“Of course it is, you idiot.”
“And so who is she? I mean, what has she told you about her life – has she been married, is she married, is she …”
“We don’t mess with baggage,” he said impatiently. “She didn’t talk about her past relationships and I never talk about mine. We’re just in the moment, and it’s fantastic.”
“So she’s not married?”
“It’s like she said, Tim, life is about choice. If you choose marriage, then you are married; if you choose not to be married, then you’re not.”
His words tumbled out, leaving him slightly breathless. It was a pent-up rush that he seemed grateful to release, but the flood ended as quickly as it began. “Anyway, I’ll bore you with all this some other time. Got to get to the concert.”
Given even a few seconds I might have asked for more illumination, particularly about her marital status, but he swallowed the last of his beer, plonked the bottle on my desk and swarmed out of the office. I was left with a ringing in my ears and the feeling that I really hadn’t learned anything. Although, to be honest, I doubted that Joe was learning much either.
Like anyone dazzled by rapture, he was in no condition to really know what was happening to him. The stardust algorithm was just too strong. I’d never seen him so swept away and I kept remembering Jarrah’s comment about stability. I wondered if Sophia was a little crazy and if this had sparked a similar madness in Joe.
Whatever the case, the personal pyrotechnics continued over the next week, with Joe emitting a series of muffled love explosions on the other side of my surgery door. Instinctively I wanted to know more, but had to be content with the available evidence.
13
Around dusk, when I can get away from the clinic, I go for a run down the hill through Potts Point to Woolloomooloo Bay and back home through Kings Cross. On this particular night, I’d worked up a good head of steam by the time I got to Woolloomooloo and Cowper Wharf Road, but I had to shift gears to a low register when I reached Harry’s Cafe de Wheels, due to tourists jamming the footpath. If you’ve never eaten at Harry’s, it’s a converted fast-food van that’s been serving the sailors and wharfies working along the bay since the late 1930s. Now it’s an institution.
A small platoon of Japanese tourists was politely jostling itself in search of Harry’s
After an encouraging kiss, Joe began using his welterweight frame as a polite but insistent battering ram, with Sophia in his wake. It was a moment I didn’t want to interrupt. But as I looked around, planning an escape, they glanced as one in my direction, and shot me a pair of ninety-watt smiles.
“Get over here, comrade, we’re having an early tea,” Joe called out.
“Mate, I’m in the middle of a run.”
“Bullshit.”
The tattooed teenager, looking down upon Joe from the high serving counter, spotted the subtext immediately. “You want pies and peas?”
“Three, thanks mate, with mashed potato and gravy.”
“Sauce?”
“Plenty.”
“Anything else?”
“Sophia, you want anything else?”
Hanging onto his arm, she smiled bravely and glanced at the cartoon illustrations of pies and hot dogs decorating the van. I knew what she was thinking: whatever he’d ordered, it was enough.
“A quiet dinner before tonight’s concert?” I asked.
She laughed, still brave. “No this is my night off. Joe is showing me Aussie culture.”
Eventually Dr Franken shouldered his way back to the footpath with three small mountains of pies, peas and potato in a white cardboard container.
“Here you go,” he said, thrusting the load into my hands. “Let’s get a beer at the Bells.”
At first I wondered why I was given the role of attendant but, as we headed towards the Bells Hotel, it became clear. Joe and Sophia walked tangled in each other’s arms, as if they’d morphed into a quadruped. I was looking for the pink cupids wittering about their heads. It’s a miracle, I thought, that they’re able to walk anywhere.
The Bells Hotel is another Woolloomooloo institution, once famous for traditional jazz and roughhouse brawls. Now it’s been largely tamed, although there are enough knockabout locals to give it a rowdy edge. When we walked into the bar, a trio of ancient musicians, in black tee-shirts stretched across beer-barrel paunches, were playing Jimi Hendrix quietly in the corner. We found seats at a table where Sophia and Joe seemed to dissolve into each other while I went to buy some beers. Waiting to be served, I kept a surreptitious eye on the lovers.
The cooing was lost in the muted sound of Hendrix, but they could have been a pair of human turtledoves. I have to confess it was strange to watch Sophia. I’d only seen an ice queen given to a rare sunshine smile, but now I was watching a love scene from A Star is Born. Any doubt I might have had about what was happening to them was dispelled as we worked our way through the pies and peas.
“I love your business partner, and I love the city,” Sophia said with no warning.
Joe grinned, not an elegant achievement through a mouthful of peas. “I adore you too, darling.”
“Must be the legumes,” I said, embarrassed.
“Not so much,” Sophia smiled, “but if this is what Joe loves then it’s beautiful.”
“You have something similar in Romania?”
“Not exactly, no.”
Maybe it’s strange to dissipate a declaration of love with a discussion of fast food; but in a noisy pub, with the ghost of Jimi Hendrix urging us to appreciate Purple Haze, I couldn’t think of an alternative. Not that one was necessary. As they wrestled with their plastic forks they sat shoulder-to-shoulder, holding hands under the table. Each mouthful seemed to stimulate bliss. Even if it had been a place and time to analyse the intoxication, it would have been wasted.
The science of flowing dopamine and oxytocin would never explain the mystery of what was happening to them. I’d never seen Joe in such joy. When I left, they were polite, but it was obvious that I was both unnecessary and invisible.
Jogging home through Kings Cross I couldn’t help but think about them or, to be absolutely accurate, about love. As much as I was delighted for Sophia and Joe, I felt like a failure. If such wonder could land from the universe into the lap of my business partner, when would it land for me? I’m not saying the thought was rational, far from it, but it was human.
14
A day or so later, there was a call from Emma, the equine vet. I hadn’t heard a word from her since she’d bruised me in the business-class lounge at Sydney airport.
I was in bed reading an article in Psychology Today, positing that striped shirts make dogs submissive. The proposition is that it mirrors the wild, where bold stripes on animals such as snakes and skunks are a warning to predators. I was wondering how this equates to lions devouring zebras when the phone rang.
“Tim?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Emma, I hope it’s not too late.”
“No,