by Jane Rawson
‘Yeah, y’know. Take em out for a spin. Do a little – whaddyacallit? – orienteering with em. I guess you could probably flog the India one off for a bit – not much use to anyone but a historian these days. But you never know when you might get over to Prague, eh mate?’ At that point the soldier reached over onto Ray’s side of the table and pawed through the maps, pulling out one of the Macedon Ranges. ‘Like this one. I mean, things have changed a bit out there, no doubt about it, but it’s still mostly trees and hills and stuff, right? Might as well take the map out, have a bit of a gander, eh? It’s not like you’ll get lost or nuthin. Y’know, me old man used to take me out around here.’ The soldier tapped on a worn patch in the map, the crease where the map had been folded and refolded over the last ninety or so years. He looked up at Ray meaningfully. ‘Y’know what I’m saying? A bloke could do a lot worse than have a look around here.’ Tap tap tap.
Ray had no idea what he was saying, but he nodded anyway.
‘So why are you selling, mate?’
‘Aks no questions, sonny Jim, and I’ll tell you no lies,’ the soldier replied. ‘You fellas know what it’s like, right? Sometimes the booze just gets a hold of you, and nothing else much seems worth bothering with but a drink or seven.’
Ray let the comment go, though he could see Peira rolling her eyes at him. Instead of answering, he counted out a wad of money and wished the soldier well.
‘Wanna celebrate a sale well made, mate? You got yourself a real bargain there. I’ll buy you a beer or a rum or whatever it is you fellas like.’
‘Thanks, no,’ Ray replied. ‘I’ve got a business meeting to get to.’ Which he didn’t, of course. ‘I’ll get this one,’ he said, and while he was at the bar paying he asked Peira to give him a call once the soldier had gone so he could slip back and have a drink or two with Caddy.
‘What you got there, Ray?’ Jason had stopped him on his way out. ‘Something good, bro?’ Jason had aspirations to be just like Ray when he grew up.
‘Just some maps, mate. Nothing you’d be interested in. No electronics, no porno files, no mentholated cigarettes.’
‘Aw, come on Ray. I like the classy stuff too, y’know?’
‘Sure you do. What’s classier than a menthol? Hey, where’d you get those sunglasses from?’
‘These?’ Jason pulled his sunglasses off. ‘One of the little tackers stole them from somewhere, sold them to me for a dollar. You want em?’
‘Aren’t those Caddy’s sunnies?’
‘Yeah, might be. You want em?’
‘I’ll give you eighty cents.’
‘A dollar is my final offer, man. Best price.’
‘You’re a sharp dealer, Jase. I’ll take em.’
Later some rich guy he was doing a deal with had noticed the sunnies, offered him ten bucks for them (said they were just the look his daughter was into) and Ray had sold them. It wasn’t till he’d seen Caddy outside Library that he’d remembered whose they were. There didn’t seem much point mentioning it by then.
Anyway, business had been a bit slow over the following weeks, so on a quiet Wednesday Ray decided he might as well go out to the country for a few days. He’d taken his motorbike along the Western Highway and headed out to near Hanging Rock, to the spot the obnoxious soldier had shown him on the map. He folded the map up tight, so he could focus on the area that was worn down, the place where the image had creased into non-existence. He rode around, cruising slowly till he thought he’d found the place. He locked his bike up, hid it under some bushes, and started walking. He was just about at the place when he felt his feet slide out from under him and he threw his hands down reflexively, expecting to fall. But it wasn’t him that had slipped: it was the land around him. The shock of it gave him tunnel vision and he shook his head to clear his eyes, but the tunnel stayed. ‘It’s not my eyes,’ he realized. ‘It’s the world.’ He was being sucked through a tunnel of the world. He barely had time to register all this before it stopped. He was standing on firm ground again, clear eyed, full three-sixty-degree vision. He was standing among trees and rocks still, but he was sure right away it wasn’t the same place. There were tree ferns; he’d been in sclerophyll before, he was sure of it. This looked almost rainforesty. It was still the same temperature though, almost exactly. He looked up at the sky – same kind of sky, same clouds or lack of them. Hang on though: before, the grey haze of Melbourne had been on his eastern horizon. Now it was to his west. What the hell was going on?
