have been karma.”
“What?”
“Karma. I was just delivering his karma. Not my fault.”
“Are you nuts?”
“Jesus, Lily, why are you in such a fucking bad mood all of a sudden?”
“I guess you didn’t leave your number.”
“It wasn’t my fault, Lily. I mean, don’t shoot the messenger and all that. I told you it was karma. God knows what the other guy actually did.”
I pause for a minute. I don’t think I have an appropriate response.
“Are you okay?” I say, eventually.
“I’m a mess. I can’t face work. I’m calling in sick.”
I invite him to come with me to Watson’s Bay for scones and cream with my mother. I feel he needs something sweet to get him through the rest of the day, and I need a buffer against the advice I’m sure Mama has prepared to pile on me so she can get through her day.
“Pick me up in fifteen minutes,” I say.
When Sam arrives, we check out the damage. Jackson looks completely fine. The hairline scratch on the bumper isn’t obvious even when he points it out to me. Sam, on the other hand, is a mess.
“You haven’t been home yet, have you?” He is still wearing his party clothes: a tight black T-shirt and even tighter black jeans. His suit, business shirt and purple tie are hanging in the back seat. “Give me the keys,” I say. “I’m not in the mood for dodgems today.”
In the car on the way to brunch we talk about guys. Sam tells me how he spent the night dancing with pretty strangers, but didn’t get lucky with any particular one. We pass through the leafy Rose Bay streets. It’s another glorious spring day in Sydney. Mercifully, the temperature dropped ten degrees overnight, and the cool, crisp air carries hints of sea salt and diesel fuel. The footpaths are peppered with squashed petunias and the purple confetti of jacaranda petals.
“I still had a good night,” he explains. “What about you?”
“I thought it’d be a quiet one, but Jeremy called up at midnight.”
“Jeremy? Oh Lily, no, not again.” Jeremy and I are each other’s backup plan. Whenever either one of us is bored or lonely we call the other for an easy lay. It’s not a particularly passionate affair, but it’s reliable. And it’s all we both have right now.
“He’s not that bad,” I say.
“He’s a dag.”
“He’s around.”
“He’s boring.”
“He calls.”
Sam and I are the only ones of our friends who are still single. We always joke that we have each other, but it’s not really that funny. Even if Sam wasn’t gay, we’d probably kill each other within a week. Monogamy is Sam’s idea of a nightmare, but I guess I’m open to the idea. I’m still not sure what it is I want more, the boyfriend or the peace having a boyfriend will bring me: no more anxious monologues from Anyu, no more random set-ups from Punci and the gang, no more pathetic grooming advice from my girlfriends. They say it’s all about love, but one thing I know is that a steady relationship would be a gift for those who love me the most: Sam, who loves the drama; Mama, who wishes for me the relationship she never had; and Anyu, who simply can’t stand the shame.
We’re almost there. They are digging up the road again on the S-bends leading down to the water. Five fluorescent-clad workers hover around a fractured hole, smoking cigarettes and talking on their phones, as one lone man jackhammers away at the bitumen. Sam motions for me to slow down so we can catch a glimpse of their gleaming, sweaty bodies. He sticks his fading chewing gum briefly on his index finger and lets out a strident wolf whistle, met equally vigorously by whoops and jeers from the troops. I quickly check the rear view mirror to make sure they’re not following us with a sledgehammer. Sam smiles. He’s feeling better. But I’m worrying about whether or not we’ll find parking and how we can avoid the hordes of toddlers and geriatrics in the park on their precious day out and the busloads of Japanese tourists who will cram up the boardwalk in front of the café with their ever so polite murmuring and shuffling, blocking the view of the city skyline and the only reason to sit at that café in the first place.
As we get closer, I catch Sam mouthing a silent prayer to the God of Parking.
“Pray with me,” he says, reaching for my hand.
“You know I don’t believe in Him,” I say.
I slow down and pull up in front of the white, knee-high wicker fence bordering the Tea Gardens. I scan the lawn while Sam looks ahead for a parking miracle. Mama is already there, her nose buried in the Sydney Morning Herald. She is wobbling on the rickety wrought-iron seat whose legs sink unevenly into the sparsely covered lawn. The café is uncharacteristically quiet. An elderly couple sips tea from paper cups near the fishpond. A skinny, rat-like dog noses around in the flowerbed. A bored waiter slowly wraps cutlery in serviettes by the counter. A car pulls out of a space right in front of us.
Sam grins.
“Screw you,” I say.
Mama is excited to see us. She has news.
“Did you read about the monstrosity they want to build over at Darling Harbour? That place is getting uglier by the day.”
I didn’t read anything. I haven’t read the paper for years, instead trusting Mama to wade through the news for me and filter out the important from the trivial. Sam’s ready for a discussion; he loves any kind of drama, but she’s not really interested in talking more about it.
“Aren’t you kids working today?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“I’m not in the mood,” Sam says.
“What time do you start?” Mama asks.
“Oh, I’m not going to the gallery. I’m working at home.”
“You mean painting?” she says. It is unfathomable to Mama that I dropped out of university to paint. “Oh Lily, if it’s painting that you really want to do, well, nothing is wrong with that – you have plenty of time on the weekend for colouring in! But giving away your hard-earned place in medicine to draw pictures all day, well that’s insanity.” She turns to Sam. “Even he has a respectable job, right Sam?”
A respectable job for a poof, she means. A project manager, he sits in front of a buzzing computer screen all day and then has to drink and snort himself to oblivion each night so he can muster up enough strength to do it all over again the next day.
“You know I would have given anything to have gone to university. You don’t know how lucky you are.” Mama is the most educated person in her family even though she left her home economics high school when she wasn’t quite fifteen. “Us girls weren’t even expected to get our Leaving Certificate, darling. What for? It wouldn’t be long before we’d find ourselves husbands and in the meantime, we had better earn our keep.” It wasn’t that Mama
