by Rose Hartley
I followed the direction of his finger. ‘No. No, it is not.’
‘We had a call from one of the neighbours, who witnessed you urinating in the gutter.’
‘They must have had me confused with someone else.’
‘Look, I’m not here to arrest you, as long as you move along. I’ll write you out a warning.’
‘I’m not moving along. I have every right to be here. The City of Yarra permits—’
‘I’m familiar with the law.’ His cheeks turned a darker shade of red. ‘But you’re causing a disturbance and if you refuse an order to move along I can take you down to the station.’
I stood silent. I knew my rights. Nobody could prove that it was my puddle, and nobody could force me to move.
‘Well? What will it be? Do I have to arrest you, or will you move along?’
God, what is it with fucking vinyl? Everything in the Collingwood police station was green vinyl. Maybe the interior decorators thought that murky shade of green would soothe violent criminals, or maybe the vinyl was on special when they bought it. The pink-cheeked officer made me sit in a vinyl chair while he wrote me up for public urination, disturbing the peace and whatever the hell else he felt like. At least he didn’t handcuff me. The blinking fluorescent lights reminded me of a documentary on CIA torture techniques that I’d seen on TV one time. As I sat there, it slowly dawned on me – a little late – that I’d be better off getting this pink-cheeked do-gooder on side.
‘Look, buddy, sir, mate, if you’re writing me a ticket, I don’t have the money to pay it. I’ve got twelve dollars.’
‘It’s a little more serious than a ticket now,’ he murmured, scribbling away on the piece of paper in front of him.
‘Okay, look, what if I move the caravan a street away?’
He looked up from his piece of paper. ‘You have to stop urinating in the street.’
‘Fine.’
‘Do you need to find a women’s shelter?’
‘A—’ I was suddenly outraged. ‘A women’s shelter? Dude, I work for a women’s shelter. I’ve got a Diploma of Accounting and a mother in Camberwell.’
‘It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Plenty of people find themselves—’
‘Haven’t you heard of the tiny houses movement?’
He sighed, and I had a mad urge to grab him by the collar and explain that people who had jobs and kitchens and bathrooms and partners and children were almost always sad cogs in the capitalist machine, but I decided it wouldn’t make him like me any more.
‘Is there someone you can call? The mother in Camberwell, perhaps?’
A knot formed in my stomach. ‘I already tried her. She’s a little . . . irate at this moment.’
‘A friend?’
‘If my best friend comes to pick me up, you’ll let me go?’
‘With a warning.’
‘Look, I could seriously just walk home right now. It’s not far.’
‘It’s procedure. We need to release you into someone’s care.’
‘Someone’s care?’ I rolled my eyes all the way up to the shabby, probably asbestos-filled ceiling. ‘I’m not a geriatric.’
PC Pink Cheeks folded his hands.
‘All right, all right. I’ll call Jen.’
Jen didn’t pick up. It rang out and I dialled again. It rang out again. She was probably having sex with Jono, or discussing the wedding.
‘She’s probably working.’ I put the phone down on the bench and realised I had no one else to call. My brother was in Europe. My other friends were just people I knew through Jen, who hung out with me and laughed at my jokes but could not be relied upon to rescue me from a ruddy do-gooder police officer and drop me back at my caravan without gossiping about it to three thousand people. I did something I hadn’t done in a long time. I called my father.
‘Maggie!’ Dad answered the phone immediately and his deep, rich voice sounded joyful, as if he was genuinely happy to hear from me. He must have found a new girlfriend.
‘How’s your tan, Dad?’
‘Oh, tan’s great, life’s great, can’t complain. New missus! She’s dynamite. Blonde, curvy, forty-five. Goes off like a rocket.’
‘Gross.’
‘So what’s up, love?’
‘I’ve been arrested for living in a caravan. It’s persecution.’
The policeman narrowed his eyes at me and I shrugged.
‘A caravan! Good on you, love. I always wanted one, but your poor old mum never let me buy one when we were married.’ Dad was always running out of money and moving house to avoid paying overdue bills, and like me he preferred living on someone else’s dime, but unlike me he had a bent for luxury, so he’d probably hassled Mum to import a twenty-foot Airstream for eighty grand. ‘What sort did you get?’
