Game Theory

by Barry Jonsberg

  ‘She’s a lovely girl, Mr Delaware,’ he said. ‘We’ll get this back to you as soon as possible.’

  ‘Just get her back,’ said Dad. ‘Fuck the photograph.’

  His words went through me like a jolt of electricity. Dad doesn’t swear. I mean never. But the officer wasn’t aware of this so he simply nodded. He told us we’d be the first to know if there was any news. He shook Dad by the hand, a curiously formal gesture under the circumstances, I thought. And then he left. I suspect he was glad to get out of there, out of the atmosphere of desolation and loss and back to a place where there would be action and colleagues and occasional laughter. Mum paced up and down in the front room, her mobile clenched in her right hand, giving the world a thousand-yard stare. Already the lines around her eyes seemed deeper, more ingrained. Dad waved me into the kitchen.

  ‘Tell me everything,’ he said.

  I was tired of talking, but I didn’t really have a choice. So I went through it all again. It was strange, but the recounting of the story diminished it somehow. Each time I told it, it became more of a fiction, something that belonged in the pages of a novel rather than being a reflection of the real world. Tragedy was transformed into the commonplace through the medium of words. When I’d finished, Dad said nothing, and I didn’t know whether to be grateful or resentful. Maybe I wanted acknowledgement that I’d been witness to disaster, that somehow I was therefore more entitled to consideration, to forgiveness. But I also knew that any remark he made would either reveal or hide the true nature of my responsibility. I was already cocooned in guilt. I had no idea if I could take on the burden of any more.

  Dad went straight to the computer and opened up Phoebe’s photograph. He inserted some text: Have you seen this girl? Any information, please ring. Then he put our home number and Mum’s mobile at the bottom and printed off dozens of copies. He stood by the printer, drumming his fingers on the machine and avoiding my eyes. The printer ran out of paper and he searched for more, cursing when he couldn’t find any on the shelves. I went to my bedroom and brought down a fresh supply, which he took without saying anything. The machine burred once more and he resumed the finger drumming.

  Mum came into the kitchen, picked up a sheet and nodded.

  ‘Good idea,’ she said. ‘Get another twenty done and I’ll get these up.’

  ‘What, now?’ I said.

  She looked at me as if not quite registering my presence. There was another world in her head and she was lost in it.

  ‘Of course, now,’ she said finally. ‘Is there any point in waiting?’

  ‘Do you want a hand?’

  ‘Stay with your dad,’ she replied. ‘And try to contact your sister. I’ve rung her mobile dozens of times and all I get is her message bank. Any news and you ring me first, understood?’ I nodded. Mum took the car keys from the pot in the kitchen and gathered up the posters. She glanced over at Dad as if she was about to say something, but then thought better of it. The front door closed and moments later I heard the car start and the crunch of gravel as she reversed out of the driveway.

  Dad printed off posters until the ink cartridge ran out, his head bent over the printer. He only spoke once and then it was to himself.

  ‘Computers,’ he mumbled. ‘My area of expertise.’

  I said nothing. I’m not sure a response was expected and it sure as hell wasn’t required.

  Eventually, silence, like a cat, stretched and curled around the house. I was aware of its claws and knew that at some stage it would use them.

  Dad and I sat for the next two hours locked in our own thoughts. At one point I considered offering to make us a sandwich but dismissed the idea as soon as it came to mind. I rang Summerlee but had no more luck than Mum. I left three messages. All of them the same. Ring. Now. Urgent. I didn’t have Spider’s number and couldn’t think of a way of finding it.

  ‘Do you want me to go round to Summerlee’s house, Dad?’ I asked. ‘I could get a taxi.’

  ‘Wait till your Mum gets back,’ he replied and fell into silence again. I wondered why it was important to wait for Mum. Was he resentful that she had appeared to take complete charge and was spitting the dummy? I’m not allowed to make decisions so don’t ask for one. Or had he spent enough time alone and couldn’t bear the thought of a silent house full of vague, malevolent shadows? Whatever the reason, I was aware we must be sharing mental images. Phoebe, clumping down the stairs after getting ready for bed, that peculiar asymmetric rhythm of bare feet on carpet. Phoebe in the morning, ducking her head as she ate breakfast, trying to get her mouth as close as she could to the bowl of cereal. Phoebe in the evening, bent over her homework, biting her bottom lip and printing her words carefully, methodically. Those were the good images, though they were painful. But others drew me, as they must have drawn Dad. Phoebe in a dark room, scared, her hands tied, the smell of mildew and despair rank in her nostrils. Phoebe in a shallow grave, eyes wide and unseeing . . .

