A small piece of tomato has slipped from the side of my sandwich onto the plate. I pick it up and pop it into my mouth, and you take this opportunity to fill the atmosphere with negative thinking, further elucidating and elaborating all the blocks to my plan, drawing on your multitudinous yet unbacked boasts to know more about land law and its operation than I do and in immediate subsequence explaining how little I understand of the complexities of providing evidence for and attaining the right to claim land through what you call adverse possession. When I chew at the sandwich, you bite. You bite at me.
I’d expected your scepticism as you have always been, of the two of us, the more defensive and the more sceptical – well, different when we were young and when bruises healed faster – but can I just say that nothing, really nothing, depends on any type of claim, inverse or converse, adverse or obverse or transverse, to that or any particular piece of land, so that if we were moved on, or given your hesitation, if I were moved on after a few years and before being able to keep the land through any verse or the universe of possession, by that time I or we would have built up plenty of fruit-growing skills and it wouldn’t matter if we needed to shift – plus I’m very confident we’ll have saved up enough to purchase our own Orchard, even if we sold only, say, twenty kilograms of fruit per day, just a couple of boxes for, say, fifty or seventy dollars per box, you can see how that would all add up – the object is not to get something for nothing, some cargo cult variation, but simply to turn a good idea into a good and satisfying life, and can I say it grieves me that you, rather than embracing what could be, instead turn your mind to fault-picking and hole-finding, but no matter.
And what are sandwiches for other than biting and punctuation? I pierce the doubled bread and you pierce my soliloquy. You, somewhat submerged, swim for the surface, and you’re spluttering, I think, or so it seems, with a desire to simultaneously reassure and deflate, that of course you mean nothing but good for me, and that your desire to chip away at any ideas or plans I have been thinking about and developing over days, or weeks, your desire is only that I find fulfilment and a measure of success.
Thank you, of course, for recognising that such ideas don’t just fall out of sleeves but are matters of great consideration, but if lands and Orchards fall through, fear not, for we have back-ups and fall-backs and stand-ins: in these times, one must prepare for drought, and droughts strike so very slowly such that we find ourselves in the middle of them even though we haven’t sensed them coming on, and preparations for drought cannot simply be the setting aside of water; instead, we must set ourselves up for dehydrated life and hence, in the event of furniture provision being less promising than estimated, and if an Orchard cannot grow as previously empty land withers, there is always one more idea, or plan, for the hard times, and this plan derives from the propensity of people to prepare themselves for the worst – sharing your pessimistic persona, I suppose, but without the wit – and after raising a small amount of capital in partnership with existing insurance industry players this new kind of insurance won’t simply compensate for loss of income and desiccation of economic opportunity but will translate that loss into sustenance – in the future, cash money may be readily available but, given likely severe shortages of furniture and Orchards, it will be difficult to trade it for anything solid and sustaining – the system of trade and purchase on which we have built our expectations may break down irreparably, so imagine, my dearest sister, that compensation will be supplied not in cash but in water and food, which we will warehouse from the proceeds of premiums, and I’m in the process of making appointments to speak with senior management at several major insurance service providers to offer them this chance, once appropriate non-disclosures are entered into, of course, and of course I would prefer not to do this all on my own, so if this is the plan which is most appealing to you …
You seem a little glazed, translucent carbonates or oxides through which your underlying earthenware skin may be glimpsed. After all, some people are lucky to have a single idea in their entire lives, and here am I sharing plan after plan, each one ready to act upon, to action, as I’ve heard said in corporate circles. I slice the remaining part of the sandwich into bite-sized pieces, partly for convenience and partly just to allow you a little more time to consider, to choose among the offerings I have laid out, and you have finished your sandwich. You lean back and cross your arms, perhaps too closed-off, perhaps still thoughtful.
Would you like some notepaper? A pencil? Would you like me to run through the Orchard again? I’ll be making a few appointments tomorrow or the day after. Perhaps you’d like to come along, but I’d definitely have to let them know ahead of time, given that these are senior executives who can’t just have unexpected team-members showing up in their offices without appointments.
I press my finger onto the remaining two or three crumbs and pop them into my mouth. Good sandwiches, I say. Thanks. You’re offering to lend me twenty dollars – another twenty dollars, you say – because you’re my sister and because these ideas or plans, these plans, might take a little while before they begin to produce significant returns.
Up/Down
1
On the wing of the aircraft, someone has stencilled ‘Do not walk outside this area’, but I am pacing the trolley-width aisle like a technician who has escalated the call to Level Two and is waiting on hold as the irate client also waits on hold and the fact (or, to be more accurate, figuration) that the client has placed the pacing technician on speaker signifies therefore that this imaginary technician has been transfigured into – has become – a conduit for the script which values your call and will be with you as soon as possible but doesn’t cherish your call enough to consider whether or not you may be further irritated by a cover of ‘Greensleeves’ played by a single robot programmed by no one who attended the Conservatorium of Music.
Below the area designated by ‘Do not walk outside this area’ are clouds and a distorted blueness.
