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Chapter Forty-one
Cash
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwIZdh6MqIo
It’s been a long but good day. I think I did my best work today, but it is good to leave the studio for a bit and spend some time at my father’s house. Cora has made chicken pie for dinner. It’s delicious and both my father and I polish our plates. Afterwards my father asks if I want to join him for a drink in his study.
‘I’ll just sit here for a bit on my own and …’ I lift my beer bottle, ‘finish this.’ I smile and take a swig.
‘Right,’ my father mumbles, and disappears into his study to wait for Britney to come back. She is out on a date with a guy called Liam Foxgrove. He’s probably a good kid, but my father and I treated him to the Hunter interrogation welcome routine anyway. His hands were shaking by the time Britney floated down the stairs.
After a while, strains of music float out of the study. I recognize it. Nick Cave is singing Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne. It suits my mood and I sit back and gaze through the window at the garden. I watch the neighbor’s ginger cat climb over the wall and crouch by a hole in the ground. I see her get bored of stalking an empty hole and walk away, her tail swishing. I stay staring out until the solar lights come on.
Cora pops her head around the door. ‘I’m off. Can I get you anything else before I leave?’
‘Nah, you go on. I know you can’t wait to get home and jump your husband’s bones.’
‘Oh you,’ she scolds, but her eyes twinkle.
I finish my beer and go into the kitchen for another. I go to open the fridge and I suddenly see it and freeze. It’s a postcard from Italy. It has a picture of David wearing a fig leaf. It could have come from anyone, but I knew even without turning it over that it was from her. There was a time I couldn’t stop thinking of her. Now I don’t allow myself to think of her.
Like a man in a trance I reach for the card and slip it out from under the magnet. I turn it over and the sight of her writing is like a knife in my heart. There is only one sentence written in purple ink, but I start bleeding again.
He has a small dick. :)
Love,
Tori
She has sent a card to Cora. I stroke the ink and just like that I am by her side. I try to think of her in Italy. Her hair bleached by the sun, her skin golden brown. Her perfect body encased in something summery. She was like a glass of bright yellow sunshine. I didn’t drink enough.
I slip the postcard back under the magnet and walk out of the house …
But I come back often. To look for her cards. I tell myself that I’m just curious, but any fool can tell that’s a fucking lie. Every two days once I make the journey to my father’s house. Full of anticipation.
They are always funny or cute. I travel with her through Europe staring up at cathedrals and palaces and great monuments, down to Turkey, then Egypt where she sends more postcards than any of the other countries before. Pyramids, obelisks, statues of Pharaohs.
She leads me to India where I watch her break her heart when she is swarmed by a gaggle of baying child beggars. They grab her clothing and clutch her body, and she has no choice but to beat them with a stick to dislodge their clinging hands. She takes me by the hand into the Golden Temple of Amritsar and feeds me round sweets called Ladhu.
I follow her down the Ganges River to see the Aghori, the mysterious cannibal monks of Varanasi. They paint their unclothed bodies in ash, drink from human skulls, and live their entire lives in cemeteries. Their eyes are red and wild. I’ll send pictures when I get back, she writes.
I am filled with longing to be on the same journey.
From India they take the South East Asia route. In Thailand they visit a Buddhist temple where the girls shake a container of sticks until one of the sticks falls out and a monk reads their fortune according to the number on the stick.
‘Your Prince Charming is coming,’ the monk tells her.
I feel it like a punch in the gut.
But she is mine.
Next stop, Malaysia. She sets out to enjoy the fantastic variety of food, that is, until they get dysentery. It puts both girls out of action for four days. They lie in their cheap hostel room groaning and rushing to the toilet. Weakened, lighter, and wiser, they reluctantly cancel their trip to Indonesia and catch a flight out of Singapore to the last destination of their journey. Australia.
There are three more cards while she tours Australia. From the postcards I know they spent a few days on a friend’s farm helping to pick cherries. Then comes the final card. It has the picture of a mother kangaroo with its baby peeking out of its belly.
The holiday is over. We’re flying back home tomorrow. A bit sad.
Tori
Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I went on this trip. I’ve seen so much and learned a lot about the world. Leah and I have witnessed and done things very few people do in their lifetimes. I know it has developed me as a person.
Before this trip someone would have had a very hard time convincing me that there is a dying breed of wild-eyed monks who exist in a state of intoxication and believe that they can reach enlightenment by the very act of turning away from all earthly pleasure and partaking in everything that is disgusting and taboo. Even eating dead human flesh or human waste.
Now I know better.
When we were in Australia I met a cute Australian surfer who chased me relentlessly. Probably because I didn’t turn him down flat as I had all the others. In some small way he reminded me of Cash. It wasn’t his looks. Maybe the curve of his mouth, but it was enough to endear him to me. Still, in the end I didn’t want him. Even drunk on Fosters I couldn’t bring myself to go with him.
Leah and I made a pact never to discuss Cash. We never bought a gossip magazine or watched E-news. She is of the opinion that the more you obsess and think of something the more it embeds itself into your heart. She thinks the solution to a broken heart is t
o never talk or think about that person.
We were on a strict Cash free diet.
I fell off the wagon once. Just once when Leah went into a shop to get us a couple of cans of coke. It was in India. I was standing beside a wooden stall selling magazines and sweets and cigarettes and my eyes fell on a magazine cover. He was on it. My heart slammed into my ribs.
I looked away quickly and then, like an addict, I looked back at his face. There was something different about it. I would have stared more, but Leah was coming back and I hurriedly turned away and smiled at her.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ she asked.
‘Nothing. Bit too hot I think,’ I said.
She looked at me strangely, then at the Newsstand, and sighed. ‘Come on. Let’s go find a cool bottle of beer.’
Other than that one time I never thought about him, well, during the day at least, but when I got into my sleeping bag, or into my hostel bed for the night, my mind would replay that scene when he looked at me as if I had stabbed him in the back. With such hurt.
Hurt always turns to hate.
Sometimes I cried silent, bitter tears, thinking of him in England hating me and other times other memories would come back. The ants in his pants, being on the roof, laughing together under the sheets, going to The Ministry Of Sound, our unforgettable time in Milan, having sex, having sex, and having sex.
Chapter Forty-two
Tori
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o358xut_JBE
I look around the dinner table. My mom, my dad, even Brad has come home tonight for our family dinner. They listen to my tales with wide eyes. We laugh, we drink, and we talk late into the night. It is gone midnight when Brad leaves. My mother kisses me on my head.
‘I’m so glad you’re home, darling. I’ve missed you.’
‘I love you, Mom.’
My parents go into their bedroom and I go into my room and close the door. I don’t switch on the light. I walk to the window and look down at our yard. The silver glow of the moon peeks through the trees and illuminates the old tire swing. The metal on the gate gleams and the air is still. Everything is exactly as it was. I look up at the sky dotted with stars and tears gather in my eyes.
