A Hunter's Eyes

If you asked people who know me now to describe me, they’d all say roughly the same thing. Tall and fit. Good-looking in a clean, ordinary sort of way. The kind of face people trust quickly because it looks composed. Safe. A little stern maybe, but dependable. The sort of bloke who remembers deadlines, replies to emails, keeps his shirts ironed, doesn’t make scenes in public. Mid-level manager at a construction company. Good at his job. Plays social rugby again after getting back into shape. Divorced, but never talks about it. Lives alone in a nice apartment in Toowong overlooking the river. Quiet, private, polite ... Cold ... if they’re being honest. Most people are only honest when you’ve got your back turned. They’d say ... Cold and distant. Hard to read. Not rude, exactly, just not warm but stoic and reserved. Not the kind of guy who asks about your weekend unless there’s a reason. Not the kind who slaps backs or tells stories.

I’d say that they’re all correct, to some degree. I show up when needed. I leave when politeness has been satisfied. I don’t linger. I don’t get drunk. I don’t stay until the real conversations start. The men at the club notice it and the women definitely do. People at work stopped trying to drag me out for Friday drinks because after a while, rejection starts to feel personal, even when it isn’t. The old friend group barely bothers anymore. School mates, Uni mates. Men I played rugby with when my body was younger and dumber. Men who got married around the same time I did and bought houses in Kenmore and Chapel Hill and Indooroopilly. Men who send barbecue invitations and over share in group chats, men who use too many thumbs-up emojis and not enough honesty. Men whose wives remember the old me, the one who laughed more easily. I turn them down nearly every time. Busy, mate. Big week. Maybe next time. There’s almost never a next time.

They probably think the divorce made me bitter. That’s the easiest version, the politest story. The one people can tell each other over beers without feeling like they’re gossiping. David got burned. David never really got over it. David changed.

That story is close enough to the truth to be useful and far enough away to let everyone sleep at night. The real story is uglier than that. The real story has roots. It has patience. It has a very long memory and a very neat filing system.

At thirty-two, I looked better than I had at twenty-five. That annoyed me in a way I secretly enjoyed. In my early twenties, after I got married, I let myself go without ever getting truly bad. I was still broad through the shoulders, still carried some of the old rugby shape, but softness crept in around the waist, under the jaw, across the chest. Marriage can do that if you’re lazy and comfortable and stupid enough to believe comfort is proof of stability. You eat more. You move less. You think love means the game is over. Then one day you learn the game never ended. You were just the only one who stopped playing.

So, I went back to training. At first, it was petty. Anger in gym form. Five in the morning. Empty streets. High protein meals on the bench. Running until my lungs burned. Lifting until my forearms shook. The first few months were all revenge fantasies and discipline. Then my body started changing and the discipline became its own reward. The old shape came back. Shoulders first. Then chest. Then legs. Then stomach. Men at work started asking if I’d joined a gym. Men at the club asked if I was serious about playing again. Women looked a little longer than they meant to. I noticed all of it but said very little.

I took rugby back up socially because it gave me somewhere to put the violence. That was the respectable answer anyway. The less respectable answer was that it reminded me I still knew how to hit and be hit. That there was still some honest pain left in the world. A shoulder in the ribs. Studs in the thigh. Mud on your calves. Blood in your mouth. Men shouting truths at each other. There was tangible relief in that.

My apartment sat on the third floor of a newer building on Coronation Drive, secure entry, clean lines and expensive quiet. Two bedrooms, though only one ever mattered. The second had become a sort of neutral space. A desk, some shelves, another bed. Nothing personal enough to suggest it was occupied. The lounge opened toward a balcony with a view over Coronation Drive and the Brisbane River. At night the city lights dragged themselves across the water in broken ribbons. Headlights moved below in a slow stream. Ferries passed like lit toys. On still evenings you could stand outside and hear traffic, the faint pulse of music floating along the river from the Regatta Hotel, the city breathing. People assumed it was a good place to be alone. They were right about that, too.

