by Nick Earls
He laughs, and I wish I’d been there. I could have done with something like that in my night. Vanessa’s laughing too, looking at Frank and imagining him foaming.
‘Your septum’s the bit in the middle of your nose,’ he says to her, ‘and some drugs wreck it.’
‘Oh, right,’ she says, and thinks about it. ‘What are they doing up your nose? Why don’t they come in tablets?’
‘Good question. It didn’t do a lot for me with the Staminade. I was sneezing crystal for the rest of the night while Phil was off . . .’ He pauses and looks at me, searching for the right word . . . ‘gallivanting around’. It’s a dad word if ever there was one, a dad word used to rebuke rebellion with pride.
‘I’m sure you taught me everything I know.’
‘Yeah. I expect I did. But don’t use it all at once. Remember, use your powers wisely. There were times early on when you were dancing that I thought it might get the better of you.’
‘Good advice, Love Master. Hey, how would you describe my chin?’
‘Your chin?’ I show it to him side on, and he gives it some thought. ‘Decisive. What do you reckon, Ness? Decisive?’
‘Yep.’
‘You know,’ he says, nodding his head as if the change might have come from my much-needed gallivanting, ‘I’m not certain I noticed that before.’
*
Of course, the morning ended the way I’d expected.
‘I assume there’ll be a call going in,’ Frank said in the car once he’d given me the phone number. ‘Say, tomorrow evening? That’d be two days, generally taken to be the right balance between desperate and not interested.’
I made some evasive remark about preferring her friend, but it didn’t get me too far. So I told him I’d think about it and he threatened to dial the number for me.
‘I’m going to put it to you,’ he said, ‘that you’re afraid you can’t live up to last night. And, can I just say, if you did it once you can do it again. You were the man last night, and I’m doing my best to adjust to that. Give me a break and do the follow-up.’
So, now calling Jacinta seems to be a favour to Frank.
I’m glad when I’m back in my room, lying on my bed and listening to him gun the Valiant up the street and over the hill. My mother’s at rehearsals, my father’s gone into work and there’s plenty of time completely alone to launder things that need it.
You wouldn’t have believed the mess on the Paradise, I’ll tell my mother. Not even I could leave clothes around in that state for someone else to wash. French onion dip everywhere, and you know how it goes off if you don’t get to it.
I pick up my bullworker. I put it down again.
The images of last night stagger before me like pictures in a home movie. Pictures in a home movie no home should make and that I know I don’t want to watch, but I also know I can’t walk out on it. The lurching moment of abandon as control switched to autonomic and there was nothing I could do to save it. The tousled silhouette of the food and beverage manager against the city lights. The torchlight, flaring and flaring from my cuffs, my hands darting around in my pants like surprised hamsters, trying to vanish, to bolt away from the light. Only looking more like masturbation in action.
*
There’s also pressure from my mother, growing by midweek, to be part of the protest at the campus on Friday, the day Joh gets his honorary doctorate. She tells me she’ll be protesting, but there’s a limit to what she can do since she’s on staff. I ask her what that means and she says, ‘Peaceful protest,’ which makes it sound as if she’s urging the violence on me. She tries to explain, but blithely tosses in the expression ‘front line’, waves her hands in the air and says, ‘Oh, Philby, that’s all rhetoric. You know what I mean. It’ll be rowdy, nothing worse.’
The other topic that came up after Saturday night was my neck. Early Sunday evening, when I was watching TV and the room was becoming dark, my neck apparently gave out a yellow glow from behind. We talked about it at dinner. I explained it was from a feather boa, a glow-in-the-dark boa, but that didn’t seem to dispel concern in quite the way I’d wanted it to. I told them it was nothing more than one of those spur-of-the-moment dance-floor things, an incident involving a little playful lassoing. I said it as if playful lassoing was something we’d do most family dinners between courses. Anyway, it put me fifty bucks closer to the video camera. That’s what the Paradise was about.
‘You should be pleased for me,’ I told my mother. ‘I’m sticking with my plan and there was interest in me last night. Not interest that’ll go any further, but interest nonetheless.’
