‘You like Chinese women.’
‘What? No-no. I mean, yeah, sure—on my day. What I’m talking about is the scope, Wristy, the complexity. Forest and desert, mountain and plain. China’s just a metaphor / I adapt ’em to suit. Think sea-to-sea America, think Russia or Brazil.’
‘I have never had a Brazilian woman. What is going on?’
‘The death of my searing headache is what. Nothing distracts like migraine fog but suddenly I’m cleared for take-off. Do you know what she told me? Facts don’t mean shit to them. It’s about the way they feel.’
‘I have known this fear.’
The Blue Mover moves close, insinuating the other male body into his plot; Hristo cops his breath and squirms. ‘Do you know what women want, cobber? They want the exact fucken thing you’re not giving them.’
His switch to whisper is a canny one: the boys look up to find her frozen on the stairs. ‘What are you doing?’
A jolt of separation, of nothing times two. Hristo gets stuck into the bacon while Rawson tells her That was quick, managing to yawn despite feeling extremely bloody awake.
‘Numbers are economical,’ she says slowly, her own yawn of reply not forged. ‘Even when they’re wrong.’
‘Not behaving, eh.’
‘Haven’t for months.’
‘It’s supposed to give you the same reading, right? Every time.’
‘God, Michael, you’re an elephant.’
‘It’s supposed to give you p, Litvo’s constant.’
‘Exactly. And 96.7 per cent of the time it does.’
‘So what’s 4.3 between friends.’
‘Try 3.3—and it’s a very serious stuff-up. In maths, science, nothing effs you like assumption. Hristo? That creamed spinach is all for you by the way.’
‘Oh. Thank you.’
‘You’ll iron it out, Suzie Q. You’ll crack it.’
‘No,’ she says to coffee cooled by time, by thermo entropy. ‘We’ve got two hundred mathematicians in eighteen countries and nobody can. Three of them have won, bloody, the Fields Medal.’
‘Hear that, Wristy? Suzie can’t swear for shit. Doesn’t say anything coarser than bloody and always puts it in, bloody, the wrong spot.’
She hardly hears, is talking mostly to herself. ‘The scary thing is it’s off by the exact same margin. It’s not random, a blown fuse or passing bee. It’s like there’s this other value for p just as valid, simply rarer.’
‘Is this spinach that we grew here?’
‘You grew it, Hristo, and yes.’
‘It’s bonzer gear, Wristy.’ The benediction has a consequence, Rawson’s double-take peer at the cap he blesses. ‘Mate, Henson Park faithful. When did this happen?’
Hristo’s response is to cease all mastication. That’s it. Susan frowns and Rawson elaborates: ‘Wristy’s gone and signed up for the Jets.’
‘He’s had that cap forever.’
‘Bullcrap.’
‘Have you never noticed? Look at it, Michael—it’s twenty years old.’
Hristo giving nothing, frozen, the droid in need of some WD40. ‘If he was wearing that twenty years ago, Christ—he’d have just about copped my final hit-out.’
The Bulgarian stands and takes Susan’s hand, offers fealty like Lancelot / thanks her kindly for the grub. Old smoothie. He turns without flinching and fixes the Black Knight.
‘Round five. You scored in the rain. North Sydney Bears.’
‘Hey?’
‘You started two fights and got stretchered away. Then you came back, started another.’
‘I don’t remember no Bears in the rain. Are you telling me—?’
‘You could have been anything,’ says the Magyar locust. ‘But you only played good in the losses.’
—
Rawson went to Nevada, played good in a loss. Good to start with: the first half was brilliant. A bit like life. But then the plan unravelled and things got ridiculous. Namely him.
‘Omigod, are you drinking scotch?’
‘My oath. Hair of the god what bit me.’
‘Bloody…Can you believe this, Hristo?’
‘Yes.’
The tiki cocktail of Vegas lights, Kristy taking them in with girlfriends, belonging to Christopher’s orbit but still officially half single. He tacked onto the buck’s thing of a cop he hardly knew, some prick from White Collar he couldn’t pick out of line-up. Fuck it, screw it, you do as needs must. Their hotels were neighbours and he thought it was fate / what else would it have been.
