Flesh & Blood

by A. E. Dooland

  I was busy stewing on that and I didn’t notice the time until my pocket buzzed. I had to take off my glove so I could unlock my phone and see what Bree had to say. “um…..i think i waited long enough to say that no moving guys came………….” I checked the clock: it was 9am.

  I sighed heavily at my phone. Mum hadn’t messaged me, either, and when I spent a couple of seconds calling my bank to find out if I’d been refunded from the movers, my balance was still $1.91. I hung up with no idea what was going on, and it was making my headache worse.

  I didn’t stop worrying about it, though, and while I was supposed to be paying attention to getting the bricks exactly level, I found myself counting the hours since Mum and I had fought. The flight to Australia is 11 hours, I told myself. And she’d need maybe three to pack, and how long would it take her to find someone to look after Grandma?

  “Oi, Min!” Rob’s booming voice shook me out of my head. “What are you doing, mate?” He was pointing at the row of bricks I’d just laid—and sure enough, the perpends between all the bricks were all way too thick, I was going to get to the end and have nowhere to put the last brick. Swearing, I pulled the last dozen bricks off and repositioned them, trying to focus on what I was actually doing.

  We finished the walls the afternoon of the following day, and then spent an hour or so cleaning up the site before we left. I took some photos of the finished redbrick walls for myself, because the brickwork looked so satisfyingly neat I thought I might be able to make a Photoshop texture out of it—supposing I felt like painting anything ever again.

  Daz came over to me while I was trying to get the frame right, and clapped me on the back. “How are your arms?” he asked knowingly, and then laughed when I shot him a very telling glance. “I couldn’t even brush my teeth after I’d laid my first house,” he told me, and then mimed shakily trying to hold a toothbrush while I chuckled at him. “Anyway, like I told Rob, we don’t ordinarily need another set of hands, so I don’t know how much work I’ll have for you, but here’s your share of the plunder for three days of hard work anyway.”

  He slipped a wallet that was fat with fifty dollar bills out of his back pocket, and took out a clipped section of them, passing it to me. I thanked him and was about to put them in my own wallet when he gave me a weird look. “Don’t you want to count them to make sure I didn’t rip you off?”

  It seemed rude to do it in front of him, but I took the clip off and tabbed through them anyway. There were 14 of them—$700. That was a couple of weeks’ worth of loan payments for Seung plus Opal money for Bree and petrol for me. I think I laughed with relief. “You’re definitely not ripping me off.”

  He clapped me on the shoulder. “That’s the way,” he said, and then pointed at my handful of cash as he turned to walk away. “That doesn’t go on your tax return, either, just so we’re clear.”

  I saluted him, tucking the notes into my wallet. At least I’d be okay with the pawnbrokers for a while, just as soon as I’d changed my banking passwords and put the money in my account.

  We loaded up Rob’s ute with some of the tools and other junk from the yard, and then set off for the long drive back up to Sydney.

  “Well, I’m buggered,” Rob said as we finally made it back to the highway. “I think I’ll sleep for about three days! What about you? You sore?”

  “I’ll let you know if I’m ever able to feel my limbs again,” I told him, checking my phone for data coverage.

  “It feels good here, though, doesn’t it?” He thumped his big barrel chest. “That we built that nice house? I always want to buy them and move right in when we’re done. I get really attached.” He laughed at himself.

  I opened my mouth to reply, but then I noticed I had a text message. Pausing for a moment before I spoke, I unlocked my phone. I expected it to be from Bree, but it was from an unknown mobile number.

  Mum’s in Australia! was my immediate reaction, and I think my gasp sounded like a choking noise.

  Rob reached over and thumped my back, making it worse. “Hey, you right there?”

  “Yes,” I managed, shrinking away from his paddle-like hand as my eyes watered. I blinked to clear them, and, taking a deep breath, mustered up the courage to finally open the message.

  “Okay so here’s the problem: I’m standing in front of an ATM and it’s telling me this:” There was an attached photo of—the breath caught in my throat—an ATM receipt with the last four digits of my bank account number and ‘insufficient funds, transaction cancelled’ printed on it.

