‘That fucker has cursed me,’ says the Big Ship soft, his gaze fused suddenly to darkness. Kitten 5 knows a truth that Bobby Cobra does not, that his eyes are lovelier than hers / than anyone’s.
‘He sent you poetry, Bonecrusher…Jesus Christ, ten thousand bucks! I could have bought, like, six mobile phones.’
‘You still can.’
‘Nup—the offer lapsed. Your admirer has left the building.’
‘Let us follow his example. Come home with me, pussycat. No sex, just sleep.’
She shakes her head, a gesture he cannot see but feels. ‘I missed sixteen calls tonight—and all from the same bloody number.’
‘A lucky man.’ The bear works his pain like a stroke that might be swallowed, the star of his heart in tight eclipse. ‘You know, my dear, if congratulations are in order—’
‘Quiet, Bobby.’
The dancer reaches to collect the garment recently shed, and no—he did not look at her. Not properly / not once. She squeezes his hand and the sensation is grace, an undoing of the poem and all its hateful attainder. ‘I hate to love and leave you, Incremental.’
‘But you’re so good at it.’
‘It’s no one’s fault.’ She kisses his lips and the Big Ship dies: all the rest is afterlife. ‘It’s just there’s somewhere else that I’m apparently meant to be.’
19
Sutton unclipped the guide ropes. He was watched through glass by Bloke’s harlequin smile, its response of simpleton genius to even fixed or bitter predicament. The carpenter turned the bikers until they formed her penitent mattress, down among the dead men / Kristy’s body lumped with theirs.
—
In the bar upstairs he shopped for bottles. Whit stood rigid like a hat-rack / made an offer of shake. ‘Where will you take—’
Sutton put Johnny in that hand and kept on walking.
—
They drive-crept slow into the world at night. The pilot turned the gears and Bloke was company on the bench-seat, barking to cross Tom Ugly out of time-established habit. Just a Shih Tzu little bark because his heart could not be in it.
The Darke Forest loomed and Sutton left the Princess Highway, opting for the Kitemaker to gyre down from height. Bloke has stood at Balding Hill and watched the coloured deltas gliding, dying under zephyrs just like lemming paper planes.
After that came secret roads and thin illicit pathways, the ironbark dimension that surrounds at Copper Road. The canine murmured doggerel like a case of frontier mindsick and the human carried Kristy to the shelter of The Shack.
—
He set her down like fragile goods, like a case of glass inside. He stood in memory of the girl she was, the bloodless sister she had been. The white fluorescent light was out and the green one flicked with palsy.
When the man came out he sat the truck and revved like GT Falcon. Bloke circled in a dance for rain but could not claim the shotgun. He made a song from werewolf notes to prove how much he loved him. It hurt Bloke’s chest like bindis thinking Sutton could have left him.
—
They used half-born tracks to hack retreat and leave the hidey-hole behind. Far to sea the ore ships burned like pyres for the Grange. Bloke stood the handle like a demon bull and drank the lazarus wind. Soon the sun would stickybeak its orange peek of rind.
They cruised past shipyard gantries shaped like brontosaurs in iron. Beyond them stood the boneyard home of a thousand cactus Holden. Two cranes were rusting in the reddened waste like film-set Mars or Titan. One lay tipped and slaughtered / Cain-and-Abel war between them.
—
It was the whitegoods he wanted. They stood rotting at the western edge, facing dead and broken country. Sutton browsed like a newlywed until a thousand litre flat-top that he hitched up using chain.
The truck was called to hector the icebox to a corner more remote. It was a realm of mounds where gravel was king / where blue metal lived for free. Sutton laboured like a navvy until the coffin was levelled over. Then stood to tit-feed shovel like the wise department of roads.
—
He jumped in the cabin and put her mind to serious reverse—the press of her arse against make-do crypt to merge it with vanquished crane. The union was violent / without consent / but it swallowed proof of crime. The truck retraced her tyre marks imprinted when she came.
18
It is true that Sutton nearly died in prison. It wasn’t misadventure, attack by some bastard enemy. The problem was inside.
The great detective saved the day. It wasn’t his long-gone acumen or prodigious volume of body. It was not even his bone-crush hands, as cracked as the Darlinghurst Strip.
