by Laura Elvery
‘You need to know what he did.’ Briggsy frowns down at the wooden planks. ‘We’re not going to hurt you now. But soon everyone will know.’
As Briggsy and Josh and Vossy walk away into the salty wind, Dylan hears the huge arms of the Fluminis machinery grind to life beneath his feet. His vision cleared, he sees inside the Federal, where workers on bar stools nose their beers and tap-tap the tips of their steel-capped boots together. Feeling returns to Dylan’s fingers and toes, and to the area around his mouth, from which, indulged and full and flush, the metals start to come.
Pudding
The office is buzzing. Travis has just returned from the United States, but Customs quarantined him at home. Apparently, there was an Ebola scare on the plane, and we won’t see him for weeks.
‘Suits him, doesn’t it?’ Margot says. ‘Lazy bugger.’
I have visions of being stretched out on the couch, napping while The Walking Dead downloads. I want an Ebola scare.
We conference-call Dahlia in the boardroom. Someone from downstairs delivers a dozen green smoothies in tiny milk bottles, along with a jar of stripey straws. Carrot muffins sweat beside them, untouched. No one wants Dahlia to see them eat.
Margot sidles up and takes my arm in her fingers. I can smell the deep paste of her fake tan.
‘What do you think it’ll be?’ I ask.
She shrugs. ‘Must be big.’
Margot heads social media for Dahlia, so she plucks her phone from her pocket and holds it aloft over the smoothies. After a second, she separates one bottle from the rest, shifts it to the corner of the frame like Tasmania, lays a straw across its mouth, taps her screen. She hashtags the photo while walking, passing Cheryl, who fingers Pantone swatches. With Travis out of the picture, Cheryl’s in charge.
‘Maybe it’s a Christmas appeal?’ I suggest to Margot. ‘Or a new flavour?’
‘What are Christmas flavours in Australia anyway?’
‘They’re the same everywhere. Cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger.’
‘Cinnamon?’ Margot winces. ‘No one wants carbs.’
‘Fucking quiet, please,’ Cheryl says as the Skype logo bubbles on the big screen. ‘Hello, Dahlia.’
Dahlia is smile-ready, dressed in a white business shirt and pink-framed glasses. I recognise a new colour in her hair. She is framed by a shelf of books: Success through Self-Love. Juice Your Way to Happiness. Ancient Grains, Modern Wisdom.
Dahlia holds her hands in prayer. ‘Good morning, everyone.’
‘Morning!’ trills Margot.
‘Let’s start with a Proof, shall we?’ Dahlia adjusts her glasses.
Margot is prepared. ‘There’s a woman, @fitchickforlyfe2, who’s been posting some really inspirational pics about her weight-loss journey, her battle with hypothyroidism and her goal to adopt a kid from Uganda in the next twenty-four months.’
Dahlia raises an eyebrow. ‘Uganda? Bump it up to Proof.’
Proof is Dahlia’s blog. Each post is signed, Health and Happiness, Dahlia xx. Margot writes one to three posts per day. She has a degree in Creative Writing.
‘Actually, maybe it’s Ghana,’ Margot whispers to me as Freddie starts talking quarterly earnings. ‘One of those.’
Will crowds the conference cam with a notepad sketch for a flagship smoo-boutique in Bluestone. Dahlia is ruffled.
‘Why am I seeing this on paper? Surely you can send it to me.’
Cheryl shakes her head at Will, and he sits down.
‘We should move on to the main item on today’s agenda. Christmas.’ Dahlia says the word like Dachau.
Freddie eyes off a smoothie. He creeps towards the centre table, bypassing the straws, and tries to fit his top lip inside the glass rim of the bottle. A slug of blended kale and celery drips down his shirt.
‘Shit,’ Cheryl hisses. ‘Here.’
Dahlia frowns as Freddie swats at his shirt front with Cheryl’s tissue. ‘Everyone markets Christmas,’ Dahlia begins, ‘as the perfect time of year to spend with your family.’
A curl of uneasy laughter moves through the boardroom. Dahlia and her husband are mindfully withdrawing from their sixteen-year marriage. If it gets out – and then that’s Cheryl’s problem – Dahlia and her husband are most definitely not separating.
Our boss continues. ‘But it’s also a time for helping others. One of Dahlia’s central tenets of faith is that we have a responsibility to give back to the global community.’
Cheryl starts nodding. Margot too, while tweeting.
