by Tim Winton
You go out, said Kai, agreeing. But it’s okay. It’s just your eyes.
Exactly, he said, sounding in his relief like a dolt.
Keely had never had a thing about heights but some days up here it was too much to simply stand your full measure without being giddy. Talk like this was not helping. But he was fascinated by the kid, wanted to catch what he was seeing and thinking.
Kai pressed his brow to the screen, wheezing slightly.
So, what’re we looking at down there?
Just me.
You’re down there?
Sometimes.
Like a grownup? Walking around? You imagine yourself like all those people down there one day? You know, being in the big world?
The boy thought about this a moment. No, he said.
Where are you, then, what are you doing when you see yourself?
There, he said, pointing down to the paved forecourt.
What are you doing?
Laying down.
Resting? Asleep? Just lying there?
Kai sniffed, gave the slightest of nods.
Can you see it now? Kai, are you down there now?
The boy sucked his bit of orange with some fierceness, as if impatient.
Kai?
No, not now.
This is your dream, then?
Sometimes.
Wow, he said for something to say. That’s pretty interesting.
Can I go out? asked the boy, pointing to the balcony.
No, mate. I think we’ll stay here.
Do you have Scrabble?
Keely shook his head.
I know a tree with an owl in it, he said lamely.
The boy said nothing. Worked his way through the orange.
I gotta wash my hands.
Keely ushered him to the sink and when he’d dried his hands on the tea towel Kai picked up the book and headed for the door.
Kai? Maybe you should wait for your nan?
But the boy went ahead regardless. Keely trailed him along the gallery to 1010 where Kai was fishing a key from inside his shirt.
Kai? Shouldn’t we wait for Gemma?
The boy went in and closed the door behind him. Only a few moments later Gemma came clomping down the walkway from the lifts. She’d been gone a lot longer than twenty minutes.
What’s he up to?
I think he wanted to play Scrabble.
We don’t have Scrabble.
Me either.
Keely didn’t know how to broach the subject of the boy’s strange fantasies. Gemma seemed preoccupied, anxious to get inside.
Listen, he said. Kai asked me if I was angry with him.
Are you?
Of course not. Why would he ask that?
Maybe the bird, she said.
What about the bird?
You had the wrong bird. He knows a bloke doesn’t like getting showed up.
You’re kidding me.
Never wrong, any of yez. But look out if someone calls you on it.
Oh, man.
You said it.
He sees things.
Tom, you dunno what he’s seen. You got no bloody idea.
All he could do was nod, acknowledge it.
Okay, he said. I’m going back to what it was I was doing.
And what was that?
Not nearly enough.
I need a favour, she said. Can I come by in a minute?
Not a problem.
Jesus, she muttered, going inside. You gotta stop sayin that.
* * *
When she returned to rattle his screen door he was halfway through a grocery list. He’d already made his daily resolution to finally scrub the shower recess and then put it off until first thing tomorrow. He waved her in. She was barefoot. The dress was all but backless and he saw that she had a tattoo he’d not noticed before. The standard murky butterfly, in the middle of her back. And down her arm, inside her left elbow, was a burn scar the size of a coin.
What d’you need? he asked, hoping to hell it wasn’t money.
I don’t like to ask, she said, sitting opposite, tugging the barrette from her hair. But there’s no one else.
Kai’s no trouble, he said hopefully.
Gemma turned a bracelet on her arm.
It’s not that. He’ll be at school then.
When’s this?
Thursday, she said. I’ve gotta collect something from his father.
He waited.
And I was sorta hopin you’d come along.
Right, said Keely with a nervous flutter.
Won’t be any aggro, she said. Shouldn’t be. But some company’d help. Figured while you weren’t workin.
Well. Fair enough. I spose.
You don’t mind?
Not a problem, he croaked.
She leant over and kissed him on the side of the head. A flash of lust ripped through him. He laid a hand on her hip and it slipped free as she straightened.
It won’t take long.
What’re you picking up?
Just some stuff that’s ours. I’ve put it off too long. It’s not easy doin all this shit on me own.
No, it doesn’t look like it is.
When we first come here, when the Housing people put us here, it gimme the creeps, this place.
A school for Kai. Right next door.
Yeah. And work, too. In the beginning at least. It’s somewhere, I spose.
That’s what I tell myself.
There’s others with nothin after all, she said. And Kai likes it.
He’s a nice kid.
He likes you.
Keely’s heart gave a treacherous ping.
And his dad – there’s not much contact?
Restrainin order.
I see.
Anyway.
Gemma reached into the front of her dress and his balls buzzed again. From inside her bra she drew out a key tied to a dark loop of wool.
Here, she said, getting up. This morning I got a fright, that’s all.
I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to do. And then I fell asleep.
Just look in on him, willya? When I’m at work?
He nodded.
Other night.
Yeah?
You’n me. We were just lonely.
Yeah.
And I’d had a couple. You see?
Yeah, of course.
I don’t want a bloke anymore, Tom. I haven’t got it in me. But I could do with a mate.
Not a problem, he said too brightly.
Christ, will you stop sayin that? she said with an exasperated laugh.