The past, the past: Rawson’s Gordian hair and Tibers of sweat, a colossus of rogues who did favours. Before he lived in modern times, the ancient world owed him.
—
He wakes and groans hugely with sciatica, stenosis, the heroic strains that attend titanic mass. The oldest derive from accident, a car wreck survived at twenty-four when a boab tried to kill him. A kink in his spine no rod would iron and two months in traction, the doctors saying Your walking days are over.
Knock-knock. Who’s there? It’s faint—the front door perhaps—and comes again with polite insistence. The tenant rolls from dishevelled manger and somehow gets his legs up and under, a human Pisa swaying perilous with hangover. En route he stumbles into four bits of furniture and comes off first-best every time. That is the essence of him, a gift for collision.
‘Angel Dust.’
A pale slice of visitor, compact and orderly, nudging glasses along the bridge of his nose—a nervous tic prompted by Rawson’s unfortunate nickname for him. Tom makes an anxious sweep of corridor and says, ‘Come on, Michael—you can’t answer the door like that.’
‘Like what?’
‘With no bloody clothes on. I could have been anyone.’
‘Rubbish.’ Rawson architects a smile that is deep, deranged, a wise and comic encompassment of much beyond the moment. ‘Who the fuck else would you be.’
He turns and picks a path through chronic apartment, speared by skewers of light that somehow breach the filthy blinds. The sun has a robust quality that is far from dawn, proof of a morning now long in the tooth. Rawson slumps in a chair to roll a smoke, to close his eyes against the casual brutality of day.
It would be worse—brighter—if not for a rampart of sordid dishes piled high against kitchen window. The tower shades a wasteland of half-eaten meals, the festering remains of murdered cheeseburger and suicide kebab. Blowflies float drowsy and obese through thickened air, a Luftwaffe that has never known sustained opposition. The smell of the place is shocking / just shocking.
‘May I sit?’
‘Depends,’ says Rawson. ‘If you’re here about nutting Trevor again—’
‘No. Not that.’
Rawson’s chair has an identical partner. Shoe, sock, mousetrap. The visitor takes his unconvincing ease while Rawson roams a hand across the table, a ruderal crab intending for a broken-down pie, the pastry now enjoying a grand old age. Tom averts his eyes and thus misses the merciful detour—the crab striking fast and perpendicular, snatching vodka bottle instead.
‘Those plates look like a game of Jenga.’
‘Come to talk crockery, have we.’
The vet sniffs and rubs his temple, probing for the nerve that hardens tact into resolve. ‘The thing is, Rawse, this is a nice building.’
The hearer drills a good hard hit and surfaces with a nod. It bloody is a nice building; their select little pocket of Elizabeth Bay has any number like it. Older; not without the odd shabby nook, but possessed of unmistakable decorum.
‘Out with it.’
Again the tic with the spectacles. Tom is mild by nature, an esteemed veterinarian. He sits on boards and what have you: the theatre, the opera. His private life is different from his public one.
‘The Body Corporate has passed a resolution.’
‘Aw sing it, man—the Body Corpo
rate has passed a resolution!’ Rawson celebrates with a second swig, one that hurts him in ways the first did not. He sucks his teeth and litters a string of oaths, a rant of illicit beauty that summons a portly feline mass. Rawson locks eyes with his cat and says, ‘Have they finally outlawed all the yapping little dogs?’
Tom indulges the moment with a smile; the building is infested with yapping little dogs. More acutely, with the little old ladies who own them. Rawson rolls his enormous head clockwise, anti-clockwise, a clown in sideshow alley. ‘I’m sorry,’ says his friend from old. ‘I really am.’
The Big Ship nods to believe it. ‘When did I come here, Tom.’
‘The start of October.’
‘Right. And how many favours did you owe.’
The good doctor doesn’t think about it, doesn’t shrink from the magnitude of his debt. ‘Five, maybe six.’
‘Five or maybe six.’ Rawson sounds tired, thoughtful, resigned. ‘You got me into this joint. That’s one down.’
‘Yep.’
‘And when the old sheila in twelve saw me copping a BJ in the lift, you convinced her it was a misunderstanding.’
