Page 23 of People Skills

‘I think we should stop and ask ourselves, does the world actually need another novel by Xavier Hobbs Sullivan? The Deep was not good,’ Kat says.

‘It wasn’t bad,’ I say.

‘I liked it,’ Jamila says. ‘It was interesting.’

‘It had a stream-of-consciousness chapter from the point of view of a spoon,’ Kat says.

‘It was experimental. It represented his descent into madness.’ Jamila will not be swayed against him. ‘And the spoon bit was funny.’

‘I just remember reaching that chapter and thinking, life is too short. It is too short to be reading about the sexual fantasies of a teaspoon,’ Kat replies.

‘I forgot about that part,’ I say and it makes me realise that I need to reread Xavier’s books. I need to get into his head, and that is the fastest way to do it.

10

XAVIER DISAPPEARED FOR most of our first weekend living together. He got the train back to Melbourne to pick up some more things from his apartment and he came back in a sporty red car that he told me he’d borrowed from his brother. There was a surfboard strapped to the top. That piece of information, about the car, was pretty much the only exchange we had before I went to work on Monday.

I get home on Monday night expecting to find him sitting in my lounge room—well I guess since he’s paying half the rent it’s our lounge room—watching, well I don’t actually know what men watch after a breakup. After my breakup with Caleb, I found solace in crime procedurals. Murder was where my heart was. Serial killers were the teddy bear I snuggled up to, grizzled detectives and violence as cosy as a cup of tea.

Xavier is not in the lounge room and the house is eerily silent. Silence, which used to be normal, is now tense. Where is he, is he home, is he behind his closed bedroom door?

‘Hello?’ I call out, but there’s no answer. The red car is parked out the front. Maybe he’s gone for a run. Or a walk. Or home to Hillary for a meal. He strikes me as the kind of adult man who would go crawling back to his mother with his laundry, ready to make up for a bowl of spaghetti bolognese or Hillary’s famous garlic-butter pork chops. (Famous in the sense I have heard her mention them, not that I have ever eaten them. My time in Hillary’s house is very clearly designated as work—looking after her dog, meeting tradespeople, bringing her dry-cleaning to and fro.)

I put in my earbuds and listen to music as I make a stir fry for dinner and as I turn away from the pan to reach for chilli flakes, I catch a man’s figure in the corner of my vision. I scream, without thinking, before my brain catches up with my instinct and tells me it’s Xavier. I pull an earbud out of my ear.

‘Sorry,’ I say.

He looks horrified by my reaction. He also looks rough—unshaven, in a rumpled white T-shirt and grey trackpants, messy hair extra messy, sleepy-eyed.

‘Sorry,’ he says, holding his hands up. ‘I was talking to you but didn’t realise you had headphones in.’

‘My fault,’ I say. ‘I’m used to living alone. I called out when I got home.’

‘I was napping,’ he says. A 5 pm nap. Hmmm. No, I’m not judging. I’m not.

‘Are you hungry?’ I ask.

He speaks at the same time. ‘I’ll get out of your way.’

‘No, no, it’s fine, would you like some stir fry?’

‘No, I’m okay.’

I watch as he makes himself cereal, pouring from a big packet of muesli I hadn’t noticed in the cupboard, and he spoons a mouthful before walking to his room with the bowl and shutting the door.

As the week goes on, I barely see him. I hear the shower, I hear music or TV playing from his room, I see his dishes on the draining rack, the carpet vacuumed, the rubbish taken out. I feel like I’m living with a semi-helpful ghost. When I wake in the night, I sometimes hear him moving around the kitchen, getting a glass of water, or opening a packet of something. He’s living a nocturnal life, as far as I can tell.

He’s always missing around dinner time. His car is gone when I get home from work and he doesn’t get back until eight-ish and then he disappears into his room.

At work, Hillary has been dropping hints, desperately wanting to know how things are going, possibly imagining Xavier at a typewriter with me looming over him approvingly. I can’t bring myself to tell her that we’ve barely seen each other or spoken. I say things like, ‘I’m easing him into it’ and ‘It’s a delicate process’ and ‘Nothing to report yet’.

On Friday night when I get home from work, I knock on his bedroom door but there’s no answer. I knock again, and then, against my better instincts, I ease the door open.

His room is empty.

It’s clean, and his bed is made, both of which are shocking to me. I was expecting a crime scene of food wrappers, clothes on the floor, dirty dishes and sheets covered with crumbs—the sad wreckage of a broken man. I don’t always make my own bed, although I have since he moved in, because I’m worried he will look in my room while I’m at work and—what, report back to Hillary? Her bed is unmade, her room is messy, fire her. I don’t know. I can’t quit the urge to make sure people think well of me, to protect myself.

I need to provoke him, I decide. Jolt him into an emotional response of some kind. I set myself up on the couch with a glass of wine, put on my glasses, and pull out my reading for the night. The Bird House.