The Marriage Gap Year, page 16
“Thanks.”
Syed shot out his hand. “I don’t give hugs,” he laughed, and looked to the others to join him. “But it’s nice to meet you. Maybe you can play here,” he said, rocking back on his heels. “The sound system is best on the market.”
Erik followed Syed’s gaze up to the ceiling and nodded back. “I’m sure we can work something out. Not tonight though.”
“No, no. Now you relax. Enjoy.” Syed patted Erik’s shoulder like he was a dog. Syed looked over at the bartenders and gave them a little twirl of his finger. The bartender nodded. “Okay,” said Syed. “You enjoy.”
“Sure thing,” Erik stuffed his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket. Syed whispered something in Kendry’s ears and walked away, receding until he was absorbed by the dark silhouettes gathering in his night club.
“Geez,” said Erik. “That guy’s keen.”
“Well,” said Kendry, “maybe he knows quality when he sees it.” She winked. Kendry handed Erik one of the fresh martinis on the bar. “A toast,” she said, holding her glass high above her head. The contents dribbled. “To life in the middle ages!”
Emma gave Kendry a stern look. Kendry slurped her drink. Erik took a small sip of his and put it down on the bar. Emma gave Erik an apologetic look.
“Sorry, mate.” Kendry placed a limp hand on Erik’s chest. “I’ve asked her, but she won’t tell me.” She leaned in as if to whisper in Erik’s ear but spoke loudly. “She doesn’t tell me anything anymore. You don’t have to say exactly, just gimme a ballpark. When were you born? You don’t have to say the year. Just tell me, was it pre- or post-9/11?”
Emma mimed the words what the fuck.
“Sorry.” Kendry waved her arms, the jangling of her bracelets swallowed up by the thump of the electronic beats. “My friend’s telling me I’m embarrassing her.”
Erik smiled nervously. “No, it’s cool. I guess I don’t really think about age that much.”
“Hmm, is that right?” Kendry stroked her chin theatrically. “Must be nice.”
“Lay off, Ken,” said Emma.
Kendry wrapped her arm around Erik’s arm. “Erik’s a big boy, he can take care of himself.” She patted his arm. “He doesn’t need you to protect him from the nasty lady. Does he?”
“Look, it’s fine,” said Erik. “Honestly. I don’t know what the big deal is. I’m twenty-nine, not that it matters. I just think there’s way too much emphasis on age. Especially for you guys.”
“Us guys?” Kendry gestured to her and Emma. “Totally, thanks for standing up for us.” She gave Erik a playful jostle. “Oh, what’s this,” said Kendry, turning to look as two grinning young women in short skirts and tight tops shyly approached Erik. “Hello girls,” Kendry beamed. “Can we help you?”
“Uhm, hi. Sorry to butt in,” said the brunette, her polished little face framed by bangs cut sharp as a Lego minifigure’s. “Aren’t you Erik Braun?”
“Uh, yep.” Erik smiled and slid his hands into the back pockets of his jeans.
The girl held up her phone. “Could we take a selfie?”
“Oh, we can do better than that,” said Kendry, plucking the phone from the young girl’s hand. “What’s your name, dear?”
“Vanessa.”
“Okay, Vanessa. And you are?”
“Phoebe.”
“Well, Vanessa and Phoebe, why don’t you go over there and snuggle up next to Erik and I’ll take a photo of the three of you.”
The girls sheepishly approached Erik.
“Hey,” he said, and smiled. Those dimples. The girls glanced at him, blushed and turned to look at each other before facing the camera. Erik rested his arms on their shoulders. They leaned their bodies toward him and smiled on cue.
Kendry moved around taking pictures from different angles. “A little closer, girls. You look scared of him.”
The girls reddened, nudged closer and smiled at each other. Phoebe bit her glossy bottom lip. They wrapped their arms around Erik’s waist. Kendry circled them taking photos and then handed the phone back. Erik said something to them that Emma couldn’t hear and the girls covered their mouths as they laughed.
