by Gilling, Tom
There was one table left outside. They took it.
‘You know what I do,’ Nick said, ‘but I don’t know what you do.’
‘I’m with Qantas.’
‘Go on.’
‘I fly to exotic places, sleep in ordinary hotels, then fly home.’
‘Where do you fly?’
‘Wherever I’m told to fly. Mostly Asia at the moment. Sometimes Los Angeles. London when I get the chance.’
‘It sounds glamorous.’
‘You’re right. It does sound glamorous.’
‘But it isn’t?’
Alison shrugged. ‘One foreign city is much like another if you spend all day sleeping.’
‘And do you?’
‘Sometimes. It depends.’
‘On what?’
‘The city. The hotel. The state of my feet. I’m thinking of the smoked salmon omelette. What about you?’
‘Scrambled eggs.’ Nick folded his menu and put it down on the plate. ‘So where was your last trip?’
‘Los Angeles.’
‘Did you enjoy it?’
‘I stayed two nights and never left the hotel.’
‘Because of the state of your feet?’
She caught the waiter’s eye and beckoned him over. ‘Because I was scared of getting shot.’
‘Now that’s what I call an occupational hazard.’
‘You can laugh. Gangland starts right outside the hotel lobby. You think St Kilda on a Saturday night is dangerous. I take my life in my hands to go and buy a bagel for breakfast.’
‘Sorry.’
‘It’s not all smiling and passing out immigration cards.’ She lifted her bag onto her lap. ‘I brought some bits of the paper. Is there anything you want to read?’
Reading the paper was the last thing Nick felt like doing but for Alison it seemed to be part of the ritual.
‘Here,’ she said, not waiting for him to make his decision. ‘You have the news.’ It sounded curiously like a challenge before she added, ‘I want the magazine.’
They read for a couple of minutes in silence. Once again, Nick caught the odd glance that suggested she was more interested in watching him than she was in reading the magazine. After a while she turned to the astrology column at the back. ‘I don’t believe it,’ she said. ‘But I like to read it anyway. What sign are you?’
Nick froze. He’d forgotten Kevin Chambers’ birthday. He’d written down his date of birth numerous times—but now that he needed it, it wasn’t there. He couldn’t even remember the month. If Alison had been a stranger in his taxi he could have told her anything he wanted. But she wasn’t a stranger, and he didn’t want her to be.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’m waiting.’ Her finger was poised over the page. ‘Just tell me the date.’
Nick tried in vain to drag the date from his memory. ‘Shouldn’t I know what I’m revealing first?’ He struggled to conceal the note of panic in his voice. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted the pot-bellied waiter coming towards them with a big white plate in each hand. ‘That was quick,’ he said, sweeping his part of the newspaper off the table.
A look of mild annoyance flashed across her face. Then she smiled, as if it had all been a game.
‘Signorina,’ murmured the waiter as he delivered her smoked salmon omelette into the space vacated by the magazine. He presented Nick’s scrambled eggs with a barely audible, ‘Signor’.
‘Thirty-three,’ she said, ‘and still a signorina.’
Nick had imagined she was younger. After Carolyn’s self-consciousness Alison’s lack of inhibition felt exhilarating—and dangerous.
‘You’re shocked,’ she said.
‘No—of course I’m not.’
‘You thought: twenty-five at the most.’
‘Twenty-one,’ said Nick. ‘If you really want to know.’
She smiled. ‘It’s spending half your life at ten thousand metres. It retards the ageing process.’
‘Is that true? I always thought it was the other way around.’
‘You see—it’s a myth that taxi drivers know everything.’
A visit to the bathroom as they waited for more coffee gave Nick the chance to check his driver’s licence. His birthday was 7 April. When he returned Alison was immersed in a profile of the leader of the opposition’s ex-wife. She looked up as Nick sat down. ‘I always knew he was a bastard.’
Nick glanced at the photograph. ‘She’s not telling that story again of how he promised to stay at home and look after the kids in return for her letting him do his doctorate.’
‘She says this is the first time she has ever told anyone.’