‘Absolutely,’ I say. ‘It’s what sets us apart.’
‘So from the first of December, hidden in the base of five Dahlia cups across the country will be a token. A lucky patron at any Dahlia smoo-boutique has a chance to find one.’ She counts on her fingers. ‘They could be in a juice, smoothie, pudding or protein-ball cup.’
Will flips his notepad. His pen flits down the page.
Dahlia loves questions that she can answer. ‘And these tokens,’ I say. ‘What do people win?’
‘Erin. Great question.’ She shoots a forefinger at me, then clasps her hands together again. At my interview three years ago, Dahlia asked if I wanted to change my life by drinking green juice every day for breakfast. I promised that I did, and I got the job. Every year, on my birthday, Dahlia gets Cheryl to wrap a copy of her autobiography, Dahlia It Up, and place it on my desk. Freddie tells me the print run was slightly ambitious. There are cartons of these, somewhere in storage.
Skype buffers for a moment, and the room stills. Twenty storeys below us, the office crowds on their lunch breaks will be tucking into Dahlia FruiTango Nut Balls and Dahlia MissBliss No-Choco-Choco Smoothies.
When Dahlia’s back on, her voice is chopped up and stalling from the wi-fi, before exploding in a rush of syllables. ‘It’s called trickle-down economics. It helps our most vulnerable reach their full potential,’ she says. ‘A lot of countries are getting on board. Even Scandinavia.’
‘That’s good,’ Will says, ripping out a page. He came to us straight out of uni and Cheryl’s had him on probation for twenty-three months.
‘So. The Christmas prizes. Picture this: five gorgeous smoo-boutique patrons brushing their hands through golden stalks. Selfies with old toothless men wearing those straw hats. Burnished by the sun. Laughing. Dancing in a hacienda. Sipping on Dahlia Sun BerrySol.’
Cheryl’s thumb hovers over her iPhone. She drawls optimistically. ‘The prize is an overseas trip?’
‘The prize,’ Dahlia says, ‘is to become – for thirty healthful, spiritual and nourishing days – a plantation owner.’
Will half raises a hand. ‘What’s a—?’
‘Not just any plantation – and this is the special part. Fields and fields of amarillo. Dahlia smoo-boutiques will be the first in Australia to sell it.’
Heads bob. Excitement radiates. Amarillo. Dahlia first raved about it two years ago: an ancient Bolivian pseudocereal that would be big. Huge. Zero gluten, but full of zinc, amino acids and healing properties. She has the amarillo flower tattooed on the inside of her wrist – just looking at it gives her strength, she says.
‘Five farms we can help.’ Dahlia holds a palm to the camera. ‘Five winners, five plantation owners. Freddie assures me he can make it happen. Just a few calls to the embassy, apparently.’
‘The consulate,’ Freddie corrects her.
‘Whatever.’ Dahlia smiles. ‘The consulate.’
Cheryl clears her throat. She’s worried about insurance.
‘Winners won’t do any of the hard stuff,’ Dahlia assures her, ‘like, you know, ploughing. Instead there’ll be stories on the blog of a winner eating rustically at a farmer’s table, a photo of another winner waving at a cute kid working.’ She churns her hands through the air of her refurbished office.
Cheryl is back on board. She jabs the air with a straw.
‘Maybe there’s a jungle nearby—’
‘A ride on the back of a donkey,’ I offer. ‘Trekking up a mountain, fuelled by Dahlia-branded amarillo.’
‘You got it. Helpful stuff. Global citizens.’ Dahlia checks her watch, and I glimpse the tattoo on her inner wrist. ‘Write them all down, Erin. Give them to Margot.’
Dahlia tells Margot to start dropping competition hints on Instagram and Twitter. She tells Cheryl to give me the new deadline for the website, and then she is gone, her face momentarily frozen before the call cuts off.
Margot tucks in close to me. ‘Is amarillo trademarked?’ She calls out, ‘Cheryl, do we own amarillo?’
Will looks up from his notepad. ‘Bolivia’s in South America, right?’
Freddie is at Cheryl’s elbow, offering the carrot muffins. She gives him an awful smile – No, thanks, you’re a dickhead – so he asks me.
‘Erin? Want one?’
I’m starving. ‘No, thanks,’ I say.
