Free Geography by Sophie Cunningham

it.’ When I read that, standing by the fax machine at work, I flinched. I felt as if I had been slapped in the face. I got it wrong, I thought, blushing with the shame of presumption. I am an idiot.
    I did not fax or write or phone—all the things I had been planning to do as I had flown the twelve hours from LA to Melbourne. But complete withdrawal was not what Michael wanted either, it seemed, and after a few weeks he began to send me postcards and brief faxes. They were so affectionate I began to believe that his rudeness had been a misunderstanding and I started to send him postcards in return. I would search out increasingly ridiculous images of talking koalas, kangaroos and girls in seventies bikinis. I wooed him with kitsch.
    â€˜It’s not like we’re in a relationship,’ I said to Marion. ‘It’s not like I’m ever going to see him again, despite the occasional postcard. Sometimes I wonder if it wasn’t Los Angeles that swept me off my feet. The romance of Hollywood.’
    â€˜Well if you’ve fallen for the myth, he must’ve too,’ said Marion. ‘He’s the one living there. Anyway you will see him again. He comes back to Australia every year.’
    That night I got out a video of Legends of the Fall and forced Marion and Raff to watch it. ‘You know this is crap, right?’ Raff said ten minutes into the film, having seen enough fur coats, bears and men with long hair to get nervous.
    â€˜I think it’s good,’ I protested. ‘This is the third time I’ve seen it.’
    â€˜Sometimes,’ Raff said, ‘I have serious concerns about your judgment.’
    The second time I was with Michael it was very hot. It was the summer of 1994 and fires were raging everywhere. He was home for the Christmas holidays so I decided to go up to Sydney. The first night I was there I planned to go to a homecoming party Michael was throwing even though I had not, despite receiving a postcard only a few days earlier, been invited. In fact Michael hadn’t even told me he was returning to Sydney for the holidays.
    â€˜It’s a dubious situation, Cath,’ Marion said. ‘I know I told you he would be coming back. But he hasn’t told you. That’s not good.’
    Raff was blunter. ‘He’s fucking you around.’
    â€˜I like a challenge,’ I said. ‘I think of him as a kind of Bermuda Triangle for women.’ I was laughing, but Marion and Raff were not.
    â€˜Sounds like that game we used to play in primary school,’ Raff was sarcastic. ‘Would you rather hang yourself, shoot yourself, or drown?’
    â€˜Drown,’ I smirked, ignoring the warning in his heavy-handed irony. ‘It works in with the Bermuda metaphor.’

    I got to the party late, hoping to suggest I felt casual about it. I knew a lot of people there and spoke to them as I worked my way through the crowd to Michael. When I looked at him it hurt, I felt him in my whole body. This is what is hard to explain to people—how physical my response to him was. All I could think of was his skin and how I could get it close to mine.
    Whenever I glanced up from a conversation he was watching me, his eyes upon me. But whenever I went to approach him he seemed to slip away into another room. His technique was hypnotically simple: interested, inattentive, present, absent.
    As I was about to give up and leave the party Michael came out to me. ‘I’ve been looking for you,’ he said. ‘If I’d known you’d be in Sydney I’d have asked you to come along myself. Do you have to go so soon? I can’t leave, I have to clean up.’
    â€˜I’ll be here a few days,’ I said. ‘Call me.’
    He called first thing the next morning and came over to the flat I was staying in. He stood in the doorway of the living room, arms stretched up, hanging off the jamb. He was still lean and lined and, to me,