by Zane Lovitt
‘You keep coming in here uninvited I’m going to call the police.’
She drinks thirstily. Doesn’t seem to taste it.
‘You’re no more likely to call the police on me than me on you.’
I offer a mock toast and drink. Like paint. Maybe I was supposed to let it breathe. My thought is to sit on the floor again but it seems wise to keep a distance; I stroll back to the counter and lean there. ‘I saw Rudy this morning.’
‘I thought as much.’ She kills her wine, puts the glass on the carpet. ‘When you didn’t answer your phone.’
‘You wouldn’t have liked what I had to say.’
‘I only got him the policy he wanted, that you were keeping from him.’
‘The one that’s going to make you rich? How generous of you.’
‘I’m, like, the one positive presence in Rudy’s life. I think I deserve it.’
‘I didn’t see your car outside. Where did you park?’
‘Took the bus.’ She adjusts herself in the chair and crosses her black denim legs. ‘Rudy borrowed the Volvo.’
‘For tonight?’
‘Yeah.’
This all started with Rudy taking that car to Tyan’s. Perhaps it’s fitting that that is how it’s going to end.
‘Was it a teary goodbye?’
Her jaw clenches with too much resentment to bother lying.
‘You would have been proud of me.’
‘He told me how moved you were. What a supportive friend. Must have been a cracking performance.’
‘If it hadn’t been, your pool would have pretty soon dried up.’
I can’t argue with that. So I say, ‘Let’s not argue.’
Then I say: ‘Tyan will call me when it’s over.’
By way of assent she picks up her glass and waggles it at me. I refill it, turn pointedly to my phone and she does the same. We sit for an age, try to maintain our interest in the screaming triviality of everything that isn’t about tonight. I expected to come home and google DNA places but can’t summon the concentration, just swipe through clickbait slideshows of upcoming movies and adorable TV actors, not even seeing these pictures. I wonder what Rudy is doing right now. Is he still alive?
What else I intended to do when I got home is drink a bone-crushing quantity of alcohol, but that desire has been snuffed by Beth’s presence and instead of finishing the bottle I tap myself a glass of water. She takes the opportunity to close her phone and I feel her eyes as they wait for me to feel her eyes, so I drink and flick my slideshow, whatever it is.
She says, ‘Jason.’
Don’t look up.
‘I’m not the arsehole you think I am.’
Keep flicking.
‘I know I’ve been a little tight with the truth. But you know everything about me now. I’ve got nothing else up my sleeve.’
‘I know nothing about you.’
‘You know more than anyone.’
I shut my phone.
‘Okay. Where are you from?’
‘Glasgow.’
‘Why did you leave?’
‘Fresh start.’
‘Why Australia?’
‘The warm weather.’
‘Warm weather? It’s three degrees outside.’
‘Fuck…’ she scoffs, shakes her head. ‘You think you know cold? If you don’t have to dig yourself out of your home each morning, you don’t know cold.’
‘Your parents still alive?’
‘I expect so.’
‘Do they know you’re over here?’
‘Nope.’
‘So for all they know, you’re like…’
‘I’m not losing sleep over it.’
She pulls on one knee, tucks that foot beneath her buttocks. The other knee she hugs to her chest, all the while balancing her glass on her fingertips.
I’m like, ‘When are you going back?’
‘I’m not.’
‘But it’s your home.’
‘This is my home.’
I smile at that.
‘Yeah, but…And I mean, and I’ve got some experience with this, with…’ I cough to clear my throat. ‘…my father, finding him and meeting him. No matter how much you resent them, the day is going to come when you want to be around these people. People you share a bond with.’
‘What bond?’
‘Blood.’
‘Pfffft.’ Her mouth farts at me. ‘That’s all bullshit.’
‘What is?’
‘Blood relations. Who gives a fuck. I’m not going to love someone because we’re related.’
‘It’s not about love. It’s about belonging with them.’
‘Same difference. If I felt I belonged with my parents, which I fucking don’t, it’d be because they raised me. Their idea of raising me, at least. Not because of some blood bullshit. That’s the fucking aristocracy, mate. That’s last century.’
