There is a stoop to her stance. Her feet shuffle in their slippers as she moves across the concrete. Terrible pain has made her silent. The pills she takes make her tired, not sleepy, just tired.
ÒPuss-catÉ puss-puss-pussÓ she calls for a companion.
The apartment block in which she lives is a haven for strays. She is guaranteed a response with the can of tuna in her hand.
Two bitsas (bits of this and bits of that) approach, arching and stretching from their sleep.
They are well fed in this place.
Her slippers move forward so she can reach and stroke the fur.
Conspiratorially the cats purr.
Delphine passes the tea delicately.
ÒAre you Ok?Ó she asks, an attentive tone discernable in her thick accent. There is forgiveness and regret in the question too. When Danielle had called earlier that evening, in tears, Delphine knew that the grudge that had kept the two friends apart for these months was no longer important.
ÒYeahÉ thanksÉÓ Danielle drinks. She is glad to have her friend with her.
When Delphine arrived, she found Danielle still sitting by the phone, she hadnÕt moved, she was just crying. Now there is tea, the afternoonÕs events once again spill over into tears.
ÒIÕll get you a tissue.Ó
Peebles approaches at the sound of weeping. He makes a small noise that brings DanielleÕs hand down to his head. This is the only way a dog of PeeblesÕ size can show affection, by asking to be patted. It is affection that is asked for before it is given, and given as it is received.
Delphine returns with tissues.
ÒThankyou.Ó
Peebles lies down at his masterÕs feet.
ÒI knew something was wrong when the cats started eating PeeblesÕ food...Ó This brings fresh tears. ÒAnd when I walked into the bathroom, she wasÉÓ Danielle drifts away into more sobbing.
ÒIÕll call in sick tomorrow. I can stay here if you want.Ó
ÒThanks Delph. Thankyou.Ó
Marjorie Fullward is still in her night-gown when there is a knock at the door. Since she has been taking the sedatives her doctor prescribed, night and day donÕt seem so different. She opens the door of her small flat, to find Evan standing on the doorstep. His head is down, he sees her slippers first, then brings his eyes up to her chest.
ÒHello Marjorie.Ó
ÒWhat do you want Evan?Ó
EvanÕs hands are shaking beside him. If you didnÕt know him you might think it was nerves, or even anger making him shake. It is debt accumulated from years of borrowing from the bottle.
ÒI hope youÕve been well Marjorie.Ó He is a small man, thin. He sounds apologetic. Marjorie looks at her husband from behind the mask of her medication, it helps her cope. She has become used to this, Evan turning up on a sober morning to ask forgiveness. More often it is late at night and he is smashing bottles and demanding a fuck.
Evan tries to say something, make chit-chat, gloss over all the reasons that they are separated. Nothing will take them back to the day when they made their vows all fresh and young. Together, they had strayed too far down the wrong path.
MarjorieÕs weary body practices wisdom that her tired mind canÕt. Her body shuts out his words efficiently. It is effective in preserving her stability, but in acceding to the drugs and shutting out the world she also denies that minute, living part of her self that cannot be extinguished by man or drug. That golden bit that craves closeness, human touch, soft warm skin and hard teeth.
ÒI know what youÕre thinking, I promise I wonÕt lay into yaÉ I donÕt do that anymoreÉ can I just come in?Ó
If only she had heard what he was saying, ÔJUST come in!!Õ, she would emit a scream that would tear him and her and the world apart.
Her body answers flatly.
ÒJust fuck off Evan.Ó
Slowly she closes the door and turns back inside.
A cat protests as EvanÕs careless boots narrowly miss their target.
A dog stops yapping, and someone on the street burns rubber onto the road.
Peebles is small, and by some act of evolutionary marvel, his bark is pitched just right to achieve maximum annoyance. He senses DanielleÕs hysteria and is yapping sympathetically.
ÒYou fucking prick!Ó Another armful of clothes goes out the third story apartment window and into the garden bed below.
ÒNot my CalvinÕs!É Would you just listen to me babe?Ó
ÒFuck you!Ó
Another armful, only this time one of her own shirts goes out with his, so she stops flinging.
