Winter Traffic

by Stephen Greenall

  He moves toward the house and Rawson watches from one knee, coarse in his course in his breathing / possessed of a rising arm. When honesty goes down it happens in silence, looks to the watcher like a silly bugger game.

  Zero

  His puppiest beginnings are nursed beneath a quilt, using nothing but milk teeth to slay recumbent dragons. The legs of master, arms of mistress…The humans affect to howl, beg mercy, and he glimpses what it is to be mighty / be hero.

  —

  At night she passes through revolutions that are beyond the dog’s capacity. Susan swings through arcs that are profound and mathematic, moving light years quicker than any bright dark truck.

  It’s no wonder she wakes up always tired.

  —

  The shadowmind of Sutton likes to chatter in her orbit, but when divorced from Susan it will lapse through sleeping hours. The result is like prison / like a corpse bereft of dreaming. Bloke stood the fort in that difficult time but a dog is not a master.

  Not that he is blind to satellite cunning, to skeletons of infrastructure mapped in luminous X-ray. Susan was a Paris—a wondrous city of lights—but Sutton is like some old Angola / present-day Sudan: a lacuna in the night-time, just a dark and desert ellipse.

  —

  The harbour listens to conduct surveillance. It is pairing you with patterns in the sentient lens of itself, your pleasure yachts and private ferries cloaked by weird device. Late at night your delta flows with human chants and music. Green lights lonely at the end of piers will manage winter traffic.

  —

  Do not believe the stories told / the wonder dog escaped them. He wrestled free of Dactyl hands and ran the villain’s drive. Bad men roared on shocking bikes but they could not bear to catch him. He followed tangled creeks until a confluence of greeting.

  —

  Now he is whistled past name and face to stand the afterlife tray. To befriend in Trees of Hades all the heartsick going by. He will love the crossroad music forming late at night the delta. He will hate the STAY / the STAY is death / but wait here for the master.

  -1

  Tom Angel has been roused to pump the stomachs of beloved housecats but never anything like this. It’s what you get when you answer the two a.m. phone call and hear the voice of Rawson. It’s what you get if he’s in your life to begin with.

  He slaps on water like cheap cologne, drives to surgery on autopilot. Just a four-minute trip but as he jumps out of the car he remembers nothing of it. It had the quality of dream, previous life; he probably went coasting through bloody red lights. Dreamlike too the manner in which Rawson appears at the precise moment Tom wonders where he is. The thought invokes Pintara, the Big Ship rolling fast without headlights to a space marked reserved.

  Two questions a vet is always to be found asking in the heart of his own kingdom: Where is the patient and What is it. The Busted Incremental answers without words, the boot of the seen-it-all Pintara opening to disclose some wounded Alsatian or crook Rhodesian Ridgeback. It takes ground beans to make the animal doctor feel human in the morning, but this time he wakes up quick.

  ‘What the.’

  ‘Relax,’ says Rawson. ‘It is a man.’

  —

  ‘Why is he unconscious.’

  ‘Sleeper hold. Didn’t want him to be in pain.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ You know, if you didn’t want him to be in pain then maybe you shouldn’t have shot him.

  —Yeah, well, couldn’t help it. Who’s the most stubborn person you know?

  —Mother-in-law.

  —Bad example. Her you’d probably shoot anyway. But it was life or death and he wouldn’t bloody listen.

  —This is the guy from the roof, yeah? Your mate who went to prison.

  —Careful, Tom. He hears like a dog.

  —Won’t be hearing much after a shot of this.

  —You dropped out of medicine if memory serves.

  —Correct. But I didn’t take the elective on bullet extraction.

  Some conversations are spoken and some are not and Rawson is a paid-up fan of the latter. Silence becomes the both of them as Angel Dust rips in like a champ, a digger, the wannabe surgeon Rawson took him to be.

  —

  He loves to drive Sydney when no cars are on the road. You feel like royalty. You don’t feel like killing anyone. He tunes the informant Pintara to the Beethoven station and switches his wipers to low, a gentle counteraction to the soft and five o’clock rain.

