Whiskey & Charlie (12 page)

Giving up on sleep, Charlie rolled his way along a bookcase that ran the length of one wall. He pulled out a copy of J. M. Coetzee's
Disgrace
, which he'd been meaning to read. But when he opened the book, he found that the letters were not behaving as they ought to: familiar yet strange, they danced and jigged and spun before his eyes like the chorus line from
Riverdance
.

Charlie was holding the book in his lap when Juliet came into the room. He did not want to attempt standing up out of the chair, but he swiveled to face her.

“Whiskey's looking for you.”

“Here I am,” Charlie said.

She smiled. Truthfully, this time, he could not have said that it lit up the room, because the room was already far too bright. But it moved him just as it had when they were sitting at the bar.

“What are you reading?” she asked.

Charlie held up the book. He had forgotten which book he'd chosen.

“I couldn't stand that book,” she said. “What do you think of it?”

Charlie tried to think of a sensible answer to such a perfectly reasonable question, but nothing came to him, so he told her the truth. “I can't read at the moment,” he said.

She laughed in the dry, restrained way she had. Charlie thought she was ridiculously beautiful, and he had no idea what to do about it. Juliet went over to the desk, picked up a pen and a notepad.

“Do you want to give me your number?” she asked.

“My phone number?”

She laughed again. “What other number would I want?”

Charlie felt confused. He wondered if he had missed some essential component of this conversation. He was afraid for a moment that he would not be able to remember the number, but it came to him when he tried, all the digits in a sequence that seemed suddenly more meaningful because it was Juliet who was writing them down.

“Mobile?” she asked.

“I haven't quite caught up yet.”

She smiled, putting the paper in her pocket, and then she leaned down and kissed him, not on his cheek or on his forehead, but his mouth, pressed her warm and perfectly shaped lips to his and held them there for a moment.

“I'll tell Whiskey you're here,” she said, and then she walked away from him, stopping at the door to dim the light on the switch that was by the door in plain view.

x x x

Charlie slept late the next day, was woken at two in the afternoon by Whiskey's phone call.

“I broke up with Juliet,” he said.

Charlie felt groggy. He tried to think back over the events of the night before, wondered if his brother knew about the kiss, found he couldn't remember getting home.

“What happened?” he asked cautiously.

“Who knows?” Whiskey said. “It was her idea to end it. She said we had no connection or some crap like that. You know how it is with models. She's probably after someone with more money.”

Charlie did not really know how it was with models, but from the little dealings he had had with them, he thought it entirely possible that the state of someone's bank balance could make or break a relationship. If Whiskey had been talking about any one of his other girlfriends, Charlie would have believed him. But not Juliet.

Though he had only just met her, though he barely knew her, Charlie felt certain Whiskey's financial status had had no impact on Juliet's feelings. But what Charlie thought didn't matter to Whiskey anyway. Whiskey was not waiting for Charlie's confirmation of his theory—he did not need agreement to continue; he was not that kind of conversationalist.

“She probably thinks she can do better. But she's not as perfect as she thinks she is. She seems pretty at first, but when you really look at her face, it's actually quite out of proportion.”

Charlie thought of Juliet's face. Despite the state he had been in the night before, he had no trouble recalling it, and it did not seem to him to be the slightest bit out of proportion. In fact, he thought that if he had to make a template for a human face, hers would be the face he would choose. He did not remind his brother that less than twenty-four hours earlier he had described Juliet as the most beautiful girl you would ever meet. He tried to think of Whiskey as a person he liked and wished the best for, rather than as the brother he tolerated but could not respect.

“Are you upset?” he asked.

Whiskey snorted, as a horse snorts, through his lips as well as his nose. “There's plenty of fish in the sea,” he said.

x x x

After he hung up, Charlie tried to sort out his thoughts about Whiskey and Juliet, himself and Juliet, himself and Whiskey. Though he knew that cocaine did not have hallucinogenic properties, he could only conclude that what had happened with Juliet in the study had been exactly that, an elaborate hallucination—the lucid dreaming of a mind addled by vodka and whatever he had put up his nose.

He did not allow himself the luxury of even considering the other option: that Juliet had actually written down his phone number and then kissed him good-bye. He stuck with his theory until five o'clock, when the phone rang and he heard Juliet's low, melodic voice at the other end. She asked him to meet her for a drink in St. Kilda, and he tried on five shirts before he left the house, finally returning to the one he had begun with, ashamed of himself.

At the bar, he sat beside her in a booth, and she looked as perfect when he was tired and hungover as she had when he was high. He couldn't believe she might be interested in him.

“I'm so sorry about last night,” Juliet said without preamble. “I've been feeling absolutely sick about it all day. I know you must think very badly of me, and I don't blame you if you do, but I wanted to at least try to explain.”

