Читать книгу Surviving Hal - Penny Flanagan - Страница 9

3.

Truth be told, Andy was what I would call ‘an overlapper’. That night when he took my hand and led me into a cab, he was still entangled in the dying throes of his previous relationship. To be clear, lest you think I’m obfuscating, the relationship was not over, but Andy, emotionally speaking, was done with it.

“I should probably tell you something.” He turned toward me in the cab and put a hand lightly on my knee, which to be honest, thrilled me.

“Are you really a woman?” I asked. He laughed, short and hollow, nervous, self-effacing. I could see the effect I was having on him, it made me like him more. He wasn’t so confident after all.

“I’m assuming . . . ” he began, then took his hand off my leg.

“Whatever you’re assuming,” I said, “is right.”

There was something about him that made me bold with my feelings.

“My last relationship has not quite ended. It’s over, but . . . ”

“Has it ended or not?”

“For me it has . . . ”

“Has it ended for her?”

“Well, we’re . . . you know, it’s inevitable, I just haven’t . . . ”

“So, you have a . . . girlfriend?” I ventured, hoping he wouldn’t upgrade that to ‘wife’.

“Yes. But it’s over.”

“If she’s your girlfriend, it’s not over.”

He laughed nervously. I could see I had him on the back foot now. Something about that, the power of it, made me giddy.

“Shall we get a drink?” he said, changing the subject. “I know a great place on the water, down near Pier One.”

Without waiting for my reply, he directed the cabbie to his little waterside haunt. A hole in the wall music joint that happened to be built into the lower level of one of Sydney’s old piers. This was back when the area was a ragged fringe edge of the city. Rows of abandoned wharf buildings in the ominous shadow of the Harbour Bridge. He knew the girl on the door, she greeted him with a squeal and stood up to receive a kiss on the cheek. It was too loud inside to speak so we were spared the small talk. She stamped our wrists and we walked into a room full of sweaty bodies dancing to a live funk band. The bass physically pummelled my chest and I considered for a split second abandoning this whole idea of stealing some other poor woman’s boyfriend and just going home. My life could go on as it was, without this increasingly complicated entanglement.

Then, as though he sensed me about to scarper, he took my hand and led me through the dark, noisy room to the waterside platform on the outside of the building. The dark harbour sloshed around the pier piles beneath us and the outside bar area was haphazardly dotted with moulded table and chair ensembles, the kind that are prefabbed in one piece out of fibreglass. He settled me at a table and then went quickly to the bar. He brought back two cold beers, set one down in front of me and took a long swig of his before he spoke.

He was still living with her. The relationship was volatile. She once threw a phone at his head and nearly knocked him out. He showed me the small scar up near his hairline, where his head had been stitched back together. Her name was Lindy and they’d been together for five years. She was a heavy drinker, on her way to being labelled an alcoholic, as it turned out. But back then, everyone just characterised her as a party girl, a hell-raiser, a girl who liked a drink or two, or ten, before passing out on the bathroom floor.

“When she met my father for the first time,” he said, “she wore a Lycra cat suit.”

“As a dress up?” I asked, confused.

“No,” he laughed. “It was a full body cat suit, really low cut and I couldn’t believe it.”

“A cat suit?” I couldn’t believe it either. I was trying to picture a cat suit in my head and where one might buy it.

“If you knew my father, you’d know how totally wrong that was,” he laughed.

“It’s wrong regardless of that,” I said, missing the clue about his dad. “How did you meet her?”

“We worked together.”

“Do you still work together?”

“No.”

He grabbed my hand across the table.

“But anyway . . . ”

“Anyway, nothing,” I said, but I left my hand in his.

“I’m moving out,” he said to the table, not meeting my eyes. “Soon.”

I sat back, eyed him and took a big gulp of my beer. I set it down. Then I picked it up again and drank the rest. I stood up, a bit unsteady as the beer rushed to my head. “Call me when you’re out,” I said.

I walked back through the funk and the bodies to the roadside of the pier. I got in a cab and went home.

A few weeks later, he called me. Like most men, he needed something to jump to before he jumped: an overlapper. He jumped to me. I was his next landing point. I was his final landing point, as it turned out. An anomaly in a history of damaged, broken women.

He chose me and now I know why.

When Andy and I started going out, Hal’s name was mentioned in dark, comical asides. I recall more than once, one or other of Andy’s friends asking me ominously, “So, have you met Hal yet?”

The question carried in it some bleak joke that seemed to amuse them. This led me to believe that Hal was merely someone to be suffered and largely a source of amusement. Indeed the very mention of his name seemed to plant a wry, knowing smile on all of Andy’s friend’s faces. It also led me to believe that Hal was harmless.

What I should have been paying attention to was the sense of remove between Andy and his father. The very fact that he called him ‘Hal’ and not ‘Dad’ should have been a red flag that there was more to Hal than a potentially insufferable in-law. I should have noticed the change in temperature that came over Andy when Hal’s name was mentioned. The frozen smile, the far-off look. The way he said, “Now, now,” as a way of shutting friends down on this topic as soon as it was raised. What I don’t get is why his friends thought Hal was an amusing topic.

There really was nothing funny about Hal.