Remains of a Local Girl

“Shit!”

Kate slapped her hand over her mouth to prevent any other sound escaping until the pain subsided. She had just trodden on her shoe with the heel digging into the arch of her bare foot. The man she had spent the night with was sleeping right there and she was despe rate to sneak away without waking him.

She found her panties on the floor and pulled them on. She wriggled into her little black party dress but decided just to carry her shoes. Her hair was matted at the back of her head but she couldn’t risk the bathroom, and she slipped out the door cringing at the clunk of the latch as she pulled it closed.

She was out of there though, and she hurried along to the elevator with that familiar tingle of relief warming her chest. There was a line-up of cabs waiting and fifteen minutes later she was again on noise alert as she attempted to sneak into her apartment.

Her big brother, Bobby, was crashed out on the lounge with his neck kinked and his head twisted to one side and jammed up against the arm. He couldn’t be left like that so Kate prodded his shoulder.

“Bobby, what are you doing out here?”

His eyes shot open and his jaw flapped. “Katie, there you are! I was waiting but I went to sleep.”

2.

The television was fizzing black and grey static with a video tape having been spat out of the VCR.

“But I told you I’d be late, and what about work tomorrow?” Kate scolded as she turned the television off and started pushing Bobby towards his bedroom.

He was t oo sleepy, rubbing his huge face and clinging to his pajama pants, trying to hold them up.

“Look, it’s nearly time for you to wake up anyway,” she went on, scolding a little more.

Bobby was retarded, and Kate’s manner with him was accordingly authoritarian. His intellectual maturity was equivalent to that of a young teen, while he was actually approaching forty years of age and the size of a refrigerator.

“But where were you tonight, Katie? I already went to bed but then I woke up and you still weren’t home!”

Kate was in no mood to explain. “I was out, okay! Just go to bed.” And with that she left Bobby and went to her own room where she pulled off her dress and fell into bed. It was already after five though, and two hours later the alarm on her mobile was vibrating and jingling away on the bedside cabinet.

It was Friday and the last workday before a month long summer holiday. The day was clear and sunny, and the crowded ferry ride to work offered another 20 minutes nap time. The morning then passed in a rush, tidying up loose ends that would prepare her workstation for a temporary hand over. And at about 1pm Kate ended up sitting with her chin propped on her hand, nonchalantly gazing out at her multimillion dollar lunch time view of Sydney Harbor, while her thoughts meandered from the steady stream of runabouts and water taxis zipping in and out of the shadows of the Harbor Bridge to the yachts and small fishing boats bobbing on the white tipped swell around Fort Dennison. She watched a large yacht in full sail cut its way through the crowd and dash towards the ocean, and her gaze lingered on the shimmering horizon for a few moments then swept back to the ant like community of tourists milling around the Opera House forecourt.

3.

From the ninth floor cafeteria of her work office building on George Street, she took to pondering the way the faded old yellow and green ferries docked at Circular Quay seemed to remain motionless while the water swelled beneath them. Perhaps they are moving a little, she surmised, concentrati ng on the alignment from the top of one ferry to the roof of the passenger terminal, and the hazy numbness in her brain then wandered back out to the horizon while her mind separated and drifted off into the lingering hot flush of embarrassment at the idea of Lance Emerson.