The Big Issue Australia Fiction Edition Story- Solo by Colin Varney

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FICTION EDITION

Solo uring lockdown a trumpeter commenced a regimen of practice somewhere in our hive of apartments. It seemed a lengthy piece – a concerto, a rock opera – but when I timed it, watching the second hand twitch petulantly around the clockface, it came in at just over four minutes. The horn didn’t carry the melody but provided accompaniment, an iteration of burps and wails: a banshee with hiccups. I don’t know if the musician was practising solo or engaged in an online band rehearsal. Possibly both. In the absence of the other instruments I was unable to define a tune. The conglomeration of snorts and gastric burbles became my personal soundtrack to COVID-19, worming into my dreams at night. My pulse became the trumpeter’s metronome, my temples thudding in time. There was one lament at the conclusion, an undulating coloratura intended to signal emotional release but which, due to the practitioner’s inability, invariably resembled an ageing diva being clubbed to death. I spent the entire unreeling of the syncopated sequence dreading this culmination. I willed the musician to achieve the final money note, only to hear it collapse into choking malaise. Then the tune would repeat.

In the same way that I became ultra-conscious of the intrusive blurts and moans of the horn, so I became sensitive to the tics and habits of my husband, Oliver. I grew to resent the way his crossed leg bounced on the fulcrum of his knee while engrossed in a novel. It rankled me when he regressed to infantile baby-speak while watering the house plants (“Who’s a thirsty critter, then?”). He hoarded the TV remote, switching channels during commercial breaks without consultation.

Normally I could shrug off this catalogue of insignificant irritants, but each was magnified by being confined within a two-room prison with ensuite. His continual entreaties for me to wash my hands infuriated me to the point where I snapped back, rebuking him for being mumsy. In retrospect, I realise I was convicting him of concern, of loving too much, and the downside of constant bathroom hand scrubbing is that you spend a lot more time confronted by your own reflection.

I offer all this as mitigating evidence. Because I embarked on an office affair. Not easy when you’re working from home.

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t began via a conference call. We in the Vice Chancellor’s department were liaising with Finance to attenuate the damage wrought by the pandemic. We were investigating ways to divert funds, depleted by the dearth of international students, into online learning, while bolstering

IT capabilities to support staff working remotely. It was a logistical tangle. At the same time I was finding it difficult to concentrate because the tiny lozenge representing my video feed was broadcasting the breaking news that my husband had, in the absence of my regular hairdresser, botched the simple job of trimming my fringe. As fiscal manipulations became increasingly involuted, I felt my mouth contracting to the thinness of a garrotte. Stress bunched in my gut. Troy from Finance remained patient and reassuring, constantly recalibrating and redistributing capital, looking for ways to keep the university viable. As the call concluded Oliver had the misfortune to pass behind me and I leapt up, upbraiding him for my serrated fringe. He was in the throes of a bad day himself and we sniped bitterly before he beat a retreat to his “office”, the bedroom. When I sank back down I noticed Troy still on my screen, abashed and apologetic, frantically indicating his keyboard.

“Eleanor, you…um…you need to log out of the meeting.

The red button.”

At work I manifest dispassionate composure. I revel in a reputation for sangfroid. But in my video feed I saw a frazzled cartoon with imprecise hair and a mottled complexion. I sensed Troy’s eagerness to log out, to flee, but needed to reset my default.

“Apologies for the unseemliness.” My polite smile allowed a scintilla of warmth. “Uncertain times.”

“S’okay. I didn’t have record on.” His broad grin reconfigured his features like a film set, shifting him into handsomeness.

“Besides, it’s almost beer o’clock. The defences crumble.”

“Yes. I can almost smell the mojito.” What the fuck? Too chummy. I hit the red button.

Two hours later the intercom peeled. A waitress from Rio, a local bar, hovered at the entrance to the building. Since lockdown, Rio had instituted an entrepreneurial cocktail delivery service. A mojito was awaiting me. Oliver examined my bemusement. “Did you order that?”

“No.” I recovered swiftly. “I ordered two, obviously. There’s been a misunderstanding.”

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uring the next conference call I studied the segment of screen framing Troy. He maintained a professional mien, a faint frown marring diffidence. On the wall behind him I recognised a slice of a Tretchikoff print. I hoped he regarded the artist with the same collision of irony and genuine admiration that I did.

02 OCT 2020

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Colin Varney

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The room he’d requisitioned was comfortably disordered.

Homely. There were scattered toys. Our tiny apartment reduced us to asceticism: clutter would crowd us out. At one point a rambunctious toddler thundered behind Troy and he glanced back. That grin again, dispensing handsomeness.

Then something larger loomed. A shadow of spouse. I heard her tuneless whistling.

I dispatched an email. “Thx 4 mojito. Lifesaver.”

I saw his eyes flick as he registered the message. His mask remained blank as he typed. “A pleasure. You deserved it.”

I tapped back: “How’d u get address?”

Troy: “Contacts in HR.” Me: “Sackable offence.”

Troy: “Nah. Warning at most .”

Me: “Only 1 drink. Made hubby jealous.”

I watched his frown deepen as he wrote. “Hope I didn’t cause prob.”

