by A. J. Betts
He finds her face and focuses the telephoto lens. He wants just one more shot of her, like this — calm and meditative. The number beside the shutter reads 36. It’s the last one on the film. In the split-second he takes the photo he realises his mistake — the shock of the flash gives everything away.
Terri Pavish stands, sensing it was for her. She walks straight to the window and scans the front yard through the screen, but he’s crouching, holding his breath. She doesn’t see him but knows someone’s there.
She shouts, ‘I’ll call the police,’ then switches on the outside light.
He runs, seeking out darkness, clutching the camera and bag. He can’t let her see him like this and get the wrong impression. He hadn’t meant to scare her.
He runs to the end of the street, then left into Belvue Terrace.
Terri Pavish stands in her lounge room looking out at an unfamiliar pushbike in her driveway.
Dustin catches his breath in Curtin Avenue, alone. The camera in his hand pulses with the effort, bursting with images of her. He knows he’s not going home. Not yet.
He hails the last bus of the night and shares the ride with three other passengers. His phone rings out loud with another call, but he ignores this one too. The bus rolls on and he turns his gaze to the window, to be startled by the white shock of his own reflection. His pale face looks like a ghost in the glass. He pulls his focus away, looking again to the front of the bus. Involuntarily, he thinks of his mother.
8
It’s almost midnight when the bus pulls into High Street. Dustin steps onto the pavement and the bus lurches away.
He’d never wanted a key to his father’s photo lab, but Ken had insisted, years ago. It was necessary, he’d explained, as a backup. Dustin had never had a use for it until now.
The lab feels alien at this hour, in half-light. Dustin switches the processor on and it grinds reluctantly. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He sits on the short stool, unwinds the first few frames from his roll and feeds it into the machine. It clicks in and he presses the green button to begin. He sits and listens to the sound he’s come to hate so much.
It will take three minutes and twenty seconds.
While he waits, he rolls to the counter and pulls open the heavy top drawer. He flicks through the letters, getting to P for Pavish. He wants to know everything about her.
The machine shudders and grinds to a noisy stop — too early. The room swells with this unwelcome silence.
‘Fuck!’ There’s no-one to reprimand him now.
The processor’s useless, he knows that. His father, equally useless, is brilliant at pretending everything’s okay. There are so many things he’s let slide and Dustin’s got no forgiveness for it. Not now.
The flashing light tells him it’s a jam in Compartment F. He takes two breaths, then unbolts the cover and slips his hand over the paper feeder. He twists his wrist to reach down between the wall of the machine and Cog C. He expects to feel a crumpled photo, but there’s nothing.
He swears again, quietly, fatigue setting in. He knows he can’t just walk away and leave it like this. In the morning Ken would find the processor blinking, and after pulling it apart, find images of Terri Pavish swimming in a dark river. There could be no other explanation besides Dustin, and how the hell could he put into words the events that had led to this? Gut feeling and impulse cannot be explained to someone like Ken.
No, he can’t leave any trace of her in the machine. He’s got to find the crumpled photo and take the whole lot of them away, leaving the store exactly as Ken left it. His father would notice even the slightest difference in the room: an open tray, rubbish in the bin, even a new position of the stool.
Dustin’s fingertips touch an edge of paper — thank god — and he pulls it firmly. The photo tears in two, a piece still stuck somewhere he can’t reach. ‘Shit.’
He whips his hand free and when he does, he cracks the perspex with his knuckles. Fear rushes through him like a heat. The split is irreparable. ‘Fuck!’
He shoves the processed photos into his bag and stands looking at the damaged machine. His face burns with the knowledge of what he must do.
The old processor crashes to the floor. Plastic shatters and trays break free. He kicks and the metal yields. He kicks in that fucking machine, that old and useless machine, that pathetic, incompetent machine. It breaks under him, smashing into its pieces.
The till breaks easily too, rupturing open on impact, empty of money. It sounds like a car crash — violent and permanent. It lies there, broken. Nothing fights back.