Danielle sits down underneath the open window and sobs. Peebles has stopped yapping and sidles up to her. Peebles is not sure why they are angry at the man that sleeps over a lot, but Danielle has never been this angry, so it must be bad.
ÒDanÉ Dan!Ó
She ignores him.
ÒDAN!!Ó
Someone in one of the other apartments has had enough.
ÒFuck off you prick, she doesnÕt want to talk to you.Ó
ÒHey, Fuck you!Ó He motions violently, but thinks better and starts gathering up his stuff from the garden bed.
ÒBitch.Ó he breaths as he slumps to gather his belongings from the garden bed.
Inside Danielle sits, resting one elbow on her knees. She brushes away stray hair wet from tears, she sobs. Peebles nuzzles and wriggles his way under the free hand.
ÒWhy are men such pricks?Ó she asks quietly.
She sniffs and wipes her nose.
There is a screech of tires as the Prick pisses off in his SS Commodore.
Marjorie sometimes only wakes up twice in the night. Lately she has been sleeping right through till 4am, before waking and listening to the noises of the city in the yellow glow of the street light. She will try to remember to tell the doctor at her next appointment. At 6am she normally gets up to feed the cats. She has to remember to take her pills too, four in the morning and four at night. If she forgets to take them she will have seizures. Once before she ran out, and was found by one of the other tenants, unconscious on the floor of the laundry.
At nine oÕclock Marjorie checks the machines. The apartment block has coin operated washers and dryers. The Body Corporate owns the machines, and employs Marjorie Fullward to collect money and report faults. Sometimes coins get stuck in one of the machines and she has to open it up to retrieve them.
Today Mrs Fullward walks up the northern stairwell to the level two laundry. A hefty cat is sunning in his usual spot, the upper branches of a broad bush. Some of the residents call him the Cheshire cat because of this behaviour.
ÒHello CheshÓ Marjorie says as she walks past the tree.
Monty and Tiger are lying in the shade in the stair well. When they cool down sufficiently, they will move into the sun again. Her slippers quietly step over them.
On approaching the laundry, Marjorie hears a whimper. When she gets to the door she sees a pile of sheets on the laundry floor. She hears a whimpering, but does not compute that there is distressed girl sobbing on the floor. Marjorie stands there for a moment wondering why there are sheets on the floor.
ÒSorry.Ó She says and begins to turn to leave.
ÒMrs. FullwardÉ waitÓ Danielle has looked up from her hands now and is getting up off the floor. ÒThe machine. It ate my money.Ó
ÒOhÉÓ It takes Marjorie a short while to decide how to approach this problem, it is the effect of the drugs slowing her down. Eventually she decides to open the coin collector. She tries the lock, trial and error, with a bundle of keys she has fished from her nightgown.
Danielle straightens her crumpled shirt and picks the bundle of washing off the floor.
ÒSometimes the machines get stuck. It happens now and then.Ó
The key slides in. Marjorie opens the coin-collector and frees the mechanism.
ÒHow many coins did you put in?Ó
ÒTwo.Ó
Marjorie hands two coins to Danielle and turns to leave, she stops before the doorway. Somewhere deep within there is a stirring.
ÒIts Ok love. He canÕt hurt you anymore.Ó
Danielle begins to cry. Marjorie shuffles forward and reaches out her hand. The two women embrace.
ÒMrs Fullward?Ó
ÒYes dear?Ó
ÒAre all those cats that you feed yours?Ó
ÒNo love, they are no oneÕs. They just live here.Ó
á
The two girls had been friends since Delphine moved to Sydney from France. Delph found it hard to make friends working in a bar at night and attending English classes in the daytime. She met Danielle out clubbing one night, they had been best friends ever since. They used to joke to eachother as they were putting on their makeup how together, they were a lean and mean man hunting team. ÔDan and Delph - Double DÕ, well maybe with pushup bras.
It hurt Delph even more that it was in the same club where they met that Danielle ditched her.
It still stung Delphine to have been palmed off so easily. Danielle had been in a selfish mood all day. She made Delph read her star-sign from the paper.
