Something Fishy

by Shane Maloney

  Tony was sitting at a desk that was pushed against the wall just inside the door, signing some documents. He finished with a flourish, looked up and gave me a broad smile. ‘Hey,’ he said, spreading his palms in greeting. ‘Murray, my man, I was just gunna come up.’

  ‘Sorry to disturb,’ I said. ‘Couldn’t leave without saying thanks. A friend in need and all that.’

  Tony was a stocky, slightly paunchy Neapolitan with a van dyke beard and sleek black hair brushed back from a high receding brow. He wore a charcoal-grey polo shirt under a pale-lemon, crumpled-linen sports jacket, the cuffs pushed back to his hairy forearms, Miami Vice style. Give him a tunic and laurel crown, stick a bunch of grapes in one hand and a Pan pipe in the other, and he wouldn’t have looked out of place amid his trattoria satyrs.

  ‘Hey guys,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Meet Murray Whelan, our local MP. Labor, unfortunately, so knowing him ain’t worth shit.’

  I put my head around the door and found two other men in the room, one leaning against the filing cabinet, the other sunk in a worn-out armchair. They were observing Tony with amusement, like he was a novelty act, the genial wise guy. This, I imagined, was exactly the effect he was trying for.

  The bloke at the filing cabinet was small and neat, well into his fifties. Thick-rimmed spectacles. Brown suit, bland tie. The total package suggested a clerical occupation. Accountancy or somesuch. ‘This is Phil…’ said Tony.

  I nodded hello around the door and Phil nodded back. His eyes sideways behind his glasses, goldfish in a bowl.

  ‘…and Jake Martyn.’

  Tony delivered the name with the hint of a flourish. It was one I’d heard before. A name name.

  Martyn was a culinary trend-setter, the proprietor of Gusto, a fashionable restaurant in seaside Lorne. A frequent mention in the epicure pages, he was the pioneer of the dernier cri in fine dining, a style eponymously called ‘con gusto’. Out with those finicky morsels of yesteryear, the smidgin of scallop on a wasabi wafer, the flutter of quail over an inference of artichokes. In with the hearty mouthful, the port-glazed porterhouse on a shitload of mashed spuds, the pan-seared swordfish with a bottle of beer and a burp.

  An embodiment of the pleasures of the table, he was a barrel-chested, generous-gutted man in his early forties with a round, cheerful face, robust shoulder-length hair the colour of old oyster shells and an air of easy affability. He was wearing a just-folks sweater and scuffed hiking boots, as though making it plain he had no time for fussbudget fiddlers with sea-urchin roe.

  He came up out of his seat a fraction of an inch, gave me a brief spray of charm and dropped back. ‘G’day.’

  His charm was the kind you can see coming but don’t resent. Through it I sensed that he recognised my name. I was that guy whose girlfriend got killed and sometimes, when people met me for the first time, they didn’t quite know how to respond to that fact. Whether to say something or not. Martyn went for not, which was the way I preferred it.

  ‘Ah,’ said Tony. ‘Here it is, at last.’

  The waitress with the flirty laugh appeared beside me in the doorway, a liqueur bottle in one hand, three snifters in the other.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ I said. ‘Thanks again, Tony.’

  ‘We’re finished here,’ he said, slipping the signed form and some other papers into a manilla envelope and handing it to the accountant type. ‘Stick around. Have a drink with us. VSOP.’

  The waitress squeezed past me and Tony rose to relieve her of the bottle and glasses. In doing so, he found it impossible to avoid pressing against her. She squirmed free with practised ease, but not before he managed to grind his groin against her rump.

  ‘A tasty drop,’ he smirked, sniffing the cork. ‘Bring another glass, will you, honey?’

  I stepped back to give the waitress plenty of exit room. She raised her eyebrows as she sidled past, and rolled her eyes.

  ‘Not for me,’ I said. ‘Had a couple of beers upstairs and I’m driving. Don’t want to end up blowing into a bag.’ Or providing the pretext for a repeat demonstration of Tony’s amatory technique. ‘Nice meeting you, fellers.’

  I went back through the kitchen, amused and wondering. Jake Martyn was a long way out of Tony Melina’s league. Finding him at La Luna was like bumping into Coco Chanel in Woolworths. Whatever had lured him there, Tony was keen to impress. There was definitely business in the air. Was Tony trying to flog him something, I wondered?