If you were standing in the permitted area but unluckily deplaned because of the nine hundred kilometres per hour thing, you might spiral in tuck or pike position through the clouds, which would not feel as jagged and ice-laden as they appeared, and drop into that distorted blueness which would fix itself razorly, azurely into focus before de-escalating to the level below.
2
Forty centimetres along the aircraft wing towards the cabin from ‘Do not walk outside this area’, someone has affixed a yellow clip or widget with two holes. The clip or widget looks like a cartoon frog, tensed to jump. If you wished not to be swept from the wing – you know, because of the nine hundred kilometres per hour thing – you could fasten yourself to the clip or widget with a carabiner or two and crouch there, frog-like, beside the cartoon frog.
Lunchtime
At that time I gambled every day. These were secret times to speak with myself of my allegiance to the blank passing of hours. Every day, every evening, I lost myself. During those first few months when I was still able to retain my job, each lunchtime I found a pub to spend an hour on the poker machines. Later, of course, I had much more time. I feel no shame, looking back, and perhaps I was a different person. Nonetheless, I am told it is empowering to confess.
At the time I generally parked my old brown Holden on Victoria Street, convenient for a fast escape. One particular lunchtime, I had decided to drive to a certain pub in Paddington where the machines paid slightly better for a full house. Unfortunately, I discovered that my car had been parked in by a Mercedes convertible, in the passenger seat of which sat a woman speaking on her car phone – that’s what they had in those days, the well-off, Mercedeses with car phones. Great, you know, I thought. Terrific. I reached into my car and honked the horn. A rich-looking fat man – gold-watch display counterbalanced poorman’s beergut hanging over his shorts – climbed out of the seat behind her and made his entitled way around the Merc. He looked me over, face to feet: I was wearing a m
ostly clean T-shirt, old jeans, no shoes. I approached him anyway. You know, had to.
‘Do you think you could move this car a couple of metres so I can get out?’
‘Which is your car?’
As if he didn’t know. I pointed. He gave it disdain.
‘She’ll only be ten minutes.’ He walked away.
The woman had wound down her window for some reason. On the car phone she said, ‘I’m obviously not going to get anything out of him, Michael. I want you to start proceedings immediately.’
On the opposite side of the road a Rolls was double-parked in front of a four-storey terrace house. The fuck with all the double-parking. I mean, really. Another big fat man – this one with a receding hairline and greasy hair pulled back into a ponytail – sat impassively in the driver’s seat. Between the two men, a few good strides up Ugly Avenue. And what the fuck is it with sitting in the double-parked cars? What is that? Really. Two slightly shorter than usual blond police stood on the pavement behind the Rolls, guards of bloody honour.
The woman on the phone said, ‘I’ll just go and get a police officer to talk to you.’
She put the phone down on the passenger seat and crossed the road. I leaned on the roof of my car, twitchy. I could have leaned in and torn the phone from its moorings.
A deodorised cop came and sat in the passenger seat of the Merc, to talk on that car phone. The woman and the man in shorts now stood on the driver’s side. Second fat man turned his Rolls-Royce around in the street and parked behind the Mercedes. He got out, approached the woman, said something, walked back towards the Rolls.
The woman said, ‘You can’t just walk away. I have a right to get my things. You can’t just leave.’
She tried to grab him. He pushed her away and got into the Rolls. She followed him, reached in through the driver’s window and tried to grab him again. He accelerated and she let go. The Rolls moved around the Mercedes and along Victoria Street. The woman burst into tears, returned to stand beside the Merc. The first fat man put his arms around her.
Other cop crossed the road. The first was still talking on the car phone. He walked around to my side of the Mercedes. I tried again.
‘Do you think this car could be moved a couple of metres? I have to get going and I’ve been stuck here for a long time already, please understand.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Up the road.’
‘Doesn’t sound too urgent to me. Why don’t you walk?’
‘Too far.’
‘Ah well, shouldn’t be long.’ Turned his back to me.
A tall, slim man carried a cardboard box out of the terrace house towards the Merc.
He said to the woman, ‘These are your things from around and on the desk. Everything.’
‘Don’t say anything,’ said her man.
She didn’t say anything. The thin man deposited the box on the bitumen beside her, smiled briefly, returned to the house. Everyone else stood around as though they’d run out of choreography.
Sometimes the waiting is endless. The testing goes on and on, fascinating and tiring, and can never replace desire.
ClickBait
Their knees touched beneath an inner table at This Amazingly Protective Cat, one of Eight Local Restaurants You Wouldn’t Believe Could Fit Adult-Sized People.
He was saying, ‘I really want to let you know my news that will change the way you think about me forever, but first we’ll need to have ten minutes of standard informational conversation.’
She pressed her lips together and gave a brief but sufficient nod. It was clear to both of them why when communicating – for all purposes from business to flirting – subtle needn’t mean ineffective, and both were aware of Thirteen Unlucky Reasons Blunt Can Be Counterproductive.