  The city is at its most lovely, seducing him to remain and face what comes. The Sydney is a hard place to stay / a hard place to leave. Taxis are still out bodysnatching, plying for nightlife, for nightlife refugees made tenacious by drink. The sky that offers water is bruised but game.

  He cruises the strip, accidentally comporting like a driver in want of company: every few minutes a girl in high heels and boa will pace from a half-concealed doorway, casting in his direction a come get it look. Some are not girls at all / are patent blokes, and the thought of the energy required to live that life is exhausting to him. Working girls, appropriate title. Across twenty years they have earned his living admiration.

  The Pintara cycles west along the Cahill, the most deplorable urban scar in a town of deliberate mistakes. A villainous strip of four grey lanes they slapped on the quay like a tax. Like a punishment. Down with perfection, the nation’s ugliest road in contest with the world’s most ravishing view.

  Rawson slows to drink the water. The bridge, the quay, the mighty house of shells. Milling beyond them is a northside sea, blocks of jealous lego squinting through hard art-deco eyes. They gaze at Bennelong like its enemy clan—a tribe that never learned the making of towers.

  —

  He gets almost the same view from the InterContinental. Bobby Cobra walks in supposing to hit lights, but some sensation in the room like a burglar gives him pause. Tactile in the gloaming, its soft grey filter through luxury drapes: memory overtakes. As a younger man he went briefly to Paris and yes, here it is, unlooked-for but welcome, that same peculiar Gallicism of light. For a moment he feels its human analogue, muted yet highly precise as he undresses in a state of almost-wonder. Pins and needles / who goeth there? On the obverse side of the unseen screen is the colleague that he loves. Worships: Rawson grins to be the space-time bender, bugles on the blower for some coffee and croissants.

  He leaves the door ajar and wanders crisp into the bathroom, there to run the most searing and divine of all the showers he has known. Electromagnetic, a turbine who turns the water. The guest emerges to an adoring breakfast and he thinks about Sutton’s tinnies, night after night in old Long Bay like magic to the hostage.

  —

  Actuality is a running impoverishment of possibility. An arrestee said it to him, said it came from a book. Everything does. Rawson wrote it down and forgot it but you cannot keep a good truth down.

  Now he feels the press of it as he looks about the expensive room. The plan was to spend a marvellous final night here, get smashed on Veuve and call for a high-class friend. His Sydney farewell requires beauty in attendance. Sine qua non. A gorgeous piece / a venal heart.

  He pours the coffee, bites the croissant. In the cupboard is a single resident, his fabulous new blue suit. Darker than Royal, not quite Midnight, bought with the money he got back from the bond.

  Almost the only money that he has left. Until they convert the certificates, that is.

  What a piece of work.

  —

  An hour later he will wince in the harsh fluorescence, cages stacked with wounded and sick. A black moggie named Clio has a bandaged left paw, looks at him with the unimpressed face that is the province of felines everywhere.

  ‘How is he.’

  ‘Stable. Out of it. You look sharp, Mr Rawson.’

  ‘I know, it’s a…that bloke whose first name I can never say.’

  ‘Boss?’

  ‘I can say Hugo, Tom.’

  ‘Oh—Zegna. Ermenegildo.’
/>
  ‘That’s the one. Did the round come out?’

  ‘Clean as a whistle. But he’ll be sick and sorry for a bit. What happens now?’

  Rawson consults his watch. You want to look dapper when among Florentine Venetians, when you stroll down Soho streets. He selects an empty carrier.

  ‘Errands. Parcel him up / he’s got a train to catch.’

  —

  Central when the rain sheets down is just a big green shed. The long pavilions in corrugated iron have faded without complaint, sheltering twenty-eight platforms last re-roofed in 1949. The Volvo slides up to the entrance with hazards blinking and Tom says Hang it / they can book me. Sutton is slumped in the back with his arm in a sling.

  ‘Bastard’s dead to the world.’

  ‘So he should be,’ says the vet. ‘God knows I dosed him.’

  Angel Dust forges ahead, carrying the carrier, volunteering to queue for the ticket. Rawson opens the back door on the left-hand side, draws Sutton from the vehicle like poison from a wound. They make for a humble collection as they shuffle through the hall, the scarf of Sutton’s healthy arm held in place around Rawson’s neck.

