Minotaur

1 SMELL

1

Where was I?

In bed, obviously. Willow’s bed – that much also obvious. In Willow’s secret hideaway. But where was that?

A heavy gear-change in a nearby street. Truck? Bus? A clue, at any rate: a main road.

‘We’ll have to sublet the place,’ I whispered into the nape of her neck.

‘Hmm?’ she murmured, hard to rouse at the best of times, let alone in the wake of a flotilla of margaritas.

Time was easier to nail down than place: Friday, sometime around dawn. The first traffic starting to hum, the early birds making early music outside.

Inside, the night-owl – me – hadn’t slept a wink. ‘How long is your lease? Six months? Twelve?’

‘What time is it?’ she said, still three-quarters asleep.

‘Who cares?’

‘I care, Big Nose. Go back to sleep.’

Easier said than done; I’d slept enough in Emergency to last a month. ‘I like the new bed,’ I burbled on. ‘You can bring the bed. And the sheets. Love the satin sheets.’

And the musk between the sheets. Bring those musks: the fish-spice of sex, the after-trace of perfume, the bass-note of sweat. Her small, compact body glowed with heat; the bed was an oven of scents. I nuzzled my big, surprisingly loveable nose into her neck, gratefully; it had been too long.

‘Bring them where?’ she said, rolling towards me.

‘Home, of course.’

I found her lips and kissed them: their boozy morning-after sourness was also part of who she was. Who we were, once upon a time. The taste of the dumplings she had steamed, drunkenly, at midnight were also in the mix somewhere: faint ginger, a prickle of chilli, whether on her lips, or mine, or both. I’d pictured her face in my mind’s eye every night we’d been apart; I’d summoned back every inch of her body as best I could, but in the end those memories, all memories, were as shallow as dreams. Like dreams, they had no smell to them, no taste, no touch. No body heat.

And no voice. ‘This is my home now, Big Nose,’ she said, pulling away.

‘I can hardly move in here,’ I said, lost in happy stupidity.

‘Richard, listen . . .’

The formal name-change jarred, but not enough. ‘It would take a year to fit the place out.’

I sensed she was searching my face. ‘No one’s moving anywhere. Richard.’

‘I thought . . . After last night.’

‘Last night changes nothing.’

Plain words, but I tried to find less plain meanings. ‘I don’t follow. Why did you bring me here?’

‘You signed yourself out, remember? Against medical advice. You were in no fit state to go home.’

‘But fit enough to share your bed?’

‘That wasn’t meant to happen,’ she continued in the same calm, matter-of-fact way she always spelt things out. ‘I drank too much. You know what I’m like. I’m sorry.’ She paused, then squeezed my flaccid cock, also matter-of-factly. ‘At least you know it’s working again.’

My fingers found her wrist, gripped it. ‘What’s that supposed to mean? You lure me home for a mercy fuck, then dump me again? You promised me it was temporary. We just needed time apart.’

The cock was released, the wrist tugged free; she rolled abruptly out of bed and out of reach.

‘Where are you going?’

‘I can’t be near you when you’re angry, Richard,’ she said with that same measured calmness.

‘You think I’d hurt you? After all you’ve been through?’

Was this the stupidest thing I’d said so far? I regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth.

‘You broke my nose,’ she said. ‘Remember?’

‘I couldn’t even see your nose!’

‘It wasn’t the first time you’d lashed out,’ she said, then added that same calm infuriating word: ‘Remember?’

Anger Management Step One: count to ten. I got as far as three. ‘It was the first time you got in the way! How many times do I have to apologise? It was an accident.’

‘Just like the pills were an accident?’

‘You think I took them deliberately?’

‘I can’t do this now,’ she said, and pulled on some rustling item of clothing. A silk kimono, probably. Everything in her refuge seemed made of silk. Or satin. ‘I’m late for handover,’ she added. ‘And I’ve got a splitting headache.’

‘I said, you think I tried to top myself?’

Heavier items of clothing began hitting the quilt next to me, stirring the air, faintly. ‘Only you know the answer to that, Richard. Get dressed. Please. I’ll drop you at the Night Shelter on my way.’

Our wild night together might never have happened; she was back in daytime rational get-things-done-mode. Chinese mode, she’d often joked in the days when I’d loved both sides of her split brain.

‘I can find my own way to the Night Shelter,’ I said, and began tugging on clothes, only to get bits of my anatomy in the wrong holes and tug them off again.

Which further enraged me. ‘It disgusted you so much to make love to a blind man?’

‘What disgusts me is being hit by a blind man.’

I wrestled with the clothes a little longer, trying not to say what I said next. ‘Are you fucking someone else?’

A weary yawn; I sensed she was rubbing her eyes. One memory that never fades: those almond eyes, their heavy upper lids so perfectly sculpted they might have been glued on each morning along with the big lashes. A million of them in the country these days, and billions further north, but hers still as rare as ever.

