The Best Australian Stories 2013 Read online

  ‘You haven’t changed, then.’

  ‘I have. I have.’

  Paul waited for Julian to elaborate, but he offered no explanation. Two nurses had walked over to the bed opposite and Paul glanced in their direction. He was always looking at women. Sometimes he pretended he was studying their posture or the way they walked as a preparation for acting, but he knew it wasn’t true. Women magnetised his eyes and he followed their movements for no reason at all, just because that’s what he did. He had done it for as long as he could remember. The nurses pulled the curtains around the bed and stepped inside them. The tenuous privacy of hospitals.

  Paul turned back to Julian. He thought he detected a flicker of amusement in Julian’s eyes, as if Julian had been watching Paul and not the nurses. Paul wanted to ask about the blonde one, but held his tongue. He didn’t know if he could joke around with Julian or not. So many years had passed since they were twenty. It was like a pause in a Beckett play that’s hard for an actor to hold, especially when the audience starts to cough and fidget.

  Julian sat up in bed and reached for the Maltesers. ‘Remember that code?’ he said. ‘The one you wouldn’t fucking give me.’

  Paul nodded.

  ‘It didn’t matter, mate. Ursula coughed it up. I went in one night after everyone had gone home. I wrote “The Truth Sucks” in white paint on MacPherson’s door and signed it “Number One Fake.” I was just looking for somewhere to stash the tin and the paintbrush when MacPherson came sauntering down the quadrangle towards me. I panicked. I thought he’d probably punch me out or something. But I was past caring too, so I stood by my handiwork and didn’t flinch. MacPherson took one look at the graffiti and at the paintbrush in my hand and burst out laughing. I was stunned. I hated him so much I had dreamt of killing him, and here he was laughing at my vandalism.

  ‘But then I realised he wasn’t laughing at me, he was laughing at himself, at how he used to go on and on about the truth. I was ready for the customary abuse, but instead he put the key in the lock, opened the door of his office and asked me inside. He got a bottle of whisky out of the filing cabinet and poured two glasses. He gave me one and I took it and drank it straight away to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. Then he told me I was lucky to be out of NIDA, that acting was a hell of a life and that he agreed with me, the truth really did suck. I didn’t know what to say. It’s as if he drew the venom out of me, turned my fangs into harmless white prongs. He actually listened to me – my confused wanderings, my hopeless ambitions. Then he told me about his career, how his marriage had broken up, how he’d never achieved what he wanted, how he’d taken this job for the money and how he’d come to believe that teaching was what you did if you were a failure. Those who can’t act, teach, he said. He told me to just get on with being a failure, that you could learn to live with it. He said other stuff too, but somehow that night turned it around for me. I found a way of letting go. I found I could get on with things as long as I didn’t see you guys –’

  ‘So you weren’t angry at me for not catching up?’

  ‘Angry? Sure. I hated you for it.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Are you? It’s the easiest word in the world to say, but who means it?’

  ‘You mean who says it truthfully? As opposed to faking it?’

  ‘Yeah. The old NIDA mantra.’

  The truth sucks. Part of Paul wanted to apologise again, truthfully, but it seemed pointless. He didn’t know if he was sorry, anyway. Ashamed perhaps, but not sorry. He could do a performance of sorry, but he wasn’t sure he could do a truthful performance. So instead he asked, ‘Can I do anything to help?’

  ‘No.’

  They looked at each other. Paul was no longer nervous. The visit had gone better than he could have hoped, except for how sick Julian seemed. But he wasn’t going to dwell on that.

  Julian offered Paul a Malteser and he took one gratefully. They talked for a while about old friends, those they’d bumped into recently and those they’d heard about.

  Julian looked exhausted, so Paul got up to leave. ‘You gonna be in here for long?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah. More treatment. More tests.’

  ‘Mind if I come in again?’

  ‘Yeah. Sure. Keep me in Maltesers.’

  Paul touched him on the shoulder and turned to go.

  ‘Don’t forget this,’ Julian said, motioning to the whisky.