Charlie had tried, earlier that day, to put the events of the previous night into some semblance of order, without much success. There were great gaping holes in his memory, whole chunks of time in which he had no idea who he had been with, what he had said or done.

“Which part, exactly, are you sorry for?” he asked Juliet.

She took a breath. “I'm sorry that we—that I—I'm sorry for what happened in the study. I know it was wrong, but I was angry with Whiskey. I was…drunk.”

A memory came to Charlie then, of the night more than ten years earlier when he realized that Louise Barker's interest in him was purely for Whiskey's punishment. He was embarrassed that he had allowed himself to think that a girl like Juliet might be attracted to someone like him.

“You used me to get back at Whiskey,” he said bitterly.

“I wasn't using you!” Juliet said. She looked as though she might cry.

“You kissed me because you were drunk and angry with Whiskey. That's what you just said.”

“No,” she said. “No.” She gulped at her drink. “I kissed you because I…liked you. I
like
you,” she corrected herself. “I allowed myself to do it because I was drunk and angry.”

She kissed him because she liked him? Charlie wanted to ask her to repeat that statement, to clarify it.

“Why were you angry with Whiskey?” he asked instead.

Juliet shook her head. “There's no point in me telling you that,” she said. “I don't want to come between you and Whiskey.”

“Well, you needn't worry about that,” Charlie said.

Juliet looked anguished. “Are you very close?” she asked.

“We're not close at all. I thought Whiskey would have told you we don't get along. I don't know if that makes you feel any better about what happened.”

“That makes me feel worse,” Juliet said. “I'd hate to be responsible for driving you further apart.”

Charlie looked at her. What she was saying made sense, but he found that he didn't care. All he could think was that she must not leave, she must not leave.

“I should go now,” she said, reading his mind.

Charlie put his hand on her wrist. “Don't go,” he said. “We don't have to talk about Whiskey. But we're here now. Let's at least have a drink.”

Juliet looked with embarrassment at her empty glass.

“I'll get you another one,” Charlie offered. “What are you having?”

“Campari and orange juice.”

Charlie went to the bar. He was almost certain that when he returned she would be gone; it took all his resolve not to keep looking back at her. But when he came back with the drinks, she was still there.

Charlie sat back down, tried to think of something neutral to say. “What did you think of the party?” he asked her.

“I'm tired of those parties, Charlie,” she said. “I'm tired of that whole scene. It looks appealing from the outside, but when you live in it, it's empty; nothing means anything. That's why it was so good to talk to you. You live in the real world, where things matter. You do a job that makes a difference. That's the world I want to live in.”

“Do you want me to see if I can get you a job?” Charlie asked lightly.

Juliet laughed. “You really do look exactly the same, don't you?” she said, studying Charlie. “I know that sounds silly. I mean, I've seen identical twins before, on television or in magazines, but it's different to meet two people and actually see that amazing similarity for yourself. It's uncanny.”

Charlie had taken part in some version of this conversation more times than he could remember. Usually he found it extraordinarily tiresome to be examined like a creature in a laboratory, but it felt different now that it was Juliet who was performing the examination. It was wonderful, in fact, to have her eyes rest for so long on his face.

“You're a little thinner in the cheeks,” she said, still looking at him.

“And somehow more handsome in a way that you can't put your finger on?” Charlie suggested.

She laughed again. She seemed to be thinking about whether to tell Charlie something.

“You wanted to know why I was angry with Whiskey,” she said eventually.

Charlie nodded.

“When I first met Whiskey, he told me he wanted to give up advertising, do something for the community, maybe become a teacher. When he said that, I felt like we were at the same point in our lives, like we could understand each other. It took me a while to realize he didn't mean any of it, that he was totally caught up in advertising, that he'd never give it up. He just told me what he thought I wanted to hear. It wasn't until I met you last night that I realized the story he told me was your story, and I knew that the person I wanted to know wasn't Whiskey—it was you.”

Charlie had thought that falling in love was a gradual process, that it happened suddenly only in Hollywood movies and airport bestsellers. He didn't know what to say to Juliet. He hadn't read his part in the script. He pushed all thoughts of Whiskey out of his mind, leaned over, and kissed her.

Juliet found the dog on a Saturday morning. She had gotten up early to go for a run, and when she opened the front door, he was huddled on the doorstep, so small and disheveled she thought at first he was a guinea pig. She shouted for Charlie, who was still in bed.

“What's the matter?” Charlie called, groggy with sleep.

“There's a guinea pig. It must have escaped from somewhere.”

