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by Ron Elliott

  ‘Hold on,’ I said.

  And I held hard on the barrel and let myself fall back, dragging Robin up the last bit and over the edge and onto the ground, where she fell forward onto her knees. I lay looking up at the heavy stars, gasping for breath.

  Robin stood, dusting herself like she’d simply tripped over.

  ‘We did it,’ I said.

  ‘Yep, let’s go.’

  ‘Robin! Give me a sec.’

  She picked up the rifle and her father’s lantern while I got up and winkled my fingers to get the circulation back.

  ‘Where’s all the blood from?’

  She held up the lantern, examining my bloody t-shirt.

  ‘Your father. He sucker-punched me.’

  She scowled. ‘When we get back to Perth, I’ll move out.’

  ‘I just saved your life.’

  ‘I know. I’m letting you go.’ She gave me the rifle and started walking.

  I followed. I didn’t say anything. I had nothing left. Not after ‘I saved your life’.

  ***

  ‘You’ll thank me,’ she said after we’d gone a little way.

  I could see a distant glow. Our fire had died down, but the car light was a presence in the darkness under the trillion stars. ‘It’s so quiet out here.’

  We both stopped walking and listened.

  ‘Your mum sounds like she was good. Working. Keeping you all together. Doing whatever she could for everyone.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  We started walking again.

  After a while she said, ‘When I left Kal, Mum and Gail and Liz came to the train station to see me off. The big success. So proud. “Off to university.” “You’re so smart.” So excited. But, just as I was about to get on the train, she pushes this casserole dish at me. I mean, you’ve seen it. It’s an oven pot, with a lid. “Still warm. For your first night.” It was tuna casserole. What are you going to do, right? I’ve got a suitcase; I’ve got my pack, a handbag, sleeping bag. Now here’s this giant tuna casserole – to cart through the city, while I find my way to the uni. Geek-girl from the country. No idea. “Bring the dish with you next time you’re back up.” Sure Mum. Next time – I’m back.’ Robin stopped walking and gritted her teeth and battled not to cry. Instead, she growled, low and determined like a cough she wouldn’t let finish.

  ‘It’s okay, Rob,’ I said, reaching to pat her shoulder, but she shook me off.

  ‘No it’s not.’

  We walked again. She walked. I walked with her. The fire embers were clear now, warm and orange on the earth near her old house.

  ‘It wasn’t the washing, it was the fucking people. The fucking customers. Strangers. When they’d give us the washing, they’d smile their smiles, “Here, this should help.” Like they were giving us a fucking donation. “Here you go, lass.” She’d have to kill herself every day to get their small change. And they wanted eternal fucking gratitude. Their squeaky Christian voices: “You should be very proud of your mum.” “I hope you help her.” My mother was a saint, Zac. Ask anyone. Everyone. In fact, the only two people in the whole world who didn’t love my mother were my father and me.’

  ‘No.’

  She stopped and she pointed at me with a sneaky smile. ‘He said she put my name on the invoice cos she knew I wouldn’t come. He has no idea. She thought I caused the sunshine. The letters. Even near the end. I didn’t hate him. I hated her, for making me feel bad every day of my life, and I ran away, like he said, as soon as I could. And I never came back. Even when she got sick. Even when she tried to call. Even when she ... she died.’ Robin gasped but the gasp didn’t stop. It was like a ruptured pipe in her chest. Her cry came from inside but like it was nothing to do with her.

  I hugged her. She shook in my arms, her shoulders, her chest. The tremors kept breaking from her mouth in these awful moans. I hugged her until the gasps came back into shudders and pants for breath.

  ‘It’s okay. Shhh.’

  ‘I’m cracking up.’

  I hugged her so she wouldn’t see that I was scared too.

  Then she said, ‘She loved me. She loved me, and I hated her, and I ran away, just like him. Even when she died, I didn’t come back.’

  ‘You’re back now.’

  ‘It’s too late now.’

  I needed something wise to say, something hopeful and true and useful. I needed to say something to help her and I had nothing. I had no idea. I wasn’t smart enough.

