The Outing, page 16
The ordinariness was out of place.
At the park, he stared at the blank spot where he’d seen the attack. Then faced the swings, empty and motionless. The cars, a muted drumming from the bridge. The cicadas, a chirruping buzz. They became part of the silence. He looked over at the shelter where they would have waited together for the ferry. Waiting to go back to their other lives.
He went and sat, imagining he and Johnny sitting side by side in the shelter. He closed his eyes and it became the stage. Another ending. Different. Their last performance at the Schonell. Uni. Their last day.
He loved that feeling. The exquisite stillness of the theatre contrasting with the aliveness in him. But it was spoiled. He was so angry. Johnny’s big declaration. Completely stuffing up their friendship.
He heard something and peered into the dark crevices of the crimson curtains. Johnny emerged and sat next to him.
He could still feel the tension in his thigh, and how he softened it, and it grazed Johnny’s.
“I was waiting for you,” Johnny said.
“I was winding down, enjoying the feel of the place. It's like, I don't know. No. I do… It's like here you can play out a different story, anything can happen, and you can be anything.”
Neither of them spoke.
“Anyway, it's only been ten minutes.”
“Not what I meant,” Johnny ran his hand through his hair. “Can I tell you something?”
“If you want.”
“I was eleven,” Johnny said, “when I came out. Marnie and I- We went together and told Dad. He kind’ve guessed. Said it wouldn't be easy, and something vague about being true to yourself.”
He squeezed his eyes closed to shut out the memory of himself at eleven.
He did it now.
And then the past insisted. Look at this. Don’t shut it off.
He was back there, and Johnny was telling him, “I almost had a cat then too. A stray. It was scrawny, sick. I gave it some milk, and it purred. The next day, I put more milk out and waited, and waited. Dad said to leave it. It might be frightened. So I waited inside, all day, watching until the milk curdled and separated.”
Something lapped the edges of Johnny's eyes.
He looked away and then the back of Johnny’s fingers brushed along his arm.
He didn't move. There was a buzzing inside his inner ear as if he'd just finished a long run. He felt hot, but a shiver starting from the site of Johnny's touch, raced up the back of his neck. It spread across his shoulders tingling behind each ear, and the breath he'd been holding rushed out in an almost silent, “Oh.”
The fingers trailed downwards to his hand, and then Johnny's hand closed over it.
They sat, silently side by side. Johnny lifted the hand and placed it on his thigh holding it there.
His insides tightened and he listened to Johnny breathing till he couldn't hear it above the blood rushing to his face and between his legs.
“Robert,” it was a breathy whisper, “look at me.”
He opened his eyes. He hadn't noticed he'd closed them, but stayed looking down.
“Look at me.”
Slowly he turned his head and lifted his face.
“I'm going to kiss you.” Johnny leaned forward. Their eyes locked and closed.
At the last moment he jerked his head away.
Sensing it, Johnny opened his eyes.
He kept his face averted. Then suddenly aware of his hand still on Johnny's leg, he snatched it away.
Johnny lifted himself off the stage and faced him, “You can't be serious.”
“Don't.”
“Don't what? Why shouldn't I be upset.”
“Look, you're my best friend. I love you. OK? But I'm not gay.”
Hmmph. There it was. Again.
Keep watching.
“I’m not gay. I don't know how you got that idea. I'm not anti or anything. It's-”
“Marnie said you'd say that.”
“What's it got to do with her?” He could taste the spite and paused, softening the next words. “I don't see her like that, in that way. We've been friends since-”
“I know. She told me. You kissed her what, two, three times? Not even a hint of teenage lust. Fuck, Robert. In case nothing else came up and bit you on the arse, didn't that ever make you wonder?”
“What? You discuss the ins and outs of your romantic interests with your sister? Who does that?”
“Don't try and make this about me,” Johnny countered, “and that's not what I said.”
He clamped his mouth shut and counted in time with his heartbeat. At fifteen he started again.
Johnny held his ground and his silence.
How Johnny? How did you maintain that presence. That dignity? What the hell did you see in me?
On either side of the rows of blank-faced chairs, bands of light from the stair risers waterfalled faintly towards them. The Schonell Theatre's feature ceiling lights, dimmed now, looked like a night sky twinkling overhead.
He looked into it, searching for answers, and fell into the past, into the ceiling mould spore stars in his bedroom. He'd wiped them out of his mind, struggling with a ladder and a bucket, and the bathroom cleaning brush. Bleach running down his arms, and tears running down his face. Scrubbing away the memories that swirled into his mind whenever he forgot not to look. Terry, and the lollies. Those boys.
He looked down and Johnny's face floated back into view.
“I'm trying to help. You know?”
“Well, thanks all the same,” he cringed at his mother's arrogance coming from his mouth. “But you've got it wrong. Or maybe I sent the wrong signals.”
“Look,” Johnny's hand rested on Robert's shoulder.
