Society

Society

A Romantic Fantasy

          I checked my watch, ate another of Jane’s excellent hand-made prawn jiaozi, and looked longingly at the line-up of upmarket bottles of wine on the buffet. I hadn’t dived into being seriously drunk since I’d stopped being poor.

          Meeting Jane a month or so later had been an unexpected bonus, keeping me even more sober, but it was almost time to meet some of her friends. The bottles looked like my support personnel.

          I decided against more jiaozi or a glass of chilled upmarket chardonnay and went to sit at the compact electric harpsichord that Jane had rented specifically for my visit.

          I looked over toward her. Tall and elegant in a simple white blouse and long, green skirt, the grey streaks startling in contrast to her curtained-room-at-night black hair, her eyes dancing with intelligence and sensuousness and mischief behind her thick rimless glasses, she was doing hostess-getting-ready things. I wondered that she’d found me to her taste. I also felt amazed that I lived in an age when later that evening a pill that I’d taken earlier would overcome the entropy of my ageing.

          This reward would only be mine, I reckoned, if this encounter with her social circle didn’t degenerate into impossibility, as I thoroughly expected. If I didn’t fuck up. It they didn’t piss me off. If. If. If.

          Stress.

          I started improvising something at the keyboard without any thought as to what would come out. It sounded like something from the sound track of a horror movie set in an inner-city slum.

          That’d been my insides since Jane had told me about her intentions in regard to the soirée.

          “You know I’m not smooth,” I’d whinged, “when it comes to shallow chitchat with strangers. That’s how we met, remember?”

          “Viktor,” she’d murmured smoothly, putting her hand on my arm – she knew what that hand-on-arm shit did for me – “It’s not as if it’s people from my firm. I’m only inviting musos I play with …”

          “Yeah, and their partners and groupies.”

          She’d kissed me, but only softly.

          In my experience musos had always been like Hungarian Jews – they were, according to those who assumed they knew about such shit but really didn’t, people with whom I should’ve had a lot in common but rarely did. I couldn’t argue with Jane, though.

          I basically do all I can to avoid arguing with anybody, for that matter.

          She came up behind me and put her hands on my shoulders. “That’s some disturbing music you’re playing there, Viktor.”

          “Sorry. I guess it’s because I’m disturbed.”

          “It’s brilliant, though.”

          I played another few bars.

          “Relax, lover, please? I made it clear when I invited them that they’re not to ask you about your accent or your horoscope sign.”

          The bell rang.

          Showtime!

          … and I was the show.

          It was the usual gabble of voices and names. I’m no good with names, especially names without contexts.

          I did my best.

          I was actually starting to enjoy a discussion with a bloke named Smithy, who I think played oboe, about a composer I’d never heard of named Mozetich, who’d been influenced by Ligeti – okay, a muso and a Hungarian Jew, but what the hell – when the donkey brayed.

          She’d been standing not two metres from me, a medium-sized, narrow-faced personification of smug intensity, with streaky light-brown hair in a ponytail almost to her waist, talking earnestly and nasally to another woman about her bowels.

          Or so it seemed. I was trying to concentrate on what Smithy was saying about the similarities between Mozetich’s and Ligeti’s approaches to tonality, but the woman had a penetrating voice.

          She performed a basketball-style pivot and barged right between Smithy and me without a segue. “This should interest you.”

          She clearly meant me.

          “Hansie and I actually just shifted to Balmain a couple of weeks ago – and you’re from Auckland, right?”

          “Uh, Hamilton, to be …”

          “Same difference. You actually don’t know this part of Sydney, anyway, right?”

          “Uh-huh.”

          “Well, as I was telling Claire, if you know me you’d know that there’s actually no way I’d take my digestive disturbances to some shill for Big Pharma.”

          My eyes scanned the room, but Jane had already noticed and was working her way toward us, her face all twisted with concern.

          The enemy of Big Pharma was verbally marching ruthlessly forward, each syllable clomping on my consciousness like a stereotypically Aussie-twanging jackboot.

          “So, anyway, I actually found this really clued-in naturopath, Jen Tindall. D’you know her?”

          “Uh, no.”

          “I’ll give you her card.”

          Jane arrived and took my arm reassuringly in her hand. Smithy wandered off toward the buffet.

          “Hi Jane. I was just telling Vik here bout how Jen Tindall actually like immediately knew what diet and homeopathic approach would actually calm my tummy. She’s so tuned-in and intuitive. My guess is that she’s probably actually psychic, as well.”

          “Yes, well …” Jane tried.

          “I know. You want me to get to the point. Actually, Vik, from what Jane’s said I get the impression that you’re really high-strung.”

          “Not always.”

          “Listen, go see Jen. She’s actually brilliant. Oh! Here’s her card.” She thrust it forward. Jane grabbed it. “Listen, like Jen says that although it’s actually important to get the combination of homeopathic remedies right – she calls it a homeopathic cocktail, clever, aye? – it’s actually mostly a matter of diet. She put me on the paleo diet, and I can actually already tell the difference! You really should actually take it up, y’know, both of you.”

          I’d heard of the paleo diet fad, of course, but it’d struck me from the start that our palaeolithic ancestors had just wrapped their laughing gear around anything handy, which means that those living in, say, tropical rain forests had enormously different diets to those living alongside salt water or in the mountains or on the fringes of temperate river valleys. Without thinking about the possible consequences I asked, “Which paleo diet?”

          She brushed this aside with, “The paleo diet! Jen let me have a book about it for ten percent off.” Generous Jen. “Of course, I was already gluten-free …”

          And still her tummy had rumbled. “Oh? Do you have Celiac disease?” I couldn’t help myself.

          “Do I have what?” She looked at me as if I were speaking Magyar.

          I knew there was no point in getting into any shit with her. There’s never any point in getting into any shit with anyone.

          I murmured, “Excuse me,” sidled off to the bedroom, shut the door softly behind me, and lay down on top of the coverlet with my eyes closed, trying to breathe as evenly as I could.

          I also tried to close my thoughts down, but kept repeating in my mind the scenario of sleeping on the couch after the guests had left and heading for the airport before breakfast – or just maybe spending the night at the airport.

          These were Jane’s people. If I were to stay with Jane they wouldn’t just disappear into thin air. I was the newcomer, the outsider. I had neither the right nor the inclination to require personnel changes in Jane’s social circle.

          Time seemed slippery, but I don’t think it was more than ten or fifteen minutes or so before Jane looked in on me.

          “You okay, Viktor?”

          “Just let me know when she’s gone. Actually.”

          She put her hand on my forehead. “Edie gets up everybody’s nose, y’know. You did right to walk away.”

          “Yeah, but she’s your friend.”

          “Hansie is a virtuoso cellist. He plays way above our level. We’re lucky to have him. She’s just a pill the rest of us have to swallow for his sake.”

          “I understand.”

          “And not a homeopathic pill, either.”

          She reached for where she could activate the Cialis.

          “I’ll keep her away from you.”