Good Oil (3 page)

D
AYLIGHT

The next day I sit in maths with Penny in our usual spot – far left, second row from the front. I knit my brows together and attempt to address myself to hard, cold daylight. To the way things are.
It’s never going to happen.

‘Probably not,’ says Penny, reading my mind and telling it like it is in her usual style.

I sigh and look out at the park on the other side of the road. I can see a PE class of unfortunates jogging up a hellish incline.
Unless
, I think, my momentary flirtation with reality dissolving,
I can somehow infiltrate the older set at work. Get him to associate me with his contemporaries. Maybe I could get hold of his reading list for uni. Maybe I could start smoking, get a fake ID and start going to the pub. Maybe I could learn to stomach beer and how to order it. Maybe I could buy some clothes aside from jeans and T-shirts. Maybe I could learn some new and super-impressive words.Convince him that I am a twenty-year-old trapped in the body of a minor.

‘I could do it.’ I say to Penny. ‘It could be done. Right?’

‘Oh sweetie. I think it would be hard to pull off. And anyway, he probably likes that you are different from his usual world.’

She’s right; it
would
be hard to pull off. Observe this monumental fuck-up from last week.

Against all the odds, Chris had run out after me into the street after I had knocked off from a Sunday shift. ‘Oi! Youngster!’

I’d turned to face him and instinctively stood up straighter at his nearness.

‘Look, some of us are going back to Ed’s now for some cones. Do you want to come?’

Cones? Ice-cream? I’m on a dairy-free diet, because I’m lactose intolerant. And Ed lives several suburbs away; how would I get home afterwards? Would Mum and Dad notice that I was late and want answers? Mrs Hulme wanted chapters two and three of
The Great War
summarised by the next day. But this was the chance of a lifetime!

I agonised. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other and finally stammered, ‘I . . . I can’t.’ (Eloquence is just one of my gifts.) ‘Too much homework . . . and . . . and I can’t really have ice-cream. Just . . . just soy ice-cream . . . like So Good non-dairy dessert . . .’ My voiced trailed off.

‘Um, don’t worry about it,’ he said, edging away.

Bugger!

I could see Ed, Bianca, Andy, Kathy (Damn her!) and Donna (heartsick) assembling at the staff exit, waiting for Chris. Bloody Donna has managed to get hip to their jive. Look at her, fumbling in her canvas satchel for a cigarette, lighting it, then Bianca’s, with her Zippo. The metallic clicking sound that it made when she flicked the lid back down against her palm seemed to encapsulate everything I was lacking. Then she took a drag and blew a steady plume of smoke, looking out from behind it with equally smoky eyes. (I had found some kohl in my mother’s make-up bag the week before and tried to recreate Donna’s look on my own eyes. It’d just looked stupid.)

‘I shouldn’t have asked you anyway,’ he was saying. ‘You go home and do your homework.’

I don’t want to go home and do my homework! I want to come with you! I want to be out late at Ed’s house and fall asleep on his couch with my head in your lap. I’ll eat ice-cream! I’ll do whatever it takes!

‘All right. See you.’

‘See you.’

I must have looked crestfallen.

‘Are you still studying World War I?’ he asked, taking pity on me like the big baby I was.

‘Yeah,’ I replied in a small voice.

‘You should read
All Quiet on the Western Front
. I’ll bring it in for you on Tuesday night, okay?’

‘Okay.’

He turned on his heel and went back to join the others.

I’d walked home muttering curses and clenching my fists. When I arrived, the house was dark and quiet. I rummaged around for the phone number for Liza’s share-house, took the phone into my room and dialled the number.

It rang and rang before the STD beeps sounded and a female voice enquired somewhat uncertainly, ‘Hello?’ over very loud music. I asked several times to speak to my sister, before the female voice undertook to go off and find her for me. About five minutes later I heard fumbling and then finally Liza’s voice.

‘Hello?’

‘Lizey. It’s me.’

‘He-ey, little tacker! How’re you?’

‘Yeah, fine. Look, I was wondering, um, what’s a cone?’

Mystified silence.

‘You know, like, if people are
having cones
. . .What’s a cone?’

‘A cone is the metal cup-thing that sits in the front of a bong.’

‘Oooooh
right
.’

‘Got it?’

‘Yep. Thanks. Better go. Lots of homework. Bye.’

I hung up and sat motionless on my bed. Then I dialled the number again.

‘Lizey? Me again. What . . . what’s a bong?’

‘It’s a water-pipe for smoking pot in.’

‘Oh.’