Ray sat down on the soft leaf litter. OK, come on. There was no need to panic, he was pretty sure of that. He was in Australia still, to the east of a big city that was probably Melbourne, on the same day that he’d gotten off his motorbike near Hanging Rock.
He turned the map over and over in his hands. The map. He looked down. He’d managed to fold the map into a square about fifteen by fifteen centimeters, about twelve layers thick. On one side was Hanging Rock. On the other – he turned it over – the Warramate Hills, in the Dandenongs east of the city. In the left hand corner the ink had worn right away.
‘Well, fuck me,’ Ray thought. ‘I’ve taken a short cut.’ Not to anywhere he particularly wanted to be, but still. He looked around. Yep, it certainly looked like the Dandenongs.
‘So wait a second …’ He unfolded the map and found another worn patch, but it was down where Altona beach had been. ‘Not such a good idea,’ he thought, ‘don’t want to end up drowned in goop.’ More searching turned up a crease just to the west of Glenrowan. ‘Hey now! That’s more like it. Why don’t I go visit old Ned Kelly.’
Ray refolded the map so that the Warramate Hills were on the front and Glenrowan on the back. He pulled himself up and walked through the area where he’d been sitting. Nothing. He tried again. Nope. Dammit, how was he going to get back to his bike? He started thinking about the deal he’d hooked up for the next morning – he needed his bike! And that did it: the ground slipped away, everything went tunnelly, and a couple of seconds later he was on a hill looking down on a crummy little town. He could see the Big Ned Kelly even from there.
‘This is awesome.’ He’d said it out loud this time. It was kind of hard to believe the soldier had been telling the truth. The maps were an actual real-live bargain. He checked his watch. It was about twelve minutes since he’d been at Hanging Rock. He figured he had time to look around, so he started walking downhill, aiming for the Glenrowan Hotel and a can of VB.
Over the next few weeks Ray tried out a bunch of ideas, including gluing together the maps of Greater Melbourne and Greater Prague and folding them up so that he could theoretically step from the shanty town in Edinburgh Gardens, Melbourne, through to Vitkov Hill, Prague. He tried it plenty of times, but it never worked, even when he tried to distract himself by thinking about how he’d forgotten to put a bet on the 2.40 at Flemington, which was a sure thing, and he was going to kick himself when the horse came in. Even then it didn’t work. Seemed like unless he one day got on a plane to Eastern Europe, his jaunts would be limited to the area around Melbourne.
After a few trips, Ray started to look around while he was tunneling. That was what he called it: tunneling. The first couple of times it all seemed like a blur, but eventually he began making out what looked like coordinates superimposed on the blur as he raced past. When he did trips through the city, he realized he could see landmarks as he passed by. It seemed like he was actually physically passing through all the points between the front and back of the map. He experimented with folding the map so he could predict what would pass by, and he was pretty much right every time.
Still, though, Ray was at a loss to think of what use this was to him. He never really needed to travel around central Victoria at high speed. And it seemed like you had to be hanging on to the map for the trick to work, so he wasn’t sure he could set up any kind of commuter service (though he certainly hadn’t entirely given up on the idea). At any rate, work had started picking up again, and Ray became more and more focused on every
day life and thought less and less about the maps. It wasn’t until the Friday he was due to go to the football with Caddy – and due, he hoped, to forge some kind of lasting relationship with the carbon credit billionaires – that he started thinking again about how they might come in handy.
GSOH
On the Friday morning, Caddy woke up on the bank of the river, the sun shining full in her face.
‘What the fuck?’ she said, trying to shake her headache loose.
‘Hey Cad,’ Lanh was sprawled out next to her. Neither of them seemed to be naked.
As she sat up, Caddy’s temporary amnesia cleared.
‘Hey. How’re you feeling this morning, Lanh? How’s your head?’
‘Oh yeah, a bit sore.’
