I fight my way through to the finals until, just as Mr Tie had predicted, only Yukio Mishimoto stands between me and the championship. Mishimoto is good, but in the end my training shows and I beat him. I get my picture on the front cover of Martial Arts in Australia, my face covered in blood and three ribs broken, executing a flying kick I can’t believe I’ve done.
Strange how victory affects some people. I can take being beaten almost to a pulp—but winning? I never did know how to handle it.
I fall back on the one thing I know that won’t let me down: work. I get on with my life. I still think a lot about Adrianne West but I’m stuck with the facts. She’s married and I’m obsessed.
Spring comes. The trees lining the road to my dojo burst into bloom. I take to sitting outside on the veranda by myself after dinner, watching the fruit bats in the old mango tree, and doing long rides on my bike in the night like a drug runner. But no matter where I go—Redcliffe, Stradbroke, Noosa—I always end up back in Spring Hill. Standing in the shadows, fingering the key in my coat.
Things get worse and worse with Azure. One weekend I demolish the garage with a sledgehammer, a trick I learned from an old kickboxer who had a rocky relationship with his wife. But even that doesn’t help me much, and I know she’ll have to go. Funny, the kickboxer’s been married twenty-seven years. It worked for him; but it sure as hell hasn’t worked for me.
I begin to think more and more about seeing Adrianne again—maybe just at a distance. After all, I reason, what harm could that possibly do? Besides, it might help me to put things in perspective.
Putting things in perspective ... I torture myself with this idea for weeks until, one particularly beautiful Friday afternoon, I crack. I come in from the back garden where I’ve been building a rock wall to try to work off my confusion. I take a shower, pull on an old white track suit, do a few stretching exercises and begin to run.
Azure twigs at the last moment that something is up. She comes down to the gate and begins screaming.
“Where are you going, you bastard! Come back!” And things of a similar ilk. But I don’t look back.
The sun is setting behind the mountain. The trees look like black lace against the sky. I run steadily, keeping an even pace, and gradually Azure’s screams fade in the distance.
Still, I feel wistful. Black lace ... Azure has always worn black lace underwear. I loved it once; now it seems—there’s that word again—unsubtle.
I run on in the grip of my obsession. Night falls. The streetlights come on. It’s eight o’clock by the time I get to Spring Hill. I go first to Adrianne’s cottage—habit, I guess. But the lock’s been changed. Hah. I always knew she’d never last with him. I’m in a kind of euphoria as I walk to the building where she works.
I sit down under a jacaranda tree in the park across the road and try to arrange my feelings. The first stars are coming out, the new moon is sinking and I don’t have a hope in hell of arranging anything. Least of all, my feelings.
After an hour the high I’m on begins to dwindle; I even consider going home. Just then, I see Freddie come out of the foyer of Dr West’s high-rise, followed by the rest of the group in dribs and drabs. They disperse to their cars and drive off towards The Windmill.
Now the street is empty. I wait for Adrianne to appear, but she doesn’t come. Black fantasies run amok in my head. Is she dead? Abducted by aliens? I never read the papers or watch TV.
I tear across the road, lope through the foyer and fling myself into the elevator. On the way to the twentieth floor, reason comes to my aid: Adrianne’s okay; just heartbroken over my leaving. She stays back on Friday nights in the hope I might come to her. Ah Adrianne, if only I’d cracked sooner, all this pain we’ve suffered could’ve been avoided.
The carpet is soft under my feet as I push through the jungle. Now I’m almost at the doorway of her office.
“Heavy day?” I’ll say.
Adrianne will be sitting at her desk, eyes wet with tears, dark hair tangled. She’ll give a little cry on seeing me. The magazine she’s been sobbing over will slip to the floor, and there I’ll be on the cover of Martial Arts in Australia, bloodstained, broken-ribbed, flying kick and all.
I dash to her side. She tells me the man in the restaurant was her brother, who’d just come back from New Guinea, the New Hebrides—New Anywhere. I grab her in my arms and kiss her ...
My eyes mist at the thought.
When I come to, a strange girl dressed all in blue is watching me closely from behind Adrianne’s desk. Her hair is long and thick and crimpy, the colour of ironbark honey.
“Can I help you?” she asks warily.
I hate reality. There’s always someone kicking you in the teeth.
“Where’s Dr West?” I eventually manage.
“I’m sorry,” the strange girl says, “but Dr West and her husband” (I wince at the word) “left for India two months ago. Perhaps I can help you,” she adds gently.
I’m about to refuse, turn and go, but reason comes to my rescue. And the girl is speaking.
“I’m Dr Bostock. Suzanne Bostock.” Her voice seems to flow like water.
I nod and sit down. Thoughtfully. Of course she could never replace Dr West, but I need to talk to someone. My stints on the veranda are getting longer, my sleep is almost non-existent, and the garage is gone.
“I don’t usually see clients at this hour, Mr ...?”
