Yesterday night Paul, Sabine and Amanda all hung out with me in my room. I was on my computer compiling a list of "experiences".

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  “Guys, is it like, bad, I wrote this at work?"

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They skim it.

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  “Nah, it’s like, art, technically.”

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  “Yeah, true…and like this was more a spiritually exploratory experience, like I don’t see it as anything that deep or bad.”

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  “Yeah, exactly, it’s chill.”

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Paul left a mandarin skin on the floor of my bedroom, and I threw it off the balcony and hit some people below.

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Maybe all my writing is a lie, by the way. I hope celebrities don't have rights to their names.

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I don't try to peep a glance through the bay window as I climb the trio of steps. I kick the door with my foot, almost a bit too violently, and for a second it feels like my little patent pump is going to burst through the 90s fiberboard. Russell opens it, and we don’t make eye contact.

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  “I’m just here to get my stuff, and then I’m getting out of here as quickly as possible.”

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  “Do what you want.” Russell Brand retreats back to the papasan chair.

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The chair was a gift from my mother, and I know I’ll never get it back. It took me ages to get here. The back of my neck is burning. The back of my back is sticky with sweat.

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The house stinks of weed, and I notice Bugle Boy isn’t home, so I have no one's room to slink into and complain brashly to before slamming the door and walking off with my duffel bag of goods, which is mostly, at this point, just clothes for the op shop.

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  “Where is my Christmas ornament? And all my vitamins?”

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  “I don’t know. I threw the vitamins in the bin. That garlic oil one?”

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  “What about it?”

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  “Yeah, it stinks. It melted onto the microwave, because it’s going to melt if you leave gelatin capsules on a microwave.”

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  “What do you mean?”

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  “The microwave doesn't get hot on the outside; if it did, then no one would have one, and it would be this massive hazard.”

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  “Ok? I don’t see why you’re being so aggressive about it.”

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  “I just want to know where the Christmas ornament is.”

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  “I don’t know where the fucking Christmas ornament is. Do you think I’m going through all your stuff?”

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  “Well, it’s moved, and I said don't touch my stuff.”

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  “I’m still in debt for that psychiatrist's appointment. The last thing I’m concerned about is Christmas ornaments after you’ve just decided to leave me with all this rent that I’m going to have to try and cover by myself.”

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  “Have you tried moving back in with your parents?”

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  “Can’t.”

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  “You want a reason to feel bad about yourself because you are so incredibly inadequate."

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  “Susan Boyle, when you wake up, you'll realise that almost nothing is governed by whether you're destined to be great. You'll simply have to live in the world.”

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  “I know. But I still think I'll get what I want.”

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  “You get what you want because you want things other people don't want. That's different.”

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He turns back towards the television.

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  “You're the one who likes suffering,” he says. “You want the story. You want something to happen to you.”

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  “You're completely cooked.”

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  “Do you have the car?”

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  “What?”

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  “Did you drive?”

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  “No. I came here on the tram.”

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  “Right.”

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He turns in the papasan chair, and having finally finished rolling his joint after all the stopping and starting it takes to wail one's hands about emotively, he lets it dangle limp in his mouth.

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With both hands occupied, I struggle with the door. Just as I'm about to let it slam behind me, he calls out.

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  “And I want my fuckin' jacket back.”

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Eager for the last word, I tell him the jacket isn't my problem and walk down the steps without looking back, hoping he is watching me peripherally, clearly unaffected by his presence and now absence in my life.

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The jacket in question is a heavy felt trench he left at a friend’s house several months ago, the last time we both went to visit. Since I work in the area, I told him I’d go around and pick it up one day after I clocked off.

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Naturally, I never did, until now.

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The friend is called Paul Walker. He's more of an acquaintance than a friend, although I've always had a rather profound attraction to him. However, as a woman guided by a strong moral compass, I have allowed this relationship to remain obscurely tense and left it at that.

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I find his number in my phone, and write as self-preservingly as possible:

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  “Hey, hope all is well. Would I be able to swing by and grab that jacket? I’m around.”

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With the assumption that because it’s the Christmas holidays he won’t be at work, I figured that by the time I’d finished smoking this rollie awkwardly at the end of the driveway, he would have gotten back to me, and I was right.

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  “No worries. Come whenever. I’m home.”

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As I turn to leave, the neighbour in the first unit comes onto his porch holding a bong.

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His name is Matty Slugg. He's divorced, early thirties, perhaps, with a daughter younger than me. Twelve, maybe.

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Jovial as ever, he greets me back.

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  “How’s everything going with the house?”

