Burning Down

by Venero Armanno

  ‘Suddenly lost for words?’

  He reached for his glass and tried to understand—no, absorb—just how much anger this girl had in her.

  ‘Look, there’s something you should know.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Maybe I’ve got something to get you through your studies.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Sistine said, and was it his imagination or for just one small moment was she more interested?

  ‘You wouldn’t have to come back here except to eat as much as you want. I can make sure you get a really good head start.’

  ‘I’ve already started, thank you.’

  ‘No, what I’m saying is, I’ve got this nest egg put away for you. It can help. So stop treating me like the worst man ever walked into this dump.’

  ‘What are you then?’

  ‘Not much in your eyes, that’s obvious, but nothing’s going to change the fact I’ve got a daughter and I deserve to know her.’

  ‘After the way you treated my mother?’

  ‘Tracy didn’t like me and she had every right. I’m not arguing about that. The marriage, it just turned out to be a mistake.’

  ‘That’s what I am too?’

  ‘Stop twisting every word I say. I never wanted to be separated from you. I never wanted to be a stranger.’

  ‘So what do you want now, really?’

  That caught him. That made him think. Looking into these eyes so much like his own reminded him of his own father, and the way that man could stare so pitilessly into him.

  ‘When I was a kid, my old man had his own ideas of what a child should and shouldn’t be. Whenever I tried to tell him what I thought he sent me back into the ring for more rounds, more training, more bruises. What I want for you is the opposite. I want you to be able to say what you need. I want you to know I can listen.’

  He waited a moment but Sistine wouldn’t reply.

  ‘When you were little, before I left, I used to hold you on my knee and you’d tell me things. I miss that. I miss it a lot. So please say I can see you. Don’t make me keep sitting here ordering food I don’t even like.’

  Sistine’s expression was hard to read. It wasn’t forgiving, and it wasn’t understanding, but it wasn’t completely pitiless either.

  ‘For instance, this plate,’ he kept on, wanting to make her smile. ‘I don’t even know what’s on it. Something that lived under a rock in an ocean or something.’

  ‘That dish is one of the best we serve. You eat the roe under the shell. It’s a horseshoe crab.’

  ‘Looks to me like he should have stayed under his rock.’

  ‘Maybe I’d say the same thing.’

  ‘But this fella’s on my plate and I’m sitting here.’

  He wanted to take her hand. Sistine moved both into her lap. She glanced around. The bistro was getting busier and they noticed Diego, dashing in the expensive cut of his dark brown suit and shaded tie, emerging to drink and laugh with his guests. A man without a worry in the world—yet Charlie saw a new frown come to his daughter’s forehead, as if there was something about Diego she didn’t quite understand.

  Sistine pushed her chair back.

  She straightened the collar of her black shirt, then Charlie Smoke felt his daughter look at him a moment longer than she had in so, so long.

  On the footpath outside his home, after being dropped off by a black-and-white taxi, he felt the heat finally lifting, perspiration drying in his shirt and on his forehead. A slow night breeze made the branches and leaves of the trees outside his place sway and move. Kulari at its peaceful best; the only sound was the creak of Charlie’s wire gate as he stepped into the yard, wanting his bed. He took the pathway. A shape huddled on his front stair made him freeze; finally someone had come for him.

  As he moved closer the silhouette became clear. The fact the boy was sleeping there made no sense at all.

  ‘Hey. You want to wake up a minute?’

  The boy opened his eyes, but they were heavy, his body still curled up and the crook of his arm his pillow. Charlie watched him blink as if this was a bed he didn’t recognise, then with a deep breath Ricky sat himself straight.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Charlie eased himself down to sit next to the boy. He didn’t speak again for some minutes, letting time pass, letting Ricky gather himself. Together they took in the distance and dark.

  Eventually Charlie said, ‘It’s a quiet night, huh?’

  Ricky nodded but didn’t reply.

  ‘Hot today and probably the same tomorrow. They got airconditioning at your school?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you thought how to get there from here?’ Charlie noticed the bicycle on the small patch of front lawn, by two square-bricked garden beds. ‘It’ll be a long ride.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Charlie let more time pass.

  ‘There something wrong with your own bed?’

  ‘You …’ Ricky managed, but that was all.

  ‘Go on, spit it out.’

  ‘You said everyone needs a safe place.’

  ‘That they do.’ Charlie sighed. ‘How’d you know where I live?’

  Ricky waited a moment, and he had to swallow hard, like there were things he needed to keep down.

  ‘Your address is on the bills you give my mother. I recognised where it is. We used to live in the next suburb and I went to the school down the road.’

  ‘You did?’ Charlie asked, genuinely surprised.

  ‘Mum said she knew she could trust you to do good work for us because of where you came from.’

  ‘Isn’t that something.’

  ‘I liked this place better than where we live now.’

  Charlie cast an eye over the street and all those shadows. ‘I guess the place is pleasingly leafy.’

  ‘Dad started getting promotions and stuff. We moved because he said we should live somewhere better.’

  ‘That’s what people always want to do.’

  ‘It’s stupid.’

  ‘So you made a sentimental journey. People do that too. But, you know, I never meant you should come to my place.’

  ‘Are you mad at me?’

  Charlie gave a small laugh. ‘No.’

  He saw Ricky make a fist of one hand and squeeze it hard. The boy was trying to stop his Adam’s apple bobbing.

  ‘It’s okay. Take it easy.’