  My phone, when it rang, sent a jolt through both of us. It was as if Dad had been hit with a taser. He snapped upright, eyes filled with something – a cocktail of panic, hope, despair. He must have felt that we were on the brink of an answer he wasn’t sure he wanted. And the drop was terrifying. I must have reacted similarly. I slid my thumb over the phone without even checking the caller ID.

  ‘Hello?’ I said.

  ‘Yo, Jamie, dude.’

  ‘I can’t talk now, Gutless,’ I said. ‘I will ring you back. Please don’t call again.’

  ‘Whadda fuck, man?’

  I hung up. Dad had deflated as soon as he heard me say ‘Gutless’. Already his eyes were slightly glazed, focused on something within his head, and he appeared to sink into himself.

  The sound of the car on the gravel brought us both to our feet. I recognised the engine noise. There were no revolving patterns of light against the wall, something a police cruiser might have generated. The car door slammed just as I opened the front door. Mum looked at me and I shook my head. She brushed past me into the house. Dad had sat down again at the kitchen table and Mum went to one of the cupboards, got a bottle of whisky from the shelf and three highball glasses. She poured an inch or two of whisky into each, put one down in front of Dad, handed me another and raised the last one to her lips, draining half in one swallow. I sipped mine. I’d had whisky before and didn’t like it. Now I didn’t care what it tasted like.

  ‘You got them up?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, all of them. Around the supermarket, in all the adjoining streets. I’ll get more up tomorrow.’

  ‘Let’s hope it won’t be necessary.’

  Mum finished the glass. She gulped and twisted her mouth as if the taste was foul. Then she poured herself another.

  ‘And I want you to post as much as you can on social media,’ she said. ‘Get your friends involved. Spread the word. Facebook, Twitter, whatever.’

  I knew this wasn’t a good idea, but I didn’t know why I knew. Only later did I think of game theory and the importance of keeping everything close to your chest. At that time, I simply nodded. ‘They’ll find her,’ I said. ‘The cops will ring tonight.’

  Mum nodded as well, but we were both aware it was an agreement based on nothing but hope.

  ‘I couldn’t get Summerlee,’ I added. ‘Maybe I should go round to her place. I could get a taxi.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Mum. She moved to pick up the car keys again.

  ‘Not after those whiskies,’ I said. ‘And, anyway, maybe you should stay here with Dad.’ They had barely spoken a word to each other and I didn’t know why. Maybe there were buried recriminations and their silence concealed an accumulating pressure between them, a dam that could break at any moment. Perhaps it would be good for it to be breached, but I didn’t want to be around when it happened. I didn’t think I could stand it.

  Anyway, the real reason I wanted to go to Summerlee’s place was that I could guess what I’d find there. It wasn’t something that either of my parents could
cope with right now. There would be words. Things would be said that couldn’t be unsaid. And, anyway, Mum wasn’t the only one who craved the illusion of action.

  I rang the taxi company and was told they’d be here in ten minutes. I was vaguely surprised that the transaction was completed in a normal fashion. How could the world go on? How could it not care? I went and told Mum where I was going. She’d sat on the couch in the front room, staring at the blank screen of the television, her mobile still clutched firmly in her hand. She nodded. When I went back to the kitchen, Dad was crying. He was holding another glass of whisky and he was crying. In between curiously soundless sobs, he took another slug. I put a hand on his shoulder and then I went outside to wait for the taxi.

  CHAPTER 13

  There were lights on at Summerlee’s place. All the lights were on at Summerlee’s place. Cars ranged along the driveway and halfway down the street. A few motorbikes were dotted among the cars. The noise coming from the house was palpable. The air throbbed.

