Boundaries (chapter 2)

 

 

“Two (David)”

2022

David Newbury made a mistake. Horace lays next him in in his own bed and starts to stir. As far as David knows, Horace has half an hour before his alarm goes off for the flight. Horace suddenly being an early-riser fills David with the same level fatalistic dread of watching the Twin Towers collapse (for which he was seven-years-old, and vividly recalls missing the show about crime-fighting sharks as a result of it). This wasn’t part of the plan.

“Morning. Didn’t think you’d sleep over,” Horace says, his breath wafting towards David. It kind of smells like when you leave bits on ham in the sink drain overnight.

“I’d meant to be gone.” David tells an imaginative form of the truth (like jazz-inflected truth, versus just truth). Horace sits up out of bed and begins to rise for the day. David can never get over the fact that Horace has back hairs that are ginger, too. Horace is the only pure ginger boy he’d slept with. Of course, now, it was hard for David to focus on anything aside from the restlessness of his legs and his forthcoming, inadvertent detox.

Horace turns to him. “Are you gonna go?”

“Do you think I can have a shower before I do?”

Horace looks troubled by this somewhat uncomplicated request. He shifts on his feet.

“Will it take long? My sister’s coming around to house-sit ‘cause I leave for the flight right away.” David nods. “And she fucking despises you,” Horace adds. David resents the choice to include the last part.

#

While shampooing, it dawns on David how unoriginal Horace’s taste really is. Obviously, a big factor is his huge wealth – Horace would never be seen buying IKEA. But every room, every nook and cranny, felt like something you’d see centerfold in an Architectural Digest. Horace buys antique Persian rugs, but not in an impulsive, ‘that looks nice’ way, but in a researched way, after consulting with his mother and sister’s designers. Horace’s fashion didn’t attract as much attention because Horace is bi, but David sees the studied way he maintains his closet, and how much he takes his barber’s lead when getting a haircut. David, for comparison, looks and dresses like K-Mart Pete Davidson. It isn’t a choice, per se (once you’ve been an addict long enough you ended up looking like all the others) but the contrast between the pair still makes David laugh. It’s probably why Horace, for the most part, doesn’t take David seriously.

“You nearly done?” Horace queries through the bathroom door.

“Yep.”

David turns off the shower and wraps a towel around himself. The towel is bright white, as if brand new, and is softer than David’s bedsheets. He dares not read the brand. David, nearly swaddled in the towel, sits on the lid of the toilet seat to enjoy it just a moment longer before standing.

It was time for Plan B:

David roots through the counterspace in the bathroom, starting with above the sink. It would be too obvious a place, and all he finds is paracetamol and Gastro-Stop, which he carefully returns to their drawer. He moves to the linen closet near the bathtubs, which has a toiletries cupboard within its doors. A basket of sundry sits in the cupboard, which David feverishly searches.

“Seriously, David, Mandy’s gonna be here in a sec – I can’t deal with explaining you to her,” says a hysteric Horace from outside.

“Uh – just one sec. I decided to take a shit.”

“What? Now?”.

“I’m sorry.”.

David reads the label of each medication. They’re all prescribed to a “Horace Baartz”. Aspirin Plus. Nurofen Plus. Finasteride. Amoxicillin. Finally, a half-empty bottle of Horace’s Medsurge (which, if David could recall correctly, was hydros - jackpot).  He shakes the bottle. Quarter full. Pockets it. Thank God for wierdos like Horace’s who do not take all their opiates at once. The only thing better than consuming opiates when you’re addicted to them is the exact moment when you locate some and know they’re yours. Despite now being eighteen hours into a detox, David was elated.

#

Horace walks David through the grounds to his car. Every few steps, the bottle in David’s pocket rattles. He coughs to mask it.

“Are you okay? You’re coughing quite a bit.”

“I think my orange juice went down the wrong pipe.”

“I didn’t give you any orange juice?”

David gets in his third-generation 2006 Ford Mondeo, which looks like an ironic art installation amongst the manicured grounds around it.  Horace surveills the area before kissing David goodbye on the lips.

“What? Afraid of the paparazzi?”, David asks with a smile. He’s starting to sweat. His guts in a coil.