  ‘Are you crying?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m sorry, Rob. I’m so, so sorry.’

  ‘I should be. Not you.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Stop it.’ She pushed herself away again. We were by the embers of the fire.

  I said, ‘No.’

  ‘Leave me be.’

  ‘You can trust me, Robin. You can trust me to know this stuff about you and still love you.’

  ‘Haven’t you been listening? I don’t understand the word.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m not sure I love you.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ***

  The dog fretting woke me. It was dawn and still cold. I eased out of my sleeping bag quietly so as not to wake Robin. She was asleep in her sleeping bag on the back seat, her cheeks smudged from tears and dust.

  I patted the dog and got the rifle and used the butt end to scrape sand out from around the tyre. I went and got a piece of weatherboard from the house and slid that under.

  One of the most beautiful songs on the Bo Diddley album that I can’t name because I can’t remember who burned the album for me is ‘I’m Sorry’. It’s got a slow musical intro with mournful guitar and piano and drums. Bo’s voice is distant. The backup singers are girls. I should have played it before we’d gone to bed; so we could have swayed slowly together in the desert. It’s a very sentimental song. Robin would have grabbed the rifle and shot me, if I’d done it. But it would have been neat.

  The dog whimpered and Robin popped up looking down at me digging.

  ‘Hi,’ I said.

  ‘Tell me I had a long bad dream.’

  ‘It was all true and you promised me lots of sex.’

  She looked at the rifle. ‘It’s kind of a Swiss Army rifle isn’t it?’

  The dog whined again and Robin slid across the back seat to look over at it. She scanned the remains of the town.

  I stood. ‘He must have come while we were asleep. He took his lamp back.’

  She slithered out of her sleeping bag and climbed out of the car and patted the dog.

  ‘I think he’s a present,’ I said.

  Robin untied the rope where it was knotted at the dog’s collar. It ran off into the desert towards Bill’s camp.

  I said, ‘I guess he hadn’t thought it through.’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘He tried.’

  Robin considered that. ‘An empty gesture being better than none at all you mean?’

  I shrugged.

  She looked at me oddly. Said, ‘Your nose is crooked.’

  I turned to give her my left profile and turned again to show her my right.

  ‘More Marlon Brando now. Maybe Montgomery Clift.’

  ‘After the car accident.’

  ‘Which is better than James Dean after the car accident.’

  We both winced.

  She said, ‘I’m not magically fixed because I told you stuff.’

  ‘I think we’re out,’ I said, tossing the rifle aside. ‘You wanna start the engine? I’ll push.’

  She looked back out into the desert one more time, but got behind the wheel.

  ‘You don’t have to move out right away, you know. We could keep playing it by ear,’ I said.

  I couldn’t hear Robin’s reply because the engine caught and growled.

  I kept pushing.

  THE RING-IN

  At last deliverance is almost here. Of course I was clumsy. I didn’t know how to shoot; I almost missed myself. Of course it would have been be
tter to have died at once, but after all, they were not able to extract the bullet and then heart complications set in.’

  –‘A Young Girl’s Confession’, Marcel Proust

  EXT. PINE PLANTATION. DAWN.

  The taxi came into the pine plantation on two wheels. It wobbled a moment then went over onto the roof, wiping off the plastic taxi sign on the limestone track. It continued to slide on its roof, the driver upside down, belted to his seat, holding onto the steering wheel as though it were of some use. There was a dead guy on the roof next to him in the front, and another guy in the back screaming and scrambling amidst an assortment of firearms and blood. There was a beautiful woman in the back too, upside down with her seatbelt on. Her shirt was missing. The taxi continued to slide in slow motion between the trees like a boat sailing up a jungle river at dawn.

  Simon and the Pieman

  On a dark and lonely road at the frayed edge of the suburbs, Simon drove the same taxi, when it was new. It still had plastic on the trim. There was only three hundred kilometres on the clock. Simon flicked on the temporary dispatch radio.

  A scratchy female voice came through. ‘Simon?’

  ‘I’m done. Lights out and going home.’

  ‘See, you made it.’

  ‘Yeah. Like falling off a horse.’

