He drifted off to sleep, his head filled with images of the house in the mountains, the voices of children, the silhouette of a future he had no idea would ever eventuate.
8:20 am
Dry . . . parched . . . arid . . . desiccated . . . Desiccated? Hmm, maybe not. Dehydrated? Definitely, but that was a little prosaic. Jo’s brain had a habit of doing this, sometimes it was like a thesaurus on speed. It was a hazard of the profession, she’d decided, constantly having to come up with ‘another word for –’. Angie said she was a wordsmith, but Jo was not so sure, when half the time she couldn’t recall the name of everyday things like spatulas.
Whatever, her throat was dry and parched while her tongue felt as though it was carpeted in a slimy fuzz which Jo imagined to be not unlike moss. What was that stuff anyway? There was no word for it, as far as she was aware. Her teeth were coated with the same foul substance. This was what you got for quaffing champagne and pretzels right before falling asleep.
She stumbled out of bed to brush her teeth, kicking her toe on a box on her way to the bathroom, then nearly tripping over the same box as she turned back to get her toiletries bag from beside the bed. She then proceeded to spend an inordinate amount of time brushing her teeth. Eventually her mouth didn’t feel like the inside of a vacuum cleaner any more, but she was still stranded-in-the-desert thirsty. She needed hydration, irrigation, reconstitution . . . she needed something with fizz. It was the only cure for this particular kind of thirst. She made her way out to the kitchen and opened the fridge door with a vague hope she’d find something cold and fizzy therein, despite the fact that Jo was well aware she didn’t actually put anything in the fridge last night, and wishing wouldn’t make it so.
A buzzer went off suddenly, giving her a start. There it was again, louder this time. What was that? By the third time Jo finally twigged – it was the security intercom. She wasn’t used to it yet, she hadn’t had one in her previous building. She dashed over to the receiver on the wall and picked up the handset.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi Jo, it’s Angie.’
‘Oh, hi,’ she said, rubbing her forehead. ‘I thought we were meeting at Oliver’s?’
‘So did I. I waited for forty-five minutes –’
‘Forty-five minutes! What’s the time?’
‘It’s after eight-thirty, Jo.’
‘What?’ she almost shrieked. ‘I’m going to be late, I’m going to be so late, I have to go, I’m sorry, Ange, I’ll make it up to you –’
‘I brought you breakfast, and coffee,’ Angie broke in. ‘It’s rocket fuel, just the way you like it. Oliver made it specially.’
‘Oh, jeez Ange, I don’t know if I’ve got time.’
‘Jo, can you at least let me in down here?’
‘Sorry!’ she said, pressing the security button.
When she opened the door to Angie a few minutes later, Jo was holding up her mobile phone. ‘It’s flat. There was no alarm.’
‘I figured as much,’ said Angie, walking past her, ‘when I tried to ring and the recorded voice said your phone was turned off.’
‘God, I’m so sorry, Ange. And I was the one who insisted we meet early.’ Jo winced. ‘Are you very pissed off?’ she asked, knowing full well nothing ever pissed Angie off. Jo didn’t know how she did it. So many things – too many things – seemed to piss Jo off.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Angie, handing her a cardboard cup and a paper bag. ‘After yesterday it’s a wonder you woke up at all. Look at the state of this place.’
The floor was covered with boxes, some opened, their contents spewing out onto each other. The larger pieces of furniture had been plonked in approximately the right places, but everything else was in disarray.
Jo took a gulp of the coffee. Far out, it was strong. But it was effective. She reckoned this was what those electric paddles the doctors used on medical shows must feel like. Defibrillators. She should tell Oliver to call it his defibrillator brew. ‘What’s in the bag?’ Jo asked, taking another cautious sip.
‘One of those savoury breakfast muffins. I figured you could eat it on the run.’
‘And I really am going to have to run. What’s the time now?’
‘A little further past eight-thirty.’
‘Jesus!’
‘Don’t forget you’re only a walk away from work now,’ Angie reminded her.
‘That’s right, that’s good, okay, I might just make it.’ Jo looked around the room. ‘Can you see any boxes marked Linen or Bathroom maybe?’
