Chapter Twelve

The paranoid is never entirely mistaken.

SIGMUND FREUD

Saturday: 49 days

Pain level: 7.8

Location: Shifting between chest and upper intestine

Tips for self-improvement: Start running tomorrow

Sally comes over on Saturday morning. I haven’t started my Murakami running program yet as I slept in. I will start tomorrow. We sit on the hammock and swing together, hips and shoulders touching. It is child-like, fun.

‘So what spontaneous thing did you do yesterday?’ she asks on the down-swing.

I don’t want to tell her about Jay. It would feel like a betrayal. ‘Look, there’s a whale.’ I point to the horizon.

‘Where?’

‘There.’

‘I can’t see it.’

‘Look harder.’

By the time Sally has given up looking for the whale, I have my answer. ‘I started a Facebook group for people who are into crustaceans.’

‘Is that, like, a sexual thing?’ asks Sally as we swing up.

I hadn’t got that far, but now I decide it’s definitely the way to go. ‘Yeah, it’s a type of fetish. Quite rare. In fact, no one else has joined yet. I’m sure they’re out there, though. Crustaceans are terribly sexy. Did you know if human sperm was proportional to a shrimp’s it would be the size of a semi-trailer?’

Sally screws up her nose. ‘How does that work?’

I flap my hand. ‘Where there’s a will there’s a way.’

We swing to and fro again. As I lean back, I catch a glimpse of a small tattoo on Sally’s lower back above her cut-off jeans. This is an old one, a deer with spreading antlers. ‘Remember that holiday we had in New Zealand after we finished school?’

Sally and I had planned to walk the Milford Track. I’d imagined us strolling across alpine meadows as rainbows danced across the valleys. We hadn’t realised you needed to book the track about nine months in advance.

‘What was the name of that place we ended up in?’ asks Sal.

‘Glenorchy.’

‘Rains a lot there, doesn’t it?’

‘Yep.’

‘How was that cabin?’

‘You mean the dog kennel. I felt like I was in Guantanamo Bay.’

‘No wonder we spent so much time in the pub.’

‘That guy you hooked up with…’ I eye her tattoo.

‘Travis.’

‘That’s right. Travis the deer hunter.’

‘He hunted possums too,’ says Sal.

‘Do you think he was really a deer hunter?’

‘Oh yeah. When I went to his room he showed me his gun and his camo gear.’ She gives me a suggestive look. ‘Why?’

‘He seemed a bit pseudo to me.’

‘You’ve never said that before.’

‘No, but I thought it. His hands were too soft. I reckon he was an accountant,’ I tease. ‘From Auckland. Or Wellington.’

‘No way.’ Sally screws up her face. ‘No way would I shag an accountant from Auckland.’

‘Exactly. That’s why he was pretending to be a Fiordland deer hunter. Much sexier.’ I lean back to get a better look at her tattoo. ‘You could get a calculator tattooed over the top of it if you wanted.’

Sally squeals and pushes me.

I fall backwards off the hammock and land on the deck with a thump. ‘Ow, that was reckless, Sally; you could have—’

‘Don’t you ever say that again, Edie McElroy. Travis was a he-man. He hunted deer from helicopters. He wore big lace-up boots. He was macho and sweaty and strong and… You think I don’t know the difference between an accountant and a deer hunter? He was totally essence of Heathcliff.’

‘Edgar Linton.’ I say this as if I am sneezing, but Sally gets it.

She leaps off the hammock and pins me to the ground. ‘He was not Edgar Linton. Travis was more Heathcliff than Heathcliff. He was sexy as. You remember that scene in Wuthering Heights where he undoes his buttons really slowly.’

‘I don’t think that happened, Sal.’

‘Yes, it did and that’s what Travis was like. Do you want me to tickle you?’

‘Okay, he was Heathcliff.’ I start to laugh. ‘I give up. Don’t tickle me.’

Sally smiles and gets off me. ‘That’s what I thought.’

Sometimes Sally and I seem more like competitive siblings than best friends. I guess that’s what happens when you’ve known someone most of your life.

We get back in the hammock again and push off.

‘You can hold your meetings in the Big Prawn.’ Sal changes topics with breathtaking speed.

‘Huh?’ The Big Prawn is a ghastly monstrosity that decorates the highway not far from Darling Head, but I haven’t got a clue what she is talking about.

‘Your crab fetish meetings.’

‘Yeah. If we ever have a get-together that would totally be the place to do it.’

‘Oh my God,’ says Sal. ‘Imagine the size of the sperm the Big Prawn would produce.’

‘Sally, there are some things in life you’re better off not thinking about.’

We swing back and forth in silence for a few minutes. I, at least, lose the fight not to think about giant sperm.