‘Okay,’ I shrug. ‘But the whole world disagrees with you.’
‘Excuse me while I don’t give a fuck.’
I’m happy to leave the conversation there, safe in my sense of quiet righteousness. Which is just as well, because before either of us can speak again there comes a gentle thump thump thump.
Someone is knocking on the door of my flat.
65
My first thought is irrational—it’s Rudy. Beth is thinking it too. But Rudy is busy tonight, so I breathe. Is he killed already? Is this the police? If so, I see no point in faking like I’m not home. The lights are on.
Which is what she says when I open the door.
‘Your lights were on so I thought I’d—’
These aren’t the clothes she wears to work. These are fancy. Marnie is going out, looking as classed-up as I can remember. A clot of mascara in her left lash only accentuates the vitality of the rest of her and when I see it I have to close my eyes because it appears to be a critical moment in an epic story I will never be a part of. I open my eyes when she cuts herself off.
She’s seen Beth.
And I say, ‘Hi!’
‘I’m sorry,’ Marnie says, my epic story unfolding for her now. She shakes her head at us in apology, denial, disappointment, rejection, all rolled together into one meatloaf emotion.
‘No, don’t worry…Heading out?’
I can feel in my kneecaps how obvious it is that I’ve slept with the girl behind me.
‘Yeah, yeah.’ She flushes, her eyes flare. ‘With friends.’
I’m not a former police officer known as the Polygraph, but I can tell she’s lying. Her levels of earnestness don’t gel with how I’ve been busted. Like, ED-209 busted. She’s dressed like this to come see me, to take yesterday’s apology and use it to found something. And I nod, encouraging, like I think it’s just great how she’s heading out with friends, too caught up in my own shitfuckery to offer anything further. Then, into the tense silence comes a loud slurp of wine. I don’t turn around, don’t want to acknowledge that Beth is there. I step outside and close the door, feel the cold that Beth says is nothing.
Marnie squirms, tugs her sleeves with her fingertips.
‘I just wanted to say that I’m sorry. About yesterday. I was in a hurry. I hope I wasn’t rude…’
‘No, no. It’s fine. I said, you know…’
‘I know…’
‘I just wanted to tell you I was sorry about, you know…’
‘Yeah.’
‘I think I kind of resented you.’
This breaks the circuit. Marnie straightens slightly.
I’m like: ‘I never knew my dad and my mum’s gone. When I googled you…there you were, not talking to your parents. I think I just resented you for it. That’s why I was such a dickhole.’
‘Shit. I’m sorry.’
‘You don’t need to say that.’
She snaps out of the seriousness.
‘So, this…’ She fans our groins. ‘This is all fine?’
‘Copacetic.’
‘You’re sure?’
; ‘Yeah!’
‘Great!’
She takes a step back.
‘Let’s get a pizza soon.’
‘For sure.’
Her red hair and nice clothes turn to the stairs.
‘Wait,’ I say. ‘Can I ask you something?’
She looks back and bites her lower lip.
I’m like, ‘You said you got your father to tell you the truth. About what he’d done.’
‘Yeah…’
‘How did you do that?’
‘You mean…’
‘I mean…like…how did you do that?’
She sighs: the long stretch of steam catches in the light from the stairs. She appears to be caught between our reconciliation and her ongoing reluctance to even think about the past.
‘I told him that Mum had confessed it all to me. I told him she’d broken down and it had all come out. She hadn’t, but I said she had. I really sold it. And he cried. And then he came clean.’
‘So you—’
‘I bullshat him. To make him tell.’
And she lingers at the stairs, like I might have more to ask. When I don’t, she offers up a glum smile and a glum shrug. ‘I never told anyone that before.’
My response is useless. Just a nod.
‘See ya, Stevey.’
And then she and that clot of mascara, the blemish that proves the rule, are gone.
Beth waits for me to close the door before she says, ‘What was that?’
‘My neighbour.’
‘Are the two of you…particularly neighbourly?’
