Into the River

by Mark Brandi

  Fab looked up at the big plasma TV screen. It was one of the morning shows – the guy from The Price is Right and a very excited woman. They were talking vacuums and bowling balls.

  Another indignity for the undignified, Fab mused to himself, impressed by his own eloquence.

  ‘But coming up right now, something special for the ladies... Manpower!’

  ‘Jesus. It’s like these shows are made by someone with ADD,’ said Brunette.

  ‘Laydees, here they come!’

  A dozen steroid types in cowboy outfits rolled out to ‘Achy Breaky Heart’. Why was it always cowboy outfits? Did women want to fuck cowboys? Be poked by a cowpoke? He didn’t think Lucy would be into that sort of stuff. Not one bit. Even if she was from Queensland.

  ‘Oh... My... God. This is so bad!’ said Blonde.

  ‘They are so out of sync. Are they supposed to be out of sync?’

  ‘What’s that song?’

  ‘It’s so awful.’

  ‘They just look aggro.’

  ‘Hot bodies though.’

  ‘Hmmm.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Reminds me of someone.’

  ‘Stop it.’

  ‘You know it.’

  Fab worked out the cowboy thing – the pants came off easy. But it wasn’t dancing – just stomping and thrusting fists.

  Fab didn’t know where to look. The Italian signora concentrated on her knitting. Aftershave man stared with hard eyes out the window.

  * * *

  ‘You should really think about retraining, something to help you get back to work.’

  The bureaucrat, with his short-sleeved shirt and long yellow tie, reckoned that selling second-hand stuff on eBay wasn’t a business. And it definitely wasn’t eligible for a grant.

  ‘We can offer you some counselling to help you overcome...’ he paused, as if searching for the right words, ‘...the incident.’

  Fab listened, but was distracted by the shininess of the man’s oily scalp. He could imagine his head as a smooth white skull, balanced delicately on top of an empty short-sleeved shirt.

  And he imagined the floor suddenly opening up to reveal a gaping wound in the earth, and them both sinking slowly down into hell.

  * * *

  Out in the car park, Fab scanned the surrounds for any sign of the private investigator. He wouldn’t be wearing a suit all the time, so he tried to spot anyone looking too casual. Aside from a skateboarder, all clear. He walked to the bus stop. His phone rang. Private number.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Is this Fab?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He tried to place the voice.

  ‘It’s Derek.’

  ‘Right...’

  ‘I bought that lamp on eBay off you?’

  Shit. Another unhappy customer of DaftJunk77. Fab had underquoted the postage (again) and it was going to cost him more to send the lamp than he was making from the sale.

  ‘You got my message?’

  ‘Yeah, I got your message.’ Derek paused. ‘I’m not very happy.’

  It was easy to type a lie, but harder to say one. Fab took a deep breath.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry. It smashed when I was trying to pack it. Just went right out of my hands.’

  Fab caught his own reflection in the window of the Centrelink office, holding the phone hard against his face, his eyes wide and dark hair wild – he looked completely nuts.

  ‘Yeah? Well, I’d like to see some proof that it broke. A photo or something.’

  ‘A photo?’ He hadn’t planned for that. Shit.

  ‘Yeah. How do I know you didn’t just sell it to someone else? Look, I don’t want to leave negative feedback, but...’

  * * *

  That night, Fab locked himself in the shed and prepared to smash his mum’s retro lamp into a hundred pieces with a claw hammer. He needed a drink.

  He swung down quickly and the glass imploded with a high-pitched, gassy hum.

  ‘What was that?’ his mum yelled out from the kitchen.

  ‘Nothing!’ he yelled.

  Three

  It wasn’t Fab’s house. It used to be Sid’s place and, in Fab’s mind, it always would be.

  Sid had worked with Fab’s father at the timber mill and would come round to their house sometimes. Fab was scared of him. He was old, drank a lot and spat when he spoke. Mostly his father would go round to his place. He’d be gone for hours and come home reeking of whisky.

  At first, Fab’s mum had blamed Sid for all the trouble.