He clocked the nod and she read approval in his eyes. They had been seeing each other for two years at a certain level – rare theatre or movie visits, once-weekly restaurant and once- or twice-weekly bed. He felt he was a good lover. He’d already been a practitioner of the best four of Seven Sure-Fire Tips to Make Your Girlfriend Squeal. She had squealed frequently, he noted, though she remained not at all keen on the term ‘girlfriend’. There were, after all, at least six better and legal alternatives. He’d accepted her parameters without much enthusiasm, but on the other hand too much choice can literally waste three years of your life. Plus, he was not going to run his love life like a high-school debate by letting semantics take over. He felt in control of 90 per cent, or 80, of his life.
As far as her reasons, he tried to understand these as best he could and he accepted that the future could not yet be read. Hesitancy and reluctance were neither a pair of hibernating bears nor twinned deciduous trees: there was nothing that would inevitably awaken or sprout. And yet there was between them a certain equilibrium: not one of Three Definitive Signs Your Relationship Is Terminal had arrived.
This evening, she was slightly distracted and her glance seemed to him drawn towards her hands, which were under the table, or her thighs – though this instinctual impression was, he knew, a Hard-to-Lose Twentieth-Century Habit, and the truth was certainly that her pubic area was well covered by two layers of clothing and her phone’s true high-definition screen.
‘It’s funny you should say that,’ she said, her look benign-neutral rather than amused. ‘According to 62 per cent of communications specialists, meta-conversation is on the way out.’
Her right hand slipped from the table and she watched it descend, but she pulled her gaze back to him before its fingers could recommence their pecking.
‘I wonder if it’s the same 62 per cent who claimed psychology had died. You remember? Once everybody understood how their unconscious signals would be interpreted, they gestured powerfully and competently, with an eye to advancement. Anyway, sounds like we’re among the recalcitrant 38 who continue to talk the talk.’
‘Mm, we must be slow learners, despite the shocking new evidence that we’ve changed the way we speak without even noticing. Anyway, it couldn’t be the same 62 per cent because under 1 per cent of them would have known Two Simple Investment Rules to Retire Luxuriously Early but a larger and unfortunate subset had never encountered Four Surprising Factors Which Lengthen Your Life by Decades.’
‘Bahamas or Death.’
‘Exactly.’
The waitress’s natural thinness allowed her somehow to arrive beside their table. They had decided to age beautifully and naturally, so forwent the recommended green and red juices and selected a Souzao for him and a Roussanne/Picpoul for her from the wine list of Five Unmissable Varietals You Never Heard Of.
‘I’ll come back for your food order,’ the waitress said.
‘Sure, thank you.’
Every successful salesperson knows how much a single glass of wine increases impulsivity, but they didn’t.
His blue shirt nonetheless reflected the momentary blue light near its junction with the table. There was another opportunity which would only last ten minutes or until sold, but he put the phone back in his pocket.
‘Here’s something weird,’ he began. ‘Yesterday, I was on a bus which passed through three of the Next Four Boom Suburbs, when I was momentarily overcome by the feeling …’
‘Oh. My. God,’ she said. ‘Look at that.’
Her eyes gestured above and to her right, where the actor Geena Davis had entered.
‘See how confident she looks at fifty-seven,’ she said – the actor had lived through an apprehensive childhood because of her height, and she was not much shorter now.
‘She’s also incredibly smart,’ he said. ‘Like, Ten Smartest Actresses smart.’
‘It’s funny how many public figures you wouldn’t expect to find in Mensa,’ she agreed.
‘Shall I continue?’ he asked, careful not to tinge his voice with intonations that alienate.
‘Ah yes, ordinary bus rides through extraordinary sights.’ She was a little edgy, in the old sense, but seemed to make an effort to focus.
‘I thought I would see fireworks. I felt I had been there before, that we would turn a corner to the left and there would be, exactly that, extraordinary sights.’
‘Yeah. Those moments when you experience phenomena scientists will never disprove.’
‘Kind of. Because they will disprove it but we won’t believe them. And around the corner, there was a burning building, four or five storeys high. I got off the bus. I can’t actually remember getting up from my seat, or anything until I was standing in the street – the bus must have stopped because the road was obviously obstructed – and I walked even closer. People were still running out the front door and fire alarms were going off. There was a woman waving and screaming something out of the third-floor window. It was incredibly noisy. People were yelling at her to jump. Everyone was shouting even though no one could hear anything. She stepped back from the window and disappeared for a moment, but then we saw her again. Someone had a blanket, and everyone was holding it stretched out, like firemen in the movies, and I was also holding an edge of the blanket, not knowing whether it would be strong enough, or what it would feel like if we caught her. The woman started throwing flowers down on us and, oddly, there we were catching these white and yellow flowers in the blanket and screaming to her to jump. We could feel the intensity of the heat and at that moment a fire truck arrived, one of the firemen went straight up a ladder and grabbed her, she didn’t resist. I could see the whole thing but was backing off, or we were being pushed back by police, and she came down the ladder with this fireman and was throwing flowers the whole time, don’t know how she held so many, and when she got to the bottom she was still shouting, and I heard what she was saying, which was, “My garden! My garden!”’
When I Saw the Animal Page 7