Lanh had brought the Cruiser, like he’d promised, and they’d drunk that. But he’d also brought a bottle of Passion Pop, creamed off the top of another delivery he’d been charged with. Caddy had warned him that business wouldn’t last at that rate, but he didn’t seem to care. Caddy knew how he felt; you take what you can when you can, cause whatever you do it won’t last. Though considering the state of things this morning, it seemed like she hadn’t taken Lanh when she had the chance.
‘That Passion Pop was pretty great stuff,’ she said. ‘I’ve never had champagne before. It’s sweet!’
‘Sure gets you drunk, eh?’
‘Yep.’ The evening was falling back into place. As far as she could figure out, the last thing she could remember was lying on the ground looking up at Lanh, while he told her about this incredible sauce his grandmother used to make for fish. Yep, that was pretty much it. She guessed she must have fallen asleep. ‘Did I fall asleep while you were talking, man?’
‘I dunno,’ Lanh stared into the middle distance. ‘Yeah, maybe. Not sure. I think I fell asleep while I was talking.’
‘We should get out of the sun,’ she said. ‘You want to wash up? I’ve got some soap. Or something for breakfast?’
‘Nah man, I’m cool, I should get up to Sunny, open the place up. How about you, what’re you doing?’
‘Ah, maybe I should tidy up around here a bit.’ She put her hand in her pocket, pulled out a five dollar bill. ‘Oh! Hey, actually, can I come up to Sunny with you? I need to use the web.’
He gave her a bit of a look.
‘Don’t worry, I can pay this time!’
‘Cool, OK, thanks. I’m all out of deliveries for now!’ he smiled.
She nudged him a bit with her elbow.
‘I’m just going to grab a drink of water,’ she said. ‘You want something?’
‘Yeah, water would be great.’
‘It’s just river water, boiled. That OK?’
‘It’s all I ever drink,’ he said.
‘Apart from Cruisers and Passion Pop, of course.’
‘Of course! I’m a regular James Bond.’
She went to her humpy while Lanh found a spot in the shade, and filled a plastic cup of water from her jerry can. ‘Only got one mug,’ she said when she got back, ‘is it fine to share?’
‘No worries.’
Once she’d packed her humpy away for the day, they headed up Racecourse. Lanh had brought the two empties with him; he was pretty sure he could get something for them in the Newmarket. If not, Caddy said, she’d try to move them through Jason or Ray.
‘That guy Ray never seems to be around anymore,’ Lanh said.
‘Did he come see you the other day, after I was there?’
‘Nuh uh. It’s kind of good for me though, you know, him not being around so much? Some of the business that he passed on to me before, those guys are now coming straight to me cause they can’t find Ray.’
‘Hey Lanh,’ she asked him, after they’d been walking a while, ‘how’d you get into the internet business?’
‘You thinking of opening up? I don’t need the competition, you know!’
‘Nah. Just making conversation.’
‘I picked Sunny up off my older brother. He’s gone to Tassie now. Once he had kids, he kind of wanted something better for them, you know? Some trees and stuff, fresh water. A bit less traffic fumes.’
‘Yeah, sounds alright.’
‘You ever think of moving?’
‘Not really. It’s too much work to pick up and shift. No idea where I’d get the money. No point even thinking about it really.’
‘You sure? Or you got something keeping you here?’
‘Me? No. Nothing here.’
‘You’re not from here? No family or nothing?’
‘My parents were born in Canberra, but they moved down here before I was born. We lived down in Altona for a while when I was little. You know it? Where the beach was?’
Lanh nodded. ‘Yeah, we used to go down a bit when I was a kid too.’
‘Yeah. So when that all went they lost their place. We moved around in rentals for a while, a few share houses and stuff.’ Caddy thought about the places they’d lived, three families in a house, lots of kids. It had been fun. ‘Later I lived with friends, moved out of my parents’ place just before that summer we had the heatwave, you know, the one in ’22?’
Lanh nodded.
‘Yeah, well, mum didn’t make it through that. Dad died about six months later from malaria; probably got it around the same time as mum died.’
‘Hey, sorry,’ Lanh said.
‘Yeah, well. I mean, I’m not the only one. I guess a few thousand mums and dads tossed it in that summer.’
‘Yeah, my aunty passed then.’
‘You see? So.’