That night it was ten o’clock and I was at the dining table with my laptop open, the room lit by the standing lamp in the corner and the cold blue wash from the screen. The television was off. I rarely had it on unless I wanted noise without meaning. A spreadsheet sat open in front of me, one of the site costing reports I’d brought home because numbers were easier to look at than the inside of my own head.

Outside, the river was black glass split by light. Inside, everything was still. Then the intercom buzzed. Not a polite sound. A sharp, impatient buzz that cut through the room and sat there after it was gone. I looked at the clock on the laptop. 10:02 p.m.

Nobody came to see me unannounced. The few people who might had learned not to. Delivery drivers didn’t buzz this late. No one did, unless they were drunk or stupid. For a second, I thought maybe someone had the wrong building or the wrong number. Then it buzzed again. I stood, crossed the room, and tapped on the monitor. The screen lit, the camera flickered on.

A woman stood in a pool of light at the building entrance, hair loose and messy like she’d been dragging her hands through it for an hour. She wore jeans, a dark top under a light jacket she hadn’t fully done up, and the kind of expression that looked bad even through grainy security footage. Her face was blotchy. Her eyes swollen. Her mouth trembling in that ugly half-controlled way that women do when they’ve been crying long enough.

Susan.

Even messed up, viewed through the intercom screen, she looked good. Average height. Strong body. Curves held together by the kind of care that came from knowing exactly what effect she had on men and not minding one bit. Twenty-nine and still carrying herself with the confidence of someone who had always been desired and had started to confuse that with being loved. Only tonight, there was nothing polished about her. No performance or flirtation. Just damage and a desperation that I felt through the screen. I looked at her for a moment longer. Then I pressed the button and let her in. I didn’t say a word through the speaker. Neither did she.

I turned from the monitor and walked to my front door. Not quickly. I already knew how this would go ... in broad strokes at least. The details would take care of themselves. My hand rested on the handle, but I didn’t open it yet. I stood there in the half-light of the entry way, listening for the lift, then the footsteps.

I smiled. Not because I was happy. Because part of me, a part I no longer bothered lying to, a part that was slowly becoming larger, had been waiting, expecting this ... or some form of it.

The knock came hard. Three quick hits. Too loud and far too desperate.

She stood there breathing fast, cheeks wet, hair stuck to one side of her face. For a moment she looked straight at me and whatever she saw in my face made her flinch, just slightly. Then her mouth twisted and she said, voice cracking, “He knows...”

That was all. Then she broke down. Not graceful crying. Not cinematic tears. Full-body, humiliated, ugly crying. The kind that wrecks posture and strips a person back to something almost childlike. Her shoulders caved. One hand came up to cover her face. Her breath hitched so hard it sounded like she was choking.

I stepped aside. She moved past me with one arm wrapped around herself. I shut the door quietly and followed her into the lounge. She dropped more than sat on the couch, as if her knees had given out ... elbows on her thighs, face in her hands ... trying and failing to pull herself together. I moved to the lounge chair opposite and sat down.

I didn’t touch her ... I didn’t ask if she was okay ... I just waited. That was one thing everyone always got wrong about comfort. Most of them thought words fixed pain. They thought noise helped. But pain usually tells you what it is all by itself if you leave it alone long enough. People confess faster when silence feels like comfort ... not judgment.

Susan cried for another minute, maybe two. Long enough to become embarrassed by it or maybe by my lack of a reaction. She wiped at her face with both hands, looked around for tissues, didn’t find any, then laughed once in disgust at herself.

“You don’t even have tissues,” she said thickly.

“No.”

She stared at me, maybe expecting something else. An apology for the absence of tissues. A joke. A softer reply. She got nothing. Her chest rose and fell a few more times. Then she said, “Robert got sent photos ... a whole series of them.” She swallowed. “And a video.” Still, I said nothing.

Her eyes darted over my face, searching it. She needed me to react. To act shocked or maybe angry on her behalf. To join her in her crisis. I gave her nothing. I had learned a long time ago that if you let people keep talking, they’ll eventually get to the point.

“He got them tonight,” she said. “About an hour ago. Maybe less. I don’t even know. He was in the study when it came through and then he just came out with his phone in his hand and this look on his face.” She pressed both palms hard against her eyes. “I’ve never seen him look like that. He just looked at me like he didn’t know me. Like I was filth ... I’ve never seen him like that ... Oh God ... he...” Her voice broke again but she forced her words through.

