Anouk was confused, though I wasn’t. I’d seen Oscar Hobbs at the hall, and it wasn’t hard to see his fingerprints all over this thing. What did I make of it? It was no more than amusing. The gods can step down and salivate over the mortals like the rest of us, can’t they? Anouk had one of those bodies that demanded, as a man, your rapt attention, and Oscar Hobbs was just a man, after all. As I said, it was amusing, nothing more, and while I enjoy watching the befuddlement of my family, friends, and peers, I can’t hold on to secrets for very long. So that night, after Anouk hung up the phone at the end of a long argument with the play’s producer, I told her.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she screamed.
“I just did.”
She scrunched up her face so her eyes, nose, and mouth were no bigger than a mandarin.
“What the hell does he want?” she said quietly.
I gestured at her body and said, “Take a guess.”
“But he can get anyone he wants!”
“Maybe because of something you said to him in the casino. What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
“Come on.”
“All right,” she said. “I told him his soul’s got one of those stains on it that smudges when you try to wipe it clean.”
Two days later I was at work, standing outside the building smoking a cigarette with my boss, Smithy, and I was thinking I’d have to leave the job soon and I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t announce my coworkers’ faults on the way out. I was wondering whether they’d give me a quitting-in-a-huff party when I saw a Porsche Spyder drive up to a no-stopping zone and stop there. It was the kind of car James Dean died in. It was a nice car. I’d die in there too, if I could afford it.
Smithy said, “Feast your eyes on that.”
“I’m feasting.”
Oscar stepped out of the car and walked up to us. “Jasper.”
“You’re Oscar Hobbs!” Smithy said in shock.
“That’s right,” he said back.
“That must be the problem with being famous,” I said. “Everyone tells you your own name.”
“Jasper. Can I talk to you a minute?”
“Sure,” I answered and, turning to Smithy, excused myself. Smithy nodded at me enthusiastically, still wearing that shell-shocked face, the one that looked as if he’d just found a vagina among his own genitalia.
Oscar and I stepped into a small patch of sunlight. He looked nervous.
“I feel kind of funny coming to see you about this.”
“About what?” I asked, sensing the answer.
“Anouk came into my office and really let me have it for that review.”
“She did?”
“I also made sure the media reported an environmental demonstration she went on. But she was furious. I don’t understand it. She really hates me, doesn’t she?”
“It’s not personal. She hates the rich.”
“How can I get her to like me?”
“If you could demonstrate that you’re oppressed in some way, that would help.”
He nodded rhythmically, as if to a beat.
“What do you really want with Anouk, anyway? It seems that you’re making a lot of effort here. I’ve seen the women you go for. Anouk’s nice, and she has her own style of beauty, but it doesn’t really make any sense. You can rake in the über-women anytime you like. What gives?”
“The thing is, Jasper, the world is full of ordinary people. Some are beautiful, some are not. What’s rare is extraordinary, interesting, original, and creative people who think their own thoughts. Now, while waiting for this extraordinary woman, if I have to spend my time with an ordinary woman, do you think I’d be with a beautiful ordinary woman or an unattractive ordinary woman?”
There was no need to answer that, so I didn’t.
“Women like Anouk are rarer than you think.”
After he left, Smithy said, with forced nonchalance, “How do you know Oscar Hobbs?” and I said, “You know, from around,” and because I’m as pitiful as the next man, with the same howling ego, I felt for the rest of that day like someone important.
Still, I was confounded. This man wasn’t just running after Anouk like a snorting dragon, he was actually infatuated with her, and she was shooting him down! Power may be an aphrodisiac, but one’s own prejudice is a turnoff, and evidently the more potent of the two. I remember her dragging me once to a rally where the speaker said the media barons were in the pocket of the government, and then a month later to another rally where this speaker said the government was in the pockets of the media barons (she agreed with both), and I remember trying to explain to her that it only looks like they are, because by coincidence the government and the newspapers just happen to have the exact same agenda: to scare the shit out of people and then to keep them in constant freezing terror. She didn’t care. She decreed her everlasting hatred for both groups, and nothing could persuade her otherwise. I began to think of Oscar’s rich and handsome face as an amusing test of the strength and vitality of her prejudices.
I arrived home around sunset and walked dreamily through the advancing shadows of the labyrinth. It was one of my favorite times in the bush- the edge of night. As I approached my hut, I saw the Towering Inferno on the veranda waiting for me. We hurried inside and made love and I studied her face vigilantly during it, to make sure she wasn’t thinking of anyone other than me. To be honest, I couldn’t tell.
Half an hour later a voice was at the door. “Knock knock,” the voice said.
I grimaced. It was Dad this time. I climbed out of bed and opened the door. He was in a bathrobe he’d bought months earlier, and the price tag was still hanging off the sleeve.
“Hey, tell me something about that girlfriend of yours,” he said.
“Shhh, she’s asleep.” I stepped onto the veranda and closed the door behind me. “What about her?” I asked.
“Is she on the pill?”
“What business could that possibly be of yours?”
“Is she?”
“As it happens, she’s not. She has an allergic reaction to it.”
“Great!”
I took a deep breath, determined to bear him with as much patience as I had stored in my depths. His grin drained the pool.
“All right. You win. I’m curious. Why is it great that my girlfriend is not on the pill? And this better be good.”
“Because that means you use condoms.”
“Dad. So fucking what?”
“So- can I borrow some?”
“Condoms? What for?”
“To put on my-”
“I know what they’re for! I just- I thought prostitutes brought their own condoms.”
“You don’t think I can sleep with anyone who isn’t a prostitute?”
“No, I don’t.”
“You don’t think I can attract a regular citizen?”
“As I said, no.”
“What a son!”
“Dad,” I began, but I couldn’t think of an end to that sentence.
“Anyway,” he said, “have you got any?”
I went into my bedroom and grabbed a couple of condoms from the bedside table and took them back to him.
“Just two?”
“All right, take the whole pack. Have a party. I’m not a pharmacy, you know.”
“Thank you.”
“Wait- this woman. It is a woman, isn’t it?”
“Of course it’s a woman.”
“Is she in the house now?”
“Yes.”
“Who is she? Where did you meet?”
“I can’t see what business that could possibly be of yours,” he said, and walked off the veranda with a slight lilt in his step.
Strange things were afoot. Anouk was being pursued by a man dubbed by Guess Who magazine as Australia ’s most eligible bachelor, and Dad was sleeping with unprofessional person or persons unknown. New dramas were stirring in the labyrinth.
The morning birds, those little feathery alarm clocks, woke me around five. The Towering Inferno wasn’t in bed beside me. I could hear her crying on the veranda. I lay in bed, listening to those little deep gulping sobs. It was kind of rhythmic. Suddenly I knew what she was up to. I leapt out of bed and ran outside. I was right! She had her little mustard-sized jar pressed up against her cheek and she was depositing a new batch of tears. It was almost full now.