  Paul picked it up and smiled at Julian, then turned away. The nurses had left without him even noticing. He felt that Julian was watching him, and although he wanted to check, he made his exit without looking back, like a trained, disciplined actor. Walking to the lift Paul felt sad, sadder than he’d felt for years. As empty as when his marriage had broken up. As empty as an out-of-work actor can feel after another unsuccessful audition. He knew that if he went home he’d drink the whole bottle of whisky and he didn’t want to do that. I need to be with people, I need to talk, and I need to talk about Julian, he thought. And the best person to talk to would have to be Ursula.

  Alone in the lift, he watched the floor numbers cascade down. Why is your cheek so pale? he said to himself, remembering a line of Lysander’s. How chance the roses there do fade so fast? But if he remembered rightly, he had delivered the line to Hermia, not Demetrius. Yet it was Julian who had pale cheeks, who was literally fading away in a bed above him.

  Paul walked out of the hospital doors into the late afternoon heat. He wanted a beer not a whisky, so he headed for the Marlborough, deciding as he sipped on his ale that he’d borrow the White Pages and try to track down Ursula. He quickly discovered that Ursula wasn’t in the telephone book. Maybe she lived with a friend. She could be married or she could have a silent number. After all, she had been famous for a while, ten years ago, the sort of magazine-cover-talk-show fame that only a few Australian actors achieved. There was nothing he could do about it today. He could ask Julian for her number, but not now, he couldn’t go back to the hospital now.

  He finished his beer, thought about another and decided against it. Here he was living the hell of a life that was acting. His resume wasn’t impressive – a few supporting roles on TV, some theatre work, commercials, corporate role-playing, narrating audio books. The dreams of international success that he’d had back at NIDA had not materialised, but he wasn’t the only one who had struggled. What about Julian, yellow and out of it, too sick to appreciate the beauty of the nurses as they checked his pulse or wrote on the chart at the end of his bed?

  At a nearby table, a group of young women were in a festive mood. Their conversation was loud and ostentatious, as if everyone had to know how much fun they were having. Staring at the ring of water his beer glass made, Paul saw himself as a pathetic miser, a miser out of a Molière play who couldn’t stomach happiness. He wondered if other people saw him like that. There goes Paul Somerville, the miser, the giggling women whispered as he passed them, clicking their wine glasses in glee at his hunched shoulders and slow shuffle to the door. He knew they weren’t saying anything of the sort, but he was glad to get out onto King Street and loiter by the bus stop. At least now he wasn’t conspicuously alone.

  As much as he tried to distract himself, the image of a miser wouldn’t leave him, and he caught himself checking that his wallet was safe and calculating how much money he had left that week. He had to be careful and scrupulous with money to survive. It was just part of being an actor. No point complaining about it. No point living on credit either if you couldn’t pay it back eventually. It was the life he had chosen, no one had forced him into it. But he didn’t want to be frugal with people as well. Okay, he wasn’t a scrooge who hoarded gold in a shoebox. But what scared him was the idea that he might be the sort of scrooge who had forgotten how to love.

  A box of Maltesers in his hand, Paul stopped at the entrance to the ward. Ursula was sitting in the chair near the
bed, talking to Julian. Instead of a hospital gown, Julian wore a white singlet, and he looked a little healthier than Paul remembered. The two of them were deep in conversation. Occasionally Ursula’s hands flashed out, her long elegant arms and theatrical wrists reminding him of Meryl Streep. When Julian spoke, Ursula rested her hand on the white sheet in a manner that appeared to be proprietary, not just friendly. Every so often Ursula laughed, a spontaneous and very musical laugh that clanged off the curtain rails and swept through the room. Why was he here? Julian didn’t need him. Whatever Julian had with Ursula, whatever form of friendship or love they shared, it was more than Paul could hope to offer him. Paul wanted to leave then, but before he could do anything, Ursula noticed him, said something to Julian, and the two of them waved him in.

  Paul greeted them both and gave Julian the Maltesers. Ursula moved her chair back and Paul sat between them.

  ‘I’m sorry if I interrupted anything,’ Paul said.

  ‘Not at all,’ Julian replied. ‘I’m through with whingeing about hospital food. That and the five-thirty wake up call to see if I want a cup of tea –’

  ‘When he doesn’t drink tea,’ Ursula added.