He knocks rolls of film and bottles of fluid onto the stockroom floor, recalling the endless fucking tapping of this shit. Papers fly until he’s up to his knees in the frustrating mess of his father’s life. He continues chucking and smashing until there is nothing left to break.
He knows he’s got to do this properly. He shoves two cameras into his bag, to make it look like a theft — kids wanting stuff to loot and vandalise, that’s all. With the last of his effort, he tears down all the annoying old prints hanging from the ceiling. The photographed woman — laminated in various sizes — falls about him and scatters across the floor. There is a beautiful sadness about her.
He doesn’t know why he bends to pick one up. He doesn’t know what makes him hold the photo in his hands, then turn it over like a washed-up seashell. But at 12:15 this morning, with no good reason, he does.
It reads: My darling Meg, 1991. His father’s handwriting, faded.
He turns the photo over again and recognises for the first time his mother staring back at him, the way she’s always done. From the floor, she looks up at him in duplicate.
He sees her now — in frames on the wall, glued to the counter, above the door in A3 portrait. He recognises his mother everywhere, and he suddenly sees himself in her. He’d thought her name was Margaret. He’d thought his father had forgotten her, that there were no photos of her. But she’d been here, all the time. Watching.
She still is.
Run, Dustin, run.
With his backpack on, he runs down High Street. Run, Dustin. A dog barks behind a gate. He turns left onto Queen Vic Road, belting out onto the pavement. He takes the traffic bridge and runs past a car stopped at the lights. He passes Mojo’s, where two men walk out and lock the door behind them, humoured by the sight of a tall teenager speeding like a ghost in the night.
His breathing is ragged. The sharpness of air rips at his throat. His chest burns. He needs water to put out the fire in him. He needs the ocean, that soothing forgiveness of deep water. He needs to be up to his throat in it. He’s running to Port Beach. He’ll dive in, fearless.
Beside North Freo train station he feels a car on his heel, matching his pace. He turns into a side street, then another, hoping to lose it, and he almost does. Cops? he thinks. They’ve found him out already? But it’s nothing but a cab, dropping off a woman in high heels. The engine idles as Dustin runs up closer, dizzy from the headlights.
‘You right, kid? Need a lift?’
Dustin stops and nods. He can’t run anymore.
He slides into the front and belts up. The upholstery smells of damp carpet and cigarettes.
‘You’re a fast runner, kid, you passed me back in Freo. You an athlete or something?’
‘Where did you see me?’
‘On the street.’
‘What did you see?’
‘Nothing, kid. You got some cash for a ride home or what?’
Dustin digs in his pocket for ten bucks, then gets in. To their left, the sea is a dark, relentless mass. Its waves slop onto the shore.
Shh, they say.
Shhh.
They drive past Cottesloe Beach and he still feels the pull of it. He wants to know what it’s like to be driftwood.
Outside his house in Swanbourne, Dustin closes the passenger door softly and the car retreats, as noiselessly as a wave. He notices blood on his hands; glass is still under the skin. It bleeds on
to his jeans. He’s dazed by all the things he doesn’t know.
The front light has been left on for him. He unlocks the door, and the sound of the keys reminds him of what he’s done. It’s real. Everything is real now.
He fills a glass with water and drinks it at the sink. On the bench is a post-it note: Lamb chops in fridge. He turns off the lights.
Lying in his single bed, he waits for the phone to ring.
It does, at 3:00am. He hears his father’s muffled voice in the lounge room, followed by the blunt sound of the front door opening and shutting, then the Commodore reversing.
As soon as sleep takes him, the familiar nightmare begins: the same car, the same crash, but now a motorbike. There’d never been a motorbike before, so why now? The bike speeds off, the car spins and the dream stretches out in slow motion as usual. And it takes so long! Her hair covers her face, getting into her mouth and eyes. As she turns, her hair is everywhere, sticky and matted, hiding her face. Is it really his mother? He’s not so sure anymore.
