The Best Australian Stories 2013 Read online

  I think the kiss is ending. Wonder if it would make the Guinness Book of Records. No, probably not. They shoot horses, don’t they? Someone must have done a kissing marathon already. Blisters. Cold sores. Probably a couple of gay guys hold the record. Or transsexuals. Kiss a trannie and feel his erection up against you. No thanks. Not for me. Ah, she’s smiling at me. Such a lovely smile.

  Ursula stood up and walked towards the bedroom, beckoning at him with a glance over her shoulder and a quick flick of her wrist. He rose and followed her, pausing momentarily to take in a poster near the door. A single match flaring in a darkened room. The words Burn This across the bottom. He stared at the flame. What happened in that play? He couldn’t quite remember.

  She didn’t seem to be in the bedroom. The blankets and the top sheet had been turned back. Then he saw her coming out of the en suite. She had taken off her trousers and perhaps her knickers as well, though he couldn’t be sure. Feigning modesty, he lifted his hands to his eyes and turned his back to her. Ursula grabbed him from behind and kissed him on the side of the neck. As she kissed, she fumbled with his belt. Not so fast, he thought, but he didn’t say anything.

  Ursula shuffled him towards the bed with this sort of sideways movement like a crab crawl, until they both fell onto the bed, laughing. She tugged at his belt again and this time undid the buckle. She undid the button, unzipped his fly and pulled down his jeans and boxer shorts, until they bunched up and caught on one leg. Now they were both naked from the waist down.

  Paul unbuttoned her shirt, found the clip of her bra, and for once in his life managed the process without a prolonged, embarrassing struggle. He pulled the bra forward and along her arms. Ursula reached over him and began to drag at his bunched jeans. The fullness of her breasts as they swung free excited him. He steadied one breast with his hand and took the nipple into his mouth. He loved breasts, their whiteness, their softness. He had often wondered if this went back to childhood, to being breastfed. Or was it a function of the flow of images, the constant media bombardment of chest and cleavage? Did a day ever pass without him seeing photographs of women in bras or bikinis? Or just passing in the street, their breasts looming up at him. Breasts were good to look at, but how much nicer to wobble them in your hands, to hide them in your mouth. He sucked and kissed, ran his tongue along her sternum and pressed both breasts against his face.

  Paul could feel her hand reaching across his stomach and suddenly he thought – condoms. I don’t have a single condom.

  As if in response, Ursula pushed him onto his back, draped herself across him and opened a drawer by the side of the bed. She found what she was looking for and flopped back down beside him. She ripped at the condom wrapper with her teeth and drew out the condom. Ursula reached down and kissed him on the tummy, below the navel. Then she flicked at his penis with her finger so it bounced back and forwards, like some sort of elasticised skittle. She laughed and rolled the condom down onto him. Paul couldn’t see her do it, but he felt her fingers on him, then the rubber. He studied the bumpy outline of her spine, the fineness of her shoulders. Then Ursula lay back down and kissed him. They kissed for a long time. Somehow Paul sensed that she was struggling with something, some issue that was bothering her.

  This uncertainty spurred Paul on and he gently rolled onto Ursula. He took his penis in his hand, directed it to where he thought her vagina was, and pushed. He felt her give slightly and pushed some more. He glanced at Ursula, but her eyes were closed so he pushed again, brushing her forehead with his lips as he slipped inside her. It was one of the moments he loved best about sex – always surprising, always joyous.

  But no sooner was he inside her and beginning to draw back and push again, beginning to grind pelvic bone against pelvic bone, when he realised that Ursula was crying. He held his hips still and lifted himself up on his arms, so their bodies were barely touching. But he was still inside her and he was aware of that sensation as he watched the tears spill out of her eyes.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

  She frowned. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Do you want me to stop?’

  ‘Yes. No. I don’t know. I don’t know what I want anymore.’

