A Short History of Richard Kline by Amanda Lohrey

Author:Amanda Lohrey
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Schwartz Publishing Pty. Ltd

The next morning I stopped by Mark’s cubicle. Mark was on the phone, which wasn’t uncommon; lately he had been spending too much time on the phone, usually to some woman or other, and I stood, disapprovingly, making it clear he should hang up and give me his full attention. But Mark, insouciant as ever, continued to remonstrate in an urgent tone with whoever was on the other end of the line.

My temper rising, I made a conscious effort to distract myself (no more outbursts) and took to studying the rogue’s gallery on the wall of Mark’s cubicle, a space where the analysts pinned their notices, cartoons, photos of wives or girlfriends, children, wilderness scenes and whatever fantasy objects got them through their day. The centrepiece of Mark’s gallery had long been a red Ferrari and it was still there, in pride of place, but pinned beneath it was a small colour photograph of a woman in early middle age. Her skin was dark and she looked to be from the subcontinent. Her black hair was pulled back tightly from her forehead, and around her shoulders was a white shawl. Her eyes blazed at me.

Mark hung up the phone with a sigh. ‘Sorry, K, I’ve told her not to ring me at work.’

‘Who’s this?’ I pointed to the image of the woman on his cork-board.

‘A joke,’ he said, unpinning the photo and tossing it onto his desk. ‘Some guru that Phoebe – my girlfriend – goes to see. She put it’ – he nodded at the photo lying on the desk – ‘up there. She’s into that stuff.’

Phoebe, it turned out, had been a member of our meditation class. She and Mark had run into one another in a coffee shop near the office, and Mark, with a more than respectable excuse to strike up a conversation, had made a successful move.

‘So you meditate together?’ I raised an ironic eyebrow.

Mark’s smirk said it all. ‘Not exactly, K, not exactly.’

Later that evening I told this story to Zoe, who by then had met Mark and found him an amusing if feckless study. ‘So this is where you go to meet chicks,’ she said, ‘a stress management class. I suppose it’s a step up from cruising a singles’ bar. And when the relationship falls apart you can meditate to get over it.’

Zoe approved of my meditation. How could she not? In the months since ‘the incident’ we had behaved with a wary affection towards one another, but I could feel that in some deep part of her I was unforgiven. She was waiting. She would see.

So I was meditating, I was a good boy, but still the black shadow hovered at my shoulder. Winter came and it was cold, and harder to get up in the early mornings. There were many days when I was irascible and withdrawn. Sometimes I would sit in the dark before dawn and think: this isn’t enough. I thought of that benign field I had sometimes felt part of when I was a boy.

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