‘Mrs Hirst. A failed zipper.’
‘That’s right—Sandy was fixing my strides up with her teeth. A failed zipper, Snappy Tom, what delicate gifts of phrasing. You could have been an ad man. That’s another one down.’
‘We could call it two.’
Rawson chews a knuckle. ‘Or an accountant, perhaps.’
Big orange Trev interprets the new silence as an invitation to melodrama. He ups and bounds heavily away, fleeing along the abbreviated hall as though pursued by sadistic enemies. Cats are fond of it, acting as though routinely beaten. Someone else must be feeding that bastard / he has the footfalls of a child.
Rawson stands and stretches, a tectonic grind that fills the room with battleship mass, with condor wingspan. The new shadow unblankets his radical truth: the man in 2B denotes severe misallocation. What was it for, this mega-body that in olden days would have crushed lions, slain Israelites? He yawns with tears in his eyes and—‘Hey Zeus, that cheese has had a hard fucken life. Am I imagining things or is it a bit ripe in here?’ He rumbles to the sink and attacks the window, questing too late for a breath of fresh air.
‘Your pager’s going nuts,’ says Tom.
‘Yeah? Is that what that is.’
‘Reckon.’
The vet braves a wooden chopstick and uses it to lever a slice of pizza from the buzzing heap. Once was mushroom, now just fungus; Tom abandons the enterprise, watched by Rawson in the dust-stained reflection of the not-budging window. Open up you mongrel prick. For some while his purest rage has been reserved for inanimate refusals to oblige him. Got ourselves a hero do we? The Incremental strains and the pane gives way, a victory that triggers collapse in the dishes. A landslide cataclysm, painfully done, Tom cupping his ears like a child. But at least the vista is redeemed, Centrepoint Tower like a bucket of Kentucky Fried, expensive glimpses of Bridge stage right.
‘Jeez, you okay?’
Rawson dances among shards to assess the damage: four plates and a mug didn’t make it out alive. A slice of pale ceramic juts from his bleeding calf, a wound that goes unnoticed in the general circulation. Time to scrub it down, cleanse it away—although it doesn’t take much to be a decent host.
‘Had brekkie, old bean? Help yourself to anything you like the look of.’
—
He hits the bedroom to interrogate a pair of mustard jocks, wondering if they can hack another tour. In the cramped and dated bathroom he opens the cupboard above the sink, grateful to banish the mirror, the him. A bottle of Old Spice stands to grim attention and a shaggy toothbrush idles. Rawson is way past due to scrub the pegs but he opts for chemical wipeout—imbibes too much of the vivid mouthwash and gets the gargle hopelessly wrong. He swallows and chokes, doubles over.
‘How you going in there.’
‘This fucken Listerine, mate—it’d kill a brown dog!’
The big police staggers back to the kitchen, pawing at watering eyes and ripping out a dozen magnificent lashes. He gets to the sink, there to aggravate its wretched existence with a bout of hocking and spitting. A quizzical grunt makes him look around, Tom examining a seamy-looking flap of moulded plastic. ‘Looks like someone around here is a fan of the Tibetan Mastiff! Er, is there something you want to tell me?’
‘Ay? Oh, that thing. Chuck it in the rubbish.’
‘The rubbish, you say.’
‘Give it here, fuck-ya.’ The alacrity of his busted frame when moved to action, when shifted by pain: Bobby Cobra snatches his rubber self and defenestrates the bastard. He dusts his hands, pleased to be shot of it, but the mask proves strangely buoyant: both men are momentarily entranced by its dancing spiral on the upward breeze. Perhaps it will float witch-like at his window for hours or days to come? No: mercy prevails, sanity and logic, the wind plummeting like a stock exchange to sink Tibetan Mastiff.
Rawson shakes off the whole fey episode, cantilevering above the sink to scrape his larynx all over again. ‘You know, I’m happy I got a chance to live up here.’
‘Yes. Me too.’
‘Aw, bullshit. Been a fucken liability to you—and you a friend to me these thirty years. Hoich, grrah—fuck me dead what colour’s that.’
‘I know a very good ENT—’
‘I’m just saying it’s been nice to spend some time up the pointy end. Sometimes when you cop in the Cross you forget to go past the fountain.’
