Story for performance #186
webcast from Brisbane at 06:44PM, 23 Dec 05
“Imogen, I’ve had enough.’ It didn’t sound like him saying it, but seeing there was only the two of them in the car, it must have been him.
Imogen stared resolutely ahead. Side on, her small, pointy nose poked forth ahead of a curtain of straight blonde hair. She flicked the curtain back behind her ear and swivelled her head to face him. He could see the beginnings of a grin he hadn’t seen before. A defensive grin. A sarcastic leer that laughed in his face and censored him with portent of scorn.
‘What, darling?’ That’s right. With the grin came that haughty, private-school-for-gels tone of hers. Where the hell did she pick that up? Sure as hell not from Condobolin-school-for-anyone-even-blackfellas, where she went. Or from Pharmacist’s Advice in Burwood, where she was working when he went in to fill his Interferon script and emerged with the hottest thing Paris and Milan would see since Gemma Ward. That face. She had perfect facial symmetry, and that extraordinary neck. The neck of a swan. What’s her name? The badge said Hi, I’m Wendy. Not any more you’re not, he told her. Grab your bag and say your goodbyes. From now on you’re…you’re Imogen, and you’re coming with me.
He’d known not where they were heading as he put the MG in gear. He knew nothing about fashion and modelling and catwalks or matters chic. Before a mile was gone the full reality of what he’d done began to sink in. He’d walked into a chemist shop feeling tired and ill with Hepatitis C, and walked out feeling fresh and vital, vigorous and virile and full of the future. It had an auspice about it, a power and grace, did that moment. A beautiful girl hops into a sports car with a total stranger, changing both their lives forever.
It seemed a good idea to go for lunch, get to know each other and solidify the moment into a plan. She suggested a café two blocks up Burwood Road. They took a table and ordered coffee and cakes. She’d arrived in Sydney a year ago, she said. Moved into a share house in Bondi, been raped by an Irish backpacker and hospitalised the fellow with a baseball bat the next morning before going to the police and convincing a magistrate she’d done it in self-defence, not revenge. Then she’d moved into a flat in Vaucluse with a woman who’d booted her out because, well, she never explained why. Looking for a bit of stability, she’d lied about her age to take the lease on a place for herself, then advertised the second bedroom in that place and filled it with a Sydney Uni med student called Matt who spent most of his days stoned and who assured her med students were the biggest stoners on campus. Despite his constant spontaneous cackling for no reason—something that irritated her no end, she said with an inane cackle of her own—Matt became her boyfriend, and she’d developed an abiding interest in alternative therapies. She studied naturopathy for a few weeks but had to abort the course, for this year at least, when her younger brother sustained massive injuries after being struck by lightning walking across a paddock outside Condobolin. Coming back to Sydney, she found the place burned out and Matt gone and when she’d made enquiries at Sydney University they said they’d never heard of him, which probably explained why he didn’t seem to attend many classes—something she’d thought would have been important for a course like medicine so that was…
The moment, this most dramatic moment, was losing its moment fast. The thrall, the vigour, it was draining away. In its place was a creeping irritability and a throbbing pain in his midriff. He put his hand up to stop her mid sentence. ‘I think we should go,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a doctor’s appointment at four thirty.’
By the end of Burwood Road he was feeling tireder and sicker than ever, and angry. Loaded up with the expectations of a teenager about whom he knew nothing but who he’d just turned into a dependant by ripping her out of her job, a job in which she’d been perfectly happy not an hour beforehand, on that most fatuous of promises: C’mon baby, I’ll make you a star.
She waited for him in the car, chewing gum, flicking through the radio dial and dreaming. They went to dinner to discuss strategies, introductions to agents and stylists and editors. He didn’t eat. She ate like a horse. Green chicken curry. Prawn salad. Pork stir-fried in chilli jam. Coffee and mud cake at the café a couple of doors down from the restaurant. It’s true then, he thought—these girls can eat what they want, in the quantities they want. She talked and talked and ate and ate and talked and talked.
‘Imogen, I think I might have…’
‘What? What’s up, darling?’ Oh Christ, she was already calling him darling! They hadn’t even slept together. And while that was pretty prominent in his mind as he led her out of the shop and into this glorious future of theirs, it was the last thing on his mind now. And what was with this Miss Ascham accent all of a sudden? Had she been to June Dally Watkins in anticipation of this moment? ‘Imogen, I’ve got it wrong. I’m very sick and I’ve got it all really really wrong and I’m sorry. I think I’m going to be sick soon, sick first and die soon afterwards.’
As the car drew to a halt, her grin softened and straightened up into blankness. ‘It’s alright, mate. Don’t worry about it.’ With a little belch, he flung his door open and coughed and gurgled his innards on to the road. He spat, then wiped his lips with a tissue he found under his feet. Closing the door, he turned and found the seat beside him empty.