  I leant towards the screen of my phone, my stomach dropping. “Not okay, Min. You said you were good for the money.”

  That was… I swallowed. He was taking the money directly out of my bank account in cash? I hurriedly tried to text him back. “I didn’t know you’d take it out this early so I only have cash because I haven’t banked it yet. I’m not in Sydney right now but I can drop it around to the store tonight.”

  “When?”

  My heart was pounding as I typed out a reply, and I was acutely aware Rob was glancing curiously towards my screen while he was driving. “What’s going on?” he asked. “Is something wrong?”

  “Kind of,” I told him, tilting my phone surreptitiously so he couldn’t see what I was writing. “Just arranging to meet someone.”

  “Ah, right,” he said. “Do I need to drop you off somewhere? Because I reckon most of Sydney is between us and Sares’ place anyway, it’d be fine.”

  I considered that for a moment, but then decided I didn’t want Rob dropping me off at night in the dodgy part of Sydney with a full wallet. Besides, I didn’t want him or Sarah guessing I owed anyone money anyway. “Thanks, but I’ll grab my car from home.”

  He grunted, turning his attention back to the road as I finished typing, “Should be home at maybe 7pm, can I drop the money around to the store after that?”

  “Okay.”

  I stared at that single word reply. He’s angry with me, I thought, feeling a bit sick. It wasn’t even my fucking fault that the money wasn’t there. It was because of Mum that I wasn’t good for my debts for the first time in my whole life. Fuck! I let my phone fall into my lap, and then sat heavily back in the seat. Well, maybe I could pay next week’s payment in advance and maybe get back in his good books again?

  I changed my online banking password as soon as we had data coverage, and then fidgeted restlessly in my seat while we sat in traffic on the M1 for what seemed like an eternity. We got back to Sarah’s at maybe 7:30pm—I wondered if I should text Seung to update him?—and so I didn’t look totally rude and unappreciative for Rob getting me a job and driving me to it, I hurriedly helped him unload the tools off the tray in the shed before I went to the city.

  I spent what felt like ages trying to hang up Rob’s tools on their drawn outlines on the shed wall, and then went back to the ute to get my stuff.

  While I had the door open, Rob came jogging up to me from down the driveway, smiling broadly. “Hey!” he told me. “Your cousin is here—nice bloke, actually! Was that who you were going to meet? Here, I’ll put your stuff in the house for you.” He wrenched my bag from me and gently nudged me down the driveway. “Go on, it’s fine!”

  I stared at him, all the blood running out of my face. Cousin? Neither Mum nor Dad had any siblings. Oh my god.

  When I got around the front of the house, I could see a figure standing at the steps up to the porch with his hands in his pockets, and after a couple of seconds I realised who it was. “Seung?”

  He looked up. In the porch light, I could see beads of sweat on his face, despite how cool it is. “You’re really late,” he said quickly, like he’d been waiting for me. “You told me 7pm!”

  “I said about 7pm,” I corrected him. “What are you doing here? I was about to come into the city!”

  He shrugged. “You’re a first-time borrower and you missed your first payment,” he said, “and you’re scaring the shit out of me. I was sitting here in the dark wait
ing for you to come, thinking, ‘this girl has given me a fake address, and I’m going to have to take that $12k out of my own money for Dad’, and then this huge fucking biker-looking guy just comes walking up to me and asks what I’m doing at his house. I thought I was a goner.”

  “Rob wouldn’t hurt a fly,” I said automatically before I’d realised what a fucking idiot I was for saying that. I should have told him Rob had a black belt in five different disciplines plus an extensive collection of illegal firearms.

  Seung wiped his forehead with his palm. “Yeah, well, I know that now, but in the dark…” He laughed nervously; it struck me that he probably didn’t make house calls very often. “And then he invited me inside for dinner and for a second I went, ‘he’s going to kill me’. Then I realised he was actually inviting me inside for dinner.”

  I grimaced. Rob…

  I think he realised how amateur he was being and tried to stand straighter. He was still nowhere near my height. “Anyway, I’m here for the money.”

