A New Tense. Jo Day
“How come?”
“I don’t feel like it.”
“Okay,” I said again, even though I had a million questions.
“How’re you feeling?”
I considered. “Yeah, alright. Tired and jet-lagged but okay.”
He lit another cigarette. “Have you decided if you’re going to the funeral or not?”
“I dunno. When is it?”
“Day after tomorrow.”
“Right. Fuck. Um...I guess I’ll decide tomorrow.”
“Fair enough.”
A silence stretched between us. “So what’s happening with you, man, are you living here?”
“Yeah,” he said slowly. “For a little while.”
“Fuck.” I’d have asked what was wrong if I thought there was any chance that he’d answer me.
“Do you want to see the paper?”
“The paper?”
“There was an obituary in the paper today. I saved it in case you wanted to see it.”
I breathed deep. The air was warm and rich with jasmine. Somewhere on the street a family was having a barbecue, I could smell the smoke and hear voices from a backyard nearby.
“Yeah, okay.”
He went inside, sliding the door behind him. I stretched my arms up, trying to fix the knots in my back from the plane, even though it felt like the whole trip hadn’t happened, that I’d been in Berlin a second ago. Jones came back with beers for the two of us and handed me a newspaper, folded open at the obituaries page.
Turnbull, Madeline Jessica.
Beloved mother, and partner of Mark.
Funeral and memorial service will be held at
- and it gave the details of a church in St Kilda. Beloved mother? Who wrote that?
“So did you talk to this guy? To Mark?”
“Yeah.”
“What’d he sound like?”
He shrugged. “Just a guy. Pretty sad.”
I pictured some kind of English Victorian, waistcoat and all. I wondered how they’d met, if she’d gone on dates, what they’d have done. If they’d had a first kiss, if they’d held hands. Beloved mother. “He left his number, he said that you could call him.” He drew on his cigarette and exhaled quickly, the way he always smoked, little mannerisms that I’d already forgotten about. “Oh. Right.” I looked at the number. Put the paper in my pocket. “Fuck it, I’m not doing it today.” I sighed deeply and realised that I was beyond the point of reeking, and I hadn’t changed my underwear in days. “I’m gonna have a shower, I stink.” I was digging around in the pockets of the jeans I’d been wearing on the plane, trying to find a hair tie, when my fingers brushed against the unmistakeable thickness of a baggie. I was home and safe and through god knows how many airport securities, and here it was, not much, a few big lines of speed, but still my heart stopped in my chest for a moment and then, when I put a hand to my chest to remind it to do its job, it compensated by going double its normal rate. “Jesus fucking Christ,” I said, to no one. I sat on the edge of the bed, holding the baggie in front of me. “Shit,” I said, as I was tapping out a little line, just a little one, on the bedside table, rolling up a five dollar note from my wallet. The familiar burn. The shower was luxurious. My apartment in Neukölln was old and charming but the water pressure was ridiculous, just a trickle, Steffi came out of it looking fresh but I came out with soap still in my pit hair. This, though, this was blasting, and I was gasping with the pleasure of it. I got out. There was a full-length mirror on the opposite wall to the shower. I unwrapped the towel and took it in, body going so from the winter and belly protruding from the beers but still a strong body, and if it wasn’t conventionally beautiful it was beautiful in its abilities, there was strength underneath the so ness. The first time I’d taken all my clothes off around a woman — or a girl, we’d both been girls — had been fast, all of them off at once. I was saying here it is. Expecting disgust or laughter. Instead, she’d sat up in bed and smiled at me and pulled me down on top of her. I liberated one of Calliope’s hair ties, smoothed my hair from my face, and went into ‘my’ room. I put on fresh underwear and cut-offs that hadn’t been worn since summer. I hadn’t had any clean shirts to pack and now I didn’t want to wear anything that smelled of sweat. I walked to the kitchen in my bra and shorts, called outside. “Hey, can I borrow one of your shirts?” “Yeah, go nuts,” Jones said. He’d been looking at his phone, he put it face down on the table. “They’re in my room.” Everything was crisp but deliciously off-kilter. Jones’ room smelled of cigarette smoke and there was an empty Vegemite jar full of butts next to the window. I opened a beat-up duffle bag on the floor, expecting Jones’ usual jumble of mess, but it was empty except for a few leftovers — an odd sock, a ripped flyer of a band I didn’t know. His general mess was in his cupboard. I picked out a black t-shirt, soft and clean, and pulled it on. Looked in the mirror, inspected my smile again, seeing how far I could go before I revealed the gap. I helped myself to his deodorant and then looked around at the room again. There was a notebook on the bed. I picked it up, just to hold it, and then put it back. My heart was racing a bit and I wanted a cigarette. I went back outside and lit one and started to talk about a band I’d seen, a feminist band from Sweden that I’d seen last week in Prenzlauer Berg, how when me and Julia had talked to them afterwards they’d said we should go visit them and play some shows and we could stay at their place, they all lived together and I was envisioning some blissed-out commune. Probably it was just drunk talk — our band wasn’t so good yet, we were just starting, but still, it was exciting. Halfway through I realised that Jones hadn’t asked me any kind of questions, I’d just come out and started to talk about it, and I was talking too fast. When I stopped for breath he smiled. “So how’s the jet lag?” “Yeah, I’m fucked.” Ordinarily I’d have told him about the speed, offered him some, but it still felt a little weird between us, and there was a self-awareness of the fact that I was taking speed just to sit here, and I would’ve had to admit that I’d brought it all the way with me, accident or not. “No arguments here.” I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. “What?” “It’s just... it’s fucking amazing to see you, man. I’ve really missed you.” “I’ve missed you too,” he said. We kept drinking. Jones played more and more music but none of the stuff that we ever listened to together. We didn’t talk about Pete. I guessed I couldn’t blame him, he’d been through the same, or nearly the same because Jones hadn’t found him. But I couldn’t bring it up. I couldn’t imagine his reaction if I told him that the world was still fucked for me, not all the time, but sometimes when I lay in bed trying to sleep after a good night out Pete’s face would come to me and I’d crawl into bed with Julia, and if she wasn’t home or had someone over then I’d drink in bed until I could cry or pass out, or both. And that wasn’t fair, anyway. It was impossible to know how Jones felt, and I didn’t really know what it was that I wanted to talk to him about. Mostly I didn’t know how to voice the feeling that I was arriving at something, some surety, but I didn’t know of what. Maybe acceptance, I sometimes thought, and I thought as well that I was avoiding that as much as I possibly could because that idea was so much worse than any pain. The speed made me sound nasal, made me sniff every few minutes. Jones had his bare feet on the chair, was smoking cigarette after cigarette. I went to the bathroom to piss and have another line. It was still early, or early enough to have more beers and see if Jones had some weed to smoke before crawling into the clean bed. A nice lie-in tomorrow. I walked down the corridor. I was a bit drunk, I had to trace a hand along the wall as I walked, and as I did my arm brushed a photograph and nearly knocked it down. I righted it, swaying slightly. The house was covered in photos of Jones as a kid, looking at the camera, masses of curly hair, so fucking beautiful that I imagined his whole childhood had been plagued by old women in supermarkets pinching his cheeks until blood vessels were at risk of bursting. I went back outside. I was getting more and