Good Oil by Laura Buzo Page A

with her after uni, who play soccer with her on Sundays, who drink with her at the session afterwards, who come over to watch Buff y every Monday night. I’m jealous of the bus drivers whom she buys tickets off, for their moment of proximity when she dips her bus ticket into the ticket reader. I’m jealous of the sales clerks who get to sell her packets of chewing gum and newspapers, for the momentary greetings and brushes of skin when she hands over her money. I’m jealous of the hot water from the shower that slides over her skin and soaks into her hair. I’m jealous of the mirrors that reflect the brilliant brown warmth of her eyes. I’m jealous of the pillow on which she lays her cheek at night. Bastards, all of them. They have so much and I have nothing.
    Did I mention that I have Jeff Buckley playing as I write? I do. It’s certainly not hosing down the fire. And I’m not going to be wrapping this up anytime soon, let me tell you.
    Her shoulders. That collarbone.
    Brad gets to kiss her shoulders at will. He can have an all-you-can-kiss buffet of shoulders anytime he likes, and I can’t bear to think about it. But suddenly I can’t think of anything else.
    That’s why I can’t be friends with her – as she dared to suggest at the airport, and by letter, and now by phone. The hide of her! I really miss you, Chris. We were always such great mates, Chris. Let’s at least salvage one part of what we had, Chris. She’s just trying to salve her own conscience.
    How does she think it would work, this friendship gig? So, Michaela, my friend , my buddy, tell me, how did Brad fuck you last night? Mmmm-hmmm, Mmm-hm. Yes, and tell me more, old pal – tell me from the very beginning. ’Cos you know, mate , I just can’t stop visualising a variety of scenarios. Were you sitting on the couch together watching TV after all the other flatmates had straggled off to bed? Maybe you were curled up together on the couch and the program you were watching finished. As the credits rolled, he turned your beautiful face to his and kissed your soft, perfect lips. Maybe then he raised the remote up over your shoulder and turned off the TV. You climbed the stairs to his room with your arms about one another. Did he undress you on the bed, lying down, helping you struggle out of item by item of clothing, a painstaking but delicious progress? Or maybe it was too cold for that and you both just quickly took your own clothes off standing up and then dived under the covers. No, come on Michaela, you can tell me, we’re all friends here! Give me the details, go on! Think of me as one of the girls. What have I been up to? Um, let’s see now, bit of this, bit of that. Going to uni, going to work, jerking arrhythmically like a fish on a jetty, suffocating in the vacuum left by your departure, having half-waking dreams about the time we made love for three days, hallucinating that your lips just touched my neck . . . The usual. So messy. Holding the pen is not as easy as it was. And I’m crying.
    Michaela. It costs me a lot of what I used to consider my manhood to say this, but your pleasure was more of a pleasure to me than mine. Shit, if someone had taken me aside a year ago and told me that sex could be more than the relentless search for somewhere to get off, I’d have laughed them out of whatever seedy twenty-four-hour bar they’d found me in. And then you come along with your perfect skin, your freckled shoulders, your glorious laugh, and you lay my entire life to waste. Ignorance suited me fine.
    You spoke like me.
    You got my jokes.
    You got me .
    You fucked me senseless.
    Then you left.
    The shadows on your face are flickering in the light of that candle we bought in Leura.
    I see them every day.
    So don’t ring me up from your boyfriend’s house on the other side of the continent, bursting with contentment from your great life over there, and ask me to be friends. You’ve made your decision, that’s the end of it. I will