There was no need to complicate the story with the admission that I came home not a cent richer.
*
Frank doesn’t let up, but I knew he wouldn’t. On Monday I got encouragement, on Tuesday questions, on Wednesday in the car on the way to World of Chickens it’s deteriorated to, ‘I don’t get it. What’s your problem? She’s slipping through your fingers.’
‘I’m not like you,’ I said, but it did no good. ‘I don’t call them all.’
How should I have put it? ‘Frank, I took things a step further on the Paradise than I might have admitted. But I took that step alone . . .’
I’d call her. I would, and that’s what annoys me about it. I’d call if Saturday hadn’t ended the way it did. But there’s no changing it now, and it’s good to get back to World of Chickens, to normal conversations with Sophie and the life that preceded my Paradise-pants madness.
‘Pray, sirrah,’ she says the first time I come out of the toilet in costume, ‘give me something poetical.’
‘Out, out, brief candle!’ I jump into delivery position and stand, legs braced, the way I hope Olivier might. ‘Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more; it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.’
‘God, tough piece,’ she says, back in the language of the century of our birth.
‘Sure. Macbeth, Act Five, Scene Five. It’s a tough part of the play. He is within the castle at Dunsinane, and he is indeed buggered. Now, as Churchill, circa Battle of Britain 1940. Note change in intonation.’
I run through it again, and she says the change is more subtle than she’d expected. I put it down to Olivier, drawing on Churchill at that moment. Back when Olivier did Macbeth, I’m sure Churchill’s phrasing was still recent and compelling. So, next, I decide to go for the same speech in the voice of Peter Brady as Bogart. Degree of difficulty: 2.8.
‘Pork chops and apple sauce,’ I’m saying as my warm-up, ‘pork chops and apple sauce,’ when the sound of humming, and shoes on the steps, comes up from below.
That stops me. It turns out to be Zel and, from the way she looks at me when she gets to the top, I know she heard. So I tell her it was a vocal warm-up, since it’s my turn out at the road. Deep inside the chicken head, I can feel my face go red.
The three of us walk through to the front and Frank, when he sees Zel, immediately looks more focused and says, ‘Burger, madam?’
‘Why, yes, Frank, how nice of you.’ She walks round to the customers’ side and puts one proprietorial arm up on the counter, her trinkets settling noisily, like a handful of loose change. ‘How have you all been this evening? Good?’
She’s more contained than usual, more business-like. Frank, I expect, will take it personally. His interaction default setting is ‘flirt’, it’s worked with Zel before and business-like isn’t an easy shift from there. In the car, I’ll explain to him that the change in Zel’s style of presentation is actually a good idea.
When I’m back at the roadside, I work out pretty quickly that Macbeth Act Five, Scene Five sets up a miserable mood for chickening. I resort to a few old favourites. I throw in some Heart, once I’ve done a quick scan through the beak and I’m sure there’s No one around to hear it. Then Heart done by Peter Brady as Bogart. ‘Magic Man’ followed by ‘Barracuda’. Now, th
at’s tough. That’s talent. Actually, when it’s echoing around in the chicken head, it feels like I’m not alone in the suit and the other guy’s pretty creepy. So I stop.
I start humming ‘Eye of the Tiger’. That song’s pursuing me. More than I thought—it might even have been what Zel was humming on the steps. It must be three years old now. It’s getting far too much airplay. It always has, and I’ve never liked it.
Antepartum haemorrhage, I tell myself. Think instead of antepartum haemorrhage. Think of the causes, common and uncommon, and come up with a flowchart that could differentiate between them.
*
Something beeps as I go back inside. For a second I wonder if I’ve triggered it, then Zel pulls a pager from her bag and says, ‘It’s me, don’t worry,’ as she presses buttons to read the message. Frank shows her where the phone is while Sophie and I go out to change.
‘I wonder who it is,’ Sophie says. ‘She’s been getting a few calls lately.’
‘I didn’t know she had a pager.’
