Читать книгу Half Past Dead - Jane Clifton - Страница 7

IT wasn't for the sex. She told herself that all along. She had a good sex life. A perfectly satisfying, regular and often thrilling sex life, even after many years of monogamy.

A sex life that was, she admitted, largely confined to the bedroom, rather than the lounge-room floor or the shower or the kitchen table or just inside the front door and, these days, pyjamas were involved. A sex life with no urgency, not a lot of selflessness and far less creativity than those all-night marathons of the first couple of years.

The back of her neck and her thighs were no longer the preferred targets for kisses - what kisses there were - and her toes were positively neglected. In fact, she would have to say that if her body were a football field, the midfield would be brown, dry and sandy with overuse while the wings, back and forward areas would be waist-high, lush and green.

But for all that... she couldn't complain. Sex for her was open all hours, safe and savagely efficient. God knows, some of her female friends hadn't had so much as a cuddle with a man in over a year or, worse still, had almost given up hope.

Intelligent and financially independent, even the good-looking ones made other arrangements, went out with women or the occasional gay 'handbag', took pottery courses, did intensive, bone-draining yoga classes and joked about their vibrators.

And there she was, knocking it back some nights because she was too tired!

So, it wasn't for the sex, Ronnie reminded herself as she looked down at the corpse of Lawrence Konitz sprawled across the lino, right where the mail would have dropped through the slot.

He was dressed in the same cream silk pants and pale blue shirt he'd been wearing the night before, but he was barefoot, lying face down, his right leg bent at an odd angle with the foot caught under the left thigh. His left arm extended past his head, his right arm tucked under his body.

Ronnie couldn't see his face, but a dark red stream was seeping out from under his right armpit and forming a little pool in which a lone fly was showing a great deal of interest and buzzing out a general announcement to its extended family.

His body lay still, but she was not about to run over and check his pulse or hold to his mouth the small mirror one always carries for such emergencies. And she wasn't going to scream. They only did that in films and usually out of shot.

No, she was going to stand exactly where she was, paralysed with fear. She felt she could handle that.

A violent spasm had woken her earlier; one of those moments of semi-consciousness when, in your dreams, you trip and fall and your body jumps as if riddled with bullets as your jaw snaps your teeth together on your tongue.

Groping for the bedside clock, Ronnie succeeded only in sending it clattering to the floor, spewing batteries in all directions. Somewhere, far below her, a door slammed, followed by the sound of a car firing up outside and taking off at high speed.

Retrieving the fallen clock with an outstretched arm, she saw the time of 8.37 a.m., and by then it was too late. If only she had woken at seven or, even better, if she had never fallen asleep.

If only: the story of her life.

A quick glance at the headless pillow beside her assured Ronnie that she was alone, but it took several minutes for her to work out where she was and in what state, both emotional and geographic. It took longer to remember how she had got into that state.

Firstly, she was naked. Secondly, and most unfortunately, she was not between the sheets at number 37 Wakelin Street, Yarraville: the address which had appeared on her tax return for the last seven years and at which she resided with Boyd, her husband of eleven years, and her nine-year-old-son Matt.

It was entirely probable that she was in the bedroom of Lawrence Konitz, a man who, up until about five hours ago, she could have sworn she knew quite well, but now, after taking in her surroundings, she was far from sure.

Ronnie gazed with one bleary eye at the piles of books and magazines stacked haphazardly on makeshift shelves of plank and brick, at the clothes that spilled from every drawer, cascading over clusters of empty beer cans and an old take-away container still in its plastic carry-bag stained with reddish-orange oil. She tried to square this with the altar to anal retention that was Lawrence's desk, situated a paper-plane flight away from her own workspace at Arthouse Studios.

Lawrence was based in sales and marketing and had little to do with the artistic side of Arthouse Studios textile design business. Even so, Ronnie would never have imagined his home to have been so devoid of style. The early morning sun, piercing the chipped, too-small bamboo blind, threw irregular bars of light across dusty, picture-free, apricot walls huddled around irregular, unpolished floorboards. This was a room for a short tenancy; the waiting room of a country railway station; a kidnapper's lair.

It smelled stale, unventilated, with a faint trace of dog.

And the shoes. Imeldas of shoes. Blacks and browns, brogues, tan, grey, spats and trainers, elastic-sided, purple suede, thonged and buckled, tyre-soled, winklepickers, Birkenstock, Niblick, Blundstone and Docs, swoosh and three-striped canvas, lace-up knee-highs with beaded fringes, red and white cowboy boots jewelled with aquamarine, spike-soled and loafers, patent-leather pumps, clogs, massage sandals and dozens of black cotton happy shoes.

