Fremantle

Chris isn’t sure exactly what it is about Fremantle that made him move there from Melbourne after having only been there for a week’s holiday last summer. You fall in love with a place sometimes. Is it the same as falling in love with a girl? Just that something you can’t explain. Like him and Anita. Chris is on the front beach at Fremantle, near the roundhouse, sitting by himself, smoking a joint. It’s winter and the wind is bitterly cold but he’s rugged up. Anita will be here tomorrow. Chris is the advance party. He’s been here a few weeks and found a flat and picked up some work at a café on South Terrace as a barista. He thinks “barista” is a bit much. He churns out coffee from a machine. It’s not rocket science but people seem impressed when he tells them.

Chris joined a theatre group almost straight away. Something he never would have done in Melbourne. He’s not sure what Anita’s going to think. In his mind when he planned this whole thing, Anita wasn’t there. He didn’t see them walking along South Terrace or at the markets together. He hadn’t imagined telling her he wanted to write plays and films and so much more. She saw him as the “reporter guy” on the local paper, nothing more. He was solid. A good guy. All her friends liked him. He had a passion, though. He began to explain a film to Anita once time, what is was about and how much it meant to him, and she started laughing, said, “Calm down, it’s only a film.”

He’s met other people here, who are if anything even more enthusiastic than he is. They are happy to talk about Clint Eastwood’s Play Misty for Me, and how it showed that he was destined to be one of the all-time-great film-makers. This guy Andrew keeps talking to him about David Lynch, particularly this one episode of Twin Peaks that seems to mesmerise him. Chris laughed but in a good way. He knew the feeling, he just hadn’t seen that episode.

Anita prefers the multiplex. That’s an American term because she only wants to see the latest American blockbuster. Australian films were crap—not The Castle or Muriel’s Wedding—but everything else was crap. She shopped at Myer and David Jones and did the grocery shopping at Woolworths or Coles. She wore fashionable shiny suits to her job as a real estate receptionist. She wore short skirts and tights in winter. Melbourne was the centre of the universe. The world’s most liveable city. She wanted to get married and have kids right now but she was prepared to go and live in Fremantle for a year because she loved Chris. He didn’t know how to cut her loose.

Chris is twenty-five and Anita is twenty-four. They’ve been living together for two years. He planned his week-long holiday to Fremantle well in advance, not knowing the impact it would have on him. He planned it for a time when he knew Anita wouldn’t want to leave Melbourne, the days after Christmas. Her whole family—parents, brothers and sisters and in-laws—all went to Sorrento, staying close together. Chris had hated it when he went the previous year and Anita had loved it. She gave him permission to go to Fremantle. “I trust you,” she said.

Walking around a place he’d never been to before on his own, it was better than the trips with Anita to Thailand, Bali and Europe. He found out about the theatre group on the holiday and they were performing Death of a Salesman when he was there. He nearly flipped out when he went to see it, it was so brilliant.

He walks to Fremantle station, catches the train to Mosman Park, four stops from Fremantle. It’s a short ten-minute walk to his flat in Bond Street. He sees it as his flat. One bedroom and a lounge room, up high, with a view to the ocean but not modern or special in any way. He tells himself he’s going to call Anita tonight, tell her it’s over. Stop it right now before she gets on the plane. He thinks he might have been in love with her for eighteen months but that thing about explaining the film made him think she had no idea who he really was.

Chris cooks himself dinner. An Indian curry. He picked up the ingredients at the Fremantle markets, wandering through from stall to stall.

Seven-thirty. If he was going to call he’d have to do it now. In a way he is looking forward to seeing her. Misses her touch and smile but he just doesn’t want her to stay. She’s getting in at midday and he doesn’t have to work tomorrow. She’ll catch a taxi and be here in Mosman Park by one o’clock. It’ll be too late then, she’ll have arrived.

Anita checks the time on the clock on the oven door. Nine-thirty. She’s nervous. Last time Chris rang she barely got a word in. It’s like he’s fallen in love with the place, but she’s getting the plane tomorrow. Michael, her boss, said,

“Any second thoughts, you can have your old job back. I’ll keep it open for a week or two.”

She’d only packed one suitcase. Hadn’t told the owner she, or they, weren’t moving out. She was going to see Chris but she wasn’t going to stay, but maybe she would. She could get another job, she knew she could. Michael would give her a great reference. Chris told her about his job. But he was a reporter, not a waiter. They couldn’t buy a place if he was only working three days a week as a waiter. She took the lasagne out of the oven. Made a small salad and ate alone at the kitchen table. Chris said he’d made some friends. He’d only been there a month and he wasn’t outgoing. Hospitality people no doubt, they were always out drinking and getting stoned. Chris had been like that when they first met but he’d changed. No more party drugs or smoking dope.

She was eating and the phone rang.

“Chris, hi. I’ll be there tomorrow, babe. I miss you. Are you all right? Bond Street, isn’t it? Don’t do anything stupid like pop out for cigarettes. You should give up, anyway.”

“No, no, I’ll be waiting. I miss you, um, it’ll be cool. You’ll see. You’ll love it.”

“OK, I’m really tired and, um, I miss you. I’m going to hang up and go to bed.”

“Good night,” Chris says, turns off his cell phone and lies back on his sofa and lights a cigarette. She won’t let him smoke in the flat. She hates drugs. He knows she won’t like the new friends he’s made. She’ll be here tomorrow at one o’clock. He has to make a choice right now, it’s not too late to call her back, tell her not to come. He turns his cell phone back on.

Sean O’Leary has contributed several stories to Quadrant. He lives in Melbourne.