I met her at the movie theatre on Oxford Street. She stood in front of me waiting to purchase her ticket, exposing the tattoo on her arm: Colin For Evar<\/i>. I wanted her name to be \u2018Evar\u2019 because it sounded foreign. Swedish? Norwegian perhaps. We already had something in common. Colin was the name of my first boyfriend. He took me to a drive-in and stuck his face between the crevice of my neck and shoulder as I sat on his lap. He let out a sigh as the glass chillies that hung from the rear-view mirror stopped clanking together. When he took a sip from the warm beer that was sitting between the chocolate wrappers in the cup holder, he let me wipe the foam from his beard with the tips of my fingers. The thinness of his bristles reminded me of the hair on my legs, and I couldn\u2019t help but think about him whenever I shaved.<\/p>\n
Evar threw her bag on the counter waiting for her ticket to be printed as her Chipmunks Playland keyring fell on the popcorn-peppered rug. I tried to return it to her, but she didn\u2019t seem interested in taking it back. She was more focused on scraping her fingernails against her ten-dollar note, hoping to find its twin. The woman behind the counter picked and peeled at something on her chin, until I walked over and handed them the missing money. I loved the look of Evar\u2019s teeth when she smiled. She had two jagged lateral incisors on both sides of her palate. She was an uncanny resemblance of the poster of a windswept Kate Moss I had above my bed. The freckles on her arms, her streaky golden hair, gave me the impression that she was someone who was happy to sacrifice her skin just to feel warm.<\/p>\n
\u2018Thanks,\u2019 she said with the confidence of old friends as we walked into the cinema where there were at least ten people seated separately, some shuffling with chip bags and leaky ice-cream tissues. It was the premier of a film that the forums had bragged about on the internet. They talked about how artistic it was and why it \u2018hit the spot\u2019. I tried not to frequent those sites, but they were a nice distraction between studying for my finals and picking glass up off the floor after my mum had a few too many.<\/p>\n
Evar seated herself close to the front, and from the glow of the screen, I could see that she was sucking on a Crunchie bar. I imagined its hard yellow middle melting in her mouth when the room went black.<\/p>\n
On the screen, two women were cooped up in the back of an old sedan which overlooked Sydney\u2019s night sky. The camera made its way inside the car with a flashlight effect. Evar\u2019s eyes widened at the extreme close-ups. Her shoulders relaxed when the moaning started, when the soft glow distorted the women\u2019s faces and the music began. It sounded like the opening credits of Downton Abbey that my mum fell asleep to. Was this what the forums had talked about? The perfect blend of sensuality and prudishness.<\/p>\n
The drizzle of the projector showered the room and Evar looked around, wiping her face with the back of her hand. When the women on the screen made small talk over whisky, people started moving around. I got up from my seat to give the illusion that I was going to the toilet. But I just stood there, in front of the black padded doors watching the security guard texting on his phone. I brushed my hair with my fingers and loitered around like someone late for a film. I walked back and sat two seats away from Evar. I was close enough to see the ring on her finger as she tied her hair up into a bun. Small drops of sweat had gathered on her neck. I was sure she lived near a beach. I could smell the dried-up salt left over from her morning swim. She dived her hand into a bag of candy then licked the remains of the sour coke bottles from the tips of her fingers. I lifted my armrest up and down a few times, pretending that there was something wrong with my seat. When the women on the screen started to lather sunscreen on one another, Evar\u2019s phone rang and I used the opportunity to close the gap between us. A child\u2019s voice, squeamish, high-pitched and irregular escaped through the slits of her old Motorola. She negotiated a time to return wherever she needed to be, then hung up. The sun on the screen lit up the room and Evar used it to trace the outline of my face with the back of her hand. The softness of her skin matched mine. It was the kind of memory I could recall at any time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I met her at the movie theatre on Oxford Street. She stood in front of me waiting to purchase her ticket, exposing the tattoo on her arm: Colin For Evar. I wanted her name to be \u2018Evar\u2019 because it sounded foreign. Swedish? Norwegian perhaps. We already had something in common. Colin was the name of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":17811,"template":"","categories":[49,10],"class_list":["post-17810","stsp_text","type-stsp_text","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-issue-21","category-prosa"],"yoast_head":"\n