The man didn’t move or react. His smile stayed where it was. He watched Maggie.
She finished polishing the glass and put it away. She picked up another one.
‘Getting thirsty,’ the man said.
‘Eighteen dollars.’
‘New?’
‘Ish.’
The man nodded. ‘Andrew hasn’t been doing his managerial duties then. I don’t pay.’
‘Andrew hasn’t told me that.’
The man waited, but she just kept polishing. His smile didn’t waver but Maggie saw the hot rage in his eyes.
‘I’ll have my drink now.’
‘If Andrew tells me it’s okay, I’ll give you a drink. You could be anyone.’
‘But I’m not.’
‘Okay.’ She finished polishing, put the glass away, and picked up another one.
‘Maggie.’
She turned. Andrew stood behind her, eyes on the man in the suit. He almost always looked pale and worried, his grey hair and light blue eyes making him appear almost washed out. Tonight, however, was different. There was genuine fear in his expression.
‘It’s alright,’ he said. ‘Just get the drink.’
Maggie didn’t bother to look back at the man in the suit. Smug smile or grim satisfaction, it meant the same thing: You’ve been put in your place, bitch. Some people took the most mundane victory as a reaffirmation of their worth. Maggie poured the drink and slid it to him.
‘Are you hungry, Len?’ Andrew asked, the tremor in his voice almost hidden by determined loudness. ‘We’ve got some good cuts on tonight, could do you a—’
‘Might just have a couple of drinks while I wait,’ Len said.
Maggie had returned to her polishing, but she was almost certain Len’s eyes were still on her.
‘Wait for what?’ Andrew asked, the tremor obvious now.
Maggie looked at Len. His eyes were cold and hard on Andrew.
‘For us to chat, mate.’
Len turned and made for an empty booth. Maggie glanced at Andrew, whose mouth hung slightly open as he watched Len settle himself. Without acknowledging Maggie again, he turned and hurried into the kitchen. Maggie watched after him until the glass was gleaming and she returned it to its usual spot.
‘Any idea what that was about?’ Evie, a couple of years younger than Maggie, with a mass of dark hair barely tamed by a scrunchie, had sidled up next to her, spinning a tray between her hands.
Maggie shrugged.
‘When Andy saw that man he nearly ran for the door,’ Evie went on. ‘What do you reckon? Spurned lover? Grim reaper?’
‘Something to do with taxes, probably.’ Maggie poured herself a glass of water from the tap. Movement in Len’s booth snapped her eyes back to him. He was getting up and making for the hall behind the bar, where Andrew stood, a horrible attempt at an easy smile on his face. Len nodded to Maggie as he and Andrew disappeared out the back.
‘Spurned lover it is,’ Evie said.
‘Mind watching the bar for a sec, Evie?’ Maggie asked. ‘I need to go to the bathroom.’
‘There might be an order up,’ Evie said. ‘I should probably hang around the kitchen.’
‘Because business is so very booming tonight.’ Maggie dropped her polishing cloth on the bar and moved towards the hall.
The staff toilet was tucked away in a dingy room where nobody had ever bothered to clean the cobwebs. Maggie shut and locked the door behind her then turned her attention to the small, barred window above the toilet that Evie regularly joked made her feel like she was in prison. Maggie flipped the lid closed then climbed up onto it. The window was high and she doubted anybody would see her from outside, but she was still careful as she leaned close and listened.
‘. . . told you, I need another couple of weeks,’ Andrew was saying, fast and low.
‘Another couple of weeks wasn’t the deal,’ Len replied. ‘You were supposed to have the lot to me last Monday.’
‘You changed the price. That isn’t fair.’
‘That’s interest, mate. You already had an extension. It’s my money you’re spending to keep this shithole afloat.’
Silence for a moment. Maggie leaned a little closer.
‘You gave me too much.’ Andrew sounded on the verge of tears. ‘I only wanted a couple of grand.’
‘For fuck’s sake, is this where you’re at? Complaining about getting a better deal than you planned for? You needed the money to pay for advertising, to hire those pretty girls out the front. A couple of grand would have cleaned the dust off the kitchen and not much else. And I don’t remember you complaining when I offered more.’
‘Please Len,’ Andrew said. ‘We’re friends, right?’
‘Sure, mate. As good as family back in the day. But that makes it a bit worse. You can’t just go around fucking over family.’
‘I haven’t made the money I thought I would. I haven’t—’
‘You’ve got customers in,’ Len said. ‘There’s some money, so that’s what I’ll take. Tonight’s earnings, and every night’s until we’re square. And because we’re friends, I’ll come in myself to make sure the transaction goes smoothly. I’ll come in and be served drinks and at the end of the night you’ll hand me the cash and thank me for being so considerate. How does that sound?’
‘You can’t . . . it’ll kill me.’ Andrew sounded strangled, faint. ‘I can’t pay the staff, I can’t . . . please, Len. Please, just two more weeks and—’
He was cut off with a gasp by a brief, loud snap that made Maggie jump, and then a scream, stifled quickly by, Maggie was willing to bet, a hand over the mouth.
‘Shut it,’ Len said. ‘You don’t want your customers seeing this. Bad look.’
Whimpering then a muffled thud as Andrew hit the ground.
‘Come see me at the end of the night.’ Len sounded bored. ‘Get one of the girls to set that for you. You don’t want it healing dodgy.’
Maggie slid from the toilet, unlocked the door and moved swiftly back into the bar. She glanced at one of the mirrors behind the drinks shelf. She looked composed. Evie was no longer in the bar and a customer was waiting, tapping his finger impatiently. Maggie adopted an easy smile and walked over to him just as she sensed Len’s swagger passing her. It was a struggle not to watch him.