  Sid was a bit weird. ‘How’s the young fella?’ he’d ask, his breath worse than a dog’s. He lived in a run-down weatherboard near the industrial estate, not far from the mill and right over the road from the cemetery. After Sid died, Fab’s father bought the house for six hundred bucks and said he paid too much.

  After Sid died, there was no one else to blame for all the trouble.

  His father didn’t buy the land, just the house. He put it on the back of a truck and took it to the block in Stawell West, near the highway.

  It was exactly one year later, and the day after Fab’s eighteenth birthday, that his father died. A lot of things happened that year. His father dying wasn’t the worst. Not by a long shot.

  Mum had to sell the family home to pay his father’s debts. So they moved to Sid’s old place on the block, perched up on timber posts like the house in The Amityville Horror.

  The heat in summer was unrelenting. The whole block seemed to bake and split as the earth opened up, releasing tribes of angry bull ants and brown snakes. The trees stifled any southerly change and the house would stay hot overnight, with no relief before the next assault of blazing sun.

  There was only one door to the outside; Fab had sheeted up the back door with corrugated iron. There were no steps out back and he was worried his mum might forget one day. The wind from the north rattled that piece of iron like crazy. He’d tried to fix it a few times but it always, somehow, shook itself loose.

  In the space underneath the house was all his father’s old junk. He’d bought a lot of stuff at farm foreclosure auctions, loaded it on the trailer and taken it out to Stawell West.

  No one knew why he wanted all that crap, but Fab reckoned he could make some money out of it now.

  Farm equipment.

  Rustic furniture.

  Old iron tools.

  People loved that shit, especially city people. Lucy thought it could be a winner too. But the Centrelink man with the shiny head knew fuck-all about that.

  Fab had only brought a girl back to the house once. Charlotte Saint-Rose. That was her actual, real surname, Saint-Rose – like a romance novel. But there was nothing saintly or romantic about Charlotte.

  She was related to the Ricketts – they were her cousins. The Ricketts were in-breds – a brother and sister who lived together up in the Black Ranges. They had two boys together, twins. No one really knew their names, but everyone called those two boys the lumpy brothers.

  Fab had seen them once in the waiting room at the doctors. They both had hats on, but he could still see the lumps on their foreheads. He was one of the only people in town to have ever seen them. They were almost mythical, those twins, like a local version of the Loch Ness monster. Most people didn’t even think they were real.

  Some people called Charlotte the lumpy sister. Or, less often, but more accurately, the lumpy cousin. But, to be fair, she didn’t have any lumps like they did. Or none that you could see, at least.

  She was solid, powerfully built – strong legs, big arse and enormous tits. A sure thing. Not that smart, but mad for it. Not much to look at either, not in the face, anyway. She was the type you only ever did on the quiet, especially in a town like Stawell.

  Even though it was only Charlotte Saint-Rose, he was embarrassed about his bedroom with its cracked plaster and moist smell, so he’d planned to only get her there when things were ready to go. So he could keep the light off.

  The lounge room, with its high ceiling was the b
est room. They started pashing on the couch and, before he knew it, she got his pants down and was going for it, with the light on and everything. He’d never had a hand job like it. If there was an Olympic sport for it, she’d be a household name. She’d be on your box of Weet-Bix – TV commercials, sponsorship deals – the works. She was like a ninja, the tension and speed just perfect.

  And she was about to go down when it happened – his mum came out of her bedroom.

  He would never understand why, maybe it was shock or some kind of flight or fight response, but as soon as he saw his mum, bleary-eyed and in her dressing-gown, he shot his load. He hadn’t even been close til then, but it went all over Charlotte’s arm and on the couch as well.

  His mum looked at him blankly and then went back into her bedroom without saying a word. She never said a thing about it. And Charlotte just kept tugging at him the whole way through, like nothing had happened. She really was so professional about the whole thing.

  After that, any time he had a wank, he would fight hard not to think of Charlotte and – more disturbingly – his mum. They always appeared, completely uninvited, even if only for a split second.

  The worst was the dream where his mum’s face was on Charlotte’s body, but that only happened once. He’d been majorly stoned that night and eaten nearly a whole block of Coon.