  I walked up the driveway. I heard voices coming from the bushes. A number of the solar lights that bordered the driveway had been kicked over and shards of plastic littered the pavers. The grass was long and turning to seed. Someone was kneeling in the middle of the garden and throwing up. Her body wrenched and buckled but I couldn’t hear her puke. The music coming from the open front door drowned out everything else. She had on a dirty white top with spaghetti straps.

  Inside the house it was worse. One guy was sprawled just inside the door. He had on leather jeans, a leather jacket and one black glove. His eyes were nearly closed, but I could see a narrow sliver of white beneath his lids. I didn’t bother trying to wake him. The place was trashed. The marble floors were covered in dirt and other things I didn’t want to identify. One tile was cracked. How could you crack a marble tile? What force does that require? I poked my head around the living-room door. A few people were dancing, bodies jerking like they’d been connected to the mains electricity. One couple shuffled around a patch of carpet, their heads on each other’s shoulder, keeping each other upright. The furniture had been pushed back. A lamp had fallen but no one had bothered to right it and its globe still burned. I followed the sound of voices to the back of the house and into the garden. The pool was full of bodies, most of them naked. I think I spotted a couple screwing on a lounger, but I looked only long enough to make sure one of them wasn’t Summerlee. I tried to be similarly efficient with the bodies in the pool. She wasn’t there.

  I finally found her upstairs in one of the bedrooms. She was sprawled over a bed, her top rucked up exposing a wide expanse of belly and a glimpse of a white, soiled bra. Spider was curled up on the floor next to her. I stepped over him and shook her by the shoulder but she didn’t respond.

  ‘Hey, Summer,’ I said. ‘Come on, wake up.’

  She shifted then, but only to turn over on her side. She grunted and I saw a trail of spittle leaking from the side of her mouth. I turned her on to her back. She made a growl of annoyance.

  ‘Summer!’ I shouted. I slapped her face, but only gently. The bedroom was like the rest of the house. It was filthy. Things had been dropped on the floor – most of her clothes by the look of it – and left exactly where they fell. The bedside table was littered with junk, an overflowing ashtray, a packet of cigarettes, a lighter, and a plastic bag full of what could only be cannabis. A bong lay next to Spider’s outstretched hand. I went into the ensuite and wished I hadn’t. There were black things growing on the bathroom walls and the toilet seat hung askew. I emptied a black plastic cup that held a toothbrush, but I would have bet it hadn’t been used in weeks. Then I filled the cup with water from the cold tap and carried it back into the bedroom. Summerlee was exactly where I’d left her. She was snoring. I poured the water over her face. That got a reaction. She sat up instantly.

  ‘Fuck off,’ she said, but her eyes didn’t focus. ‘Fuck off, willya?’

  ‘Summer,’ I said. ‘It’s me. Jamie. I need you to wake up.’

  She rubbed at her face and screwed up her eyes. Her hands were grimy.

  ‘Jamie? What the fuck you doing here?’ She coughed, leaned over and pulled a cigarette from the pack, lit it with the lighter. Then she coughed again.

  ‘You need to come home, Summer. It’s an emergency.’

  She blew smoke into my face, but I don’t think it was deliberate.

  ‘Can’t now, Jamie. I’m fucked up. I’m seriously fucked up.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to get un-fucked up,’ I said. ‘It’s Phoebe. She’s missing.’

  It took far too long to get Summerlee to pay proper attention and even longer for her to comprehend what I had said. When she did, her face twisted as if an agonising pain had struck between her eyes. She tried to say something but then staggered into the ensuite. I heard the shower running. I sat on the edge of the bed and looked down at Spider’s crumpled body. He didn’t look better unconscious than he did normally. He was wearing a red singlet and his right arm was tattooed up to the shoulder and across the side of his neck. There was the normal stuff – dragons and other creatures designed to identify you as someone with a wild personality. But there was also a grinning skull and an impossibly large-breasted girl wearing only a pair of panties. I really wanted to kick the bastard in the nuts but instead I opened the wardrobe and rummaged around for some of Summer’s clothes. I came up with a pair of jeans and a plain black top. I cracked open the bathroom door and shoved them inside.