  Only one train visible, the 7.09. It broods on the intercity platform like a fighter before the fight, its lingering intent to blow the whistle / blow the town.

  —

  They set him in a quiet corner. Tom opens his case, brings out a syringe. Sutton’s eyes are open and he is staring at Rawson but there is no expression, no cognition.

  ‘Tell you my name,’ the patient whispers.

  Rawson smiles and the vet administers the shot. ‘It’s alright, mate. I know who you are.’

  The hoofbeats of the rain. Sutton’s eyes do the roll and he slumps against the glass, looking for all the world like the midnight cowboy. Rawson wants to talk at him, impart apology, but the other man has quit the scene for all intents and purposes.

  ‘Horse tranq?’

  Tom looks at Rawson quizzically, What kind of bush-league outfit do you think I’m running. ‘Anafil.’

  The vet takes from his case the other items, the forte and fresh dressings. He passes a towel to Rawson for Rawson to roll, to wedge between the window and Sutton’s melon. Angel Dust puts water on the table, next to it the sandwiches he got from sandwich shop. An apple / an orange / an honest bag of chips. Rawson brings out the cardboard and sets it on Sutton’s chest.

  ‘Jeez, that won’t hold. Let me find something to pin it with.’

  ‘It’s okay, Tommy. I’ll use this.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Nothin. Just an old medal I found.’

  ‘Looks valuable.’

  ‘Guess again. Come on, better jump this thing.’

  ‘Yeah. Unless you fancy a stint in the bush.’

  Rawson slides the carrier into the vestibule, neat beneath the table.

  ‘Don’t tempt me.’

  —

  Narrowly they avoid entrapment, disembarking without fanfare onto red and dirty tiles. They start to walk as the train pulls clear.

  The Busted Incremental does not look back. It was a shabby goodbye, no handshake / no nothing. The bloke was comatose and that’s the way it goes sometimes, actuality a running impoverishment.

  —

  Beneath the awning that faces the carpark. That faces George Street and the beautiful GPO that fire hath gutted. ‘Am I taking you somewhere?’

  Rawson shakes his head. ‘I’ll be right.’

  Angel stands in contemplation of the mounting downpour. He doesn’t argue / the schoolfriends shake. ‘You and me,’ says the vet. ‘We quits?’

  ‘No, Tommy Angel. We are not quits.’

  We are not quits / I owe you forever.

  -2

  He dries in a coffee shop between Central and the Hall, forming his thoughts and watching the traffic. Liverpool is merging with George beneath a tireless scudding rain but there are systems in place, systems to cope. By half past eight he is morally certain his successor will be at desk.

  Bobby Cobra rises to walk along Sydney’s central thoroughfare, a street that widens to Broadway at one end, becomes money and power and water the other.

  —

  ‘Mitchell.’

  One of the best corporate tax lawyers in Australia. Writes textbooks about it, advises government. He gets an eyeful of Rawson and flinches.

  ‘Jeepers, you scared the tripe out of me.’

  ‘The tripe, eh. I like that.’

  The suit gets upright and rounds the desk, extends a hand of welcome. Always very obliging is Mitch. He takes the bigger man’s shoulder in a half-embrace but halfway through the gesture he thinks better of it. The arm surrenders altitude like a Japanese Zero.

  ‘Sorry to barge in. I have letters for the girls.’

  ‘It’s no problem at all…Um, letters?’

  ‘I’m gonna sit down.’

  ‘Please! Coffee? Tea?’

  A kindly offer from the second husband. He works for a signature firm and does not schmooze but is such a certified pistol in an obscure branch of practice that he hauls in mighty sums and is a partner. His office on the forty-second overlooks the harbour and after years of always taking it for granted, Rawson suddenly cannot escape.

  ‘I’m going away.’

  ‘Oh?’

  Rawson taps a chest in which passport, tickets. ‘Europe, mate. Last flight out tonight.’

  ‘Gosh.’