  ‘And the barbarity of daytime soaps. We were just starting in on the screen kiss.’

  ‘Do you have a favourite?’ Ursula wanted to know.

  Paul shrugged. He felt that he was expected to come up with something captivating, but could only think of James Stewart and Kim Novak in Vertigo, and he wasn’t really sure if they had kissed or not. Luckily no one else seemed to remember either.

  ‘What about stage kisses?’ Paul asked. He had kissed onstage and loved it, the silent attention of the audience, the way the actual kiss was different each night. He told them how he had always looked forward to the kiss, was always aware that he was kissing a woman, and always slipped out of character in the process.

  Ursula mulled it over. She laughed and said, ‘Yep. I’ve done that. Even though I told myself it was just work, there’s something about kissing a man, or a woman … It puts ideas into your head.’

  ‘Like Daniel Day Lewis playing Hamlet and seeing ghosts,’ Paul suggested.

  ‘Yes,’ Ursula replied. ‘It gets personal, kissing someone. You tell yourself it’s just a physical action, but it still messes with your mind. I guess it’s not possible to keep things in neat little compartments. And I remember one play where I had this urge to slip my tongue in … it was a long passionate kiss and one night we bumped teeth and it happened and we had such a hard time suppressing our giggles and keeping the scene together.’

  ‘That’s exactly it,’ Paul said. ‘Except I never pretended it was professional. Usually I couldn’t wait to go mouth to mouth.’

  Julian mimed playing the violin and everyone laughed.

  Gradually the subject of the conversation changed and Julian began talking about his illness. Paul realised for the first time that Julian didn’t just have Hepatitis C, but that he had liver cancer as well. He was in for a series of tests to see if he was suitable for a liver transplant.

  Ursula asked about the waiting list and Julian thought it could be as long as eighteen months. Though it could happen sooner. Julian was hoping to get lucky.

  Paul found medical conversations baffling, especially when they were laced with esoteric terminology. But he tried to listen carefully. The news that Julian’s tumour had doubled in size in the last month sounded very serious.

  Paul nodded and did his best to seem interested, but he felt his mind wandering back to the conversation about the screen kiss. He noticed Ursula’s lips, how wide they were, how kissable, how she was wearing this rich red shade of lipstick. And before he could refrain, he imagined he was kissing Ursula under a single spot in the centre of a darkened stage. They were lying on a couch that creaked under their weight, and as he leant into the kiss her tongue slid past his lips until all he could feel was her ravenous tongue and the warmth of the spot on his cheek. In his mind the kiss went on and on as the stage lights became brighter and brighter.

  Paul was dimly aware that Julian had yawned and that Ursula had said he needed rest and that they should leave. Paul quickly said goodbye to Julian and thoughtfully left Ursula and Julian alone. At least it appeared to be thoughtful, though it was motivated more by his desire to not witness their parting kiss.

  ‘Wait for me,’ Ursula called after him. ‘I won’t be long.’

  Paul felt sorry for Julian, really sorry, but he couldn’t help wishing that he was prostrate on the bed and being attended to by Ursula. It occurred to him that he had come to hospital hoping to see Ursula, not Julian. Ashamed of himself, he decided to leave at once. But before he could do so, Ursula arrived at the lifts.

  They wedged themselves into a crowded lift. Despite the crush, the hospital odours of reheated food and industrial disinfectants were strong. They walked past the gift shop in the foyer with its white bears wearing red bowties and gaudy balloons inflated with helium. They dodged the smokers lingering around the entrance. Outside an assertive wind tugged at Ursula’s hair and blew Paul’s jacket so that it threatened to turn inside out.

  ‘Fancy a drink?’ Ursula asked. ‘I could certainly do with one.’

  So they headed for the Marlborough together, a day after Paul had searched the White Pages for Ursula’s number. At the door of the hotel Ursula stepped forward at the same time as Paul and they almost bumped together, and like two improvising actors they repeated the blunder in a slightly different manner until they were talking about the time they studied lazzi with the Commedia dell’Arte teacher, and how all the routines of the Marx Brothers and the Three Stooges and countless other comics seemed so simple.

