New Australian Stories 2 Read Free

the darkness of the lounge, careful not to trip over the edge of the mattress, lurching for the phone as it rang.
    Robert — he is becoming that name as I use it more frequently — wanted to meet me at a café in Glebe. I wrote the address down on a scrap of paper, although I knew the place he suggested.
    â€˜What are you up to today?’ he asked.
    I told him we were house-hunting. ‘It’s what we always do,’ I said.
    â€˜Whereabouts?’
    â€˜Darlinghurst, Newtown, Glebe.’
    He wished me luck. He said he was looking forward to seeing me. ‘Tuesday,’ he reminded me. ‘Seven o’clock.’
    I hung up and crumpled the paper in my hand.
    â€˜Who was that?’ Loene wanted to know, and I blushed as I admitted it was the barman. But she didn’t wait long enough to hear my reply. She had pushed past me, closing and locking the bathroom door behind her before I had time to protest, leaving me waiting in the corridor.
    When I arrived the following Tuesday, he was already at a table. I could see him through the window, and I felt only a desire to walk away and go home, but I stood there watching him turn the menu over and over, the plastic coating slipping between his fingers. He saw me and stood, beckoning me inside.
    The café was crowded, and I had to squeeze past other tables to get to where he waited for me in the corner. As he tried to kiss me on the cheek I pulled back, but he held my hand firmly, drawing me close.
    â€˜How is it all going? The house-hunting? The looking for work?’ There was a wetness to his lips that I noticed as he slurped the soup from his spoon, leaving a fine coating of liquid over the metal.
    I shouldn’t have come. This, too, was not going to be what I had tried to fool myself into thinking was possible. I had never liked him in the bar and being alone with him in a café hadn’t changed that. But still I continued to try, hoping that, at some stage in our conversation, a magical transformation would occur, lifting the veil to reveal a man whom I could find attractive.
    When I told him I had had no luck with either, he sat back in his chair and wiped at his mouth with a paper serviette.
    â€˜Perhaps I could help with one,’ he said.
    I didn’t see how.
    â€˜I was the personal assistant for the editor-in-chief of The Australian . I could introduce you or, at the very least, give him your CV.’
    Why, I thought, had he gone from a job like that to working in a bar? Even if he was telling me the truth, an introduction or a CV into the right person’s hands still wouldn’t be enough. I had no experience. Not even volunteer or student work to suggest that I could possibly be a journalist. It was hopeless, I told him.
    â€˜You can’t think like that. Let me help,’ he said.
    â€˜Sure,’ I replied, wanting only to end the foolishness of the conversation.
    He ordered dessert. A cake to share, he suggested, and despite my saying I wasn’t hungry, he asked the waiter for two forks.
    â€˜When I first came to Sydney, I knew no one,’ he said. ‘It can be a lonely place. I’d like to take you out. I know all the clubs. I can show you some fun.’
    He named a few places I had heard of, and I told him I wasn’t really into clubs.
    â€˜I’m not a good dancer,’ I confessed.
    â€˜What about the theatre?’
    I didn’t like plays.
    I was making it hard, he said, and I knew I was. Each time he tried to prise the door open a little I would pull it shut, unable to bear the thought of letting him in. Now, I wonder at my cruelty, but at the time I thought my behaviour was justified. He was too cocky, too smooth, and therefore not worthy of more gentle consideration.
    At the end of our meal he offered to pay, and I let him.
    â€˜Shall we go somewhere else?’ he asked.
    We stood outside the café, people walking past us on the pavement, cars slowing down in