#6: Date night
Everything felt much lighter after the kiss with Natalie. Though work at the Carr St Bookshop was slow and arduous (as it always was at the end of summer) Trixie floated around the cramped shelves in a convincing imitation of the fluffy plane-tree seeds, which drifted dreamily in the warm wind outside. Customers still trickled in an out, browsing but never buying; however, they strategically avoided the Carr St staff, despite their best efforts to catch eyes and make a sale. Everyone appeared grumpy and listless – but not Trixie.
At home, too, things were quiet. Stef had left for Sydney and a week-long conference, so Trixie had the apartment to herself for the first time in what seemed like forever. Usually, when Stef was away, Trixie and Lukas would spread out across the apartment, luxuriating in the extra space and serenity. Now she was alone, Trixie found herself pausing absently in any random spot in the flat: staring out a window until the light changed or running her a glass under the cold water tap until it was overflowing into the sink. Her saccharine good mood lasted until Friday and a reminder on her phone that woke her from a late-morning sleep in.
8pm: drink w app guy
Trixie groaned, tossing her phone away from her. It bounced off the bed and onto the carpet, still beeping ominously. She lasted another minute or so under the covers, trying to ignore the tinny reminder tone, before resurfacing to turn it off and open the dreaded dating app once again.
Name: Gavin
Age: 35
Location: Melbourne, AU
Interested in: F
Status: “Looking for my Lizzy Bennet”
From the look of Gavin’s photos, he was very tall and quite broad-shouldered. He had a mop of thick blonde hair and matching thick eyebrows that seemed simultaneously to stand out and fade away against his oatmeal-pale forehead. He was pictured cuddling a large, luxe-coated golden retriever in many of his profile pictures. The dog, which was gorgeous, looked a good deal like the man: big, blonde and enthusiastic.
Amal’s face popped up on the screen, and Trixie’s phone began to buzz again. Trixie clicked “accept” with a preparatory sigh.
“Don’t even think about it, Miss Beatrix.”
“About what?” Trixie replied innocently.
Amal clicked her tongue into the receiver. “Do not bail out of this date, Trixie. Do. Not.”
“I wasn’t planning on it.”
“Bullshit,” Amal snapped. “What are you wearing?”
“Pyjamas.”
“Tonight, obviously.”
Trixie shrugged at her own reflection, which she was able to examine in the dressing-table mirror while still sitting bed. It seemed like the glow of the week had already begun to vanish from Trixie’s cheeks. She looked a little purple under her eyes and around the corners of her nose, and her face was still creased with sleep. “I dunno. Some top and jeans, I guess.”
“Ah, Trix, come on. Try a little harder.”
“Nah,” Trixie said. “Look, it’s just a drink.”
“It’s a drink! It’s fun. And we’ll all be there, pretending we don’t know you, until he leaves . . . or until you leave together.”
“Please.” Trixie rolled her eyes. “I’m just going to wear something normal.”
“Normal. Boring.” Amal sighed dramatically into the receiver. “Let me come over and help. I can bring some stuff.”
“Amal, you’re about five sizes smaller than me,” Trixie said. Amal began to scoff at the comparison, but Trixie cut her off. “I just want to look like myself. Surely, if he’s a good guy, he’ll like me for me.”
“Hmm, touché.” Amal huffed, “I guess you’re right.”
“I’ll see you at Josie’s at six, OK?”
Was it strange, Trixie wondered, looking for probably the nineteenth time at her date’s profile, to claim to be “looking for your Lizzy Bennet”? No stranger than being called Gavin after 1985. No stranger than taking your local bus to meet a man you’d never interact with in person if it wasn’t for the internet.
The 472 lurched through Friday evening traffic, packed with a mix of grouchy commuters aching to get home; tittering teens dressed like packs of wannabe Instagram influencers and ready to invade all the bars, clubs and house parties they could manage to get into; and the usual dotting of aimless locals, who always seemed to be on the buses, at all times of the day and night, just for something to do.
Trixie had relented to the barrage of group messages encouraging her to “mix it up” and dress up for the occasion, and so had managed to find a rather gaudy, semi-see-through top and a cute brown pleather skirt among Stef’s “date night” clothes. A gaggle of teenage boys – half of them sporting the sort of sparse facial hair that sprouts from upper lips and chins when deep in puberty – were staring unbidden at her chest.