  Like that wasn’t obvious. I took my wallet out, opening it to get him the $320. “You didn’t need to come all the way out here to—”

  He took a step forward and just snatched it off me. When I said, “Hey!” and went to take it back off him, he gave me a very sharp look.

  “I didn’t bring security this time,” he told me pointedly, unfolding my wallet and taking out all of the notes so he could leaf through them. Then, to my horror, he tossed the empty wallet back at my feet and tucked all of the notes in his pocket. “Okay. Thanks.”

  What the fucking—I couldn’t—did he just take all of my—? That was nearly $800! “Are you taking next week’s payment, too?”

  He looked uncomfortable. “Look, I had to pay my brother to watch the store, and he’s going to tell Dad what I’m doing if I don’t give him $200. I’m keeping the rest in case you fuck up again, because this wasn’t exactly a fun trip to the North Shore for me. So, yeah. I guess you could call it a default fee.”

  He started to walk back to the car, but I jogged stiffly after him on my sore legs and grabbed his arm as we got to the bottom of the driveway. “That’s not fair,” I told him. “I didn’t know you were going to want the money five days after you gave me the loan, and I worked really hard for—”

  He pushed my hand off. “—Don’t, seriously. Don’t be like this, or—”

  “Or what?” I asked. “Or you’ll repossess my wallet, too? Because there’s nothing else in it!”

  He turned to square up with me, glancing up the driveway. “That’s a nice car,” he commented. “Maybe you could sell it and pay off the ring. Or maybe you could give it to me and we could forget about the loan.”

  “It’s under finance,” I told him, “or else you could fucking have it.”

  “Is it insured?” he asked. “Because, you know, things get stolen all the time, and maybe we could come to some sort of agreement where it could go missing and—”

  “I’m not committing insurance fraud!” I told him, my exhaustion, my temper, and fucking everything getting the better of me. “And you shouldn’t be taking all my money, I’m fucking sick of people just helping themselves to everything I own like I can’t have a single fucking thing in the world that—”

  “Dude, I gave you $12,000!” he said. “Sorry that I want it back, but I’m not a charity?”

  “You wanted $320 a week, not $800 a—”

  This time, he found the guts to shut me down. “Okay!” he said, holding his hands up to placate me. “Okay. Here’s the thing: I came here by myself because I don’t get customers like you that often, and I thought you seemed pretty cool and easy to deal with. I could have gotten a couple of Dad’s friends to visit instead, and you know how that would have gone down?” He gestured at the house. “They would have been sitting inside waiting for you when you got home. They wouldn’t be putting up with this,” he gestured at how close I was standing to him, “and it would have cost you a hell of a lot more than $800 for the pleasure of having everyone in your house scared shitless by them. Basically, you got a pretty good deal getting me to come here. But you know what?” he asked me. “I’m not coming again.” He held his hands up in a ‘don’t shoot’ motion. “I was wrong about you being one of those customers that doesn’t cause trouble, pays on time and is easy to deal with. You’re the same as everyone else. I’m sending them next time, so don’t default, okay?”

  I was trembling with anger and I didn’t trust myself to say anything that wouldn’t get me into trouble, so I didn’t say a word.

  He exhaled, relaxing a bit. “Look, I lent you $12k. Do me a favour and just make sure there’s $320 a week for me to draw out, and there’s not going to be any trouble at all, okay?” He sighed in what felt like disappointment at me one last time, and then walked back across the road, wiping his brow again on his wrist as he got into his car. I spun, stomping back up the fucking driveway to collect the wallet he’d just tossed on the footpath like it was nothing.

  None of this would have happened if Mum hadn’t spent all my money, I thought, scooping up some of the loose change that had fallen out of my wallet when he’d thrown it. If the $400 had been in there, I’d have been good for that payment. I’d have been completely fine for—

  For two weeks, a more sensible part of me interrupted as I sat back on my heels for a second, frowning. After which you’d also be fucked, don’t kid yourself. You shouldn’t have gotten that stupid loan in the first place.