‘Why
are you asking?’

‘Um . . .’

‘Are you getting on it?’

‘No, no . . . I’m not getting on it.’ So,
so
not, I thought. Almost, but totally
blew it.

‘Well,’ mused Liza, ‘if you’re going to try it you should come up one weekend and I’ll get some for you. That way I can keep an eye on you. And give you the talk.’

‘Thanks. Maybe I will.’

‘You’ll love the talk.’

‘I’m sure I will. I miss you.’

‘Yeah . . . I miss you too.’

Liar. She was having an absolute ball up there, I could tell. I lay back on my bed. The indignity! Why did my parents have to have me fifteen years ago? Why couldn’t they have had me eighteen years ago? Then at least I’d have had a fighting chance of knowing what a cone was, and
that
would be a fine thing!

A
VALID LIFESTYLE CHOICE

For those who are unfamiliar with the lifestyle, you do get used to having a whopping, pointless crush. By using the word ‘lifestyle’ I don’t mean to imply that it is in any way glamorous or desirable. Just that it becomes a normal part of everyday life, and your body gets kind of attuned to functioning on that plane.Your friends and teachers get used to you staring out of windows, when you used to be quite sharp. You stare out of all kinds of windows: classroom windows, bus windows, your bedroom window, over the sink and out of the kitchen window. Your central nervous system speeds up when the object of your affection is near, or expected to be near. Your senses sharpen, particularly peripheral vision. I am acutely aware of Chris’s movements at work. I see him approaching even when I’m studying a bag of beans to distinguish whether they’re broad beans or round beans. I know which girls he’s talked to throughout the shift. I know when he’s preoccupied or playful by the way he moves. I know when he’s pissed off that Kathy has been talking to Stuart Green from Groceries. I know it all. Sometimes I mutter his name under my breath like a madwoman.

I’m grateful for the twenty-minute walk home after work as it gives me time to unclench my muscles and recover from the strain of watching Chris flirt with the endless parade of my competition.

Aside from the constant threat of the Kathy-virus (don’t know why I say ‘threat’ as if I’m actually in the running) and the effortless superiority of Street-cred Donna and Georgia from the deli, there are quite a few new female casual staff. One of them is a sixteen-year-old called Sveta Tarasova. Her name alone conjures up images of gorgeous Russian Bond girls who could kill you with their thighs after you have succumbed to their charms.Villainesses who wear slinky black dresses, have long dark hair, smoke cigarettes from a cigarette holder, drink vodka martinis and bat their smoky eyes saying, ‘Da, darlink.’ Later on in the penthouse,
afterwards
, if you came around to their way of thinking they would mix you another vodka martini, bring it over to you and toast, ‘To crime, darlink.’
Oh God, maybe she’s going to kill Chris with her thighs.

Or maybe I’m getting a bit carried away. Let’s face it; it wouldn’t be the first time. Unfortunately, Sveta actually is extremely slim with long dark straight hair. She doesn’t say much. She has killer legs and at work she wears a very short black skirt with black tights and Mary-Jane-style shoes. After watching her reach up high to put some home-delivery bags on top of the trolley, Chris and I find out that she wears stockings. Real stockings. The kind that are held up by suspenders. We are treated to a generous glimpse of them while she strains with the heavy bags.

‘Oh . . . my . . . God,’ murmurs Chris.

I’m incensed. Who
does
that?
Who wears stockings with suspenders? There are plenty of normal stockings to be had.Why can’t she buy a pair of ’em like everyone else?

Chris is gone in seconds, down to the service desk to tell Ed about this unexpected and heaven-sent eyeful.

To add insult to injury, Sveta also wears a demure little black cardigan over her white work shirt, probably a deliberately titillating juxtaposition for the suspenders. Bitch.

I overhear Chris asking her to have a coffee with him after work. Of course. Why wouldn’t he? Nothing I can do about it.

There is actually nothing I can do about most things, I realise walking home. Being a slightly frumpy fifteen-year-old does not lend itself to much agency in any field. Chris is writing an essay on E.P. Thompson and has been telling me all about ‘structure versus agency’ at various intervals.

I live at home with my parents. I have to do as I am told there.

I go to work. I have to do as I am told there.

I go to school. I have to do as I am told there too.

I never get a seat on the school bus because the pushers and shovers defeat me. As soon as I turned fourteen I put on a few kilos and no matter how I crash diet and run around the park, I can’t seem to shed them. My sister Liza lives in a big share-house with other students and tells tales of parties and boyfriends every time we speak on the phone.
I
live in a small room in my parents’ house. My hair frizzes up around my face no matter how much I comb it down. Chris keeps on flirting with the other girls at work no matter how much I will him to stop. There’s not a single thing I can do about any of it.