  ‘Two minutes, Summer,’ I yelled. There was a muffled reply. At least she was capable of replying. I rang for a taxi. Another ten minutes. I figured I would need that long to get my sister down the stairs and out into the open. When she came out of the bathroom, six minutes later, she was almost normal. Her hair was sodden and she either didn’t feel she had the time to dry it or couldn’t be bothered. But she was also without make-up for one of the first times in living memory. It transformed her face, made her seem years younger. It almost took my breath away. She seemed innocent, like the girl I remembered, the other girl I’d lost. I could see Phoebe in her eyes.

  The party carried on without her. If anyone recognised her as we walked through the hallway to the front door, no one let on. Most would have been incapable of recognising anyone. The guy with the one glove was exactly where I’d left him.

  ‘Who are these people?’ I asked.

  ‘Fuck knows,’ said Summer. ‘People. Who cares?’ She left without looking back. The taxi was waiting for us.

  I had to go through it all again with Summer when we got back to the house. Now I felt like I was reciting a script that no longer seemed even faintly realistic.

  Dad had obviously made further inroads into the whisky bottle. His words were slightly slurred. ‘I rang that cop, Dixon,’ he said. ‘He told me they were following leads, but had nothing to report at this stage. “Following leads”! Sitting around eating doughnuts, more like. At least we got those photographs up. While they were “following leads”, your mum and I were actually doing something.’

  This wasn’t the time to tell Dad that it was not a pissing contest. And he was right. My parents had done something. I’d just lost her, and that took no effort at all.

  Summerlee said very little, and I didn’t know whether that was because there wasn’t much to be said or because she was still screwed up by the weed and other shit in her bloodstream. At one point she hugged Mum. She sat next to her on the couch and put an arm around her shoulder, whispered something into her ear. Mum just nodded. I went to sit by them, but Dad took my arm and led me back to the kitchen.

  ‘You think she’s been kidnapped?’ he said. ‘Because I do.’

  I shrugged. It wasn’t the time to say anything. Dad would have considered the alternatives, just as I had. The whisky was simply a way of diverting that train of thought, maybe trying to derail it. He pointed towards the front room, towards my sister.

  ‘That money is a curse,’ he said. ‘I thought it before but now I kno
w it. I reckon I’d come to terms with the thought of it killing Summerlee, sooner or later. Sooner would be my guess. But I will not have it kill my other daughter. Why doesn’t that phone ring?’

  But it didn’t. The silence wore us down, made the hours longer. At some point, around two in the morning, I went to the bathroom. I needed to piss and I was feeling nauseous again. Phoebe’s bedroom was next to the bathroom, but her door was closed and I was grateful. I looked into the bathroom mirror. What looked back was something old, haunted and defeated.

  When my phone rang, I had to scrabble to get it out of my pocket and nearly dropped it. I glanced at the screen. Caller unknown.

  ‘Hello?’ I said.

  There was a pause. The voice, when it came, was bizarre, robotic. I remember thinking briefly that maybe someone from school was having fun with a synthesiser, testing it out. It reminded me of that Stephen Hawking monotone, each word enunciated clearly yet devoid of emotion. It wasn’t even possible to detect a gender.

  ‘I have your sister. Listen carefully to what I’m about to tell you . . .’

  ‘I can’t talk to you right now,’ I said. ‘I’m busy. Ring me back in an hour.’

  I hung up. And then I turned my phone off, just so I couldn’t be tempted. Finally, I bent over the toilet bowl and threw up.

  CHAPTER 14

  I knelt on the bathroom floor, my hands gripping the side of the toilet bowl. I’d had nothing to eat, so there was nothing to throw up, apart from a few thick strings of mucus. I wiped my mouth with the side of my hand.

  What had I done? What was I thinking? I was busy? Fuck’s sake. I was light-headed and I had to concentrate to stop the toilet bowl from floating to the right of my vision. My thoughts floated as well, drifting, mixing, difficult to separate. Game theory. It was classic game theory. Don’t think about what you must do, think about what the other person might do. Someone who takes a child knows they are in control; they rely upon the balance of power being firmly on their side. How does it go?