She opened her bag and withdrew a book, unfolding it gently to preserve the spine so she could return it in good condition to the staff shelves at Carr St. She bowed her head, ignoring the snickering of the staring boys, and let Anita Heiss take her to Manhattan.
When she finally disembarked at Victoria Street, the boys rapped on the window of the bus as it pulled away from the kerb. They cat-called and laughed through the graffiti-scratched glass until an older woman behind them smacked them over the back of the head with her Coles bag. As the bus headed for the turn-off to Paisley Street, Trixie held her fingers up in a V at them.
“Classy.”
The low voice startled Trixie, and she dropped her hand, embarrassed. But it was just David, walking towards her with his usual stout swagger.
He looked intensely dishevelled. Trixie thought it was the first time she’d ever seen him unshaven in her life, and his shirt was so crumpled it appeared as though he’d been wearing it for a week straight. And his strange thatch of mousey hair was a little greasy, standing up and out across the crown of his head as though he’d been running his hand through it all day.
“Woah, are you OK?” Trixie gave a low whistle as he approached, and his be-stubbled cheeks glowed.
“What do you mean? I’m fine,” he replied. He ran his hand over his head again, and Trixie noticed how dark the delicate skin underneath his eyes had turned since she last saw him.
“For real, David. You look a mess.”
“Rude!” he tried to joke, avoiding Trixie’s gaze. Then he sighed, and shrugged a little, burying his hands deep in the pockets of his suit pants. “Work’s a joke right now. Everything’s – it’s just really busted.”
“Oh,” Trixie said. She’d never quite understood what David did. Something to do with managing profiles of money, or money for profiles. Rich people’s money, was how Stef had always (somewhat disparagingly) described it. “Uh, that sucks.”
“It’s not a big deal.” He swung an arm around to catch Trixie’s elbow in the crook of his, so they were linked. He gave her arm a small squeeze. “Let’s get this over with, right?”
“Right.”
Inside Josie’s was packed with workers of all kinds looking to blow off some end-of-week steam. The air was thick and warm and almost tropical, but tinged with sweat and the sticky scent of mixing perfumes and aftershaves. It was monstrously loud, but loudest of all was Amal, her voice rising above the rest as she fought with Kit over in the corner of the bar. David and Trixie exchanged weary eyerolls, then trotted over to join their friends.
“You’re just wrong – so wrong – and it’s kind of pathetic you can’t see that,” Kit was fuming as they approached.
“Kit, you’re not always right. You think you’re always right, but actually you’re not,” Amal snapped back.
Between them, perched on a bar stool and looking determinedly down the neck of his beer bottle, was Jin.
“Since when am I always right? You have to win at everything, Amal. It’s so fucking boing.”
“I’m boring, am I? Thanks.”
Kit groaned, a strangled, frustrated sound. “Yeah, you’re boring,” they drawled. “That’s exactly what I said.”
David cleared his throat, unlinking from Trixie to give the group a broad wave. “Uh, hi.”
Jin looked up and grinned, jumping off his stool to hug David. “Don’t you hate it when your parents fight?” he whispered in Trixie’s ear. She giggled, then stopped when she saw Amal’s stony face.
“OK, let’s not fight on a Friday night,” David said, pulling Kit in for a cuddle. They rolled their eyes, then let themselves be hugged by him, still glaring at Amal.
“I’m not—” Amal began, but Trixie cut her off, raising a hand to silence her.
“Tonight is our big ‘date night extravaganza’,” Trixie said. “and I’m fucking terrified. So can we calm down and, like, drink and laugh and stuff? Please?”
Amal shrugged. Jin and Trixie offered to go to the bar for the next round. As they pushed through the throng of revelling drinkers, Trixie asked, “How long has that been going on?”
“Since I got here 25 minutes ago, at least. Longer, probably. They were already yelling when I arrived. The whole bar was looking at them.”
“Great.”
“Maybe this whole broken-heart-group-Friday-date-rounds thing wasn’t such a good idea,” Jin mused, peering at the tap beers over the shoulder of an high-heeled woman in front of them at the bar.
“You know what, I actually think it’s good. Let them stop pretending everything’s, like, fine, when it’s so obviously not fine.”
“What’s a double murder between friends?” Jin joked darkly, darting through a gang of polo-shirted men to reach the bar first. “A jug of pacific ale and a bottle of rosé, thanks!”