‘The herb garden, Susan. Did your mother decide?’
‘She did. You can rip it out with a clear conscience.’
‘The thyme? The sage?’
‘The lot.’
His darling Kris Knife, so cordial to begin with. After that she ignored him out of town / neglected him off the premises. The pain of that thrill was too passive for the Ship so he set out to break what he could not fix, a zombie with double rum who haunted the rival resort, a gingerbread cat who dragged himself as dead-bird token to the brink of her midnight door.
‘My wingless shattered chest-pump.’
‘What?’
‘I wanna hear Dancing Queen. Do you wanna hear Dancing Queen? Or maybe a bit of Gimme Gimme Gimme.’
‘Sounds like those aspirin really sorted you out.’
‘Oh, but haven’t they—I put out an S.O.S. and they came running. It doesn’t hurt that this Macallan is Honey, Honey. Is that why you keep eyeing it?’
‘I think you scared poor Hristo away. He hardly touched his spinach.’
To be the wrong side of forty and act fifteen; what an implement of torture was his ear, Rawson pressing to wood and hearing riots in progress, her parties rife with cheap champagne and the guff of foreign males. Nearer to dawn the squeak of a bedspring, his maddened rush to construe some world-defining orgasm, a climax enjoyed specifically at his expense. A flight down to tables where his luck was very good, a strange cosmic chuckle in his Sin-o-graph.
‘I went over there, you know. Chased her. The one who cannot be named.’
‘As in, the States.’
‘As in the Devil’s Playground. Eighteen months ago. You were here and I was there and how arse backwards is that.’
‘I know. Jamie told me about it, said you had a terrible time.’
‘Deserved every second.’
Asked for it. Hit me, he told the croupier, again and again as the cards fell kind. Then didn’t; the Busted Incremental had given most of it back by the time her shift ended so he went ahead, tipped her the balance. Simply paying for the lesson: in the procession of Jacks and Queens he’d glimpsed romance as a chanceless Bridge of logic, every person a deck of multiple selves and offering Uno response to the river—the loved one—but never knowing what trump was called for because the bind was friggin blind. Folly, disaster, presenting a king of hearts when some low club was requisite, diamonds falling like rocks to bundle you out of the hand.
‘Order of battle.’
‘Order of—?’
‘All the great bloody cards you did not get to show.’
‘I think you should lie down for a bit.’
‘You’re on the wrong side of history there, my love.’
‘Then eat something. Please? Do it for me.’
‘She bought me a Mars bar once; my blood sugar was low. I hid it away / I have it still. Strange chemistry, don’t you think—chocolate sweeter from one hand than another.’
‘Are you okay, Michael? Because you look not okay.’
‘Like yourself, perhaps. Talk to me, lovely.’
‘There’s nothing to say.’
‘Chiquitita, tell me what’s wrong.’
‘I’m fine. Honestly. I just need to get through the next few—’
‘I went through the drawers in the study.’
The Big Ship wandered into desert, flirted with death by thirst. In the end he went back because a dad, because thirsty—but only after a full night wasted in a wastelan
d. He walked personal fault lines, filling them with thoughts of her and then not of her—of two young girls in the east of Australia / of two young lads in the west. The grief and rage of his dark tectonic, a fear some evil rival Cynosure was sunk beneath his feet. Tequila and acid, all his physics quantum, butterflies in the Amazon causing European storms and the Cobra’s lust for Spooky sparking war on distant planets.
‘My Very Excellent Maid—’
‘The drawers in the study…What’s your point.’
‘One of them filled with clothes, Suzie Q. Strange ones, new duds from DJs, business shirts with tags still on, shorts for teenage boys. I was looking for a pen, you understand, and they were stuffed like a secret / I am asking if you’re alright.’
‘You’re talking garbage is what you’re doing.’
‘Strange. I was chatting to Ipsafacto just yesterday.’
‘Who?’
‘De Souza. Come on—you used to love a bit of Latin. He got up in court one day, lost his composure. But ipsafacto, your honour.’