One day last week I’d been mouthing off to Chris about
Othello
, which we had just started studying at school. He’d listened to me with his head slightly cocked to one side offering small arguments that I talked over.

‘Why is it called the Tragedy of Othello – should be the Tragedy of Desdemona!’

‘Well, it’s a tragedy for her too, but you know he’s the main protag—’

‘He kills his wife! Just kills her! I mean, what kind of
psycho
kills his wife and then gets to be the hero of the play?’

‘He’s a
tragic
hero, youngster. He has a fatal flaw – they all do.’

‘It’s not
his
tragedy! It’s Desdemona’s!’

‘But the play is not
about
her, youngs—’ ‘How small a man is he? He’s this big war hero but he’s so insecure that he believes all that crap about his wife. Who
loves
him, the poor woman. Big mistake. But how was she to know?’

‘He was wilfully deceived by Iago. If someone is that good at deception, it’s easy to believe them.’

‘It shouldn’t have been that easy. Men!’

Chris gave up.

‘You should get your own TV show, youngster,’ he’d said.

Blimey
, I thought, picturing his face yet again. I should have my own TV show, all right. It would be called Lifestyles of the Young and Powerless. Lifestyles of Them What Had a Mouthful of Metal until A Short Time Ago. Lifestyles of Them What Still Let Their Mums Choose Their Clothes for Them and Spent Last Saturday Night at Their Best Mate’s House
Studying
. I’m a disgrace. The only high points in my life are those rare moments when Chris offers to walk me home after work and listens to my rants with what appears to be tender amusement. I have become a bit of a ranter, I must admit. School, work, the disrespect with which my dad addressed my mum the other morning, the injustice of the universe, the crappy marks I keep getting in maths, Madame Bovary, how one of my teachers pronounces ‘hubris’ like you pronounce ‘debris’.

‘Breathe, youngster, breathe. You’re an Angry Young Woman.’

But he listens.

L
ONELY DAYS BEGONE

The Land of Dreams is abuzz with news of an upcoming social event. Next Sunday after closing, instead of the usual trip to the pub that I almost always don’t go to because of reasons well-bemoaned above, everyone has been invited to a party at Bianca’s house in Rose Bay. Her parents are overseas. Bianca’s father, Chris confided to me, is the CEO of one of the big banks and her mother is a ‘stay-at-home mum’, despite the fact that Bianca is twenty-three. The three of them live in a huge harbourside mansion, complete with tennis court, swimming pool and private jetty. Bianca’s failure to go to uni, her casual job in a supermarket and the various Woolies slackers she sleeps with are, it appears, part of a larger framework of rebellion against her parents. I have no idea what that’s about, but it does solve for me the mystery of how a twenty-three-year-old woman is able to support herself on a part-time wage of $18 per hour and spend most evenings out drinking. She doesn’t
have
to support herself at all.

Bianca has always regarded me as one might regard a weevil in a rice jar, but I am invited to the party along with everyone else.

We’re starting
Great Expectations
in English next week, having survived
The Bell Jar
and
Othello
. I am racing through it, which surprises me, because
David Copperfield
made me want to stick my hand in a blender. It makes sense to me that Pip falls in love with Estella as a child. Children don’t know any better. But I find it hellishly discouraging – as well as fascinating – that even well into adulthood he is as obsessed with her as ever, despite her atrocious treatment of him. Don’t we grow out of these things? She’s just married some total bastard, and Pip’s all cut up about it. I empathise with him a great deal because a big part of his misery in the whole affair is that he never felt he could properly compete for her. No matter how much of a gentleman he becomes, to her he’ll always be that poor, uneducated yob from across town. He gets to live in close proximity to her and is the recipient of a bit of offhand titillation when she feels like it, but he is never, ever in with a real chance.

Like me with Chris. Will I always be theYoungster, who can’t shed her puppy fat, doesn’t know what a bong is and has no dress sense? This could go on for years. What if
I
can never free myself from it? What if I find myself forty years old and giving Chris marital advice with similar anguish?

The title character from
The Great Gatsby
(on the reading list for next term, but I read it over the summer) was in love with this girl Daisy for years and years even though she married someone else. Maybe not really love, but obsessed with this version of her that he had created. Boy, did he cling to it. He just couldn’t see things for what they were. When he finally did, it was so painful that he killed himself. Sheesh.