‘No,’ I scowl, though being particularly neighbourly with Marnie Smurtch was once a dream of mine, an intention even, only days ago. Each one of those days now feels like the rise and fall of a civilisation. For that time when Marnie and I were just two weirdos with a yen for one another and zero self-esteem, I actually feel nostalgic.
What if I’d run to her arms that night instead of Beth’s? Me with my blood and my bruises and my victimhood. If she’d been the one to dab Dettol in my eye and fold me into her bed, I would have told her everything, like I did with Beth. I would have told her my real name. I might have gone further and told her that Glen Tyan is my dad. And she would have reciprocated: the secrets of Kerang, the ones she’d never shared, the whole story, being her contribution to our midnight indoor truth picnic. And she would have taken me to the police the next day and I’d have told them everything too and right now we’d be laughing about it, getting over it, moving on.
Instead I’m here, waiting for confirmation that someone is dead.
‘If you’re going to talk…’ I rub at my face, sidle back to the kitchen, now my preferred base from which to engage Beth. ‘Use your real voice. Your real accent. When you sound Australian I just think you’re lying.’
She sucks her teeth. ‘I told you. This is my real voice.’
‘I mean, believe me, I’d welcome a distraction.’ I pour myself another wine, wish I were drunk. ‘But every word you say reminds me what a liar you are, which renders moot literally everything that comes out of your mouth.’
‘Whatever,’ she says, with those new sleepy eyes but that same old voice. ‘I’m happy to not talk.’
And we don’t.
I fold my arms and rest my head there, don’t know how long for. It’s not sleep I disappear into but thoughts as fathomless as sleep. When I blink myself upright, Beth is asleep, legs splayed out like she’s baring to me her black denim genitals, and I think I might ask her to go home. But she won’t go and we’ll fight and I don’t want to talk to her, let alone wake her up to talk to her, let alone wake her up to fight with her.
The time on my phone is after eleven.
I will it to ring. Telepathically tell it to ring. And right then, it rings.
Beth jolts awake, instantly wide-eyed.
I clear my throat.
‘Hello?’
For a moment it’s just breathing. Then the unmistakable squeak:
‘Anthony?’
‘Rudy?’
Beth straightens, as baffled as me.
I’m like, ‘Where are you?’
‘Um, I’m right…I’m outside your place.’
66
None of my windows faces the street, but I wave Beth away from them anyway. Into the phone I say, ‘Why?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Have you been to Tyan’s?’
‘No.’
‘Do you want to come inside?’
Beth slaps my arm. And no, I have no idea how we will explain why she’s here. But cagey is not an option.
Rudy says, ‘Um…I think I’m better in the car.’
‘All right. Hold on. I’m coming out.’
I end the call and reach for my jacket.
‘What’s happening?’
‘I don’t know. He’s outside.’
‘Why?’
‘Maybe he changed his mind.’
I fumble with my gloves and get them on, pull on my scarf. ‘Stay here and keep the lights off.’
When I turn them off Beth sighs, but she doesn’t have time to protest because I’m out the door, scurrying downstairs, hugging myself. My nose throbs against the cold and something seems to hiss at me but it’s only the wind.
There’s the Volvo. Parked on the far side of the mailboxes.
What I notice when I open the passenger door is that Rudy is sweating. And here’s me, I can see my breath. That face though. All of it trembling white and his eyes big like I’m here to save the day. He’s chosen his very best hairshirt jumper with orange stains for tonight’s occasion and there’s still concrete dust in his hair and down his neck. What I see next is the thing cradled in Rudy’s lap, an artifact he made himself and which is priceless.
The shiv. The murder-weapon elect.
I sit into the passenger seat and shut the door. My first time in the cursed pistachio Volvo. It’s roomy. The dashboard is baked black and the upholstery old-fashioned, velvety. Even without the engine running it’s a sauna. I rub at my nose, encourage a thaw.
‘Second thoughts?’
Rudy looks at what he’s holding, might be trying to remember what it’s for. I follow his eyes to the weapon. It would barely put a dent in Glen Tyan.