  Paul wanted to keep going, but she looked so anguished, so confused. The tears were coming quicker now, running down her cheeks and collecting on her beautiful neck. Paul wished he could wind back the tape to the moment when he was undoing her bra and find a different way of proceeding. But he knew he would regret it later if there was even the slightest suggestion that he had pressured Ursula.

  She was still sobbing. ‘I think you’d better stop,’ Ursula said and Paul put his fingers around the base of the condom and drew himself out.

  He lay down beside her and sighed. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘I can’t explain,’ she said slowly. ‘Not now. If ever. I’m all mixed up.’

  ‘Should I go?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. But can you hold me first?’

  She rolled over onto her side with her back to him. Paul reached down and pulled a sheet up over them, then cuddled up against her. He held her around the waist and over a shoulder, trying not to make a thing about her breasts. They lay like that for five minutes, maybe longer, and Paul felt her sobbing subside and her breathing deepen. He wondered if she was going to sleep.

  Just my luck, he thought. Though he wasn’t angry, just frustrated. Sex was so delicate, so tricky that even grown people didn’t understand it. Not completely. He couldn’t imagine discussing this with anyone. Ursula perhaps, but they’d probably never talk about it. And he certainly wouldn’t be telling Julian, lying in hospital with his stuffed liver and his jaundiced skin. Thinking of Julian, he felt glad that it hadn’t happened. Yet it had happened, too. Ursula had mauled him on the couch and mauled him in the bedroom. He was frustrated, yet elated.

  Ursula turned and looked at him. She hadn’t gone to sleep at all. Her eyelids were still wet. She stroked his forehead and said, ‘I’m sorry.’ Then she kissed him on the lips. It was a kiss of friendship and genuine gratitude, and Paul knew it was time to go.

  He got up and dressed quickly, without saying anything. He felt decent and chivalrous, but he knew that if he stayed much longer he’d be tempted to tell Ursula off for coming on to him, then drawing away. He didn’t trust himself to keep quiet. He didn’t want to say anything he might later regret.

  Once he was dressed, Paul fetched his backpack and returned to the bedroom. Suddenly he remembered the barbeque in Ursula’s boot. ‘What about the Weber?’ he asked.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll drop it around.’

  Paul nodded, walked over to the bed and kissed her on each cheek. Ursula smiled ruefully at him and held her hands up in the air, as if to say, who can explain this, who can explain life?

  The sheet slipped and he glimpsed her breasts again and with that image fixed in his mind he turned, called goodbye over his shoulder and let himself out of the flat.

  As soon as Paul stepped out of the taxi, the hot northerly flayed his hair and tugged at his coat. He squinted, put his hand up to shield his eyes and hurried towards the chapel. He hadn’t meant to be late – it was the trains, the consistently unreliable trains.

  What a relief to be inside, out of the heat. The service had already started and there were no seats left. He found a spot to stand, leaning against the doorway where he could see over the woman in front of him. The coffin had been placed at the centre of the aisle at the edge of a raised platform. Paul found it hard to imagine Julian lying inside it; he didn’t want to think of Julian as still and cold.

  A man finished reading from the Bible and Julian’s sister made her way to the lectern. She was four years older than Julian and from the way she talked it was clear that they had been close. She described Julian’s school years, briefly mentioned his time at NIDA and went on to his business achieveme
nts. Paul learnt that Julian had developed and patented the stock-counting device that was used by stackers in supermarkets. Apparently, it had made Julian very wealthy.

  This is typical, Paul thought, another account of a man’s life according to his occupation, his career. He remembered the first improvisation workshop at NIDA, how Julian had played a door-to-door salesman selling God, and how Paul had almost lost it when Julian went through his spiel. Julian had been so convincing, so spontaneous and inventive. But tuning in again, Paul realised that Julian’s sister was talking about other aspects of Julian’s life – how he’d loved body boarding, how he had been active in the Big Brother scheme that befriended troubled teenagers, how he hosted dinner parties where he served lamb shanks and cheesecake. These anecdotes surprised Paul – the Julian he knew was contained by the two and a half years at NIDA.

