Bliss

looking up. She squeezed his hand. She squeezed it hard.

When the car stopped at the next light she opened the door and got out. She walked back the way they had come, against the traffic.

When the lights changed, Bettina hesitated. The cars behind tooted, first one, then all of them. She was watching Harry, to see what he wanted. But he sat there stunned, not moving, and finally she applied her foot to the accelerator, very slowly, and when she moved off he did not protest. Thank Christ, she thought, one less complication.

But after a while he said: 'She was right. I broke my promise.'

There was nothing to say to that. All Bettina could ask was the question that had been in her mind since she met the girl. She knew it was the wrong question even when she was half-way through it.

'Was that smell,' she asked, 'was it marihuana?'

'It was Sandalwood Oil,' he said at last.

'I always thought that smell was marihuana.'

'Well it's fucking well not marihuana.'

She was surprised by his tone. She looked into the rear-view mirror.

'You think I'm a creep, don't you?'

'No,' he said tiredly, 'I don't.'

'You think I'm a conniving bitch?'

'No.' He wasn't even interested in the conversation any more. He wasn't interested in Bettina's projections.

Projections!

Even the way he thought belonged to Honey Barbara. He had never known the word before he met her. He had broken his promise. She had walked out the door. He was full of shit. He should have just run away, run away with her.

'Harry, I'm not a bad person.'

'Bettina, I don't give a fuck if you are.'

'But I'm not.'

'Alright, you're not.'

'We had to lock you up.'

'Thank you.' He had decided how to find Honey Barbara. She would go to the house where Damian lived. He had memorized the address. Not the street number, but the name of the street.

'Harry, will you look at my ads?'

'Yes,' he said. 'Yes, I will look at your ads.'

'Harry, we're going to kill them.'

'Good.'

He wondered how bad the ads would be.

'Do you want me to go back and find... Barbara?'

'Thank you,' he said, sitting forward, 'thank you.'

As she turned the car Bettina knew that no one would understand her, turning around to look for the woman her husband liked fucking. But no one ever did understand that Bettina would sacrifice everything for this deal. They had never understood her ambition, not her bug-eyed father, not her languid husband, not even Joel had understood what it meant to her. No one later on would understand either. They would never know what weight she had put on it. They never saw an advertisement the way she did, nor did they have her glittering visions of capitalism which she merely called by the pet name of New York.

She would rather not have the complication of Harry's girl, but it was only a detail so she did not mind looking for her either. She had decided not to be jealous and when she had decided something like that she always had the strength to stick to it. She could isolate whole areas of the brain and mentally amputate whole organs if that was what was needed to achieve what she wanted.

She had decided she did not want to fuck Harry or Joel. She had decided that she had no need to fuck anybody. She did not fuck Harry because it was now impossible, and Joel because he was too mediocre to consider, and no one else because life would become too complicated and it would only get in the way. So she had disconnected herself, and it was detectable already in the way she kissed Harry and even in the way she walked: the signs of celibacy, subtle, delicate, would show themselves to people who shook her hand or passed her in the street.

She did not mind looking for the girl. Which is not to say that she was totally free of jealousy or that she wasn't hurt by Harry’s anger and irritation. But as she prowled up and down the factory-lined streets, while Harry questioned rows of workmen having sandwiches on the footpath, she was as conscientious as she could be. In the end, however, she could not stop herself from suggesting they give up and go home. It wasn't that she was frightened of finding Honey Barbara, or even that she was bored.

She just wanted to show Harry her ads.

Part Five. Drunk in Palm Avenue

The house was in disarray. Harry had always liked it neat: the grass trim, the floors polished, the magazines in their rack, but today he was pleased to see it looking different. At least there was some external sign of change. There was a mattress on the floor in the living room (Joel – he won't go home) and another upstairs folded against the wall (friend of Lucy's). There were empty tins everywhere and, on the front lawn, an ancient Cadillac with a crumpled tail fin (some nonsense Lucy's going on with: tell her to shift it). The back garden was high with weeds (had to fire the gardener) and Bettina glowed.

She was a hot-shot.

'Let me show you ads,' she said. 'Let me show you ads.'

'Where do I sleep?' he asked, looking around the blanket-strewn living room.

'You have our old room.'

'What about you?'

'Don't worry, don't worry, it'll be alright. Come on, Harry, look at my ads.'

He sat down at the table, his heart heavy with thoughts of Honey Barbara, while his wife stood up near the fireplace and presented him with some forty comped-up magazine advertisements.

A comped-up ad is not a final ad. It is, technically, a rough. It is the sort of rough that is done when a client has no imagination or, more often, when the person doing the ad is too much in love with it to show it in any way that is really rough and does everything to make it appear finished, taking 'rough' photography and getting colour prints, ordering headline type and sticking down body copy in the exact type face (if not the correct words), carefully cut to give the appearance of the final paragraphs. And over all of this is placed a cell overlay, so that a comp ad, framed with white, mounted on heavy board, covered with its glistening cell overlay, looks more precious to its maker than it ever will again.

But as Bettina said, presenting her work to Harry, 'It's only a rough.'

For a moment Harry forgot his pain. 'Who did these?'

'I did. I told you.'

'I mean, who did the art direction?'

'I did it all. I wrote them. I laid them out. I ordered the type.'

He was silent for a long time, rubbing his moustache.

Bettina stood at the end of the table, holding an ad upright.

'You did it all?'

'Yes,' she said.

'Oh Bettina,' he said, 'I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.'

She had dreamed of this moment for years and still she was shocked to hear the pain and remorse in her husband's voice. He was like a dead man's friend speaking to the dead man's widow.

She did not need to ask him why he was sorry. It was damned right that he be sorry. But it was shocking.