‘What are you after?’
‘A towel. I should have had a shower last night, but I was just so exhausted, and besides, the water was barely warm.’
Angie had dropped to her knees and was tearing the masking tape from one of the boxes. She fished out a towel.
‘I should call you Radar,’ said Jo. ‘You’re amazing.’
‘And you’re late,’ said Angie, standing up and passing Jo the towel as she took the cup and bag back from her. ‘I’ll put these in the kitchen and see myself out. You’d better get a wriggle on.’
‘Thanks, Ange,’ she said, walking backwards towards the bedroom. ‘I’ll call you later, okay? I owe you a drink, or three . . .’
‘I’ll hold you to it.’
8:35 am
‘What the hell are you doing, Joe?’
He jumped, startled, staring up at his accuser. He blinked a couple of times, his eyes adjusting to the apparition of his brother gazing down on him from above.
‘It’s a wonder the neighbours didn’t call the police or something,’ Will went on. ‘You look like you’ve come in off the street.’
Joe rubbed his eyes, sitting upright. His heart was still pounding in his chest. He had to calm down, breathe, remember where he was . . . He was home in Australia, he was safe.
‘Why are you sleeping in the doorway?’ Will persisted.
‘I didn’t have much choice, Will. You forgot to put the key under the mat and you didn’t answer the door.’
‘Because I wasn’t here,’ said Will.
Joe was still in a fugue of sleep, he was not quite following.
‘You should have waited at the airport, I told you I’d be there,’ Will added, a little petulantly.
‘I didn’t see you.’
‘Well, I was a bit late . . .’
‘How late?’
‘I dunno, half an hour . . . or so . . .’ he shrugged. ‘I was going to stay up all night so I didn’t miss you, but it kinda turned into a party at Jake’s . . . I ended up crashing and nobody woke me. Retards, they knew I had to get to the airport.’
That was the Will he knew and loved. Everyone else’s fault but his own. ‘Give me a hand up,’ said Joe, raising his arm.
‘Thing is, if you trusted me, you’d have waited –’ Will grasped his brother’s forearm, ‘– and then you wouldn’t have had to sleep on the landing,’ he said, pulling him to his feet.
‘Yeah, but then I wouldn’t have got any sleep at all waiting around for you at the airport.’ Joe drew level with him. He still wasn’t used to them being the same height. Will was slighter though; he hadn’t filled out like Joe. Give him another decade. ‘Good to see your not-so-familiar face.’ He chucked his brother under the chin. ‘What’s this feeble excuse for a beard?’
‘Fuck off,’ Will grinned, knocking his hand away. ‘Look at you. You know the three-day growth thing went out with metro-sexuals, Joe. You’re living in the past, old man.’
‘I’ve been travelling for twenty-something hours, and this is the welcome I get?’
‘You started it.’
They paused, smiling at each other.
‘Good to have you home, Joe,’ said Will.
‘Good to be home.’
The brothers proceeded to hug in the way men do, punctuated with a couple of good hard slaps on the back.
‘So, are you going to let me in?’ Joe said finally.
‘Sure, sure.’ Will dug for his keys
in his pocket while Joe hoisted his backpack up onto his shoulder.
‘Now just so you know,’ said Will. ‘Rancid hasn’t quite moved all his stuff out yet, but he’s promised to by the weekend.’
Joe didn’t want to think about how Will’s friend had earned that moniker. ‘Renting and forgetting’ had turned into providing his itinerant brother and assorted hangers-on with somewhere to stay for little to no rent. Will was an aspiring actor, though as far as Joe understood, ‘aspiring’ usually involved some ambition, goal-setting, hard work, and he had the feeling that Will was waiting for his big break to be handed to him on a platter.
‘Where do I get to sleep?’ Joe asked him.
‘In your room, in your bed,’ Will assured him. ‘I even changed the sheets.’ He unlocked the door and swung it back to allow Joe to walk through. The place had all the signs of a hasty tidy-up. There were various ‘neat’ piles around the room, newspapers, books, clothes hanging over the backs of chairs, dishes peeking above the sink.