‘She’s lying. She tells the same story to everyone who interviews her.’
Alison studied him across the table.
‘And how would you know that?’
Nick blushed. In his eagerness to show off he’d almost given himself away as a journalist. ‘I must have read it half a dozen times.’
She frowned and turned the page. ‘Ex-wives always get a raw deal from journalists—especially female ones.’
Nick picked up the news section. Another gangster had been shot dead—executed in a crowded tapas bar by a man in a balaclava helmet—and the Age had given nearly half its front page to the story. The chief crime reporter had written a long comment piece and the graphics department had supplied a helpful timeline of previous executions. Nick turned the page to read the spill. Before he could find it, his eye fell on another story. He stopped with the cup of coffee halfway to his mouth. The headline said, LIGHTNING KILLS MAN. It was an agency piece, a handful of paragraphs pulled off the wire to fill an awkward space.
A man named Kevin Michael Chambers, thirty-four, had been found incinerated in his car—a white Holden utility—on a semi-rural property near Camden, south-west of Sydney. Camden wasn’t far from Canley Vale—about thirty minutes by car. The incident sounded like a freak of nature: a lightning strike had ignited the petrol tank. The vehicle was old and both door locks were broken. Chambers had burnt to death before he could get either of the doors open.
‘You’ve been staring at that page for ten minutes,’ said Alison. ‘What’s so interesting?’
‘Oh, nothing. I was just thinking—’
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let me see.’
She scanned the page, and for a few seconds Nick thought he might be able to deceive her about which story he’d been reading. Then her face went white, and Nick sensed that her shock at reading the report was even greater than his. To him it was a coincidence: unnerving but somehow unreal, a story like thousands of others he’d read—and written. But to her it seemed— at least for a few seconds—like something more.
‘He’s not a relative, is he?’
‘He’s someone’s,’ said Nick, ‘but not mine.’
The callousness of that remark appalled him. He was used to thinking of the human race simply as a source of copy. Now he was going to have to get used to being part of it.
‘That didn’t sound good,’ he said. ‘But it’s not every day you read about yourself being struck by lightning.’
‘Only it wasn’t you,’ Alison reminded him.
‘No,’ said Nick. ‘But you know what I mean.’
‘I think so,’ Alison said.
‘Nasty way to go,’ said Nick.
‘Very.’
They studied each other across the table. Then Alison said, ‘You’re hiding something.’
‘No I’m not.’
‘Yes, you are.’ There was a long silence. ‘Your birthday.’
‘Oh, that. I thought you’d forgotten.’
‘I never forget about birthdays.’
‘7 April.’
‘Aries,’ she replied without hesitation.
‘If you say so.’
She reached for the magazine in her bag. ‘A typically Arian response.’
‘I thought you said you didn’t believe in astrology.’
‘I don’t. It’s a mind drug
for bored housewives and penniless students.’ She paused. ‘But that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.’
He opened his mouth and said ‘I—’ and stopped himself and went on, ‘Once I picked up an old woman who wrote an astrology column. Sheila Starwoman. She told me she had fifty-two columns which she recycled every year in a different order. She’d been doing the same thing for thirty-five years.’
‘I’ve read Sheila Starwoman,’ she said dismissively. ‘I can tell the future better than she can.’ She opened the magazine and ran her finger down the page. ‘Aries. Cryptic clues, abrupt reversals and enigmatic evasions. Don’t even bother trying to make any sense out of your relationship right now.’ She studied his face, and for an instant Nick had the feeling that she was looking right into his soul, seeing all his reversals and evasions. ‘What’s your favourite movie?’
Nick looked surprised. ‘What has that got to do with anything?’
‘You can tell a lot about a person by knowing their favourite movie.’
‘It depends,’ said Nick.
‘On what?’
‘What mood I’m in. Who I’m with. Whether I’ve got the screening times right.’
‘What would you think if I told you mine was Love Story?’
‘I’d think you needed help.’
‘Actually it’s Thelma and Louise.’
‘All right. Mine is—’
‘Stop!’ She held up her hand. ‘If it’s Rambo, I don’t want to know.’