  But if I hadn’t done it, I reasoned, I would have wasted the $10k that I—well, that I probably shouldn’t have spent on Bree’s school fees anyway, to be honest. I shook my head; what was I thinking? This isn’t Pretty Woman, Min, I told myself. You’re not some billionaire sugar daddy descending from on high to solve all her problems, you’re an unemployed, broke artist.

  But I had the means to help her even if it was just through getting dodgy loans, so why shouldn’t Bree be able to finish her school? I found myself asking. Why should she have to suffer because her brother defrauded her family, why is that her problem?

  … and why had I made it mine?

  Because Bree is all alone otherwise, I thought fiercely. No one is batting for her. No one’s protecting her from any of that. And, boy, did I know how that felt. Boy did I fucking know how that felt.

  It was too late to be debating whether or not I’d done the right thing anyway, I decided. I probably hadn’t, but it was done now. We just have to keep her in school, I told myself, chewing on my lips. She just has to finish, then it will be all worth it.

  While I was tucking the coins back in my wallet, the front door opened a fraction and light spilt out onto the porch. “Min?”

  Bree. I hurriedly straightened, trying to pretend I was just walking up the path, but it turned out she wasn’t going to quiz me about what I was doing. She rushed out of the house in her knee-high socks and slipped all over the porch to pad down the stairs and throw her arms around me. I really wasn’t in the mood for being touched, though. She could tell immediately and pulled away.

  I was still fuming from everything, and when I looked down at her, all I saw under that chin was a whole lot of bare cleavage, the non-regulation jewellery, an untucked shirt, a loose tie, and everything the Principal had told me about how Bree shouldn’t wear her uniform if she wanted to keep going to Cloverfield. Was Bree trying to waste $21,550? Was she seriously trying to waste it? “Did you go to school like that?” I probably sounded angrier than I meant to.

  Bree’s big smile fell, and she looked down her body. “Um?”

  “I told you about how you need to wear your uniform for—”

  She flinched at the volume of my voice, dropping her arms from me. “Yeah, you did,” she told me a bit uncertainly. “Forgetting that this is my body, and how I wear my clothes is actually none of your business?”

  Seriously? I took a steadying breath. “We’re not talking about regular clothes, Bree, we’re talking about a school uniform. When you wear i
t, you’re representing the school and you need to—”

  “Thanks, Mum,” she said really sarcastically, and then immediately looked alarmed. “Um, I didn’t mean ‘mum’ because you’re—well, it’s not misgendering you, it’s an expression that you say when someone is acting like they're thinking they can just boss you—”

  “—Some people are allowed to boss you around!” I told her. “What are you going to say when your future actual boss tells you not to wear whatever you want to—”

  She looked me dead in the eye. “I’ll say, ‘fuck you, I’ll wear whatever I want to the pitch and I’ll nail it’.”

  I stiffened. “That is not the same thing!” I told her. “And by the way, you do realise doing that basically got me fired, right? Do you want to be kicked out of school?”

  “What do you think, Min?” She took a step away from me, giving me the once-over. She was white as a sheet. “What the hell has gotten into you, anyway?” she asked, starting to look a bit upset. “You’re never like this. Like, I get that your Mum is stressing you out, and money is stressing you out, but can you not come back home and yell at me over something totally unrelated? If I wanted to be yelled at constantly over stuff that’s not my fault, I could just go back to my parents’ place!”

  She might as well have punched me. I stood back, things suddenly in perspective. God, what was I doing? I tried to get myself together. “It is related, though,” I told her more gently, and put my hands on her shoulders. “The uniform stuff is related. Fuck. Look, please just don’t get kicked out of school, okay? You’ve done all this work, and I don’t want to see you throw it away over not doing up your top buttons.”

  She held my wrists, trying not to let me see her bottom lip was quivering. “Don’t yell at me over something like this,” she pleaded. “Please, please don’t. It’s not worth it.”

  For $21,550, it might have been worth it. It was on the tip of my tongue: ‘The Principal said she’d kick you out if you didn’t wear your uniform properly’, but then I’d have to explain why I’d spoken to the Principal in the first place, and then everything would end up coming out. I kept my mouth shut while I tried to figure out what I could tell her without giving everything away.