  Vice versa, as it turned out. And Tony paid far too much for it.

  I drove down Mount Alexander Road in a thinning trickle of traffic, harness-racing enthusiasts home-bound from the track, then cut through North Melbourne to Dudley Street and parked behind Festival Hall.

  The old boxing stadium was looking its age, a relic from the days of ‘TV Ringside’ and ‘Rollerderby’, a grimy shed redolent of hotdog water, cork-tipped cigarettes and extinct chewing gum. But, more than just a shrine to the gladiators of the glove, the House of Stoush was also a centre of excellence in the musical arts. Little Richard had played there. The Easybeats. George Thorogood and the Destroyers. The Clash. Dolly Parton.

  Tonight, the bands were called Chocolate Starfish, Bum Crack and Toothbrush Messiah. The gig was a cut-price show for under-age punters, sponsored by a zit cream manufacturer. It had just finished and teenagers were pouring from the building, gathering in droopy-jeaned hordes at the kerbside and malingering around the kebab vendors and doughnut caravans. I double-parked across the road from the main entrance and scanned the crowd.

  Red was standing with a cluster of kids beside the box-office window. His hair was gelled into a cockatoo crest, his shoulders were slouched and his clothes hung off his frame like a scarecrow. He merged, in short, with the crowd.

  I recognised some of the gang, friends and classmates, male and female. They were full of beans, teasing and joking. Their weekend had already begun. I sat watching from the Magna. Red was looming over a smaller kid, listening intently. There seemed something self-conscious about his stance, as though he was making an effort to appear relaxed. His hands were thrust into the back pockets of his jeans and his hip was cocked in an attempt at nonchalance. Then the other kid turned a little and I saw that it was a girl. A wisp of a thing, a pixie-faced waif with chopped hair and cast-off clothes. Her arms were folded across her barely-there chest and she tilted her head sideways when she looked up at Red.

  I couldn’t place her among the usual suspects, the crowd from school. But, even from thirty metres away, it was plain that she was reaching parts of my boy that hadn’t been reached before. Not, at least, to my knowledge.

  Girls were nothing special in Red’s circle of friends. They were peers, pals, members of the tribe. The boys and girls treated each other with the casual camaraderie of brothers and sisters. But this, if I was not mistaken, was something different. The lad was mooching like a man smitten. Was the young sap rising, I wondered? Was he feeling his oats? Or the unexpected sting of Cupid’s dart?

  The poor little bugger didn’t know where to look. His gaze darted from the girl’s shoes to his knees, alighted on her face for a moment, then moved back to his knees. The girl, too, seemed deliciously ill at ease. She tugged a thread from the shredded elbow of her tatterdemalion sweater and absently toyed with it.

  A Landcruiser pulled into the kerb, blocking my view. A recent model, roof-racks, rear window plastered with surfwear stickers. Ripcurl. Balin. Hot Tuna. The driver stepped out and checked the crowd, standing in the angle of the open door. She was lean, crop-haired, a wading-bird with a cashmere shawl draped over her shoulders. It was just beginning to drizzle and, as she raised the shawl over her head, the flecked light caught a dark seam that ran down her cheek, hard against her ear, and crossed the angle of her jaw.

  Urchin-girl saw the woman and waved, then detached herself from the gang, flapped her sleeve-ends in a collective goodbye and tripped to the Landcruiser. A boy I had seen before, maybe one of Red’s classmates, straw-coloured dreadloc
ks, got into the front passenger seat. Red watched them drive away. He kept watching until the car turned the corner.

  I tooted and he came, bringing a boy named Tarquin Curnow with him.

  Tarquin and Red had been mates since kindergarten and their friendship had survived Red’s years of exile interstate after my divorce from his mother. His parents, Faye and Leo, were my closest friends, family almost, pillars of strength and providers of casseroles in the dark days when I was fit for nothing. Back in Fitzroy, our houses were separated only by a cobbled lane and the boys spent so much time together whenever Red came to town that they might as well have been joined at the hip. After Red’s permanent return to Melbourne, the boys went to Fitzroy High together. Now at different schools, they were still as thick as ever.