A field of shoes. A shoedrift. All worn, creased and down at heel, and covered with a fine patina of dust and the promise of a strong smell. Unpaired. Like lost souls in a singles bar looking for Mr Right (or Miss Left as the case may be). Your partner for life just a few feet away, but you'd never know in this crowd. Lonely shoes, pointing in all directions, unable to make a decision.

Who would have thought he'd have so many shoes? She hadn't noticed that he wore a lot of different pairs, and shoes were something she noticed. You can tell a lot about a person from their choice of footwear.

'Never trust a man in white shoes,' her mother had cautioned. 'Pimps!'

In her formative years Ronnie had heeded this warning without question, as she did most of Faith's saws and superstitions, only realising later in life that these pronouncements were lines lifted straight out of any number of Hollywood movies that formed the basis of her mother's very own, midday, University of the Air. And while there was always a possibility that Faith had had some unfortunate dealings with the many white-shoed pimps she was bound to encounter at Safeway, the grown-up Ronnie decided that this was unlikely. Nevertheless, white shoes as an indicator of untrustworthiness in a man had remained locked into her subconscious (with certain concessions made to tennis players - but only when engaged in play).

So maybe if Lawrence had worn white shoes? If she had known about this store of footwear? She closed her eyes and burrowed down further into the pillow, not wanting to think about ifs, not wanting to think.

Perhaps it was only women's shoes that Ronnie noticed? From the stilettoed follow-me-home-and-fuck-me to the high-tech trainer or the low-life moccie, all objects of envy or derision, dead giveaways of character and intention.

Oh yes, her mother, the Profiler, was spot-on when it came to analysing women's footwear but she might have given Ronnie more warnings about men (pimps included) other than their sporting of white shoes. Leather ties perhaps. Or brown cardigans and cargo pants. Let's face it, anyone who falls in love when assaulted by those kinds of dress-code violations...

Fallen in love? Was that what Ronnie had done? Was love what had brought her here? Surely not. But that was what she'd said to Lawrence last night. 'I love you very much' were the words she said, confident he felt the same.

Love? How else could she express what she'd been feeling for the last few months? There were times when it felt just like it. The pounding heart, the breathless anticipation, the heightened sense of touch and smell, the loss of weight - oh, the heavenly, effortless loss of weight! But love?

She didn't have a lot of evidence to go on. Even in the self-saucing thick of it she had sensed that theirs was not an enduring meeting of true minds such as she once had with Boyd, bound with steel hoops of humour and intelligence. Her conversations with Lawrence on matters other than work had had some moments of flow, but they were just brazen excuses for her to stand close to him, to hear his voice, to breathe him in. And yet with another part of her brain, located at some considerable distance from the part that was on red alert, she had registered a dim 'no future'.

So, it wasn't love. And it wasn't for the sex. Although sex had indeed been and gone, without her even coming. Oh, very droll, she thought. Very amusing. In a few months time we'll all be laughing our heads off over that one. But not today, because any minute now her head was going to implode.

She rolled over carefully, exhaled through pursed lips as she realised with blinding clarity that it was neither love nor sex but that silly, giddy in-between land: she had simply had a crush on him.

A schoolgirl crush, at an age when the only schoolgirls she knew were going to school with her son. An excruciating crush, to the exclusion of all else. A crush with no place in the real world. Something to take her mind off the humdrum, to put a spring in her step and a two in her dress-size where previously there had been a four. A crush, at once exciting, dangerous and bothersome; she loved having it and yet longed to be free of it.

If he had, perhaps, found a girlfriend? It had taken Lou-Ann five minutes to find out he was recently divorced. He wasn't going to stay alone for long: Lawrence Konitz was gorgeous - the verdict in the dyeing room was unanimous - tall, blond, broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped, that sort of thing, with a kind of louche, enigmatic presence exemplified by a predilection for Hugo Boss suits. A veritable 'chick magnet', and straight to boot.

The appearance of a girlfriend for him would have solved everything. The sort of fantasy Ronnie had been indulging in was predicated on the faintest possibility that something might happen. An obsession for an attached person offended her moral sense, and she was, as are most women of Irish - Catholic descent, pathologically moral. Not at all like those women for whom an intrinsic part of the attraction lies in the fact that the other person is already spoken for.