“There were photos of us in my bedroom. At my place.” She lowered her hands and looked straight at me now, anger beginning to push through the shame. “And a video from the anniversary party. Against the wall near the downstairs bathroom. Do you remember that?”

Of course I remembered. I leaned back in the chair. “Yes.” Her eyes widened a fraction at how flat I sounded. “Yes,” she repeated looking completely thrown. “Right ... Yes ... Well, he got that too.”

She stood suddenly and started pacing, hugging herself so tightly it looked painful. “It wasn’t just the fact they got sent,” she said. “It was the way they were sent. Whoever did it wanted to destroy me. Do you understand? ... Not just tell him. Not just expose it. Destroy me. The photos were ... graphic. The video was ugly. The audio...” She stopped moving and shut her eyes. “You can hear me ... everything ... you can hear exactly what I was saying.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “About him.” Finally, there it was. Not the sex. Not even the betrayal. But the humiliation of having her own contempt heard by the man she’d wronged. The utter devastation of having nowhere to hide.

“What did you say?” I asked.

She looked at me like I’d slapped her. “You know what I said.”

“I want to hear you say it.”

“Why?!” Her nostrils flared. For a second I thought she’d tell me to go to hell. Instead, she looked away and said, “You were there, you heard ... I said terrible things.”

“That’s vague.”

She laughed once, sharp and full of self-disgust, staring at the river beyond the glass for a moment, then she spoke to the dark instead of me. “I said he was weak. That he bored me. That he never knew what he was doing. That I felt dead with him.” She swallowed. “I said you made me feel alive.” Her shoulders dropped another inch. “You can hear me saying all of it,” she said. “You can hear me sounding like...” She couldn’t finish. “Then after that, he just stood there with the phone in his hand and asked me one question. Just one. He asked, ‘How long?’”

Her eyes found mine again. “And I lied. Even then. Can you believe that? I still lied. I said it was a few times. I said it was stupid and over. And then he showed me more. More photos. Different dates. Different clothes. Different places. Enough that I knew whoever sent it had a lot more than what Rodger held in his hand.”

I stayed still.

“He told me to get out.” She laughed again, but there was panic in it now. “Not even shouting. That would have been easier. He was calm. Do you know how awful calm can be? He just said, ‘Get out of my house.’ Like he was speaking to someone who’d come to read the meter. Then ... when I tried to talk to him ... then he yelled. He said I’d made a fool of him. Said I’d turned our whole marriage into a joke.” Her mouth trembled. “He threw my bag onto the driveway. He wouldn’t let me take anything else. Told me to get a solicitor.”

She looked around my lounge like she’d only just realized where she was. Clean carpet. glass coffee table. The chair opposite the couch. The laptop glow from the dining area. My life. My space.

“I didn’t know where to go,” she said quietly. “So, I came here.”

I let a few seconds pass. Then I said, “Why?”

She blinked at me. “What?”

“Why did you come here?”

Her whole face changed. Confusion first. Then disbelief. “Because he knows,” she said, as if I were slow. “Because I’ve been thrown out. Because this is partly your mess too.”

“Partly?”

She stepped closer. “Don’t do this.”

“Do what?”

“This ... This cold, blank, nothing thing you do when you want to pretend that you’re not involved.” Her voice rose. “I am standing in your apartment because my husband got sent explicit proof that I was sleeping with you and now I have nowhere to go.”

I looked at her for a moment. Then I said, “Why would I let you stay here?”

The silence after that was almost beautiful. She actually stopped breathing for a moment. Her face emptied. Then filled again with shock, then anger, then something that looked very close to fear.

“Are you serious?”

“Very.”

She looked around again as if a hidden audience might jump out and explain the joke. “David...” Her voice had changed. Softer, more careful. “ ... I have nowhere else to go tonight.”

“That’s not an answer.”

She stared at me. “What is wrong with you?”

A lot, I thought, as I fought to suppress a smile. Out loud I said, “You’re avoiding the question.”