‘I think Professor Brownlow might be interested in my Facebook group if I introduce it to him in the right way,’ I say.

‘Ralph Brownlow? Is he your boss?’

‘Yeah, do you know him?’

‘He’s a client.’

‘Get outta here.’ I push off the wall. ‘No way.’

‘Yes way, babe. My first paying client. He called me yesterday. Guess I’ve got you to thank for that.’

‘So…’ I raise my eyebrows. ‘Which of the eight steps is he interested in?’

‘Can’t say. Client confidentiality.’

‘Piss off.’

‘No, really.’

Sally sounds serious, so I back off. ‘Have you met him?’

‘We’re meeting downtown this afternoon. Anything I should know?’

‘Yes, but I can’t say. Workplace confidentiality.’

Sally tickles me. ‘Come on, tell me. Is he gay?’ She looks at me. ‘Not gay, then, sleazy?’

I squirm away from her probing fingers. ‘No, he’s…hot.’ This comes out a lot louder than I meant it to as I am laughing at the time.

Jay steps out on the verandah as I say this. He takes in Sally and I on the hammock. ‘Who’s hot?’

I blush. Does he think I was talking about him? ‘No one.’

‘Hey.’ Sally cleverly steers the conversation away from hotness. ‘It’s fancy-dress night down the surf club tonight. Why don’t we all go?’

‘No way,’ I say.

‘Okay,’ says Jay at the same time.

Sally gives me a meaningful look and rustles one of her flyers in her hands. She is reminding me I am her star client.

‘I hate fancy dress,’ I say.

Jay collapses on the couch in the sun and closes his eyes. As usual, he is dressed in black: a tattered long-sleeved shirt and skinny jeans. ‘Fancy dress is so much fun,’ he says.

I suspect he is being ironic, but I can’t be sure.

‘What will you go as, Jay?’ asks Sally.

‘I’m tossing up between a fairy and a dolphin.’ His eyes are still shut. ‘Maybe a fairy dolphin.’

I giggle, but he doesn’t smile. I bite my lip.

Sally raises her eyebrows at me. ‘I knew you were a hippy at heart,’ she says to Jay.

‘Yeah.’ Jay opens one eye, squinting into the sun. ‘I’d go as a hippy if I had longer hair.’ He opens his other eye and fixes his gaze on me. ‘You should go as a hippy.’

As always with Jay, it is hard to know if there is a hidden meaning to his comment.

Sally, however, latches on to this as if it is the greatest suggestion ever. ‘That would be perfect for you, Edie.’

I can’t see how being a dope-smoking remnant of the sixties is perfect for me, but I can’t resist the combined tide of Sally and Jay’s will. ‘Okay. I’ll go as a hippy.’ I feel sick already.

Sally climbs out of the hammock. ‘Let’s print out a few more of my flyers and stick them in some letterboxes, Edie. I’m on a roll now, I can feel it. Do you want to help, Jay?’

‘Love to, but I’m flat out.’ Jay closes his eyes again.

We go upstairs and I print out about one hundred flyers on my computer and fold them into neat packages. Sally does the odd one, but mainly she is occupied taking a phone call. She wanders over to the window and coos, clucks and chirps. It is obviously a man.

She rolls her eyes as she slides the phone in her pocket. ‘Francisco calling from Rio. Wants to come out here. I managed to fob him off, I think.’

Francisco doesn’t realise that once Sally has the tat, the relationship is dead meat.

‘All done, Ed?’ She picks up the bundle of flyers.

We spend the morning posting them all around Darling Head. As it turns out, I do most of the posting too as Sally is waylaid in conversations with passers-by every five minutes or so. When she is not chatting she is sending and receiving texts.

‘Who are you texting?’ I ask her at one point.

She winks at me. ‘Not texting, sexting.’

‘You didn’t tell me you had a new guy.’

‘Nah, I don’t really — just playing. You should get into this, Ed; it’s so much fun.’

‘Who am I going to sext with? Where do you meet these people?’

‘All over the place. Fifty per cent of the population is male, you know. I met this guy at the supermarket yesterday. He’s really hot. You remember how Heathcliff used to tell Cathy that he was burning up for her?’

‘I don’t remember that part.’

‘You need to re-read it, Ed. That’s what this guy’s like.’

Sexting a guy I met at the shop yesterday seems about as achievable to me as flying to Jupiter on my own steam. Sally and I are definitely living in parallel universes.

‘I’m working up a new coaching module,’ says Sal. ‘Opportunistic flirting.’

‘Oh yeah?’ Why am I getting an uneasy feeling that this is not good news? ‘You’re the woman for the job, Sal. I’m sure you’ll be good at it.’

