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and she comes to me in our kitchen.
    Seductively.
    It’s musty and half-dark. Sweaty. “Hello, Cameron.” She keeps coming, and she pulls a chair over to sit right opposite me. Our knees touch — that’s
how close she comes to me. Her smile is one of definite something. Danger? Lust? Eroticism?
    How can I dream this now?
    Tonight?
    After what’s been happening lately?
    I’ve gotta be kidding me.
    Is this a test?
    Well, whatever it is, she leans closer and licks her lips. Her swimsuit is a bikini and it’s yellow and it shows a whole lot of her. Can you believe this? She lets one of her fingers touch my neck and she strokes her way down with it, and her fingernail is just light enough not to scratch. It’s smooth, and something tells me to make the most of it, to never let her stop. Then something else screams silently somewhere in my feet that I must tell her to stop. It rises.
    She’s on me.
    Breathing.
    I smell her perfume and feel the soft thrill of her hair.
    Her hands undress me and her mouth takes me.
    I feel it.
    Gathering.
    Pushing.
    Against me.
    She falls, letting her teeth touch the skin of my throat. She kisses, long, with her tongue touching —
    I jump.
    “What?”
    I’m standing.
    “What?” she asks. Ohh …
    “I can’t.” I hold her hand to tell her the truth. “I can’t. I just can
    “Why not?”
    Her eyes are fire-blue and I almost allow her to go on as she begins stroking my stomach and searching for the rest of me. I stop her, just in time, and I wonder how I do it.
    I turn away and answer her.
    “I’ve got someone real. Someone who isn’t just —”
    “Just what?”
    Truth: “Something I only lust for.” “Is that all I am? A thing?”
    “Yes,” and I see her change. She is ghost-like, and when I reach out to touch her, my hand goes through. “See,” I explain, “look at me. A guy like me can’t really touch someone like you. It’s just the way it is.”
    When she disappears completely, I understand that my reality isn’t the catalog girl or school beauty queen or anyone like that. My reality is the real girl on her left.
    On the table, the swimsuit model has left her purse. I go to pick it up, but I don’t open it for fear of it blowing up in my face.
    The beauty queen, I long for.
    The real girl, I long to please.
    Dream complete.

CHAPTER 6
     
    Remember when I said how I liked watching Sarah and Bruce come up the street that Sundaynight?
    Well, during the week that all seemed to change.
    There was also another change, because Steve, who normally didn’t get home from his office job until about eight at night, was home too. The reason for this was that the previous day at football, he’d turned on his ankle. It was nothing serious, he’d said, but on the Monday morning, his ankle was the size of a shot-put ball. The doctor had ruled him out for six weeks because of ligament damage.
    “But I’ll be back in a month, you watch.”
    He sat on the floor with his foot raised on some pillows and his crutches next to him. He would be stranded at home for a fortnight, after his boss gave him half of his holiday early. This drove Steve mad, not only because he would miss some of his holiday in summer, but because he hated just sitting around.
    His somber mood sure didn’t help things in the lounge room between Sarah and Bruce.
    On the couch on Tuesday, rather than going at it like they normally did, they both seemed to be glued down by tension.
    “Smell this pillow,” Rube instructed me at one point as I watched them while trying not to. “Why?” “t stinks.”
    “I don’t feel like smellin’ it.”
    “Go on.” His hairy, threatening face came closer and I knew he wouldn’t take no for an answer.
    He threw the pillow over and I was expected to pick it up and stuff it in my face and tell him if it stank. Rube was always making me do things like that — things that seemed ridiculous and meaningless.
    “Go on!”
    “All right!”
    “Go sniff it,” he said,