“Don’t answer,” says Ethan.
“He loses his mind if I don’t.” She answers, avoiding Ethan’s eyes. “Hey, Carter.”
She listens and says, “It’s okay. I know. Don’t be sorry.”
She twists her knuckle near her eye and sticks out her bottom lip to indicate Carter is crying. Ethan can feel Carter’s pain: the shock and disbelief when you’re in love and you think the other person feels exactly the same way.
Terrible. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bloke. He sips his margarita to prevent the Schadenfreude from spreading across his face.
“Why aren’t you at poker with your friends?” Jasmine asks. She murmurs and clucks, like a mother talking to a toddler, and then she becomes careful and conciliatory like a hostage negotiator talking to the man with the gun. Ethan searches his memory. Has any woman had to do this for him following a breakup? Surely not.
Then she says, “I’m at home. I told you. I have not met someone else. I’m just at home.”
Pause.
“Yes, he’s here, he lives here, you know that.” She looks at Ethan. “Well, yes, we are having dinner together because it’s his birthday, but as I told you a million times there is nothing going on between us, and, Carter, it is perfectly normal for a man and a woman to live together and just be friends and nothing else.”
Nothing else.
Pause.
“Yeah, okay, well, you can think that if you want to think that, but it’s not true. I’ve got to go. No. That’s not why! I’m hanging up, Carter.”
She puts the phone face down on the table and dips a cracker into the black bean dip. “Carter says happy fucking birthday.”
Ethan nods his thanks. “Sounds like he’s really applying the ancient philosophy of Stoicism.”
Jasmine splutters on her cracker, and then they are both laughing and it’s maybe the best moment of Ethan’s whole life, but that’s when the apartment buzzer starts going off, over and over, over and over, like an alarm warning of something cataclysmic.
He doesn’t need to say, Is that Carter? The fear on her face is his answer.
Here we go, thinks Ethan, and it feels just like after he kicked that soccer ball and watched it arc across the sky, heading inevitably, unavoidably, toward that Year 11 kid’s big boofhead, and there was literally nothing he could do to change his terrible future.
Ethan has never enjoyed movie prequels because the ending is predetermined. All the way through the movie you know the villain is going to end up the villain. Sure, you might know his backstory now, you might feel a bit sorry for him now, but no plot twist can change his ending.
If Jasmine is in actual danger from her ex-boyfriend, tonight or at some other time, Ethan will have to put her life first. That’s what Jason Bourne would do. That’s what Ethan Chang will do.
Of course he will.
He hopes he will, because right now that buzzer sounds like a chainsaw, and he’s honestly not feeling especially brave.
Guys like us aren’t action heroes.
Chapter 87
David Smith. That was his name. It was one of the most common names in Australia at the time, and remains so. Perhaps your accountant or pharmacist or optometrist is a David Smith.
Anyhow, I shall tell you about my David Smith.
His name was dull, but his face was not. It was a striking face. A beautiful face. His father was British and his mother was Korean, and David had inherited his mother’s eyes and black hair and his father’s patrician nose and strong shoulders. His Elvis Presley sideburns were something to behold.
He was not as tall as Jack. Not so tall that people said “Goodness, you’re tall.” David was appropriately, authoritatively tall. We had exchanged a few polite comments at the Swiss fondue party, but I was too enthralled by Eliza to take much notice of him, and he knew the couple sitting opposite, so he mostly talked to them.
Anyhow, when it was time to leave somebody asked how I was getting home, and I said I would be catching a bus and train. No Ubers back then, of course, and taxis were only for wealthy people and special occasions. However, Baashir came over all paternal and frantic, “Young Cherry must not walk the city streets alone! Just look at her!”
That’s when David spoke up. He said he lived close to Hornsby, and it would be no trouble and his pleasure to drive me home. Everyone except me was thrilled to have the problem solved. I had become suddenly exhausted. I did not think I could manage to make conversation with a strange albeit handsome man on what would be an hour’s drive, all the way home from Newtown to Hornsby. If you are a fellow introvert you will understand. We’re all the rage these days. Movie stars regularly describe themselves as introverted while being charismatic on talk shows.
The night had become chilly. David had a Ford Falcon, which smelled very masculine, like leather and cologne. His cologne was Ralph Lauren Polo Green. He put the heater on full blast, switched on an easy listening radio station, and didn’t try to make conversation at all. He turned out to be a man who never made conversation for the sake of it and I always appreciated that about him.
You can probably guess what happened when I got into that quiet warm car.
Yes, that’s right, I fell asleep.
I’d only told David the name of my street, so rather than waking me to ask for directions, he pulled over, got his street directory out of the glove box and looked up Bridge Street. I had not given him the street number, but he looked for, and found, the Madame Mae sign on the letterbox. (Madame Mae had been a hot topic of conversation at the party. People were always interested in Mum’s profession.)
“Cherry,” he said quietly, and he touched my arm. “We’re here.”
I woke, and was confused and grateful to be home. I thanked him and he asked for my telephone number, which of course I gave him. He took me out to dinner the following weekend to an Italian restaurant in Glebe. That’s the night when I wore my green crocheted dress. That’s the night he called me a “bombshell” while he refilled my wineglass and said, “Tell me your life story, Cherry.”
It’s also the night I lost my virginity on a giant waterbed in Wahroonga.
Please don’t worry about the refilling of the wineglass. I consented.
Goodness me, I consented.
My apologies if that was too graphic.
It’s just that my relationship with David Smith was based very much on desire. It was truly all that mattered. Desire can be powerful enough to sweep away everything in its path: your good sense, your Catholic upbringing, your plans for the next day. It was all I thought about. You may be at a stage in your life where you have forgotten this, and even the word “desire” might aggravate you.