“You joke, but my mother’s honeymoon shots were leaked to the media.”

“In the eighties. And she isn’t Princess Di, just because she’s dead. When will I see you?”

“My convention in Adelaide goes for two weeks, so I should be back by end of April. Do you want me to text you to come around when I get home?”

David offer a pregnant nod, holding back a response.

“Oh, what, David?”

“We don’t have to meet here. We could meet at, like, a bar, or a restaurant, or like, Southbank or some shit. People do that. And I know you can afford it all.”

Horace shifts on his feet.

“You know I can’t do all of that. And you know why. Go.  Before Mandy gets here.”

David shakes his head and pulls out. The driveway, a full circle around a prominent marble statue of an ancestor of Horace’s from antiquity, leads to iron metal gates a man named Stavros opens and shuts. That’s his whole job. Sometimes Stavros gives David unripe mangoes.

“Bye, Stavros,” says David as he drives out.

“Stay out of trouble. Next summer - lots of mangoes, my boy”. They both smile.

#

David decides to pull over somewhere in Ascot to avoid vomiting. He was hoping to make it home before using. Out the window, he’s surrounded by the houses of Brisbane’s one-percenters – wrought-iron fences, professionally-maintained hedging and sandstone walls. He retrieves Horace’s bottle of pills and a spent H&M gift card his mother gave him for Christmas, opening the car’s centre console for a flat surface. He pours the pills out. All four of them.

“Fuck.”

He crushes them with the card into a fine powder. Four pills will won’t even keep him till tomorrow. He snorts them anyway, feeling a momentary lift of spirits, a warmth in the guts, and then gums what remains of the powder.

The realization he now has to plan to last out the day washes over him. He feels submerged in sewage.

He looks at the overnight bag he packed for Horace’s in the backseat. Everything he owns is in there, which, for reasons he doesn’t know yet, would be of import later that day.

#

Pit-stains have spread down David’s tee as he rings the intercom for Tameka’s heritage-style apartment building. The intercom trills like it always does: the sound of a lazy bell being rung in some unseen dimension. David is always amazed anyone hears it. For this reason, when no one answers, David tries again. Tameka’s never shared the entry code, nor gave him a set of keys, because he’s technically staying as a favour. That’s how David lives – chaos and favors. He looks up at the building – stone and asbestos, ten stories overlooking the Bowen Hills streetscape – hoping to see Tameka appear in her window, four floors up.

A woman carrying a subdued poodle and an imitation purse pushes past him and dials the code.

“Hey, could you let me tailgate you? I don’t think my flatmates are home and I have to get in.” She stares at him, mutely, then closes the door behind her. People tend not to believe David, even when he’s telling the truth.  

 One more try on the bell – mmrriiing.

“David.” Tameka’s tinny voice journeys through the intercom.

“Tameka. Let me up. I stayed at Horace’s.”

“You’re not coming in.”

“What?”

“We had a house meeting: you barely pay rent, you refuse to clean properly, and you steal from us.”

David doesn’t say anything. He foresees Tameka’s next move.

“We know you’re an addict.”

“I’m…. I’m trying.”

“That’s great. Maybe you need to find somewhere to…”

“Can I at least pack my stuff?”

“We had a look – if you include the stuff you stole, we reckon you have everything you own already.”

“You can’t just kick me out, Tameka. Come on.”

“I’m the head tenant on the lease. You’re a house guest. We’re not trying to hurt you”.

David looks up at the fourth-floor window. Tameka, her fat, Greek, face, and a few of the other flat mates David hadn’t met during the day were now looking down on him. Tameka forces a smile as she waved. She disappears from the window, presumably to use the intercom.

“I’ve blocked you for now, but when you’re better, call me. Please.”

David nods.

“You can’t see me but I’m nodding,” he says into the intercom.  

“We all wish you good luck.” The intercom terminates with a hiss. David imagines Tameka and the flatmates’ relief at having gotten it done with and debriefing with each other enthusiastically while he walks down the street in no particular direction.

He reaches a crosswalk as Horace’s hydros start to wear off; the first aches in his legs.  He’ll be vomiting by end of day. Homeless and detoxing. He’s too sick to even think about it.