Dinner Party

Brad was trying to suck down the last of his cigarette before they got to the front door. He didn’t want to smell like smoke, but he always tried to time his arrival so that he had nicotine in his system. Chris rolled his eyes as Brad held up his hand “wait” just before the entrance.

‘Every time.’ Chris said, not looking at Brad.

Brad looked back up the steep gravel driveway, trying to make out the descent they’d made in the dark. Wallabies thumped past them somewhere in a paddock to the left. He took a final drag and looked around for a bin. Spotting none, he stamped it out, picked up the butt, held it in his hand for a moment, and then stuffed it into his pocket. Chris rolled his eyes again and rang the doorbell.

‘Come in, come in,’ Val screeched as she swung open the door.

Brad and Chris smiled and stripped off thick winter coats and gloves, hung them carefully on pegs nailed to the entranceway wall, and kicked off their heavy boots. Val walked into a cavernous kitchen and dining area, Brad and Chris following just behind. She turned and handed them each a glass of wine from the kitchen bench and said something. Brad didn’t hear over the seven other voices that were suddenly fighting for his attention. He looked at Chris.

‘No, not at all, we’re just down the road,’ Chris said to Val.

‘The little blue one on the left?’

‘Yes, not a big trip – it’s such a nice area,’ Brad said.

The other guests were scattered around the room, some perched at the edge of couch cushions, others lounging over wine at the long white dining table. Two of them, Robert and Alex, waved and yelled ‘hi.’ The other’s stood up, three smiling with hands in their pockets, and the other two with hands already outstretched.

‘Brad,’ he said, rubbing his damp palms on his jeans in lieu of a handshake.

‘Chris, nice to meet you.’

‘Susan, and this is my husband Mark.’

‘You know my husband, Steve,’ said Val.

‘G’day.’

‘Rod, and that’s Sarah in the corner.’

Sarah waved with one hand and covered her mouth with the other as she chewed through too much bread and cheese.

* * *

‘And we lost six chickens in one month to the quolls,’ Robert was saying.

‘Six chickens?’ said Brad.

‘It was eight,’ said Alex.

‘Sorry eight, so we ended up putting in a – what? – a four-thousand-dollar electric fence, which didn’t work either.’

‘It worked for a while.’

‘Yeah, it worked but eventually they got in.’

‘Are you sure the battery didn’t just die?’ Sarah asked.

‘No, it wasn’t just the battery. No way. We checked the battery all the time. Basically every day,’ said Robert.

‘At least once a week. Anyway, we ended up getting a dog and we haven’t lost – well we’ve only lost two chooks in what, three years?’

‘Three and a half years…’

‘Seems like a dog is the best way to go,’ said Brad.

‘…and one of them was to the dog!’ They laughed.

‘Oh,’ said Brad. ‘Maybe not.’

‘Yes, do it, it’s so much easier,’ said Robert.

‘We do already have a dog, but she sleeps inside,’ said Brad.

‘Well that won’t work.’

Brad paused, his eyes moving between Robert and Alex.

‘We’ve met her, she’s a very sweet dog, isn’t she?’ said Val to Brad.

‘Yes.’

* * *

‘Did you know they use aborted foetuses in vaccines?’ Mark asked the table a little later.

Chris immediately turned away and started a conversation with Alex. The others sank back in their chairs, but Mark’s wife Susan sat forward, shredding the label on her bottle of beer while looking around at all the faces. No one asked Mark to continue, but Brad made the mistake of raising his eyebrows like they were a question mark.

‘It actually stuffs up your whole hormones when you have more than one vaccine at once, and the MMR has three. Explains a lot, doesn’t it?’ Mark said with a knowing smirk.

‘What’s an MMR?’ asked Brad.

‘It’s three vaccines at once but nobody knows that,’ said Susan nodding, eyes wide.

‘How do you know they don’t know, though?’ Brad asked no one in particular.

‘I just think people should look closer into it.’ Mark looked around, his face slightly red. ‘They shouldn’t just accept what the government tells them.’

‘If they have evidence that they’re bad for us, I think they should release it,’ Susan said.

‘Yes, probably,’ Val said, and frowned.

* * *

Brad washed his hands, losing himself in the mirror. He curled his toes up in his shoes so hard they hurt, and he realised they’d been clenched for a while. He could finally feel the wine supressing his need to run. A few more glasses, and he might start to forget to concentrate on the tiny movements of those around him, on every awkward pause, on every beat of his heart, and on the feeling that he wasn’t really here. He knew the names for these feelings, but it turns out naming something doesn’t make it go away. Instead the feelings merged and strengthened in him. He sat down on the closed toilet, squeezed his eyes closed, clenched his toes again, and clutched a few milligrams of neatly pressed diazepam in his pocket like a teddy bear.

After too long he stood up, flicked off the light, shut the door, and walked back into the dining area. People had moved places, but he sat back where he had been before.

‘So, when did you move in?’ Rod said to Brad as he settled.

‘About three months ago.’

‘And when did you meet Chris?’

‘Four years ago. We went to uni together.’

‘I never went,’ Rod declared. ‘Never really found the time, you know?’

‘Yeah, totally.’ Brad said. Rod looked at him. Brad had, after all, found the time.

‘You studied environment, didn’t you Brad?’ Val asked, her eyes flicking between the two.

‘He studied science,’ Chris said. Brad turned dessert over on his plate.

* * *

Outside, Brad lit another cigarette, the clouds he exhaled doubled with fog. He could hear Chris talking inside with Robert and Alex, and he sounded comfortable – jovial, even – in that way he was with other people.

Brad looked up as Val walked out. When the others had left, she had immediately switched to warm, loose clothes; a thick coat over the top of a mismatched tracksuit and well-worn Ugg boots. A black and white cat followed cautiously behind her before streaking away.

