Alice meets Victoria

When Jack’s arm falls from Victoria’s shoulders to Victoria’s waist, he uses all of his hand – his fingers, his thumb and his palm – to trace the shape of her arm.

Victoria looks as if she listens still to the people around her who speak. Her head is cocked and she nods. But her breaths grow deeper than they were, and her fingers twist and curl.

Alice has not tried very hard to not watch Jack and Victoria.

Alice has been busy of course, putting out plates and serviettes and handing around hors d’oeuvres. She has been taking heated trays from the oven and sliding cold trays in. She has been telling people that the rolls are chicken and the triangles are pork.

She has been agreeing that Rose looks beautiful, that Mick’s a lucky man that yes, it is a gorgeous ring but no, they haven’t set the date.

Alice has been listening to the people who whisper about Jack. About Victoria.

…so that’s her

she doesn’t look that old

she’s very tall
and

bit of a change from Sue.

But Alice can do all of this. And watch Victoria.
Alice wonders how it feels to be at a party a stranger to all but one.

Victoria does not toss the hair from her eyes. She does not lift her chin or bite at her lip.

She does smooth at her skirt – a fitted flowered number that stops above the knee – and she pushes her fingers through her hair then rubs one finger down her cheek. She laughs at the local jokes as if she understands. Victoria holds a glass of wine (red, but less so than her nails) and always answers ‘yes’ when she is offered more. She shakes her head at food.

She lifts the toes of her left foot, then her right, then her left again.

Alice hopes Victoria has strong heels.

And always Jack’s arm moves from Victoria’s waist to her shoulders and back to her waist. From time to time, he leaves a kiss in the space between Victoria’s cheek and Victoria’s ear.

The kiss is not long, but it lingers and even from a distance Alice sees that Veronica swallows and presses her fingers hard against her neck.

Alice counts the people who have arrived. Ninety six. And she knows eighty two.

The first hour of the first day of the rest of Nina’s life

Her clothes are the polyester which is always bought under flouro lights and which, even with the crowded aisle between them, Nina can feel grating her fingertips. The blues of her top and her pants do not quite match each other, but with only a little more grey either could match the clouds she insists are clearing.

When she speaks, she leans in to the woman next to her, but she never lowers her voice. She says, for example, ‘that must be the air conditioner making that noise’. She talks about the traffic at the Cross Road intersection, under the underpass, past the Showgrounds and over Greenhill Road. She says ‘bumper to bumper’ a lot and ‘imagine doing this every day’.

Nina closes her eyes against the woman, but if she keeps them closed too long she will fall asleep. She opens them again.

The woman wears no foundation, mascara, eyeshadow, but her nails and her lips are red. When her mouth is open, her lips are full, but when it is closed, they are thin. So thin they are barely a line and without the lipstick you might not know that they’re there. She wears thick gold earings and a diamante-clustered owl above her sagging breast.

Nina’s head has started to thump again. Her chest is tight and her ears have started to ring.

‘This is our stop,’ the woman says at the Grote Street market stop and, it must be because she’s assumed that the woman would be with her until the last North Terrace stop, that Nina only now sees the shopping bags.

Visiting, Sunday afternoon

The smell was lunches past. The besa bricks were dully white and the dusty flowers were silk. The fluoro lights were evenly spaced. Blu-tacked posters listed irrelevant rights.

If it had not been for following the squeak – his right shoe, after he lifted his heel and before he lifted his toe – he would not have timed his walk, and he would not have known that each door was fifteen steps from the next.

Not all of the doors were closed but all of the beds were made. Televisions flickering in darkened rooms, and all of them too loud. Brisbane versus the Crows.

A woman knitting, another with a book. A visitor with a cup of tea wrapped between her hands. A man asleep in his chair.

Photo frames in rows or clusters of threes on shelves and window sills and bar fridges and televisions which stood on four sturdy legs. Photos of people who echoed each other, but whose names could only now and then be dredged from between the holes of crumbling brains.

And then in a room at the sunroom end, a woman. Her chin lifted. Her mouth lightly open and her eyes lightly closed. A younger woman, one he’d never seen, bent over her, putting lipstick on in dabs.

‘There you are, love, gorgeous again…they’ll be here soon’. Her voice was round and strong and yet to let her down. He was seven steps past, but he thought of turning back and of wrapping her in his arms. She would not smell of voilets or cashmere bouquet or even Oil of Ulan. Her skin would not be paper thin and her eyes would not be pale. There would be no weight between them.

Somewhere down the corridor, a baby cried, another door closed.

He used the stairs because he could, went down them two at a time, then jumped the final four, pinned the number in, made sure the lock of the gate was clicked.

But still, the wanderer’s alarm followed him back to his car.

Airport, Sunday night, seven thirty (pm)

They shared both the cigarette and its figure, passing it one to the other, pinched between finger and thumb by one, scissored by the other.

All of them – the cigarette, the brunette, the blonde – long, straight and increasingly lined.

Each deep drag thinned.

They had, like everyone else in the line, suitcases at their feet. Padlocked zips and ribbons (one gold, one red) wrapped around the handles. They wore, both of them, tight jeans, high boots and jackets that weren’t tasselled or denim, but could have been.

Cars drove up, boots popped, people got out, gave quick and cursory hugs, lifted suitcases in, doors slammed, cars drove off.

Like everyone else in the line, the women glanced at their watches, checked their phones and hunched their shoulders against the cold. They spoke, but not loud enough to be overheard.

Their car, when it arrived, was loud and black, or perhaps deep blue. Its tyres were rimmed with silver and its windscreen wipers were fast. The boot popped. Nobody got out.

The blonde woman, the last to hold the cigarette, looked right, looked left, then twisted to look behind. She looked to the right again. Frowned as she took one last drag.

A short beep from the car.

The blonde woman pressed the butt against the pole she had not leaned against, twisted her hand to look at the ashed end of the cigarette, then, using her thumb, she pushed the butt into the pocket of her jeans.

She pulled at the handle of her suitcase and wheeled it to the car.