The fact that she herself was not only spoken for but had it in writing, was welded at the heart for all eternity to a husband and child whom she would not and could not leave, did not seem a contradiction to Ronnie. In her fantasy file, the one marked 'never to be released', she was free as a bird; an extreme object of desire.

The emergence of a real-life girlfriend for Lawrence, however, would have put an end to all of that, would have forced her to admit that she was indulging in a bit of fun, some romantic aerobics for the flabby, marriage-fatigued heart, that she was not free, that she had nothing to offer. There would be no contest.

But there had been no girlfriend. No rumoured liaison had cropped up in the office goss broadcast via Lou-Ann's regular coffee-break bulletins. On the contrary, Ronnie rather feared she might be an item on the agenda when Lou-Ann had asked her point-blank, and almost breathlessly, what she thought Lawrence might like for Christmas. Genevieve's head had spun around so fast Ronnie almost heard her neck snap. 'Miss Inhuman Services', one of Genevieve's many epithets, usually feigned grand indifference to coffee talk. Stella, the apprentice cutter, had even glanced up, sighed, then buried her head further into Textile View.

The fact that Lou-Ann might have noticed any crush-like behaviour on Ronnie's part was, in itself, no big deal - the receptionist from hell had a heat-seeking device for trouble - but it was a wake-up call. Time to get a grip, snap out of it before someone else noticed her pink cheeks and cow eyes. Someone else who would give her hell. Someone like Dexter.

Two weeks at the coast on her Christmas break had helped her to shake the whole thing off in the nicest possible way. She had to admit that what she lost on the swings of her husband's high-powered legal career she gained on the roundabouts of the low-key summer holiday. Perfect house with panoramic views across the ocean to Wilsons Promontory, a safe, secluded beach, bush-walks, rockpools and decent local restaurants. Paradise.

When Matt was a baby it was more like an endurance test than a holiday - housework on location with none of the comforts of home. Cowering under an umbrella breast-feeding and swatting flies or crouching in terror as the toddler rushed into the water, while Boyd wandered off for hours - 'fishing'. In the last few years, however, things had improved immeasurably. Boyd brought all the boy-toys: scuba equipment, sailboard, fishing rods, frisbee, with which he and Matt kept themselves amused from sun-up to barbie.

Sketchpad and pastels at her side, Ronnie lay glistening from her swim and let the sun burn a hole through her spine all the way to China, she didn't care. If she thought of work at all it was of the year of possibilities ahead.

'Sky's the limit, Ronnie!' Isn't that what Dexter said at the Christmas party?

'David Jones and Target have both re-ordered - can't get enough of us - well, you, really - they love you: your designs. Right place, right time, right pictures! That's what textiles is all about!'

Strictly a VB man, her boss Dexter Henderson had a low tolerance for methode champenoise, it made him wax garrulous. 'And I just know,' he barrelled on, fingers to his temple, 'in my heart, that if we get this foot in the door of the Asian market... sky's the limit!'

Old fantasies of a new house, private schooling for Matt and maybe another overseas trip were starting to look attainable. The real world was looking good. Boyd was looking good. Warm, funny, considerate, he even did the dishes, and there is no greater turn-on for the hard-working professional mother-of-one than the sight of her husband, tea towel in hand, scrupulously drying a plate.

Sex was edging its way back into the love-making category; they actually looked into each other's eyes, kissed the way they used to and, afterwards, their tingly, sunburned bodies stayed locked together instead of turning to distant sides of the bed and the pressing business of sleep, or maybe just one more chapter of holiday reading. Contentment ruled.

That's when she decided to keep her promise to Dexter to go back to work a week early to help him finalise the pitch that he was sweating over to secure a deal with a major Asian department store conglomerate known as 2-SWAN. She knew it would involve working closely with Lawrence, in his capacity as Arthouse's recently acquired South-East Asian hot-shot, but she was confident that she was over all that nonsense.

Boyd was all she needed. Theirs was the real thing, the enduring love that had weathered the storms. They were a family again, with Matt luxuriating in his father's attentions. Going back to work early would give father and son some long overdue quality time together. Poor kid saw so little of his dad and, with all the love in the world, there are limits to how much empathy can flow between a nine-year-old sports fanatic and his arty-farty, nambypamby mother. But Boyd was always up to his neck in some case or other, often interstate for weeks at a time.

'Bringing home the bacon,' was his defensive mantra. Except that he hardly ever brought it straight home and was rarely there to enjoy it for breakfast.

