"Nairobi" short story by Brett Lupton.

   It’s still early in the evening but it’s already dark outside. Ruth is sitting in front of the dresser mirror, putting on make-up, getting ready for Wendy’s farewell party. Every now and then she stops dabbing at her face to check for a telltale line where the make-up ends and the real Ruth begins. Her bottom lip juts out, the way it does whenever she concentrates hard on something.

            She looks pleased with what she sees – in a way I know has nothing to do with me. As she reaches for her mascara Ruth notices my reflection in the doorway behind her. I think how she’s seeing an image of her man that’s his exact opposite. Neither of us speaks but occasionally our eyes meet, and it’s obvious she’s beginning to feel self-conscious.

            Funny. It’s almost a relief to have this effect on her, as though my presence in the background is making some kind of point that needs to be made. I raise my hands to the top of the doorframe, push against it, and make myself bigger.

            “Oh, hey there,” she says, finally. “Lose something?”

            “No,” I tell her, “don’t think so.” But to be honest I’m not completely sure.

            Maybe I have lost something.

            All I know is how it was last Friday, how she was looking at that guy, David – the same way she used to look at me before she finally divorced Mark. Sure, Ruth and I might argue a lot, but we always smooth things over eventually. So what’s happening here? I need Ruth to tell me what happens next.

The thing is, Ruth is the kind of woman you meet and immediately sense some kind of pre-existing history, as though you knew each other in a previous lifetime. Every lover makes you feel like that to some extent, I guess, as though underlying every love affair is a shared memory of something that hasn’t happened yet.

Like that night in the botanical gardens. We used to meet there when Mark was still in the picture, and we couldn’t use her place. Ruth and I were walking along a tree-lined path when for no apparent reason a word popped into my head. I said it aloud, just to feel it roll off my tongue.

“Nairobi.”

Ruth stopped and looked at me. “What?” she said. “How did you know I was just thinking about Nairobi?”

“Love makes me psychic”, I told her, and we laughed.

We still joke about that from time to time. We’ll be in bed, say, and Ruth will ask me what I’m thinking about. Nairobi, I’ll say, and we’ll laugh and be reminded of that night, and how good it is to be in love.

Okay, so having a seemingly irrelevant word represent your relationship might seem kind of trite – stupid, even. But my point is that it’s not just the monumental events we share that matter: those small signs and signals that pass between you and her are what really let you know where you stand with each other. And if there’s one thing I can do, it’s see the signs, read the signals.

But the longer we’ve been together, the more I’ve come to see that Ruth has a much less transcendent view of the workings of human attraction – or of anything else, come to that. For her, the world is pretty much what it appears to be. She told me she’s tried – even went to church once – but she just doesn’t feel there’s some higher power watching over her.

She’s finishing things off with some lipstick. This business with the make-up, the growing feeling there’s more going on here than meets the eye, reminds me of a tube of cream I found in a drawer just after we began sleeping together, and about why Ruth didn’t keep it in the bathroom cabinet with the rest of the medicines. It seems crazy that only now do all of the possible implications of discovering the hidden seem starkly clear.

One of Karl’s toys – that fire engine we gave him for Christmas – is lying beside my foot. I pick it up and see it’s lost one of its wheels. When I push the little button that sets off its siren, Ruth says, “Chris, do you have to? It’s bad enough listening to that racket all day.”

“I’m sorry”, I tell her, “it was an accident,” and put the toy down again with exaggerated care.

“Why are you staring at me like that? Are you alright?” She’s kind of studying that opposite-man in the mirror as she works the lipstick. “How is Karl, anyway? Has he settled down?”

“He’s fine. Must’ve been exhausted. He was asleep in two minutes flat.”

“Aw, he’s been really good, lately.”

She’s right: Karl has been good. Ruth smiles rigidly to avoid smudging, and says, “You both have. I’ve noticed Karl’s been hugging you a lot this week. It’s great you two are finally getting on.” She turns around to face me. “If only you’d try harder with Wendy.” She sees my reaction and says, “Oh don’t sulk, Chris. For a guy who meditates, and goes on and on about karma and spirits and all that stuff, you can be really intolerant sometimes.”

“Well, she bludgeons you over the head with her education. It’s not like I haven’t picked up the odd book. And the condescending way she talks . . . I don’t know why you want to be like her. She should get out of her ivory tower and experience life in the real world. She could certainly do with the exercise.”