  Adolescence had done wonders for Tark. Formerly a drip, he had transformed himself into a Goth. Spiky black hair, funeral weeds, fingerless gloves, high-laced Doc Martens. A pet rat, too, until the cat ate it. Purple candles and Nick Cave records. But Faye and Leo had drawn the line at the eyebrow piercing. And no tattoo, not yet.

  Not that his parents were panicking that Tarquin was on the slippery slope to glue sniffing and satanic rituals. He was too smart for that. His maths were good enough to get him into an advanced studies program, his general aptitude test placed him in the top eight per cent for the state and he was vice-captain of the school debating team.

  He and Red loped across the road and piled into the back seat of the car, like I was the chauffeur.

  ‘Any good?’ I said. ‘The bands?’

  ‘Wimpy pop,’ declared Tarquin. ‘Think they’re alternative, but they’re not.’

  ‘He can’t wait to get home,’ said Red. ‘Take the Marilyn Manson antidote.’

  We drove past the market, windscreen wipers scraping the drizzle, and turned down Victoria Parade towards Fitzroy. The boys talked bands, names I’d never heard, until we were almost at the Curnows’ place.

  ‘Before I forget,’ said Tark. ‘Mum wants to know if you’ve decided about the holiday house.’

  Faye Curnow had invited the two of us to spend part of the summer break at Lorne, a couple of hours west of town, in a rented beach house. I’d mentioned the idea to Red, but we hadn’t yet discussed it in detail.

  ‘What do you reckon?’ I asked Red. ‘Any chance of an opening in your hectic social calendar for some time at the beach with your poor old dad?’

  Red had been giving the matter some thought. ‘I’ve got Christmas with Mum, so I’ll be in Sydney until the twenty-seventh,’ he said. ‘We could go down to Lorne when I get back, take Tark with us. Then Faye and Leo can come down with Chloe after New Year when Faye’s holidays start.’ Chloe was Tarquin’s nine-year-old sister. ‘There’s that non-residential rowing camp in mid-January, but I haven’t made my mind up yet. Maybe we can stay at the beach longer, see how it goes.’

  ‘With Jodie Prentice,’ said Tarquin.

  ‘Get stuffed,’ said Red.

  ‘Who’s Jodie Prentice?’ I said.

  ‘A girl,’ Tark informed me, authoritatively.

  I glanced at the rear-view mirror. Tarquin clasped his hand to his breast, turned his gaze upwards and heaved a lovelorn sigh.

  ‘Jeeze, you’re an idiot,’ said Red.

  ‘This Jodie, she wouldn’t have been the one you were putting the moves on, back there?’ I said. ‘Little Orphan Annie.’

  ‘She’s Matt Prentice’s sister,’ said Red, like I was supposed to recognise the name. And not notice that he was sidestepping the subject.

  ‘The rasta?’ I guessed.

  ‘Surfer,’ said Tarquin. ‘He’s in Year Eleven. She’s in Year Nine. Their mother’s an architect. Designs these ecological houses. They’ve got a place at Aireys Inlet, spend a lot of time there.’

  I got the picture. Aireys Inlet was just along the coast from Lorne. A couple of weeks surfside would give Red ample chance to pitch his novice woo in the general direction of the elfin Jodie.

  ‘That was her in the Landcruiser,’ I said. ‘The mother?’

  ‘She’s divorced,’ said Red. ‘Quite attractive, don’t you think?’

  ‘Fancy her, too, do you?’ I said.

  Red shook his head, despairing. ‘It’s known as sublimation, dad.’

  ‘Actually,’ I corrected him. ‘It’s called projection.’

  By the standard measure, I was a man in the prime of life. My forties still lay before me, half of them anyway. I was moderately fit. I still had my own teeth, most of them. Secure employment, good pay, flexible hours, excellent pension plan. With the right lighting, not entirely repulsive. Hydraulic equipment in full working order.

  So there were, of course, women after Lyndal. Three, to be precise. Brief encounters, regretted even before they began.

  There was nothing wrong with the women. Except for the nut case, but she’d been so forceful as to represent a collapse of resistance rather than a lapse in judgment. Nor, with the passage of time, was fidelity to Lyndal’s memory an issue. I missed her and thought about her every day, but nothing would bring her back. I nurtured no illusions about dedicating the rest of my life to the chaste remembrance of my lost lover.