‘Let me put these bags down,’ said Joe, crossing to the bedroom. The bed had been freshly made up, a mound of dirty linen in the corner testimony to it. Joe dumped his bags on the floor, frowning at the bedside alarm clock. ‘Is that the time?’
Will walked in behind him with the second overnight bag. ‘Ah, yeah, probably. Close enough anyway.’
‘Fuck,’ muttered Joe, blinking at his wristwatch. ‘I’m still on US time. I’ve got to get out of here, I’ve got a meeting up town in about twenty minutes.’
‘Jeez, Joe, you didn’t organise that too well.’
He gave Will a withering look. ‘Can you please go make sure that is the right time while I wash my face and change my shirt?’
Joe was rummaging through his bag when Will reappeared in the doorway.
‘Clock’s dead on,’ he announced. ‘Hey, old man, getting a bit of a gut there,’ he added, giving Joe a gentle whack across the middle as he pulled a clean T-shirt over his head.
‘What are you talking about,’ said Joe. ‘It’s all muscle.’
Will snorted. ‘Coffee’s on.’
He slipped a collared shirt over his T-shirt, the least crumpled one he could find. ‘Do you still make it like rocket fuel?’
‘Yep,’ Will said proudly.
‘Never mind, I don’t have time anyway, I have to get out of here,’ said Joe, feeling for his wallet in the pocket of his jeans.
Will was regarding him, frowning. ‘This meeting, is it about work, like an interview? ’Cause you know you look like you slept in those clothes.’
‘Funny about that.’ Joe walked past him into the living room. ‘It’s not an interview, just a chat with an old friend. Putting some feelers out.’
‘Well, I hope for your sake he’s a really good friend, understanding, you know . . .’
Joe stuck out his hand. ‘Key please.’
‘I’ll be here,’ he said.
‘Just to be on the safe side,’ Joe persisted, beckoning with his fingers.
‘Fine.’ Will shoved a hand into his pocket. ‘Take mine, ’cause I’m not going anywhere.’ He dropped the keys into Joe’s hand.
‘I’ll buy you a beer later,’ said Joe as he crossed to the door.
‘I’ll hold you to it.’
8:55 am
Jo was finally on her way to work, setting a brisk pace. She’d dressed in the outfit she had packed separately, twisted her damp hair into an approximation of a French roll and slapped on a little make-up. That would have to do.
Three blocks and five minutes later, she arrived at the building that housed the offices of the Daily and Sunday Tribune, and various other sister publications. It was an ugly edifice, its prominent concrete ribs and brown detailing placing it undeniably in the building boom of the seventies. Jo hurried through the revolving door and skittered towards the lift bay.
‘Hold it!’
The elevator doors blithely ignored her, Jo couldn’t see from the angle of her approach whether there was anyone inside.
‘I said hold the lift, please!’ she cried as she careered towards the closing doors. They touched, barely, before miraculously parting again, gliding open to reveal a tall, scruffy man smiling out at her.
‘Sorry,’ he said cheerfully.
Why was he saying sorry? He’d held the lift, she hadn’t missed it. What was there to be sorry about? Jo gave the man a cursory nod and stepped inside.
‘Which floor?’ he asked.
‘I’ve got it,’ she said brusquely, reaching across to press the button herself. Did he think she was incapable of pressing a button? Moron.
He nodded, still sporting the goofy grin. He really was tall, freakishly tall in fact. Jo was used to everyone being taller than her; she’d lived with that reality the whole of her adult life. But she could still tell when someone was exceptionally tall. And this guy was tall. And big. Not overweight – he was what her mother would call ‘a big bear of a man’. His presence seemed to fill the elevator, which was a little intimidating in such a small space. Just as well Jo was not easily intimidated.
She fixed her stare on the buttons as they lit their way to her floor. They seemed to be moving at a painfully slow pace. In fact Jo’s hackles were rising faster than this elevator. At this rate she was going to be late for the meeting and Leo would make her suffer for it. He wouldn’t let her slip in quietly and take her seat. No, Leo could never let an opportunity like that pass without getting some mileage out of it. That was Leo’s way – lead through humiliation.