‘Do I look like the sort of person whose favourite movie would be Rambo?’
‘Looks can be deceiving. Surely you’d know that—’ she paused, ‘as a taxi driver.’
Nick thought for a while before answering. ‘The Maltese Falcon,’ he said. ‘Humphrey Bogart. It’s black and white.’
‘“This is genuine coin of the realm, sir. With a dollar of this you can buy fifty dollars of talk.” It’s one of my favourites too.’
‘You’ve got a good memory.’
‘It was on cable the other night.’
‘Cable is something else I don’t have.’
She looked at him thoughtfully. ‘No cable. No washing machine. No hair. Your life seems to be full of absences.’
‘I’ve told you my favourite movie,’ said Nick. ‘What does it say about me?’
‘I don’t know yet. It might just confirm what I suspect already.’
‘Which is?’
‘Wait and see.’
The red car, a 1986 Alfa Romeo Alfetta, was still there, gleaming on its aluminium dais, and Nick had to admit it was the best looking car in the yard. But it was an Alfetta, and Nick knew something about Alfettas, having been nearly bankrupted by one in his early twenties. Nearly ten years later his memory of owning an Alfetta (like most owners, he remembered owning rather than driving it) had been reduced to a kind of symbolic essence: window rubbers. Replacing them had been one of his first acts—courtesy of a tip from his then-girlfriend’s older brother. At numbing cost Nick had had all the seals replaced— but the windows still leaked. Once, after driving back from Wollongong in a downpour, he’d found half an inch of water sloshing around beneath his seat. After that he avoided driving in the rain. It wasn’t just his Alfetta, he soon realised, that took in water. It was all Alfettas. You never saw an Alfetta driving in the rain: you saw them lurking under bridges or loitering, like flashers, in underground carparks. He thought of this as he walked slowly around the dais, searching for evidence of the structural rust he knew must be hiding beneath the expensive re-spray.
‘What do you think?’ asked Alison.
‘I like the colour.’
‘Is that all you like?’
‘It’s Italian.’
‘And?’
‘It’s probably older than you’re looking for.’
Alison stroked a wing panel. ‘It looks brand new.’
‘It’s had a brand new re-spray.’
‘Isn’t that a good thing?’
Nick didn’t want to sound like a know-all, especially as she so obviously liked the car. Nor did he want to admit having owned one. That was Carmody’s car, not his. On the other hand he liked her. You didn’t stand by and let a woman you liked throw her money away on a second-hand Alfa. He crouched down to inspect the wheel arches. ‘You know Italian means rust.’
‘I thought Italian meant style.’
‘It means rusting with style.’
‘My Fiat never rusted.’
‘If you say so.’
‘So you’re telling me not to buy it?’
‘It’s your money but…I’d urge you to consider something else.’
‘You just object to the colour.’
‘The colour’s great. It’s the car I object to.’ He glanced around the yard. ‘There’s a Corolla over there. Nobody has a bad word to say about them.’
‘I hate white cars.’
‘What about that silver Lancer in the corner?’
‘It’s got those spoiler things on the back.’
A tall salesman in a blue suit was walking towards them. Alison pointed to a white Mazda 323 hatch. ‘Let’s look at that one.’
The salesman did his best to guide Alison back to the Alfetta until a casual question from Nick about window seals convinced him he was wasting his time.
She put a deposit on the Mazda with her credit card. As they walked out of the car yard Nick could feel his heart beating faster at the thought of where they might go next, and what they might do. Alison seemed to sense what was going through his mind. ‘Well?’ she said.
‘I could buy you a drink,’ said Nick. ‘Since you’re not driving home.’
‘You could,’ replied Alison. ‘Or we could go back to my place and open a bottle of wine.’
The house in Drummond Street was a small red-brick two-storey terrace. The Italian restaurant next door had a banner that said ‘Pizza-a-metro’—pizza by the metre. Between the house and restaurant was a cobbled alley that ended in an L-shaped garden where lupins and marrow plants were fighting a war of attrition against a shin-high sea of grass. ‘I’m not sure why I’m showing you the garden,’ said Alison. ‘I’m not much of a gardener.’