‘My theory is that most people go through life totally blind to the flirting prospects that arise every day.’

‘You’re probably—’

‘I’m talking about people like you.’

I knew it. She’s lining something up for me. How can I head her off at the pass? ‘I flirt all the time. Why only yesterday…’ And now I wish that Sally would interrupt me as I have no idea where I am going with this.

Sally cocks her head to one side. She is wearing her mock-alert look, as if she can’t wait to hear what I say next.

‘Only yesterday…’ I rack my brain, trying to think of a man I have interacted with. ‘There was this guy, standing outside a building as I drove past and…’ What would Sooty do? ‘I winked at him.’

‘Winked?’ Sally smiles like a trashy investigative journalist who knows her subject is lying. ‘Like this?’ She gives me a slow, cheeky, adorable wink. Sally’s wink could double as a résumé. Sally’s wink tells me that she is a fun-loving girl with a lively intelligence and a positive attitude towards casual sex. ‘Show me how you winked.’

She has backed me into a blind alley and she knows it. I am unable to wink without scrunching up half my face like a Benny Hill impersonator. My wink could also double as a résumé, but it is one best kept in the bottom drawer. My wink says I am a strange, sad person who should be avoided if possible.

‘Who was this man you winked at?’ Sally pushes her advantage.

I can see no more point in pretending. ‘A priest.’

Sally bursts out laughing. Tears run down her face. Eventually she brings herself under control. ‘You’re the sweetest person I know, Ed, but you desperately need taking in hand.’ She gives me a one-armed hug. ‘Stick with me, babe. I’ll find you someone better than a priest.’

At twelve o’clock Sally leaves for her meeting with Professor Brownlow. ‘I’ll come and get you at seven,’ she calls as we wave goodbye across the street. ‘I’m expecting groovy things, man.’

My route home takes me past the beachside café strip. I am pondering my hippy outfit when someone calls my name.

‘Edie?’

I swivel. A woman with glossy, asymmetrical black hair and enormous black sunglasses is sitting in the café. She has an iPad in front of her and is wearing one of those earpieces people use to talk on mobile phones without getting irradiated. Colourful drawings are spread out on the table in front of her coffee cup.

‘Djennifer?’

The woman slides her sunglasses up to the top of her head and stands up. Soon I am enveloped in a soft, warm hug. Djennifer is wearing a floaty black top over black tights. Each of her plump, white arms support about twenty chunky bracelets, and rings adorn her black-nail-polished pedicured toes. Among the suntanned surf-label-wearing denizens of Darling Head, she stands out like a penguin in a desert.

‘What are you doing here?’ I ask.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I live here.’

‘You live here? HERE?’ Djennifer squeals. ‘This is paradise.’

I look around. It has never occurred to me to think of Darling Head as paradise. It is just the place I grew up in. The place I couldn’t wait to leave. ‘It’s okay. So what are you doing here?’

‘Holiday, darling. What else? I’m staying at the Sands Resort in Lighthouse Bay.’ Djennifer waves her hand vaguely northwards. ‘I’m working on a new range.’ She sighs and gestures at the table. ‘I needed some creative space.’

Djennifer is the owner of Hotpunk, my former boss. She never took much notice of me while I was there. In a cutting-edge design outlet, catalogue illustrators are barely one step above mail boys. I always found it hard to explain to people what Hotpunk actually sold. Cool stuff, I’d say. You should see their teapots. This sounded ridiculous, but Hotpunk’s teapots were as much about making tea as a Van Gogh is about hiding a damp patch on the wall. Hotpunk’s teapots had attitude.

‘How’s the latest range going?’

‘It’s crap, darling. That’s why I’m here. I need to reconnect with my inner muse. Something just came into my consciousness and I thought… Lighthouse Bay, that’s the place.’ Djennifer’s phone plays a techno beat. ‘Mwah, mwah.’ She purses her lips. ‘Lovely to see you, Edie.’ She picks up her phone. ‘What is it now?’ She waggles her fingers at me and rolls her eyes as I go.

At home, I wish with a vengeance I had not agreed to go to the fancy-dress party. Why do people like fancy dress so much? I think girls like it because they get to dress up as tarts without being taken for one. Halloween party means sexy witch, seventies means minidress and a celebrity theme is always Paris Hilton in a bikini.

For guys, it’s different. Guys can never resist an opportunity to dress up as a woman. It shows how jealous they are of the primping and preening that is a woman’s right. False eyelashes? Yes please! Lipstick? Of course! Fishnet stockings? Bring it on!

In some cultures it is the men who get all the gewgaws and make-up. I’ve read about an African tribe where the men court the ladies with the aid of lipstick, face powder and feathers in their hair. I wonder if the women of this tribe harbour a secret desire to snatch the powder and feathers off their men. Perhaps they do.

