Chapter 31 Chiave
CHIAVE
ZEKE
On Friday night – almost a week after my meltdown at footy training – I go back to Sabrina’s flat, turn my key in the door, and open it.
Sabrina is in her Baby Yoda jumper, curved up on the couch like an overcooked croissant as she watches an episode of Black Mirror.
‘About time, Vic!’ she mutters, eyes on the screen. ‘Big queue at Shining Dragon?’
They must be having a girls’ night.
‘Nah,’ I say.
Sabrina’s limbs flail as she turns to face me. Her mouth is agape. We haven’t exchanged a word since I lost my shit in front of her.
‘Zeke,’ she almost whispers. ‘What are you doing here?’
I close the door behind me as Sabrina pauses Black Mirror and hold up my hands in a surrender gesture. ‘I’m not here to fight,’ I say. ‘I came here to apologise for my behaviour at footy the other day.’
Sabrina casts a wobbly smile at me. ‘Not gonna lie, it was like seeing this whole Jekyll and Hyde version of you. It scared me.’
‘Well, you were seeing a whole side of me I don’t usually show,’ I admit. ‘I’m not good at showing my anger. Think I bottled it up for years and finally exploded.’
‘Yeah, I kinda picked that up,’ Sabrina says, smile arching from wobbly to wry. ‘I didn’t even know you had the capacity to be angry. You’re usually so placid.’
‘On the outside,’ I clarify. ‘But anyway, I was out of line to cut sick at you like that. You didn’t deserve to be called a cunt. I’m sorry. When you said I wasn’t allowed to hang out with Jack … it sent me over the edge.’
Sabrina’s smile collapses like a soufflé.
‘I’m totally mortified about that.’ She winces.
‘It was the most embarrassing Freudian slip. Even Victoria said I was crossing a line, and honestly, I didn’t mean to say it.
I get why that must have seemed, like, reminiscent of your mother or something.
’ She shudders. ‘No offence, but I am nothing like that woman.’
‘None taken.’
‘And I’m sorry for ripping your poster off the wall,’ she adds, rubbing her elbow self-consciously. ‘I don’t like that stuff, but I could’ve had a proper conversation with you. And if you’re not my boyfriend, I probably should’ve ignored it. It set me off because of Shane.’
‘Yeah, I could see that,’ I say. ‘I guess I gave you an idea of who I was and – it wasn’t really true anymore.’
Sabrina tilts her head. ‘Oh?’
I take a steadying breath. I imagine cold needles of rain driving into my arms at footy training.
I’m tough enough to do that, so I’m tough enough to do this.
‘I’m not the same guy from high school, Sabrina,’ I explain.
‘That guy was trying to be good so nobody would know what he was really like. That was the pretend version of me. Ghost Zeke.’
‘Ghost Zeke?’ Sabrina repeats. ‘That’s morbid. It makes it sound like the old you died.’
‘Well, maybe he did.’
Tears spring to Sabrina’s eyes.
‘That guy was never me, Sabrina. I’m not a good Catholic boy.
I’m not a wood-chopping, gingerbread-baking, white-collar-shirt-wearing trad-husband.
I’m gay and I’m a hedonist and I like it.
It makes me happy to not repress my sexuality.
It’s a huge part of my life, and I’m not ever going to apologise for who I am. ’
Sabrina paces around the lounge room for a moment, glancing at her Firefly poster and one of my Green Lantern posters, touching the Green Lantern logo.
‘I think I could tell you’d changed, and that’s why I was working so hard to try to like, bring you back to the old Zeke I recognised,’ she says.
‘Do you remember the Perth trip in year ten? When we were all playing cards on the boat?’
I smile. ‘Yeah, that was fun, that week.’
‘Not just fun,’ Sabrina says. ‘I remember you standing up for me when Tamara called me a square. You were this other person in our year who wasn’t ashamed to be intelligent.
I found that attractive. Being around you made me feel better about myself.
’ She pauses. ‘I think I was clinging to you after Shane broke up with me, for the same reason. Did you realise I haven’t dated since him? ’
‘I did, yeah.’
She turns her face away, embarrassed. ‘It was nice to come home to you each night,’ she says. ‘Nobody could have competed. The Perth dating pool is a cesspit of Shane clones.’
I snort. It’s nice to laugh with her again. ‘Well, somewhere there’s a guy for you,’ I offer. ‘It’s just not me. And hey, I’ve never dated since you, either,’ I admit. ‘It was comfortable for me, too. Maybe we were holding each other back. But it’s time for me to move on … and move out, you know?’
