Winter Traffic

by Stephen Greenall

  —

  You’re too good for them. Even Susan will speak in such terms when pushed. You can take the girl out of the Eastern Suburbs, but—‘You’re bloody too good and I’m not going to watch you go back to that place because you bloody don’t realise.’

  ‘I’m never going back,’ he says quietly.

  ‘Good. Because you nearly died last time.’

  ‘Don’t tell me what I nearly did.’

  ‘Fucking—fuck you.’

  ‘Anyway, it wasn’t the last time. It was the first time. You make it sound like I’m in and out.’

  ‘Fine. But I’m not one of those women, Jamie. I’m just not.’

  This is not the last thing Susan says—but it is the final word.

  —

  An hour before sunset comes the car of Arabella, a luxury four-by-four that has never been west of Kent Street. A brief packing of home, a few necessary contents. The house and dog unite to form a perfect background silence.

  Repetitive suicide, water as it dies on Bondi rock and Sutton solo on the landing. His close of day is marked by a weird down-south aurora, some Pinatubo legacy or crime of Shire fire. Night steals in from the storm-hit east looking fresh from South America, treading the waves for a patient span afraid to breach the shore. At midnight he reaches to construct the tiny lighthouse—the daily cigarette he smokes with a slow brand of care.

  21

  When Shark hit the deck he decided to stay there. Sutton sucked big ones like the City to Surf and Bison rolled at his feet / started frothing at the gob. Whit moaned in the background like a man already ghost and Bison died with a gurgle like he couldn’t fucken believe it.

  —

  He came into the room to plead her name and issue summons, her eyes still precious stones but somehow robbed of all their shine. He sawed at the binds and commenced resuscitation, calling to a heart that had been switched off at the main.

  Twenty-two minutes. More exhausting than the fight. Sutton walked into the lounge and heard the fireside bundle breathe a sob to see his face.

  Whit they’d gagged the way you’re supposed to.

  —

  Sutton went to the bar and took a hit of something brown. He turned down the lights and executed the music. He left Whit the way he was because he didn’t need the hassle.

  Down into the garage where the first corpse waited, a red-line Rubicon he had to cross again. He strayed through the door and wandered barren in the street, the man adrift but scanning for his square lines of truck.

  Bloke was howling in the distance like a child turned canine, a casualty of witchcraft or self-inflected wish. His black lips couldn’t form the spell of reversion but the effort was like sonar / Sutton used it for a thread.

  —

  He reversed the drive and put the old girl under cover. He shouldered inside the trio of Harleys and the garage door shuttered with a scream like amputation. He chucked Bloke in the cabin to safeguard Nigger’s body and after this crook action he ascended into hell.

  Whit saw him and roared but Sutton did not go over. Instead he bound Shark and went the fireman-carry down, buckling under weight until he heaved him in the tray. He returned to pack up Bison and he ferried him the same, lumping him with Nigger on the far side of Shark. When he went to the fire he lowered to haunches, Whit’s face going beetroot with fright and vain exertion.

  ‘She’s dead. She was dead when I got here.’

  Whit made a noise of keening, the one still trapped and flapping in the cage of Sutton’s chest. His ties were cut but it made no odds—he lay scrunched like paper / he was bawling like a pup. Sutton in the bar filled a rocks glass past the brim and he placed it by the brother like a card of liquid sympathy. Then he rolled towards the bedroom like an engine primed for labour, a car on desert track designed exclusively for work.

  —

  Sheets on the bed of Egyptian cotton. Sutton lay them out and placed the girl at the heart. He drew the left edge across and gently cradled her beneath, a reach to the right and a grasp of different edge.

  The carpenter took the last of his rope, his most ingenious of knots. He tied lengths around her knees and shoulders, her ankles and her neck. She looked like the dead of an olden ship, like a consignment meant for sea, and it was in this attitude that the brother arrived, Whit shivering as though naked. His whimper to find her embalmed already, a pip of resentment / a squeak of relief.

  ‘Sutto.’

  Sutto said, Who do you know that looks just like her.