  At the end of second year, they had taken a trip up the coast. The night before they left, they had gone for a drink and on the way home they had stolen a garden gnome from someone’s front yard. An average sort of gnome with a red hat, a full beard and a somewhat faded blue coat. He was standing at the edge of a pond holding a wooden fishing line out over the water.

  Julian picked up the gnome, took one look at him and christened him Mac, after the Head of Acting.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Paul asked.

  ‘We’re taking Mac on a holiday. He looks like he needs it.’

  ‘You’re nicking a garden gnome?’

  ‘No, we’re just borrowing him. And I’ll make sure he writes home so these good people don’t worry about him.’

  And so despite Leeanna’s protests that this was a bad example for Jack, the four of them set off on their trip up the coast with the garden gnome in the middle of the back seat. They took the first photo of Mac in front of the Big Banana at Coffs Harbour. Paul put sunglasses on Mac for the photo, while Julian wrote, ‘Top banana milkshakes here. Missing you, XXX,’ on the back. At Lennox Head they had great fun balancing Mac on a surfboard just as the waves were about to break. They chose a photo that made Mac look like he was hanging five. At Nimbin they put a joint in the gnome’s mouth and a bag of marijuana in his hand. In a bar on the Gold Coast they photographed Mac surrounded by gorgeous young women drinking schooners of beer. Finally they put him on a beach towel with Kerouac’s On the Road on one side and a bottle of Johnson’s Baby Oil on the other. Julian’s last note was deadpan: ‘Flying home Saturday. See you at the airport. Love Mac.’ If the owners hadn’t previously named their gnome, then Julian had done it for them.

  Paul could remember it all vividly, despite the twenty years that had passed: Julian sitting in the back seat of the station wagon with Mac on his knee singing along to the country standard ‘Stand by Your Man’ and each time replacing ‘man’ with ‘gnome.’ You had to be there, Paul thought, but the memory seemed like a good way to send off Julian. His sister had finished talking and everyone was singing a hymn. Paul wanted to sing ‘Stand by Your Gnome’; he wanted to lean over a grave and toss in a copy of Stanislavsky; he longed to drive and drive up the coast, stopping only to bury his head in the breaking surf. He wanted Julian back; he wanted his own youth back. The tears welled up in his eyes and he could not stop them.

  He saw the back of Ursula’s head, three rows from the front. After the evening in her flat he had tried to ring her a couple of times but had only managed to get the answering machine. Then Ursula had rung to tell him that Julian had died and to pass on the funeral details. They just couldn’t find another liver in time, she said. Paul could hear the pain in her voice. She spoke slowly and hesitated a lot, as if she hadn’t found a set of words to make it easier on herself. Paul had wanted to talk for longer, but Ursula said she had other calls to make and hung up quickly.

  The service ended and the coffin disappeared behind a sliding partition. Later that day Julian’s body would burn in a serious fire. Though not in the coffin. They would recycle that, or at the very least, remove the mock-gold handles. With burials you saw what happened, you were able to toss a handful of dirt on the coffin, you could linger by the grave and return later to see the mound covered by marble or grass. It was better than watching a coffin disappear behind a partition; it felt as if you were saying goodbye.

  People were trailing past Paul, leaving the chapel. He turned and made his way outside and was assaulted at once by the heat and the wind. Looking around he couldn’t see anyone he knew, couldn’t see where Ursula was. Someone was pointing out a woman in a black dress and saying that was Julian’s ex-wife, Rachel. She stood with her arm around her ten-year-old son. Paul looked at the boy, his blond hair, his shoulders beginning to thicken, the way he was standing with his head down as if he didn’t want to talk to anyone. Julian had mentioned Chris at the hospital, but never Rachel.

  ‘Paul.’ Ursula’s voice came from behind him. She was wearing a charcoal suit and a white blouse. Her eyes were red. She wrapped Paul up in a hug and held him for what seemed like ten seconds, maybe longer. ‘I’m so glad you could come,’ she said.