‘A 1962 aluminium hand-built ten-footer. You can find it online. It’s called the Periwinkle. People used to build them from instruction manuals.’
The policeman sat back in his chair, shaking his head and making a winding motion with his finger, as in, Hurry up, lady.
‘Let me see.’ I heard Dad tapping on his keyboard. ‘Here it is. Oh, what a beauty!’ He was practically roaring. ‘What an absolute ripper. You don’t sell this one, Maggie. You keep this. This belongs in Classic Caravan magazine. It’ll be worth a bit. How much did you pay for it?’
‘Eleven hundred.’
‘Bargain! Hold on to it, it could be your retirement plan.’ Dad sighed. It sounded like he’d turned down his stereo. I braced myself for a deep and meaningful. ‘Maggie, I’m so proud of you. In a caravan, you’re beholden to no one. You’re nobody’s serf, working off a mortgage and giving birth to ungrateful kids who ask for iPads as soon as they can talk. You’re free. You’re living.’
‘So, why don’t you move into a caravan now?’
He laughed. ‘I’m an ugly middle-aged man. It’s all I can do to get women back to my apartment. If I lived in a caravan, no one would sleep with me.’
‘Well, shit,’ I said. ‘No one will sleep with me either in that case.’
‘All right, that’s it,’ the policeman leant forward, cutting in. ‘Is he coming to pick you up, or what?’
‘Can you pick me up from the police station?’ I asked.
‘Ooh, bad luck, love, I’ve moved to the Gold Coast.’ Of course he had. ‘Well, I’ve gotta go test drive this Beemer I found on Gumtree. Good luck, sweetheart.’ He hung up.
‘He can’t come,’ I said to the police officer, who was turning a delicate shade of purple. ‘Turns out he moved to the Gold Coast.’
He put his head in his hands. ‘Call someone else or I’ll put you in a jail cell for wasting my time.’
I looked at my phone and willed Jen to call back. ‘There’s no one else to call.’
‘Then I’m writing you up.’
‘Wait. Wait.’ I scrolled through numbers. Could I maybe call . . . ? I really didn’t want to, but I sighed and pressed the button, scrunched up my eyes and half hoped for no answer.
Dan answered on the second ring. ‘Well, hello. Is the trailer park wench hoping for another night of sensual snoring on the vinyl bed?’
‘The trailer park wench is in jail,’ I said. ‘Or, almost.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Seriously. I need a favour.’
‘What are you in for?’
‘Doesn’t matter. Can you pick me up?’
‘Tell me what you’re in for and I’ll come get you.’
I sighed and shot the police officer my most mutinous stare. ‘Public urination. Allegedly.’
Dan coughed to cover a laugh. ‘Okay. Tell me where you are and I’ll be there soon.’
After he signed me out of the police station, Dan took me for a cider.
‘Now I need a favour,’ he began.
‘That’s great, because I need a favour too.’
We were sitting on leather couches in Balloon Hour, a bar on Smith Street that was frequented by dope smokers and uni student
s and served soup made by someone’s mum. It was quiet, dark and cheap. The candle on the coffee table between us had gone out.
‘I just did you a favour!’
‘All right, what’s yours?’ I asked.
Dan chugged his beer. ‘She’s engaged.’
‘Who?’
He made a noise like he was trying to push the breath out of his lungs too quickly.
‘Lisa. My ex. She’s engaged to the divorce lawyer. She invited me to the engagement party.’
‘What?’ Someone in the back bar cheered wildly, and I thought I’d misheard. ‘Your ex invited you to her engagement party?’
Dan nodded.
‘Who does that? Is she trying to torment you?’
‘No, no,’ he said. ‘She’s a good chick. She wants to be friends.’
He knotted his hands a little, his eyebrows knitted like a pair of dirty blond caterpillars making love. Poor Dan. He had no idea of the depths of evil his ex-girlfriend was clearly capable of. She didn’t want to be friends. She wanted to flaunt her success at casting him aside in favour of a more successful man. Dan’s eyes were round and sad, like Dot’s when I ignored her plaintive meows for more snacks directly after being fed.
