I’d destroyed my castle, substituted Luke’s queen, sneered at the bishop and taken down innocent pawns along the way. Now it was my chance to make this final move to claim my king. I stood on Jarvis’s doorstep, that art deco building he had described to me so many times. It was a Sunday morning soon after I’d shattered Max’s world. Luke had picked Max up earlier to go for a bike ride. So there I was, free to live out my heart’s desire, a single woman at last. I was dressed in my favourite frock, a pretty forest-green dress, with white trim around the bodice, and I was wearing my new black Swedish clogs. My hair was freshly washed and styled, and, although my hair could be pretty hit and miss some days, I felt like it was a hit day.
I pressed the bell next to his surname. ‘Hello?’ his voice sounded crackly through the speaker.
‘It’s Luisa.’
‘Really?’ he said, almost breathless with surprise. ‘I’ll buzz you in.’ I heard a loud buzz and the door creaked open. I stood in the dank hallway for a moment, confused, not knowing where he lived. There were three doors on the bottom level and a staircase leading up to the next floor. There was a lady’s bike lent against a wall, one of those retro, big-wheeled ones, pastel blue, with a cane basket. I put my hands into my pockets, suddenly unsure of myself.
It seemed to take a long time, but finally he appeared out of one of the doors on the bottom floor. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said. ‘You’re actually here.’ He wasn’t dressed like I’d imagined he would be. But I had to forgive him, because it was a Sunday morning and he wasn’t expecting me. He was wearing grey cotton shorts of all things, and a red t-shirt that was torn at the shoulder. His hair seemed thick and fluffy, like it had just been washed and hadn’t had time to settle, and his beard needed trimming around the lips. When he kissed me on the cheek he smelt like rotting compost of the barley and yeast variety. He must have had a big night.
He walked me through his door. His place was messy. My vision of him being the type of person to iron and hang all his shirts facing the same way on matching coat hangers in his wardrobe had been wrong. Looking around, I realised that he probably didn’t iron at all. He had a wooden clothes horse in the centre of the living room, piled with his clothes in an unventilated manner. There was a red plastic washing basket full of unfolded clothes on the couch. I could smell a cooked breakfast. In the narrow galley kitchen there were two different pans soaking in the sink, toast crusts, coffee cups, beer bottles and a stack of unwashed plates on the bench.
‘Sorry, I didn’t know you were coming,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t heard from you for a few days, I was starting to wonder what was wrong.’
‘Luke and I are over,’ I blurted out, standing there in his small dark living room.
‘What?’ he said, collapsing into his brown cord couch next to the washing basket.
‘We’re over. My plan worked.’ I went and sat beside him, moving the washing basket onto the floor. I touched his hand finally, the hand that I had seen in my mind over and over again. He had said that he had pianist fingers, and he was right, they were long and thin and his nails were short and rounded. He had a dark mole on his middle finger, underneath his fingernail.
I had waited so long to be in a room alone with him, without any guilt. My heart was pounding, ready to play out all those scenes that we’d written so passionately about. He’d said that he wouldn’t be able to keep his hands off me when we were finally together. He’d said that he’d need to press his lips to mine for three days, just to believe that they were real. And yet, here I was, and he wasn’t doing any of these things.
‘We can be together. Luke is with someone else.’
I felt his hand trembling. He leaned his head back into the couch cushion and shut his eyes for a moment.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s too late,’ he said, finally opening his eyes and looking at me. ‘When you sent me that message from Hobart I thought we were over. I thought maybe you were trying your best to make it work with Luke, that you’d pushed me to the side. I thought you didn’t want the same things that I wanted anymore . . . I’ve started seeing someone else.’
‘Are you fucking kidding me? Why didn’t you tell me?’ I reeled back, my heart searching for courage.
‘I’m sorry. I thought we both felt the same thing: that it was over. Just neither of us wanted to admit it.’
‘I’ve ruined everything,’ I said, feeling suffocated in that bottom floor flat of his. There was so little air. Didn’t he ever open a window? I pulled myself up onto my feet again. ‘Is it that girl in the red dress from the McClelland opening?’
‘Yes,’ he said, his eyes on the cheap carpet.
‘Great, another quean with an “a”,’ I said. ‘She wears too much eye makeup. You’ll get mascara stains on your pillow slips.’
I was making no sense to him, but it didn’t matter. I was heartbroken, ruined, a foolish minx. I’d thrown half my eggs into one basket, smashed the rest, and now this basket had been dropped and these eggs were broken, too. He didn’t even try to stop me from escaping out the door with another word.
Well, what was there to say?
I couldn’t even blame him. All along he’d had nothing to lose and I’d had everything to lose. Now I had lost everything and he had gained something else entirely. I had no role at all to play in his life, other than the fun he’d had with me in the past months. How long had it even been?
I found myself staggering up Punt Road, passing bumper-to-bumper football traffic. There were team flags hanging out of many car windows. No one was going anywhere fast, so they all had time to gawk at me, to see the anguish piled on my face. I was limping because those clogs hurt, and my heart hurt and my self-esteem and belief in myself had been pierced with Cupid’s vicious arrow.
The cars were full of families on their way to an afternoon at the football, family units spending time together. Even though they were stuck in traffic and hardly moving, I envied them. I limped up the hill, looking through those windows as if they were a Myer Christmas display, and I felt how far I had come from the life that I had once cherished. That had been me, once upon a time; all I’d cared about was my family unit. A play at the park, a coffee at a café, an afternoon at the football with Max and Luke; that had been all I had needed to be happy. But somewhere along the way that happiness had dimmed, and I’d gone looking for something else. And now I knew that that something else didn’t even exist.