The Bus on Thursday Page 7

  Okay, so, fascinating new developments …

  Saturday morning. Managed not to drink too much last night. I get up at a reasonable hour, look out the window and it’s drizzling, so instead of going for a walk I get my yoga mat out and start to do a few salutes to the sun, etc. My plan was forty-five minutes yoga, twenty minutes meditation, then get stuck into preparations for Parent-Teacher Night next week. But while I’m downward dogging it, there’s a low, furtive knock on the door.

  Almost—hard to describe—like someone is casing the place. Not expecting anyone to be home, but just surreptitiously checking it out.

  So I think, Who the fuck is this? And I’m so grateful for the excitement of a visitor that I spring up from my yoga mat and throw open the door.

  And there, ladies and gentlemen, is the most beautiful man I have ever seen in my entire life. I mean, this creature is so jaw-droppingly ravishing it’s actually hard to look at him, like it’s hard to look directly at the sun. And I seem to have caught him by surprise, because he’s creeping around near the windows like he was just about to try my window locks. So he spins around and goes, “Hi!”

  And I say, “Hi.”

  It’s a bit awkward, like I’ve somehow sprung him mid–nefarious deed, so he says, “I’m sorry, I wasn’t sure if anyone was home.”

  “I’m home,” I say brightly. “What—were you casing the place?”

  And he laughs then. Incredible dazzling smile. Runs a hand through his tousled curls. Looks kind of embarrassed in an unbelievably adorable, incredibly handsome way.

  “Oh, God,” he says. “No, I wasn’t casing the place!” And he looks down at this note he has in his hands. “I just wasn’t sure if I had the right place. Are you, like, the teacher?”

  And I suddenly realize that this Greek god standing before me must be, in actuality, Ryan’s brother!

  Pause a moment to silently marvel. How can this possibly be??

  “Yes, I’m the teacher,” I say eventually.

  “Wow,” he murmurs, gazing at me through the dark lashes of his deep-blue eyes. “Incredible. Why didn’t they have teachers that look like you in my day? Maybe I would have turned up to school a bit more often.”

  And immediately I commence to blush and simper. Truly. I am so unused to compliments that I behave like this, even when said compliments are obviously completely concocted and laid on with proverbial trowel.

  “I know this is weird, seeing you on the weekend,” he says, “but I travel all the time with work, so…”

  “That’s fine!” I cry out somewhat too eagerly. “Please come in.”

  But now he seems suddenly a bit reluctant. He’s like, “How long is this going to take?” And I’m like, “Well, I think we have a bit to talk about. There’ve been a few behavioral issues and so forth.”

  And he nods very seriously and says, “I’m just thinking, now that I’ve met you and you seem a hundred percent straight up, no bullshit—I’m just thinking, maybe I need to give this a bit more time…”

  I’m like, What?

  “It’s just I have to take Ryan into Tumut right now for indoor rock climbing,” he says. “So … would postponing our chat to this evening be out of line?”

  Are you kidding???!! This evening would be splendiferous to the max! I have a date with the most beautiful man on God’s earth! (Okay, not exactly a date.) What did I do to deserve this? (Did I mention that because of the drizzle, his curls formed little damp tendrils on his temple and the nape of his neck?) Thank you, God. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

  He didn’t show.

  Not that it was a date or anything, it was a school-related appointment with a primary caregiver, but I still feel exactly like I’ve been stood up.

  Possibly because I spent the entire day preparing for it as if it were a date.

  I washed my hair. I shaved my legs and my armpits. I waxed my lady bits, incurring only minor burns. I blow-dried my hair and then went at it with the GHD. I plucked my eyebrows, a task long overdue. I went up to Janelle’s and shopped for canapé-style nibbles (not much there, obviously—came back with Jatz and tasty cheese and a hideous dip professing to be “tzatziki” containing what appears to be particles of reconstituted gherkin). I applied quite a bit of makeup but tried to make it look “natural,” even “dewy.” And then I waited.

  It was tough, because I didn’t want to have a drink before he rocked up in case it looked bad. In case it looked like his little brother’s teacher had a raging alcohol dependency, for example.

