No Place Like Home

by Caroline Overington

  Roger bought himself a bachelor pad on St Kilda Road. He installed a round bed, and called it ‘My Work Bench’. He took holidays to resorts in Thailand and the Maldives, where the aim was to parachute, get drunk, go on the jetski, and find a girl. He began to disrespect his parents, turning up for his mum’s famed Christmas lunch an hour late, planting a kiss on her forehead like she was the child, and saying, ‘Hey, Pop,’ to his father, then refusing to turn off his mobile phone – even in the early days he had one of those, a brick of a thing that he wouldn’t go anywhere without. For gifts, he gave cash.

  Money – ugly money – was something the Callaghan boys had never been given as gifts, not on their birthdays, and certainly not at Christmas.

  The years went by, and his wealth grew, and he could never make it to Sunday lunch because he’d be so hungover from Saturday nights – never Friday nights because Saturday was auction day and that was a drug all its own. Post-auctions, having counted his commissions, he would get together with a few other guys from the rival agencies and they’d hit the bars in King Street, ordering Krug champagne and cognac and whole boxes of cigars, and sit with their ties loosened and their knees apart, waiting for pretty girls to come by. It was all about volume: how many girls he could get to go to bed with him, and what could he convince them to do?

  I’m going to show some naivety here, but it’s a source of amazement to me that girls fall for the kind of bloke he was. Callaghan was arrogant. He was vain. He also had a bit of a gambling problem. There was the time he backed Vintage Crop to win the Melbourne Cup, won $15,000 and blew it all in the member’s stand on champagne and Crown lagers and, later, at Goldfingers, and later still, at the home of one of the Goldfingers dancers, where he found himself lying back on a white leather sofa, tie undone, pants round his ankles, stripper writhing in baby oil over his lap, wearing nothing but heels, all so he could brag about it.

  But what did Roger care about what people thought of him? He cared only about business. Everything in his life was geared toward the sale. Early in 2005, for example, he took to running around the Tan – that’s the name they’ve given to the track that weaves its way around Melbourne’s Botanical Garden – not for fitness, and not in old shorts and a worn-out pair of runners. He invested – and that is the right word – in a whole kit made of that expensive material that dries on contact with a cool wind. He had $300 trainers, hi-tech sports socks, an iPod on his upper arm – the whole outfit worth well over $800 – and it was all part of a bigger plan.

  Roger started to run on the Tan because all the other blokes on the track – the judges and IT specialists and partners in law firms, middle-aged men with boardroom seats – owned big, expensive homes, but they also had places down by the beach in Sorrento and Portsea, and they owned investment properties – apartments in the new buildings that were going up in the CBD, for example – and if at any point they wanted to buy more or sell some, Roger wanted to be the one to handle the trade. The point of being on the Tan wasn’t so much to keep fit – although there was that – but to make sure he was moving in the same circles – literally! – as people who had money.

  Of course, most of the guys on the Tan he already knew – from the MCC, from the footy, from the cricket, from the racing, from all the other clubs he’d joined for the same reason: to make more money. He’d make eye contact with them as he thundered by, knowing he looked, in his expensive kit, like success itself. He’d nod and smile and be cheery because in sales, confidence is everything. He was simply incapable of feeling embarrassed about always being on the make. I’d go so far as to say that Roger Callaghan had no shame – not even about the fact that the girlfriend he’d flown up to see in Sydney on the day of the siege went by the name Krystal or that they’d first hooked up at a gentleman’s club, which is another way of saying that she was a stripper when they met.

  Chapter Twelve

  Some people, when they think of priests, think: poofters and kiddie-fiddlers. I don’t mean to sound crude. The truth is, some priests are secretly gay but not practising. Then there are blokes like me who fancy women but have to push those feelings down.

  I’m admitting to having those feelings – lust, desire – because I want people to realise that I did understand Roger Callaghan.