  —

  Bloke was pleased to lap at Nigger’s blood. It was the dog’s first taste since months ago when the Smith kid cut his foot, ran bleating like a cowardly Jones / left his flip-flop soaking red. Bloke raced over to lick that bonus thong but then the dad came out and yarred him.

  It is hard to say what he might have done given freedom with the carcass. The dog was infected by feral seas welling high inside of Sutton, oceans that have no title in the human world at all. They maddened by proximity and they reddened-up his water: the master had succeeded to an animal estate.

  —

  ‘I’m sorry about what happened,’ said Whit. ‘Back in the day.’

  He started to cry and Sutton cracked him one, Whit sliding down the wall like the contents of an egg. For a time his mouth worked dumbly but there was nothing mean about the clip. Whit was giving in to shock and they could neither of them have it.

  ‘There’ll be trouble with Slane. You need to piss off.’

  The rocker shook his head. ‘I have to stay, look after her.’

  ‘You had your chance to do that, Brett.’

  ‘Yeah? Well where the fuck am I supposed to go.’

  The carpenter’s shrug. ‘Think big.’

  Whit’s eyes revolved like symbols on a pokie—cherries, lemons, the prick thinking how to play it. ‘Maybe we should call the police.’

  ‘If you call the police you’re finished.’

  ‘Not even Rawson?’

  ‘No,’ said Sutton. ‘Not even him.’

  Whit closed his eyes against the sight of her mummy, biting his lip to court a different kind of pain. ‘What are you gonna do. If Chris and Gary find out—’

  ‘Just think about what I asked.’

  ‘Come on, dude—it’s four in the morning. Who am I supposed to get?’

  ‘A man like you has options.’

  ‘Sure.’ Tears welled in the brother, a salty Warragamba fit to burst. ‘But no one looks like Kristy.’

  ‘No one,’ said the carpenter, empty in agreement. ‘Just half the girls in Tamarama.’

  ‘Fuck me.’ Whit lowered like yoga, heels not touching floor. ‘Can I have a minute, say goodbye?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sutton in a zero tone of voice. ‘That’s exactly what you can have.’

  20

  ‘How do you feel about a dance.’

  The Tibetan Mastiff hears the voice of Kitten 5 and throws his head in silent howl. He has been sitting quietly, smuggling nips of Rémy Martin, noting the traffic of dapper dogs and nearly naked cats. His vision is not perfect but now it fills with things that are: Californian legs paired with European knickers, the whole rig topped by fireworks of single-fountain hair. ‘Small world,’ he whispers as she rounds the chesterfield, a serpentine grace on drastic pumps. ‘But if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not.’

  ‘Tough.’ She applies her body to his, straddling his knees then lowering, resting on his quads to face the man and use him like furniture. Her arms find rest upon tableland shoulders, fingers clasped behind a neck she wants to wring. ‘What are you doing here.’

  ‘If you’re thinking this isn’t coincidence—’

  ‘I don’t mean it like that.’ She performs a series of relaxed gyrations and quietly repeats the question.

  ‘I’m undercover,’ he says. ‘Working a case.’

  ‘Oh, the Blue Mover—it would be beautiful if that were true.’

  ‘My name is Tibetan Mastiff.’

&n
bsp; ‘Your name is the Big Ship, Bonecrusher, the poor old Busted Flush. Why do they always start with B?’

  ‘Kitten 5 is high. Does Slane know you’re here?’

  ‘Does he care?’

  ‘Stop doing that thing with your hips. I don’t like it.

  ‘Is this weird for you, Bobby Cobra? Jesus—another B.’

  ‘Yes,’ he says, unhappy about it. ‘Because it isn’t weird for you.’

  Kitten 5 speaks soft into his floppy ear, the most compelling of registered informants: ‘A public dance is the only way. The walls have ears, kiddo—especially the bedrooms.’ She nuzzles his collar until her tongue hits flesh, the vulnerable fault line between neck and rubber skin. ‘Seriously. Get the fuck out.’

  ‘Was about to tell you the same.’

  ‘Dangerous people, mister. When they realise who you are—’

  ‘Got X-ray vision do they?’

  ‘Got you on camera is what they got. Downstairs, when you first come in. It’s half the reason they run these things.’

  ‘Did Chris tell you that?’

