Adam sipped from a can. The aluminium might have been chilled by the ice in the laundry tub, but the beer itself was barely cooler than room temperature. He didn’t know many of the people who had shown up at the party, and drifted from room to room, adding to a few conversations, unable to interrupt others. The mood was tight, conspiratorial. No-one seemed to see him standing at the edge of their group, let alone invite him to join in.
Marita’s law-student friends came in two types: the clean, uptight ones who were doing coke in the front part of the house, and the scruffier ones who were out the back, stoned and talking loudly. Both groups probably went to the same private schools. The rest of the guests, squeezed into the small lounge room or standing around in the kitchen, must have been Kate’s friends, or possibly Yun’s; the queers had got hold of the stereo and were dancing.
After leaning against the wall in the laundry for a minute, he chose the backyard and sat on a bench near the stoners, who were talking intensely about the latest political grudge match. When no-one spoke to him he pretended to read the can in his hand. Beside him, a young bearded man was explaining the shortcomings of emissions trading to a patient young woman. Adam thought he might involve himself in the discussion, offer an opinion about Rudd or Turnbull, but he could not muster strong feelings about either of them so he gave up and let the sound of the man’s voice wash over him. At least the rain had cleared, though the bench was damp; it was soaking through his jeans, which might explain why the seat was vacant. He stayed where he was mostly because the thought of having to get up and find somewhere else to be filled him with despair. From the house, he heard the sound of broken glass, then someone laughing.
When he looked up he saw Yun in the doorway, peering out. They caught his eye and their expression changed. Adam shifted along his bench to make room for them, but they disappeared inside again. He turned to pay attention to the conversation beside him, but found he could not follow it at all; he had lost the thread. The woman glanced at him, then laughed into her plastic cup of sparkling wine; she seemed to be enjoying herself at somebody’s expense.
Adam picked his way through the kitchen, past abandoned plastic cups of half-drunk sangria, empty cans, the remains of a plate of dips. Red wine was pooled in the baba ghannouj. He pressed himself into a gap between two dauntingly tall women – netballers, Kate’s – and into the hall. On the stairs he paused, dizzy and bereft. He had drunk too much beer too quickly, he thought; he was light-headed. He decided he needed to piss.
Usually, when he paused here, the house was empty, or asleep. He looked down the hall now, past a couple of close-talking law students, to Yun’s door. It was closed.
The music was beginning to irritate him, but people were still dancing, and neighbours had not complained yet. If they did Marita would deal with it. She was good with cops, after her experience. Somehow he found himself drawn into a corridor conversation, the third and silent party in an argument about a band that may or may not be as amazing live as people said they were. He couldn’t really hear the argument, so edged away. A stranger’s iPhone sat on the bookshelf, unattended; his own discarded iPod lay unplugged beside it. He tucked it into a pocket.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, pressing the girl’s shoulder when she did not hear him. She ducked out of his way without flinching too visibly. There was a line, mostly girls, blocking his way to the bathroom. He considered going out into the lane behind the house, but decided to wait.
The girls were like a catalogue, a range of shapes and sizes. Women, he corrected himself. He watched them, assessed them, cautiously attentive to any response in himself. Adam had had girlfriends, a few anyway, but none who had really moved him. The girls had chosen him each time, and each tried to mould him into a different shape. It never felt very fair.
He saw Yun press through the corridor, past the argument about the band that had turned into something more intimate. Adam averted his eyes, tried to hide from them, though he could not have said why. He watched them move, at once elegant and awkward, to their door. An emptiness expanded in his solar plexus. It was harmless, nothing serious, just a temporary fascination. He was a good guy, he knew that, watching them struggle with the doorhandle with one hand. They pressed one hip against the wall to steady themselves, the other hand curved around a glass. Water, or something clear. He wanted to go down there and open it for them.
‘All yours,’ a woman said, and then another behind him, more loudly, ‘Hey, mate, bathroom’s free.’ He turned away.
The guests trickled out much earlier than he had expected; apart from the few who were headed to a club somewhere, the night had quickly grown subdued. Too much talk of the vigil for that woman had killed the mood. Adam stood on the stair, looking down the corridor, the scene transformed to its proper silence. A light was on in Yun’s room now, the door left ajar. He thought he remembered a light. A look returned, an invitation. Afterwards, he wasn’t sure.
There would be so much that he did not remember. His hands under the cold tap, the laughter of women outside. The way his body felt, the mingling of fear and relief, as he crept upstairs. Then lying awake in his room, waiting for the music to stop, the noise of conversation to disappear. Waiting until the house was silent and dark and he could pass through its belly unseen.
He didn’t know he would forget. The calm in Yun’s undisturbed face, their fragile privacy, the curtain of night that protected them both. He thought at the time he would remember every detail, that it was significant, that something was about to change. Something serious.
It was embarrassment, more than anything, that cleaned up after him. The necessity of simplification. Like his mother, clearing her husband’s things from the house, not wanting to see a single reminder: removing the evidence that might bring her grief. Well, she had done nothing wrong. And neither had he.
It was not his fault, what happened to them. Some people must be marked this way, a fault line in them.
When he stood in their doorway, he saw that the light was coming from a bedside lamp. They had fallen asleep with it on, their face hidden in the pillow. Kindly, quietly, he walked around their bed to switch it off for them. They did not stir. He looked down from this new angle at their face, their body, feeling the breath move in his chest in time with theirs.
He would not remember standing there, aware of the life in his own body. Or reaching to touch Yun’s one exposed shoulder, the delicate, smooth skin. Or feeling them breathe beneath his touch, then turning, opening their eyes, pale like two carvings of the moon. He would forget their face. There was nothing else he could do.
‘Adam,’ they said.
Adam smiled. He had almost forgotten his name. He thought he would not need to remember; he thought this would stay in his body forever. Their skin under his hand, and the sweet movement of the breath in their body, met in his own. He had crossed over at last. He kept his hand there as if stopping an invisible wound. But he felt them start beneath his touch, and sit up in the dark, and scramble away from him. He felt the sudden pain of separation, as desire became poison.
‘What the fuck, Adam.’
The flat of his hand was still tingling.
‘You can’t be here.’
But he was here, and he was not hurting anyone. He did not deserve their strange fury.
‘Can you hear me? Adam. For fuck’s sake, get out of my room. Why can’t you just leave me the fuck alone.’