‘If you’ve got something to say—’
‘Orright. I think I’ve just swallowed two Fenechs.’
‘Which are?’
‘An interesting development—for the both of us if you’re gonna keep stealing nips of my blessed eighteen.’
‘It’s true; I have been. But they’re making me feel better. Like, really good.’
‘Quit while you’re ahead, Suzie Q. Or not too far behind. Or only a fair bit behind. Or only a mile or tw—’
‘He was very good to me, you know. Angelo. He told the security guard to bugger off.’
Rawson buggered off, begged the airline for a change of flight. They wanted four hundred bucks / he cited bad internal bleeding. Sir? Sir, it sounds like you should really see a doctor. No shit, Sherlock—but no insurance either, a coverless man departing one sin city and arriving home to another. One worse, Rawson thirsty still and struck by Eternity’s hardship, blondes in all directions giving coronary acupuncture. His heart quickened into foolish canter every thirty seconds, a trotter in a pacer’s race and drawn to Rawson’s Roulette: no more bets, no more rainbows—the stubborn refusal of every girl on every Sydney corner to be Kris.
—
Hristo reaches for the high secateurs. The big ones, rusted favourites, the pair that brooks no compromise. The light in the shed reconfigures and he turns to find a woman interloping. Hair and sweat, a torrent of words: it takes him a moment to realise it is Susan.
‘You have to do something for me. I can’t, I can’t, but he told me the solution and he won’t take no for an answer.’
‘What are you—’
She jerks his sleeve, waves the cordless in his face. ‘You’re a nose-roll innocent, Wristy. Understand? You’re a virgin who wouldn’t know a bar of soap.’ She starts jabbering the details, numbers and names, here you go / just hit redial. When she goes he is dumbstruck, storm-hit, sniffing his armpit to see if it pongs.
Drunk? Maybe. Abba has been blaring from the house for almost half an hour; that fellow is a terrible influence. But Hristo follows instructions.
‘Shane Metcalf’s.’
‘The people here are strange.’
‘Try working at a bookie’s. Account?’
‘Edward Michael Rawson.’
‘…I have a Rawson, Michael.’
‘Canterbury tomorrow, race number two. The runner is—’
‘Hold your horses. Password?’
‘Kristy.’
‘Okay, Michael. And how much are we talking?’
‘Everything to win.’
‘Sure? That’s five figures.’
‘Everything to win on the…I have forgotten the name.’
The lady sighs and sources acceptances, starts giving him the odds and options. ‘Jimmy Hoofa, six-fifty; The Goggomobil, three dollars; Himma Primma Donna is your two-twenty favourite. Luxor Fortune? Twenties. Drunken Circus? Sixteens. Then comes Bound for Gluery, thirty-to-one pop—’
‘That one,’ says the gardener, pretty sure.
‘Drunken Circus?’
‘No.’ The Magyar swaps ears, tells her Everything to win on the horse that is Bound for Gluery.
—
Rawson sits in the bath like the rogue of time. Fully clothed beneath a running shower, his pager in the sinkhole and making for a decent plug. It relayed every fragment and he has managed to piece them, a bear in the rain good at puzzles.
Dad you’ve gotta come round.
Susan dances into the room and then out of it, loving the sound of greatest hits, of songs she forgot she owned. What a Super Trouper. She didn’t drink much / will be fine in an hour.
And fix it.
Recovery will take him longer: the Incremental is exploring highs and comedowns at the same space-time moment, facing both his apertures at once. It shouldn’t be possible / doesn’t feel natural.
Mum’s going crook because I called Uncle Jem and now—God!—we can’t find Mitchell.
The present happened already: minutes ago or maybe years. The idea consoles as he brings theory to chaos, his fast-spinning family of near and dear. Sasha called Jamie, the Jem that Susan left. Whit’s sister was not in the paper / Heather’s lapdog can’t be found.
We think something’s happened but we don’t know what and Mum says it’s all my fault.
He hears Susan enter and sit down on the tiles. The plastic is drawn but her hand snakes under, Rawson squeezing her fingers to offer proof of life. He says, ‘I like the shower curtain.’