Trixie spotted her date the moment he entered the bar, in large part because he stood at least a head and shoulders above the rest of the patrons. He was enormously, ridiculously tall, with hair so bizarrely blonde it glowed like a halo above his brow. He arrived fifteen minutes early and, on instinct, Trixie ducked down at their table in the corner of Josephine’s, trying to avoid his searching eyes.
David peered at her, tipping his head in curiosity. “Whatcha doing?”
“Shhh! Nothing,” Trixie whispered, though it was impossible to hear anyone more than one metre away from you in the crowded room. “Just act like we’re, like, you know, drinking and chatting.”
“We are drinking and chatting,” Kit observed, amused.
“Well, good! Stop looking at me,” Trixie waved her hands at the group, and they all began looking around the bar, grinning. “Stop! Stop it.”
“He was . . . blonde, I think?” asked Jin.
“Clocked him!” Kit pointed to Gavin, who was now standing uncomfortably at the bar, squinting at the collection of beer taps on the wall. “Oh my god, who is he, the BFG?”
“Put your hand down, please,” Trixie snarled, pushing at Kit’s arm, but too late – perhaps because he felt their eyes on him, he turned away from the wall and stared straight at Trixie. Trixie stared straight back at him. The rest of the gang stared from Gavin to Trixie, like attendees at a tense tennis match. Trixie and Kit lowered their arms, then Trixie raised hers again in timid greeting.
“Trixie!” Gavin’s voice was probably too loud for any room, Trixie reflected. It was certainly too loud for a cramped bar on a Friday night. Almost every patron turned to stare at this enormous man as he strode across the room toward Trixie, his thick arms outstretched. Trixie wanted to disappear.
“David,” David said, standing and holding his hand out to Gavin, attempting to break the awkwardness as he approached. “Friend of Trixie’s. Great to meet you, mate.”
Gavin grabbed David’s hand and wrung it enthusiastically. Trixie caught David and Jin exchanging grimaces once Gavin had released David from his intense grip. He stood over Trixie, towering above her like an epic shady tree in an otherwise unwooded park.
She stood slowly and held out her hand. She wasn’t quite sure what to do in a situation like this one, but a handshake seemed safest. “Hi, Gavin.”
Gavin pulled Trixie into a bone-crushing hug, lifting her feet off the ground just a little. Her arm, still extended for a handshake that would never come, was pressed uncomfortably between her breasts and his torso. She could hear Amal giggling, and her face reddened – not just because the sheer size of Gavin’s body around her seemed to have created its own climate for her trapped body. When, at last, he released her, she stepped away unsteadily.
“What are you drinking?” he asked. “Red? White? Bubbles? Let me get you something new. On me, of course. Put your wallet away. No! All of you! Wallets away.” He scanned the table, where an empty pitcher and an upturned bottle of prosecco in a melted ice bucket were still cluttered across its surface, then gave the group an enthusiastic thumbs up.
Once he had retreated to the bar, Trixie sat again, squashed between David and Amal, and moaned quietly. “Oh, my god.”
“Wow,” Kit observed, still watching him at the bar. “He’s really – he’s something.”
“He sure is,” Jin said, grinning.
David shrugged. “Look, he seems nice. Just—”
“Psychotic?” Amal offered.
“Enthusiastic,” corrected David. “Trix, go over to the bar. Hang with him.”
Trixie gave David an appalled look. “By myself? Are you fucking joking?”
“If he tries to murder you with another hug, we’ll intervene,” Jin said.
“Ha-ha.” Trixie looked around at her friends. They were all giving her encouraging smiles and nods. She sighed, knowing she was defeated, and hopped up. “Fine. Fine!”
“Good luck,” Amal said, chuckling.
Trixie flipped Amal the finger, then turned and shuffled off to the bar.
“What’re you drinking?” she asked Gavin, once she’d finally managed to catch up to him in the line.
“Actually,” Gavin said, “I don’t drink.”
“Oh!” Trixie frowned at him. “Why did we meet for drinks, then? Sorry.”
Gavin laughed. It sprayed out of his wide mouth like gunshots. A couple in front of Trixie turned around and gave him a strange look. “Ah, because how else do you hang out with a blind date on a Friday night?”
“Fair,” Trixie said.
“I can, like, go to a bar. I don’t mind if other people drink around me. I just . . . don’t.”
“OK. Cool.”