  ‘Yes—gosh. You know, Mitchell, you’re not really my kind of bloke. And I reckon that’s the same way all around. But you’ve been brilliant for Heather and the girls and I don’t want you to think that I don’t know it. I’m sorry I never said so.’

  ‘That’s very decent of you, Edward.’

  ‘Don’t call me Edward.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Now listen—I’ve got some money coming in. Inheritance. I haven’t sorted out the details, but I want to set up a trust for the girls. Want you to manage it. Do that?’

  ‘Of course. I mean—if you think it’s appropriate.’

  ‘Highly propriate. But it goes without saying that if you rack off to Rio I’ll be right on your hammer.’

  ‘I would never—’

  ‘Joke.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘One more thing.’

  ‘Name it.’

  ‘Got some phone calls to make—ten minutes tops. If it’s all the same to you, a bitta privacy’d be nice.’

  —

  In youth, when you are foolish, you pine for wide renown. You want to be esteemed the best thing going. Your hubris is boundless, like your energy perhaps. You hunger for medals and thine is the power and the glory, forever and ever amen.

  Then you grow up, wake tired; fatigue teaches you a thing or two. You don’t want the power and the glory, just want to be cosy when the winter comes along. You just want to be comfortable, a compliant bed and time enough to sleep in it—and who cares that no beauty queen writhes flaming between its sheets? Thanks, but no. To sleep alone and deeply is the new erotic and Rawson has a mongrel just thinking about not using it.

  Energy enough for a shower. Maybe. The debate rages during his transit across the hotel foyer and the affirmative has it. No—the negative. In the elevator he counts the floors the way a fool counts lovers and when he haunts the purple rich hall of his floor he is already dozing. In such a state every music sounds like lullaby.

  Death metal: fingers grasp the handle as he slots the room key home. Green light, pleasant chime, a singer telling him Sweet dreams. He pushes against the portal into a world of dark and cool, one of those outfits where you insert the card to grant the room some power.

  He almost doesn’t bother: Rawson is past the need for light or climate. He is four steps in when instincts old from youth engage, instincts old from times when he was worthy of medals. The ping of a perfume that doesn’t belong.

  Vanilla. It’s a big suite and his eyes do a sweep, ears ready for the click. The big chrome lamp in the corner gets tri
ggered.

  ‘Well, hello.’

  She says nothing, lets her service-issue Colt do all the talking. Karen looks serious, the war-memorial colour of her jacket blending to chair until it’s hard to make her out. Millar uses the weapon as a pointer, motioning him to the corner by the heavy curtains. Rawson raises his hands / his walk is slow obedience.

  The table there is round, glass-topped, its glass tinted blue: the handcuffs seem to float in crystal water. Christ-like in that lake stands a small green person who looks like art and doesn’t belong to him.

  ‘Who’s this punter.’

  ‘Tycho Brahe,’ says Karen.

  ‘Oh, I remember him. Played hooker for Manly.’

  ‘Put them on.’

  ‘Never took you for the kinky type.’

  ‘Just do it. Behind your back.’

  ‘Shouldn’t I be naked for this?’

  ‘You’re under arrest.’

  ‘Righto. What for?’

  ‘I’m homicide, aren’t I.’

  Rawson bobbles his head side to side, weighing the proposition. Murder One. The bobble becomes a nod and he cracks the first cuff onto his wrist the way a Frenchman cracks an egg—the gesture is abrupt, magisterial. He doesn’t apply the second cuff / he looks over at the minibar.

  ‘Mind if I take a drink? Could be my last for a while.’

  ‘Go crazy.’

  ‘Want one?’

  ‘I’m on duty.’

  ‘Yeah. Very much so.’

  Bonecrusher slaps his hands together in sudden prayer; the half-applied cuffs swing like an ill-conceived bracelet. He takes two miniature bottles and dumps them into a lowball, medicine applied hastily in the field. He adds ice to the recipe and rips a packet of cashews.

  ‘Eight bucks these are. Believe that? For a handful of goolies. What this world is coming to I do not know.’ Rawson holds the glass against a razorbeam of light as he composes these statements, the one thin shard that pierces from without. The room rumbles to life with automatic air con / the suite is set to cold. ‘How do you come to be here.’