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I just tell him:

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  “Oh, it’s going. You know, lease wrapping up and everything.”

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I never say it's going except to people like Matty Slugg. Battler types. The kind of men nationalists call 'the salt of the earth'.

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He nods his head knowingly, although it’s likely he will never, ever leave this unit.

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  “Does your daughter, like, want any clothes?”

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  “Yeah, of course she does; she’s really into all the trends and everything right now... she's at that age."
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  “Well, I’ve got this big bag of them. Do you want to take it in for her?”

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Sweet Matty, who was probably rather attractive back in the day, before he inevitably got someone pregnant around my age and I guess had to deal with that ever since. His face sags a bit now, but he’s got a good head of hair.

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I think he could still be quite attractive. He also seems like the type to sleep with younger people.

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He thanks me, and I shove the duffel into his hands. His daughter has no idea how long it took to build that collection of Adidas tracksuits and American Apparel leotards.

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I get on the ever-innocuous 82 tram and sit, practically buzzing in my seat. I don't have much of a plan for what I'm seeking to execute.

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I think about how all the trams and trains on the Metro map have corresponding colours, and these colours are such a pillar of cultural knowledge, really. The Sandringham line is pink. The Hurstbridge and Mernda lines are red. Who gets to sit there and pick the colours and draw the maps? I want to be the person who gets to decide what colour everything is and where the lines go.

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I've managed to find my way to the apartment block all by myself through natural navigation.

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Before I even have to press the intercom, a young blonde woman in athleisurewear buzzes me in. We nod thank you to each other, and she tells me she's been trying out this new sunscreen she bought at the Clinique counter, and I tell her that I just stay loyal to La Roche-Posay, to which she concedes she has tried, but didn't love.
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I'm suddenly so anxious about the imminent interaction that I almost want to turn around and keep talking to her. Ask if she wants to get a drink. See if she wants to sit by the river with me. I don't know.

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She has no idea who I am.

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Inside the air-conditioned foyer, I call Paul Walker.

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  “What apartment?”

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  “8.”

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There's a sort of low hum of music, or not quite music, maybe a theme song, playing in the background. I pressed my ear to the door quickly before pulling hurriedly back, in case it were to suddenly open. I knock twice and hear some rummaging upstairs. A sort of padding sound slowly approaches the door, and Paul Walker cracks it open.

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He’s grinning, and it feels almost instinctual to place my head on his shoulder as we hug. I notice he's wearing slippers, despite it being December. I can tell he's recently shaved his head and his face, only a tiny bit of stubble poking through. His shirt is rolled up to his elbows, and I notice on his arm the name Siobhan written in cursive. It's something I've never seen before, and I wonder if it's new. I wonder if maybe he has a girlfriend, and I hope even more that it's his mother's name, or his sister's.

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  “The girl that buzzed me in, she is the nicest person I've ever met.”

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  “Really?”

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  “Yeah.”

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  “Everyone in this building's pretty nice…what did she look like?”

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  “She was, like, blonde and tan. We were talking about sunscreen.”

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  “You were standing out there in the street just talking about sunscreen?”

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  “No, we were in the doorway. It was just a matter of politeness, really.”

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  “Yeah, no, I'm joking. Do you want to come in and get this jacket?”

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  “Yeah.”

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My tone falls a bit flat. I don't want this moment to be rushed. He must have realised. And I suppose, out of courtesy and perhaps curiosity, he continues the conversation.

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  “Why isn't Russell Brand getting it?” he asks. “I haven't seen him in a while.”

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  “Because we broke up, and it's my jacket.”

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He lets me in and shuts the door behind him. I was correct in thinking there was some sort of theme song playing. It's Downtown, on MTV, flashing across the strip screen, the sharp-angled geometric bodies bouncing up and down, grooving around in some sort of subway, and then the next scene is a record store with Alex and Serena flirting-ish.

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  “This show’s pretty old.”

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  “Well, it came out the year I was born,” he laughs.

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  “I meant that in a good way. I'm not saying you're old.” I choose not to humour him back to assert control.

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The house has these massive, full-height windows looking out onto the Maribyrnong River, with a huge mezzanine above the open plan downstairs. There's an uninterrupted view from the kitchen through to the river. It's perfectly aerated and smells of pine, which I attribute to the Christmas tree in the corner.

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There's Aquarium Softsoap and these sort of aqua blown glasses on the table. There's a fruit bowl with limes in it, and metal dishes and tubs for ingredient prep stacked on a bar cart in the kitchen. Travertine tiles, replica Eames hooks, huge print of The Valpinçon Bather above the box television, and a Maurin Quina's Green Devil poster in the kitchen, just like at my parents'.