  ‘Yes, actually.’

  ‘Oh—so he does know you’re here. Probably puts you up to it.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, I do it for fun.’

  ‘And money. How’s it work? Lap dance for a couple of hundred, head job for a monkey? What’s the damage for a root.’

  ‘Severe.’ She arches her back, reaching behind to access the first of sixteen hooks that secure the bodice. ‘I can do the first three or four,’ says the kitten. ‘But after that it’s up to you.’

  ‘Do you think that’s what I want? To sit in some walnut fucken parlour and undress you?’

  ‘Ssh—don’t get upset. The way it works is simple: the dogs make offers and the cats decide what they feel like. No rules, just free-market logic.’

  ‘What else.’

  ‘And yeah, some of the girls are on the hook. Others just strip.’

  He turns his head from the summary but cannot escape: he is presented with the pair of them in profile, reflected in the glass of a harbour-view window. Her lines of beauty captured there in sinuous treble clef, her neck the neck of a lovely swan. The bear-man closes eyes and hangs his head, a monstrous rock to which they chained a princess. ‘The girls and cars,’ he says in plain lament. ‘The paintings and chandeliers. All this beauty in a single spot and look how ugly they make it.’

  ‘Excuse me—Miss 5?’

  ‘I’m busy.’

  ‘I hate to interrupt, but there’s a Doberman Pinscher who’s very keen to meet you.’ Tibetan Mastiff looks up, past the girl who is the world, and puts his focus on the lady bringing news. Black Forest eyes that fix him, transmit a curse then vanish.

  ‘She’s a barrel of laughs.’

  ‘Yeah—Anita. She’s not so bad.’

  ‘Not so bad? Gave me hypothermia.’

  ‘Feel warm enough to me.’

  ‘I’m serious—she used that hooter of hers to point the bone.’

  ‘Wrangling strippers is a tough job,’ says Miss 5 dreamily, rising and turning, resuming her seat but facing now the opposite way. ‘It’s like herding, well—’

  ‘Kittens?’

  ‘Come on, unclip me.’

  ‘The irony, Kris: twenty corkers floating around with their faces covered up while Anita von Vinegar roams around with a puss like—’

  ‘Concentrate.’

  The workmanship exquisite and the mechanisms tiny; the bear fumbles without success for an extended span of time. He realises he is short of breath, appalled by her proximity, astounded to be the scale that weighs her in the moment. He had despaired of ever touching her again.

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘If only I’d never said it, we might still be together.’

  ‘You were allowed to say it, Tibetan Mastiff. You just weren’t allowed to mean it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are they engaged yet?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Who else.’

  The dark-red leather creaks with her professional grind, his semiprofessional shudders of involuntary reply; despite himself he gains momentum with the hooks, passing halfway in the wired outer-spine that keeps her decent. ‘I don’t think Jamie is the marrying type.’

  ‘Well I reckon she might be. Does she still hate my guts?’

  ‘Suzie doesn’t hate your guts. She’s just…wary.’

  ‘For someone so smart she sure is stupid. Christ, if he was gonna do it he would have done it by now.’

  ‘Fucked you?’

  ‘Married her.’ She raps his knee, targeting with precision a site she knows to be sore. In perpetuity / ‘Bad dog.’

  ‘She is a deep old ship,’ he intones to Kristy’s gently swaying back. ‘Susan’s brain is astronomical.’

  ‘What, like telescopes? Laser beams and big black holes?’

  ‘I mean cosmology. I mean, Dr Sheldon’s branch of mathematics is concerned with the viability of stars.’ The quote is old, wonderful to him, but its sudden effect is weird: he feels raised to a higher pitch of being. The torch of his focus lights upon the far side of room, fixing around the moment where the Doberman Pinscher sits. A bend of space-time, a carcinogenic intensity. ‘Just spotted your admirer,’ he says through fast-onset nausea. ‘The one in Anita’s ear.’

  ‘He must like blondes.’

  ‘You know, you’re actually quite alike.’

  ‘Me and the Dober?’

  ‘You and the Susan. Both interested in the universe, in the mysteries that drive it. Different sides of the same shiny coin, the science and the…’

  ‘Shamanism.’

