The Slip, page 6
Now he comes out carrying his car keys. ‘Are you serious?’ asks Louise.
‘Don’t even. I’m just going to go there quickly, sort things out and then I’ll come straight back.’
‘We just got here. It’ll take hours.’
He looks helpless. ‘You don’t know what it’s like.’
Adam does not come back that night, and without him there the house is clinical and creepy; Louise can’t move without seeing herself reflected in kilometres of glass. She goes to bed early, feeling annoyed and insecure. In her dreams she is on the verge of a realisation, but the message keeps getting interrupted. There are no curtains in the bedroom and at dawn the day invades the room, pervading it entirely and urging her awake.
She goes out to the deck and looks across the spit of land toward the ocean. The day has come up grey and humid, the sky a slab of cloud rammed flat against the sea. After a while the overcast look of everything begins to feel unglamorous, as if it has been stained in the wash or pissed on by some dogs.
‘Where have you been?’ she asks, almost hysterical, when Adam finally gets back.
‘You’re supposed to be taking it easy,’ he says. ‘We’re on holiday. Relax.’
‘I am relaxed,’ she snaps.
For the next two weeks it remains overcast and sprinkles rain from time to time. The windows drag the grey into the house, dulling surfaces and draining things of their vitality. Despite his promise to switch off, Adam is preoccupied with the business and spends much of his time talking on the phone. Even on holiday, their routine takes on a terrible monotony. They sweat it out and snipe at one another, and their sweat is the relentless kind which makes them chafe instead of glow.
‘Everything is weird,’ Louise sobs one night after too much wine. Adam puts his arms around her, kisses her face and strokes her hair. ‘It’s okay,’ he soothes. ‘It will be better in the morning.’
But in the morning it is grey and humid, just like the day before. She and Adam laze around the pool, hungover in a way that seems disproportionate to how much alcohol they actually consumed. A hot northerly skims a film of leaves and grime across the surface.
‘I feel awful,’ says Louise, slipping off the doughnut floatie.
Adam looks up from his phone. ‘You’re just hungover.’
Louise pushes off from one side and floats listlessly to the other. The air smells like mushrooms. She inspects her tan, which is coming on slowly, if at all.
‘Come on Lou … what’s the matter? Are you sick? Are you anxious? Oh my god – are you pregnant?’
She looks at him over the top of her sunglasses. ‘I wish.’
‘Really?’
‘No.’
‘Okay, well, I’m going inside to reapply. Want some?’
While Adam creams up, Louise looks at her phone. Her mum posts the most out of anyone she knows. She watches reels, signs a petition organised by Teachers 4 Palestine, buys a lipstick and eventually ends up watching a news clip of a massive storm in Queensland which has razed entire towns and dumped the carcasses of cattle on the beach. People are freaking out because a person died. They’ve named it Helen, which is also the name of her friend who has been living in Berlin. Soon she will return from Europe, and Louise knows that she must see her.
The last time they spoke, Helen said something which Louise had found disturbing. It sounded incongruous at first, but afterward it irked her, and for days Louise had ruminated on her words, failing to understand them. Helen had simply asked if Louise saw herself as a person who goes home when the party’s winding down, or someone who stays late, until or past the end.
Louise hadn’t known what Helen meant by this.
Even now, she does not know.
Later they go for another swim, this time at the beach. The one they like is mostly empty because of a seaweed problem. Parking the car, they turn themselves out of the aircon and Flossy immediately pelts to where the seaweed is the thickest and most fetid and then rolls in it with wild abandon. Louise wishes she were an animal, doing everything instinctively. Adam strips off his shirt and turns his back to her, handing her the sunscreen. ‘Can you do my back?’ he asks.
‘Again?’
‘Yeah, the UV.’
‘Is it high, did you check?’
‘Eleven.’
‘Fine, give it to me.’
‘Don’t miss any spots,’ says Adam. ‘I don’t want to end up all patchy.’
‘Are you going to come in?’ she asks once she is done.
‘You go. I’ll wait for it to sink in.’