Sabrina wipes her eyes, then barrels at me, throwing her arms around me tightly. I hug her in return.
‘I’ve asked a mate to come help me pick up my stuff,’ I add, hearing the low rumble of the V8 engine drawing closer to the house. The rumble becomes a low, almost deafening throb. ‘Yeah, it’s Jack,’ I add. ‘I know he’s not your favourite.’
Sabrina tilts her head. ‘He was actually very nice to me after you swore at me,’ she admits.
‘He made sure I was okay, and his boyfriend was good to me, too.’ She moves into the kitchen and puts the kettle on.
‘I’m sorry for your loss, by the way,’ she adds.
‘Curtis. I didn’t like that bar, but it’s terribly sad, what happened to him. ’
‘Thanks. That’s good of you to say.’
Jack raps at the security screen, the shadow of his Akubra visible in the porch light. ‘Someone ordered big muscles to help lift some boxes?’ he booms.
Sabrina plasters on a smile and opens the door for him. ‘Hello, Jack,’ she says. ‘I’ve got the kettle on – can I make you a cuppa?’
Jack stifles a burp but it still escapes; I can smell the bourbon from where I am.
‘Aw, nah, reckon that’d mix pretty badly with me fight juice, ay!’ he booms.
‘Double coat Tim Tam?’ Sabrina offers, sliding the wrapper off a tray of the biscuits.
‘Now you’re talking,’ Jack says, plucking a Tim Tam out of the tray. ‘Cheers, Sabrina.’ He spots me and winks. ‘G’day, Fudgy, wanna show me where the heavy shit is?’
Jack and I get to work unpacking my room while Sabrina and Victoria eat their takeaway Chinese in the living room. Sabrina obviously communicates our truce to Victoria, because the first time I pass Victoria carrying containers, she scowls, and the second time, she beams and offers me noodles.
It only takes an hour for me and Jack to clear out my room. We load most of it into the tray of Jack’s ute, Phantom: he’s storing it for me in his spare room until I find my own rental.
When we’re done, Jack pulls the soft tonneau cover over my plastic containers of clothes, books and life debris, and lights a smoke. ‘You know the way to my place, yeah?’
‘Right behind you, bro,’ I tell him.
I head back inside and take one last look at my empty jail cell room. It felt like a safe place when the door was locked, but now I wonder if I was only ever hiding here.
I take my key off my keychain and place it on the kitchen bench with a muted click.
Sabrina and Victoria pause their episode and glance up.
‘Aw, Will is moving out of Grace’s life,’ Victoria says wistfully. ‘It’s sad when it finally happens, isn’t it? End of a little era.’
She stands up and presses herself lightly against me in a lukewarm hug, which is the nicest Victoria has ever been to me.
I smirk. ‘Take care, Karen,’ I say. ‘In a weird way, I’ll miss you.’
Victoria pokes her tongue at me and pours another glass of Bollinger.
‘You take care too, Grace,’ I say to Sabrina. ‘Thanks for the good times. Thanks for the bad ones too.’
Sabrina gets up off her chair and offers me a hug. ‘I feel like a lot of dust has to settle,’ she says. ‘But when it has, one day, let’s get lunch or something, okay?’
‘Good call, cos I need some space to myself for a while,’ I tell her. ‘But yeah, one day, let’s catch up.’
Sabrina nods. ‘I’d like that.’
I don’t smile at her as I leave: my mouth turns down at the corners, because it’s sad to lose a friendship. We might be amicable, but the bond we once had is lost, and I have to go.
So I walk out into the cold night air and I leave.
I leave Sabrina’s house, leave her cream bricks and her takeaway Chinese and her Firefly posters. I leave her rules, leave her pressure, leave her weight. I leave my old self on her driveway bitumen, like snakeskin that can get washed down the drain in the next storm.
I leave my airless bedroom, leave the call centre, leave the university.
I leave the priest who gave me penance for my sins, leave the school that let Charlie get torn to shreds on the stage at the Summer Dance.
I leave my good brother and his wedding, leave my father and his closed fist, leave my mother and her smashed potato salad bowl.
I leave the years that bent me out of shape. I leave the voices that drowned out my own. I leave behind homes that weren’t homes. I leave behind love that wasn’t love.
I leave in my own car, my own foot on my own pedal, my own window down, my own face buffeted by the cold bracing wind of my own slipstream.
I am on my own now. I am my own. I am.