  Finally, at quarter to nine, I cracked open a bottle from my stash. And I got stuck into the Jatz and tasty cheese, even finally, in my desperation, the tzatziki.

  Eventually, I must have fallen asleep on the couch. Which is where I awoke this morning, surrounded by Jatz crumbs, to the strains of the Praying Mantis banging away at the carillon.

  “Elenore” again. What a creep.

  I have a few flashes of memory returning intermittently. Like I swear, I swear, somehow at one point we were dancing to “Let’s Spend the Night Together”—the Bowie version. Did he have it on his phone or something? Where did the music come from? And so loud! The whole house was literally shaking with it. Fuck, what must the neighbors think?? And this most amazing, amazing kind of salsa we were doing—seriously, it was like something you’d see on So You Think You Can Dance. This dude is a shit-hot dancer. I mean, unbelievable—like a Latin dancer, maybe? That would account for why he wears his pants so high, also his shirt unbuttoned to practically the navel. But he totally, totally knows how to lead. At one point, we were up on the kitchen bench, and I swear, I’m pretty sure anyway, I had my legs wrapped around his waist and I was leaning right back with complete fucking abandon while he spun me round and round, and I was laughing hysterically, because amazingly, my head was just narrowly skimming the benchtop.

  So that’s one memory. And I remember bits of us having sex, which was just unbelievably thrilling and exciting and would pretty much have to be hands down THE BEST SEX I HAVE EVER HAD, BAR NONE, and may I just say that includes Josh. At one point—maybe when he came?—he bit down on my neck so hard it was like he was the fucking Lion King. And I know that bit is real because I have the bruise on my neck to prove it. Even the teeth marks.

  I’m not sure, I am fairly sure, because it is coming to me in flashes, that at one point we were both stark naked on the golf course, and definitely, definitely we must have fucked there, because I remember looking up at the stars and thinking, This is so perfect, this is so perfect, ohmygodohmygodOHMYGOD

  I really need to try to put all this down properly because the last twenty-four hours have been extremely bizarre to say the least. The only thing I can compare it to for thrills and spills is the Wild Mouse at Luna Park—I mean the most terrifying and exhilarating experience of my life, except the only thing is I feel like I am the Wild Mouse carriage that crashed, the one that spun off the rails and into the crowd, the one they have on display when you’re queuing for tickets in order to frighten the fucking bejesus out of you.

  Okay, so … this is what happened, as best as I can recall. Sunday afternoon, maybe around five o’clock, there’s that odd little furtive knock again. And there he is on the doorstep, holding a bottle of wine. (I have this horrible feeling I drank all that wine. Because I don’t think he drinks at all. Anyway, it was delicious.) And he is very, very apologetic for standing me up the previous night. He says: “Can you believe what happened? Ryan drove the Charger into the Pondage. Fuck it, that’s the last time I’m giving him a driving lesson.”

  Which begs the question—what was he doing giving a backward kid like Ryan a driving lesson at all, let alone on a winding mountain road in a hotted-up Charger, for Christ’s sake???

  “I can’t blame him completely,” continues Gregory (that’s his name). “Some idiot was trying to overtake a bus.”

  My heart practically stops dead.

  I’m thinking, Is he serious? Has he seen the Corolla parked
in the driveway and put two and two together, and now he’s having a shot at me about that incident the other day? But he’s eyeing me very coolly, very normally, not giving anything away. “You’d be surprised at the lead foots we get around here,” he says. “For what purpose? Is it worth being dead just to get there a few seconds earlier?”

  He smiles at me then, and I get a flash of white teeth. Can I say? Simultaneously terrifying and extremely arousing.

  “So is Ryan all right?” I ask.

  “He’ll be all right when he stops crying like a baby,” says Gregory.

  For the first time ever, I feel a slight pang of sympathy for Ryan.

