Steve Toltz - A Fraction of the Whole

I don’t know how long Anouk had been planning this unpromising mission, but she showed me an article that said Reynold and his son, Oscar, were going to be in the Sydney casino that night to celebrate their purchase of it. Her plan was for us to go to the casino and try to convince Reynold Hobbs, Australia ’s richest man, to meet with Dad, Australia ’s poorest.

At this time Anouk was back living with her parents in a nice house in a nice neighborhood in a nice cul-de-sac with a nice park next door and lots of children playing in the street and neighbors chatting over fences and big front lawns and big backyards and swings and a nice comfortable family car in every driveway and dogs who knew where to shit and where not to shit and in nice symmetrical piles too, like a Boy Scout’s campfire. It was the kind of middle-class exterior people love to peel back the layers of, looking for worms- and the worms are there, sure. Where aren’t there worms? And yes, Anouk’s family had a worm. They had a big worm. A worm that wouldn’t go away. It was Anouk. She was the worm.

Her father was working in the garden when I turned up. He was a healthy man in his fifties, so healthy that the sight of him always made me resolve to do fifty push-ups every morning. Muscles bulging, he was bent over the flower bed ripping up weeds, and even his workman’s crack was taut and glowing rosily underneath strong, virile tufts of bum hair.

“Hey, Jasper, what are you all dressed up for?”

“Anouk and I are going to the casino.”

“What the hell for?”

“To break the bank.”

He chuckled. “You can’t beat those corrupt bastards. They’ve got it rigged.”

“There aren’t many corrupt bastards you can beat.”

“Too true.”

Anouk’s mother, a beautiful woman with streaks of gray through her thick black hair, came out with a glass of water that she might have intended for her husband but that she gave to me.

“Here you go. Hey, am I shrinking or are you still growing?”

“I think I’m still growing.”

“Well, don’t stop now!”

“I won’t.”

I liked Anouk’s family. They didn’t make a great effort to make you feel welcome, they just looked at you as though you’d always been there. They were honest and earnest and enthusiastic and cheerful and hardworking and never had a bad word to say about anyone. They were the kind of people it’s impossible not to like, and often I’ve felt like marching them up and down the street, daring people not to like them.

“Where’s Anouk?”

“In her room. Go on in.”

I walked through the nice cool house, up the stairs, and into Anouk’s bedroom. Anouk always returned here after unsuccessful outings into the world- usually after jobs or relationships went bust. They kept it for her. It was strange to see her here in her family home, and in the bedroom of a fifteen-year-old girl. Let’s be clear- Anouk was now thirty-two, and each time she moved out, she swore she’d never return, but things always had a way of going sour for her, and she was never able to resist going back for a while, to take a breather.

I had been to several of Anouk’s apartments, and she was always in the middle of throwing out a man who’d disgusted her, or washing the sheets because a man she’d been sleeping with had been with someone else, or waiting by the phone for a man to ring, or not answering the phone because a man was ringing. I remember one who refused to leave; he’d tried to invoke squatter’s rights in her bedroom. In the end she got rid of him by throwing his mobile phone out the window, and he followed closely behind it.

When I went in, Anouk was in her walk-in closet getting changed.

“I’ll be out in a minute.”

I snooped around. There was a photograph beside her bed of a man with a square head and dark sunglasses and the kind of sideburns that killed Elvis.

“Who’s this horror show?”

“He’s history. Throw him in the bin for me, will you?”

I had considerable satisfaction tossing his photograph in the bin.

“What happened with this one?”

“I’ll tell you what happened. I have no luck. My relationships always fall into one of two categories: either I’m in love with him and he’s not in love with me, or he’s in love with me and he’s shorter than my grandmother.”

Poor Anouk. She couldn’t stand being eternally single and she couldn’t stand that she couldn’t stand it. Love was tantalizingly absent from her life, and she was trying her best not to conclude that she was three-eighths through an eighty-year losing streak. She was humiliated to have joined the legions of single women obsessed with trying not to obsess about their singular obsession. But she couldn’t help obsessing. She was now in her thirties and single. But it wasn’t a question of the biological clock. It was a question of the other ticking clock- the clock, the Big Clock. And while she was always looking deep into herself for answers, just as the sages advise, what she came up with wasn’t one single reason, and it wasn’t as if she were stuck in a vicious circle, but rather in a pattern of several conjoined vicious circles. In one, she always singled out the wrong type- either “bourgeois yuppie bastards” or just “bastards,” or, more often than not, a “man-child.” In fact, for a while she seemed to be meeting only men-children in various guises. She also had a habit of being the other woman and not the woman. She was the kind that men like to sleep with but not have a relationship with. She was one of the boys, not one of the girls. And I don’t know the psychology behind it, but anecdotal evidence proves it: she wanted it too much. But because no one seems sure how it works, you just have to go about trying to beat this mysterious force by pretending not to want what you really want.

Anouk stepped out of her closet looking spectacular. She was wearing a diaphanous green dress with a floral print and a black slip underneath. It looked like she had bought it two sizes too small on purpose; it showed every curve of her body. They were hairpin curves. My God, she was voluptuous, and if you had the right kind of imagination you couldn’t think of anything other than sleeping with her, if only to get her off your mind. I admit I’d enjoyed masturbatory fantasies about her from the age of fourteen onward, ever since she had tired of her phase as shaven-headed, Doc Martens-wearing, pierced angry girl. The green eyes were still shining, but over the years she had grown her black hair out so it was long and flowing. She removed her piercings and went from stick-thin to spongy and now sauntered around like a promiscuous cloud in a tight dress. Even though I was there to help combat my father’s depression and encroaching suicide, I couldn’t help but think: Maybe it’s high time Anouk and I slept together. Should I try to seduce her? Can you seduce someone who’s seen you go through puberty?

“Maybe you should give relationships a break for a little while,” I said.

“I don’t want to be celibate, though. I like sex. I’ve slept with a lot of men and I want to keep sleeping with them. I tell you, whoever talks about the carnality of human beings and excludes women should come by my place one night and see me at it.”

“I’m not saying you should be celibate. You could find a lover, like they have in France.”

“You know, that’s not a bad idea. But where do I find a no-strings-attached lover?”

“Well- and don’t say no straightaway- what about me?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re like a son to me.”

“No, I’m not. We’re more like distant cousins secretly checking each other out.”

“I’ve never checked you out.”