frustrated desire | Jerusalem Mortimer: Between the Lines

Qing was in the doorway, carrying two mugs. “You’re leaving?”

I let her see that I was unhappy about that. “Yeah, I’d rather stay all weekend. If you’d have me.” She smiled. I was still persona grata, even if Mikey wasn’t. “But I have a bastard idiot dickhead friend. He’s got himself in trouble. I got to give him a ride home.”

Emu shit. You don’t want it on your shoulders.

She nodded. “Huh. I hope his ears turn to emus and shi’ on his shoulders.”

“What the fuck?” Most of the expressions people think are Australianisms were invented by Barry Humphries in London in the 1960s. Except that Humphries said “arseholes”, not “emus”. I liked Qing’s version better, but I was still amazed that she’d ever heard of the line.

Maybe Barry Humphries was big in Shenzhen.

She ignored me. “But loyalty is goo’.”

“Oh, I’m staunch, me.” But I wasn’t feeling staunch. I took the tea and drank it quickly, then took Qing in my arms, rubbing my sweaty body against her clean one. I kissed her, with my hands on her ass. Her skin was cool to the touch. In a better-arranged world there’d be time to make it burn again.

Qing was good at making me sorry I was going.

Qing enjoyed making me sorry I was leaving, and she was good at it.

I showered quickly, using her shampoo, and went back to the bedroom, still naked, to hold her again. Qing stroked my cock mischievously, and it turned out there were signs of life. I had to step back and put my clothes on.

And be polite. “Thank you. Um, for the hospitality. And the night was wonderful. So are you.”

“Yah. You take care of your frien’. And you. I’ll see you later.”

“Be sure of it. I want to see you. Um, among other things.”

Qing smiled, unreasonably cheerful. “Inter alia. In my tailia.”

That was surprising too. But there wasn’t time to ask her about Latin puns or anything else. I left it, and after I’d taken a business card from my wallet and dropped it on her keyboard, I left her.

Outside, looking at the street, I brought out my keys. The car wasn’t far away. Always the way when you don’t want to leave.

An emu stalks a jogger, who is getting her shoulders out of range.

Towards noon Qing got up and put on a tee-shirt. She asked if I wanted coffee or tea. I ordered brown tea with lots of milk, and she pulled a face (“Milk!”) before she disappeared.

I didn’t care. I’d done every possible duty by every pleasure-sensitive surface and orifice in her body. I don’t think I’d forgotten anything. Certainly not any of the orifices.

So I put my hands behind my neck and lay on my back, listening to her shower.

I could hear, faintly, John Bonham’s drum opening to “When the Levee Breaks”. When I found my pants under the bed and extracted the cellphone I found it was that morning’s twelfth call from Mikey.

Mikey was the guy who’d come up to this town so he could spend the night fucking his girlfriend and then dumping her – in that order, naturally – and who’d manipulated me into giving him a lift so he could manage this. My feeling of friendship for Mikey was a little strained. I said, “Mikey?”

“Where you been, citizen-dude? I been calling you all morning.”

“Sorry. I’ve been sleeping.”

“Uh-huh. People at the party said you’d disappeared with that Chinese girl. So what happened there?”

He wanted to hear me tell a story about sex. Qing had walked into the kitchen, and could hear me, but I wouldn’t have given him the truth anyway. “Sleeping. I mean me. On my own. You called me?”

Erin was an red-headed woman whose parents had named her after Ireland. Mikey, by contrast, was an idiot.

“Dude, you gotta get me out of here. Erin, I told Erin a couple of hours ago. And she is pissed. Super-pissed. I got scratches down my face, makes me look like, oh, I been in a car crash.” I said nothing, because I thought ‘car crash’ pretty much summed up his night’s work. “Citizen! Now she’s got two friends – big guys on roids, squeaky voice angry boys – out looking for me.”

“You’re a bampot, Mikey.” ‘Bampot’ means ‘stupid person’, mostly not in an affectionate way.

But Mikey was still my stupid person. I’d got him here, and somewhere in my damn stupid code it said that therefore I had to get him home. “So where are you?”

“I’m in the park, corner of Fourth and Derwent. In that clump of trees. You know it?” I didn’t even know the park, let alone its foliage, but I’d be able to find it easily enough. So I said nothing. Mikey said, “I can’t leave, citizen-dude. Those guys are looking for me. I’ve seen them.”

“Yeah, okay. Have you got all your stuff with you?”

“Mostly. There’s things in Erin’s room, but nothing I’d go back for. Can you drive past, along Derwent Street, very slowly?”

“And you’ll run out of the trees and jump in, right?”

“Yeah. That might just about save my life, Jaime. Can you hurry?”

“You’re a… Okay, this is a serious fucking nuisance. It’ll take me at least half an hour.”

“Half an hour! Those guys’ll break my arms, minimum, if they see me.”

“Then I bet you’ll make sure they don’t. Look, you’re in the shit, and it’s an emergency. I know that, but half an hour’s still the minimum. It’ll take me that long or a bit more to get there. Just stay patient. Also out of sight, probably.”

Mikey had more to say, but I told him to text and ended the call.