They walked a while longer. When they stopped at the corner across from Sunny to wait for traffic, she felt Lanh take her hand. She looked over at him, but he was looking, very hard, for a spot where they could cross. She squeezed his hand, then disengaged herself.
Inside, she helped him open up, putting the sandwich board out on the footpath and starting up the wireless hub. He cruised around for a while till he found someone who hadn’t password protected their account, and broke in.
‘OK Cad,’ he said, ‘you’re ready to go.’
While she was firing up the computer she watched Lanh. He was kneeling in front of his armchair, poking his hand underneath. Eventually he pulled out his Demons cap, then he settled into the armchair, tipped the brim of the cap over his eyes and opened his novel.
‘Ready for a hard day’s work?’ she asked him.
‘You bet.’
She was going to ask him where he’d gotten the cap – the Dees hadn’t been around for about ten years, she reckoned – but that might have led into a conversation about football, and then she would have felt compelled to mention the game she was going to tonight, and that’d mean not only pointing out that she had access to Ray, even though Ray was ignoring Lanh, but also that she was a part-time hooker. It didn’t seem worth it.
Instead, she did a search for ‘Tarkin Collins’. Google brought up a bunch of ads for some gin based drink, so she tried www.spock.com.
- Tarkin Collins, Gemini, 58, Vancouver (www.facespace.com). Nope, that wasn’t him.
- Tarkin Collins, 45, online community manager, web manager (www.linkedin.com). Might be.
- Tarkin Collins, 12, Norway (www.penguin.com). Unlikely.
- Tarkin Collins, 36, account manager, Melbourne, tall, dark hair, GSOH (www.lavalife.com).
Bingo. And the good news was, if he was on lavalife he probably didn’t have a family that’d be looking for his five dollars (or, more likely, his body). She clicked in to see his profile. It definitely looked kind of like him, but not quite. She couldn’t really explain what the difference was. Maybe it was that he was less dead, she figured.
There was an email address. Should she use it? She should use it. She certainly wasn’t going to look all day for the mysterious Mr Collins, so emailing his address was as good a bet as any.
What to say? She thought a while, then typed: ‘Hi. If you’re checking this address because you’re a friend or family member of Mr Colli
ns, I want you to know that I have news of him. If you’re looking for him, please email me back. Cheers, Caroline.’ Cheers? Maybe not. She went back. ‘Regards, Caroline.’ It was maybe a bit too mysterious, but she didn’t just want to blurt out, on email, ‘Hey, your husband is dead, and what’s more he was looking for sex on lavalife.’
She read through her other emails, nothing much interesting. News from Harry’s sister about the nephews; she sent her usual polite reply and binned the photos without looking at them. Thank god they were all in New Zealand. Back in her inbox, she already had a reply from [email protected].
I know this is probably some scam email I shouldn’t be answering, but you have piqued my interest. Why would I want news of myself? Are you suggesting I should be trying harder to ‘find myself’? Are you, perhaps, some mystical guru who can help me discover the inner Tarkin? If this is the case, I’m not interested. If you want me to buy some documents or suchlike about myself, I am also not interested: I know my family history already, thank you very much. And of course, if you’re offering to tell my future, that doesn’t interest me either. If you have something unique to tell me, then go ahead. I assume you found me via lavalife. Are you interested in meeting for a drink?
GSOH my arse, she thought.
Seemed like this wasn’t the right Mr Collins then. She checked the LinkedIn Tarkin Collins, but he lived somewhere in Hungary, so it was pretty unlikely he’d be lying dead in a Melbourne gutter. It was weird though – the Lavalife Collins certainly looked like her friend the corpse. Maybe she should go on a date with him – the Lavalife one, not the corpse – and check him out in the flesh, so to speak. But not now; she had enough dates to deal with for now. She delicious’d Tarkin’s profile and shut the computer down.
‘Thanks Lanh, what do I owe you?’
‘Call it two bucks.’
‘I call you two bucks!’ she announced.
‘Ha ha.’ He pushed his cap back on his head and made to get up.
‘Don’t get up, I have it right here.’ She passed him the two dollars. He started getting up again.