They were almost children, thought Emma. And yet their gushing over Erik made her uncomfortable, not because they were young and pretty – okay, maybe a little – but mostly because the three of them were organically part of a scene she knew nothing about.
She thought of Rob and missed the security of knowing that he was on her side, that they aligned in age and experience. They shared a child, friends, cultural references; they were comfortable, could fart in each other’s presence. These things mattered.
Emma’s daydream was interrupted by a bartender handing her a shot glass of some clear liquid. She took it apprehensively and saw that everyone had lifted theirs, including Erik, Vanessa and Phoebe. They all shot their drinks and grimaced. Emma sipped the concoction, enduring the cold and citrusy vodka thing, whatever it was.
Erik walked over with his hands in his jacket pockets. “Hey.”
“Hey.” Emma put the half-empty shot glass back on the bar.
“Sorry about this,” he said. “It’s stupid. I know.”
“No, it’s okay.”
Erik scratched behind his ear. “Apparently there’s a whole bunch of people at a table back there.” He nodded toward the back of the venue. “It’s a Discord group or something. I know it’s annoying, but I should probably go say hi. Do you want to head over there for just a bit? Say hello?”
Here it was. One of those moments that betrayed the age gap between them. A table of young people, his fans, and her, some hanger-on. It’d be embarrassing for them both. “Why don’t you just go,” she said, as softly and genuinely as she could.
“Really?”
She nodded.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean for it to get weird or anything. I don’t really know how to act in situations like this. It’s not like it happens all the time.”
“You should go,” she said, patting him on the chest. “It’s part of what you do.”
“Then why do I feel like a dick doing it?”
“I don’t know. You’re not a dick.”
He slid his arm around the small of her back. “Thanks for being cool about this.”
“Of course.”
He kissed her on the cheek and walked toward Phoebe and Vanessa. The three of them disappeared into the depths of the club, toward whatever happened next. Her pang of jealousy felt juvenile and perplexing. The only dignified move was to leave.
Emma walked tentatively back toward Kendry who sat there, glassy-eyed and twirling her straw inside the icy mush that remained of her drink. “What the fuck was that?” said Emma.
“What?” Kendry held the glass to her lips and used the straw to shovel pink slush into her mouth.
“Nuzzle up girls,” Emma mocked. “I’ll take your picture.”
“I was being playful.”
Emma rolled her eyes. “You were obnoxious.”
“Oh please.”
“Well, I think I’m going to get going.” Emma stood.
Kendry put her glass down on the bar and slid it away from her reach. The bartender eyed her. She shook her head no. Kendry dabbed at her mouth with a napkin. “Sit down,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“Sit down,” she said gravely. “I need to show you something.”
Emma lowered herself back onto the barstool like an obedient dog.
Kendry pulled out her phone and put it face down on the bar, her golden phone case glowed under the bar lights. “I found this photo.” Kendry’s French manicured nails hovered over the phone case. “I don’t know if I should show you, but I also think you need to see it.”
Emma threw up her hands. “Now you have to show me.”
“A warning. It’s bad.”
“Just let me see it.” Emma reached for the phone. Kendry turned it over.
On it was a picture of Rob standing next to a tall, young woman in a hard hat. Behind them was a stone wall with the ocean visible in the distance.
“Any idea who that is?” said Kendry.
Emma zoomed in on the photo and shook her head. The young woman was striking. Beautiful, in a rugged sort of way, dressed in jeans and work boots, her crimpy dark hair flowing out the back of her hard hat.
The most remarkable part of the photograph was Rob. His face. Emma zoomed in and out on her husband’s expression several times. He looked relaxed, younger, as if a great weight had been lifted from him. He looked happy.
“He is so banging her.” Kendry picked up her drink, saw it was empty and put it down again.
“What do you know about it?” Emma zoomed out of the photo to frame Rob and the young woman together. You could tell she had a nice body, even though it was hidden under a puffy orange vest.