  ‘Yeah—that. Tell me, darling, are you still clairvoyant?’

  She thinks about it, momentarily still as though wired remotely, somebody somewhere pushing her pause. ‘Kitten 5’s branch of erotic dance is concerned with the viability of getting Bobby Cobra off the premises.’

  ‘Oh my—that’s very good.’

  ‘D’you know that bloke? Doberman?’ His Kitten’s tone describes a sudden tension and it makes him freeze; the final hook pinches between mangled fingers, digits broken more than once and setting wilfully crooked.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Do you know what’s dangerous in this line of work.’ Her question is soft, deriving from far away. A blind urge to hurl rope or life preserver grips him to the quick, the marrow.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘You get an instinct for it, quick bloody smart. It’s not the blokes who look, Bobby Cobra. It’s the men who watch.’

  ‘And that’s what he is. The Dober is a watcher.’

  ‘You got it,’ she says in a voice strained with meaning, the girl sliding towards her involuntary mode of seer. ‘Only he isn’t watching me.’

  Cometh the witch: Anita appears from the banquet room and there’s a card in her hand, an awful intent about the frictionless way she moves. Tibetan Mastiff closes his eyes, disquieted in ways he does not understand. He prays for deafness / hears the lot.

  ‘Ten.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Our friend the Pinscher just offered ten thousand dollars for you to get off that lap and walk over there, sit on his instead.’

  ‘I’m unavailable at present.’

  ‘Kristy—’

  ‘Don’t you fucking dare.’

  ‘Fine. He asked me to pass this along.’

  Mastiff opens, aware too late that he grips her tightly, frightened into antic spaces by the card he cannot see but senses. ‘I shouldn’t have done all that coke,’ says Kitten 5, sounding steady despite it. ‘It fucks with my spooky gift.’

  ‘Ah, I forgot you called it that.’ He smiles at the secret anecdote, known only to the pair of them and thus precious. ‘Remember that fortune teller in Miranda? Ha ha ha / she touched your hand and blew a fuse.’

  ‘You think you are loved in this city. Don’t you, Bobby Cob.’

  ‘Listen, I don’t know if ten grand is stand
ard around here, but I suggest you jump ship. You wouldn’t be hurting any f—’

  ‘There’s this tribe in New Guinea,’ she says. ‘If they find the gift, they blind it. Not with a knife or anything; there’s a potion they use. And if the girl survives, wakes up from coma, she can see into the future of every person she ever touched.’

  ‘What’s on the card, kitten. His phone number?’

  ‘Even you know better than that. Even you, who knows nothing.’

  ‘I know I don’t want you drinking jungle juice in PN-fucken-G.’

  The dancer reaches behind to do the thing he can’t: release the final clip and break the circuit of her basque. She lifts away the ravishing bark, twisting to face the man she has many times touched, many times foretold. Kristy scandalises protocol / she slips her plastic mask.

  ‘Look at me.’

  He doesn’t, won’t. ‘What is written.’

  ‘I should, you know—go to New Guinea. Imagine the greatness of it: drinking the drink and surviving. Even now, I’m such a bloody coward.’

  ‘But they would blind you, love. I wouldn’t live in a world without your eyes. What would be the point.’

  ‘I want to tell you something but I don’t know how: I know you will not cope. You can’t even look at me when I’m sitting right in front of you, as naked as the day I was—’

  ‘You say my names all start with B, but not the ones that matter.’

  ‘I had no proof, Bobby—no reason to think it. But in your cells you know. I went to the doctor.’

  Pregnancy; the heart of the Mastiff curdles. ‘You think I am prone to break but I am called the Incremental. It isn’t rank / it’s algebra. The line of personal limit that a person cannot pierce. But if you are brave like Ajax, put the world onto your shoulders—’

  ‘Atlas,’ she says. ‘I’m going to read it. Are you ready?’

  ‘Wait—’

  The bear is looking down the barrel of all

  The guns he tried to run,

  All the horses that refuse to

  The words are bells that ring the pair of them, each sorry as fuck to be the speaker / hearer. ‘I had coke tonight,’ says Kristy shivering. ‘But what did you have?’