“Is that a problem?” He asked, raising a thick, blonde eyebrow.
“No! Of course not.” Trixie thought for a moment, then continued. “I just – I’ve never met anyone our age who doesn’t drink.”
“Yeah, most people think it’s pretty weird. But I reckon you’ll agree I’m a fair amount to handle as it is, without any booze in me.”
Trixie grinned. “OK, consider me warned.”
Gavin laughed again, staccato shots over the heads of the other punters. “So, what can I get you and your mates?”
“Ah, fuck ‘em,” Trixie said. “They can get their own drinks. But I’ll have a rosé. Shall I find us a table?”
“Nice.”
Punters filtered in and out of Bar Josephine in buzzing, booze-fuelled streams, each new group turning the dial on the volume a little more as the night wore on and the patrons got tipsier. Trixie drank slowly, trying not to lose her wits as she listened to Gavin talk – and he talked a lot – about his job, his friends, his mother and his dog, Cali, who he explained was “the best fucking thing on this whole planet”. They huddled together over his phone to watch videos of Cali rolling around in the dying grass out the back of his mother’s house, where he admitted, with slight discomfort, he still lived.
“She’s such a good lady, you know?” he explained, showing Trixie a photo of a comically small blonde woman with lashings of fake tan all over her body. “So it’s kind of like just living with a mate.”
“Right,” Trixie said, unconvinced. “I don’t know. I’d lose my mind if I had to live with my dad these days.”
“He a good guy?”
“The best,” said Trixie. “Just – don’t you feel like a kid again? Living back at home.”
“Not really.” Gavin shrugged. “We watch trashy TV together, talk about dates, cook dinner. It’s nice.”
Trixie told him about the bookshop, and about her little brother. Gavin, who worked for an insurance broker out in Keilor Downs, was fascinated by a job that didn’t go 9 to 5 every day. “What do you do when you’re not there?”
“Read. Lie around. I don’t know.” Trixie blushed. “Lots of people are like, that’s not a real job—”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Sure. But I’ve worked there for six years. Those people are like my family. I’ve been in that shop longer than I’ve lived in my current apartment, you know?”
“Yeah,” Gavin said, peering at Trixie. “Kinda. Do you want to be a writer or something?”
Trixie snorted. “Shit no. No thanks. Years of working on something to have some shitty sales assistant shove my book on a back shelf for three months until it gets pulped. Nah.”
Gavin looked bemused. “So . . .”
“Yeah?”
“So, like, what do you want to do?”
Trixie spread her arms out. “This. I’m a bookseller.”
“Right.” Gavin smiled politely and sipped his soda water.
Trixie pulled her phone out and scrolled absently. They had been talking for two and a half hours, and her face hurt from forcing a smile. Plus, the skirt she’d picked from Stef’s wardrobe was much too short to be worn while sitting on a high stool, and it had taken all her concentration to avoid flashing the whole of Josie’s every time she shifted in her seat.
“So . . .” Gavin said again. He looked at Trixie again, this time with far less interest. He gestured to her wine glass, still half full. “Do you want another one?”
“Um, no. That’s OK.”
“Cool! Cool.” Gavin looked down at his thick wrist, where a watch should be but wasn’t. “Look I’ve really got to get going if I’m going to get back home in any kind of time, hey.”
“Back to mum,” Trixie joked.
Gavin didn’t smile. Instead, he stood up, lurching over Trixie again like a humungous ghost gum. “I’ll – we should do this again.”
“Sure,” Trixie lied. “Definitely.”
“Nice to meet you.” He bent down and planted an awkward kiss on Trixie’s warm cheek. Then he shuffled to the door and exited with more haste than Trixie thought was really necessary.
Trixie’s phone buzzed in her hand. She opened the message, then looked over at the gang, who were still sitting in the far corner of Josie’s, watching Trixie intently.
@trixie: did he just leave???
Trixie tapped a reply, then skolled the rest of her tepid wine.
@gang: whoops.
The Broken-Heart Brigade is released via weekly e-newsletter instalments through Substack. It is supported by Matilda’s generous subscribers, Melbourne City of Literature and City of Melbourne.
The Broken-Heart Brigade is made in Naarm (Melbourne), on stolen Wurundjeri land that was never ceded. Matilda pays respect to the rightful Aboriginal owners of the land on which she lives and works, and hopes the readers of her writing do too.