At least in my particular mind’s eye.

‘Not that again,’ she said.

‘Who is it? Who are you fucking?’

‘I just fucked you, remember? And before that – guess who? You! Again! Even if it’s so long ago you’ve bloody well forgotten!’

At last, a little passion. A deadly combination when she was on song: eyes narrowed against the dust and glare of the Mongolian steppes, mouth broadened by the western suburbs of Adelaide. Part of me wanted to kiss her again, on the mouth and the eyes; but most of me just wanted to lash out.

‘How do you live with yourself? Walking out on a blind man? What do you tell people?’

No answer. She was rummaging in her bedside drawer, a sound as familiar as those that followed: the tearing of tinfoil, the two aspirins fizzing in the glass of water.

When she spoke she was matter-of-fact again. ‘I tell them what I tell myself. I sat by his hospital bed every day for a month. I took a year off my studies when he finally came home. Remember?’

That word again; I forced myself to stay silent.

‘I loved him, comforted him. Tough love at times, but only when needed. I nursed him through his rages. His self-pity. Through all those times when he wouldn’t fuck me. And how did he repay me?’

She paused and drank the dissolved aspirins, calmly.

I was anything but. ‘Repay you? What was I? A business investment?’

‘I drove him to blind school,’ she methodically ticked off more key performance indicators. ‘To dog training. Those writing classes the shrink recommended.’

My T-shirt and jeans had found their correct limbs at last; my jacket followed. ‘Through thick and through thin,’ I said, ‘in sickness and in health,’ then added my own short-arm jab: ‘Remember?’

‘You think I didn’t try, Richard? You were a full-time job, but I didn’t mind.’ At least she was talking to me now, not about some business plan. ‘I just wanted my husband back. Who drove you kicking and screaming to anger management? Fat lot of good that did. No one could ever tell you a thing. Least of all me. And you’re still too blind to see it!’

A figure of speech, yes, but no slip of the tongue. Willow’s tongue never slipped, at least before margarita hour.

‘Figure of speech,’ she echoed my thoughts with her usual ease. ‘So don’t go adding that to your list of grievances.’

I felt about on the floor for my boots with the blunt, stubby fingers of my feet. And biting my own slippery tongue. She knew me too well. She knew everything too well.

‘Here,’ she said, and laid my cane across my thighs.

I swept it, clattering, onto the floor.

‘My point exactly,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing as precious to you as a grievance, is there?’

‘I was in intensive care a day ago! I nearly died!’

‘You slept, Richard. For a couple of days. A handful of sleepers was never going to kill you.’

Her logic was implacable; I felt trapped, shut in, about to explode. ‘That so? Well, maybe it won’t be pills next time!’

‘The truth,’ she said. ‘Finally. It was deliberate.’

Bedroom eyes, a hippie name, boozy morning-after breath – but a mind like a steel trap. I jerked upright, desperate to escape, collided with a wall, groped for the door and did a fingernail on the jamb.

‘You’ll be sorry!’ I shouted as I stepped through the doorway.

Ridiculous words, but the echoes proved useful. Short voice-bounce ahead, long bounces left and right: a narrow passage. But which end was the front door? Cue another truck, rumbling by, stageleft; I turned in that direction. A great fist seemed to be squeezing my chest; I needed air.

‘Hang on, you stubborn idiot. You forgot your boots.’

‘Fuck off!’ I said as I found the handle of the front door and yanked it open.

‘At least take your stick, Richard.’

I thrust my left hand, palm up, behind me as I stepped out; the folded cane was smacked into it like a relay baton.

‘I’ve missed you,’ she said. ‘But I needed some space. I needed some time out. After this little performance, I think I still need it.’

‘Take as much time as you like,’ I said.

I shook the cane out, snapped it straight, tapped the edge of a narrow porch, and stepped down. A residue of sense in me, at least: shoes I could live without, even Willow I might learn to live without – maybe – but not my trusty cane.

2

Sounds: the hard acoustic of the house behind me, a softer world ahead, echo-free and already fuzzy round the edges with bee-buzz.

Smells: the cloying sweetness of jasmine to the left. A faint savoury rock-pool stink – prawn heads in a garbage can? – somewhere to the right.

She didn’t eat seafood; had she been serving aphrodisiacs to her new boyfriend? Such was my state of mind, I would have gone through her garbage given a pair of working eyes. Instead I tapped a low picket front-fence, found the gate, fingered the latch, and walked through into the street.

Which street? Willow had kept her address secret all these months. I sniffed for more clues. Not a main road after all, it seemed: no trace of diesel in the after-trail of jasmine. No exhaust fumes of any kind.

Time to swallow my pride and ask for help. I turned my mouth to my collar microphone. ‘Current location, Siri?’