Charlie yawned. He didn't feel like getting up so early, but he remembered that Juliet was scared of guinea pigs. Not long after they met, she had told him about being bitten by a guinea pig when she was small. Charlie regularly forgot all sorts of important information, but for some reason, he remembered every detail of this story, even down to the guinea pig's name, which was Olive. He rolled out of bed and went to the door.

“It must belong to one of the kids in the neighborhood,” Juliet said. She had tied her hair into a ponytail, which made her look younger than she was. She sounded panicked. Charlie kissed the back of her neck and then bent down to look at the animal.

“It's soaking wet.”

Juliet disappeared and came back with a towel. “Use this,” she said. “Poor little thing. It's probably been wandering around all night in the rain, trying to find its way home. It might belong to those children in the blue town house.”

“We'll have to put it in a shoe box or something until we find out where it lives.”

“You're not putting it in one of my shoe boxes.”

“Why not? You've got at least a hundred,” Charlie teased. “Surely you've got one to spare for this little fellow.” But when he picked the creature up, he saw that it wasn't a guinea pig at all.

“It's a puppy,” he said, “but he's not in very good shape.” He held the little dog up for Juliet to see.

“Oh, Charlie, look at the poor thing. It looks half dead!” She burst into tears.

“Don't get upset,” Charlie said. “It's probably just cold and hungry and a bit bewildered. It'll work itself out. Why don't you take it, and I'll see if I can get hold of a vet.”

Charlie drove to the animal hospital in North Melbourne while Juliet held the dog on her lap. Charlie had a sudden sharp memory of sitting in the back of Mary Partridge's car, sick with anxiety, after Bravo had been hit by the car. He didn't say so to Juliet, but he didn't think the dog was going to make it. It was limp and trembling, with glazed eyes and matted fur, had barely lifted its head since they found it, hadn't even sniffed at the bowl of warm milk they put under its nose. Charlie put his hand on Juliet's shoulder.

“It'll be all right,” he said. “Don't worry.”

According to the vet, the puppy was some kind of spaniel, about seven weeks old, who had almost certainly been abandoned. He weighed just under a kilo—about two pounds, less than a bag of flour—which was about half the average weight for a healthy spaniel of that age. There were no broken bones or serious injuries, but he was in shock, as well as suffering from dehydration and hypothermia. He explained that there was no obligation for Charlie and Juliet to do anything more, that the animal hospital would clean him up, keep him warm, and try to get some food into him, and if he recovered, he would be put into the hospital's adoption program.

Charlie thanked the vet and put his arm around Juliet, who was still looking at the puppy.

“I think we should take him,” she said suddenly. “He'd have a much better chance if we took him home. I could look after him. He probably just needs some love, doesn't he?” she asked the vet.

“It's probably true that a bit of nurturing would do him more good than anything we could administer here,” the vet said cautiously. “But as I said before, there's no obligation.”

“Oh, Charlie, let's take him. He'll probably die if we don't, and I'll feel awful.”

“I know it's difficult,” Charlie said, “but I think it's better to leave him here.”

“Not better for him, the poor little thing.”

“This is the animal hospital, Juliet. We're leaving him in the best hands. And I'm sure they'll find a good home for him. There's always lots of demand for puppies.”

“But you heard what the vet said, Charlie. Our taking him home will give him a much better chance.”

“I know you're upset, Juliet, but you don't go out and get a dog, just like that.”

“Why not?”

“Why not?” He realized he should have seen this coming. “Getting a dog is something you have to think about carefully,” he said.

“But he needs us, Charlie. He found us. Why leave him here when we can give him a good home ourselves? We've got a garden. There's nothing to think about.”

Charlie coughed. This was not a conversation he wanted to have in front of the vet. To his relief, the vet seemed to realize where things were leading.

“Would you excuse me for a moment?” he said. “I need to check on something.”

“Please, Charlie,” Juliet said as soon as the vet had left the room. “Why don't you want to?”

“It's not that I don't want to.” He felt around for the right words. “I don't think we're really ready for a dog. We've never even talked about it before.”

“What do you mean, not ready? It's not like having a baby, Charlie.”

“Well, it's not so different,” Charlie said. “It's a serious long-term commitment.” He could not look at her as he said this.

“I'm ready for that kind of commitment, Charlie,” Juliet said in the voice she used when she was about to cry.

Charlie knew she wasn't talking about the dog anymore. He looked out of the window. He thought of her earlier that morning, how animated she'd been about the guinea pig. He didn't want to make her cry.

“You know that he might not pull through, don't you?” he asked carefully.

Juliet nodded.

“You're sure you want to take him home anyway?”

She nodded again.