Penny has suggested to me a few times that
I
might like to get a grip on reality. You know, accept that getting together with Chris is unlikely in the extreme and stop torturing myself. I wish I could. It would make sense.

Our group at school is just starting to talk to some of the boys from our year in the boys’ school. Not the real alpha males of course because our group is only in the middle third of the social ranking system. Sometimes they drift over towards us at lunchtime and brief words are exchanged, almost always with Penny. It’s looking like we might even start eating lunch with some of them, and if we eat lunch with them then that will logically lead to standing together at the bus stop after school. I might be able to find a more realistic target for my emotional energy.

But it’s no use trying to stop loving Chris. That’s
my
virus.

On the Friday before the party we have maths for the last period of the day. I tell Penny that I’m worried I might have an aneurism or something if I don’t get my lips onto Chris sometime soon.

‘
Man
, my head hurts. It hurts; it hurts; it’s going to explode.’

‘Oh, sweetie-pie,’ says Penny.

‘If he would just kiss me once, just once, properly, on the lips, I think I could die happy. If God would give me that, I swear I will never ask Him for anything else ever again.’

‘You don’t believe in God,’ Penny points out. ‘And I guarantee that if you ever did get that, you’d want more.’

I fold my arms and sulk.

As the day of the party draws closer, Chris seems to be less and less concerned with Sveta’s thighs and more and more flushed with an apparent relapse of the Kathy-virus. I can see it coursing through his veins, dilating his capillaries and pupils. He’s hoping that this party might be the launching pad for a successful mission into ‘the Search for the Perfect Woman’, as he terms it during evening tea-break.

‘You should see Bianca’s place. Beautiful view of the harbour, the city lights. I can put my arm around Kathy and say “One day all this could be yours”. The sun will be setting. I’ll have plied her with alcohol. It will be magic, youngster. Magic will happen.’

Magic. Kathy appears in the tearoom at that moment and starts to make herself a cup of International Roast.

He eyes her as you would a big juicy steak after a six-day hike eating only dehydrated vegetables. I know the look.

At the end of the shift, Chris and some of the other boys collect money to buy a few slabs of beer for the party. Bianca frowns and says we can just drink her dad’s liquor.

I begin to agonise about what I’m going to wear. The agonising is short-lived though, as the only casual clothes I own are jeans, T-shirts and boots. In cold weather I put a jumper over the top. I can’t buy anything to wear for the party as I have a raging phobia of shop fitting-rooms, and in any case I’m absolute rubbish at picking out clothes. Liza has been known to lend me an outfit, but she’s taken them all to Bathurst. My mum is generally too exhausted after work to consult on such matters. Penny is about a foot taller than me and none of her clothes fit me. Besides, she is also a big fan of jeans, T-shirts and hiding behind her hair.

So I resign myself to the fact that my big decision to make is grey, white, black or navy T-shirt. In the end I decide on the navy one. It doesn’t really matter, I tell myself. It’s not like he’ll have eyes for anyone other than Kathy. Pfuh.

On the day before the party Chris confides in me that he’s decided to ‘throw his hammer at destiny’ and make a grand gesture to Kathy, thus bolstering his chances for success the next night. The plan, as explained to me in the staffroom, is as follows. He’s been working on a poem for her for a week and reckons that tonight he’s going to have it couriered to her house along with a bouquet of red roses. Anonymously. Then she’ll have twenty-four hours to glow and to ponder over who they’re from. By nightfall he’ll have her down on Bianca’s father’s private jetty, with the harbour bridge and the city lights blinking across the water, whereupon he’ll confess all and go in for the kill.

‘Lonely days will be gone, youngster.’

‘Tops,’ I say, a little sourly.

He actually passes the draft of the poem across the staffroom table and asks me to read it and give him my opinion.
The universe is agin me
, I think, as I read down the page.
Incredible.
Here I am, able to treat myself to the words of longing, desire and downright worship in Chris’ funny handwriting, knowing that they are not for me and never will be.
Thanks universe. Thanks heaps. You bastard.

‘Yeah, great,’ I say weakly, and hand it back.

On the day of the party there is lots of whispering throughout the store about the mystery flowers and poem that Kathy received the night before. After we close up at the end of the day, everyone gets changed out of their work clothes and we pile into various cars to drive to Bianca’s.

I end up in Kathy’s car with Chris, Street-cred Donna, Celene and a checkout boy called Jeremy. There’s not enough room for me to have a proper seat so I have to lie across people’s laps in the back seat. My head is in Chris’s lap.