She leaves him scrolling on the sand and strokes out far beyond the shore to where the sea is flat and broad, thinking of ways to blow it all up – her life. She could quit her job, go overseas, get pregnant, fall in love with a woman, have an affair, dye her hair, start a new degree, ask Adam for a break. None of it appeals to her; the solutions are boring because her crisis is routine.
Flipping on her back she thinks again of Helen. Once, on holiday with a group of friends, they had a threesome with a drummer. It was the only time Louise had been unfaithful – she and Adam had been dating for about a year. It was not a bad experience but not a good one either; she and Helen were too close as friends to be intimate as lovers, and the entire thing felt staged.
Helen was thin and elegant and incisive, like a sharp, expensive knife. Louise was tall and soft and talkative, though at times she could be shy. At first they played up their differences, how they complemented one another, which drove the drummer wild. But then at some point Helen decided she was over it and left the room, taking all the glamour with her. Louise had felt jilted, like a lover spurned. There didn’t seem any point in going on without her, though a sense of obligation made her stay and finish the job.
Afterward, Helen asked if it had changed Louise’s feelings about Adam. ‘Are you going to break up?’
‘No,’ Louise had said. If anything, it was clear that she loved Adam and preferred to be in a relationship. The failed threesome was a minor aberration. But maybe that’s what Helen meant, she thinks now, when she asked Louise if she was someone who would stay until the end.
That night, she and Adam watch a movie where a group of storm chasers have a series of dangerous, passionate encounters with tornadoes and each other. Its cheap erotic thrill is stupid and it makes them horny so they start to mess around. While she is giving him head, his breath catches in his throat. It is only when he gargles slightly that she realises he’s asleep. ‘Adam,’ she says sharply. ‘Adam. Are you sleeping?’
‘Huh? No. What?’
‘You were snoring! Is it that fucking boring? How do you fall asleep with your cock in my mouth?’
‘Mmn,’ he mumbles, sinking back against the couch. He looks exactly like a sated baby disengaging from the nipple, his mouth open slightly, the sweet curve of his nose. There is a greediness about him that she finds unnerving, a sense of entitlement. He has flung his arm against the pillow. She wants to hurt him. She can’t hate him. Gently, she puts his cock back in his pants. ‘Love you,’ he says sleepily.
It prompts in her a shiver of abjection. Not disgust, exactly. There is love and fear in it, too.
Restless, she gets up from the couch and roams the house, opening cupboards and turning on taps, but it’s the kind of place which has no secrets. She laments the lack of narrow passages and shadowed corners, places where it would be possible to begin.
What does she mean, begin?
She means to start the work: the delicate task of beguiling all these disparate aspects of herself into a whole.
At the beginning of the last week of their holiday, Adam goes back to Melbourne for a day to help out in the shop. Louise says nothing, trying hard to be magnanimous. ‘I’ll bring us back some treats,’ he promises.
‘You fucking better,’ says Louise.
The next day Adam returns with a bunch of flowers, prosecco and a bottle of Montenegro to make spritzes, vegetables, meat, fish, bread, charcuterie and several different types of cheese. Louise prepares lunch, setting herself the task of celebrating each ingredient, as Adam’s nonno used to say. They take a tablecloth, wine, cutlery and plates and carry it all down the back, where they spread out on the grass to eat. The air is heavy and it finally looks like it might rain. Once they have eaten, Louise lies back against the grass. She is full and suddenly quite emotional. She reaches for Adam’s hand. He squeezes hers, as if to say, ‘I understand.’ Everything is beautiful. Everything feels pregnant with meaning.
‘Is that your phone?’ he asks. Louise looks around and finds that it has slipped under the tablecloth they’ve been using as a picnic rug. It is Helen. She doesn’t answer.
‘Who is it?’
‘Helen.’
‘Fucking hell. What does she want?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Are you going to answer it?’
‘No.’
‘Good.’
‘Adam, you’re being an arsehole.’ She bends down and starts stacking their dishes, intending to carry them inside. Adam looks hurt, but also slightly righteous. She feels bad. He loves her. He is trying to make her happy.