Leo July 23 – August 22
Are you ready to rumble? With Mars passing through Venus you are on a collision course. Stay true to your LionÕs instinct and who knows what erotic pleasures await your senses? The ÒGreater BenificÓ must be activated now! Today: lie low, surf the net Tonight: cut loose
This man, Javid, had sauntered over, his abs visible through the shirt he was wearing. He grabbed Danielle, and it was as if Delph never existed. Danielle had also forgotten that DelphÕs purse and keys were in her handbag. Delph had walked five kilometers in heels to the bus station and had to fend off a would-be rapist on the way.
á
Marjorie takes the last two tablets in the bottle. She missed her appointment at the clinic last week. She puts the empty bottle back in the medicine cabinet and closes the door.
A bedraggled woman stares back from the mirror. Her hair is greying and wild, her eyes are blood-shot and yellowing. She has those distinct mauve bags under her eyes that mark out the living dead.
She stares at this image of herself wondering if it is really her. She doesnÕt feel like the person in the mirror. She thinks about yesterdayÕs encounter with the young girl, Danielle, and about how DanielleÕs best friend Delphine has not been speaking to her for two months. She feels for Danielle, alone like the strays that inhabit this place.
Opening the cabinet again, she looks behind one of the empty prescription bottles and finds an old lipstick. Inserting her little finger she manages to get enough pink to put on her dry, cracked lips.
There is something in the image of this tired woman in a grubby night-gown wearing lipstick that brings a glimmer to her eye. She blinks, and there is a glacial melt. Over her staid and weary face, the hint of a smile spreads. She is alive again.
á
The building groans and shudders as someone in the apartment below DanielleÕs turns on a tap. All the apartments are identical. She is sure they can hear her folding sheets in the livingroom. The room is scabbed with drying socks and underwear.
There are scones in the oven. The smell of baking is making Danielle feel much better.
Peebles gets a scone and a little butter. He has to eat it outside.
The cats are pestering Peebles, jealous of his warm treat. He is protesting in his own way, but wisely backing away from his larger, clawed rivals.
Danille hears PeeblesÕ growl and the catsÕ hisses.
ÒHey! Shoo.Ó The cats scatter as Danielle retrieves the scone and brings it back inside.
Peebles hesitates over his scone, he is not usually allowed to eat inside. Danielle gives him the go ahead.
á
The door of Mrs. FullwardÕs flat is slightly ajar, and drifts further open under DanielleÕs knock. Danielle peers in to the apartment. A cat jumps down off the kitchen bench and runs out past Danielle, brushing her legs. She almost drops the scones.
She knocks again.
ÒHello?É Mrs. Fullward?Ó
From the doorway, Danielle can see a broken jar on the kitchen floor. There are unwashed dishes in the sink. Flies land, fly and land.
ÒHello?Ó
There is no answer. Danielle thinks about entering, just to put the scones down. Instead she turns to leave and is surprised by a man with a long face. His hands are shaking beside him.
ÒYou frightened me.Ó She starts. ÒAre you looking for Marjorie?Ó
ÒYes.Ó Says Evan, he looks suspiciously at Danielle and at her scones, then her breasts. Danielle shifts her feet uncomfortably.
ÒI donÕt think sheÕs here. Her door was open when I got here.Ó
Evans eyes go from Danielle to the scones, to the open door.
Danielle watches as he walks past the kitchen and through the flat. Her limbs weaken and she stops breathing when she hears EvanÕs moan come from within the apartment. In moments, Danielle is there, in the bathroom. There is a dirty nightgown and slippers on the green tiles. He is kneeling, his hands holding her. She is submerged, and wet and blue. Her hair is floating at the tap-end like a delicate sea-plant.
á
The ambulance leaves without a siren or lights. Danielle goes back to her apartment. She opens the front door then collapses with grief. All she can think about is Marjorie alone, cold in the bathtub. She needs someone.
ÒHello, Delph?É ItÕs me. IÕm sorry.Ó She cries down the phone line.
ÒIÕm sorry.Ó