Playing the Field Read online

  ‘Hi, Jay, hey, Ingrid.’

  ‘Hi, Colette.’ Ingrid looked up for less than a second, issued a brief smile and went back to the Karen Walker skirts that had just come in. She thought Col visited too often, distracting both me and the customers.

  ‘You’re in a good mood,’ I said slowly. ‘How come?’

  ‘Oh, you know, sold my first house for Gerard.’

  ‘Shut up!’ I squealed. I ran around and hugged her, not caring what Ingrid thought. ‘Oh, that is the best news. I’m so happy. Who, where, when?’

  ‘This young guy, actually. Bought it with his brother. Not too bad a sort, either. Could do with some sun – was haunting the agency with his paleness – but funny as. Meeting him this arvo to —’

  ‘Ohmygod, are you going on a date?’

  Col didn’t have dates. Well, she hadn’t for months, anyway. She was in an anti-men phase after what had happened with Eric, who had been her fiancé until, well, he wasn’t. She found out that he’d been having an affair with his ex-girlfriend – a scrawny rat of a woman who taught yoga to other equally scrawny rats – just five weeks after he’d proposed. She swears she wasn’t snooping, but she’d ‘found’ an email from the woman in his Gmail account, and it was so explicit and so recent, and presented such a disgusting trail of to-and-fro from the both of them, that she’d called it off that day.

  That was almost four months ago. He’d called and he’d sent obscenely large bouquets, but Colette was having none of it. She’d taken their dog, the blender, the espresso machine and all the best furniture, and moved out. Mum had tried to persuade her to move back up to the Gold Coast, but Col was about as keen on that as she was on getting ‘Eric’ tattooed on her right shoulder. Instead, she’d convinced me to come and live with her. Which, given how gutted she was, and that a move to Sydney had been on my radar anyway, was a relatively easy decision.

  I was equally single, sans the simmering rage. I’d broken up with my last boyfriend, Jeremy, not long before. He was a sweet boy: an electrician with warm brown eyes and a talent for guitar rivalled only by his talent for building the perfect University Cigarette. But he also had a chronic pot addiction and an inclination towards alien conspiracy theories.

  At first it had seemed so romantic and naughty, smoking a joint together after a night out, giggling and making Dorito sandwiches and dissecting Futurama. Then, when he refused to go anywhere without first inhaling some electric spinach, it became annoying. And finally, when I busted him smoking a joint before work, it became unbearable.

  He told me he’d quit, that he’d never touch marijuana again, and that he loved me, but I couldn’t seem to get past his bloodshot eyes during these declarations. He tried to call a few times, and even turned up at my place with some petrol-station flowers and a badly written poem, but my attraction to him had long gone. I wished him and his bong the best, and told him not to come round any more. In this sense, my move south came at the perfect time.

  ‘No offence, Jay, but: You’re a moron. He and his brother just have to sign some paperwork. And he’s not my type – not even in the same postcode.’

  She saw the quiet disappointment in my eyes.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m not about to ship off to the Mad Island of Lesbos just yet.’

  I laughed. ‘Well, I’m thrilled for you. And I hope that commission means we can go for a yummy dinner … Hey, we still going to pick up those bedside tables this arvo?’

  ‘Shit sticks! Totally forgot about that. Can you grab me from Lucio’s at five?’ She saw the blank look on my face. I was as confident finding my way around Sydney as I was negotiating foreign arms policies. ‘It’s that one we went to after the movie last week?’

  ‘Oh yes, I remember the one.’

  ‘Thanks, Jay.’

  I hugged her again and kissed her on the cheek and tried not to think about the fact that if I had given my number to Adonis on Saturday, I could be off meeting a guy for coffee this afternoon.

  ROUND 4

  Fate United vs The Coincidences

  I pulled up in front of Lucio’s at ten past five in Mary, the little white Mazda who had been with me since Year 11 and had been my transport to Sydney, filled with clothes, shoes, jewels and all of my most beloved books, music and magazines. I called Col’s mobile.

  ‘Coming!’ she answered. ‘I see you out front.’

  I hung up and started fiddling with my long brown hair, wondering whether I should get a fringe. I folded some back over itself and held it over my forehead in a high-tech simulation. Just then the passenger door opened and two sets of legs greeted me. Colette bent down.