‘Nice house,’ said Nick. ‘How long have you had it?’
‘It’s not mine. I wish it was. I’m just renting.’
She shut the back door and locked it and hung the brass key on a hook beside the fridge. ‘You’re probably wondering about the front room.’
‘It had crossed my mind,’ said Nick, who’d been thinking of nothing else since they entered the house. The sight of a pair of men’s runners and a milk crate full of dirty laundry had almost made his heart jump through his ribs.
‘My flatmate, Corby. He owns the house. Or maybe his parents own it. I’ve never got to the bottom of the story.’
Nick tried hard but unsuccessfully to hide his disappointment.
‘You don’t have to worry about Corby. He’s nocturnal. We only run into each other at weekends. You might find him a bit odd…Actually, he is a bit odd. But it’s his house and he always cleans the bathroom, so I can’t complain.’
Nick felt a sudden jolt. He remembered the morning in Hyde Park with Jess, the weedy-looking man asking him questions about bathroom scourers, the way he’d stood there making himself out to be a household cleaning fanatic. How could Alison possibly have known about that? Answer: she couldn’t. Nick was imagining a connection where none existed. Or was he? He couldn’t help sensing a curiosity in the way Alison looked at him that went beyond a simple interest in getting to know him.
She opened the fridge and took out a bottle of wine and handed it to Nick. While he opened the bottle she rummaged in the cupboards for glasses. She didn’t seem to know where they were or even—it struck Nick—where they might be. She opened another cupboard and there, on the top shelf, stood half a dozen wine glasses.
Nick couldn’t help noticing—and noticing her noticing—the film of ancient dust on the glasses, as if they hadn’t been used for a ve
ry long time.
‘They’re not the ones I was looking for,’ she said, ‘but they’ll do.’
They didn’t go to bed that afternoon, although afterwards Nick had the feeling they could have done, if they’d opened another bottle of wine.
Some women liked to get sex out of the way early—some of Carolyn’s legal colleagues, for instance (although not Carolyn). It was an experiment in compatibility, they used to say, between orbits of grim-faced cocktail waiters at the firm’s Christmas party. It took the pressure off. To Nick, the counterargument seemed equally strong: it put the pressure on, to repeat the experiment.
There was something about Alison that mystified him. She had a way of looking at him sometimes that made him wonder if they hadn’t met before, and she was waiting patiently for him to remember. And yet faces had always stuck in his mind—especially faces like hers. If they had met before, he was sure he would have remembered it.
She invited him to dinner the following Monday. By the sound of it, Corby was going to be there, and Nick made a half-hearted attempt to switch the venue—to his place in Coburg. But his cooking had never been more than utilitarian, often not even that, and in any case Alison had insisted. When he arrived at the house in Drummond Street, Nick found she was alone.
She had made spaghetti marinara, preceded by thick artichoke soup. He said little while they ate the soup: a reticence that Alison immediately attributed to his dislike of artichokes.
‘Not true,’ he replied.
‘You can’t fool me,’ she said. ‘Artichokes are a window to the soul. Every cook knows that.’
‘All right,’ said Nick. ‘I’ll admit they’re not my favourite. But that doesn’t mean I’m not open to conversion.’
She moved to take it away but he wouldn’t let her. ‘I’ve always thought I would like artichokes if only I could find the right person to cook them. I’ve got a feeling you might be the person.’
‘Careful,’ she said. ‘I might think you were making assumptions.’
She asked him about his parents and he repeated the tale he’d told Homolka. It had become a sort of game he played with himself—the challenge to constantly refresh this imaginary past without making a mistake. He heard himself telling Alison the same spurious family history but this time the voice didn’t sound like his. It sounded like the voice of an actor too tired to put any life into the lines he was reading. It occurred to Nick that it wasn’t the future that was going to catch him out, but the past: the real past, in which he’d allowed himself to be bribed by Danny’s father, or the imaginary past. Or both.