  ‘I nearly didn’t make it,’ he replied. ‘The train was late, then I couldn’t get a taxi –’

  ‘Why didn’t you ring me? I would have picked you up. Sometimes Paul, I just don’t … Well, let me drop you home, anyway.’

  ‘Thanks, Ursula. That’d be good.’

  The wind blew Ursula’s hair across her face. As she flicked it back into place, she took Paul by the arm and they turned their backs into the wind.

  ‘I can’t believe he’s gone,’ Paul said.

  ‘I know. I kept telling him to hang in there, that they’d get him a new liver, but he wasn’t lucky. And you know he only shared needles once or twice before giving up drugs for good.’

  Paul shrugged. It was one of the things he had liked about Julian, his recklessness, his lack of fear.

  ‘Look,’ Ursula said, ‘I’ll just give my condolences to Rachel and Chris and then I’m off. I can’t face the wake. Not today.’

  Paul thought that he should follow Ursula and do the same, but he didn’t know what he’d say. And he hadn’t met either of them. He watched Ursula weave through the crowd and greet them. She was talking to Julian’s son and he was looking up at her, and although Paul couldn’t hear what she said, her hand seemed to spin a web of comfort around Chris. It wasn’t long before Ursula had hugged the boy, kissed Rachel and turned back towards Paul.

  They walked towards Ursula’s car. Paul sat in the front seat. It was like entering a furnace. Paul’s mouth felt dry. The sweat trickled down his back. Julian was too young to die, but there was nothing that could change that now. Nothing that he or anyone else could do. But how could he say something that was so obvious? He glanced at Ursula, but she seemed preoccupied.

  They were at the gates of the crematorium before either of them spoke. ‘Oh God, I hate funerals,’ Ursula said.

  ‘But you’re good at it. I never know what to say. I feel like I’m acting without a single bloody rehearsal.’

  ‘You don’t have to be good. Bumbling works. Sincerity helps. But no one notices anyway.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. But saying you’re sorry just seems so inadequate.’

  They were back on Concord Road. The traffic was flowing smoothly, the air conditioning had kicked in. Paul wondered why he hadn’t taken off his coat. He tugged at his tie and undid the top button.

  They stopped at a set of traffic lights. ‘I’ll miss him,’ Ursula said, staring straight ahead. ‘God, I’ll miss him.’

  Paul refrained from inquiring about her relationship with Julian. What difference would it make if he could say yes, tick, they were lovers, or yes, tick, they were close friends? It was none of his business, really. If Ursula told him he’d listen, but somehow he preferred not knowing.

  Instead, Ursula began to talk about the Williamson play she was touring in next year. Rehearsals star
ted straight after Christmas. She was glad. Glad to have the work, glad to be leaving Sydney for a while. She was looking forward to the routine, the way her life would build towards those two hours in front of an audience. She was ready for fly-blown verandahs and drafty changing rooms. And the splendour of the new regional theatres that had sprung up in marginal seats. Perhaps she had Romany blood, she speculated, a distant ancestor who had plied his trade in market places and village greens, who had filled his life with costumes, fooling and the exhilarating sound of applause.

  Paul listened jealously to the details of the tour. But he wasn’t insanely jealous, for he had just received a call back for a second reading. It was a contemporary play about the waterfront strike. He was auditioning for the role of an investigative journalist, a role well suited to his talent, his range. It wasn’t a major theatre company, but a cooperative venture. Still, if the houses were good he’d do well. The director wouldn’t have called him back if she hadn’t liked what she’d seen. As the call back was the following morning, he only had the rest of the day to work on the detail of the piece, to get it right.

  ‘You’re playing a man seeking the truth,’ Ursula said with a knowing grin.

  ‘That’s me,’ Paul agreed. ‘An actor after the truth.’

  They had stopped outside Paul’s flat. ‘Do you want to come in?’ Paul asked.

  Ursula shook her head. ‘Right now I think I’ll go home and run a cool bath. I keep seeing Julian in little things, thinking of him … I guess I need to be alone. But after twelve weeks on the road, I should have my head together again. You understand, don’t you?’