  Paul suggested Guinness and Ursula agreed. It had been a favourite of theirs at NIDA and with a black schooner in each hand, Paul momentarily felt young again. At least with Ursula he would not feel defensive about his fluctuating, struggling career, would not feel he was a failure because he wasn’t Russell Crowe or David Wenham.

  He put the schooners down on the table and smiled.

  ‘You look happy,’ Ursula said, ‘but then you always did.’

  ‘Makes a change. I came here yesterday after visiting Julian. I felt so down, seeing him like that ...’

  ‘Yeah. I know. But let’s not talk about Julian, if you don’t mind.’ Ursula took a sip of Guinness, then licked the white foam off her upper lip. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you about Jack. What’s he up to?’

  ‘He’s at uni studying environmental science. Thank God he didn’t follow me into acting. He’s having a ball. Majoring in geography. Seems like he spends half the time down at the beach, studying the coastline, apparently. Good work if you can get it. I met him down at Coogee the other day and we had a drink.’

  ‘He’s moved out?’

  ‘No. Still with his mum.’

  ‘I heard about the break-up.’

  ‘We don’t even fight anymore. And now that Jack’s an adult there’s no way you can use him to score points … I’m ashamed when I think back to what we did …’

  Ursula nodded. She told him how her sister’s marriage had ended when her husband met another woman while walking the dog, and how she no longer expected people to stay together … But she hated the way people tried to maim the person they used to hold hands with. She admired the men and women who were still friends, who treated their ex-lovers like adults, not trolls.

  Paul laughed at the mention of trolls. He asked Ursula what she thought of the troll in the Lord of the Rings and they spent a few minutes discussing the trilogy.

  ‘Pity that Tolkien didn’t write more female characters,’ Ursula suggested. ‘After all, there’s only Galadriel, Arwen and that great big spider …’

  ‘There’s Éowyn,’ Paul added. ‘But you’re right, not much to audition for. Though you could have played the spider!’


  ‘Careful! If I was smaller and younger I might have played a hobbit wench. But who’d want that as their last big credit? Yeah, I’ve just finished playing Samwise Gamgee’s wife … Whose wife? You can barn dance like a hobbit? Great!’

  They were well onto their second schooner and Paul excused himself to go to the toilet. It was going well, he thought, very well. He paused at the mirrors, flicked his hair into place and grinned. He had just made it to the urinal in time, breathing out as the relief swept through his body.

  He glanced up at the wall and saw it, the condom vending machine. No, he thought, she wouldn’t. But then another voice in his head took over, saying why not, you might as well be prepared, you never know when your luck’s going to change. He remembered how he had once gone home with a woman and she wouldn’t do it with him because neither of them had a condom. And here was a condom machine that only needed a $2 coin to operate it. ‘Ultra Protection’ read one of the advertisements. The other one read ‘XXXtra Ribbing for her XXXtra Pleasure.’ Right, he thought. Ursula will be impressed with that, really impressed. But he already had his wallet out and a $2 coin in his hand. He had to hurry back, there was no point hesitating and the last thing he wanted was for someone to come in while he was standing there, coin in hand, in front of the machine. It would be like your mother walking in on you while you were masturbating.

  Paul tried to put the coin in the slot and dropped it. It bounced on the step, rolled towards the urinal and clanked into the tray. Damn it, he thought. He hated losing $2, but he didn’t want to get down on his knees to extract the coin from the urine-soaked tray. Would his hand fit through the bars? No, he wasn’t going to try. He had this vision of his hand wedged into the grille, stuck there with his fingers a few centimetres short of the coin. He turned away, fished in his pocket and found another $2 coin.

  This time Paul managed to put the coin in the slot. He pushed it in and the coin disappeared, but there was no sign of any condom. ‘Fuck!’ he cried loudly and his voice echoed around the cubicles and came back to him. He pushed the coin slot in again, then slammed the condom machine with his fist, just as The Fonz had punched the pinball machine in Happy Days. Or was it the jukebox? Whatever it was, he was no Fonz, for the little cranny where the condom was meant to appear was still empty. Feeling very frustrated, feeling very foolish, he turned and kicked the door open, walked past the mirrors without glancing up – how could he look himself in the eye now? – pushed the next door open violently, and headed back towards Ursula.