  I know what it’s like to be absolutely crazy about someone. I especially know what it’s like to have that desire, even when it’s forbidden. I don’t put myself in the same category as Roger in that regard: I had much more self-control. Roger was for a long time the kind of man who needed to have sex all the time. Going on a date with a girl was, to his mind, a bit hit and miss: he might end up spending a fortune on dinner and drinks – as much as he’d spend on a hooker – and not get laid.

  In that context, it made sense to Roger to go out with hookers, at least when he was younger.

  Not just hookers. He liked strippers as well, not only because they, too, could often be coaxed, with money, into having sex with him: he also liked the way they looked. Roger’s type was, as he put it, ‘the trashier the better’.

  He liked his women spray-tanned and tottery on their heels. He liked fake nails and Brazilian waxes. He liked short skirts, ankle chains and blouses with plunging necklines. He wanted the girls he went out with to carry enormous shiny handbags with buckles and studs and fringes. He liked to watch them rummaging through those bags with their painted talons, searching for lipsticks and mirrors and little baggies of coke. He liked the clanking of the cheap bracelets on their skinny limbs; he liked their big cheap rings; and their hair extensions. He liked to see their boobs up in lacy cups, on display. He liked their tiny arses in dark, tight jeans, and nipples showing through their blouses.

  Having sex with these girls was, for Roger, a kind of stress relief. He justified it to himself by saying he worked hard, why shouldn’t he enjoy himself? His favourite break-up-from-work party of all time was in the year that he’d worked harder and made more money than ever before. It was the same for a lot of agents that year. He and a bunch of colleagues went from bar to bar on King Street, leaving empty bottles upside down in the ice-buckets as they went. They ended up at A Touch of Class in Elsternwick. They asked for two girls to share between them, and when that wasn’t enough they asked for two more, and when they got bored with the first two they traded them in and got two more, and so on, until something like six girls and six drunk real estate agents were writhing around in the brothel’s penthouse, rooting until the satin sheets came loose and slipped off the bed.

  The bill for the night was $9000. It went on Roger’s Black Amex, for which he paid $600 a year – that was just for the privilege of putting it in his wallet.

  At the risk of making this sound like a love story, which it absolutely isn’t, nights like that weren’t uncommon before Roger met Krystal.

  On some level, I’m sure that Roger knew as well as anyone that it was ridiculous to fall in love with a girl he met on the stripper’s pole, but that is what happened. Krystal had been stripping at a gentleman’s club on the night she met Roger.

  He saw her standing on glass heels, one hand on the pole and the other in her hair, doing the splits and the spread-eagle, and he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her. For pretty much six hours straight, he’d sat directly below the stage she was dancing on, falling more deeply in love, or lust, anyway.

  I don’t mean to disrespect Krystal when I say this but she knew a mark when she saw one. She was winking and gyrating in Roger’s direction, saying, ‘What’s your name?’ and acting like her show was only for him. She had on nine-inch heels and a silver G-string and her game, once she was sure that Roger was under her thumb, was to stride away from him just after getting close, so he’d have to wave a fistful of fifty dollar notes around to get her to come back to him again.

  Roger probably couldn’t have said what it was – besides the obvious – that kept him coming back night after night for seven nights, just to see Krystal, especially given there were plenty of g
irls in the place who looked like Krystal and moved like Krystal, but he couldn’t have been more delighted, more excited, when, on Krystal’s last day in town – she wasn’t from Melbourne, she was from Sydney – she’d bent down and whispered in his ear, ‘Wait for me out back.’

  He took the coat off the back of his bar stool, and soon found himself in an alley behind the club with what sounded like rats in the bins. He waited at least forty minutes and he didn’t immediately recognise Krystal when she came out the heavy fire door with her clothes on. Not that she’d removed the nails, the false eyelashes, the hair extensions or the tan, but she had clothes on: a Bundy Bear singlet, barely over her breasts (yes, fake, of course, fake) and slim jeans and heels that were hopeless on the cobblestones, so she had put her hand on his arm and he was shot through with the kind of excitement he normally only felt taking the first line of cocaine.

  She said, ‘Hi, Roger,’ and he said, ‘Hi,’ and she said, ‘Where are we going?’ and he said, ‘Wherever you want. Where do you live? I’ll take you home.’

