Dinner

In Guangdong, seven girls in their twenties dip their hands into a vat of seafood seasoning. They idly chat about their supervisor, the son of the factory floor manager with a handsome and strong face. He had returned to China from Sydney in September, in a sort of business disgrace. He was probably too handsome for this job. He wore a mask of disconnect as he walked the factory floor, lambently ashamed and dark-stain sweating.

“Not as humid in Australia,” he tells one of the girls, patting sweat from his forehead with paper towel. They all push their fingers through the seasoning, taking fistfuls of it, letting it sift, swirling, mixing, swirling in the vat. The supervisor wasn’t at all ugly to them. He was beautiful.

Mild metal toxicity from contaminated industrial salts sends them all a little crazy sometimes.

•

E nibbles the corner of his sandwich as I try to roll through my YouTube explore faster than he can notice it looks like this:

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎Living with Childhood Alzheimer's
‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎Treating Burn Victims - A&E
‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎Most Intense Family Feuds from Series One | Teen Mom UK
‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎On track to becoming the world’s heaviest person! - My 600 lb Life

“What do you want to watch?” I ask E.

“You need to slow down,” he huffs. “I can’t see.”

I hope he dies, scrolling faster than his eyes could ever track. E lives in a shed in the back of Mary’s garden. At night he does the dishes for her family and walks the dog. He isn’t overly smart or disciplined. He’s no more attractive than any of the men I work with. He cleans dishes well and sometimes says things that are interesting. It’s end times.

I reach the bottom of YouTube. I can’t scroll any further. Outside, it’s end times. I’ve never been here before. Outside everything is underwater. I refresh the page and start again.

“Bookmark that one,” I say. We are in love, I look at him with love.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎Why I Eat Like A Man … To Look Like A Woman.

“You should bookmark that one.”

We are planning on starting a family in the next few years. Today, I interviewed for a receptionist job at the psychiatrist clinic near my high school. When I walked in, no one looked at me.

“Hi,” I say. Desk girl asks me how she can help. I tell her I have an appointment with Dr. Wood.

Dr. Friendship, Dr. Foodcourt. Dr. Fix My Body, My Chest Doesn’t Feel Right. She looks at me. She follows the medical emergency protocol. She actually works for a temp agency, but the psychiatrist had given her a sheet detailing when and how to deal with a medical emergency. “Realistically, you will have to do this. At least once,” he told her.

The ambulance comes to take me to the hospital.

“Sorry I’m so sick,” I say to the paramedic.

“It’s no big deal,” he says. Yeah, it’s no big deal.

“And I hope you don’t mind,” he says, “But I’ve written my number on your arm. When you get better, you give me a call. I’ll take you out to dinner. Just make sure they don’t wash it off at the hospital.”

“Hi,” I say, “I’m here about the receptionist position.”

I hope I get the job. Walking home, having dissolved two Valium under my tongue and having blotted the pooling sweat under my arms with paper towel, both in the clinic bathroom and both maybe having made no difference, I lift my chin up to the sun. I feel briefly hot and violent. I let this gun of a thing slip in, quick, slot right into me, then trickle down my legs and out my toes.

In the afternoon, I make E watch me in the mirror. I sit my spine down against my hips, my pelvis forward. “You are lucky,” I say to him and, even though he’s on his phone, I illustrate my point by letting my hands hold the shape of lumps of fat. “I’m all curved for internal protection.”

E looks up from his phone. He looks stupid. He is stupid. “Well," he says, “I’m a boy.”

“Barely,” I say. He looks sad or something. I think about killing him. “I, personally, have low sexual dimorphism,” I say. He looks stupid. We are in love. But sometimes I think about fighting him. Whatever.

“I think you also have low sexual dimorphism, Eli,” I say, and sit back on the shed floor. I can feel cold air coming through the gaps in the floorboards. The heater is on, probably at about 30°C, but it doesn't properly work. It makes you sweaty but not warm. If we leave it on all day, we do, it uses about $15 worth of electricity; I carry on folding laundry.

“That’s not true,” E says, “I’m made perfect.” He’s chewing on the cork coaster I keep on the bedside table. “I’m perfect for fighting bandits, dirty crooks. I have a good jawline and nice arms.”

He is speaking with cork in his mouth. I can see teeth marks in the coaster. You annoy me so bad, I think. I count all his fingers, all his toes. If I could, I think, if I were strong enough, I would like to hurt you.

We are in love. We eventually decide on a video. We lie there together, sweating, lazily melting into one perfect person that is part me, part you, and part someone else.

•

He’s up after dinner, quiet and snowed in. We had chicken. Mary’s dad is asleep on the couch. He’ll get up later in the night, silent between the couch and the kitchen, feeling heavy, dead, stupid, ordinary, complete, feeling pregnant and unhappy, opening the fridge, the pantry, closing the fridge, opening the drawers, opening the fridge again, resenting me probably, looking for a knife, closing the fridge, opening, realising, closing, thinking about me, thinking about Mary, opening, hearing it beep, hating me, realising, beep, closing it, realising, chewing, looking over here, looking over here for a knife, checking, realising, beeping, opening, realising, realising.

I’ll be up later. I’m a tuna fish, a forever teenage cutter now idling into ambient ideation. I’ll be up later too. I’m someone who is running out of time and thinking that, finally, all could be immortal under algae, metal, and snow.

____
Tallulah Papaellinas lives in Melbourne, Australia. This is her first publication.