A New Tense. Jo Day
“Yeah,” says Pete, “but give ‘em a wash first, they’re probably filthy.”
The woman holds the jeans away from her for a moment and then shrugs, taking them with her.
We stay in this position for a while, only moving to get more beers from the stinking fridge inside or to roll cigarettes. The sun goes down slowly, we’re still in the same positions, and after a while I can talk about the other stuff with Pete, how excited I am for Europe, about how now I could stay for longer, about how he should stop spending his money on bullshit to come meet me somewhere.
“Alright, mate, I know you’re upset, but beers, speed and records aren’t bullshit.”
I lift my eyebrows at him.
“But point taken, I’ll save up, you find me a place to stay and I’ll be there in a heartbeat.”
“Fuck off , I’m not living with you again, you’re forever pissing on the toilet floor.”
“Now that’s just your hurt emotions getting the better of you, isn’t it? That’s surely not directed at me, your dearest friend. Hey?” He starts to nudge me. “Hey, who’s gonna meet up with you?”
We look up as Jones walks up the street, inspecting the clothes before stepping up to us.
“Bloody hell, Laurie, they’re not yours, are they? I didn’t think you had any dresses.”
“They’re not mine, but I have a couple.”
“Really?” He takes my beer, drinks most of it and lets out a low gargling burp before he hands it back to me with only the dregs left. I sigh.
“Have I ever seen you in a dress?”
“Yeah, man, probably. Why?”
He sits down on the other couch, pulls a pouch of tobacco from his pocket. “I just reckon you’d look weird in a dress. Like a dog on its hind legs.”
“Jesus, Jones, fuck off.”
“Yeah, come on, Jones, mate,” says Pete, “not today, she’s had a fucker of a time. Go get a beer and be nice, alright?”
My phone rang again sometime later when I was sitting in Julia’s room with her, drinking more beers and listening to music. It was an Australian landline number.
“Hey, Calliope?”
“No, it’s Jones.”
“Oh.”
“Look,” he said quickly, “I was a dick before. It threw me, I didn’t know what to say.”
“Mm,” I said back, which I hoped conveyed, yeah, you were a dick, but that’s not been a huge change, has it?
“I know, I know. So. Are you coming back? Can you spare the time?”
“Well, yeah, I can spare a week or two, maybe more, it’s just...I don’t know, man. Am I gonna get a black suit, go to her funeral? That seems fucking weird.”
“Yeah. I get that. But I was talking to mum, and she talked to some guy Mark — your mum’s partner, I guess, or ex-partner, whatever the fuck you call it — and she said there was some stuff with the will that you need to sign for. Might be easier if you came here.”
I got the subtext, but I wanted him to say it. “They could just send that over to me though, couldn’t they? I don’t need to go all the way back for that.”
There was a pause. “I want to see you,” he said. “We haven’t... well, you know how it’s been. It’s hard, mate, on the phone, or email, or fucking Skype. I do want to see you. Even if it’s just for a week.”
It was partly the breakfast beers, partly the fact that I hadn’t heard him say anything that could be construed as slightly emotional in a long time, but I was close to crying. I held my hand over the receiver and coughed to get rid of any hoarseness in my voice.
“Yeah, I’d like that too.”
“Good. Okay. So, I’m looking at the flights now. There’s one for tomorrow afternoon, can you do that?”
“My time or yours?”
“Yours, obviously,” he said.
“Okay, well, yeah, but won’t that be crazy expensive? I don’t know how soon I can pay that back.”
“Don’t worry about that, we can sort it out later. It seems like you’ll be getting money soon enough anyway.”
“Oh. Yeah, right. Well, yeah, book it then, I guess.”
“You guess or you’re sure?”
“I’m sure. Is there a return flight?”
“Not for this,” he said, “you can do that when you’re here, should be easier. Email your details, yeah? Passport number and address and birthday and all that shit.”
“You don’t know my birthday?”
“Oh, the outrage! Like you know mine.”
“Twenty-fifth of May,” I said immediately.
There was a pause on the other end. “September eighteenth?”
“Twenty-eighth.”
“Close enough,” he said. “Send me everything and I’ll get on it.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem. Anyway, I have to go. You’re alright, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, man. It’s fucking weird, but yeah, I’m alright.”
“Okay. You can call me, you know, if it’s not.”
I wondered if Calliope had just walked into the room, because that didn’t sound like it was for my benefit. Of course, it could’ve been drunk paranoia on my end. He’d always been like this to an extent, it seemed like it was hard for him to open up, he did it well enough with me but still sometimes I had to almost interrogate him before he’d tell me what was on his mind.
“Yeah. Sure. I’ll send you the stuff now. And I’ll see you — when?”
“Wednesday. We’ll get you from the airport.”
“Yeah, right. Cheers. Bis bald.”
He scoffed on the other end, and said, “Don’t be pretentious, Lauren, you know I don’t speak German.”
“Dickhead.”
“Yup,” he said, and hung up.
The Flight
There was some problem with the booking, I didn’t know what, I couldn’t understand. I don’t know why I spoke in German, I could barely speak it and my accent was awful. I tried anyway, but instead of saying I wanted to get my ticket I used Muschi instead of möchte. The woman hid a smile and shook her head and I felt like a fucking idiot. I’d been learning German for months, that was a mistake I thought I’d gotten over. My face burned, I imagined school kids chanting on the oval: Laurie wants pussy! Laurie wants pussy! “I have to go home,” I said in English. “My mum died.” I didn’t say it to make her feel guilty, it just kind of came out, and she looked sympathetic. She told me that she was sorry and spent a few minutes frowning at the screen before she smiled at me sympathetically. “Everything’s fine, you can go through,” she said. The flight was in a few hours. I changed most of my remaining money, which was fuck all, to Australian dollars. Spent the rest of my euros on whiskey at the bar, anything to cover last nights ‘one beer’ in Neukölln, which of course turned into all the beers and three hours sleep. I’d hoped to sleep as soon as I got to my seat on the plane but the man next to me was snoring and farting in his sleep. I welcomed the distraction of food but it quickly became a toxic mass in my stomach and the days of drinking caught up with me and I had to clamber over the snorer so that I could vomit. There was a stopover in Abu Dhabi. I caught a glimpse