‘Rudy, how do you know where I live?’
Did he follow me home one night like he followed Tyan? Did I tell him at some point?
He doesn’t seem to have heard.
I’m like, ‘So what’s happening?’
‘I don’t know,’ he shrugs. ‘I’m not scared.’
‘I know, matey. I know you’re not scared.’
He only stares at the toothbrush. Happy, I suppose, to have something down there to look at.
‘Maybe you should go home. You’ll still be covered tomorrow. Insurance, I mean. And Glen Tyan will still be living in the same house.’
‘I think I should stay in the car,’ Rudy repeats, eyeballs quivering.
‘Okay. You want me to drive you home?’
Before he can answer, and who will ever know what his answer might have been, he sees something in the rearview, swivels to see out the back windshield but it’s misted over.
I say, ‘What?’
Rudy winds down his window fast like he can’t breathe, reveals a black and frozen street.
‘It’s…’
Beth smiles into the cabin, wrapped up in a puffy asexual jacket, the innocence in her eyes restored.
‘Hiya! What are you guys doing?’
‘Anthony lives here,’ Rudy excitedly points to my flat.
‘Wow,’ says Beth, gawking at me, at the coincidence. ‘I had no idea. I was just visiting a friend and now I’m heading up to the shops.’
Rudy says, ‘Really?’
He can’t possibly fall for this. But he can, because it’s her.
‘Is everything okay?’
‘Nah, everything’s good.’
‘Can I get in? It’s freezing.’
She opens the back pass
enger door and sidles inside. ‘Good and warm in here.’
‘Yeah,’ says Rudy, overjoyed she’s experiencing this warmth with us.
‘Rudy was just saying…’ I turn to give her a pointed face. ‘…that maybe tonight isn’t the right night.’
‘I didn’t say that,’ Rudy corrects.
‘But you need time to think, though, right?’
He wants to refute this too, to save face in front of Beth, but also he wants a reason to go home. He consults with the shiv in case it knows what to do.
‘Is that true, Rudy?’ She’s the stern teacher again.
‘I don’t know.’ And he’s the recalcitrant student.
‘Perhaps the best thing to do is to go there and see how you feel then.’
‘Can you come?’ he asks, his eyes pleading.
‘Sure,’ Beth says. ‘Sure, Rudy. I can come.’
‘You too,’ Rudy looks at me. The man strangely silent in the passenger seat. Who right now is shaken by how much he and Rudy have in common.
‘We can’t come. Someone might see us.’
‘The windows are fogged,’ Beth says, helpfully. ‘No one can see in.’
‘Someone might see your licence plate.’
‘They were going to see that anyway.’
She peers back with those innocent eyes, not dropping her act. Rudy considers it resolved.
‘And also…’ He’s back to analysing his toothbrush, the death it foretells. ‘I’m not good at driving right now.’
Beth says, ‘I can drive.’
She seems remarkably cheerful given where she’s offered to drive to, but Rudy doesn’t pick up on behavioural anomalies, even when he isn’t on his way to a home invasion. He and Beth swap seats and without any more talk the engine turns over and the heater roars and the stereo comes alive.
A gentle, almost beatless track. Bongos and a man singing.
I know this song. ‘In the Air Tonight’. It’s like a funeral march. So loud that the speakers distort on the heavier notes.
We motor east through the fluid streets and when the song ends it starts again. The CD player in this car still works and it’s programmed to repeat. I let it play. I do not adjust the volume.
67
We pull over a block short of Suttle Street. Phil Collins has felt it coming in the air tonight about a thousand times since we left Kensington, while tonight’s air itself hasn’t offered much more than a frigid wind and a moon that glows behind the clouds like it’s ashamed. We’re silent: Rudy slumped in his seat, toying with that thing that isn’t a toy. Beth has been following my minimal directions and praying like fuck, I suppose, that Rudy doesn’t pike. For my part, I’ve been preparing for when Rudy asks me how I know where Tyan lives. But also, I know he won’t ask.