“Chris, that’s a horrible thing to say. Wendy has a fluid retention problem. You know that.” She replaces the cap on her lipstick. “And as far as living in the real world goes, the same could be said about you sometimes. Anyway, I’m going to stay the night at her place, OK? This thing will probably go on all night and, knowing Wendy, she’ll get too drunk to drive me home. You’ll be alright with Karl, won’t you?”

Suddenly there’s a pressure on my chest and a white noise ringing in my ears. She’s going to stay out all night? I place my foot on that toy fire engine, gently rock it back and forth, then give it a push and it takes off, curving across the floor and disappearing under our bed. “Pour me a wine, would you?”, she says, turning back to the mirror. “Leave it in the kitchen, I’m nearly done.”

I take the wine out of the fridge and close the door. Its motor chooses now to plunge abruptly into some kind of mechanical thrombosis, rattling the grill at the back of its housing. I nearly drop the bottle, and realize I need to get hold of myself. So I begin doing the breathing exercise I use to calm myself and clear my head, and silently recite the prayer of Saint Francis that accompanies it.

Lord, let me be an instrument of Thy peace . . .

There’s this powerful sense of being rushed headlong toward some dark outcome twisting in my stomach.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love . . .

As I’m pouring, Ruth calls out to pour one for Wendy too; she’ll be here any minute to pick her up.

Where there is injury, pardon . . .

The stove clock says 6.45 p.m.

As I take out another glass, Ruth asks about a book Wendy loaned her. Actually the other day I did see Ruth reading and wondered about it. She’s not a big reader by any rights, but that the book belonged to her best friend explains the jutting lip and contained expression as she ran her finger down the page.

Where there is darkness, light . . .

Instead of leaving it there like she said, I take Ruth’s wine back to the bedroom. God knows Wendy’s glass can stay on the bench for her to find when she arrives. Wendy probably heard the cork pop halfway across town, and even now is lumbering toward it.

Ruth is standing with her back to me at a chest of drawers as I reappear in the doorway. The clasp on her handbag snaps shut when I say, “Here you go”, and she turns around and slides a drawer back in one movement. Raspberry-red material, maybe a T-shirt, is left poking out from the lip of the drawer.

“Oh, right,” she says, walking over to me. “I said not to bother.” She draws my attention back with a lop-sided smile as she sees me looking at that T-shirt. “When did you decide to become my butler?”

Ruth takes her glass, and there’s an unfamiliar perfume in the air as she brushes past me. I follow that fragrance across the hallway and into the lounge room. Ruth settles herself on the sofa; I take the La-Z-boy across from her.

I pick up the remote from the coffee table and point it at the stereo, and a Beach Boys song bursts out from the speakers.

Wouldn’t it be nice to live together, the singer speculates wistfully.

Ruth takes a compact from her handbag and checks her make-up again. She looks fine – more than fine – and knows it, but is, I think, simply expending some of the nervous energy from that sense of anticipation she’s been exuding all night. I’m still holding the remote, rubbing my thumb on the rewind button, thinking about how best to approach this, and knowing, knowing, knowing Wendy will be here any minute.  

            “Oh dammit”, Ruth says, suddenly. “I have a pimple.” For the first time tonight she looks at me like it’s important to her. “Can you see it from there? Is it a pimple? Christ, it had . . .” But she trails off – possibly because we talked enough about blemishes the day I found that cream, and there’s nothing left to say, really, after someone tells you they’re sorry and seems to mean it. Anyway, so far I’m fine.

            Wendy walks in – from the direction of the backdoor as usual. She has this banal code of etiquette that deems it bad manners for one friend to pass into another’s house by way of the front entrance. Apparently knocking on doors of either variety before you enter is optional. Naturally she’s found the glass I left in the kitchen.

“Ruth”, she says brightly. “Babe, are you ready to go?”

Wendy both acknowledges and relegates me to the periphery with a curt nod and a “Chris . . .”, and flops down on the sofa beside Ruth. The two women cuddle up girlishly and start talking. “Have you finished that book?” Wendy says happily. “It’s good, isn’t it? I just love Joan Schadenfreude’s take on contemporary feminism, don’t you?” She pronounces the word with acute correctness.

Schah-den-froy-duh . . .

Wendy says something else I don’t catch, which makes Ruth arch an eyebrow briefly. It might have simply been more girl-talk but why should I now recall that the original meaning of ‘conspiracy’ is ‘a breathing together’?

Perhaps in an attempt to gather me back into the fold, Wendy turns and smiles at me. But she says, “David called me at home. He said he can make it after all. He said he’ll be coming later.”