  Anyway, I invite him in, and I say, Would you like some wine, which he declines, so I say, How about tea? But he refuses on account of me having no herbal tea. He also declines water, on account of the fact that the government puts fluoride in it in order to turn us all into passive, unquestioning zombies. (Apparently Gregory is some kind of wild faun who only drinks from mountain streams.) So he sits down very formally at the kitchen table and pontificates for half an hour on the fact that Ryan apparently confuses Gregory’s disciplinary techniques with those of a prison guard at Guantánamo, and consequently is always crying and talking back, and once even tried to smother Gregory with a pillow while he slept. “And I am the sweetest, most docile person in the world, until you cross me,” says Gregory. “Word of warning: don’t even try it.” And I begin to think to myself, Jesus, what is going on in that house? Is this something I need to report?

  You see, I remember all of this bit because I hadn’t started drinking yet. But Gregory insists I open the bottle of wine he brought, so of course I do. And from here on, everything gets very hazy. For some reason, what memories I do actually retain of the evening all have this strange bluish tinge to them, like we’re under a neon light or one of those zapper things that kills flies in fish-and-chip shops. I expect that’s the brain damage, because almost certainly I blacked out. I mean, the whole night was WILD. Did he spike the wine or something? Also, what’s weird is I had no hangover. I mean, I’ve felt a bit strange and wired all day, but no headache, nothing.

  What did he think about my reconstituted breast?! Did he say anything? I can’t remember. But anyway, it didn’t seem to put him off. Not like Harry the Harelip, with his “Whoa. Whoa.” I’m pretty sure Gregory and I did it multiple times. I mean, this guy is seriously UNBELIEVABLE.

  So anyway, all that was fine and dandy. Sensational, in fact. But as is so often the way in my experience, everything went to shit in the morning.

  Okay, so at some point in the proceedings, I must have passed out on the bed. And I wake up with a start because I’ve heard a door bang. It’s Gregory letting the screen door bang on his way out. Dawn is just beginning to break. So I think, Where’s he going at this hour? Is he going home to cook breakfast for poor neglected Ryan?

  I peer out the bedroom window, which looks onto the golf course, and I see him. For some bizarre reason, even though it’s absolutely freezing and there’s frost on the ground, he’s bare-chested and barefoot. And he’s crouching over a little and moving very stealthily. Every step he hovers his foot above the ground a bit before he places it down. And I’m thinking, What the fuck is he doing??

  And then I realize he is STALKING THE KANGAROOS.

  Absolutely barking, as my mum would say.

  So I go back to bed for a bit, then I get up and make coffee and some toast, and suddenly he comes strolling in through the back door and he’s got these bloody scratches all over his forearms. He goes directly to the sink without saying anything, and he washes the blood off and then he dries his arms on a clean tea towel. I say, all innocent, “What happened to you?” like I hadn’t just watched him creeping around after kangaroos, and he shrugs and says, “Nothing.” Like making it plain that he doesn’t wish to discuss it.

  So I say, “There’s some coffee in the pot.” And he’s like, “I don’t drink coffee.” And I say, “Of course you don’t, how stupid of me.” And he says, “What’s that supposed to mean?” And I’m back-pedaling a bit here, but I say, “Well, I’ve just noticed that you’re kind of puritanical about things.” And he snorts and says, “That’s funny. Especially coming from you.” And I’m like, What?

  And then the fucker turns to me and says, “You wonder why you got cancer? Look at you. You eat crap, you drink caffeine and alcohol. You’re filled with bile and envy. It’s all cause and effect, you know. Nothing happens to a person that they do not deserve.”

  I was floored by this. Slammed on the ropes. I was gutted.

  But all credit to me, I fought back. I got very icy, which is what I do when I’m really angry, and I said to him very coolly, “For your information, fuckwit, there’s a fifteen percent increase in survival rates if you’re a light to moderate drinker.”

  And he makes this scornful little “Pffft!” sound again, so now I’m really fucking angry and I tell him very calmly to get the fuck out.

  And he says, “You’re asking me to leave?”

  To which I respond, “There’s no asking—I’m telling you. Fuck off.”

  So he saunters very casually to the back door. And then he stops and turns back and he’s got this odd little smirking, questioning look on his face, like, Are you sure about this? I reiterate: “Fuck off, arsehole.” And he duly fucks off, letting the screen door bang behind him.

