IT GOT quiet at night on the streets of Camberwell. It was always quiet with Bill unless I was prepared to talk. Sitting on the stoop of the fish and chip shop next to 7-Eleven was something that we liked to do after we’d done everything else. After we drove across town to the less gentrified neighborhood, where the architecture was better but where the people who lived in it were generally poorer, had coffee, drank beer, played pool, saw a band, and drove back across town to the middle-class suburban neighborhood where my mother lived, we’d sit on the stoop of the Camberwell fish and chips shop enjoying the balmy weather and the freedom of not having to look at a clock. There were as many hours as we needed in the middle of the night, if in fact, 2:00 a.m. was considered the middle of it. Usually with these free hours I would tell Bill my troubles, my plans, my desires, but tonight I really didn’t have any. I was just sitting there, living. Living was in stark contrast to dreaming about living. Usually I would tell him my plan to make Sacha fall in love with me, the directors I had hopes to meet, why being in Los Angeles was better than being in Australia. When I was bored of talking about myself, I would talk about him, challenge him about why he didn’t have a girlfriend, a job, an escape plan from his life. But I was still really just talking about me, talking myself into the reasons why I didn’t have a girlfriend, a job that I liked, but mostly, I was trying to find a reason for having had to escape from the place that was my home. To convince myself of my choice, I had to make it a place that everyone should want to escape from. But tonight I really had nothing to say. I wasn’t excited about anything. I realized that in stark contrast to Christmases past, I had no drive, no reason to propel me forward. I had nothing to say. And because Bill doesn’t really like to talk, Camberwell at 2:00 a.m. was pretty quiet.
Although there were several more days before I had to return to LA, it felt like the holiday was over. The excitement of seeing my family after many months and the thrill of showing off my new body was over. My cousins, my uncles, and my aunts all saw my body. They were all seemingly unimpressed. No one mentioned that I had lost weight or that I looked good or that I was thin. It was baffling to me that they didn’t say anything. I didn’t even try to hide my arms anymore. I took my sleeves off, put my gym clothes on, and called Sacha. She would be impressed. She would understand the work it had taken to achieve this body. I called her and convinced her to take me to her gym. I told her that she and I were going to work off our indulgences over the holidays. I couldn’t wait to see her, to make sure I still had my best friend after what I’d put her through in St. Barths.
I walked past my brother in my gym clothes, my bag slung over my shoulder.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m meeting Sacha at her gym in Prahran.”
He looked simultaneously disappointed and determined as he said, “I’ll drive you.”
I knew I couldn’t argue with him. Not when his face looked like that.
My brother pulled into the parking lot at the gym but instead of leaving to go do whatever he’d come into town to do, he parked and shut the engine down.
“Aren’t you going to run errands or something?”
“No. I thought I might come in with you.”
“To the gym?”
“Yeah.”
Shit. I’d told Sacha to meet me at noon. It was only ten. I wanted to give myself a good solid two-hour workout before she arrived.
“Why do you want to go to the gym? I thought you were just dropping me off. You know what me and Sacha are like, we’ll be goofing around for hours.” Goofing around? Geez.
Now it looked like it was his turn scan his brain for a reason in the form of a rational-sounding lie. But why? What was he doing?
“I thought I might like to see Sacha. I haven’t seen her in ages.”
Bullshit. Jesus. I wished I’d taken the tram. I didn’t know how to get around the fact that Sacha wasn’t going to be at the gym for two more hours. As I walked into the almost empty gym with my brother trailing behind me, I decided to cover the lie by acting annoyed at Sacha’s lateness. That would do.
“What are you going to do in here? Stand around like a pervert?” He was wearing jeans and boots. He looked like a total weirdo.
“I’m just gonna check it out. Don’t worry about me. Do your thing.”
I took his direction and stopped worrying about him. I didn’t care about the whole Sacha lie either. Once I checked in to the gym I got to work. I did what I came to do. I got on the treadmill and started sprinting for twenty minutes. Then I got on the elliptical. I did twenty minutes and burned 137 calories on that, which I counted as 100. In my mind, twenty minutes on any cardio machine gave me a 100-calorie burn even if the red digital digits said otherwise. I couldn’t trust machines. They were all different. By the time I was done with cardio (I felt okay about only doing forty minutes because I’d run for over an hour that morning) and moved to the mats on the floor to begin the glorified sit-ups they call Pilates, I noticed my brother still standing in the corner. I had forgotten him completely.
“Why are you still here?” I had to speak loudly over the whirr of the machines and the yelling of the sports commentators on the TVs.
“Oh. Ahh . . . I dunno. Just do your thing. I’ll wait for you.” He was acting strangely. He had his head down and was avoiding eye contact, which was so unlike him. He was a helicopter pilot. He loved eye contact. He’d have laughed if he could have seen himself like I did. He really looked creepy standing around in the darkest corner of the gym in jeans and boots. I hoped all the women in there didn’t know he was with me.
I did my thing. I finished my forty-minute mat workout (so many reps to be effective!) and moved to the weights. I occasionally did weights to tone my arms and back, and I figured that since I wasn’t doing a photo shoot or appearing on camera for a couple of weeks, the muscles would have time to deflate if by accident I somehow pumped them up. I would’ve hated to look fat because I’d worked out too hard and my muscles added the inches I’d painstakingly taken away.
After I’d worked my bi’s, tri’s and deltoids, I saw that my brother had found a friend. It was Sacha. My desire to run to her was curbed by the seriousness of the conversation she was having with my policeman of a brother, creepily brooding in the dark corner. I wondered what the hell they could be talking about. Could they be talking about my having come out to him? It seemed unlikely, as I doubted that either of them would betray my confidence. Surely it couldn’t be my weight. I knew I was a little thin in places, but not enough to have a serious conversation about it. I started to worry, like perhaps their somber mood had nothing to do with me, and so I went over to them in a hurry. As I approached, I realized they were talking about me because Sacha’s mood immediately changed when she realized I was within earshot.
“Peeeee!” She squealed my name and hugged me all at once, leaving me deaf in my right ear. But my brother didn’t smile. He stayed the same. He looked at me, this time in the eyes.
“Porshe, can I see you outside?” He turned away from me and walked out of the gym.
The seriousness of his tone made me follow him, leaving Sacha alone, but I got the feeling that she was fine with me following him, too. It was exciting almost. It was so different. My brother had never pulled me away to talk to me seriously about anything before. I couldn’t help but be excited because it was so different. I could tell that he wasn’t angry, but I couldn’t quite figure out what he was feeling and why his feelings were so important that he would pull me away from my best friend whom I hadn’t seen for months.
We got all the way to the car before we stopped. The longer we walked, the more concerned I became. By the time he spoke, my stomach was in knots. He leaned on the hood of the car with both hands, his broad back to me, blocking his face from mine. I couldn’t see where this was going. I started to get really scared.