‘Sure. Hey, did you hear something?’
‘About what.’
‘I mean in the roof. Like something moving.’
Rawson heaves shoulders to signal indifference. ‘Rats.’
‘Per-lease. We’re vermin-free, my friend. Triple-certified.’
‘Then we’re singularly fucken blessed. You should have seen this yellow-eyed punter I copped on Ward Avenue last night. Bigger than Trev! I walk straight at him and he gives me the stare. Fuck off, buddy—go around.’
‘There—that creak.’
Rawson concludes his vigorous ablutions and scratches his nuts. ‘Potts Point is this city in a nutshell—the rich and respectable cheek by jowl with the warbs. Walk out of Showgirls, buy a gel cap, three minutes later you’re in Millionaires’ Row. A hundred and eighty seconds, mate. You don’t even have to jog.’
Tom on his feet now, his own gaze rodential as it fixes the ceiling. ‘Kill the fan, I want to find out where it’s coming from.’
‘They say Parra’s the centre, but that’s just the geography. Centre of what? Live your life in Parra-Doesn’t-Matter and Sydney is a place you’ve never been.’
‘This corner,’ says the vet. ‘Cripes—could be a problem with the foundations. I’ll have to inform the Body Corporate.’
Cripes. The Body Corporate. Rawson’s sigh is candid. ‘Relax,’ he says. ‘It is a man.’
‘What?’
‘In the ceiling.’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘I have a friend,’ says Rawson. ‘He likes to crash up there. Enjoys the dark, the quiet.’ The policeman turns to find the astonishment he expects; most folk arrive there easily. Sensible types with their sensible lives. ‘Sorry. I didn’t realise he was here.’
‘You let your mate sleep in the roof.’
‘I keep a mattress up there. A little fan.’
‘Christ alive.’ Tom shakes his head and waves the matter away. It is all too much for him, too zany. But then he snags—mentally, physically—and revolves with a starfucker’s glint. ‘Is it the guy from the trial?’
Rawson places a finger to his lips. ‘Careful. He hears like a dog.’
‘Wowee. No wonder your career is stuffed.’
The detective’s answering laughter is cold. It is true that Sutton is not admired among certain police. Then again, Rawson has cultivated many worse associations. ‘You enjoy working with animals?’
‘Of course.’
‘Well I
don’t.’
‘Look, I didn’t mea—’
‘Yeah yeah / save it. When do I have to be out by?’
Angel Dust wears a defeated cast. He should have covered the details sooner, when the vibe was peaceable. ‘Four weeks. But the board says if you make it seven days, you’ll get your deposit back. You know, regardless of the state of the place.’
‘Really? Irregardless of the state.’ Rawson grins to show there are no hard feelings. ‘I always thought twelve weeks’ bond was a bit fucken cheeky. Who do these old bats think they are?’
Tom strives to answer. Rawson has always been an unlikely person, but now he is flat-out preposterous—a pygmy in ragged loincloth that experiments have made huge. Every detail except for the spear, the grubby blue flyswatter he waves at his unseen associate in the sky.
‘I don’t know,’ the vet says eventually. ‘But I reckon they might ask you the same thing.’
17
He is in the foyer, fetching mail, a warm g’day for a vintage crone who now heartily disapproves. A sad unravelling / at the outset he was loved. That is the key to his expulsion: he has spurned their adoration with his reckless ways and now it is time to go. They thought they were getting the champion of Fairfield Siege, the hero of Ashfield Fire. They thought they were getting the Peter Mitchell Medallist but they are ten years late for any of that.
Rawson is late too. Colleagues have ceased to expect him in the a.m. / today he might just surprise them.
Nup: he reaches the end of the brief garden path that puts him onto Ithaca and sees a light blue Fairlane idling in the autumn. It’s a trap, a dirty ambush. A low-down bloody bushwhack is what it is.
‘Bookies paying house calls,’ he says to the hydrangeas. ‘What will they think of next.’
—
He visited Long Bay every week and they spoke of surface things. But then came a time when the hour was different, when Sutton’s silence was like a force field. The policeman worked hard to get a confession.
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