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During the next half an hour Nikita banged on every window and door, thinking he was dead to the world, or asleep inside. She tried out every lock and noticed the security system, the light switches, the alarm, his unlocked car, the lights in the shed and what was in there, the outside toilet, the bedroom window, and his balcony. All the windows were locked, shit. The air conditioner and TV were switched on. It seemed like a lonely house and a boring mediocre life. Suddenly she wondered what she was doing here. But anything was better than being stood up, and the feeling of powerlessness and abandonment that she had allowed herself to be subjected to. In the end she didn't even want to see him again. She quietly left the premises. For a while the emptiness followed her, like grass turning towards her shoe. But she felt content inside after the mini surveillance job. He ran away to his life with her stolen emotions. She chased him briefly in order to confront him with what he had done. I think people should do this more often.
The next day she went back and knocked on the door. She had to stop herself from turning the handle, before he had time to answer. The trust now gone, Nikita knew she'd find him home, between 3 and 5 p.m. That's when men like him were generally home, either doing the lawn, or getting ready to go out, after they had slept it off. It was a man on holidays during his domestic hours. She parked the car next door so as not to arouse distress or suspicion. Not so close that he would be prepared for her visit, and not so far away that it would look like she thought that she shouldn't be there again. This was his explanation. He spoke softly, 'I'm very sorry I didn't ring you. I was at the hospital with my daughter all night.' Nikita asked, 'What's up with her?' But she was too shocked to hear the answer. She pictured the army guy with his sick child, assuming he was telling the truth, and her in high heels, at the RAAF base patrolled by security dogs, scaling walls and checking out locks.
If she could have climbed high enough, no doubt she would have been jumping up and down on the tin roof. He said he would ring tomorrow night, but all her defences were up, and she wasn't prepared to trust him. She was now more intrigued by the layout of his house, and how it looked so different by daylight. It was more interesting than his personality. It was where she had taken back her power. How could she begin to fantasise about him or anyone or anything being nice again? As now she would have asked him, 'Are you the angel or the devil?' Actually she's a little bit of both and he's sending out the signals that she can't interpret. He didn't show up the next night. But Nikita thought that she saw him drive past in his creepy yellow station wagon, around the time he was meant to be picking her up. He was quite odd and may have been out on power patrol himself, enjoying the internal distress of all the dates he had stood up. How many suckers this time?
If Nikita had been able to climb up onto the roof, she would have jumped up and down on it in her high heels, and rung the cowbell 'til the cows come home. The night they had gone out he unclipped her shoe straps and slipped them off to make her more comfortable. This time she didn't require comfort. She wanted two-storey houses in the dark with deceitful men hiding inside, and her rage and confusion stomping on the rooftops. By this stage the person who had been the original source of the anxiety was irrelevant. We can also see the situation from his point of view. What if he had seen her? What if you were an army jerk living in Winnellie, where things were fairly laid back. As it turns out, you had to take your sick cat to a veterinary clinic, and for some reason didn't call the dynamic young lawyer whom you had recently met.
You might have forgotten to take his number to the surgery, or simply have been so distraught about your cat. Whatever your reason, you thought of ringing him early the next morning, hoping by then that it wasn't too late. Instead you arrive home at 4 p.m., only to find out that a man in a navy blue business suit has been scaling your roof, checking out your locks and lights, and knocking on your doors and windows, and all because you stood him up, or so he thinks. You might say, 'What the Hell are you doing on my property?' Most likely you would threaten to call the cops. I doubt if you would want to see him again, his tense and desperate fingers still gripping the front door handle. An unstable man in his own bewildering world, with only a vague idea of who you are to him, has now reached resolution. He has climbed your balcony, stood outside your bedroom window in his good work suit. After this exhausting event, he went home to a quiet Scotch, in the crystal bottle from a teak cabinet. There is a dimly-lit room, where he sits drinking on his own, the confusion subsiding. Now he may have done a stupid thing, but at least in the midst of the night air and all the insects, he had been alive. No number of excuses from you will take away the pain he went through, as irrational as it may have been. And no amount of apology will be strong enough to turn back the hands of time. Relationships in their initial phases are fragile eggs. The lawyer leaves the situation smashed. Whatever it is he had to offer you, you have lost. He no longer felt the same about you, now that he had replaced you with absence, and conquered your entire house in the process. |