*
The new website launches, Travis doesn’t have Ebola and Cheryl ends Will’s probation by sacking him. Margot’s social media blitz is working. At smoo-boutiques all over the country, Dahlia patrons line up in the dozens, caught up in a manic pudding-buying spree, frantic to see a token at the bottom telling them: ¡Ganaste! Some patrons don’t even wait till they’ve swallowed all their Pina-Cleanada Super Sips, but tip the remains into city garden beds where bald-headed ibises drink the dregs in snatches. Couriers deliver our new Pantone 7487U cups in locked boxes.
At her desk, Margot is pleased. She shows me a new photo: tanned, pedicured feet rest on a freshly painted verandah balustrade, an orange sunset in the distance. ‘It’s got 245 likes already.’
I look closely. ‘Perhaps we should avoid the hashtag plantation owner?’
‘Why?’
‘It might be a bit problematic.’
‘How?’
I don’t know. What about non-Spanish speakers moving onto Bolivian farms? What about taking the family donkey for a spin? What about five 18-to-39-year-olds asking Abuela where the tequila is kept?
‘I’m sure it’s fine,’ I say.
Margot taps her phone screen. ‘Look. Over 300 likes.’
In less than three months the winners of the five tokens are on a plane to Santa Cruz, via Auckland, via Santiago, via Lima, seated in economy.
*
With his quarantine now over, Travis sends himself back on a plane – this time to Santa Cruz. On the advice of her life coach, Cheryl expresses (to us) her unexpressed anger at Dahlia for opening the competition up to five randoms. Anyone could’ve found the tokens, and who knew what they’d look like? But, as Cheryl notes, ‘all five are pretty much babes’. Margot uploads stories about the five winners. All of them except for Hugh (whose angle is ‘Aussie-grandpa-turned-clean-eating’) are in their twenties. In their stories they express how they love to travel (Marlon aims to visit North Korea one day) but have zero tolerance for drama (Claudia and Rohan) or fake people (Verity). They are good-time guys and gals. Travis poses with them at the airport, their Dahlia singlets knotted at the waist, consulate documents organised, and their suitcases packed with what we hope are sandals and cut-off denim shorts.
*
I’ve been watching Freddie re-heat his bowl of seafood paella in the microwave for several minutes. Every thirty seconds he stirs the rice, testing it, except each time he shovels a few forkfuls into his mouth before replacing the bowl and shutting the door. There isn’t much paella left.
Yet again he presses the quick-start button. He smiles at me as I stand against the sink. ‘We could all pitch in. Get a better microwave.’
‘Sure.’
‘Oi, is Freddie in here?’
We turn. Cheryl clutches the door frame. ‘We’ve got a problem.’ Panic teeters in her eyes. Cheryl once told me I’d have brighter eyes and better hair if I took her lead and enjoyed the benefits of thrice-weekly fatty acids found in cold-water fish.
‘What sort of problem?’ Freddie asks.
‘You’re here. Fucking come.’
Freddie nods, grabs his paella from the microwave. He takes a bite. ‘Ooh,’ he says, ‘hot.’
‘Erin? Quick. You too.’
Cheryl herds us behind Margot’s desk. Margot has one headphone in and she’s typing, frenzied, pissed. She points to one of the windows open on her monitor. I see the headline: Baby donkey killed by ‘prize-winning’ tourists. A photo taken from above shows what I guess, yes, is a smallish donkey, on its side in the dirt, apparently dead.
Freddie’s eyes widen, mid-bite. ‘Are they our tourists?’
Margot nods, her eyes fixed on the computer. She alt-tabs so fast the images seem to strobe.
‘Surely donkeys die all the time,’ Freddie says.
‘I thought they were supposed to be hardy!’ Cheryl says. ‘Someone fucking Google donkey life expectancy.’
I lean into Margot’s computer. More photos of donkeys. ‘They all look old to me.’
Cheryl spreads her hands out wide. ‘And what even are they? A cross between a what and a what?’
Freddie drops the sucked-out tail shell of a prawn into his bowl. ‘You’re thinking of a mule. Donkeys are actually members of the horse family—’
Cheryl shoves him. ‘Fucking must you?’
‘What did they do?’ I ask. I wonder if Dahlia knows yet.
Turns out Claudia and Rohan have become, as Cheryl puts it, friendly, and have, in fact, borrowed the family donkey for a trek up a mountain to watch the sunset and camp overnight and take photos of it munching on hessian sacks of amarillo.