Then suddenly he’s awake and the room is lightening with sun. He hears his father’s footsteps on the kitchen tiles. His father, the keeper of secrets. Is that how his mother was killed — by a motorbike? That would explain his father’s hatred of them.
He wonders what else he doesn’t know.
SHUTTERSPEED
7
‘Dustin, I need to talk to you.’
Ken’s standing in the bedroom doorway.
Dustin’s finger throbs with the ache of glass.
‘I’m late,’ he says, sitting up and reaching for the clothes on the floor.
‘Where are you going?’
‘School.’ He rummages for phone and keys.
‘Don’t. I need you to stay. Something’s happened.’ Ken isn’t keen on dramatics. Never has been. Like his son, he prefers to let things slide. There’s no outpouring of emotion. No shouting or pleading.
‘I’m going to Nugget’s,’ Dustin lies, keys and phone in hand, moving through the doorway.
‘Stay.’
‘No.’
‘Something happened at the store last night,’ Ken says, following Dustin from room to room, ‘and I need you to be here. I need you to …’
The house is shrinking and Dustin’s got to escape, now. He’s got to find Jasmine — no, not Jasmine. His mobile lists another missed call from her. He leaves through the kitchen to get his bike from the back fence, but it isn’t in its usual spot. He suddenly remembers a torch beam shining off its handlebars in Terri Pavish’s driveway. He flinches. Shit. He needs wheels.
His father follows him into the back yard and looks around at the expansion of grass. The mess of it confounds him and he mumbles, ‘When did it get so overgrown?’
Dustin re-enters the house, making his way through the airless rooms to the front door.
‘The police tell me it was you,’ Ken says, stopping the chase.
This pulls Dustin up short, just for a moment. He hadn’t realised it would happen so quickly.
‘They say it was someone with a key. Tell me it wasn’t you. Tell me you wouldn’t …’
Dustin burns with a confession but before he gets the chance, his father crumples. Ken leans against the fridge as hurt rises up and spills out. Secrets can surface at such times. Confessions can float to the surface, debris from long-ago storms.
‘I need to talk to you, Dustin. There are things you should know.’
The kitchen is filling with driftwood, knocking at Dustin’s legs. And Dustin can’t swim.
‘You need to know why you’re like this, why you feel the way you do. She was sad too, Dustin.’
She?
‘Your mother had depression. She was sad too.’
Dustin leaves and shuts the front door behind him. He almost trips over Jasmine, who’s sitting on the front step in her school uniform. What’s she doing here? Did Ken ask her to come? He doesn’t need her psychoanalysis crap right now, so he steps over her legs and jogs the three blocks to Stirling Highway. The bitumen is wet from early morning drizzle and the clouds begin to spit rain again.
For $2.20 he buys a ticket for the 7:15 bus to South Beach, straight to Nugget’s house. None of the other passengers care who the lanky kid is in the middle of the bus, and what he did or didn’t do last night. That’s the beauty of being anonymous — no-one can blame, and no-one can expect anything of you. He’s going to Nugget’s place because it’s safe, and because Nugget’s always Nugget. Life is always normal at his house, with noise and people and mucking around. Nugget’s house is a home.
By the time Dustin gets to the front door, the rain has set in and the fire in his chest is subsiding. He makes himself stand tall, reminding himself he’s a figure of strength, not pity. He will not let guilt weigh on him like his father.
6
But Nugget’s house is quiet this morning.
‘Nugget? Mrs Hooker?’
He walks through the hallway, his wet shoes marking the cream carpet with each step. He opens the door to Nugget’s empty room. The bed is unmade. Clothes and CDs cover the floor. His room smells of man.
‘Nugget, you here?’
The wind is picking up outside, so Dustin reasons they could’ve all gone down to the beach for an early windsurf.
Then he hears something, a voice from outside. Someone’s speaking on a mobile. He moves closer to the window and looks through a gap in the blinds.
Nugget is sitting on the weights bench wearing Batman boxer shorts. He’s picking at a toenail as he talks. ‘No, go to school, Jaz. He might turn up there. Where else would he go?’