“O’Neill,” I venture. “Michael O’Neill.”
“But as you were one of Dr West’s clients, I’ll make an exception for you.”
She’s riffling around in the files as she speaks; a tiny thing with slim ankles and blue high heels. Very different from Adrianne, and not at all like a schoolgirl.
“Ah.” She has found my file. Now she crosses to the desk and opens it in front of her.
I watch her as she reads. She’s wearing amethyst earrings, and I can see her, actually see her.
“Hmm ...” Dr Bostock leans back in the black leather chair. I look at her hands. There are no rings.
“It says here you suffer from obsession, Mr O’Neill.”
I try my bashful look. “Well, sort of.”
“Sort of,” she says and smiles.
It’s a good joke. She and I both know there’s no such animal as “sort of” in obsession. Suddenly I don’t feel so bad anymore. Suddenly I feel as if everything’s going to be all right.
“Would you like to tell me about it?” Suzanne Bostock is saying.
I begin at the beginning. The day I first met Dr West.
END
About the author
Until the publication of her novel MagnifiCat at the end of 2013, Danielle de Valera was best known for her short stories, which won a number of awards in Australia and appeared in such diverse publications as Penthouse, Aurealis, and the Australian Women’s Weekly. Many of her short stories are set on the far north coast of New South Wales, Australia, where she has lived since 1977.
More Star, O’Neill and Lawson (aka God) stories
“Transference” is the 7th story in the O’Neill, Star and Lawson series.
The 1st is “Busting God” can be previewed at:
https://danielledevalera.wordpress.com/short-story-previews/
[Undercover narcotics agents Michael O’Neill and Baby Johnson are sent to the northern rivers of New South Wales to bust a heroin dealer so big everyone up there calls him God.]
[Michael O’Neill and Baby Johnson, still suffering from PTSD, quit the Australian Narcotics Bureau and move to the far north coast of NSW. Each hopes love will save them.]
The 3rd, “Stella by Starlight,”is available at:
[Released from jail, Lawson, formerly the heroin manufacturer known as God, fails in his attempt at suicide, but he manages to save Star from her abusive relationship with Wayne.]
The 4th, “Star’s Story” is available at:
[Almost all the men in Star’s life have turned out to be violent. In choosing Wayne, she thi
nks she is breaking the pattern.]
The 5th, “The Real Thing” is available at:
[When Charles Lawson is forty and enjoying a prestigious academic career in chemistry, he goes to Maralinga to investigate the authenticity of a mysterious coin found there. There he meets handsome Jamie Stanborough, who seduces Lawson for his own ends.]
The 6th, “Trio: Three award-winning short stories” is available at:
[O’Neill and Azure move to Brisbane, where he begins a new life as a karate instructor. When she leaves him, O’Neill is desperate enough to see a psychiatrist. He expects “some old git who looks like Sigmund Freud”, but the psych turns out to be the beautiful Adrianne West.]
To preview the 8th story in the series, “Last Train to Parthenia”, go to:
https://danielledevalera.wordpress.com/short-story-previews/
In all, three more stories featuring the characters introduced in “Busting God” will be released in 2014/early ‘15. If you’re a short story aficionado and you’d like to be notified in advance of their release, please send me an email at
[email protected].
Other works by this author
MagnifiCat: an Animal Fantasy, 70,000 words, 288 pages.
[Meet the Katt family. Despite the love in their little cottage, they’re finding it hard to make ends meet. When the bank won’t grant more time t pay the mortgage, the Katts must find a way to save the day. A feel-good, animal fantasy for adults with the fairy tale ending we’d all like to have.]
“Frankie and Juno”. Very short story, 1,000 words, 3 pages—a quick read.
[Frankie, a lovesick tom, falls for the beautiful Juno, an elegant white cat, but the relationship is not a success.] On Derek Haines’s e magazine Whizzbuzz Shortz:
https://www.derekhaines.ch/shortz/2013/12/frankie-and-juno-a-fable-by-danielle-de-valera
Connect with me online
Twitter: https://twitter.com/@de_valera
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/danielle.devalera
Google+: https://plus.google.com/+DanielledeValera/about
My blogs: 1. About Writing and Writers: https://danielledevalera.wordpress.com
2. Manuscript Development Services: https://patrickdevalera.wordpress.com
Questions or comments?
I’d love to hear your thoughts. Email me at:
[email protected] Need help with your writing?
I’ve been a freelance manuscript assessor since 1992, and an editor (copy, structural and creative) for even longer. If you think I might be the right person to help you iron the glitches out of your novel, drop me a line at:
[email protected] I love helping emerging writers, and my rates are very reasonable. Check out:
https://patrickdevalera.wordpress.com/manuscript-development-services/
One last thing ...
If you enjoyed this story, would you mind taking a few seconds to let your friends know about it, perhaps on Facebook, Google+ or Twitter?
Thank you,
Danielle de Valera
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