Concentrating on its weight and warmth, so different to Lauren's, he thought about how light and normal hers was. It was how his life would be. How he would be. Her face formed in his mind and a raised eyebrow under the silvery-blond fringe questioned him, What's all this about Robert? And before he could answer, her face turned into his mother's and the slow creep of self-loathing began its move. He held the shudder in.
“Look,” Johnny said again, “I know you're uncomfortable with the idea, but it gets easier.”
The hand lifted from his shoulder. He wanted it back. Unanchored, he floundered, “I thought we were friends. Can't you just be my friend?”
Johnny put both hands on the stage and hoisted himself up again.
Their thighs touched again.
He felt a wave of anticipation starting with the skin against the floorboards. He clenched and followed it towards his ribcage, as it rippled out across his chest and up the back of his neck. He wallowed in it. Again.
But then Johnny moved. It was only a hand-width. It felt like more.
Already seesawing, his attention sought the pressing indentation of Johnny's hand gripping the right-angle of the stage floor.
He sucked in a breath. The imprint was so strong. He could still feel it.
Thought of anything except feeling its heel wedged into the side of his hip no longer existed. He wondered if Johnny would try to kiss him again and imagined leaning in this time. What would it feel like? His face was getting warm, and his breath was shallowing.
He stared ahead, knowing the truth, but not giving it a voice.
“I can't spend my life waiting for you to be more than my friend Robert. I'm not going to stick around and watch you get married and pretend I'm OK with it. I can't. I just can't.”
Silence.
Johnny lifted his chin and staring out over the unresponsive auditorium, “You're going to have to come out one day. Your whole life can't be an act.”
He was stone and then the words tumbled, “It's not an act. I'm not gay. I can't be.”
Something crept across Johnny's eyes blocking out the light.
“I've been seeing Lauren.”
“I know,” Johnny's hand raked his hair back behind his ear.
“Anyway, even if I were, it's not just about me. What do you think would happen to my dad? Joh would bury him. I can see the headlines. There won't be any, jovial 'never mind, don’t you worry about that'. He'd lose his seat. And Mum? It's not that easy.”
“I didn't say it was. But it's not that hard either. People deal with it.”
“Don’t be so naïve Johnny. They don't 'deal with it'. It breaks them. In case you've forgotten, last year, hah. First ever gay mardi-gras. What a joke. Arrests. Beatings. Even afterwards, in so-called protective custody. And that was in Sydney for God's sake, where gay's ok,” he scoffed again. “And after? You're a criminal. Forever. Do you get that? It never goes away. How the fuck can I be a lawyer if I'm a criminal, illegal? Huh? Tell me.” He waited. “See? You can't.”
Fear and disappointment, jostled with regret and anger and shame creating a storm in his eyes. “How are you supposed to live, like… a normal life, and be gay?”
Johnny lifted one shoulder, “How are you supposed to live and not be who you are?”
“You still don't get it,” the words sharp and jagged, lightning-like.
“I do get it,” Johnny's voice was flat in comparison, “you don't.”
“What? What do you want me to do? Five years. Five years I’ve spent here, working my arse off to be a lawyer.”
“There are other things you can do. We could move interstate. Overseas. You don't have to be a lawyer.”
“Are you joking? Honestly?” he snorted. “Sorry Mum, sorry Dad. Changed my mind. I'm going to be a queer instead of a lawyer. You don't mind, do you? The wasted money, the wasted time. I'm moving too. ’Bye.”
“But it's all right if you waste your life,” Johnny's calm slapped him. “And what about my life? Do you get to waste mine too?”
He was stone again.
Johnny pushed himself off the stage and started walking up the waterfall stairs.
“I can't.”
The anguish twisting his insides was still as raw. Back then it had transported in his voice.
Johnny had heard it. Felt it. It had pummeled his departing back, and the something close to breaking that Johnny had been holding together, fell apart.
Johnny’s legs stopped moving. He drew in a long sedate breath and slowly his bunched fists unfurled. It seemed as if their opening held some promise, a change, hovering, hesitant, yet to arrive. And it turned him around and propelled him back, “You can. We can. You won't be doing this on your own. It's both of us. We'll find a way.”
“There isn't one. Don't you see that? There is, no, way,” his mouth set, then quivered. His exhale blew away the remnants of his composure. He looked up and the clouds building behind his eyes broke. He stared ahead seeing nothing till Johnny shimmered, shadowlike through his tears, moving away, and in the blurred dimness, appeared to be floating up the waterfall with the muted stars glistening overhead. A silent sob heaved itself from him.
As the door into the foyer opened, the back of Johnny’s head, emblazoned with bright light had seared itself.
When the door closed, the waterfall lights and the soft glistening overhead, again became the only things illuminating the theatre. He rubbed his eyes, sniffed, and forced a breath past the lump in his chest. Gradually his heart remembered its rhythm and as his tears dried, his shoulders retracted, and the mantra from his childhood returned, Terry will be OK. He looked up. These stars twinkled, not like the mould ones, “Johnny will be OK. We'll be OK,” he didn't realise he'd said it out loud.
He pushed off the edge of the stage the same way Johnny had, and moved forward, his step measured and deliberate. His head nodding with gravitas, as if he'd just agreed to something momentous.
