Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer
We met at the bookstore, in the greasy boiler stockroom.
Trish pushed me forward, her shiny lipstick smeared onto her smile.
‘This is Charles,’ she said. ‘He’s been working here for two years so he knows all the tricks of the trade. He’s going to look after you on your first day, Caitlin.’
Charlie had a broken front tooth which I tried hard not to stare at. His dark oily hair curled over the collar of his white bookseller’s shirt and he had on black skinny jeans instead of the regulation dark slacks. He snapped shut the scalpel he was using to slit open dusty boxes of books and shook my hand.
‘So you’re the new Caitlin?’
I was suddenly conscious of my straight white teeth; my freshly ironed shirt.
‘The ‘new’ Caitlin?’
‘Oh yeah, I’ve got plenty of Caitlin stories I can tell you over a drink sometime …’
It seemed important to deliver a witty rejoinder but I couldn’t think of one. Trish jingled her keys and shouldered her beige handbag.
‘Well, I’m off. Have fun together, guys!’
For the first week, Charlie and I sat around unpacking books, playing the best of The Smiths on the tinny CD player and trading lines from Black Books. He told me he was a musician, a poet and a vegetarian, so I thought for sure he must be a really brainy guy. I liked the graceful curve of his smoking wrist as we rolled cigarettes outsides. I liked the way he held his head to one side like whatever I said was bound to be interesting or clever.
‘So … do you wanna get that drink?’ he asked as we pushed through the turnstiles at Heidelberg Station on Friday. A model glared at me from a billboard above us; she looked freshly bashed or gang-raped. The busy bodies of businessmen brushed past, the hoot of incoming trains competing with the sound of different service announcements.
‘Sure,’ I said, embarrassed by his broken tooth, but smiling broadly, too. ‘Tonight?’
We met at Pony, in the dim glow of the downstairs bar. Charlie’s eyes were already bright with a peculiar phosphorescence.
‘I take a lot of drugs,’ he said, ‘I just want you to know that right from the start.’ I shrugged. I wanted to be a cool girl; a girl who was chill. Besides, half the stories we’d shared had involved drug-addled nights and drunken hijinks. I thought he was just being dramatic.
‘I’m serious,’ he said, ‘I take drugs, like, every weekend. I don’t want you to get hurt.’
‘I won’t,’ I deadpanned. ‘Don’t let this newsreader’s face fool you.’
He laughed. ‘You know Trish freaks me out when she talks about you. She keeps ringing up to check on the store, asking, ‘How’s Caitlin fitting in, she’s such a nice girl’ …’
I rolled my eyes and took a filter from him; rolled a cigarette with it dangling off my lip. ‘I appreciate the sense of consideration that you’re showing me,’ I said, ‘But I can’t tell you how bored I am of being treated like I’m made of glass.’ We eyed each other speculatively for a moment and a sly pulse of excitement built in my stomach. For the first time in years, I wasn’t bored. I felt electric; powerful; a pearl of a girl.
We became a couple unconcernedly, casually. We wandered hand-in-hand down Smith Street, our reflection captured in shop windows and car mirrors. We were both part-time at uni, casual at the bookstore, and it was easy to become co-dependent. I was completely besotted with Charlie but when I saw him, I’d just say, ‘Oh hey. Yeah, right. I’ve missed you too.’ It was crucial to seem indifferent; not to be seen to care.
We went to cheap cafés and argued about the menu. We split the tab at seedy bars and sweated off the beer pong dancing to Joy Division. His friends told him I had great legs and I made cups of tea for people I didn’t know in the chill white calm of hungover mornings.
We were nearly always high, which created problems. We’d spend a lacklustre twenty minutes fumbling with each other in bed and then give up. ‘It’s me, not you,’ he’d say. ‘I take too many drugs.’ I didn’t know what to do so I did everything I could to make him feel powerful and virile in front of people. I smiled mockingly when friends complained about bad sex experiences like I was sequestered in a special, elite club.
I was too out of it to cry when I saw him exploring another girls’ mouth with his tongue at a party. He said, ‘It doesn’t count, babe. I can’t even get it up, remember?’ My lips were distractingly dry and there was a terrible heat in the back of my throat. I wanted Charlie to feel desire for me, but I knew that was not what he felt. Later that night, we spilt a bottle of red wine in his bed and slept in it anyway, the sheets damp and fermented.
Some of my friends couldn’t stand Charlie, could see through my smart talk and cigarette smokescreen. They said, ‘What’s happened to you? You used to be the smart one.’ I rolled my eyes. ‘Yeah? And where’s being ‘smart’ ever got me?’ They gave me strong maxims to repeat, things like ‘I mean this …’ As if I could set the rules, mark out the boundaries. It didn’t seem realistic.
Sometimes at his band’s gigs, Charlie would jump off stage and come kiss me in front of everyone. Those charming moments, the inconsistencies, it was all part and parcel, I told myself, of loving somebody artistic. When he said to me, in an accusatory tone of voice, ‘You know, I could really fall in love with you’, I responded, ‘Well, if you think you can … ’, like I was telling him whether or not he could get away with a polyester shirt. I didn’t want to put any pressure on him. I didn’t want him to feel obliged.
He dumped me anyway, despite that, despite everything. The morning light was just starting to creep through the cracks in my curtains and my head was a violent cloudburst of conflicting colours. We hadn’t slept yet, but Charlie swung his legs off the bed.
‘I’m going to go now,’ he said, cradling his clothes to his chest. I looked at him with my mouth open, uncomprehending. ‘Probably going to stay at Gerard’s. Listen babe, I liked you, I really did. Thanks for being so understanding – as always.’ His voice could be very soft. Like the fur of a kitten. There was a seam of bad breath all over the bed and Charlie kissed my cheek with his head angled like a periscope, pocketing his tobacco pouch. He shut the door gently behind him and I sat looking at my body in the mirror, watching my face fold.