“One more prob wouldn’t matter.”

Why did I send that?

I saw him type then physically blanche from his keyboard, uncertainty loosening his features. He stabbed send with a convulsive lunge.

“No failed hairdresser can make you look less than gorgeous.”

I saw his trepidation but returned nothing.

That evening the intercom trilled again. The waitress had a mojito and a gin and soda. Oliver tutted at his drink. “No expense spared,” he muttered.

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erking into wakefulness in the depths of the night I believed I could hear the trumpeter practising.

Shrouded in bedclothes, interred in darkness, I listened as each phantom chord embodied an ugly notion. One brassy diminuendo represented a global economy in freefall, an omen of depression. A sorrowful keen became an elegy for the escalating coronavirus death toll. A teetering blast of dissonance conjured a vision of Dad, bewildered and afraid in the care home, bamboozled by Alzheimer’s.

The bedroom lacked oxygen. I panted. Swallowing compulsively, I detected the simmer of a nascent sore throat.

No, all imagination. I struggled from the sheets. Disabled by darkness, I fumbled in a drawer for the bag of pot I kept stashed beneath a bundle of knickers. Where was it? Where?

Oliver’s arms encircled me. He hauled me to his chest, voice rumbling reassuringly.

“It’s okay, Eleanor. Breathe.”

His bed musk. I sucked it in.

“Code red,” I gasped. “I panicked.”

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roy and I entertained ourselves during group calls by indulging in coded flirting. I watched his eyes flash as he said: “I could massage the figures. Is that what you’d like me to do, Eleanor? Massaging?”

Once, while discussing reallocation of resources to Finance I gambled with: “I’m sure your requirements are pressing and urgent, Troy. I never stop thinking about them.” I craned towards the screen, battling a smile as I witnessed his blush.

He texted verse he’d composed for me. Clumsy confections, but their awkwardness charmed. I returned film clips of

love songs, many of them racy. We risked one-on-one Zoom assignations. Wearing noise-cancelling headphones, I visually monitored the bedroom door to ensure Oliver was safely ensconced, bundled in his own tasks. I could tell Troy revelled in the huskiness of my lowered tones. One afternoon we took a virtual tour of the Musée d’Orsay together. Our first date.

I pictured us ambling through the City of Love, moonlight shimmering off the Seine. At the time, COVID deaths were spiralling out of control in Paris. The smoggy environs of Sydney were a haven by comparison.

Except the smog was clearing. The air was newly polished and flavourless. On our evening walks, Oliver and I were able to amble across previously impassable roads as traffic became a novelty. Fewer planes rent our conversations with their surly bellowing. The suburbs were healing around us.

One afternoon Troy typed: “At last! Something meaty to divulge during online confession .” I was taken aback. I didn’t know he was Catholic. I realised I knew very little about him at all. I found this both thrilling and dangerous.

The unseen presence of his wife haunted his end of the feed. She could be heard bustling and bumping, her idle whistling monotonous as an eerie wind. He rarely spoke of her but was effusive about Billie, his daughter. He described how she’d sobbed in a playground with its equipment cordoned off by tape like a crime scene. Fun outlawed. Then her delight as she’d explored the neighbourhood on bear hunts. Residents had strategically placed stuffed toys in their windows and front yards so children could spot them. He showed me the obese teddy, the size of a terrier, pressed against his own pane, arms eagerly spread to embrace any passing stranger.

One afternoon when the air was free of whistling, his wife busy elsewhere, he demonstrated on the bear what he would like to do to me, tenderly smooching the loosely sewn snout while his hands caressed the chubby torso. When he nuzzled between its legs I was forced to temper my harsh exhalations.

Over his shoulder, I saw Billie enter the room, incomprehension writ large in her saucer eyes and loosely hinged jaw.

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e plotted. Neither of us could shake off our limpet families, but we arranged to exercise in the same park at the same hour. It took sustained effort to convince Oliver to cycle to a distant location, situated partway between our residences.

We chained the bikes and strolled in the waning evening light, Oliver complaining about the prospect of pedalling home in the dark. I peered around, heart plunging, unable to locate Troy.

Perhaps he’d been unsuccessful in persuading his wife to make the trip: it was a difficult thing to wrangle a toddler. Then I saw them on the far side of an oval, the parents sauntering while the child circled, a restless electron. Thankfully, a wide-brimmed hat shadowed his wife’s face, but her skirt emphasised her trim waist and lithe frame. Troy’s homing gaze was avid as a sniper.

Even at a distance I recognised his longing. Lagging behind, he risked a wave. When his wife turned he transformed the gesture into the shooing of an insect. Too soon, we were heading in opposite directions, Troy yearning over his shoulder. Such a fleeting and timorous venture, yet my chest fluttered with the stuttering beat of a faulty fan.

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alls encroached. The balcony offered a promise of freedom, although the air of Sydney seemed bogus without its toxic tang.

Abandoned projects littered the apartment: discarded crochet and bundles of wool, cookbooks lying open but unstained, a wardrobe door half lacquered with undercoat.