  ‘I think that’s getting back on the horse, sweetie.’

  ‘Night, Cheryl.’

  Simon turned off the two-way then flicked off the taxi sign on the top of the car. He tried to blink out a glitch but the thing in his eyes stayed there. Way out in the darkness beyond his headlights was a red dot. The dot got bigger and became two brakelights at a T-junction.

  Simon pulled up, his headlights on the car in the ditch across the road. It had failed to turn right or left and was nose down in the drain, its back wheels still spinning in the air.

  Simon sat at the junction, his taxi in gear, looking at the car. Its headlights were on, bouncing back off good dark river dirt. Dust or smoke formed a drifting haze around the car.

  Simon looked left and right along the dark country road but there was no one else. He sighed and put the taxi in park. He took off his seatbelt and walked slowly to the other car, rolling his neck a little stiffly and settling his shoulders. The engine whined shrilly. He entered the brake-lit red of the exhaust smoke and looked down to the driver’s side, but the windows were tinted.

  ‘Hey, you’ll burn out the motor. Hey.’ Simon stepped off the bitumen and onto the gravel shoulder and carefully tapped on the boot. ‘Hey.’

  Simon looked down into the ditch, where the half-buried headlights kicked back some light. There was rubbish but the ditch had not seen rain for a year now. He stepped down and knocked on the driver’s window. ‘Hey.’

  The engine stopped revving. After a moment the window came down. A middle-aged man in a shirt and tie blinked out at him. Then he peered at the other side of the ditch. ‘I’m stuck.’

  ‘You sure are.’

  ‘I gotta get home. Late for dinner.’

  Simon looked into the darkness. There wasn’t even a farm light on this late. The engine began to tick as it cooled.

  The man fumbled for his mobile, dropping it somewhere in the car. He bent forward, banging his head on the steering wheel. He waved a hand in the air, giving it up.

  Simon said, ‘You want me to call you a tow truck?’

  ‘Hey, yeah. Great. I got a rope in the boot.’

  ‘No, what I meant was...’

  The boot popped up.

  ‘If you give me a tow out, then I can get home.’

  Simon stepped back as the door swung open. The man swayed out of the car, hung for a moment on the door then sat down on the side of the ditch. ‘Woaw, I’m fucked.’

  ‘I’m Simon,’ said Simon, not very loudly. He looked at the guy a moment then stepped up out of the ditch and looked back at his own taxi headlights across the road.

  ‘Simon?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘My name’s Frank.’ He was standing now.

  ‘Glad to meet you Frank.’

  Frank reached his hand out and Simon took it, and Frank started pulling, so Simon got some purchase and hauled Frank up to the back of his car, where he stood looking into the ditch. ‘Fuck, eh.’

  Simon looked in the boot. There were lots of little cardboard signs. Granny Jo’s Pies. There was some rope under the signs. ‘You sell pies, Frank?’

  ‘Fucken A. Sold more fucking pies than any other bastard last month is what I did. Shitload of commissions. King of the pies.’ Frank looked up at the sky and howled at it like a wolf.

  Simon had the rope, hefting it. It was nylon, and he doubted it would be strong enough. ‘I’ll give this a try, but I don’t like our chances, Frank. My taxi’s new, and I don’t know whether the pistons...’

  Frank, who had been peering across the road, suddenly pushed himself up off his car and yelled, ‘Taxi!’ He stepped towards it. ‘There’s a taxi.’

  ‘Yes, there is, Frank. Just over there.’

  ‘I gotta go. Gotta get home for dinner.’ Frank started across the deserted road towards the taxi.

  ‘What about your car?’

  Frank didn’t turn. ‘Fuck it.’ He raised his hand and waved down Simon’s taxi.

  Simon tossed the rope into the boot and closed it. Then he went down into the ditch again and turned off the headlights and got Frank’s keys from the ignition. He locked up and went to his taxi. As he got in the driver’s seat and turned on the ignition, Frank said, ‘Fifteen Royal Court, The Pines, mate.’

  Simon started the meter. ‘You got it.’

  ‘Simon?’

