Authors: Jessica Bell
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“Um, er, nowhere, Mr. Viadro, just clearing up my space. I … uh … accepted the job.” I look my desk up and down; gather some useless papers into a clean pile.
“Melody. Please. Richard,” button boy says in a purring semi-whisper, as he places his hand on my lower back and tilts his head to the side.
“Sorry. Richard.” I laugh a laugh that sounds pre-recorded for a sitcom, move hair out of my face, scratch my neck, brush some invisible crumbs from my clothes, and put my hands on my hips, “Ahem, er … I’m sorry, was there something you needed?”
“No, not really. I just dropped by to introduce myself to Jodie and Dianne. I’m to return to the London office this afternoon.”
“Oh. Right. Well, have a safe trip, Mr … er, Richard.” I nod, moving backward an inch so he can’t touch my lower back again, even though, guiltily, I’d love him to.
I imagine toplessness. Me. Him. Alone in the office. Silence. Twilight. Cicadas singing through the open window. His fingers brushing over my hips as he moves his hands toward the arch in my back. Our breaths hot. Skin on skin. He pulls me closer, his erection pushing against my pelvic bone as I bend backward—his firm hold balancing me like a dancer. He lifts me up onto my desk—I point my toes the moment my feet lift off the floor. He slips his hand up my thigh and unclips my garters—
SCRATCH!
I’m not wearing garters. I’m wearing my crappy white flowery panties that have been tinted gray after years of mixing them with blacks in the wash.
“It was a pleasure to meet you, Melody,” Richard says, snatching me from reverie. He takes my hand. Shakes it. His skin is warm, soft, nails groomed. “I look forward to doing business with you.” He bends forward. I stiffen. He kisses me on each cheek, Greek style.
I breathe in his aftershave.
Prada Pour Homme.
Woody, suede, bergamot, mandarin. The scent I bought for Alex.
The scent he never wore.
Nineteen
Leaving UTD for the last time feels like I’ve gotten away with faking a sickie—guilty, but dizzily satisfied. I leave earlier than usual, so decide to take the route along the ocean road to clear my head, shake thoughts of Richard from my skin, and mix them with the sand, out of reach—diluted with mother earth; a creature I fear to confront.
I find a convenient car park by the beach—the gods are working in my favor today—and slip on my blue and white checkered triangle bikini in the back seat. I throw off my shoes, lock my belongings in the car and march across the hot grainy sand and straight into the sea with blistering urgency. My head, being so full of contradictory feelings, needs to cool off.
Salty splashes sting my face with lament, as I push my body through a sea of sorrow and awe swimming along side each other like water and oil. The saliva in my mouth is thick with disgust—toffee in teeth—at Alex, for making me want to break free from him, and at me, for feeling like it’s the right thing to do, and for allowing my attraction to Richard coax me like bait.
The cool sea caresses my body. I imagine the beginning of life after death might feel like this. Like a baptism. Not of a new body or soul or mind, but of new skin; a little more flexible and impervious than the last. But I haven’t finished living in
this
skin yet. So why do I feel like I need to shed it?
Because the love I hold for Alex is like water. It’s needed to keep my body from cracking and peeling toxic waste into this sick universe. I know it’s not irreplaceable. I can always coat my skin with moisturizer. It may not be the most natural hydration, but it’s hydration nonetheless. But I’m not sure I’m ready to wipe my skin dry; to drown myself in a new ocean, where my desire for fleeing this emotional cage hides like a mermaid ambivalent about growing legs.
He’s lucky. Alex. For if our love were like land—easy to burn—I’d risk throwing it in a fire, to see if it might grow back like torched eucalyptus trees do in the desert.
But we are floating now. Alex’s love and I. Like we imagine angels might float on clouds—we want it to be real, but can’t find the proof. I wish the earth would soak us up. Drench us in faith, make us soft and pliable, squash us, roll us into tiny little pearls, and place us together in the same clam. Under the sea. Where we are bound to return.
I hope fate has a say in us. Because tonight is the night I choose to make a better life for myself, and if it were only up to me, I think I’d run away forever.
The traffic this afternoon is worse than trying to drive a car over one hundred kilometers of speed bumps. Most afternoons I could probably walk home faster, but like the rest of the environmentally conscious who are all talk and no action I haven’t attempted it yet.