The rest of the night dragged on. Andrew appeared after about half an hour, moving gingerly with his right hand conspicuously held to his stomach. Usually he checked the state of the bar and pointed out things that needed tidying. Tonight he barely even looked at Maggie. He seemed to just drift in and out, staying very clear of the corner where Len waited like a hulking shadow.
He came to get more drinks occasionally. Maggie made a point of smiling and telling him to enjoy, as if she’d been reprimanded. The pretence made her feel sick, but she wanted Len’s attention to stay in one direction.
Predictably, Andrew told her to leave early, before she’d even mopped the floors. Maggie didn’t argue. She changed quickly in the staff room, getting back into her jeans, shirt and jacket. She walked out with her hands in her pockets and even nodded to Len, who just watched her as she left.
Out on the street she took a deep breath of the warm air, then scanned the cars parked out the front. One caught her eye immediately: an oversized black, shiny thing with the silhouette of a driver in the front seat. A gangster, then. Maggie didn’t look at it for any longer than a standard passerby would. She put her head down and walked.
The bar sat on a side street, close enough to the centre of the town to be accessible, but away from the noise of Port Douglas by night. Not that the noise was ever unbearable in this little tourist town, but tourists liked to get loud and drunk. They just seemed to prefer doing it away from Andrew’s bar.
But she hadn’t chosen Port Douglas for the noise or lack thereof. She’d chosen it because she had never lived anywhere warm before, and the change of scenery felt, at the time, somehow symbolic. A new world for a new life. She had driven
into town a couple of months back, worn out and well and truly sick of the road. Her plan had been to have a few drinks, crash in a motel and leave, but a few drinks in a quiet bar had led her to Andrew, who was looking for staff, and, a little tipsy, Maggie had taken the opportunity she wasn’t aware she was looking for. Within a week she had a job and a little apartment in a resort town that somehow managed to toe the fine line between tacky and beautiful. The smell of the ocean and fruit trees thick on the air, the relaxed vibe of everyone wandering down the main stretch overhung with palm trees, the smiles and greetings at cafés and pubs that never seemed forced. Maggie had been surprised by how quickly she found herself fitting in. Or if not fitting in, then feeling comfortable. Life here was lazy and unassuming, and nobody looked twice at another young woman working behind a bar. For all anyone knew, she was a backpacker or student funding a road trip.
Her apartment was essentially a bedsit – one room, adjacent bathroom, mouldy smell in the air – tucked away behind a shop on the main street and accessible only by a narrow alley. It was the opposite of fancy, but Maggie liked the simplicity of it. Everything she owned could fit into one duffle bag if she needed to leave in a hurry.
Once inside she went to the tiny bar fridge and took out a couple of beers. She didn’t bother to turn on the lights before she was back out the door and on the main street again. Some of the bars and one or two clubs still had sound coming from inside, but it was muted and the street was largely empty. A weeknight. Stuff still happened, but it didn’t flow on to the street, especially not nearing midnight. This wasn’t a town that stayed up too late.
Usually she enjoyed her nightly stroll down the main street, but there was a twinge of anxious discomfort in her chest that she didn’t like. That feeling tended to precede trouble of some sort, and Maggie’s primary interest in staying here had been to avoid trouble. But the snapping sound replaying in her head again and again suggested that wasn’t going to last.
Sometimes the beach near the town still had a few drunk idiots staggering about on it, or else a couple enjoying a romantic, moonlit walk, but tonight, as Maggie preferred, it was empty, the white sand stretching away under the shadows of trees and the clear, starry sky, with the dark sea lapping and languid. By day, the beach and the town were all brilliant greens and clear blues that looked like a holiday brochure come to life. At night, everything was muted, but Maggie didn’t mind. It was as though a blanket had been draped over the place to keep it preserved until dawn, and with no nearby people it was easy enough to assume the blanket was covering them as well, leaving Maggie the only person awake and aware.
She sat about halfway down the beach and cracked a beer. She took her first sip and waited for that familiar sense of tension unwinding, of another day having passed without being recognised or hunted. It didn’t come. That same twinge in her chest was all she felt.
Whatever was happening with Andrew and the gangster had nothing to do with her. It shouldn’t affect her life in any way. It was, simply put, none of her business. Andrew was obviously terrible with money and had appalling taste in friends. Those were, without question, his problems to deal with.
And yet.
Even thinking this way was dangerous. She had managed to stay ahead of any pursuit for a long time, and it had taken every second of that time to gain enough confidence to settle even in this limited way. Tenuous as it was, this peace was the definition of hard-won, and Maggie had no interest in doing anything that might upset it.
And yet.
Without Andrew, there would be no peace. He had offered her the fragile infrastructure she needed, even found her the apartment. She was under no illusions; it was no act of great charity, but it mattered to her. What she knew was this: Andrew was a good person, and beyond that, without his bar she lost what little she had.
Her first beer was finished. She ground the bottle into the sand until only the top half stuck out. She looked at it for several seconds, considering. The twinge had lessened, slightly. She cracked the second beer.
What did she have?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
GABRIEL BERGMOSER is an award-winning Melbourne-based author and playwright. He won the prestigious Sir Peter Ustinov Television Scriptwriting Award in 2015, and was nominated for the 2017 Kenneth Branagh Award for New Drama Writing. In 2016 his first young adult novel, Boone Shepard, was shortlisted for the Readings Young Adult Prize. A film adaptation of The Hunted is currently being developed in a joint production between Stampede Ventures and Vertigo Entertainment in Los Angeles.
COPYRIGHT
HarperCollinsPublishers
First published in Australia in 2020
by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited
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Copyright © Gabriel Bergmoser 2020
The right of Gabriel Bergmoser to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.
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