Waiting by Philip Salom

Author:Philip Salom [Salom, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9781922186904
Publisher: Puncher and Wattmann
Published: 2015-11-30T05:00:00+00:00

When It Really Matters

When Jasmin rings Angus from her office she keeps mumbling about staff cuts at the University, at all the Universities, at all the new extra ultra criminally corporatised Universities, and how when push comes to shove they are such fucking creeps of the fucking system they were set up to challenge, to question, to critique, but when it comes to funding problems they react with predictable results – laying off staff. They are as bad as banks. Should she be looking over her shoulder? Is she publishing enough? Why hasn’t she won big research grants for the University?

His mobile or hers is breaking up, the sound warping and stop-starting. He is certain she has said slaying of staff so when he tells her this she breaks out of her bad mood and laughs. It must be the heat.

Perfectly justified griping he tells her, and she says yes it is but it ain’t very romantic and it isn’t why she’s ringing. She suggests that if he’s free after work they could meet somewhere in Lygon St for a drink, she nominates a Carlton wine bar, at 5, 5.30? As it’s Friday there’s no reason to rush home afterwards. It’s the blend of the practical and the cooing he likes, or imagines, because neither character is actually in her voice, so he agrees, as long as she realises that he’ll have to come straight from work, no fancy washing and dressing this time.

There is no cool change in the eaves outside her office. If anything it is hotter than before. Even walking the short distance to Lygon St makes her hot and dampness gives way to plain sweat. She can feel it under her breasts, a sweaty chest a sign of humidity if ever there was one, a slow sense of being-awash. Australia’s southern states are becoming… tropical? Who now dresses to think? The clothes maketh the mentation, perhaps, as rags render us human. As a thinking person Jasmin has worn a dress with a light hem so she can lift it away from her legs while she sits at her desk in the un-airconditioned office. She lifts the cotton back into her lap and reads very serious things while looking like a schoolgirl. This lightness and practicality has made her walking in a summer skirt seem more a flighty show, as girlie as she truly isn’t.

When she steps into the bar she sees Angus standing and swinging his head about like an ex-racehorse in one of those hills paddocks. He is still in his work clothes. She is not Lady Chatterley, but here he is, looking like the gamekeeper, or gardener… she feels a sudden embarrassment. She does, however, as they embrace lightly and kiss, feel the small happy changes within her, of his scent and her response. He is wearing a work singlet. Something dizzy and inducing about this, not work-scent left over from muscles under strain, and nor is it cardio-vascular sweat. Just him, the lion.

They don’t like the way I’m dressed, he tells her.

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.