucepan and her dad would throw a strand against the wall to test if it was ready. If it stuck, he’d carefully peel it off the wall and toss it high in the air, trying to catch it in his mouth as it fell. He’d always end up with spaghetti stuck to his face, his shoulder or in his hair.

Sophie waited one year and two months before her dad spoke his wife’s name again.

Cynthia.

Her mother.

‘Why don’t you love me?’ Carlos’s voice is insistent.

‘Because.’

‘That’s not an answer, it’s just evasion.’

‘Invasion?’ Mrs Daintree doesn’t have the best hearing.

‘
Evasion!
’

‘Come up, Sophie love. I’ll put the kettle on.’

‘You could at least say you like me, you’re fond of me, that we have good sex,’ Carlos pleads.

Mrs Daintree pretends not to hear. ‘A pot of Irish Breakfast.’

Sophie sighs. ‘I like you enough, Carlos, not to tell you what I really think of our sex.’ She turns and walks away, crossing the lane and heading towards the bus stop. Nigel will still be at work. He’ll give her the money if she argues.

‘Sophie, come back.’

She hears the sound of the door release, long and persistent.

Carlos calls her name across the alley.

Sophie turns the corner.

When I was nine years old, Dad picked up a hitchhiker. The man wore leather sandals, baggy harem pants and a patchwork Indian vest. Before he got in, he stubbed his cigarette out on the bitumen and picked up the butt, lodging it behind his ear. He had the longest beard I’d ever seen.

He bowed at us as he got in, then kept his hands folded together on his lap.

I turned in my seat to marvel at the hippie Santa. A fat buddha hung on a silver chain around his neck, laughing through the hair. If I touched his beard, would the grey flecks come off in my hand like sparkles? Would it feel like smooth silk, or cold wire?

When Dad asked him where he was heading, he said, ‘Eternity.’

Dad put the car in gear and suggested somewhere closer. We dropped him near the freeway, Dad pointing out where best to wait to get a ride. The man walked to my window, his hand funnelling down the beard. In a deep voice, he said, ‘It took me twenty years to grow this.’

The Buddha jiggled on his chest. He walked off along the roadway, scratching his backside.

‘You’re a student teacher . . . this is your first job, right?’

It’s a statement, not a question. She’s been watching me, trying to work me out.

‘Yeah.’

What wit! What repartee! Say something more . . . 

‘C-can . . . you guess anything else?’

She turns in the seat to face me, cracking her knuckles as if getting down to work. Her eyes roam over the car and me. ‘I don’t
guess
. It’s a . . . gift. If I’m right, you buy lunch. Deal?’

I sink into the quicksand of company. ‘Okay.’

‘You live in the eastern suburbs, with your parents. You’re studying at university and so they bought you this car.’ She runs her fingers along her leather seat. ‘A very nice car it is, too. Your dad is a lawyer, or a doctor, or a CEO who makes an obscene amount of money.’

She looks up, quickly, wondering if she’s pushed too hard. ‘How am I doing so far?’

The first rule of hitchhiking is not to upset the driver.

‘I-I asked for a beat-up Mazda and they bought me a new BMW.’

She smiles knowingly and I feel a tinge of regret at betraying Dad so easily. ‘Dad is a surgeon.’

‘Ooh, a surgeon.’

I feel the colour rise in my cheeks.

The second rule of hitchhiking should be not to pick up know-it-all women with long hair and perfect skin.

The side of the car vibrates as a semitrailer thunders past. I instinctively back off and let him cut in. I check my mirror for more trucks. They roam in packs, like stray dogs.

My mobile rings. The hitchhiker makes to pick it up from the console. I quickly snatch it, fumbling with the button. It could only be . . . ‘Hi, Mum.’

‘James? It’s Pete. Not your mother.’

Pete and I shared six years of cheese rolls, file- swapping and chess games in high school.

‘Hi, Pete.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Heading west . . . just outside of Lithgow.’

‘You lucky bastard.’

The hitchhiker crosses her legs.

‘Yeah. I’m off to Paris, New York . . . Hillston.’

‘At least you’re not stuck at uni for another five years.’

‘You chose law, Pete.’

He coughs quietly. ‘I rang Mandy Bartlett, after you left last night.’

My going-away party: me and Pete and a bottle of vodka on the pontoon at Rose Bay, the harbour water black and shimmering, and both of us wishing we had some girls to invite over, or the keys to his parents’ speedboat, which was tied up beside us.

I squirm in my seat, knowing where this conversation is heading.

‘I got her number from a friend on Facebook,’ says Pete. ‘I said I needed help with an assignment, urgently.’

‘You need help all right.’

‘Do you want to hear this or not, James?’

‘I’m kind of busy . . .’

‘What, driving a BMW is that difficult?’ Pete scoffs.

I glance across at the hitchhiker. She’s leaning against the passenger door, watching me. My voice lowers self-consciously. ‘Did you speak to . . .’ I hesitate at saying Mandy’s name.

‘No, her voicemail. I left a message. Something to do with ice and her naked back.’

‘That’s obscene.’

‘Yeah. I said my name was James Spalding.’

‘You
bastard
!’

There is the hint of a smile on the hitchhiker’s lips.

‘Lucky you’re leaving town!’ says Pete.

I hang up and toss the phone on the console, imagining Mandy Bartlett scanning her memory for a James Spalding.

Nothing.

No one.

And me spending two years sitting behind her in the lecture theatre, taking notes, trying to focus on the lecturer, not Mandy’s graceful neck and golden skin.

Bugger Pete.

‘Your mother has a very deep voice.’

‘That was my mate Pete. He’s a—’

‘
Bastard,
I think, was the word you used.’

‘We were . . .’ How could I explain Mandy to a woman like her? ‘. . . talking.’

‘I’ll have a tofu burger and a coffee, thanks.’ She smiles. ‘For lunch. Remember the deal?’

That’s how easy it is. Transport, food – why not just hand over the car keys now and be done with it? I may be two metres tall, but I’m out of my depth.

‘What if I can guess stuff about you?’ I ask.

She rolls her eyes.

We both know I’m kidding myself.

‘You can pay for afternoon tea if I’m right,’ I suggest. ‘Scones, with jam and cream.’

‘Good luck,’ she says.

I mimic her cracking-knuckles routine to give myself time to think. A row of eucalypt trees lean too near the shoulder, their muscular trunks patchy with age.

I have no idea, but I have to take a stab.

‘You’re twenty-three . . . no, twenty-two. You could have gone to university, but didn’t. You, um, deferred and never reapplied.’

I look at her handbag, hoping for clues. It’s black and worn. Doesn’t she have any other clothes? Where’s the backpack?

‘Your boyfriend is away for a week, so you decided to visit your family. A surprise . . . for your mum.’

She stares out the side window.

‘Am I right?’

She doesn’t answer.

Maybe the boyfriend dumped her? She’s too erratic, too unpredictable?

My phone beeps a message, but neither of us reach for it. Pete wants the last word. My eyes flit from the phone to the white line to the radio. Would it be rude to switch it on, to fill this awkward silence with pleading country music sung by women with names like Kasey or Stacey or Lacey?

Her voice is soft. ‘I’m twenty-one.’