  ‘Hey, Jay … Nice hair, idiot.’ I dropped the faux fringe quickly. ‘This is Frank.’A second face bent down. It belonged to a man in his thirties who smiled and said, ‘Sweet park.’

  ‘Thanks!’ I beamed back. I enjoyed being the cute little sister. It was my favourite role.

  ‘So, Colette tells me you work at that posh dress joint on High Street, huh? Mum loves to throw Dad’s money in there. She’s probably already secured your Christmas bonus.’

  I laughed. ‘Tell her to say hi next time she comes in … So, uh, you ready, Col? We’ve got to get there before 5.30 …’

  Another set of legs walked up to the car.

  ‘Oh, and this is Frank’s brother, Josh.’

  A smiling, tanned face furnished with beautiful teeth and dark floppy hair leaned down. And somewhere in the area of my body that ensured I had oxygen travelling to my heart and brain, there was a malfunction. It was Adonis. Holygodamnfrickenshit, it was Adonis!

  I caught his eyes for a flicker before blushing and dropping my head.

  ‘Hey, do I … do I know you?’ His voice wafted in slowly. Shit. Why couldn’t this have happened when I was looking pretty? I didn’t even have any makeup on. ‘You’re the girl from Balcony!’ he exclaimed. ‘You spilled your drinks on me. It was you, right?’

  Before I could utter a response, Frank’s voice had thieved the aural spotlight.

  ‘So, make sure you have no plans on Wednesday, okay? ’Cos that’s the day I’m going to ring out of the blue and suggest we do something completely spontaneous.’

  Frank started walking backwards towards the BMW parked in the no-stopping zone up ahead. He stood at the passenger door and called to Josh, who was still looking at me in disbelief.

  ‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ he said, smiling, his eyes shining brightly.

  I looked at him and nodded, smiling shyly, my right hand running nervously through my hair.

  ‘Josh! Activate the automated door opening mechanism at once!’ Frank boomed.

  I dropped my head so that Josh didn’t feel inspired to make any further conversation. I was acutely aware that I was performing situational suicide: I had thought of nothing but this man for days, and here I was being all coy and insipid now that he had magically presented himself.

  Frank blew Col a kiss and stepped into the car, and Josh, a look of surprise and amusement dancing across his face, bid Colette and me farewell with a wave and a smile, and stepped into the driver’s seat.

  ‘Wednesdaaaaaay!’ Frank yelled as they pulled away.

  ‘Too much, isn’t he?’ Colette said with finality, climbing into Mary.

  ‘I think he’s funny!’ I wanted the topic of Frank to be over, so that I could launch into the topic of Adonis.

  ‘Thinks he’s a comedian.’

  ‘Well, that’s not so bad. Even you managed a few laughs.’

  ‘So, get this, Jay. Frank’s brother, Josh – PS how stupidly hot is he? – is some big football star, right, and he was one of the people who came and looked at that massive penthouse on River Parade. Must have some serious clams.’

  Col had great difficulty understanding the confidentiality aspect of the real-estate agent’s role.

  ‘Frank works at News Limited as the publicity something-something. Reckons he can get us tickets to any event we want. You know, he’d have potential if he wasn�
�t so full-on … ’

  I let her launch into her spiel on all the things Frank should change so that she could date him once before telling him she ‘wasn’t looking for anything just now’. As I half listened, my mind spun off to another dimension entirely: of all the siblings Col had sold a house to, and of all the days for me to pick her up, it was him. That shit simply doesn’t happen unless you’re meant to be together living on an island somewhere, deliriously in love, existing on coconuts and gently massaging SPF 30 onto each other’s backs.

  ‘Shame Josh has a girlfriend or we could’ve had a double date,’ Col said as a verbal full stop to her soliloquy.

  My fluttering, frenzied heart stopped cold.

  ‘Really?’ I said, trying to sound nonchalant.

  ‘Mmm. Some model slashie TV bird. Been together for a couple of years, I think.’

  Girlfriend. Model. Couple of years.

  Computer says no.

  ‘Ooh!’ Col squealed. ‘There’s a park – quick! Good one.’ She grabbed her handbag from the floor. ‘The gods are smiling on us today, aren’t they, Jay?’