  She said, ‘I’m not from Melbourne but my friend Honey has a hotel room.’

  He said, ‘Your friend’s called Honey? Maybe I should bring a friend.’

  She said no, and let Roger pay for the cab – not so much let him as alighted without bothering to think about offering to pay – but why would he have cared? They’d already started kissing in those seats behind the driver, and she was all muscle, through her throat and tongue, and his suit pants were dancing all over the place.

  Just as he’d figured, Honey was at the hotel, still awake at 6 am, wearing silk pyjama shorts, and getting wasted. There was cocaine dust all over the table as well as business cards from many men, an empty bottle of single malt and a full ashtray.

  Krystal had said, ‘This is Roger,’ and Honey had said, ‘Hi Roger,’ and pulled him into the room by his tie. The three of them spent the next eight, maybe nine hours getting absolutely wrecked on coke – at some point, the buzzer on the room rang and a bloke was there with another baggie, for which Roger paid – and getting it on: him and Krystal, and Krystal and Honey, but not him and Honey; he thought Honey looked like a meth head. Her face, under the normal lights in the kitchen, was pockmarked and her teeth were nearly green.

  It wasn’t long before Roger was paying to fly Krystal down to Melbourne from Sydney every other weekend, paying for her hotel and her coke and her cabs and her clothes and, because he didn’t like Honey, and sensed that Honey didn’t like him, he was soon renting an apartment for Krystal in Sydney, too, a place where he could visit her and not have to see Honey.

  His mates – or blokes who passed for mates but were actually his accountant, his lawyer and some of the young blokes on his staff – would see her out stripping on nights when he couldn’t get to his favourite bars and told him he was mad, saying, ‘She’s making a fool of you. Cut her loose.’

  It was like telling a kid not to itch when he’s got nits. He couldn’t stop seeing Krystal even though he wasn’t able to control her. He wanted Krystal to stop stripping but she would not stop stripping. He didn’t want her to see other men but she insisted upon seeing other men.

  She’d say things like, ‘Okay, Roger, are you going to give me $2000 a night to stay home and sit on your lap? Because that’s what I’m making when you’re not here to entertain me.’

  He’d say, ‘I’m paying your rent! That’s got to count for something.’

  She’d say, ‘I could always go back to Honey’s place.’

  He’d say, ‘Then I’d have to take back all my stuff.’

  He knew that Krystal wouldn’t want to give up all the things he’d let her buy for her new flat: the white leather couch with a furry blanket thrown over the back, and the tower of Kylie Minogue CDs, the stainless steel kettle and toaster, the stainless steel refrigerator and the microwave from the same range, none of which Krystal ever used because she could not cook.

  In all likelihood, Krystal knew that Roger was kidding when he went on like that. She could surely sense that he was absolutely addicted to her – even if she also drove him absolutely crazy. Krystal had no idea about housework. When Roger rented the place for her, he had in mind flying up to Sydney whenever he could, putting a key into the door, and relaxing into the white lounges in front of the big screen, while Krystal got him a beer from the fridge.

  What actually happened was that he’d slip the key in the door and trip over whatever Krystal had left lying on the floor. She seemed incapable of picking up after herself. There would be takeaway food containers – white boxes with wire lids, with cold, half-eaten noodles inside – strewn around the coffee table; corn chips crushed into the carpet; empty milk cartons left to go smelly under the sink.

  That was nothing compared to the bathroom. It was an absolute pigsty. Krystal had jars and pots and tubes of cream that Roger had never seen before and they were strewn over the vanity and the floor and inside the mirrored cabinet and all had the tops missing. The mirror was smeared with mascara from where Krystal had gotten too close when putting it on, and the Q-tips and cotton balls and pink sponge triangles that she used to put on her make-up were strewn everywhere, as were used wax strips with hair stuck in them, and coloured dust from eye make-up, and there were handfuls of hair stuck in the shower plug.