Oh come on . . . what the hell was wrong with this thing?
Jo glanced sideways at tall scruffy guy; he was watching the buttons too, frowning curiously. Had he noticed the lift was barely moving as well? She thought about asking him, but she had never been one to do the small talk thing with strangers.
Clunk.
‘What was that?’ Jo gasped as the floor beneath her hiccupped. There followed a loud wheezing groan, another clunk and the elevator came to a shuddering halt.
‘Shit!’ she exclaimed, pressing her hands against the walls for support.
‘Are you okay?’ Scruffy asked her.
‘Of course I’m okay. What’s wrong with the lift?’
‘Looks like it’s stopped.’
He was clearly a genius.
Jo stepped gingerly away from the wall and approached the control panel. She pressed OPEN DOOR, CLOSE DOOR, then the buttons for the floors above and below, then the open and close buttons again, but nothing happened. ‘This is ridiculous,’ she muttered. ‘Why isn’t anything responding?’
‘I think it must be pretty well stuck,’ he declared.
‘It can’t be stuck,’ Jo snapped. ‘People don’t get stuck in lifts these days, everything’s computerised, right?’
‘Mm, and computers are foolproof.’ He folded his arms and leant back against the wall. ‘Nothing ever goes wrong with computers.’
She glanced at him, slouched against the wall like a vagrant at a bus shelter, and about as useful. ‘Well, aren’t you going to do something?’
Joe raised an eyebrow. He knew her type. All feisty and independent, but they still expected blokes to fix everything. Demanded it, in fact. Equality meant payback: men owed women for all their years of oppression, even if most of the guys he knew had never oppressed a woman in their lives. They were too scared.
She was still standing there, hands on hips, all self-righteousness, waiting for an answer.
He shook his head regretfully. ‘Gee, if only I’d packed my emergency elevator repair kit . . .’
No, he wasn’t a genius, he was a smart-arse. Jo had met his type before, too often. Useless males who had decided that equality between the sexes meant they didn’t have to do blokey things any more. Women could look after themselves if they wanted their independence so badly. Problem was, they didn’t make up for it by taking their fair share of ‘women’s work’. So in the end they did bugger all, but still managed to be self-righteous about it.
> ‘What I can do,’ he said, pushing off the wall and stepping across to the control panel, ‘is press this button that says Help.’ Joe was pretty sure she could have worked that out for herself eventually, but hey, he was happy to oblige.
‘You have reached the Otis emergency helpline.’
‘I don’t believe it!’ Jo exclaimed. ‘It’s a recorded message?’
‘This line is exclusively to report service difficulties, breakdowns and malfunctions of the elevator, and cannot be used for any other purpose. Heavy penalties apply . . .’
The voice droned on as Jo tuned out. Her heart had started to race and her stomach was churning, which was not a good thing considering that she’d just scoffed a cheesy muffin studded with globules of bacon and then washed it down with industrial-strength coffee. God, what if she threw up in this small space with this strange man? She felt a cold sweat break across her forehead. No, no way, she simply could not throw up. She had to steel herself . . . focus on something else . . .
She tuned in again as a voice – a live one – was saying something about ‘an hour and a half’.
‘What was that?’ she cried. ‘Did they just say an hour and a half?’
‘Is everyone okay there?’
‘No, we’re not okay!’ Jo shrilled. ‘We’re stuck in a friggin’ elevator.’
‘I’m aware of that, ma’am, and I’ve logged you into the system. I was just telling the gentleman that we’ll have someone out there within an hour and a ha–’
‘You’re kidding me?’ Jo had had just about enough. Random downpours, power failures, batteries dying, now lifts breaking down? It was like a comedy of errors, except there was nothing funny about it whatsoever.
She shoved scruffy boy aside, leaning her hands against the wall and talking straight into the intercom. ‘Just how many people are stuck in lifts across Sydney right now?’ she demanded. ‘There can’t be so many that it takes you an hour and a half to respond to a call, unless you have the shoddiest elevators on the planet, or the most incompetent technicians. But they’re not incompetent, are they? They’re just lazy. It must be morning smoko –’
Crossing Paths Page 3