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Everything is presented meticulously, but I can also tell it's never used, and I become suspicious of who's buying these things. I don't have any right to be suspicious; it’s just my own self-concern.

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I tell him the house looks good and go sit down on the peeling leather couch, exhaling loudly to make it as clear as possible that I am rather blasé about the whole situation, and, if anything, just a bit tired from the commute over here.

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  “Well, I’m sorry to hear about that. Russell Brand didn’t tell me anything. I guess it never came up.”

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  “Oh yeah, it’s fine. You don’t need to be sorry. This is definitely not the first time it’s happened. But it will be the last.”

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I’m conscientious about making sure I express no residual emotion attached to the relationship, out of fear that if he thinks I’m too fragile, he won’t touch me.

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  “Life when you’re young. Hopefully you guys can be civil or whatever.”

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  “Life when you’re old too, I’d argue”

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  “For sure. Do you want a beer?” he asks, hands on hips.

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Paul Walker has been loitering at a safe distance beside the fridge, apparently waiting for the appropriate moment to offer one. I tell him I thought he’d never ask, and he takes two tall cans from the fridge.

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CENSORED. Afterwards, we walked around the block whispering to each other. I think I finally fell asleep as the sun rose, and the reflection of the light made the televisions look blank.

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He made us steak and eggs in the morning, and I joked that maybe I'd never leave. He said he wouldn't make me if I didn't want to, so I stayed. I didn't eat the steak.

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I was showing him a PDF copy of Selected Unpublished Blog Posts of a Mexican Panda Express Employee by Megan Boyle that I found via a Reddit rabbit hole of 2010 alt lit.

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Passing the computer to him and looking for something tactile to grab, I found the photographs tucked inside a novel about Sartre's existentialism, a book about miserable people being wholly disaffected by something so obviously unimpressive.

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There were several photographs of the same woman.

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  “Who’s that?”

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  “My girlfriend.”

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She had long brown hair. In the face, we weren’t entirely dissimilar.

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  “Why do you have pictures of her in here?”

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Paul Walker looked at me for a moment, then reached over and turned the music down.

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  “I’ve had them for ages.”

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  “How old is she?”

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  “Mid-thirties.”

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  “She’s beautiful.”

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  “She is.”

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I looked at the photograph again. Why had he agreed with me?

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It was a photograph of him with his tongue pressed against her teeth as she grinned that did it. I hated being second best.

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The realisation hit with the force of a wave breaking into some unsuspecting gulf. How could someone I considered so sharp, so watertight, so magnanimous, so outwardly jaded yet vulnerable in my presence, have failed me in this way?

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  “What would you think if she was sleeping with someone my age?”

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  “I wouldn’t care. Maybe she is right now. She’s in China for work.”

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  “Would you date me if I was older?”

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  “We’re in very different places in our lives", says Paul Walker.

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I put the photographs back inside the book and deliberately squashed them between the pages, feeling juvenile. I briefly consider leaving a piece of my hair there for her to find, but then I imagine she doesn’t even know her photographs are living inside this book. If she ever did find it, she’d probably assume it was hers.

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  “Can I smoke?”

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  “Why are you asking?”

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  “Actually, I’ll just grab a Stella.”

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I sob silently into the open refrigerator, although I’m enjoying the theatrics of it. I’m such a fraud. I love this, and force myself to cry a little more for good measure in a kind of erotic, scorned way. After all, I am Susan Boyle.

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From the loft above me, I can hear The Cars floating down through the apartment.

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  Who’s gonna tell you when it’s too late?

  Who’s gonna tell you things aren’t so great?

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I had constructed the whole thing myself: I had mistaken my increasing disaffection for us reaching a mutual equal, and his attention for some kind of invitation into a more sophisticated life.

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I had wanted him to be the person who could tell me what was real, and now who would?

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I very slowly climbed the stairs, reddened but no longer crying, like I’d been slapped across the face and ready for some coy beguiling to begin.

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Abashed at my own naïveté, I turned my back to him in one swift motion and sat back down on the tile, picking up the chunky laptop and resuming reading.

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  “Oh, Susan,” Paul Walker says.

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He is a pervert, and therefore posturing into the bit. I don’t mind.

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Dice paraphernalia is scattered across the floor, along with the selection of Felt and Crystal Castles records and 90s anthologies I’ve pulled out from the pine shelves, and suddenly I burst into tears again, this time from exhaustion more than anything else.

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“You’re going to cause a lot of trouble when you’re older,” he says.

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RIP Paul Walker.

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