  Krystal had no idea how to keep so much as a toilet clean. Roger often couldn’t move around the bedroom for things on the floor – clothes, mostly, but also anything else she’d dropped: odd shoes, and handbags, and shoeboxes, and big upright shopping bags with tissue paper sticking up. The bed wouldn’t be made and the sheets would be twisted and he’d get between the covers and find the whole thing sprinkled with sand from where Krystal’s stupid white fluffy dog had come in, wet, from the beach, and snuggled down there to dry.

  He’d say, ‘Jesus, K, can’t you keep the dog off my bed? Can’t you in fact make the bloody bed?’ and Krystal would shrug. Roger knew perfectly well that she also had other men in that bed when he wasn’t there, and his obsession with Krystal grew in direct proportion to the time he spent brooding about it. There had been occasions when he’d gone to see Krystal in Sydney and smelled the aftershave of another mark in the air of the apartment he was paying for and he’d lose his head over it.

  Other times, he’d fly up determined to have a proper conversation with Krystal, to say, ‘You’ve got to pull your life together. Go back to study and try to get a good job. And pay the bills that come into this place; don’t just leave them to pile up on the bench until they come and cut the electricity off. Stop hanging with the other whores, and settle down with the coke. It’s frying your brain. Don’t waste so much money on shoes and clothes you never wear. I’ve seen things in your cupboard that still have the tags on them.’

  While he was ranting, she’d strip to her knickers. He’d say, ‘Put your clothes back on,’ but she’d cock her hip and refuse to comply. She’d come toward him, putting one foot in a clear glass heel directly in front of the other, swinging her hips this way and that, like a model on the catwalk, and he’d go to water and have sex with her, and then he’d think, ‘Never again,’ and fly back to Melbourne.

  He’d ignore her text messages for a week but gradually she’d get under his skin and he’d need to see her again and, next thing he knew, he’d be back on a plane, near out of his mind with lust.

  That was the frame of mind he was in on the day of the siege at Surf City. The night before, he had been thinking about having Krystal’s legs wrapped around him and he’d told her so. She’d responded with a photograph taken on her iPhone of her legs, wide open. He got his PA to book the flight.

  Roger’s Audi was parked in a garage underneath his house, the seat set up, electronically, to anticipate him. The morning of the siege, he switched on the ignition and the blue lights on the dash glowed. Roger sometimes listened to motivational CDs but, on that particular day, he decided to go with the flow, give into the good mood he was in, and play pop songs on t
he FM radio. He headed out on the Tullamarine freeway, left his car with valet parking and, before he knew it, was heading through the security checkpoint, keys and change from his pockets in a tray.

  He was stopped, briefly, for a pat on the shoulders and hips by one of those guards who checks everybody for explosives and he was momentarily worried that he might have some cocaine residue on his belt buckle – it’s always the first place they touch with their wands, because it’s the one thing everybody has to touch when they’re getting dressed, and the thing they’re least likely to wipe down – but he passed through okay, and ducked straight into one of the airline lounges.

  He was beginning to get sick of the lounge. It was absolutely packed: there was a queue for coffee, a queue for the Bircher muesli, the poached fruit, the slow-moving toaster machine, and who were all these people? They didn’t look the type to have club membership. Some had backpacks slung over one shoulder and their shoes weren’t the type to ever need a polish.

  He settled down with a broadsheet newspaper until they called the flight and he was waved through the business-class queue to take his seat. He adored these little luxuries: not having to queue to get onto the plane; having it ready, waiting for him, when he arrived at the gate. He had a Platinum credit card on which he hungrily collected frequent flyer points; he liked to make the same joke, over and over, about how he ‘only turned left’ when he got on a plane; he couldn’t abide ‘cattle class’.

  He loosened his tie, enquired after the morning’s newspapers. He read the Financial Review and Smart Property, and flirted with one of the hostesses. Fifty minutes later, the plane was preparing to touch down. He felt the landing gear loosen, and rubber touch the road – and then the plane skidded across the runway. It fishtailed, actually, quite noticeably, and there was a gasp of breath from others on the plane.