'Gimme a break!' he'd bleat. 'It's not going to be for ever. Just a few more years at this pace and we'll be able to sit back and enjoy the spoils.' Sure, just you and me in our wheelchairs, was how Ronnie pictured it.

Boyd never had enough time for Matt. Time to play ball, go to the footy, a movie or just to dag around together. He also failed to notice how handsome his son had become. Faith always maintained that boys resembled their mothers, as girls did their fathers, and Matt was living proof of this wild generalisation. Ronnie's pitch-black hair fell in thick bangs around the creamy skin of her son's angular face and hazel eyes; no sign of Boyd's auburn curls, freckles or baby-blues. Matt was just average height for his age, but a combination of swimming, basketball and cross-country had burned off any puppy fat that might have accumulated during his national-average exposure to children's TV.

'Girl-catch! Girl-catch!' he would taunt as Ronnie dropped yet another ball at the park.

'Yeah, well I am a girl!' she'd yell back. 'And this is how we play!'

And then the perennial question. 'How come Dad never comes to the park?'

'Well, your dad's very busy, darling. You know he would if he could. It's just... '

'He's always on the phone or in the study with the door shut. Couldn't you ask him to come? Then you could stay home and cook tea.'

'Gee, thanks Matt. I'll see what I can do.'

Well, I got you an extra week at the beach with your old man, Matty, so how am I doing? Make the most of it while your mum gets her arse back into gear at work.

Work that saw Ronnie back at Arthouse Studios at 9 a.m., Monday 6 January. While much of Melbourne was still on holidays, she was putting the finishing touches on sketches that would form the basis of next season's collection. The autumn - winter designs they would present to 2-SWAN were fully developed and had already had a successful test run on the fabrics, but Ronnie also wanted to give the South-East Asian group a taste of what was planned for spring - summer: a theme combining tea-roses and bone china.

Perched on a high stool with her feet on the bar, she worked at an angled desk, adding layers to the inky drawing in front of her, occasionally glancing at the litter of open books, pressed flowers, leaves and fragments of crockery that lay strewn across a small table at her side.

Lifting her head for a second, Ronnie spied Lawrence through the glass doors that separated the printing room from the business end of Arthouse. He walked from the lift in his languorous way, hips forward, shoulders tilted to the left. A slim briefcase in one hand, brushing his hair back with the other, he stopped at one of the long printing tables to chat with Stella.

No problem. Ronnie felt strong; over it.

She continued working on the delicate tracery of a leaf, shading in the varying shades of lime, chrome and sepia, trying to decide whether to intensify one or lighten the other, when, all of a sudden, there he was, at her desk.

'Well, look at you,' he said. 'You look fantastic.'

It was not a loud greeting, bellowed from across the room for everyone to hear; it was soft, intimate, for her ears only.

'Thanks,' she managed, straightening herself up on her stool, tucking back a loose strand of hair.

'I didn't think you were back until next week.'

He leaned against her desk, his back towards the rest of the room, his cream-silk thigh a crease away from her linen skirt. Grapefruit-scented pheromones filled the air between them.

'No, I wasn't. I decided to try and help finalise the 2-SWAN submission, you know... Dexter sort of twisted my arm... as he does.' She waved her hands in a comical 'ta-da!' way, laughing, trying to keep it light.

'As he does, yeah.' He laughed softly with her. 'He shouldn't worry. I've told Ching Lee all about you. He loves all the pictures, he just likes' - he leaned closer - 'the personal touch.'

Her resolve was beginning to crumble. 'Oh, good,' she said.

'Well, kinda good,' he said, stretching out his hand and fluttering it from side to side in a 50/50 motion. 'There's buttons you can push with Ching Lee, but he's a real operator. I wouldn't want you to find yourself in deep water.'

His lips were moving, words were coming out, but she wasn't processing them very well because she was drinking in his face. The hollow of his cheek, the sharpness of his chin, his caramel-coloured eyes with their heavily lashed lids at half-mast. And his mouth. It was all she could do to stop herself from leaning across to that sensuous destination.

'So, listen... do you wanna have a drink later? I can explain things a bit better, fill you in.'

Fill me in? Resolve? What resolve? She was over what?

'A drink? Sure... that'd be... '

'Unless you have to get home.'

'No... no... that'd be fine. No, the boys are still down at the beach. I'm... ' Home Alone, she thought, and in big trouble '... that'd be nice.'

'Great. And welcome back.'

Missed it by that much.