But at the top of the waterfall, he’d opened the door into the foyer and there was no-one there.
I’m sorry Johnny. I’m sorry. I let you walk away. I didn’t know- I didn’t want to know what I was missing till it was too late. And now it is. All over again. I’m so glad I told you. I’m so glad you knew that, before… oh God, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have left you by yourself. I’m so so sorry.
He sat in the park shelter. Breathing shallowly and slowly. As if the air was too big to swallow in one whole piece. As if, if he got too much at once, it would burst some small aperture and he’d shrivel up as life drained through it, leaving small puddles in his wake, that evaporated instantly in the heat, or soaked invisibly into the ground. No one would even notice it was happening. He would be a shell. Robert from the outside. Nothing on the inside.
He looked back at the swings and then scanned the park. Through the drying tears he noticed the blue and white police tape winding around the stubby wooden pylons holding the ferry shelter out of the river, and finishing, staked in the grass in front of the mangroves.
Is this where they found you?
His heart had been subdued, almost weary, but now it started waking up, punching and trying to get out. Standing clear he turned a hundred and eighty degrees, looking up and over towards the underside of the bridge, following it to a place about a third of the way across and down river.
Walking became jogging then a flat-out run.
At Johnny’s apartment he went straight to the wardrobe shelf where he'd seen Johnny's camera. Yes. And a spare film.
Back at the park, he started clicking. He was microns away from one hundred percent certain they could show that Johnny hadn't jumped and maybe… he pushed away the images of that night and was then helpless to stop the dreadful made up ones which might be the truth.
After he'd exhausted the second roll of film, he did what he'd come to do and put up Ernie's notice with a silent prayer that Alan John Peters would actually want this stuff and come to Ernie's to claim it.
Returning the camera to its shelf Robert pressed his face against the clothes sniffing the fabric for Johnny’s presence then unconsciously he reached up searching. He didn't know what for, until at the back behind folded knitwear he felt a box.
Sitting on the bed, he foraged. When he found a small Monopoly house key-ring, he attached it to Johnny's apartment and garage key, and clipped it onto his own keyring, There were photos at the bottom, he found one of Johnny at about thirteen or fourteen, handsome even at that awkward age, with a wide-smile mouthful of teeth he'd since grown into. And under it, he and Johnny at university.
Robert's mind reeled.
He flicked through and took two more. Johnny on a concrete wall, perched model-like, in a white T-shirt and jeans, and a close up face-view. He'd get copies made.
Then he propped Johnny's close-up against the light on the bedside table and lay on his side so Johnny's face looked at him. After a while he turned onto his back and closed his eyes. His arm ranged over the empty space on the bed next to him and stilled.
He must have slept, but the sun had barely moved. Except for his manic run, everything was lethargic today, as if a day with grief should be weightier and slower. Hard to carry. He turned and looked at Johnny's face and wanted to scream or shout or hit something. But the idea folded in on itself and he put the photos with the film, straightened the bed-cover, and washed the sign of snail trails from his face.
Do something.
He called Anna and apologized, and reaching into his pocket for the cracked face of his watch, took out his wallet instead. The coaster with Pete's number was there.
Chapter 31
Robert pushed a beer towards Pete, “This is the one I owe you. Cheers.”
The umbrellas over the tables in the beer garden provided protection but not relief from the heat.
“Thanks for the other night,” Robert wasn't sure how to progress.
“We're all cut up about this,” Pete said, “and I'm not one to pry,” he didn’t finish.
Robert looked out past Pete's shoulder into a place inside his own head where Johnny was nodding, “Do you remember those guys at the bar? When I first met you?”
Pete's eyes squinted.
“That's who I was running from.”
“I figured. That's why Blue took you into the office. We were expecting them. Thought it'd be better if you were somewhere out of sight.”
“So why were they coming. Place was closed,” Robert's clarity and training were kicking in automatically.
“If the publican wants to give someone a drink after hours, up to him isn't it?” Pete's eyes narrowed, “Are you a narc or something? A reporter?”
“No. No. Lawyer.”
“How about you tell me. What do you know about them?”
“I know they're Special Branch or something. Licensing? I know they're collecting money so the pub can serve, you know…”
“Us.”
“Well…”
“The illegal queer folk.” Pete added in mock seriousness, “Not you of course.”
Robert wasn't sure if he was being laughed at, “And from what I hear, and what I saw that night, they are into a bit of gay bashing and robbery on the side. I think you know that. You tried to warn me. About Mr Muscles.”
“Fuck,” said Pete when Robert finished telling him what had happened. “This isn't fuckin' ancient Rome. This is Australia, in the twentieth century. Far-k me.”
They drank in silence.
Finally Pete spoke, “I know it doesn't help you, but what you just told me, might help me.”
Robert's brow creased.
“I can't say anything,” Pete’s eyes roamed. “You talked to anyone else about this?”
“Tank and Blue. And a reporter.”
“You trust him.”
Robert peered into the distance again, he could feel Johnny's approval, “Yeah. Yeah. I do.”