  Apart from Charlotte, most of the girls in town just weren’t his type. And, more to the point, he wasn’t theirs. But as soon as Lucy started at the pub – that first day he saw her – he knew something was different.

  He didn’t try to rationalise it. He couldn’t.

  She’d picked up the job just for extra cash while passing through. Within six months, she’d shacked up with Bob and had been in the kitchen or the bar ever since. Bob had promised that once they were married, she’d never have to work again. But apart from their wedding day, a grand affair at the footy clubrooms, it seemed like she’d barely left the building. Or taken off that apron.

  She was a fair bit older, thirty-six, but that didn’t bother Fab so much. And they’d never done anything. Not yet. Nothing serious anyway.

  There was just the one time, in the pantry out by the kitchen. Saturday night. Bob was asleep upstairs. Just a few seconds. Hot breath. Nervous hands. Slow down, she said. Fumbling, trembling fingers. Slow down. Tight jeans and smooth, cool skin. Just a few seconds.

  And it was enough. Up until now, at least.

  But he had plans for him and Lucy. He just had to play the long game. It couldn’t be rushed.

  The first step was to sell his father’s junk, then fix up the house a bit. Mum might agree to sell it and they could move somewhere else. Ballarat. A change. It wasn’t like they had friends in town anyway. They could start afresh. He could get a job at the goldmine up there. Make some real money.

  Then Lucy could leave Bob and come live with them for a bit. And once he made enough cash, they could move up north. Somewhere tropical. Mum could come up too, if she wanted.

  He had it all worked out, more or less.

  Four

  Dion Shea was the same age as Fab, but had recently risen to the dizzying heights of Assistant Manager of Safeway.

  This meant he got a little name badge and his picture on that special board inside the supermarket. The ‘wall of shame’, as Fab called it.

  Dion appeared to model himself on Shane Warne, with gelled peroxide hair, cheap jewellery, and a mindless habit of adjusting his balls. While he had battled body odour and severe acne throughout high school, Dion now saw himself, somewhat optimistically, as a viable prospect for a quick, no-strings root on a Saturday night. He had the general air of a man who viewed this as a pretty decent achievement in life.

  To highlight his success, he’d recently invested in a Celtic tattoo, an eyebrow piercing and a yellow Mitsubishi Lancer with every imaginable aftermarket enhancement. The car was, aside from his own appearance, the number one priority of his world.

  ‘Hurry up, Fab. The shoppers need trolleys, ya know.’

  Fab nodded. He sometimes thought Dion might have missed his calling. Motivational speaker.

  He’d had just enough time to gulp down a large iced coffee he’d nicked from the cold store before his shift. He needed caffeine. The job took a lot more effort than most people, even Dion, imagined.

  He linked eight trolleys in a long snake and pushed up the hill, dodging people and cars on the way. Daft Punk in his headphones.

  He felt someone grab his arm.

  He turned, irritated.

  A man, late forties. Big eyes and short grey hair. Meaty face. Unsmiling.

  In Stawell, Fab knew pretty much everyone. Not this guy. He wore a neatly pressed shirt, which was unusual. He was out of breath.

  Fab took his headphones out. ‘Yeah, what?’

  He tried to look blasé as he studied the man’s face for any signs. Signs of someone serious. Someone official. Someone who might want to ask questions.

  ‘You dropped this,’ the man said.

  Fab looked down at the man’s hand – he was holding the rabbit’s foot.

  Fuck. How had he dropped that?

  ‘I chase you from inside.’ The man had a thick accent and he clouted out each word. Maybe German. A tourist.

  ‘Thanks.’ Fab took the dried foot from the man’s hand and quickly looped the silver chain through his key ring.

  ‘No problem.’ The German smiled. ‘They say they are good luck, yes?’ His head bobbed up and down.

  ‘If you say so. Thanks again.’

  Fab pushed the key ring back inside his pocket. He continued toward the trolley bay, where Afriki was trying to fix a busted baby chair with the studied intensity of a brain surgeon. He stopped fiddling with the buckles of the seat and stared at Fab.

  ‘My friend, you look like a ghost.’