Dustin’s chest flares hot again.
‘… no he wouldn’t … he wouldn’t, Jaz.’
Dustin walks away from the window.
‘I know … but he’s not his mum … what were you doing in his dad’s room anyway?’
Dustin sits on Nugget’s bed, not wanting to hear his two best friends talk about him like a stranger.
‘Don’t cry.’
The gentleness in Nugget’s voice surprises him. He’d never heard Nugget speak to anyone like that. He turns his attention instead to his mate’s bedroom. So much has changed in here. There’s a new duvet cover, a new stereo, a new built-in robe. When did all this happen?
There’s a new desk too, and from his vantage he can see photos that have been blu-tacked to the wood. One of Nugget’s brother Ben, and a family shot on the sand at Prevelly Beach. There’s last year’s group shot, with himself and Jasmine in it. And there are other photos. Of Jasmine. Three from school camp, one from the newspaper article on her winning a sculpture competition, and two of her cut from last year’s school magazine.
‘Dustin?’
Nugget’s standing in the doorway and for a moment they’re both silent, grappling with things unknown.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘What’s all this?’ Dustin’s voice catches on the words. ‘What’s going on, Dustin? Your dad’s worried. Jasmine’s freaking out.’
‘Why do you have photos of Jasmine?’
‘Everyone’s worrying about you. Did you do what they said?’
‘Fuck that, tell me about Jasmine.’
‘What? She’s my friend, like you.’
‘But the photos …’
‘I’ve got photos of everyone.’
‘Don’t talk shit. I know what I see! What’s with you and Jasmine?’
‘Just calm down. I’m calling your dad.’ Nugget is scrolling through the numbers in his mobile phone.
Dustin knocks the phone out of Nugget’s hand. They both know that things will never be the same.
‘You care about Jasmine.’
‘Of course I care —’
‘No, you like her.’
‘So what? She’s so into you.’
‘You know it’s not like that.’
‘Geez, do you want it all? You want to keep her as a friend, but not let anyone else near her?’
‘It used to be the
three of us.’
‘Until she turned me down,’ Nugget says. ‘It was you all along, dickhead, and I didn’t want to watch that anymore. Now you’re stuffing that up too, just like you stuff up everything.’
Dustin shoves Nugget into the wall — enough to hurt him — and steps through the doorway. He’s already outside by the garage when Nugget catches up.
‘Just go home, Dustin. Your dad’s waiting.’
‘Fuck you.’
‘I’m trying to be your friend.’
‘Well, leave me alone.’
One of the garage doors is open, with surfboards, a jet ski and two motorbikes in view.
‘Go home. There’s nowhere else to go.’
Dustin picks up the spare key from the toolbox and straddles the grey Honda CBR 1000F.
‘You wouldn’t,’ Nugget says.
Dustin tightens the helmet straps, then shrugs. He turns the key in the ignition and revs it once. With a roar, he’s away.
5
The engine drives him with a force he’s never experienced. He’s a projectile, a bullet. The noise is in his ears and head, deafening any voices he might have had. Those fucking voices. The 1000 is hard and fast and awesome. It’s better than he’d imagined. He commits to a corner onto Hampton Road, tapping the throttle and powering through. This is what it feels like to be in control. He knows exactly where he’s going.
And Nugget’s not far behind. He’s on his new Yamaha FZX250, at the same time phoning Jasmine, telling her not to worry, to go to school, and the two of them will meet her there.
Nugget hits Hampton Road, seeking out Dustin, trying to follow the noise of his father’s engine. He wonders if it’s as serious as Jasmine thinks. Dustin’s always had an underlying sense of humour about life, hasn’t he? Everyone has bad times. He wouldn’t do anything stupid, would he?
Ahead, Dustin’s thoughts aren’t of Nugget. There’s only space for Terri Pavish. This is how she must feel. This is what makes her eyes shine the way they do, and her mouth turn up at the corner. This feeling is her secret. Being anonymous under a helmet, flying, on someone else’s machine. He wants to share all of her secrets.