“Just telling you the truth,” said Kendry.
“No, you’re just being shitty now.” Emma hated when Kendry got like this. There was such a fine line between her being the life of the party and being a mean drunk. Why couldn’t she just stay on the wagon once and for all?
Emma took a last look at the photograph of the woman. How was she supposed to compete with that? If that’s what he wanted, good luck to him. She handed the phone back to Kendry.
“Hey, you can’t be that surprised,” said Kendry. “And you can’t really blame him. I mean, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander?”
“You know what?” Emma stood. “I don’t need this tonight.”
Kendry chuckled. “Oh, come on, Em. There’s no need to be so fucking dramatic. Sit down.”
Emma gathered her purse from the hook under the bar.
“You’re actually leaving?” Kendry woozily leaned back on her stool. “Okay, that’s cool. Did I ‘offend’ you?” she air quoted. “Seriously, grow up.”
“Me?” Emma hissed. “You know what, get your shit together, Ken. I mean it.”
“Ha.” Kendry’s head drooped as if it suddenly got heavier. “Pot. Meet kettle. You’re just mad because your toy boy found a younger kitten to paw.”
Emma grabbed her coat. “You can be such a cow.”
“And you can be sooo needy.”
“You’re pushing it, Ken. Don’t act like I’ll always come back.”
“Pffft. Sweetheart, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m all you have left.”
Emma slung her bag over her shoulder. “Dry up, would ya.” She brushed past Kendry, and pushed through the bodies now mashed together in the venue. Erik was in there someplace, with his harem. It’d been so easy for him to abandon her. She stormed out of the club, past the glorious doorman in his gold embroidery and the well-groomed people waiting for permission to come inside.
Emma lay in Kendry’s mom’s old bed trying to fall asleep. Margaret hadn’t died here. She passed in hospital. But this is where she suffered. Emma switched on the too-tall pedestal lamp on the bedside table and it cast sinister double shadows on the wall. Why didn’t that bloody TV work? She just wanted to flip channels, anything to fill the silence of Kendry’s empty house, but the knot of dusty cables at the back of the TV/DVD unit was too daunting. Rob always handled that kind of stuff. She flicked off the light, pulled the blankets up to her chin, hugged the second pillow and soon drifted into a shallow sleep.
Emma woke to rattling and rustling in the kitchen, the clinking of glass bottles, the thump of the refrigerator door. She squinted at the digital clock. 3:27.
Kendry was out there, shuffling around, opening and closing cupboards. The murmur of voices on the TV soon came through the wall. Emma turned onto her side, put the pillow over her head, then turned over on her other side. She closed her eyes but sleep felt impossible. She pushed the quilt off and put on her dressing gown.
The blue light of the television glowed on the cream walls of the hallway. The house was cold and Emma balled her hands inside the pockets of her dressing gown.
She found Kendry in the loungeroom, her head flopped back on the arm of the sofa, the flicker of the TV like a strobe light in the dark room. Some cooking show. Cutting onions.
Kendry snored, an open bottle of white wine on the coffee table. Emma found a blanket and draped it over Kendry and her eyes opened suddenly, dark and vacant as a shark’s. She murmured something unintelligible before her eyeballs rolled back into her head and she passed out again.
Emma took the bottle of wine from the coffee table and returned it to the fridge. She left Kendry with a large glass of water, just as she used to do for her father. It was hard to let people be themselves.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The table saw screeched and the spinning blade shuddered to a halt. Rob looked up from the timber he was leaning over. Across the spiky edges of the circular blade, he could see Sareena ambling toward him from the long grass at the cliff’s edge. She was on her phone, laughing in an exaggerated way, tilting her head back, hand circling as she spoke. He could only faintly hear what she was saying, but it sounded cheerful. If it wasn’t for the hard hat, she might be someone out for a walk in the park.
Rob replayed his recent conversations with Syed. He didn’t like keeping Sareena in the dark. But Syed held the purse strings. What he said is how it went. That’s just how the world worked.