I’m ashamed to say I’ve united with the majority after spending my whole life trying to be different, but I’m working on it. At least I have kicked the habit of leaving the tap running when I brush my teeth. But it’s difficult to care for the environment when you’re forced to wade through a river of litter in the streets everyday. It seems so … pointless. Walking a kilometer to dispose of a lonely chocolate wrapper in a bin where there are mountains of other chocolate wrappers at your feet isn’t worth the effort. At least that’s something I don’t do—walk all the way to a rubbish bin and throw the wrapper on the ground.
I’m stuck behind a truck and in front of a bus full of peak-hour people. Truck exhaust wafts through my air conditioning vents despite nothing being turned on, and the bus behind me inches further and further up my rear as if I’ve been inching forward. I haven’t moved. Soon all the bus passengers will be getting comfortable in my backseat.
To my right is a bank. And I remember that I should have withdrawn money for rent and the apartment maintenance fee. I contemplate leaving the car to idle in the middle of the road, but decide against it when I visualize the bus driver suffering from impulsive road rage and squashing my olive green 1976 Mini Cooper like an empty soda can.
I pull up on the footpath leaving enough room for the bus to pass if the lights turn green before I’ve withdrawn cash. I step out of the car, and before both feet are off the road, it does, crushing my side-view mirror, and denting the truck’s rear bumper-bar too.
I watch, jaw agape, rage bubbling like lava in the back of my throat over the fact that I won’t be able to do a
thing
about it. Well, not if I don’t want to wait five years for the insurance claim to come through. I have learned through trial and error that if I were to try to get the bus company to pay for my broken mirror, it would be a waste of time, not to mention more money.
As I grit my teeth and glare at the bus driver, a police officer taps me on the shoulder.
“
Kiria, einai afto to aftokinito sas?
” (Ma’am, is this your car?)
“I’m sorry, what did you say? I don’t speak Greek,” I say with a tight-lipped smile, playing dumb. The Greek police don’t bother with foreigners—it’s too much paperwork and they’re too lazy to deal with it. The man smiles, swaying his head side to side with an I’m-cool-look-at-me-in-this-uniform-doesn’t-it turn-you-on attitude.
“I said, may you be, er …,” he winks and clicks his tongue through the back of his teeth, “ …owning this ve-hicle, Miss?”
“Yes. I’m so glad you’re here. Did you see what that bus driver just did to my side-view mirror? And to the back of that truck?”
He leans on one foot, tilts his head, and looks at me from above his shades, “Miss. Please be known that you are in discussion with an officer of the abiding law and that it is requirement that you speak in dignified manner.”
“I
am
speaking politely—”
“No, it’s good. You don’t must feel the necessity to be apologetic.”
I take a deep breath, resisting the urge to explain myself. It would only make this encounter longer than necessary.
“Thank you, sir. Will you please—”
“Miss. One moment. It is my duty to be you informed that you park illegally, Miss, and I’m going to issue you paper ticket.”
A ticket? For parking on the curb where there are already ten cars standing with emergency lights flicking away? He has got to be kidding me.
“What?
Me
a ticket?” I squawk, pointing to all the other cars. “Excuse me for being a bit blunt here, but where are you when people park in front of my driveway in the mornings and make me late for work?” I don’t know what inspires me to blurt that out, especially since I don’t have a driveway.
“Pardon, Miss? I’m not understanding. Please do speak with correct diction so I can be to interpret your strange accent.” His top lip moves like a wave as he runs his tongue along his teeth. He switches the weight to his other foot and wobbles his head.
I want to squash the arrogant little turd like a cigarette butt. Confidence mutates like bacteria, “Excuse me, but why do you spend all day giving useless tickets to considerate ladies like myself, but let men in suits double park in front of fire hydrants?”
“Pardon, Miss. What is this “fire hydrant” you describe of?”
I laugh, my voice on the brink of sarcastic mockery. I contemplate saying something that could put me in prison, but am saved by an old woman yelling like a wicked boarding-school teacher at the police officer through the bus window. He apologizes to her and refers to her as …
his mother
?
“Please, Miss, de-park your car and drive home in safeness,” he says, in a hurry, blushing like a five-year-old boy who peed his pants in public.
“May I withdraw some money first?” I ask.