‘I love you,’ he says on cue.
How to reassure him?
‘I have to call her back,’ she says, marching up the sloping yard to make the call inside.
She recalls what Helen said the first time she met Adam. ‘He’s nice Louise, but is he really on your level? What does he do again?’
‘He’s a butcher,’ she’d replied.
Helen had wrinkled her nose. ‘His hands must always smell of meat.’
‘Not really.’ She didn’t say, we fuck like we mean it and eat every part of the beast.
Trying Helen’s WhatsApp, she thinks: Adam is gorgeous. Adam is kind and perceptive and his hands do not always smell of meat. Sometimes they smell of herbs. Sometimes they smell of Turkish delight. Sometimes they smell of Parmigiano Reggiano and sometimes soap, especially when he gets home from the shop. Lately, Adam’s hands smell of sunscreen. Helen cannot know this, because Helen doesn’t care. She thinks Adam is parochial, and he thinks Helen’s an elitist. Both are true to some degree. Adam has blind faith in work and family and an aspirational model for creating wealth. Helen’s parents are left-wing intellectuals, which makes her wonderful and generous, and the most vicious kind of snob. Their mutual contempt is something Louise has not been able to reconcile.
Finally, Helen answers.
‘My flight gets in on Friday,’ she declares. ‘And I was thinking I would come and stay.’
First thing on Friday morning, before it is even light, Flossy leaps from the bed, raises her hackles and emits a low, unusual growl. When Louise lets her outside she runs into the yard, fixes on something in the near distance and begins to bark hysterically. It is somehow spooky. Louise calls her inside.
There is a sachet of smoked salmon in the fridge that needs to be eaten before it goes off. In the kitchen, she turns on lights and makes coffee, wondering what to do with it. She takes it out and removes the packaging. The flesh triggers an association with Helen, perhaps a dream she’s had but can’t particularly recall.
Adam walks in looking sleepy. ‘What time is it?’
‘Early,’ says Louise.
‘Why are we up?’
She sips her coffee and says instead, ‘Helen’s back today.’
Adam puts his hands on the bench. ‘And?’
‘She was thinking of heading down here for the weekend,’ she says.
‘When, exactly?’
‘This afternoon.’
‘Seriously?’ Adam exhales loudly.
‘Can you stop breathing so aggressively and like, say what you want to say?’
‘Okay Louise, you want to hear what I have to say? Helen is a fucking user. She’s in it for the free holiday. She finds out we’re staying in this amazing house, gets back and sniffs us out. And you’re just going to let her do it, like always.’
‘Fuck off Adam,’ says Louise. ‘She wants to see me.’ But she is disturbed by the way he said she sniffed them out.
Adam is flushed with excitement. ‘She’s so transparent, but she acts like she’s this great unsolvable mystery. It’s unbearable.’
Disquieted, Louise plates up the salmon. She has read that no one knows why salmon jump; there are various hypotheses but essentially their behaviour is inexplicable. Now she imagines the fillets leaping off the bench, brought back by some odd galvanism. Softly, as though to the fish she says, ‘I still find her mysterious.’
Adam watches her intently. ‘You’ve already said yes, haven’t you?’
‘It’s only a couple of nights.’
‘Fucking hell,’ he says quietly, taking his breakfast things and stalking from the room. She hears the television come on and then the rousing melody which accompanies a special broadcast. There is the phrase, unusually severe. She follows Adam into the loungeroom and sits next to him on the couch.
‘Check this out,’ he says, their argument over Helen momentarily forgotten. ‘There’s going to be a massive storm.’
The audio is slightly out of sync, so there’s a delay each time the newsreader speaks.
