I wasn’t concerned about the fiancée. I knew from her Facebook status that she was about to fly to New Zealand for a Cultural Studies conference. She’d be gone a week.
“I don’t want to see you get hurt,” Kailee said, giving me this pouty I-feel-so-sorry-for-you look that made me want to slap her. Instead, I took a deep breath and quoted some Napoleon Hill.
“There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.”
As soon as I said the words it became obvious what I had to do: go back to the book and apply the thirteen principles. I had desire, faith, persistence, and knew how to plan. Specialized knowledge? By the bucketload.
“I’ll be okay,” I told her.
Four days later I was at WSU’s Parramatta campus — a flat, spread-out place with lots of green fields and jacaranda trees blooming pale purple. Back in the olden days the whole of Parramatta was a gigantic farm which provided food for the penal colony of Sydney, and the university site used to house schools for orphans, a female insane asylum, and a boiler house where the urchins and psychos did laundry, presumably. I knew all this from reading the heritage pamphlet while sitting on a bench outside building EQ, an old-fashioned, two-story job with wraparound verandas where Josh and a couple of other philosophy lecturers had their offices. He hadn’t been hard to find. His room and phone number were listed on the university website and it was only a matter of time before he emerged. At exactly 4:36, he left the building in the company of a tweedy-looking older man and I followed them onto a shuttle bus at the entrance to the university. I was incognito, dressed as a student in a denim mini, a striped, off-the-shoulder T, oversized Gucci sunnies, and ballet flats. I carried a bag from the Co-op bookstore. They alighted the bus at the Parramatta City stop and walked toward the railway station, past old sandstone buildings and new office blocks with windows like mirrored sunglasses. I was worried they were going to catch a train together, until they crossed to the Commercial Hotel.
The pub’s original colonial façade faced the street, but the inside had been scooped out and expanded to accommodate a bunch of different bars. I tailed them to the beer garden, which wasn’t so much a garden as a cavernous two-story atrium with a massive TV screen suspended from one of the glass walls. They bought beers and sat at a wooden table and I nicked into the ladies’ for a couple of lines of coke, before buying a Wild Raspberry Vodka Cruiser and parking myself at the next bench, hidden behind a fake hedge. They sunk a couple of beers and then the older guy said he had to run for his train and dashed off.
I approached Josh, who looked up as he drained the last of his schooner.
“Oh my god, it’s... Josh, isn’t it?”
He seemed confused so I leaned forward and whispered, “We met at your cousin’s party.”
Now he recognized me.
“I’m Lila,” I said. It’s actually short for Delilah, which is spelled Darlyla on my birth certificate because my mum thought it was more “unique.” I’d stopped telling people my full name because as well as making me seem like the world’s biggest bogan, there was not a man alive who could resist singing the Tom Jones song as soon as they heard it.
“What are you doing here?” he said.
“Picking up textbooks!” I brandished the bookshop bag. “Hey — do you mind if I have a drink with you? I was sitting at the bar, but a couple of engineering students started getting sleazy.”
“I was about to leave.” He glanced at his watch.
“Just one? I wanted to pick your brain about philosophy. I’m thinking of doing a double degree.”
Josh had another beer and I drank a pinot grigio (to look sophisticated) while I asked him questions about the course and philosophy in general. I’d spent the past week researching on Wikipedia, and was familiar with the big enchiladas and main theories of the subject. People think I’m a dumb bitch because I work as a stripper and left school early, but I got a great mark in my Tertiary Preparation Certificate at TAFE, and I’m heaps good at retaining information when I put my mind to it.
Josh had a lot to say on the topic, and as I watched his mouth move and his hands wave around, my pussy literally started throbbing and I had to squeeze my thighs together, tight. I hadn’t been mistaken, some irresistible force was attracting me to him, though I never figured out exactly what it was. Kailee, bloody hippie, reckoned we must have met in a past life, but I leaned more toward fate and pheromones. Either way, it was just like the Nick Cave song. He was the one who I’d been waiting for. Everything else fell away — Matt, Josh’s girlfriend, the chattering pub patrons, and the State of Origin replay on the giant TV. I’m in love with you, I thought, and hoped I hadn’t said it out loud.
I touched his leg under the table.
He pulled away like he’d been burned. “You’d better not do that.”
“Why?”
“I’m engaged.”
“Sorry, I didn’t know.”
His face had a sort of scrunched-up, apologetic expression. “Nothing against you. You’re very attractive.”
Trust me to fall for the one man in the Sydney metropolitan area who wouldn’t cheat on his partner. Still, I wasn’t discouraged because I knew he liked me, even if he wouldn’t admit it to himself. I also had the words of the good book to back me up. Napoleon Hill says that most people are unsuccessful because they can’t come up with a new plan when their original one fails.
I came up with a new plan.
“Oh my god,” I widened my eyes, “I completely misread the situation. This is mortifying. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay.” He leaned over and patted me on the shoulder. The touch of his palm through my T-shirt was so intense I nearly came. I just wanted to push the empty glasses off the table, crawl across, straddle him, and lick his face.
“I am such an idiot.” I buried my face in my hands, then peeked out at him, cringing adorably.
“No you’re not,” he said.
“Yes I am. And the only thing that’s going to make a dent in this embarrassment is a stiff drink. You like Glenfiddich?”
I knew he did, because I’d seen a picture on Instagram of him and his fiancée at the distillery on a trip to Scotland two years earlier. I hated the shit, but jumped up and bought two doubles. The bartender didn’t see me take out the tiny fish-shaped soy sauce container and drip clear liquid into Josh’s drink.
By the time the whiskey was finished Josh had started to feel woozy. I suggested that maybe one of the engineering students had tried to spike my drink, and offered to help him home. He refused, but I insisted, and held onto his arm as we lurched out of the pub and into a taxi.
It took about half an hour to get to Ashfield, driving down the M4, then Parramatta Road, with the sun setting behind. Before I moved to Sydney I thought the whole city would be glamorous, like the parts you saw on postcards: sparkling-blue harbor, pearly Opera House, the majestic Harbour Bridge, but most of it was dog ugly. Parramatta Road was an endless gray ribbon of used-car yards and service stations punctuated by the occasional McDonald’s. Wasn’t much different from my hometown, just bigger, with less aboriginals and more Indians and Asians.
Josh’s ground-floor flat was in a whitewashed deco building with a cute little burgundy awning out the front. He let himself in, flung his brown leather messenger bag onto the polished wooden floor, and lay down on an Oriental rug. The whole living room was lined with bookcases, all filled with actual books instead of Xbox games and DVDs.