  I was a total mess all day. For one thing, I couldn’t stop crying. I was late to school because of it. When I finally got here, I gave the kids some worksheets I found in a drawer and sat at my desk with my sunglasses on, pretending I had an eye infection. Madison comes up to me at one point and asks me if I want a heat pack. I’m like, What? And she says that she used to be Miss Barker’s heat-pack monitor for when she had her period pains. And she opens this cupboard and it’s chock-full of heat packs. I’m thinking, Really? Miss Barker is discussing her period pains with a six-year-old and getting her to warm heat packs in the microwave? Christ Almighty. So I say very pointedly, “Thank you, Madison, I do not need a heat pack. Not now, not ever.”

  The weirdest part was seeing Ryan. This made me stop in my tracks a bit. Does he know I’ve been cavorting all night with his brother? And if he doesn’t exactly know, does he suspect anything? I mean, he would surely be aware that his brother came around to see me and didn’t come home. But maybe not … He certainly didn’t indicate that he knew anything, just seemed his plain old usual dopey uninterested self. Anyway, I decided, best plan of action: avoid the kid as much as possible.

  At one point, he did look up and catch me staring at him from behind my sunglasses. I just find it so hard to believe they are brothers, I guess I was staring at him trying to see a resemblance. Anyway, he looked up and caught me staring at him, but I’m hoping that because of the sunglasses he may have thought I was staring at Oliver, who was sitting directly in front of him. So then I say very quickly, “Oliver, will you please get on with your work.” Which confuses Oliver, because in actual fact he had been working, and of course he gets all bewildered and upset and goes, “But I am working!” so I just say very sternly, “You know what I mean,” and leave it at that.

  Then at lunchtime I’m in the bathroom splashing water on my face, trying to reduce the swollen eyes, and then I notice afresh the big fat purple bruise on my neck, complete with teeth marks, which I’d been inadvertently flaunting all morning in front of the children. Anyway, I smother it with foundation, which helps only slightly. (I wonder if Glenda saw it? I don’t see how she could actually miss it. Obviously, this will confirm her low opinion of me. But since when is it a crime for a primary school teacher to have sex? Albeit sex that involves biting. Albeit sex that involves being bitten on the neck by the primary caregiver of one of your students.)

  After lunch, the night’s activities caught up with me, and I actually nodded off at my desk. Like, seriously this immense weariness overcame me, and I just slumped over the desk and fell sound asleep, till fina
lly one of the twins came over and prodded me awake. How long was I out for? I think, I’m not sure, maybe forty-five minutes? Anyway, I leaped up and we did some movement exercises to music, basically in a bid to keep myself conscious till the bell went. Then, as the kids filed out, I found myself hovering hopefully in case the Charger made a return appearance. But then I remembered the Charger is at the bottom of the Pondage, courtesy of Ryan, so I came home. I think I was actually half expecting, half hoping Gregory might still be here. Which is mad. Because of course he wasn’t.

  Although I can still sort of smell him. He had a particular smell, hard to define, a little earthy, a little piney, a subtle note of spearmint leaves crushed underfoot. I should know, because I picked up the bloodstained tea towel on which he’d dried his scratched arms and had a good old inhale. Like, practically buried my face in it. And then I thought, What the fuck am I doing?

  I suppose because I actually really like him.

  I do.

  Every time I inhale the scent of him, my belly kind of flip-flops.

  I haven’t felt this way about anyone for a long time. Since Josh. Since the early days of Josh. Since Josh pulled my regulator out and pashed me underwater.

  Admittedly this guy is a prick. And I still can’t believe he actually said what he said. But—and this is very hard for me to put into words—this tiny little part of me agrees with him. I do deserve it. All the crap I’ve put into my body. All the crap I continue to put into my body, even after the wake-up call of all wake-up calls, namely cancer. And also the bile and envy. He totally nailed it. I am filled with bile and envy, and also I’m a total consequence dodger. Meaning I can never accept the consequences of my actions. I will always blame something or somebody else. Never me. And finally someone called me on it.