‘Check it out, the youngster lets her hair down,’ he says, giving my hair a playful yank.

I try to think of a response, but I can’t.

Kathy drives like the grown-up she is. Her slim, bare arms turn the steering wheel gracefully. I’m not even old enough to get my learner’s permit. I’m bloody Pip.

Chris looks like the cat that knows he’s about to get a big dish of cream. I stare up and out at the upside down trees whizzing past.

Bianca’s family digs are indeed spectacular. The sunlight is low and golden by the time we are all set up on the deck with music and beers.The water is ablaze and there is not a breath of wind. I can’t help comparing it to the ramshackle little terrace that my lot squish into.

Andy, Stuart Green, Ed and Lincoln are playing pool on the pool table just inside from the deck. Bianca, Donna, Celene and Kathy sit together, uniformly smoking in their sunglasses and red lipstick.

I sit a little way from them with some of the other youngsters (dammit, he has me saying it now), including Sveta, of the killer thighs, and Jeremy. I gulp white wine and wonder when Chris is going to make his move. He is flitting from cluster to cluster, as he does at work, making everyone laugh, making everyone feel good. Bless him.

I try not to stare too hard at Kathy. Jealousy swirls around my irises, probably flecking the blue with green. How will she respond to what is about to be offered to her? The thought of her and Chris getting together for real parts my insides like a hot knife through butter. Curiously though, the thought of her rejecting him and hurting him is almost as unsavoury. I know Chris well enough to recognise him for the drama queen that he is and I know that, in that event, he will take it hard. But having read the poem, I reckon the chances of her melting into his arms are pretty high.

What are you gonna do? I take a generous swig of my glass of white wine.

This is the first time that I have been in actual social proximity to Stuart Green from the grocery department. Stuart Green from Groceries and Vic from Perishables are the only two non-checkout staff that hang out with us, mainly due to their age, and the fact that they both study at the same uni as Chris and Kathy. I think Stuart is about the same age as Chris. He studies chemical engineering. I don’t really have a feel for him as he has never said a word to me or even made eye contact. He only ever comes down to the front end of the store to talk to Kathy. There is sometimes a curt nod towards Chris, Ed or Bianca. He is generally unsmiling and a bit formidable, but incredibly self-assured. From the little I know of him, he is the complete opposite of Chris. Chris is inclusive, extremely social, and his speech is so laden with in-jokes, self-deprecation and sarcasm you have to learn to decode it. Stuart seems kind of minimal. He is a large guy, broad across the shoulders, attractive if you like cruel-looking men. And people do. Liza did once.

The other week, late in the evening shift, I’d heard squealing from down towards the service desk. Kathy was in a state of great agitation. It seemed that a mouse had run out from underneath a pyramid display of Vita-Weat. Three checkouts ahead of me, Chris quickly secured his register and started down towards the service desk. He was halfway there when Stuart Green strode out from aisle one, where he must have been stacking shelves. He carried a white polystyrene box which he deftly brought down over the top of the offending mouse. With the mouse trapped, he put one steel-cap booted foot on top of the box for good measure. Kathy breathed a sigh of relief. Chris had frozen in his tracks. There was a good few seconds when they all three cut an interesting tableau. Kathy broke it first.

‘Thanks, Chris, you can go back to your register now. We’ll take it from here.’

Chris looked from her green eyes to Stuart’s cruel ones and didn’t move. A couple of late-night customers had started to queue up at my register.

‘Go back to your register, Chris,’ Kathy said, pulling Service Supervisor rank. ‘There are customers waiting.’

Chris turned and walked back up to his register. He looked at me briefly, expressionlessly, as he passed. Stuart took care of the mouse. Somehow.

So right now at the party, Stuart is playing pool and Kathy is smoking on the deck. I’m chatting to Sveta about school when Jeremy comes up to us carrying a bottle of white wine.

‘How’s the evening going, ladies?’

He slots himself in between us and expertly pours three glasses of wine.

Sveta doesn’t say anything. It’s up to me.

‘Fine. It’s going fine.’

‘Cigarette?’ he asks, fishing in his pockets.

‘No!’

He stops fishing. ‘Cheers then. To Bianca’s dad’s Christmas bonus.’

Again, Sveta doesn’t say anything.

‘Cheers,’ I say. We clink glasses and look out over the harbour.

Maybe it’s the wine, which I’m not used to drinking, but I’m beginning to feel something resembling relaxation. If Sveta does kill men with her thighs, she certainly doesn’t talk about it at parties.