‘It’s older than I am,’ she whispers. Plausible, the article faded but its motif for children clear: a mural of celestial bodies, the planets all local identities. ‘Star, sun, moon,’ she says dreamily.
‘I know her well.’
‘Know who.’
‘Star Sun-Moon. Korean girl, dances over at Rascals. Or maybe its Rumours. A personage of very great beauty.’
‘You and your persons of beauty.’
‘Please tell me you haven’t left him over Kris.’
‘I thought we didn’t say that word.’
‘You’ll have to in a minute—she’s the password on my bet account.’
‘Bet acc—? No mate, never in a million years.’
‘It’s alright; I don’t expect you to work for free. But if you do—’
‘Why would you even ask.’
‘Because my luck is dead, Susan Q, but the likes of you—a virgin innocent who would not know a nose roll from a bar of soap—you can give my fortunes mouth to mouth. Metcalf is not my usual outfit, far from it, but the twenty-one thousand I hold with him is my chief asset in this world. And the horse named Drunken Circus is the most darling under-the-radar colt in the colony of New South Wales, a mudlark secret sure to start at double figures.’
‘Drunken Circus,’ she sings. ‘You’re only asking because I feel so peculiar.’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s an arsehole thing to do, Michael.’
Rawson smiles and looks at a rising tide now saying hello to his navel. ‘Yeah? If I’m such an arsehole then where’s my hot girlfriend.’
Where indeed. It’s a little close to home so he isn’t surprised to lose her grip, to sense her dance into the hall. Canterbury Park, he intones in the direction of Venus, Neptune. Drunken Circus. If you do it, Dr Sheldon, I will tell you what’s wrong with your Cynosure.
Her laughter is not particularly charitable and Rawson does what she did—snakes his hand beneath the curtain. Bobby Cobra raises three fingers, the pious salute he never learned because expelled in advance / disruptive as a Cub. ‘In life, in love, nothing fucks you like assumption.’
‘What?’
‘There was never anything between them, my dear. Now go to the phone, press redial.’
‘As if. Not until you show me the colour of your money.’
‘Very well.’
The Rawson looking through the alpha starts to speak, possessing in full the powers of mouth but not much presenc
e of heart. The heart belongs to the Rawson at omega—a man whose password is not a daughter’s name / who cannot go round and fix it. Susan listens in silence to his torrent of lyrics, a quizzical song no mathlete could pen. The soundtrack of silence when she exits the room, leaving to hunt down the phone.
—The present, she told him three years ago when fresh from America. It’s actually happening some time ago.
—You’re hurtin me brain.
—The Portuguese think it’s just a few minutes but the Germans are talking years.
—I know who I’d back. What about the future?
He could mission to the Darkside, to the home of his family, but Rawson would only make things worse: such is the calculus that reigns, his exponential effect on daughters’ crises, his ex-wife’s tribulations. The twin accusations the man has fielded, justified in every instance: he calls too much / he does not call enough, a bear powerless to get it just right.
—Tell me, princess. I’m not afraid.
—The latest research…listen, Michael, it’s complicated.
—Bullcrap. You just don’t want to speak the truth.
—What truth.
—The future, Suzie Q. Your Sin-o-gram reckons there’s no such thing.
12
‘So me and Gary are having a drink and Gary goes, These cunts are keeping time like a bride. You like that? Like a bride. When they rock up there’s three of them, one skinny and two fat. Why are Maoris always so fucken fat? There’s Charlie Moose and two others and they walk in like they own the place.’
Vespa Kline nods and spits. ‘I thought you said this was at the South Pac Club.’
‘That’s right. Wentworthville.’
‘Well then they do own the place. Don’t they.’
‘South Pac? Oh right. Welltheycertainlyfuckenactlikeit! Charlie Moose says, These are my nephews, and he says their names and their names are like thirty letters long.’
Vespa stands in the jamb, staring the length of the hall. Nuts Finnegan is unseen in the lounge with a baseball bat. He’s a good man, Nuts—vigilant, proper biff merchant. That’s good because the bloke, the owner, could walk in any second. And if he does it’s gonna be war.
Winter Traffic Page 9