Sareena looked over at Rob as she drew closer and gave him a thumbs up and pointed to her phone.
Why take a call now? There was shit to do. He straightened himself and leaned back, kneading the small of his back where the kinks gathered.
Sareena smiled again and pointed at her phone. “Oh, that’s so awesome…,” she said to whoever was on the other end. “No, really, so great.”
It seemed most things were “awesome” to Sareena, whether it was a sunset, a mitered edge or a vegetarian pizza. She nodded again and gave Rob an enthusiastic thumbs up. Rob was only half listening to what she was saying. It set a bad example for her to be on her phone all the time. No phones outside break times. That was another rule.
“Really,” she grinned, still engrossed in her conversation. “Yup…No, you’ve made my day, seriously… You’re going to love it…That’s fine, whatever works for you guys.”
Rob picked up a plank of LVL timber and dropped it on the saw plate, letting her know that he was working while she was on the phone.
“Yeah…,” she said, turning her back to him. “Yeah…yeah…yeah…No, totally…Okay. Awesome. Thanks so much…Okay…Bye.” She turned back to face Rob, hunched over his plank of wood. “Guess who that was?”
Rob gave her a sideways glance.
“That was the editor of Home Design! They want to do an article for the magazine.” She fist pumped the air.
“An article about what?”
She gave him a playful shove. “About the build, ya nob. I reached out and they said yes.”
Rob straightened the plank of wood on the table. “Yeah, but I mean what about it? What do they want to know?”
“Do you seriously not know this magazine? They’re all about the journey. Before. After,” she said. “They’ll want to get some of the history of the place, find out how we’re restoring it, get some before-and-after shots. It’s a big deal!” She pumped her fist again. “You should be proud.”
Rob placed his aluminum speed square against the piece of timber for the door frame he was building. Sareena said the tool was “old school,” that it looked like some pyramid-looking contraption he’d stolen from a masonic lodge or something, it was so old and scuffed. But it was one of the few useful things he’d inherited from the old man. It felt substantial in his hands and was stamped Made in Australia, as things used to be. Young tradies never properly understood the value of the thing. He knew they privately mocked him for the way he wandered around site using his speed square to check angles on freshly laid timber. Even though Sareena joked about it too, Rob knew she appreciated its value. She may not have been as fanatical as he was about plumb lines and sharp edges, but she had her own obsessions: salvaging, repurposing, period accuracy. It sometimes gave him the shits the way she clung to materials he thought were well past their use-by date, but he could respect her devotion to doing things right as she saw them.
Rob slid his speed square up the side of a fresh plank of timber and fished out the chewed-up pencil that lived behind his ear. He licked his pencil and scribed a sharp line on the wood. “I don’t really like people poking around in my business until the work’s done.”
“Oh, stop being a fusspot. It’s a nice story and we’re doing good work here.” Sareena looked up at the repointed stone facade of the house. “It’s going to look fucking ace. Plus, to be a little selfish about it, me and the girls could use the exposure. I haven’t been in the game as long as you and if I can’t close deals, my crew don’t eat.”
Why was that suddenly his problem? He didn’t want some magazine poking around here. He’d told her that. That should have been the end of discussion. Did Syed know about this Home Design article thing? What would he say? It was him that insisted on Sareena being part of this project. He’s the one who gave her more control than Rob was comfortable with. Now some magazine was prying around. They’d want to see the building plans. This couldn’t end well.
Rob had been ready to treat this job like any other. Sareena and her crew were making that difficult, the way they poured themselves into the work. It was admirable, but they were too invested in the outcome of this project, the way they personified the house as “Marge,” the fine old lady who lives by the sea, who was growing old gracefully but needed some attention. The way they joked about “her” needing a facelift, how “she” needed a chiropractor, a new frock, a hat. It all suggested they’d grown too attached to what they were doing here, and Rob knew from experience that it would cost them time and money in the end. Get in. Get out. Get paid. That’s how this business worked.