‘Go on then,’ she said. Brad handed her a cigarette and lit it for her. ‘Sorry about Mark.’

‘Don’t apologise,’ said Brad.

‘Such a weirdo.’

‘Chris was mad at me because I encouraged him,’ Brad said.

Val scoffed. ‘Bullshit.’ She swayed slightly, closing her eyes as she puffed. Brad had seen her steadily consume sparkling wine, white wine, red wine, and a digestif – to match the food, she’d said. She was holding a beer now. ‘You know we’ve been here for five years. Me and Steve. He hasn’t left the house basically that whole time.’

‘Oh, really?’ Brad asked.

‘Dead set,’ she replied. She hadn’t opened her eyes yet. ‘When we moved from Melbourne, we had a big party. We had about thirty, forty people ‘round our place which was actually tiny compared to here. Steve had been messed up for ages at this point. They’re not even sure what he’s got so they’ve just put him on, like, five drugs. They all make him sick or tired or boring.’

She tilted her face to the sky and opened her eyes. Brad’s toes were curled up in his boots again, and he took a sip from his empty glass.

‘After everyone left, he fully lost it. He was running around the house screaming, and he was packing and unpacking our suitcases for hours.’

Brad scraped his foot back and forth on the ground, making a shallow groove in the gravel.

‘I’m thinking of leaving Chris,’ he said.

‘Yeah, I figured.’

‘I feel so stupid.’

‘When mum left dad, I’d never seen her happier. She actually wrote a letter to him ‘cause her therapist told her to, and she read the whole thing to him. Out loud. When Dad woke up one morning, she was sitting at the dining table in her dressing gown just staring at the wall and she asked him to sit down, and then read this letter out. I don’t think that’s what the therapist meant, but apparently it was hilarious.’

Brad finished his cigarette, flicked away the cherry, and held the butt pinched between two fingers.

‘It was, like, thirty years’ worth of shit in that letter. She told him about how he ignored her feelings and watched too much TV and never had sex with her and spent too much on booze and how he cheated on her, like, fifteen years before. She must have felt amazing. She’s seventy now and has a boyfriend.’

She stamped her cigarette into the ground and kicked some gravel over it.

‘Is she happy she did it?’

‘Yeah, I think so. She doesn’t really talk about him much anymore, but she told me she kept the letter. He’s dead now, anyway.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s fine.’

‘What are you going to do about Steve?’

‘Nothing,’ she said, then took a swig from her beer. ‘Nothing I haven’t tried before. I can’t leave or he’ll probably kill himself. What are you gonna do about Chris?’

* * *

A few days later, Brad stood in front of a plastic fold-out table set in the middle of a field. He arranged then rearranged the knives, metal buckets, paper towel, and zip-lock bags, then checked on the large pot of water simmering over the portable stove. Chris walked towards him holding a chicken upside down.

‘Come here. You’ll need your knife.’ Chris said.

Brad stepped towards the metal cone nailed to a tree, holding his yellow-handled knife. Chris dropped the chicken in to the cone and carefully negotiated it’s head out the bottom.

‘You need to cut it from here…’ he said, moving a finger across its throat, ‘…to here.’

‘Is it going to make any noise?’

‘Not really. Not if you do it right. It’s pretty dizzy by now anyway.’

‘I don’t know if I can do this.’

‘You have to. And if you don’t you can’t have any of the meat.’

‘Maybe I just won’t eat meat anymore.’

‘Don’t be stupid.’

‘I named this one. She’s Barry.’

‘Barry?’

‘Yes.’

‘I told you not to do that.’

‘I know.’

Brad took a breath and stepped forward.

‘Here?’ Brad asked, holding the knife to its throat.

‘Just a little bit higher... Perfect. You have to do it hard and pull her head back at the same time.’

‘So just… go?’

‘Well what else are you going to do?’

‘It just seems weird.’

‘It is weird, but just do it.’

‘Yes. Okay. I’m going to do it.’

He paused, and then killed the chicken. Chris was right; it didn’t make any noise, but its wings flapped heavily as the blood drained out of it. It took about forty-five seconds for it to stop moving. Brad sat down on the grass still holding the knife.

‘Are you okay?’ Chris asked.

‘Yeah, I’m fine. Are you ok?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m just – are you ok?’

‘Yeah, I’m fine.’

‘Good.’

‘Good.’

After a few minutes, Chris pull the chicken out of the cone and walk it over to the table.

‘You don’t have to watch this bit.’

Brad decided to anyway; the least he could do was watch. Chris dunked the corpse into the simmering water, moving it about, checking every few seconds to see if its feathers were loose enough to pluck.

Chris threw it in to a plucker, turned it on, sprayed the inside with water for a minute, then pulled out what suddenly looked like something from the supermarket, but with a bloody neck. He slapped it on the table, picked up a knife, and dispatched the head, neck, feet, and guts, dumping them in to one of the metal buckets. He was wearing his farm clothes, all dusted with blood and dirt and sweat. He always frowned slightly as he worked, as he concentrated, but exerted himself with so much purpose; cutting here, reefing this, throwing that.

Brad was reminded again that Chris was so strong. He looked like a new person from the one Brad had met in Melbourne. Brad wondered whether he himself could ever change. He knew now that he wouldn’t ever be in the world as securely as Chris was. But sitting here on the grass watching, he could almost feel the earth beneath him like he used to. So, he kicked off his shoes and splayed his toes out and upwards, to the sun.

‘One and done.’ Chris said, smiling. ‘We did it. Thirty-four to go, and then we’ll have chicken for about a year. Good job.’ Chris smiled quickly at Brad, who decided to see the sincerity in it.