Even the trumpet player no longer practised. I suspected my fling was a half-hearted project also: only attractive while impossible to consummate. There was safety in our inability to commit. The notion dismayed me, so I decided to test it.

I refused Troy’s Zoom invites and left texts unanswered, insisting that our next tryst should be physical. We would arrange a further encounter in the park, but this time meet in person, in the romantic nook of the women’s conveniences beside the oval. It needn’t be for long: just enough for a kiss or hurried fumble. Sure, it would be tricky to escape his clinging kin, but if he was serious about us he’d find a way.

I’d rationed my supply of weed, hoarding it for when auguries of apocalypse proliferated or nightmares of Dad lost in the lonely corridors of the care home intruded. But before we saddled up the bikes I lingered on the balcony for a quick toke to settle jangling nerves. I regretted it. The smoke corroded my airways and backed up my nasal passages. While pedalling up hills, panting, my throat felt parched and polluted. As we

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n the ride home, I mentioned to Oliver that his congested hawks during our stroll reminded me of the honks and haws of our old friend the trumpeter.

“Are you telling me that I can cough out a convincing accompaniment to ‘Empty Fairground’?” he said.

“Is that what it was?”

But I didn’t need confirmation. The squawking earwormed in my head, perfectly slotting into the swing of the 90s hit.

At the conclusion, my mind corrected the imperfections of the final coloratura.

Colin Varney’s debut novel, Earworm, is a tragi‑comedy narrated by a love song. His short fiction has featured in Meanjin, Kill Your Darlings and Island, while satirical pieces have appeared in Points in Case and Slackjaw. He completed a Masters in creative writing at the University of Tasmania. The music world mourns his decision to cease drumming in pub bands.

02 OCT 2020

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ext morning, Oliver paused beside me, nostrils quivering. “Are you wearing scent?”

Did he wonder why I was paying more attention to my dress and hair while simultaneously becoming careless concerning the top buttons of my shirt? Why I devoted myself to exercise, running every day and hefting weights at home? I was throwing myself into sit-ups, trying to flatten the curve of my gut.

ambled towards the oval I issued a gentle, muffled cough, yet passers-by gawped in alarm and a father hauled his children away. I felt I should be tolling a bell, chanting: “Unclean!”

Oliver, noticing the reaction, barked an impressive series of comic hacks into the crook of his elbow. As the expressions of dread switched to him, he flashed an amused sideways glance.

It was an inopportune moment to succumb to affection.

Troy and family hovered by the oval. His wife was arm‑in‑arm with an elderly woman, possibly her mother. His nervousness was an indictment: damning evidence; exhibit A. I pulled the joint I’d half-consumed from my pocket and told Oliver I was heading off for a sneaky smoke. He grimaced in disapproval, but I cited tension and a creeping headache and he relented. As I approached the amenities block I saw Troy peel away from his family. He loped towards the gents’, then swiftly diverted into the ladies’.

We squeezed into a cubicle. Our smiles looked endangered.

I felt unaccountably bashful and my upper palate smacked of pot. Troy was shorter than I remembered. We weren’t touching, which wasn’t easy in the cramped confines. “So much for social distancing,” he joked. Then his uneasy grin was infiltrated by desire. His voice hitched as he said: “You’re so beautiful.”

We kind of waddled towards each other, but before we could complete the clinch we heard the main door wheeze open. There was tuneless whistling – the familiar backing track to so many of Troy’s Zoom meetings – and the lock slid home in the neighbouring cubicle. We froze, fixed on the other’s apprehension, aware of the rustling of trousers being loosened and the soft protest of the toilet seat as a body settled onto it. We should have been reddening, or suppressing giggles like schoolchildren. The plash and trickle sounded private and achingly vulnerable. We endured the flush, the snapping back of the lock, the hand washing which was, of course, over-thorough. When the door creaked shut behind her, we were left inspecting the other’s uncertainty.

I found myself wondering what his wife’s name was.

Troy inched tentatively forward but I held up a forbidding palm.

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y feet, in heels, scuffed carpet as I sashayed to a lazy bossa nova, the laptop cradled in my arms.

Troy, lost in dream, trembled on the display as he waltzed around his own lounge, cuddling his PC. His wife was tucked away, sacrificing herself to online yoga, while Oliver was trapped in the bedroom, committed to a scheduled appointment. I surrendered to the seductive plumes of sinuous sax wreathing from my headphones. The walls yawned away; the floorspace expanded. I was in a ballroom somewhere, softened by mood lighting, spangled by mirror ball. The sweetness of perfume vied against the spice of cologne and the waft of exquisite booze. There’s a taxi idling at the curb, waiting to spirit us away. We’ll canoodle in the backseat.

Troy leaned in, heavy lidded. His features distorted as he crowded the lens. His tender expression fractured and juddered as he planted the kiss, the failings of wi-fi censoring intimacy. I pressed close too, smearing lipstick on the screen.

Abruptly, the bedroom door swung wide, framing Oliver, clutching a coffee cup. I started, then countered his bafflement with an exasperated sigh, as if already unjustly accused.

“Just some silliness with a work colleague,” I deadpanned.

“You know, cabin fever.”

He gave me a wide berth as he made for the kettle.

Troy logged out.