Object Coach by Tom Lee

Author:Tom Lee [Lee, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Schwartz Books Pty. Ltd.
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

I decided it would be ideal if I was deliberately late to the meeting, so Del and Zep might have the time to chat before I arrived. To my annoyance, when I walked down from work to the entrance of the NSW Technical College on Mary Ann St, which I’d specified as the meeting point, only Zep was waiting, wearing an informal, scruffy outfit, with thongs, very dirty feet and a really stupid hat. He seemed pleased to see me, disarmingly so, and I wondered, in the context of this different emotional resonance, whether I’d really got him during the couple of years we’d known each other. He induced a feeling that made me immediately want to confess everything and explain my plotting—this was conveyed more through his smile and eyes than anything specific he said. We talked distractedly about the NSW Technical College and our present concerns associated with work. Zep said, ‘Umm…’ a lot, in a vaguely Irish accent, and it seemed part of the song of his voice, rather than a distracting pause.

So, I imagine things are starting to get busy now for you, with teaching? When does semester start? he asked.

It’s next week, actually, we’re in Orientation week. O week—there’s three of them now.

Three, really. Oh.

And how’s things with you, how are all the projects going?

Del didn’t come to the meeting that day. She gave an excuse that for some reason I refused to believe, about another meeting with an industry partner going overtime. I was furious with her for an hour, then moved on. My desire to confect a romance between them also more or less completely dissipated after that, though, in one last gesture of fidelity to the idea, I decided to send an adapted version of my matchmaking story a couple of weeks after the failed meeting at the NSW Technical College, with both Del and Zep included in the one email.

I faced one particular dilemma, in terms of whether to alter certain details of my story: the issue of my irritation at Zep’s outfit on the day of the meeting, which I’d included as the final scene in the story, most conspicuously his hat. I decided to shift my focus from aesthetic judgements about his outfit, to descriptions of his face, and here not so much isolated attributes associated with the shape of his eyebrows, hairline, jawline and so on, but more its topological aspects, like the relationship between his cheek and lips and how his skin looked in the evening light. I tried to make it seem as though my description was at once highly specific, yet common to all faces.

Eventually Zep replied to my email. Thank you for trusting me with this, he wrote, and sorry it took so long for me to get back to you. I was strangely nervous while reading, like watching a film of yourself. You write with an enjoyable cadence, it’s honest and engaging. I don’t really know what to do next…

I didn’t hear from

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.