“No. You not need to give me money. I not issue you paper ticket. I let you disappear.”
“Oh, I wasn’t going to. I need some money from the bank. For me.”
The police officer hangs his head, nods, defeated, scrunches up his nose and looks at his feet.
“Yes, Miss. Do as you may be wishing.”
He mounts his motorbike, hooks his arm through his helmet and takes off, navigating through the stagnant peak hour traffic like a dying bumble bee.
After half an hour of circling several blocks in my neighborhood looking for a parking space, I find one in front of the guitar shop I have chosen to ignore all these years. I gaze at a gorgeous secondhand Gibson Les Paul 1957 gold top in the shop front window—just like the one stolen from Dad when I was a kid. He would be delighted if I bought it for him.
Bells jingle when a fifty-year-old-looking guy with a full head of grayish dreadlocks, ripped jeans and a red and black flannel shirt pokes his head through the shop door.
“Bee-ootiful, isn’it?” he sings in an authentic Australian accent.
I smile and nod toward the friendly, familiar voice, and ask if I can give it a play.
“Of course. Come on in.”
The shop is packed to the brim with secondhand electric and acoustic guitars. The moment I enter the shop, the smell of musty wood and rubber amplifier leads reminds me of the rehearsal studios my parents often dragged me to—when I’d sit and draw, trying to mimic my mother’s scrapbook fashion sketches from when she was a teenager.
The guy plugs me into a small practice Mesa Boogie Amplifier with a funky pink and white striped cable. He hands me a plectrum—resin-colored—smiles with one corner of his mouth, turns off the stereo playing Jimi Hendrix, and slides into the back room. Only true guitarists know that a quiet moment between human and guitar is the key to developing a bond.
I pluck the crisp new strings, gaining no comfort from the tortured dirty rock sound of the original P90 pick-up. I don’t feel a connection to the guitar at all. It’s way too heavy and the friction too tough. But I’m glad I feel that way. This way I can buy it for Dad without the pang of loss rendering my generosity worthless when I give it to him.
I put the guitar down to look for the guy, but he is already standing behind the counter.
Hmm, intuitive.
“So whadid ya think?” he asks, looking up and down with narrowed eyes and fiddling with something out of sight.
“Yeah. It’s great, but not for me,” I reply, scratching my chin as if I have a beard. “How much is it going for?” I lift the guitar off my lap from the base of its neck, rest it face up on the ground, bend over with my legs spread like a bloke in dirty ripped jeans, and examine the almost unnoticeable scratches on the body as if a little shortsighted.
“Um, that one’s going for two thou, but if it’s too expensive for ya, we’ve got another goldtop, but it’s a 1975 DeLux with a mini-humbucker. Its neck is made from maple instead of mahogany, though. Not really the best quality if ya ask me.” He stops whatever he’s doing behind the counter and points behind him with his thumb toward the back room.
“Um, yeah, they didn’t sell too well if I remember correctly.” I click my tongue. “Look, I just live a couple of blocks down, can I think it over?” I ask, hoping not to sound as if I’m just being polite. I would really like to get it for Dad, but not sure if I can afford it. Maybe I’ll ask Mum for some input. Make it a joint gift.
“Sure, no probs … um, you wanna take a card?” he asks, with a scrutinizing look in his eye. I’m positive he’s trying to sum me up. Here I am, dressed in black tailored pants and a white shirt, with scraggly wet hair and a bikini strap sticking out of my collar, talking about guitars like an expert.
“Yeah, why not. Thanks,” I say, smiling at the back of his head as he turns to find one. I wonder why he isn’t he asking me which part of Australia I’m from. They all do—usually—expecting the world to have shrunk to the size of one city:
Oh, you’re from Melbourne, hey? Well, maybe you’ve met my cousin, aunt, sister ….
Or they think because you’re from the same country, you must have common interests:
Oh, my daughter lives there, maybe you two can go for coffee next time you’re Down Under?
The guy holds out the card like one would hold a cigarette. I take it and slip it into my trouser pocket.
“Ta.” I open the shop door to leave, but the guy says, “Um, by the way, we’ve also got a really nice Gibson acoustic Hummingbird, out the back. I haven’t displayed it because it’s been really bashed around. There’s no logo or markings left on it anywhere. It was one of the very first—a 1962 model. You wanna give it go?”