Absolutely.
Thursday. Means you got time for a shave and a haircut.
You serious?
Wouldja mind?
She gave him a winsome, girlish grin of supplication that excited and annoyed him. But Keely thought about it, the itching nest his beard had become. What was it anyway, all this hair, but a kind of wallowing in defeat?
Honest, you’re no use to me lookin like that.
Okay, he said, from longing more than friendship.
She kissed him chastely again and when she was gone he gathered the key and held the woollen loop to his face to catch her musky scent.
Conan the barbarian was harmless enough. Between spells in the locked ward the scrofulous, bellowing vagrant was a fixture on the streets in all seasons, and at his least offensive the locals were fond of him. He did a lot of unfocused seething and roaring, his great leonine head thrown back in rage or pleasure, and although he was an infamous and copious public defecator there was some charm in knowing he did this more for effect than from need. Conan was nuttier than Queensland batshit but he wasn’t mad enough to underestimate the grander pleasures of performance; he laid it on with a trowel – and that wasn’t always just a figure of speech. Wags in cafés said it was only a matter of time before he got an arts grant. In summer he liked to colonize bits of public space – a bus shelter, park bench, beach awning – where he could hunker down in h
is midden, snooze, scream and drink epic quantities of beer. He was entirely harmless. Unless you offered him money, advice or help of any sort. Keely, who had over the years done all three, knew that the best way to get along with Conan was to avoid him completely. For once you fell into his noxious orbit he liked to reward you with his attention, for hours, sometimes days, and this would entail blistering harangues, buttock display, and the trumpeting of your name in public as he pinched a loaf. All in the service of extortion, for the purpose of securing free lager, in bulk. And the wily bastard never forgot a face or a name. Which was why, next morning at the beach, rinsing at the spigot and feeling semi-decent, Keely was so studious about ignoring him.
He’d come straight up between the dunes in a sweet pain-shadow, mildly revived by his swim, and he was standing beneath the shower when he caught the glint of crushed beer cans around the awning. There was a denser mass of junk in the shade where it looked as if someone had backed a truck in and dumped a load of garbage. But the sight of two horny feet protruding from beneath a candlewick bedspread was all it took to know that overnight the beach shelter had become Conan’s latest bivouac. Keely cut his ablutions short. Morning regulars jogged by, wincing as they caught whiffs of the old stager’s ruinous miasma. Some raised a conspiratorial eyebrow and grinned circumspectly, with the sort of boho-bourgeois forbearance locals prided themselves on. As Keely towelled off he observed from only the very corner of his eye the mattresses, shopping bags, rags and cartons, the profusion of empties shining in the sun like footlights around the perimeter. He was seasoned enough not to gaze frankly but found himself caught up in documentary wonder all the same. You had to marvel at the havoc one man could wreak on a place in the space of half a day.
Conan was asleep. Or lying doggo. Maybe biding his time between eruptions. The dozing inferno. Keely was keen to be on his way. Feeling as tentatively fair as he did this morning, there was no point pushing his luck by staring recklessly into the maw of this Vesuvial force of nature. So he looked away, finished towelling off briskly and was gathering himself to go when his eyes wandered back treasonously. Which was when he saw it. Buried deep. But patently there. Camouflaged by sodden underpants, beneath hanging kelp and broken fronds of saltbush. His bike. Keely’s spirits rose. Then sank again. Because just seeing this had complicated his day irrevocably. Conan was mad, not stupid. He loved to negotiate. Especially when he couldn’t lose. Like a desert warlord in a hostage bargain, he’d choose the longest and most indirect path to the least pleasant outcome.
The Malvern Star wasn’t worth suffering for. Its ransom would include an hour’s foulmouthed argy-bargy and a carton of Emu Export at a bare-arsed minimum, not to mention having his woebegone name shouted up dune and down dale for a week. Keely hadn’t even had breakfast yet. He had five bucks seventy in his pocket. He was supposed to be home cleaning the flat. Then to the barber to satisfy Gemma. These days the price of twenty-four cans of industrial-grade beer was no small thing. And it seemed so much steeper when you weren’t drinking them yourself.
No, he thought. Bugger it.
And yet.
He needed the bike. It was, after all, his bike. And it browned him off, being robbed and stood over by a lunatic.
He was fresh from a swim. Fresh-ish. Damp flab. Headache in partial remission. Weak. But no kitten. He could dash in now, right now. While Conan slept the sleep of the unloved. Wrest the treadly from the grimy heap and bolt before the malodorous thief even stirred. Yes, dammit. He’d have it back.
Dry and dressed, Keely stalked towards Conan’s camp, thongs clapping him on. I’ll outrun you, mate, outride you, and you can take your pants-down, butt-slapping warrior dance elsewhere. It’s my fucking bike.
Keely went all the way. He did not deviate. He strode right through the eye-watering frontier of Conan’s encampment, head up like a man with a sturdy will, and actually had his fingers around the handlebars when a single basso fart sent him scurrying in search of an ATM, an early opener and a slab of Western Australia’s nastiest.