  No, I thought. Not really.

  ROUND 5

  Googling vs Ignorant Bliss

  ‘Working hard, I see?’

  I looked up from my magazine to see Frank standing in front of me.

  ‘Hi, Frank! Yeah, uh, Tuesdays are usually pretty slow …

  He looked around at the empty store.

  ‘Okay, really slow,’ I confessed. We laughed.

  ‘So, Jean Jeanie, I wanted to drop these off for you to give Colette, to show her the kind of no-expenses-spared romance-athon she’s in for with the Frankonator. I would’ve taken them to her work, except I didn’t want her workmates to get jealous and resent her.’

  He pulled out a bunch of pathetic plastic flowers from behind his back.

  ‘Why, they’re just beautiful, Frank,’ I gushed.

  ‘Right you are. Now, I’d appreciate it if you put them in water – purified, of course – and the finest Venetian vase you have.’ I laughed. He was as lacking in confidence as Donald Trump was money. And Col was nuttier than a Snickers: he was funny! And persistent! And romantic! And a funny, persistent, romantic guy was just what she needed.

  ‘I’d better go. Josh and I are parked in a no-stopping.’

  My heart began racing – Josh was nearby?

  Suddenly a voice piped up from behind Frank.

  ‘Found a dress for your big date yet, Frankie?’

  And there he was, standing in front of me. Adonis. He was wearing a grey V-neck jumper, dark blue jeans and the kind of trendy white trainers that looked generic but were probably bought for several million dollars. His skin was glowing, his smile radiated; he emitted a kind of halo. He really was astonishingly handsome. Especially with his eyes twinkling like that. I blushed, dropped my head and looked down. When I looked back up, he caught my eye for the slightest second before looking back to Frank. I silently cursed the hair gods for failing to warn me to do something with my hair this morning. It was filthy and cowlicky and messily braided.

  ‘No, I’ve decided I’ll just borrow that pink one of yours. As you can imagine, Jean, we’re often mistaken for identical twins.’ The joke lay in the fact that Frank was at least three inches shorter, ten kilos lighter and roughly a fifth as handsome as his brother.

  ‘Hey Jean,’ Josh said, now standing next to Frank, close enough for me to be able to reach out and touch.

  ‘Hi,’ I managed weakly, still smiling at Frank’s self-deprecation. I could feel the prickly heat that inferred my face was now the colour usually reserved for the deeply sunburned.

  ‘We’ve gotta stop running into each other like this.’ Josh gave me a mischievous smile, his blue eyes searing into mine.

  ‘You two know each other?’ Frank asked.

  ‘I —’

  ‘We —’

  We both stopped. I laughed nervously.

  ‘Jean threw a drink at me once.’

  ‘No no, it was an acciden—’

  ‘I’m kidding, I’m kidding.’ Josh laughed. I shook my head, flushing further – if that were possible – with embarrassment.

  Frank looked at me, then at Josh, then back at me. A knowing smile spread over his face. ‘I see.’

  I cleared my throat. ‘So, um, Frank, I’ll see that your flowers get to Colette and I’ll tell her you stopped by.’

  ‘Muchos grassyass. Well, we’ll let you get back to your … work,’ he said, glancing at my magazine. ‘Just don’t exert yourself, okay? Could put your back out.’ He turned and walked out of the shop, jingling his keys.

  I giggled and tucked some hair behind my ear – #82 in my alphabetised catalogue of Annoying Nervous Tics.

  ‘Later, Jean.’ Josh smiled and drilled into me with those eyes again. As he turned and walked out of the shop, I exhaled a breath I didn’t even know I was holding.

  Once they had disappeared from sight, my hand flew to my mouth, half from shock, half from disbelief. What exactly was fate, that filthy little wench, up to? Suddenly, within the space of two weeks, I had seen Josh three times. And I’m sorry, but that was flirting he was doing just then. It was! And what of his beautiful girlfriend? I’m sure she wouldn’t like to know he was asking some random girl if he could buy her drinks, and handing out his dizzying smile on a silver platter.

  I wondered how serious they were … Google! Google would open the lid on Josh’s relationship; after all, he was supposed to be some big-shot footballer, so there’d be plenty of dirt on him online. Why hadn’t I thought of this before? Loser.