‘Will you come with me?’ he asked. ‘To the engagement party? The invite said I could bring a date.’
‘You mean you’re actually going? You want to go to this party and watch your ex moon over her new man? Why would you put yourself through that?’
‘I just . . . I want to see for myself. If she’s happy. And I can’t turn up alone.’
I thought I understood. ‘If you take someone, she might be jealous. And if she’s jealous, she might realise she still has feelings for you? Dan, haven’t you learnt from my mistakes? She’s moved on.’
He smiled sadly. ‘I love her.’
‘Yeah, all right. But why would you ask me to be your date? Don’t you know anyone better looking or more successful to make your ex jealous? Like, a stripper? Or a janitor?’
He fiddled with the label at the back of his T-shirt. ‘You are good looking, Maggie. Anyway, I don’t know who else to ask, and you seem to be a good liar.’
‘I’m an awful liar. I am literally never believed.’
‘Please?’
I wanted to stand my ground but was helpless against his pleading look and dimples. That and I really wanted him to check out my mother’s floorboards so I could move back home. I felt a strange urge to pat him on the shoulder. I didn’t, though. I just agreed to be his date for the torture session.
‘Fine.’
‘Thank you.’ The depth of relief on his face was discomforting.
‘But this is a way bigger favour than picking me up from the police station.’
He drained his beer and set it down on the coffee table. ‘Okay, what do you want?’
By the time we left the pub, Dan had agreed to look at my mother’s floorboards on Saturday, paid the bar tab and loaned me twenty dollars. Meanwhile, I had almost two weeks to prepare for Lisa’s engagement party.
Chapter 10
Rueben volunteered three days a week, like me. And, because Agnes decided she didn’t want to have to repeat any instructions, she rostered Rueben and me on for the same days. So I was stuck in an office every Monday, Wednesday and Friday with the guy who not only knew my penchant for sticking my hand down strangers’ pants but could do my job with his eyes closed if he wanted to, and who, with infuriating regularity, turned me on just by saying hello in his gravelly voice.
This morning, Belinda, whose mother, Margaret, had kept me on the phone for half an hour on my first day on the job, was being interviewed for a more senior role in the op shop. Agnes already trusted me to conduct interviews on my own, which I thought was a little optimistic of her, but I wasn’t about to complain. Since we had no other candidates for the role, Belinda’s interview was just a formality.
I closed the door and sat down opposite her in the tiny windowless room. She was in her late forties or early fifties, dressed in a pale pink pantsuit, with the most perfect Grace Kelly wave in her blonde hair that I’d ever seen. She had a lined, solemn face and heavy eyelids that drooped over her eyes like candle wax.
‘So,’ I said, ‘you’ve been volunteering in the op shop for three months, I see. What makes you suited to the role of shop supervisor?’
‘I have leadership skills. And I keep a careful eye on the shop.’ She held up a dainty finger adorned with a long pink nail. ‘When people come in and want things for free or get lipstick on the shirts, I know what to do. Firm but fair. And the older ladies in the shop listen to me.’
‘Okay. Look, you’ve done pretty well so far and altogether we’ve had good feedback about you—’
‘Have I shown you my scars?’ she interrupted.
‘Er . . .’
She stood up and lifted her shirt. All over her belly were deep red fissures, overlapping each other like cross-stitch. Some were deeper than others and still showed pinholes where they had been sewn up. She pointed to one.
‘Here’s where the knife went in first. It was a kitchen knife, semi-serrated, that’s why it left a big crevice like that. Then he – my ex – took it over here, here and here.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Right. Jeez, that’s nasty.’ Nasty? Christ.
‘All up, fourteen slash wounds and two stab wounds,’ she said. ‘They sliced some of my organs and I was in intensive care for a while.’
‘Right. Yeah.’ I fumbled, shuffling my papers awkwardly as though the interview was finished, hoping she would put down her shirt so I could leave. ‘Okay, well, you’ve got the job, congratulations,’ I said quickly.