‘It’s for home hairdressing, mainly. Dad pages her sometimes, but she’s got it for work. She does hair, make-up and style consultancy part-time,’ Sophie says, as if reading it to me from a business card. ‘She says the big word in hair right now is “volume”. Have you noticed she’s got volume?’
‘I’ve never been one for volume really, or for noticing hair. But, yeah, I think I might have noticed hers.’
‘Some of us don’t even have the option of volume. Me, for instance. Dad doesn’t even have all his own hair and he looks kind of two-tone, but Mum reckons it’s different for guys. She says my hair comes in just this side of “lank”. Lank, for hair people, is a bad word, and I don’t think that’s going to change. Whatever anyone’s tried with my hair—even Mum—it just falls right out. Even perms. And I don’t mean just some stupid home perm. Mum used to have her own salon, but she sold it a few years ago. She was good, you know. Respected. She was the first person on the southside who could do every style from ‘Charlie’s Angels’ and match it properly with the customer’s needs. As far as the salon business goes, she went out on a high. Round about when Dad’s World ideas started taking off.’
The back door swings open and Zel’s there, voluminous of hair in her white and gold as she sweeps by. ‘Just your father,’ she says to Sophie. ‘Worried where I’d got to.’
Her heels clang down the stairs, click across the concrete and into the dark.
‘Hey,’ Sophie says once she’s gone, ‘I read this article. Automatic turn-ons and turn-offs.’
‘Yeah? You read a lot of magazines.’
‘I’m doing media studies. So what do you reckon? Automatic turn-ons first. What would you rate as an automatic turn-on.’
‘Quirky observation,’ I tell her and I’m quite proud of myself. It sounds so much more sophisticated than ‘sizeable shapely breasts’, for example, or ‘fast trouser hand’.
‘Yeah, I’d go for that,’ she says. ‘I’d rate that pretty high. Okay, turn-offs.’
‘Turn-offs . . . A lack of appreciation of the finer points of physics? No. A genuine attachment to extreme right-wing political beliefs. It’d be very hard to come back from there.’
‘So, Phoebe’s not a Joh fan then?’
‘No.’ Yet again, a Phoebe reference catches me unawares. Why am I never ready? ‘She’s going to the protest on Friday.’ And why do I always end up appropriating a small amount of Phoebe my mother to play Phoebe my girlfriend? If I don’t stop doing this, I’m destined for some kind of therapy. ‘So, what’s your automatic turn-off then?’
‘The named penis. If a guy drops his pants and goes, “say hello to Charlie,” I’m out of there.’
‘And if he drops his pants and doesn’t ask you to say hello to Charlie?’ ‘Depends on the guy, I suppose. Hey, I had a friend once who went out with a guy who was a big 2001: A Space Odyssey fan and he called it Hal.’
‘And was that friend called Sophie?’
There’s a pause, as if she honestly hadn’t expected to be caught out. ‘Maybe.’
‘You’ve spent far too much time with the sci-fi crowd. But here’s what I don’t get. How do the Hal-penis guys even get that far? Nothing personal, but surely it’s not the first signal that there’s something wrong. Surely things aren’t going along swimmingly, then all of a sudden it’s Howdy Hal that gets you wondering for the first time.’
‘Depends, I suppose. That’s why it’s the automatic turn-off. There are plenty of turn-offs out there, but a lot get you a second chance. Howdy Hal gets you a definite nothing, at least as far as I’m concerned.’
*
Her hair’s not really lank. That’s what I’m thinking, sitting in Frank’s car with his burger box on my lap. Thin and straight, yes, but lank’s a bit harsh. Not an observation a parent should make, particularly a full-haired parent. But they do, don’t they, they do. And they never mean it badly. It’s been two weeks since my mother classified me as scrawn, she’s not forgiven yet and she doesn’t even know it.
The named penis. Sophie had had time to think about it, but it was still good material. It’s reassuring that that’s a turn-off. Frank’s penis, from what I’ve heard, has many names. Not that that’s made it any kind of master of disguise.