            She swallows the last of her wine, and launches into a fit of coughing as some goes down her windpipe. Wine sprays across the coffee table. Ruth starts laughing and slapping her on the back. “Are you sure you’re okay to drive?” I say. “How much have you had tonight?” Wendy is incapable of answering and can only hold up a hand to indicate she’s fine. “Maybe you should leave the car here and walk.” I look at Ruth. “After all, as Herodotus said, walking is man’s best medicine.”

Ruth glares at me, but the jibe is lost on Wendy. She’s regained her grasp on life, and in a voice still thick from coughing, says, “Actually it was Heraclitus who said that.”   

            Ruth finishes the last of her wine, and the two women stand up and prepare to leave. I have mere seconds to secure some kind of assurance from Ruth. As they make their way toward the door I rack my brains trying to think of how to convey my fear to Ruth without showing my insecurity to Wendy. I need some code, some way of telling Ruth that I suspect what she’s contemplating. Wendy is already outside and Ruth’s about to pass through the threshold when I say the only thing I can.

            “Ruth . . . Nairobi.”

Ruth stops, turns. Wendy sees this and slows down, glances back at me, then carries on down the path, and I thank her silently for what may be an act of decency or simple disinterest. For the second time tonight Ruth is really looking at me, but I hope, for the first time, she’s seeing the man as he is, our shared memory of something that hasn’t happened yet. She says, “Look, you’ll be alright, won’t you?” She says, “I love you . . . Chris?”

Ruth puts one hand on my hip and the other on my cheek and she’s smiling. Even as I hold her, I feel that dark outcome, her own anticipation of it, pulling her away. She kisses me lightly on the lips, perhaps to show me that we’ve both always known what happens next, and then off my killer goes, out into the night.

The bedside alarm clock says Ruth has been gone for five, maybe six hours now. I decide to get up and look in on Karl. He’s sleeping in that serene way of a child who still lives beyond a world of adult action and consequence, and I feel a profound sense of loss at that thought. I should probably go back to bed myself but I won’t sleep, so what’s the point?

Instead I close the door and go into the lounge. There’s an old Tarzan movie on TV. I try to lose myself in it, but the sexism the male characters direct at Jane annoys me more than it should. The film was, after all, made nearly sixty years ago, when things were, as they say, simpler. I’m eventually driven from the room by strident classical music crashing against the cries and howls of stampeding jungle beasts.

But upon entering the hallway it hits me that I don’t know where I’m heading. This isn’t even my house – Ruth owns it. But there’s this need I can’t – or maybe don’t want to – explain. So, for some reason, I go into the kitchen, get a rag from under the kitchen sink and wipe down the bench. From there I move about the house, wiping tabletops and windowsills, and anywhere else dust has accrued. I sweep out the hallway, vacuum the lounge and straighten the furniture.

I’m heading back to the kitchen with the broom as I pass by the bedroom doorway. Maybe I should make the bed, too? But out of the corner of my eye there’s that red rag still hanging from the dresser drawer. I look at it for a moment, try to come to a decision. I realize I know what happens next.

When I pull back the drawer to push the T-shirt into place, there’s a small, opened cardboard box beneath it, emblazoned with the image of a bare-chested man embracing a woman in a bikini. They’re beside a swimming pool and laughing and having a great time. They’re tanned and beautiful, and probably have great jobs with reliable incomes, and no debts or any other care in the world.

I see the word confidence . . .

Out on the porch in the near-dawn twilight, the air is cold but I have to focus hard on that fact before I really feel it on my face and hands. A woman wearing a navy blue pantsuit turns off Pitt Street and onto Elder. The intersection isn’t far and soon she’s near our house.

            Now, I’m aware that women walking alone at night don’t enjoy being scrutinized by strangers – by strange men. So as she gets close enough to see me, I turn away and stare up through the branches of the silver birch that crowds over our front gate. The sky there is the colour of a brand new battleship. The woman’s heels resound off the brick and stucco faces of my neighbours’ houses. Then they falter. I turn back and she’s walking purposefully back toward the intersection. At Pitt Street the woman turns left and proceeds away up the hill, glancing once in my direction as she disappears into the night.

            For some reason this incident, as trivial as it is, annoys me. Why go the long way home on my account? I’m just this guy – this harmless guy – enjoying the night air on my own porch. What possible interest could I have in her?

            Then I hear the hooted cries of drunks – teenage boys, or men, I guess – and turn back to see who’s coming. But they never pass by. Whoever it is stays where I can’t see them – down at the dark end of the street.

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