Not Okay

I wandered outside the surf club to escape Ruby's presence and find Coral.

The DJ's wedding music wafted in my ears. My eyes adjusted to the dark. I felt anxious, wondering about my bestie. I wanted to check; she was okay.

Is Coral okay, circulated in my head.

I found her, and relief flooded me.

She chatted, half circled by two guys, all three smoking, near the surf club's flagpole.

I stooped under the floodlights against the outside wall.

A cigarette glowed between her lips.

Damn, Granville and her bad habit!

Coral held the stub as she came over to me.

My back straightened, and I released my hands from deep inside my trouser pockets.

"I'm staying. It would be best if you went home," she said, touching my arm.

She butted the nicotine stump in the metal ash pan attached to the wall.

"Coral," I started, wilting.

I stopped, unsure what I intended to say.

"Go home," she urged softly, "I'll be fine."

I sidled inside.

I saw the back of Coral's elegant, silvery dress through the glass doors.

My bestie's shapely body was flanked by the shadows of two guys leaning into her space under the high outside floodlights.

After slapping my forehead, I glanced hunting Ruby on the dance floor; she wasn't there.

One of the venue staff passed me, heading to the kitchen.

Stalling them with an outstretched arm, I said, " A cab! Where can I ring for a cab?"

Gliding on, they pointed to the bar.

Leaning on the bar, I drank a beer alone until the bartender said,' Sir, your taxi has arrived."

I exited through the double glass doors.

No Coral left or right. I walked along the entrance path, past the flagpole, to my waiting taxi.

Under the pathway lights, I saw the flagpole rope. At its end, a lumpy, awful knot.

Sailor Ruby would want to fix it.

I mused in the taxi going home; weddings and watchful guys don't tie lover's knots. 

My overriding thought: I hoped my bestie knew what she was doing, staying at the surf club.

I wanted her, okay? Okay, with the world. Coral, okay, within herself.

I recall mid-82 when my best friend finally shared she was not okay.

Coral had been a passenger on the Granville train, involved in the country's worst rail disaster in 1977. Previously, she had never spoken about it to anyone.

Equally, I never spoke about Ruby and Paris to any soul. My life drifted as a mopey single. I recollect being at work when the phone rang about a year after the wedding.

"Deviser's Consultancy. Luke Moore speaking: How can I be of assistance?"

"It depends on whether you have finished daydreaming behind your desk."

I heard Coral's soft signature titter. She grasped my listlessness beyond work. As usual, she was too kind to press my buttons seeking the cause— even if she knew or suspected Ruby.

"I'm busy, you too," as I returned to the pile of spec plans on my desk.

It would be a late finish tonight. Late finishes never bothered me.

"No, not tonight. Never too busy for a friend."

The blueprints on my desk demanded my attention.

"What's your plan?" half-hearted as I studied a multi-storey house design.

"Oh, it's good," enthused Coral.

She gave a keen, short chuckle.

"There's a Twentieth Century Masters, erotic art exhibition. I have two complimentary tickets to the private viewing. Pick you up at seven!"

She hung up fast. She denied me the chance to offer a meaningless excuse. Coral organised me! She would collect me at work and deny me the opportunity to weasel out.

I set my watch alarm to meet her in front of my workplace at seven. I concentrated on the blueprints spread across my large desk. Time and my life passed in the next few hours, poring over the shape of other people's dreams—the home of someone else's future.

Coral arrived punctually at seven o'clock. My watch alarm rang as she approached through my office's glass partitioning.

"How did you get into the building!" I exclaimed.

She wore a mustard yellow dress, very fetching. An emerald green clutch purse tucked under her arm made me look straight into her eyes.

"The sweet security guy on the ground floor. He saw me waiting outside the door. He let me in."

She took in at a glance I hadn't stopped working.

"Come on," she charged, "leave it."

I put my head over my work and studied the basement spec before me. Coral moved around to my side of the desk. The bright office lights formed a halo around her golden locks.

She coaxed, "The taxi I came in is waiting downstairs. Let's go and share an evening."

I left the building plan spread and grabbed my coat. Coral turned to go, then halted. Her eyes developed a keen interest as she moved to check out a framed print on my wall.

"New pic," as she explored the print.

Yikes, I registered; it was six months since Coral, and I last shared an evening coffee on a different night when she unexpectedly turned up at my office door.

As she scrutinised the print, I told myself to put some effort into this friendship. 

The photo-print Coral scrutinised I purchased three months prior. It dominated a wall—a black and white framed photograph of Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater.

