Beside me, Joshua grimaces. ‘Yeah. I know.’
The inside is something of a cross between a country pub my family visited once, and the house of a hoarder with eighteen cats that I saw on TV at Elsie’s. It’s jammed with ill-assorted furniture and giant speakers that are vibrating with the force of the music. It’s also wall-to-wall with yelling, laughing, gesticulating people, who all look like they dressed haphazardly in the dark. There seems to be a preponderance of tattoos, and unnaturally coloured hair, and beards.
I hug my jacket around me, unaccountably glad I picked my knee-length coat, even though it’s as humid as a greenhouse in here. Fashion is confusing, but the plain green dress I’m wearing is unmistakably out of place. It’s like that time I showed up at the Nayers’ wedding anniversary wearing jeans and a sweatshirt Raj gave me for my birthday. The sweatshirt featured the slogan ‘fractions speak louder than nerds’. For a long time I didn’t know what I had done wrong, only that I suffered through the night fielding brutal looks from various Indian aunts, with that horrible lingering feeling of having made a faux pas that I could have avoided by staying at home.
People wave at Joshua. He says hello to a few guys, who do that back slap thing I’ve seen boys do. I’ve never pictured Joshua as a back-slapping, fist-bumping guy guy. It’s a little bit troubling that I’ve managed to miss this component of his character.
He steers me through the whirlwind of people and smoke, the fingertips of one hand lightly on my back. I feel predictably queasy, like my insides are stretched too tight beneath my skin; it’s taking every stress-response technique in my book to keep me from fleeing.
Joshua stops every few moments to shake hands or kiss someone on the cheek, but I can see in my peripheral vision that he is keeping one eye on me. He introduces me to everyone but doesn’t linger, always keeping us moving, that hand never straying from my back. Inadvertently, I find myself storing names and faces alongside random bits of trivia, but mostly, I can’t tear my eyes away from Joshua.
The silent, ghost-like boy from St Augustine’s is totally in his element here, swarming in a sea of goodwill and friends. He smiles warmly at everyone, and people smile warmly at him; he never looks lost for something to say. This person could never be invisible in the back of a classroom. This Joshua stands out, like a cosmic spotlight is following him. I wonder how I ever saw otherwise.
He touches my elbow and points across the room to a messy-haired boy who’s attempting to manoeuvre another huge speaker out from behind the bar. ‘That’s Jasper. This is his place,’ he says near my ear. ‘He’s pretty cool, though he can come across a bit more … aggressive than he actually is. I should warn you, if this is gonna end up being one of his all-nighters, he will be throwing furniture off the second storey at some stage.’ I look up at Joshua in alarm, but his face just looks amused. ‘Just don’t bring up anything to do with Leonard Cohen. Or Bill Callahan, or Nick Cave,’ he says. ‘Actually, maybe just avoid talking music with him if you want to escape with your sanity intact.’
‘I’ll keep that in mind. Joshua, how the hell do you know all these people?’
He shrugs. ‘Around. Here and there. Work and, you know. Places.’ He grins.
A giant with more arm tattoos than I have ever seen grabs Joshua around the neck in a chokehold and plants a noisy, wet kiss on his cheek. I’m guessing this is an example of beer-fuelled party affection, and probably not unusual for this group. Though I really want to hand him a tissue for the shiny spot of lipstick that she has left on his face.
‘Hello, Amy,’ he says through gritted teeth. ‘Um, Sophia, this is Amy, my boss.’ He extricates himself and wipes the back of his hand pointedly across his cheek.
‘Well hey there,’ she says. She looks back and forth between Joshua and me, blue hair bouncing across the shoulders of a hairy fur coat. Then she smiles at me. It’s a kinder sort of smile than I expected from someone so blustery. I smile back tentatively.
‘So how goes it, Ames?’ Joshua says. He straightens out his shirt and angles his body a little in front of me.
‘Just dandy,’ she replies. ‘Oh, hey, I almost forgot to tell you, I sold that Walt Sheppard box today – that’s this crazy expensive collectable piece that’s been gathering dust in the display cabinet,’ she says to me. ‘Yeah, some chick with a Sheppard obsession actually paid the whole fifteen hundred for it –’
She freezes, her beer bottle dangling over Joshua’s shoulder. It takes me a second to register that the music has changed from something with crashing cymbals and wailing guy vocals, to soft violins and wailing girl vocals.
‘What?’ Joshua says as he attempts to remove himself, again, from her arms.
‘Nothing. I just … like this song. Jesus, I think I told him that.’
She stares, stone-faced, across the room. Messy-haired guy, the future furniture-thrower, gives her a wave before turning back to a wall of records. ‘Like, what’s Jasper’s problem?’ Amy growls.
Joshua gives me a pained look. ‘I dunno, Amy,’ he says. ‘It’s a mystery. But you know what? You could always just cross this little ol’ room and ask him.’
Amy all but bares her teeth. ‘I’m gonna get drunk,’ she mutters. ‘Nice meeting you, chick,’ she says before vanishing into the dark.
‘Do I want to ask what that was about?’
Joshua shakes his head. ‘It’s complicated. Actually, you know what? It really isn’t.’ He gestures to Jasper and then nods his head at Amy’s retreating back. ‘Those two? They’re stubborn idiots.’
Before I can ask any follow-up questions, something catches his eye across the room. He straightens, tucking his hair back and doing that wiggly shoulder move that I have come to recognise means he is bracing himself.
‘Hey hey!’ a melodic voice calls out. ‘You’re here!’
A girl shoves her way towards us, waving madly. She’s wearing a silky red dress with a billowy skirt, and a pair of heavy purple boots that everything in my limited fashion vocabulary tells me should not be worn with a dress.
‘Hey, Camilla,’ Joshua says. He gives her a hug. ‘Yeah, we made it.’
I can tell right away that she’s one of those bubbly, confident girls, the ones who instantly make my skin feel all clumsy and askew. The type of girls I have gone out of my way to avoid since I was old enough to realise how they see me, the ones who give each other smug side-eyes when I say something weird, or call me ‘cute’ in a way that even I know is supposed to be patronising. I can only imagine the things Elsie would have to say about this shiny, smiley girl.