‘Well, there you go.’ Freddie shrugs. ‘It wasn’t the selfies.’
‘No,’ Cheryl says, rubbing her temples.
‘It was the amarillo,’ I say.
Cheryl’s phone rings. She listens, then tilts the phone away. ‘It’s Travis.’ Listens again. Tilts again. ‘Not good.’ She puts the phone back to her mouth. ‘Not fucking good.’
*
We all work overtime. We distance Dahlia from the donkey, distance the donkey from the amarillo, distance the amarillo from Dahlia. Margot releases statements on social media about Dahlia’s thorough and transparent processes, about her credentials, both environmental and zoological, about the dangers of eating several sackfuls of just about anything. Cheryl sets up three minutes on breakfast TV where the hosts ask Dahlia if she will oversee both an internal and external review of the alleged incident.
Travis flies home for damage control. We’re in the office after hours when he steps out of the lift, straight from the airport. He’s apparently cultivated an idea on the plane.
‘We will,’ he tells us, ‘leak the mindfully withdrawing. Move towards the controversy, not away from it. Pump up the breakfast spots. Dahlia looking terrific. Bunkered down, processing it all, in her kitchen. I’m picturing her hair in a bun, a chunky knit—’
‘Not too chunky,’ Cheryl spits out.
‘—asking for privacy, saying how marriage is hard work, her hands cupped around a mug.’ Travis demonstrates what that would look like. I stare, mesmerised, my eyes scratchy and dry.
Then, of all people, Freddie pipes up. ‘What if, to get over the heartbreak, Dahlia adopts a rescue puppy?’
We stare at him till, finally, Travis pumps the air. ‘A dog! Puppies! Plural,’ he says. ‘We’ll call them Biff and Scrap and Squid and shit.’
Cheryl covers her face and nods. She won’t say it, but Freddie’s hit the jackpot.
Margot begins to plan an elaborate Instagram competition to choose the names.
Freddie’s on a roll now. ‘And we could run something called, like, Cups for Pups Day? And a dollar from all extra-large smoothies gets donated to a charity that raises money for, I don’t know, dog treats?’
The donkey will be forgotten.
Christmas will make way for autumn and twelve-dollar hot pudding pots. We’ll choose a new Pantone to celebrate.
Mountains Grow Like Trees
Beth was at work when Danny rang. ‘Bad news,’ he said. ‘About the cabin.’
‘We can’t go?’ She opened her laptop with one hand and rested the phone between her ear and shoulder.
‘Sorry. I have to work all weekend.’ Danny blew air out his lips and Beth flinched. She turned down the volume on her phone.
Danny had lined up a weekend for the two of them, at their friends’ cabin in the mountains. Beth had the grant application to write, Danny reminded her, and working in the office was doing her head in. All those interruptions. Beth looked at the grant then, information spread across a dozen tabs on her laptop screen.
‘Babe, you should definitely go without me,’ he said. ‘Jeremy and Mel won’t care.’
‘I guess so.’
‘Do you mind?’
Beth had visions of the time alone. The desk in the corner of the cabin, adorned with a large glass of wine. Her important but doable work framed by the window with the trees outside. She’d stay up late and get up early. Buy the good cheeses from the deli on the way up the mountain.
She saved a PDF of the application and pressed print.
‘You got a lunch break today?’ Beth asked. ‘Drop the keys round?’
She turned off the highway at Windham and pulled into the carpark beside the deli. The mountain air tugged at her lungs. This felt right. She pushed her sunglasses onto her head and snatched up a basket inside the doorway of the shop.
A teenager was shifting around buckets of flowers. ‘We’re about to close,’ he said.
‘I’ll be quick.’
Beth decided on a wheel of triple-cream brie. Avocado and lemon were a good idea, along with the loaf of sourdough and the early-harvest extra-virgin in the bottle with the monkish tassel. Strips of prosciutto vacuum-sealed. A little pot of fetta marinating in rosemary and oil. She paid the boy and dropped her change into the canister for leukaemia research.
The bottle of pinot noir from the Macedon Ranges rocked on the passenger seat as she drove the two-lane incline to Mount Ludlow. The trees snapped in the wind. Beth’s grant application was about the mountain pygmy possum: her team planned to investigate the patterns of feral cats who preyed on the possum in Kosciuszko National Park. A new benefactor, a woman from Adelaide who’d made millions selling voluntourism packages, had set up a national fund for dozens of environmental projects.