No answer. The sisterhood, sticking together? The truth was less dramatic: she was powered down. I tugged her from the belt holster, thumb-printed the on-button, reholstered her, and repeated the question.

‘246A Wakefield Street,’ came the familiar, soothing contralto. ‘Adelaide.’

‘So much for sisterhood solidarity,’ I said.

‘I’m not sure I understand, Richard.’

‘Don’t even try. I need you in my corner. Drop pin, current location.’

‘Pin dropped. Name pin?’

‘Gotcha,’ I said, and tapped away along the footpath, still barefoot but so angrily pleased with myself I hardly noticed. ‘Chez Gotcha.’

‘Show Gotcha may be beyond my abilities at the moment, Richard.’

I had to laugh. ‘It’s good to hear your voice,’ I said, not for the first time.

‘Flatterer,’ she said, also not for the first time.

In fact I was mostly flattering myself. I chose hers from a range of voices, male and female. High-pitched voices carry further, I told myself at the time, but maybe I just craved extra female company. We’ve lived in each other’s pockets ever since, on her side literally. Each time we step out the door it’s a kind of date.

‘At least you’ve stuck by me,’ I told my date.

‘Your satisfaction is all the thanks I need, Richard.’

I managed another gruff laugh, if less at her nonsense than mine. I might as well have taken comfort from a talking parrot on my shoulder. Plenty of candidates for that job were feeding in the trees above me: lorikeets hinge-squeaking at each other as I tapped closer; cockatoos squawking from higher branches further off. A waspy scooter engine burst into life behind me, revved once, then buzzed my way. I quickened my pace but there was no escape.

‘Come down off your high horse, Big Nose,’ Willow said, drawing abreast. ‘And jump on mine. Please.’

‘At the risk of repeating myself: fuck off.’

‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that, Richard,’ Siri whispered in my ear, supportively. ‘At least take your boots, you stubborn git,’ from Willow.

‘You can chuck them over the nearest powerline, for all I care.’

The thought amused me, despite myself: a little reminder dangling in her face each time she stepped out her unlisted front door. I would have done it myself, if it wouldn’t have taken me all day.

‘No powerlines in the city since 1989,’ she said in her calm, know-all manner. It might have been Siri speaking, if not for the last word: ‘Remember?’

She braked and pulled into the kerb; I stalked on.

‘I’ll leave them back here,’ she called after me. ‘By the light-pole. Your socks are tucked inside.’ She revved her engine, and drew alongside again. ‘I love you, Richard,’ she said, matter-of-factly, ‘but I can’t live with you until you see yourself more clearly.’ Then she U-turned, and buzzed off in the other direction.

‘Go to hell,’ I muttered. ‘And take your figures of speech with you.’

‘You have religion,’ Siri murmured from my collar, ‘but I only have silicon.’

She’d picked the wrong time for another joke, even one I hadn’t heard before. ‘Find route. Current location to RSPCA Night Shelter,’ I said, and tapped on, following instructions.

A bicycle squeaked towards me – Gotcha, Gotcha – passed by then stopped.

‘Excuse me, Sir! Sir! Are these your boots by the light-pole?’

A boy scout voice, on the verge of breaking; I tapped on, ignoring it. The bike hit the ground with a clatter; a pair of footsteps came jogging in my wake.

‘Hey, Mister! Here, behind you! I think I’ve found your boots.’

Persistent little do-gooder. ‘Piss off,’ I said, ‘or I’ll tell the scoutmaster you ripped them off a blind man.’

The footsteps stopped dead. He hadn’t picked a good day for a good deed. ‘Just trying to help, Sir.’

‘You want to help? Chuck them over the powerlines.’

A pause, then a puzzled, ‘There are no powerlines in this street, Sir.’

I kept walking, barefoot, leaving the Boy Samaritan in my wake wearing an expression on his face (I could picture it clearly enough) as if his good deed had exploded across it like a trick cigar.

The thought cheered me a little more. I’d given him a hard time, yes, but I’d also given him one hell of a story to tell. It was my good deed for the day, in a way. Bad intentions, but goodish outcome. Might the road to heaven, the road back to heaven, be paved with bad intentions? My amusement at this riff lasted only a few more steps. Bad choice of metaphor, given my unshod feet. The day was warming fast: the rough chemical reek of bitumen rising from the road, the paving beginning to scorch my soles.

‘Hutt Street twenty paces,’ Siri piped up.

‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ I said, having caught the faint diesel-spoor of the bus route at last.

‘Knowledge is good, Richard,’ she said, cheerily unperturbed. ‘Can you be more specific?’

I tapped the base of the traffic-light pole, pressed the walk-button. ‘The way to a woman’s heart?’

‘Interesting question.’

‘Do tell,’ I said as the walk tone bleeped, and I stepped down onto the burning bitumen and crossed over, gingerly, my feet already toast.