‘Thanks, sweetheart. Do you want to see my back as well? There are more scars on there.’
‘Oh, no, that’s all right. Maybe another time.’
She tucked her shirt back in and left the room, her suit pristine again. When I got back to my desk, slightly disorientated, Agnes came by to drop off some forms.
‘How did Belinda’s interview go?’
‘Uh, very well,’ I said.
‘Did she show you her scars?’
I looked up but couldn’t discern any particular expression behind the frames of Agnes’s glasses. ‘Yeah.’
‘She always shows new people,’ Agnes said. ‘Her therapist encourages her to be open about her experiences, but I think she also does it so that other women will feel they can talk to her if they need to.’
She gave an enigmatic smile and went back to her desk. I headed to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. The kitchen door had a sign on it saying PLEASE KEEP DOOR CLOSED, so I opened it. The familiar sounds of Bunny’s guitar greeted me. Bunny, Josephine and Boris were perched around the kitchen table. They twisted their heads to stare as I entered the room.
‘Jesus is my hero,’ they sang in unison. ‘He guides me on my way.’
They kept their eyes on me, still singing, as I made my cup of tea. I rattled tins and teaspoons to annoy them, pretending they were singing Justin Bieber at their desks.
‘He’s my friend and my teacher, my family, my preacher,’ they sang. ‘He lights up every day.’
Just as I took my first sip of hot, weak tea, they burst into the chorus.
‘We all love Jeeeeeeeesus!’
I choked on my tea, splattering a mouthful into the sink, and ran out of the room. The voices followed me out, high and clear and spirited. I reached my desk and leant on it, coughing with laughter.
‘What is it?’ Agnes asked me as she passed.
‘Nothing. I was just thinking about Justin Bieber.’
She nodded and went on.
‘He’s so hot I can’t concentrate on my spreadsheets,’ I complained. ‘Ridiculously hot.’
Jen was furiously scrubbing a lasagne dish over the sink, her lips pressed tight, curls shuddering with the motion. She seemed less than interested in what Rueben looked like, but I continued anyway. I’d spent the last few weeks alternating between wanting to strangle
the calm smile off his face and wanting to screw his brains out.
‘But the bastard always finds some way to slip in a reference to your engagement party.’
Jen stopped scrubbing. ‘He was at my engagement party?’
‘Haven’t you been listening to me? He was the slide guitarist. He plays in an alt-country band.’ I sighed with longing. ‘He has excellent taste in music.’
I chucked a tea towel into a cardboard box full of food Jen was giving me, a homemade chocolate cake with hazelnut-chocolate filling being the biggest score.
‘So he was the one you tried to sleep with first?’ Jen said.
‘That’s the one.’
‘Huh.’ Jen went back to scrubbing. ‘So does this mean you’ve lost interest in Dan?’
I’d lined Jen up to help me get ready for Dan’s ex’s party, which was just over a week away. She’d promised to make me look hot. Jen knew Lisa. She’d described her as ‘a sweetheart, but crazy competitive’, and said if I showed up looking like a reasonable replacement it’d drive her nuts.
‘Dan’s more of a back-up plan,’ I said. ‘Maybe when I get sick of the caravan I could stay at his place for a bit.’
Jen threw the sponge into the sink and turned to me. ‘So you’re going to throw yourself into another relationship? Do the same thing over and over?’ She stomped into the living room and picked up a neatly folded set of bedsheets, which she was also giving to me.
‘Dan doesn’t want a relationship,’ I called to her. ‘He’s hung up on his ex. I just need a nice place to sleep sometimes.’
It was true. Hiding out in the caravan after a long day of work, I felt somewhat like a budgie in a vintage hipster cage. It seemed like passers-by were staring even when they weren’t. I hadn’t moved the caravan following the incident with the baby-faced police officer; I was just hoping that if I didn’t pee in the street he would leave me alone.
Jen stomped back into the kitchen. ‘Sean didn’t want a relationship either, remember? You talked him out of moving in with his girlfriend and then made the move on him yourself.’ She threw the sheets into the box, tipping the whole thing over with a crash, then huffed and started picking up items that had sprawled over the floor.