  ‘Like I’ve seen a ghost, you mean.’ Fab started linking the trolleys.

  Afriki nodded, and Fab could see him store yet another strange saying to memory. He never got it wrong twice.

  ‘What happened?’ he said.

  ‘Nothing, just lost something. Hey, listen. Do me a favour will ya?’

  Afriki frowned and nodded as though he understood, which Fab knew was his way of buying time. He rephrased.

  ‘Afriki, I need you to do something for me.’

  ‘Yes, Fab, of course.’ His eyes widened. ‘Anything!’

  ‘If anyone comes asking for me, or acting funny, you tell me, okay?’

  ‘Of course, yes.’ The frown returned. ‘But at my home, when people look for you, is never good thing. Who looks for you, Fab?’

  ‘No one. I mean, maybe someone. Well, I don’t know. Just tell me if you notice anyone, okay?’

  ‘Okay, yes.’ Afriki smiled and nodded.

  Fab pulled the row of trolleys out, put his headphones back in, and pushed back up the hill.

  Five

  When Lucy picked up the empty, his third stubby in fifteen minutes, she paused before getting the next.

  She frowned. ‘You all right?’ ‘Yeah, why?’

  ‘Knocking them back pretty quick. Doing old Arty proud. He’d be pleased you got his seat.’

  ‘I ah... just had a tough day. So listen, has that fella in the suit been around again?’

  Lucy leaned forward, placing her elbows on the bar and her hands on her cheeks. ‘Jesus, are you getting paranoid or what?’ She winked and his heart raced. ‘Not today, but you’ll be the first to know.’

  ‘Just thinking though, you said he was asking general stuff. Like what?’

  She leaned back and crossed her arms. ‘Jesus, I dunno. What days you worked, stuff like that. Like I said, I didn’t tell him anything.’

  She picked up a cloth and wiped down the bar. Fab could tell by the edge in her voice that he should drop it. He tilted the empty toward her.

  ‘Well, you did okay if he hasn’t come back.’ He forced a smile. ‘Better get me one last beer, to celebrate.’

  * * *

>   Three beers later, he stared for a moment at Lucy, just so perfect in her black apron.

  She had that low-cut white cotton t-shirt underneath. His favourite, nice and simple. Fab imagined her breasts would be heavy, fleshy – but not too soft. The skin there cool and smooth to touch. He could see a faint blue vein running down her left breast and it made him a bit crazy.

  ‘Kitchen’s closing soon, Fab. Nothing to eat? I’ve got some shepherd’s pie if you want?’

  ‘Nah, no pies!’ He swayed to the left, but kept his feet rooted to the carpet, eyes fixed on her chest. ‘Don’t like pies, remember?’

  ‘Steak sandwich?’

  ‘Not tonight.’ He slurred and shook his head. ‘No room!’ He smiled, held up his beer and swayed to the right, just to even things out.

  Bernie Stark walked to the bar and reached for a bag of chips. ‘Jesus, Morressi. Really falling apart, aren’t ya?’

  Fab glared.

  ‘Why don’t ya come back out to the abs for another swimming lesson?’ Bernie dropped a handful of coins on the bar. ‘I should be careful though, eh? Me brother told me years ago that you were the Karate Kid!’

  Fab put his stubby down on the bar. ‘And how is Pokey? Prison treating him well?’

  Bernie’s face twisted. ‘He’ll be out soon enough. And you’ll get what’s coming.’

  As Bernie headed back to his table, Lucy placed a hand gently on Fab’s wrist. ‘C’mon. Don’t start any trouble.’

  He took a swig of his beer. The dregs were warm and bitter.

  ‘What is it with you two, anyway?’ she said.

  ‘It’s his brother.’ ‘Pokey?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Same year as me.’

  ‘In school?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘That’s a long time ago.’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten.’

  ‘Give you a hard time?’

  Fab shrugged. ‘Something like that. Was pretty shit all round.’ He picked at the label of his stubby.

  ‘School?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Didn’t you have any friends?’

  He stopped scratching at the label, looked at her, then went back to the task. ‘Just one,’ he said.