  Always pragmatic, Lyndal herself would have been the first to urge me to find a new squeeze. Although she might have had something to say about the randy desperation which led me to crack onto a half-sloshed twenty-four-year-old legal stenographer at the Lemon Tree by pretending to be a recently divorced commodities broker.

  Problem was, I needed more than a hump. I needed what Lyndal had embodied. Passion plus compatibility. A shared bed, a shared world, a shared future. A combination it had taken me the best part of my life to find.

  I’d met Lyndal during the ’88 election campaign when she was doing some sort of voter-profiling work for the state secretariat, number-crunching the demographics in a raft of wobbly seats on the urban fringe. Taking the customers’ measurements, she called it, so our wonks could tailor policy to a snug fit.

  I loved it when she talked like that, her scepticism pitched midway between the earnest cant of the old guard and the blatant cynicism of the up-and-comers. I quite fancied other things about her, too. Eyes, lips, hips, those kinds of things. I planned to make my move at the election-night party, the victory knees-up. I left my lunge too late. It was three years later before I got a second shot, both of us on the rebound.

  What I missed most about Lyndal, apart from the touch of her body, was her sharp eye for the nuances, her bedrock sense of justice and her bullshit detector.

  And there’s never a shortage of bullshit, not in my line of work. You don’t even need to go looking for it. It seeks you out.

  In early December parliament went into recess until the following March. I spent the next three weeks avoiding factional brawls, handling constituent matters, playing the minor dignitary at civic events and assisting with the disposal of free beer at end-of-year piss-ups. By then, the sky had begun to behave itself, the mercury was pulling its weight and summer appeared to have arrived. Like everybody else in Melbourne, I suspected a trick.

  Christmas Eve was the last business day of the year. The only business of the day was to shut the electorate office for the four-week break.

  At ten, I drove Red to the airport for his flight to Sydney. The baggage-handlers had turned on their customary peak-period go-slow and there was no danger that the flight would leave on time. I contrived to steer Red into the Mambo outlet.

  ‘You’ll be needing a surfboard,’ I said. ‘It can be your Christmas present.’

  He beamed and picked out a three-fin thruster.

  ‘Act surprised when your mother gives you a wetsuit,’ I told him.

  When I told Wendy that I planned to give Red a board for Christmas, she immediately suggested that she complete the package with a wetsuit. At first, I took the suggestion as her reminder of the deficiencies of my universe, like I was personally responsible for the water temperature in the southerly latitudes. As if
to say that when he lived with her in Sydney, her son hadn’t needed thermal insulation. Thinking the worse of my former wife was a reflex, but considering her previous form Wendy had been remarkably sympathetic about Lyndal, the whole mess, and since I was the victor in the custody war, I no longer had any true cause for resentment.

  ‘And I got some of that fizzy bath stuff for her,’ Red said. ‘And this is for you. You can open it now, if you like.’ He handed me an inexpertly wrapped object.

  ‘A 48-piece socket set,’ I said. ‘This’ll be really handy.’

  ‘Get stuffed,’ he said. ‘At Christmas dinner, I mean.’

  There was no point in Red schlepping the surfboard with him to Sydney, so I waved him off at the gate-lounge and carried it back through the terminal, a man in a business suit with a Balin thruster under his arm.

  On the way to the electorate office, I stopped at AutoBarn in Tullamarine and bought a set of roof-racks for the Magna, then found a chain bookstore and picked up a present for Ayisha.

  The electorate office was a shopfront in Bell Street, Coburg, near the municipal library. When there were no delivery trucks blocking the view from the back window, you could see all the way across the K-Mart carpark to St Eleptherios basilica and the dumpsters behind Vinnie Amato’s fruit shop.

  I arrived just after one o’clock and found Ayisha surrounded by bags of groceries, talking to her husband on the phone. ‘Since when do Macedonians have roast turkey on December twenty-fifth?’ she was saying. ‘It’s not even orthodox Christmas. And I’m a fucking Moslem, culturally speaking. You want it, you cook it.’

  Reminded of lunch, I went into the kitchenette and scraped together a tub of low-fat cream cheese, a jar of kalamata olives, a packet of crispbread and the remnants of a bottle of chenin blanc. I waved the bottle in Ayisha’s general direction. ‘Fancy a quick one before you go? This won’t be worth drinking by the time we get back.’