"So inspiring, a house built over a tumbling mountain stream, it should happen more," offered a contemplative Coral.

I replied, "I like the fixed living and the sense of movement through it," revealing my marvel at nature and architecture, more than combined, a perfect binding.

Side by side, we shared it as it congenially invited until I broke her meditation.

"The taxi!" I urged.

"Whoops!" and she laughed.

"Poor cabbie," she added, "and the meter is running. We better skedaddle."

And we did like we were youngsters. We raced down the stairs and scampered across the ground-floor foyer of the office complex. Past the security desk with a whipped double wave. Out the front doors where, we piled into the cab's back seat. I caught my breath. Coral managed to do the same and tell the cabbie where to take us.

"Sorry if I made us late," I apologised, leaving the cab after paying the driver outside the gallery.

"Fashionably," replied my bestie, unconcerned.

Coral smiled as she opened her fancy clutch purse and handed me the gallery tickets. We entered the vast foyer of the exhibition space and its canapés and cocktails. We admitted jointly to skipping dinner, so the appetisers were moreish and filling. Coral and I blended into the other milling guests, in our element, as a pair of highbrow culture junkies.

After nibbles, we entered the first of the gallery showrooms. Coral purchased the exhibition catalogue to help interpret the works.

She raved excitedly over artists, and I realised I missed her.

The artworks engrossed and provoked. Some, in particular, provided the opportunity for Coral to get stoked. Her thesis artist, Schiele, had works represented in the exhibition. We perused two ink-on-paper works, hung side-by-side—one of a male masturbating and the other of a female doing the same. The woman spread naked except for a pair of shoes. We both exclaimed we loved the boots!

She effused as she explained how Schiele's erotic works were ahead of his time, "His works pose questions about everyone's sexuality."

I let her comment pass as I preferred to watch the bounce in her movement and through her hair as we left gallery one. My sexual yearnings post-Ruby lay desensitised.

In the following gallery, a painting caught our mutual attention. We analysed the large canvas, Double Nude Portrait: The Artist and his Second Wife [The leg of mutton nude] by Stanley Spencer.

"He makes you think," Coral quavered, "The leg of mutton makes his and his wife's genitals raw."

I agreed, "Nothing hidden."

"Yet," Coral pointed out after perusing the catalogue, "They are hiding. They never had sex."

I thought of the painting as downcast as I followed Spencer's eyes. He looked at her without touching his wife's naked, splayed body.

Unexpectedly, my lively Coral switched off. She usually lavished words on artwork. I half-turned. Coral's face tensed and blanched a ghastly pasty pale.

"Are you okay?"

Knowing she was not okay.

"No," she managed in a shaken voice.

"What is it?"

I sensed the painting triggered a gnawing ache. Her brow wrinkled.

So not, Coral.

"The raw gloom," she gasped, "It messed my head. That lump of meat took me to—"

Her arms hung loosely at her sides. One hand had a flimsy grasp on the catalogue, and the other dangled her clutch purse. I ventured Coral referenced her unspoken train crash experience.

Like a sombre news broadcast, her voice started eerie, "Crushed bodies - they crowd my mind, unannounced."

Her eyes stayed fixed on the leg of mutton.

"Let's move to another artwork," I urged.

I touched her arm to provide comfort. Coral held her ground, fixed like a statue. I stepped away. Coral stood alone in her hurting.

I stepped back to her. My eyes quizzed her face. She gave me nothing to support her as her eyes scanned the gallery. I scouted the room, desperate to support her. I saw a gallery, paintings and patrons. Nonplussed, I stalled.

Finally, Coral shuffled in a weary drop onto the square, flat bench in the gallery's centre. I remained in front of the Spencer artwork, my back to it.

Coral carefully laid down the catalogue and placed her clutch on top of it beside her at the edge of the bench. Listless, she motioned for my company. I sat and provided my shoulder; she leaned into it, her face drained.

Her legs closed tight at her knees distracted me towards her mustard yellow dress high on her thighs. The dress cinched tighter at her waist. It shaped open across her spread breasts, revealing her breastbone. Her blemish-free skin looked like she had stepped out of a milk bath. Yet her face remained ashen.

My eyes roved. Her shoulder straps lined delicately, holding her dress where she wanted it. Coral's shoes were glossy white and short-heeled. Her sweeping locks shone butterscotch-hued under the high lighting. I lingered on her fashion detail when her need appealed deeper. She wasn't looking at me, so I wasn't caught out. Coral folded her arms under her bosom.

"Granville," I pressed, risking the word for the first time with my best friend.

She squeezed a raspy "Yes."