#2: Lots of vodka = great plan
It wasn’t until well after midnight that Trixie realised how much red wax her tapered candles had dripped on the white tablecloth. The pattern resembled the artful blood spatter in a noir horror film, and Trixie thought the look reflected her mood acutely: bloodthirsty, hardened by the late hour and, perhaps, a little filthy.
The vodka was long gone, into six bellies along with a good quantity of beer, prosecco and a questionable blackcurrant liqueur, which Trixie had retrieved from her secret space in the laundry cupboard (where she kept things Stef would undoubtedly throw away during a cleaning raid if she found them). The Valentine’s Day meal Trixie had so meticulously made for two was also gone, picked apart at the dining table by six sets of ravenous fingers during a low-energy drinks and durries break. There was no more miso eggplant, no more sesame salmon and soba noodle salad. And the love-heart cupcakes Trixie had decorated with great care – and a lot of spilled sprinkles – had been devoured by an appreciative (though unintended) audience. The table and kitchen countertop were now littered with scrunched red patty pans, bearing the sticky residue of icing and cake crumbs.
And now, though it was close to 1 a.m., talk had turned to the possibility of going out. Amal was busy, nose to screen, trying to locate a group she had seen on her Stories who were partying at Franny’s; while Jin was sussing out the vibe of a house party over in Pascoe Vale, which he worried – repeatedly, and at increasing decibels – was “winding down”. Kit was ignoring them all, rolling a cigarette out on the balcony.
But Stef and David, flushed with alcohol and the lingering heat of the day, were stuck to Trixie like glue. As she leaned forward to pick at the wax coagulating on the tablecloth, they leaned with her, as if taking in breath collectively.
“Please,” Trixie said. “I’m fine. You don’t need to baby me.”
“We’re not babying, Trix,” Stef insisted, chewing her broad bottom lip. “Well—”
“You don’t seem very fine,” said David.
Stef gave him a stern look. David’s gruff, matter-of-fact sensibility had always wound Stef up, because of how it grated against her unfailing determination to be optimistic. “You seem very fine,” she said. “We’re just being . . . present.”
“Could you be present with some more alcohol?” Trixie replied, only half-joking. Her head was already spinning, but she didn’t feel nearly brassy or fearless enough to face the world – especially not at Franny’s on a Friday, which she could guess was the group’s next location-of-choice.
“I – well . . .” Stef gave Trixie a guilty look. “Now, don’t say anything about this. But I might have—”
She stood up abruptly and swept out of the room. David watched her go, bemused. “Does she actually ever finish a thought?”
“Sometimes,” Trixie replied, grinning.
A minute or so later, Stef returned, cradling a squat bottle full of clear liquid. Trixie looked for the label – handwritten – and read “30mL x 33”. “Stefanie Galanos, you have been holding out on me!”
“Oh, stop it!” Stef said, waving away Trixie’s laughter. “I’ve just been saving it for a . . . well, for a pertinent moment.”
“You hoarder,” Trixie teased. “What else do you have squirreled away from me?”
“I told you not to say anything,” Stef said, blushing. “Now, shut up, or I’ll put it away.”
Trixie glanced over at David and mimed locking her lips. He nodded gravely.
“Good!” said Stef. She collected their glasses and measured out short, even shots of the stuff.
The sharp scent of it caught Trixie’s throat, so strong it nearly knocked her to the floor. “Fuck! What is it – paint stripper?”
“It’s my theía’s suoma, actually. But if you think you can’t hack it—”
“We can hack it,” David protested.
“You tell Theía Eleni she is a bad, bad woman for making this,” Trixie said, accepting her glass back from Stef.
Now Trixie knew what all those crates of figs down the back of Eleni’s house were for. Every time they’d visited the cramped, red-brick cottage in Bundoora – to use Eleni’s hill’s hoist, or to take advantage of her doomsday-prepper quantities of frozen meals, available for family to pilfer – she’d noticed piles of the fragrant fruits stocked behind the shed, waiting.
“Oh, just you wait!”
The three of them clinked their glasses, then knocked it back. David and Trixie spluttered and heaved hot air over the table, halfway choking and laughing. Stef watched them smugly, having already finished her glass and poured herself another.
“OK, OK,” Trixie coughed. “OK. Ow.”
“I told you,” said Stef.
“Yum, though.”
“Very yum,” David agreed.
After much discussion and a bit of scuffling from the living room, Kit, Amal and Jin returned to the kitchen, looking perturbed.
“It’s off!” Amal huffed. She slumped back down at the table, and her chair let out a long, low sigh as the lino padding contracted to accommodate her.
“What is?” Stef asked, collecting more glasses to fill with the extraordinary fig liquid.