We interrupt this morning’s normal programming to bring you news of a severe weather event Adam raises the volume set to make landfall later this afternoon. Meteorologists have identified a low— he changes channels pressure system which is set to interact with exceptionally high ocean temperatures, causing catastrophic storm conditions, extremely dangerous, peaking at Category five minutes later, all the news channels are reporting the same thing, how populations have been put on high alert, as well as SES teams across the sky outside begins to bruise and ‘Fucking hell,’ says Adam again, as the dog pins back her ears and hides behind them on the low-lying areas of the Peninsula will need to be evacuated says the newsreader, slight delay, as State Government officials meet this morning to discuss which measures will be taken there is already footage of congestion on the roads.
They open the weather app but it’s glitching and won’t load.
Ten minutes later, they see on the news that the weather app has crashed.
While the experts try to bring it back online, Louise and Adam check their socials, where conspiracies have already started circulating. Adam refreshes the feed, his amusement giving way to anger. ‘Can you believe these people?’ he asks.
‘Madness,’ says Louise. But in some way she does understand it. The hysteria. The impulse to see portents, the desire to speculate. Like the conspiracists she finds herself hoping that the storm contains a message, as if she is calling on it to produce a kind of knowledge.
‘I wonder if we should do anything to prepare?’ she asks.
‘We’ve got until four.’
‘That’s when Helen’s meant to be arriving.’
Adam is almost smirking. ‘Oh, really? I guess she’ll have to come another time.’
Feeling intrepid, they walk down to the beach. The atmosphere has changed, a frisson hums around them and their hair lifts in the static. Flossy sniffs the air, runs and sniffs again. The morning comes up palely, a sunrise not of colour but of shade. Suddenly, Louise feels her excitement plummet; it is the same as all the other days – grey. She walks down to the shoreline, where waves lay their promise to waste: the sand, the sea, the swimmers are grey, the bloodless sky, the manky froth and shat-upon rocks, the gulls and cranes and broken shells, the books on towels – fifty shades of summer reading. Terrible tourists have left plastic and aluminium behind, wrappers that the sea has tumbled to a dullish shade, and heat has bleached the seaweed, stripping picnic tables of their stain. Adam’s sunscreen catches fluff like office carpet. Today was supposed to mean something. It is crushing to think that it is simply, grey.
She swims out past the waves as usual and flips onto her back. The ocean ripples slightly, as if a shiver courses underneath. On the beach, in the distance, Adam is looking at his phone. She can tell he’s agitated by the way he jigs his leg. Flossy lingers by his side, panting worriedly. Louise waves. Suddenly he rises and, as if compelled by unknown forces, walks straight into the sea.
She finds herself moving. Something thrills her, drawing her to Adam. Reaching the shallows, she stands and walks toward him. The dog is barking madly. The tide has drawn itself a long way out. Adam leaps forward, smiling in an odd way, not quite laughing. He scoops Louise into his arms.
For a moment they hold each other’s gaze and Adam’s body is so warm and dry against her own, which is cool and slippery from her swim. A quick charge bristles between them, an erotic force which speaks to something more than sex. Louise believes that in this moment she and Adam feel they’re on the threshold of an experience. This is it, she thinks. This will change the way we live.
Then there is a sudden slap of thunder, and he drops Louise into the sea.
‘We’d better go,’ he says.
She agrees.
Back at the house, Adam goes into action mode. He fills the bathtub and the wheelie bins with water, rummages in the shed for torches and candles and goes through the cupboard for canned food. They keep track of the storm, reading stats and watching footage shot from space, anxiously discussing changes to its fearsome eye and tentacles of swirling, lethal cloud. The weatherman is young and gay and as the storm predictions worsen he becomes excited, like he’s about to scream or dance around the newsroom. By midday, the storm has been upgraded. The weatherman looks like he’s on drugs and has been partying for several days: his hair is tousled and his shirt has come unbuttoned. He makes intense eye contact with the camera as he predicts a superstorm. ‘That’s right Michelle,’ he says, turning back to his colleagues. ‘The biggest storm this state has ever seen.’
The Premier declares a state of emergency, evacuates low-lying regions and urges those at higher elevation to prepare. Now there is footage of sandbagging in the beachside suburbs. Whole swathes of the city have been pre-emptively taken off the grid.
