Utopia by Heidi Sopinka

Author:Heidi Sopinka
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC019000, FIC076000, FIC045000, FIC069000
Publisher: Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
Published: 2022-08-11T00:00:00+00:00

THEY’VE DRUNK SO MUCH CHAMPAGNE, and now that they’re home, she feels drunker than she was at the gallery. Paz walks up the steps past the dried-out roses, and Billy says something about how before Dylan Thomas drank himself into a coma, he fell into a rosebush and scratched his eyeball. ‘Even his slapstick was poetic,’ Paz says. Billy takes out the dog, drunk in his suit, and then he comes back and opens the fridge door, standing in the glow of it, clinking some jars. Something about making pasta and then deciding it is too much work. Her guard is down and so is his. She thinks about telling him about the postcards. Every time she thinks of them, a slow spool of images flashes through her brain, ending with him and Romy and the baby. She is full with all the questions she wants to ask him. About Romy, about the calls from Milt. But instead she finds herself asking, ‘Who was the woman in the gold top?’

‘Who?’

‘Who was she?’

‘I don’t really know.’

‘She seemed like a big fan of yours.’

‘People act that way when they want something from you,’ he says in a way that ends the conversation. Billy stands there at the window, smoking and looking out. He doesn’t say anything for a long time, and neither does Paz.

‘I meant to ask you what Milt wanted,’ she finally asks. ‘You saw him today, didn’t you?’

‘Why?’

‘He called a lot while you were in Rome. It seemed urgent.’ Paz looks at him.

‘He wanted to talk about the show. It’s all — happening a bit sooner,’ Billy says.

She feels certain that she is being lied to. The conversation lapses into silence, and they both sit on the couch while he smokes, his other hand on the bare legs she’s resting in his lap. She’s feeling light-headed and leans her head on his shoulder, the one covered by a scar. Not covered, that was lazy, but it took up most of his left shoulder. He had once been struck by lightning. Tall, thunderstorm, dreamer, Romy had written. The closeness of his body has always had a sedative effect. The feeling that comes over her when he is beside her is so total, it makes it impossible to see him clearly. ‘What are you thinking?’ Paz asks him, her face burning a little. She feels like she is staring at two separate people. Not even two — many. He is in so many fragments, but she only ever gets one. She thinks how little she actually knows him. If she were to admit it, she knows more about him from Romy’s journals, and is not unembarrassed by the voyeurism.

After a long silence he says, ‘I have some things’ — he coughs — ‘I need to sort out,’ and he moves his hand over her hair. She knows he isn’t talking about work. She finds it unbearable. It almost doesn’t matter what it is that has made him remote, it just makes her feel like she has always felt — that there is something wrong about her that no one could love.

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