“All of it. The party. Franny’s. Anything.”
Kit tsk-ed down at their drink. “Who cares? It’s just a night out.”
Amal pouted. “I wanted to dance.”
“You wanted to have a pash,” Jin said.
“So what?”
Trixie laughed. Already she felt warmer, full of more fight than she had when they’d all arrived hours ago. Though perhaps that was just Theía Eleni’s suoma. “We can dance here,” she said. “You can play as much Lizzo as you like.”
Amal bounced over to the speakers, pulling her phone out. As she did, Kit called after her, “No Angel Olsen, Amal! You can’t dance to Angel Olsen.”
As the thrump of Coconut Oil rattled the flat, Jin put his hand over Trixie’s. “How are you, bub?”
“Oh, fine!” Trixie said, over-bright.
“She’s not,” David replied.
“David!” Stef shook her head. “She’s fine,” Stef told Jin. “We’re not to baby her.”
Jin grinned at Trixie. “Ah, I see.”
“Really, I’m OK,” Trxie insisted. “You know, he’s been a dickhead for weeks. I kind of had this feeling . . .” She trailed off, then gestured around the kitchen. “I guess that’s why I did all this.”
The gang looked at her, as one, their heads dipped to their shoulders, eyes wide and pitying.
“OK! Let’s not talk about it anymore.” Trixie glanced at the little green clock on the microwave: 2.36 a.m. “New day, new . . . no-Lukas talk.”
“You know,” Amal said, shimmying over to the table again, as “Worship” ticked over to “Phone” on the amp, “I was thinking in the car, this is the first time all of us have been, like, alone.”
“What a fucking depressing thought,” Kit said.
Amal rolled her eyes at them. “I mean, not alone alone. Like, single. We haven’t all been single at the same time for years. Maybe even ever.”
“This is true . . .” Jin said. His face was scrunched in its usual reflective expression as he considered this.
“So?”
Amal picked up David’s hands, dancing into his lap. “So, David, that’s interesting!”
“I don’t know that it is,” said Kit.
“It’s kind of interesting,” Stef said.
Trixie nodded, sipping her drink. “It’s something, for sure.”
She considered them all, single together, at last. No more plus-ones. No more date nights. And, most compelling of all, to Trixie at least: no more obligations. Now it was just the six of them.
“Kit, you just think it’s boring because you think everything’s boring,” Amal was sneering.
“Now, don’t fight” Jin said, holding up his hands. “I thought we were talking about our newfound independence, not our past romantic indiscretions.”
Kit and Amal glared at each other. And Trixie thought, really, there must be some lingering obligation, some something, between the two of them. After such a long time together – nearly a decade, since school – Kit and Amal’s break up was still fresh in all their minds, no matter how much the pair had wished to forget it. It had been just six weeks earlier, after all, and like an eerily amicable parents’ divorce.
“OK,” Kit said, forcing calm, “we’re all single. That’s interesting. And?”
“And,” Amal went on, “shouldn’t we do something? Like, something fun. A fun single thing.”
“An orgy,” Trixie said soberly.
“Ha-ha.” Amal rolled her eyes. “I mean, what about, like, an agreement. Just that we’ll make the most of it all. That we won’t feel sorry for ourselves.”
“That we’ll go dancing every Friday,” David teased.
“Maybe!” Amal grinned. “Just . . . I mean. Why not? How long before we’re all forced back into boring monogamy and silly crushes and blah love drama?”
“Kind of like a singles cult,” Kit said. Though dry, they appeared to be coming around to the idea.
“I am genuinely keen for this.” Jin held up his glass, now empty. “I’d say let’s cheers on it, but it’s bad luck to cheers on an empty.”
“Hold on!” Stef picked up her bottle and refilled all their glasses. The sting of the suoma filled the room, filled their chests. “But do we need rules?”
“Stef!” Amal groaned. “Not everything needs rules.”
“A good pact needs rules, Amal.”
“One rule,” David said. “You can have one.”
“OK.” Stef, glass already charged, cocked her head, thinking. “OK! How about: no broken hearts, no moping, just have fun?”
“Stef, that’s like three rules,” said Kit.
“But I like it.” The gang looked at Trixie, and she shrugged. “I’m feeling it. No more broken hearts; no more moping. Just have fun.”
“Right!” Amal rammed her glass into Trixie’s, and liquid splashed and sloshed from one to the other. The rest joined in: Stef, Jin, David and, at last, Kit. “The Broken-Hearted . . . Gang?”
“Uh-uh. Not gang,” said Trixie.
“Team?” Jin suggested.
David smiled, and the last burning candle spat more wax over the table. “We’ll work it out.”
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 the 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.