Being a hippy offers none of the satisfaction of dressing up as a tart. I look in the mirror and wonder where to start. If I mess my hair up a bit it looks long and shaggy, like Janis Joplin’s , but I’m not sure about any of the rest of it.

I go downstairs. Dad and Rochelle have been surfing all morning and are now stretched out on the couch, flicking through ski brochures. This is another shared passion of theirs. When they are not surfing, they are thinking about skiing. They look like salt-streaked bookends, Dad with his feet on Rochelle’s lap and Rochelle with her feet on Dad’s.

I wasn’t here when Dad and Rochelle met but I imagine it as being like two oppositely charged magnets coming together. While I am cynical about the concept of The One, it was obvious when I met Rochelle that there was no other way of describing the way they are together.

I am happy for Dad, how could I not be, but it also makes me feel strange. As if, in a parallel universe where we all meet our soul mates at exactly the right time, Dad and Rochelle are breeding a tribe of surfing champions. In this parallel universe there is, clearly, no place for me. I am my mother’s daughter. As Rochelle is only thirty-six to Dad’s forty-five, I suppose the option of a troupe, if not a tribe of surfing champions is still out there.

‘Hey,’ I say.

They both look up. ‘Hey Eddie,’ they say, simultaneously. It’s a little spooky.

‘I’m going to a fancy dress tonight as a hippy. Have you got anything I could wear?’

Dad and Rochelle look at each other, then back at me and I already wish I hadn’t said anything. The sparkle in their eyes suggests they are latching onto this project with way too much enthusiasm. They jump to their feet. ‘Let’s have a look,’ says Rochelle.

Dad and Rochelle’s room is upstairs, like mine. Rochelle has two built-in cupboards and Dad has one. They pull open their cupboard doors in a ta-da way, as if they expect to see a hippy costume hanging there, waiting.

Rochelle’s cupboard displays Quiksilver T-shirts, Roxy shorts, Billabong bikinis and Volcom jeans.

Dad’s cupboard reveals Rip Curl T-shirts, Mambo shorts and Quiksilver jeans. There is, also, an embroidered waistcoat of unknown ethnic origin. ‘Ah ha.’ He pulls this from its hanger. ‘That’s what you need.’

Rochelle presses a pair of white flared pants and a long silky scarf on me. ‘You’ll look great, Edie. Fancy dress is so much fun.’ Unlike her brother, there is no hint of irony.

I go upstairs, put on the pants and waistcoat and knot the scarf around my head so that the ends trail down my back. If I cross my eyes, put my head on its side and don’t go too close to the mirror, I look like Janis Joplin might if she was halfway through transforming into Jimmy Page. ‘Far out, man.’ I hold my fingers up in a peace sign. I suspect it’s not going to get any better, so I take the outfit off and put it in a pile on the bed.

I now have five hours before Sally will pick me up. Five hours to think of reasons why I can’t go to the fancy dress anymore. I pull my notebook towards me. These will have to be good reasons; Sally is not easily deterred. I start a list.

1. I am sick

I chew on my pen. This will only work if I have evidence, for example, a temperature. Still, there are ways…

2. I have nothing to wear.

I suspect Sally will not take any notice of this one. She will be expecting it, and will already have an answer prepared, maybe even a spare outfit.

3. I am too busy.

I am already scraping the bottom of the barrel and I am only up to number three. What can I be busy doing? Could there be a crab larvae emergency of some kind?

This brings me back to Professor Brownlow. I wonder how Sally is going. I am keen to hear her opinion of Professor Brownlow’s hotness. Now, why would he be having life coaching? One of Sally’s flyers is on my desk. I pick it up and glance through the eight steps.

Career direction, life purpose, self-expression, business coaching, mentoring, relationships… I stop there, remembering Professor Brownlow and his wife the other day. Is he having relationship problems? Maybe there is an opening for me to comfort him? No, Edie. Bad karma.

I fling the flyer back on the bed. It falls face down. I stare at the back. There is some typing on it. A sentence jumps out at me, ‘Take me now,’ she cried, ‘you sexy fiddler crab.’ I don’t understand why there is pornography on the back of Sally’s flyer.

Then I realise; it is my pornography. My mind flashes back to Sally and I printing and folding the flyers. I see one of her hands taking the paper from my recycled paper pile and putting it in the printer while the other holds the phone to her ear.

No, it can’t be.

But I already know what has happened. We have printed off the flyers on my recycled paper. My erotic story has been strewn all around town. I feel like I am falling off a high-rise building. I am about to vomit.

I do vomit.