We pass within a block of the Underground on the way to my place. We should have gone there tonight, the three of us. I put it to Frank after Zel left, but he said he’d told his parents he’d come straight home after work to ‘move a sofa, or some shit. You know how it goes. And it’s always got to be done today.’ So the idea never even made it to Sophie.
‘I’ll do you a deal tomorrow,’ he says.
‘Yeah?’
‘Your parents won’t be home till about six, right?’
‘Round about. My mother’s usually home around then, my father some time later.’
‘I’ll give you a lift home from the Mater if you’ll help me out with a photo or two. I’ve got a plan for O’Hare.’
‘The surgery tutor? Do you really think that’s a good idea?’
‘You haven’t heard the plan yet.’
‘The last plan I heard was keeping a low profile and doing another case in the holidays.’
‘Yeah, this is a new plan. On top of that plan. That’s still happening too. It’s just a couple of photos.’
‘Okay.’ Said in that ‘against my better judgement’ way, but that’d never bother Frank. ‘Hey, Sophie said this thing about photos tonight.’ Which I can’t believe I’m about to quote, but . . . ‘I can’t remember what we were talking about but she said, “Do you get that thing where, when you look at old photos of yourself in public places, you wonder what’s happened to all those people in the background that you’ve never met?”’
‘You sick bastard.’ He shakes his head. ‘You total lost cause.’
‘What?’
‘You know what. Your sly little plan to get me to ask her to the Underground. And then that photo shit—that’s just the kind of stuff you like.’
‘What kind of stuff?’
‘You know . . .’
‘No, I don’t know.’ Yes, I do know, but the two words that come to mind I keep to myself: quirky, observation. ‘The Underground just seemed like a good idea. You made us go there last week. And the photo story just seemed topical.’
‘Topical,’ he says, and laughs. ‘Well, that’s all right then.’
11
Frank’s got me wrong—wrong in two ways. I know exactly where the boundaries lie with Sophie, and of course I’d be calling Jacinta if things were different.
But Frank’s got a lot wrong. His tactics for his surgery long case, for a start.
‘You’ll like it,’ he says, pulling his bag over from the back of the car when we get to my place on Thursday afternoon.
It turns out I don’t like it much. First, he makes us confirm that there’s No one home. Then, when we go into my room to get the camera, he shuts the door and starts to undo his belt.
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‘Is there any bit of your wall that you don’t have English-boy posters on?’ he says, as though that’s the problem with what’s happening. ‘I’m going to have to squat in the corner. It’s the only bit that could pass for the Royal.’
‘And, you know, I’m okay with that.’
‘Whatever. “Catweazle” and bullfighting don’t fit with the plan.’ He pulls a packet of Tim Tams from his bag, tells me, with clinical detachment, ‘Just arse and biscuit,’ and crouches down on the floor. ‘Here’s the idea. We get ourselves a good photo . . .’
‘Singular, Frank. You get yourself a good photo. I was never here.’
‘I get myself a good photo, I get into his office at the Royal, I give a couple of his Tim Tams a bit of a suck, put them back in the packet and slip the photo in there for him to find just when he’s taken a bite.’ He sticks his buttocks in the air, pulls his tiger-print hipster underpants down and lifts a biscuit from the tray. He reaches it around, then stops. ‘I don’t have a mirror. You might have to . . .’
‘Hey, I might be going to take the photo just to get this over with, but I’m not loading the biscuit into your arse.’
‘Come on. It can’t just be jammed in there. It’s got to be . . . aesthetic.’
‘You really aren’t standing where I am. Have you seen your arse? It’s not particularly pleasing to the eye. Just stick it in.’
He reaches round behind himself again, like a child struggling with a slot toy, trying to poke the square peg into the . . . it doesn’t bear thinking about. The sooner the photos are taken, the sooner this is over. That’s what should be on my mind. He manoeuvres the Tim Tam into position, but it keeps slipping and it’s starting to melt, sliding over his buttocks and marking them like a brown crayon. Brown crayon, I tell myself, since that’s the better thought to fix in my head right now.