  ‘How ya doing, Frank?’

  Simon drove back through Middle Swan where good flood plain country had turned from melons and pumpkins to vineyards, and then wineries with restaurants. On weekends you had to dodge 50cc scooters and tour buses, but some sagging stalls outside the old farmhouses still sold cheap oranges and table grapes.

  Frank lived in a boutique housing estate wedged between the wine country and a huge pine plantation. Simon turned in to a cul-de-sac filled with McMansions in different shades of terracotta with big double garages and tiny neat lawns.

  Simon pulled into number fifteen, and turned to find his passenger dozing. ‘Frank. Frank. We’re here.’

  ‘Huh, oh, right.’

  ‘That’s twenty-eight forty.’

  ‘What?’

  Simon pointed at the meter. ‘Call it twenty-eight. Well, you can call it more, too. That’s up to you.’

  ‘You stopped to help me.’

  ‘Yes. That’s probably why I was hoping it might be more.’

  ‘You stopped to help me, as a ... as a ... Not as a taxi driver.’

  ‘Ah. I see.’

  ‘You gave me a lift, didn’t you?’

  ‘Well, the thing is, Frank, it’s on my meter now. You know, if you don’t pay, I’ll have to.’

  ‘You bastard. No. You’re not ripping me off. No way.’ Frank flung open the passenger door and staggered towards his house.

  Simon got out and followed. Frank was leaning on the door and wrenching at the handle. Simon jangled Frank’s keys next to his ear.

  Frank turned. ‘Simon. Good on ya.’ He took the keys, unlocked the door and went inside.

  Simon watched the door close. He stood a moment longer, rolling his neck again, teasing out the tightness. He went to the rear passenger door of the taxi and closed it gently, then to the driver’s seat. He put his seatbelt on, backed out of Frank’s driveway and drove out of the culde-sac.

  We’ll Always Have Paris

  It was hot. Sweat beaded on Grace’s temple and dampened under the arms of her dress. Grace was reading Jim Thompson’s The Rip-Off at the tiny beer can–covered table of a small caravan. Her lips moved as she read.

  A beer can popped. Johnny Johnston sat at the same table, bulging out of his slacks and an unbuttoned turquoise silk shirt. He took a gulp of the beer and looked over at Grace.
‘What you reckon was the best place we went?’

  Grace looked up from her paperback.

  But before she could answer, JJ said, ‘France was the best. That was the best place ever.’

  JJ burped. He was looking at the empty beer cans on the table but thinking about France.

  Grace started to think about France too. The Ibis Hotel in Paris. She was blonde back then, not dark-haired like now. And skinny. She remembered lounging in a bikini in the sun that hit the glass at one end of the indoor pool.

  A cute young guy in tight black pants and a white shirt had two drinks on a tray. He put them down, smiling at Grace, not hiding that he liked what he saw. ‘Mademoiselle.’

  ‘It’s madam. Merci,’ said Grace trying to soften her Aussie accent.

  ‘Monsieur.’

  ‘Yeah, right garsonne. Beauty.’ JJ took his drink and raised the glass towards the sun. ‘How good is this, babe? How fuckin’ good is this?’ JJ was trim then, still fit and handsome and happy.

  ‘It’s good,’ said Grace.

  ‘Bet it’s raining in Australia, now.’

  Grace smiled at the pool as she sipped her vodka and tonic. Two days in the hotel and they hadn’t yet set foot in the rest of Paris. ‘What do you want to do JJ?’

  JJ waved his drink at the pool and rooms somewhere above them. ‘We can do whatever we want. Whatever we want.’

  JJ was remembering the Ibis Hotel too.

  Mostly he was remembering Grace’s legs and her perfect little feet with bright red nail polish. He looked up to see her sparkling happy eyes catching him looking. She was a beauty no matter what country you were in. He said, ‘I’ll tell you what I want to do.’

  Grace smiled back, dreamy like a cat.

  JJ smiled in the cramped caravan far from France. He looked at the green chipped walls. Sweat dribbled down his chest and slid sideways around his stomach. Grace was reading again. ‘You wanna do something?’