* * *
The bloom was well and truly off the morning when Keely finally wheeled the redeemed Malvern Star into the cycle shop. He wanted a titanium lock. Immediately and forever. Yes, it was worth more than the bike and twice the cost of a carton of piss, but after what he’d just endured he needed to know there’d never be a repeat performance.
He was comparing two rival brands and muttering to himself when he heard her voice.
Tom?
Before he even looked up, he knew it was Harriet. She wore a black suit and blunt-toed shoes. Pushed back on her head, her sunglasses held up the dark tide of her hair. She looked flushed, even blotchy; he supposed it was the heat.
I didn’t recognize you for a moment, she said. The beard.
Right. Of course.
So.
Right. Yeah.
So, um.
How’s things?
Harriet did that slant thing with her mouth. It was hard. Lovely. Terrifying. To see her again after so long. A year? Fourteen months. There before him. Smelling of herself.
Thought you’d gone to Brussels.
She shrugged. Changed my mind.
Ah.
You okay?
What? Why?
You know you were talking to yourself?
Bullshit.
Whatever.
I have to buy a lock, he said, holding up the gizmos in their sealed packets. Bloody Conan.
The homeless bloke?
Homeless? He loves the outdoor life. Makes himself at home wherever he goes. Helps himself to whatever you have. Shits in front of old ladies.
So, okay. Right. The street bloke.
Keely recognized the tone of aggrieved patience. He waved abstractly and put the locks down in surrender.
Anyway, he said. Not a good start to the day.
They stood miserably a few moments, during which time Keely registered the fact that she’d put on weight. For a second he had the dimwitted and painful thought she was pregnant again. The things he did to himself. She was ten years his junior. But that glorious youthful gloss was gone. Which just made her more sad and lovely.
I was in town for a meeting. Always loved this shop. You know, she said, tilting her head towards the boys putting sleek machines together, bustling about in their dreads, talking nerdy bike lingo.
Yeah, he said, just to make a sound.
Thought I might even buy a new bike, she said. I’m chubbing up, as you can see.
Bollocks.
Thought maybe I could ride along the river before work. There’s a nice path on the foreshore.
Keely nodded, a little lost. It was a lot of talk. Out of nowhere. Out of nothing. After such resolute silence.
Listen, she said. You want to get some lunch?
Us?
It’s only food.
But. I mean. You think that’s a good idea?
We’re not savages, are we?
No. But.
A quick meal, Tom. Don’t get —
Okay.
Right, then.
He looked down at his thongs, his damp shorts and T-shirt.
It’s Freo, she said. No one gives a shit.
It was too hot to go in search of somewhere anonymous, so they ended up in their old regular, the Thai joint a couple of blocks away. Their entrance caused some confusion amongst the family staff who’d witnessed the dissolution of their marriage, enduring it week by week with sad discretion.
After a minute’s skin-peeling banter with various members of the clan, Harriet ordered a bottle of semillon. Waiters came and went gingerly around their table. He was glad when the food came and they were free to do more than stare at one another indulgently.
You’re living in Perth, then, said Keely despite himself. In the CBD?
It’s odd. Like living in an industrial park. Bit of a shock, actually. They weren’t kidding; it really is Dullsville.
I guess there’s the river.
Ye
ah, there’s that. The flat, shallow brown bit.
And the food’s better there.
If you fancy a fifty-dollar steak.
Are they good? The fifty-buck steaks?
She glared at him.
And work’s okay? he asked with a grin of small satisfaction.
Corner office.
So you’re a partner at last.
I live a block from the building. No wonder my arse is bigger than my tax bill. All I do is work.
Keely gulped wine, caught himself. He set the glass back and made handprints on the bare wood of the table.
So.
So, she said.
Is it still good work?
Righteous work, you mean? she said with a wry grin. Sometimes.
I meant is it stimulating, interesting.
I know exactly what you mean; you’re a Keely.
He held his hands up in concession.
Harriet cracked a wan smile. Anyway, you know how it is.
Afraid so.
So, yes, they own my bones.
But it’s interesting?
Of course. I’m in China once a month. Paying homage.
He nodded – what could you say?
You look shocking, Tom.
Thanks for noticing.
Sorry. That wasn’t … But the beard – Christ.
The beard is not long for this world.
But are you okay?
He shrugged.
Are you seeing someone?
Harriet.
I meant, like, counselling.
He stonewalled with a mirthless grin.
I wish it hadn’t happened, she murmured. Any of it.
Keely took a breath but she clarified immediately.
I don’t mean the marriage. I don’t regret that. Just —
Let’s not, eh?
No, you’re right. I’m sorry. Hey, is it true you’re living in the Mirador? That’s different.
You’ve been talking to Doris?
I’m always talking to Doris.
And she’s talking to you.
Well, sometimes it’s professional.
She never said.
She’s a bloody legend, you know. Anyway, everyone still wonders what you’re up to.
Sure they do.
Hey, I saw Freda from the EDO. She sees the WildForce crew all the time. Half the movement knows where you are.
And so few visits, eh.
Come on, Tom. You’ve left them in no doubt about where things stand.