‘LOU! Where are you?’
Among the knees and feet Lou could see Gretchen’s blocky graduation heels coming towards her, and behind them the tell-tale black-and-white Converse. Her breath was coming quicker now; she thought she might hyperventilate if she couldn’t disappear.
And then, suddenly, a pair of hands grabbed her shoulders. The grip was firm, but not painful. The hands were lifting her up, and all Lou could think was that any minute now she would be visible, facing the crowd, and she would be eye to eye with Luca, who for three months had been the only thing she could think about, but who had, three minutes previously, been bringing a girl who wasn’t her to earth-shattering orgasm in a toilet cubicle.
The hands pulled her to standing. Lou found herself looking up into a man’s face. He was tall. Pale blue eyes, an amused smile. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked her.
Lou could sense that, behind her, a pair of Converse approached.
So she reached up and put her arms around this stranger’s neck. And she kissed him.
She kissed him like it was her last kiss.
Josh
1 November, 2005
11 p.m.
She smelled faintly of vomit, and her hair was in his mouth.
Josh pulled away from the stranger who was kissing him at the bar, and held her at arm’s length.
She was small, this stranger, with a tangle of long brown hair falling across her face. Her eyes were ringed with smudged black make-up, the edge of her mouth was twitching a little. She glanced quickly over her left shoulder, then focused on his chest, his T-shirt. Well, it was vintage Ramones, who could blame her?
‘What are you doing?’ he asked her, still feeling the pressure of her kiss on his mouth.
‘Hiding,’ she said. And then she looked up into his face. Her eyes were wet, but she smiled.
‘Hiding?’
Just as he asked that, another woman fell out of the crowd and landed on them. She was tall, with one of those interesting haircuts that was long and short at the same time. She was wearing a nose ring and a graduation gown. Students.
‘Lou!’ the woman shouted, because shouting was the only way. To Josh, reeling a little from the remarkable kiss he hadn’t asked for from a woman he’d almost tripped over, the music was almost oppressively pushing on him now. Newtown was proving too confusing to him tonight. And he’d only had two beers.
‘I thought you’d fallen down,’ he said to the stranger, at a normal volume.
She shook her head.
‘Lou!’ the nose-ring woman was shouting. ‘Why are you kissing this . . . T-shirt guy?’ She looked at Josh as if he’d been doing the unsolicited kissing, not her friend. ‘What the hell happened back there? Where’s Luca?’
Josh saw the kisser flinch at the sound of this man’s name. Jesus, he thought. Trouble. And he turned his body away from hers, back towards the bar. ‘Nice to meet you,’ he said, almost under his breath.
‘And you,’ she said quickly, quietly, just as the nose-ring friend pulled the kisser under one arm and away, into the crowd. He heard the tall woman say, ‘Let’s get out of this dump.’
Another strange night. Josh was getting sick of them. He’d only come out because his mate Mick had begged him to be his wingman on an internet date and Josh was curious to see how this new thing worked. It had been almost six months since Sinead, after all, and he was beginning to entertain the idea of what it might be like to be with someone else, for real. To talk to another girl for longer than a messy, drunken half-hour before sex. To kiss another girl, and feel something.
Well, he’d just felt something then, he thought, waving a ten-dollar note at the barman. But it was probably just surprise.
Mick and his date were playing pool, giggling and bumping into each other at every opportunity. Josh scanned the mass of bodies for other familiar faces, friends he’d spotted cruising the graduating class of 2005, who were getting drunk and sloppy all around him.
It was making him feel old. Ancient at twenty-seven.
This was his last drink, Josh decided. He needed to go home. Student piss-ups weren’t really his scene. He was probably two beers away from texting Sinead. Again.
Mick came over, swaying slightly. ‘We’re going to go, mate. Thanks for coming, but we’re good.’ He looked back at his date, who was rummaging in her bag.
‘No worries,’ Josh said, summoning a smile that he hoped was encouraging. ‘Godspeed, my friend.’
‘You should try it, mate.’ Mick leaned in, beery breath in Josh’s ear. ‘I know you’re tall and everything, but even you could do with a bit of help meeting someone who isn’t . . .’ He trailed off, and Josh knew what the next word would be. ‘Nuts,’ Mick managed.
‘Piss off,’ Josh said, but he was still smiling at Mick, who nodded and turned back towards the rest of his evening.
Fuck this, Josh thought, I don’t want to be the sad guy tonight, and he sculled half his beer before putting the glass on the bar, pushing his hands into his jacket pockets and heading for the door.
The night felt sticky for spring, and the street was almost as busy as the pub. Josh’s house – or, rather, his room in someone else’s house – was a ten-minute walk away, towards Redfern and the city. Josh liked the walk, especially at night. King Street was never boring, everything was open, all human life was here. Wide-eyed teenagers who’d doubtless told their parents they were somewhere else were standing outside pubs trying to talk their way past the bouncers. Couples were making out against graffiti-scrawled brick walls. Twitchy kids in tracksuits were outside the station asking everyone who passed for a dollar.
And tonight, there was a busker outside the kebab shop three doors down from the pub, playing a Coldplay song, an old one, one of the ones that didn’t make Josh want to throw up.
The busker could sing. He looked young but worn out, and his feet were bare and dirty. Josh walked the few steps towards him to look at his guitar. You can never walk past a guitar, he heard Sinead saying in his head. What’s so bad about that? he heard himself responding.
Then, just beyond the kebab queue and the guitar, he saw the stranger girl from the Bank.
She was talking to a man wearing a red rag around his head, and a long black coat that seemed too heavy for the weather. Even from here, Josh could tell the guy was pretty solid and good-looking, and even from here he could tell that the guy was a complete prick. There was the way that he was pointing at the girl with his cigarette, which he was holding between his thumb and forefinger like he was some kind of old-time gangster, not a wannabe with something written on his trainers in white-out.
Later, Josh wouldn’t really be able to explain why he’d stayed there, several metres away, watching the way the man with the bandana was talking to the girl who’d kissed him at the bar. He didn’t want a kebab. He didn’t want a fight. He didn’t really want to give the busker any money, since the kid had a better guitar than Josh did, shoes or no shoes. But still he’d stood there, watching this couple arguing. And they clearly were arguing, because the girl was crying, and the bandana dick was alternating between shouting and laughing.
So Josh was standing there watching, with his hands in his pockets, when the girl drew in a big gasping breath and looked up and past the bandana guy, straight at him. And Josh felt himself smiling at her.