Charlie put his arm around her and kissed her forehead. “Let's go and find that vet then,” he said.

x x x

The vet said the dog might respond to Juliet's heartbeat, that it would remind him of his mother. So when they got home, Juliet made a sling out of a sarong, and for the rest of that day, she carried the dog around with her like a baby. She talked to him softly and stroked his head, and every hour she squirted warm milk into his mouth with a pipette the vet had given them. When he peed on her, Juliet took it as a positive sign. Charlie refrained from saying that wetting themselves was often the last thing people did before they died.

When they went to bed that night, Juliet tucked the dog into a cardboard box with a hot water bottle and an old sweater and put him on the floor next to her side of the bed. Despite her ministrations, the dog was still showing very few signs of life, and Charlie felt sure they had found him too late, that the dog would die in the night. But Juliet got up three times to feed him, and in the morning, he was still hanging on. Juliet kept him in the sling all day on Sunday, and by that evening, he was starting to show signs of recovery. The glazed look had gone from his eyes, and he was sniffing at Juliet when she gave him the milk. By the time Charlie got home from work on Monday, the dog was looking considerably better. Juliet had bathed him, and he was lying on a towel in front of the heater to dry.

“He looks better now I've cleaned him up, doesn't he?” Juliet said.

Charlie knelt down to have a look at him. He was chestnut colored with a round face and floppy ears, and when Charlie put out his hand, he lifted his head and began to lick Charlie's fingers.

“He reminds me of an Ewok,” Charlie said.

Juliet laughed. “He does look a bit like a bear,” she said.

“It looks like your Florence Nightingale routine did the trick.”

Juliet nodded. She looked so happy. Charlie put his arm around her. He didn't know what to feel. He hadn't wanted the dog to die, of course, but that didn't mean he wanted to keep him. Since they brought the puppy home, neither he nor Juliet had mentioned their dispute at the animal hospital, but it was still on Charlie's mind.

It had been difficult enough when Juliet had asked Charlie to move in with her. On the surface, the suggestion had seemed logical. But they had started talking about it when they'd been together for six months, and it had taken another six months for Charlie to actually make the move. He hadn't been attached to the house he officially lived in, nor to his housemates, whom he had found through the paper. And it was not that he had feared the loss of his independence; he knew Juliet respected his independence and valued her own.

Initially he had put his reluctance down to his experience with Kristy. He'd been burned, he had told himself, and it had made him wary. But Juliet hadn't accepted that explanation. She had said her house was much bigger than Kristy's flat, and they would still be able to have their own space, that Charlie wouldn't have to put anything into storage, that he could bring everything he owned with him and make the place his own. Her arguments made perfect sense. Charlie agreed with everything she said. But he still didn't want to move in with her. And eventually he realized his fears had nothing to do with Kristy, that what it boiled down to was that Charlie had no faith in his relationship with Juliet.

There was no question about his love for her. Charlie was smart enough to know that Juliet was the best thing that had ever happened to him. And that was the problem. It was too good to be true, and Charlie was sure it couldn't last—exactly like his own parents' marriage—that eventually Juliet Katrina Robertson would realize she was far too good for plain old Charlie Ferns.

Charlie couldn't see the point of moving in with her when it was only a matter of time before he would have to move out again. He thought their living together would accelerate the inevitable. And that having lived with her would only make things harder when he had to go back to a life without her. He didn't want to get used to opening the wardrobe and seeing her clothes hanging there. He didn't want to get used to the smell of her shampoo or the color of her toothbrush because he knew that one day he wouldn't have them anymore. One day Juliet's house would stop being his house. He would have given back the keys and would have to ring the doorbell when he went back to collect the things he had accidentally left behind when he moved out. Juliet would have put them in a plastic bag, as though she didn't want to touch them or look at them, and they would be waiting inside the front door when he arrived so there would be no need for him to go into the house.

And it would be the same with the dog. You couldn't divide up a dog the way you could with other belongings. The dog would have to go one way or the other. And Charlie already knew which way it would go. He loved dogs. He had loved Bravo, and he would love this little bearlike dog just as much, would treat him with fresh minced meat, walk him, and let him sleep on the bed, spend hours throwing a stick or a ball for him. And then Charlie would move out and leave him with Juliet in the house that was no longer his. But how could he begin to explain that to Juliet?

Charlie stroked the dog's head. “What are you going to call him then?” he asked Juliet. “You can't keep calling him your little bag of flour.”

She laughed.

“You'd be better off calling him Kilo,” Charlie suggested. “At least it rolls off the tongue a bit more smoothly.”

Juliet poked him in the ribs. “Don't be horrible, Charlie,” she said. “I don't want him to be permanently reminded of his ordeal. I thought I might call him Chester.”

“Why Chester?” Charlie asked.

“He looks like a Chester to me.” She tried it out. “Chester!” she called, and the dog lifted up his head to look at her.

“You see, he already knows his name.”

“Chester it is then,” Charlie said, and he reached down to rub his little snout.