  I tapped in his name on the work computer. Site after site came up. Whoa. Seems he was quite the star. Oooh, shirtless shots – right click, save. Aaaand – right click, save again. I wondered how I could have got this far in life without having heard of him. I put it down to living in another state. That and having roughly as much interest in football as a Muslim did in pork.

  Most of the sites were sport-based and full of statistics or reviews of Josh’s game. He was twenty-seven, an Aries, and liked The Family Guy. There was the occasional gay blogger waxing lyrical about his ‘hot sizzly pecs’ and ‘eyes that were made for the bedroom!!’ And then there were the women’s magazine websites that cooed over his ridiculous physical beauty and featured more shirtless shots of him in his training gear. There was a story implying he’d had a tryst with a Playmate after judging her in a bikini competition, one linking him to Natalie Imbruglia, and one speculating on his fidelity, which was nestled cosily between several boozy shots of him with what looked to be some seriously loose women. Instantly a small bonfire of curiosity and jealousy flared up. But I pressed on bravely with my online stalking.

  Right click, save.

  And then I saw them: Josh Fox and Tess Clifton. They were captured midway up the red carpet at a film premiere two months back. He looked confident and smiley, wearing an olive green shirt and an open-necked black suit. She – all cascading toffee waves and feline green eyes – looked, well, kind of smug. She wore a bright yellow mini-dress which should’ve been garish but actually looked quite adorable on her perfectly slim and tanned frame. She was enormously TV-ready and very conventionally pretty. He had his arm around her waist, but I was pleased to see that there was definitely distance and a slight awkwardness between the two of them. They didn’t look ready to announce a six-figure, six-page-spread engagement just yet.

  I studied her. Was that the kind of girl he liked? My hair was that length – longer, even – but it was dark brown, not expensive Jennifer Aniston blonde. My eyes were brown and my skin was the brand of fair that repelled fake tan and violently opposed the sun. I looked terrible in yellow, and my bust was an optimistic B. I was screwed.

  Nevertheless, I continued on, frenzied with curiosity. The first entry on their considerably well-documented romance was two years back. It was from the social pages of The Times, and reported that they had been spotted at a trendy beachside diner having breakfast.
He was the ‘handsome football star’ and she was the ‘gorgeous socialite’ who just happened to be the daughter of the chairman of his football club, Henry Clifton.

  Oh, Josh. What nous, dating the boss’s daughter.

  There was clearly no hope for me, despite his propensity for eye-locking and power-smiling. I wished them many genetically blessed babies and clicked off the Internet in defeat.

  ROUND 6

  Chemistry vs The Clowns

  Frank and Colette were on their date, so I took Dave, Colette’s neurotic little Maltese Terrier, for a walk to the park, where I felt chubby and guilty watching people close to vomiting throw their bodies around in a sadistic boot camp. As Dave sniffed around, trying to locate the tree fortunate enough to receive his stream of priceless yellow gold, I wondered when I might start making friends down here. I really only had Col, and while her friends were nice enough, they were all 29-ish like Col, and a bit rougher, and a bit not-my-friends. Or they were married with small children. Fun as for a single 24-year-old like me.

  As always, following this realisation, I tried not to resent moving down, reminding myself of the ‘give it six months’ rule – I couldn’t pack it in and run back to the beach yet. Anyway, I wasn’t hating it down here; I was just lonely. All I really did was work, and pester Col to spend time with me on the weekends and show me around a city that she’d become disenchanted with years ago. I guess I was still enjoying the bigness of the city: being able to get dinner after 9.30 p.m., and being able to choose from a whole cast of decent clubs and bars, as opposed to three. I found the people a lot more inspiring for my work, too. When I went people-watching around Surry Hills and Kings Cross, and to the markets and all the crazy vintage stores and antique warehouses, I always felt compelled to create exotic, odd new pieces, using new stones and new styles and new metals. That’s what I should be doing today: making some jewellery. Not watching TV and making excuses. I sighed, watching Dave allocate several urination millilitres to a large Moreton Bay Fig. I called him and set off home, filled with the obligation to create, which I knew translated to a twelve per cent chance of follow-through.