  ‘At home … I made it so my parents don’t like each other. So then they don’t like me. Or they don’t like me and it’s the other way around.’

  ‘Families get messed up sometimes, but the important thing is—’

  ‘I wish my dad was like you.’

  ‘What? No. Definitely no.’

  ‘And, Mr Smoke? Maybe I could come work with you.’

  ‘All that dirt and dust, the sun … sweating like a pig day in, day out?’ Charlie patted the boy’s shoulder. ‘You’re strong and you’re going to get a lot stronger, but you stick to your school stuff.’

  ‘I don’t think my school’ll agree with you.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘These two guys keep pushing me around. They’re bigger than me but today I got even.’

  ‘You pushed back? Good. That’s the way.’

  ‘I took their schoolbags and set them on fire.’

  Charlie Smoke had to chew on that. Then, with effort, he stood.

  ‘Better come inside.’

  He put out his hand and yanked the boy to his feet.

  …

  It was midnight, which Diego Domingo knew was Junior’s prime time, and when the bistro closed Diego had the man on the telephone.

  ‘But you broke the rules, Terence.’

  ‘Old friend,’ the soft voice spoke through the r
eceiver, ‘don’t you break every rule by not paying?’

  ‘But my son. Your men went to him behind my back.’

  ‘Consider it a small encouragement.’

  ‘He’s an innocent. Just a boy.’

  ‘My reports are that young Roberto is very willing to shoulder your burden for you. He’s made distinct commitments.’

  ‘Keep him out of it.’

  ‘Diego, I think you have a better idea of how to keep Roberto out of things.’

  ‘Your father … he never operated like this.’

  ‘You never placed him in so awkward a position.’

  ‘I just need time to get finances organised.’

  ‘Excellent. I’m sure the boy can help.’

  ‘No. Thanks to you he knows more than I wanted, but you must never trouble him again.’

  ‘He means that much?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then there’s an easy way to prove it.’

  ‘You’ll leave him alone?’

  ‘Everything that happens, old friend, is completely dependent on you.’

  ‘That’s your promise?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Diego felt the relief that went through him, the sort of relief that weakened the bowels and made the back of his neck burn. ‘Thank you, Junior.’

  The line died. Diego replaced his receiver.

  More than anything he’d dreaded having to discuss this money problem with Robertino, to actually talk about the embarrassing mechanics of failure. But, come on, it wasn’t failure, not yet. There must be options. Diego couldn’t see any right now, it was hard to concentrate, but he would think of something—and from now on Roberto wouldn’t be involved. He had Junior’s word on that.

  Good enough news to go investigate a Spanish treasure, that thirty-year-old aged Torres Jaime waiting in a locked cabinet at the bar.

  …

  Charlie Smoke gave the boy a glass of milk and decided to keep him company with one for himself. They sat at the kitchen table like buddies. He couldn’t help noticing how Ricky seemed to like that.

  ‘So what’s the real problem?’

  ‘My dad … he sort of left tonight.’

  ‘Oh … why?’

  ‘They had a fight over me and what I did. But other stuff too. They do it a lot.’

  ‘Your father’ll come back. These things happen.’

  ‘He’s got someone else.’

  ‘No,’ Charlie said, a bit too quickly. ‘Don’t tell me that part.’ He watched Ricky take a sip of milk. ‘Just tell me about you.’

  ‘Me with Dad? He doesn’t care about me any more.’

  ‘That’s not gonna be true.’

  ‘He couldn’t care less about anything I want.’

  ‘Have you told him what you want?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Just to be left alone. Be allowed to do what I want to do. But he’s always on me about my future and studying and making sure I’m as good as him.’

  ‘Fathers usually want something like that.’

  ‘But he’s not good. He’s never home. Then whenever he is around he acts like he’s in charge. In charge of what?’

  ‘Maybe … maybe some fathers don’t like their lives very much. Don’t like where they ended up, so they try to live it a second time. Sometimes that’s by living through their kids. And if that doesn’t work out it makes them feel even worse.’

  ‘You too?’

  ‘Me too what?’

  ‘Your father was like that, right?’

  ‘My old man was his own story.’ Charlie leaned back. ‘He was set on me doing what he never could.’

  ‘Mum says you used to be a boxer.’

  ‘Which was his idea,’ Charlie replied.

  He remembered the first time his father had brought him inside a ring. At least, the first time that man had wanted to see how his son moved and punched. Charlie had been so young he should barely have even remembered the moment, but the memory was etched into his mind by the leather glove that had struck him full in the face, making his nose bleed copiously. A coach working with someone else had to come give little Carmelo his first application of adrenaline chloride solution, a cutman’s regular coagulant. Maybe six, seven years of age? After that he’d tried everything a small boy could think of to stay away from boxing; he’d stuffed himself with sweets and bad food, consciously or unconsciously putting on too much weight, but in the end his father had prevailed. It might have been because he’d been so overweight that his father had decided to prevail.

  Early teens, and into a ring he was thrown.

  ‘Carmelo.’ That tough, brittle voice. ‘Lift your hands.’

  And in unfamiliar gloves he’d had to do it.

  Ricky was looking at him.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Mr Smoke, I asked you how come it was your father’s idea.’

  ‘He was a boxer when he was young, but he had to give up early. A case of a back not designed for that sort of thing. He spent his life limping around, aches and pains all over. So he pushed me hard because my back was fine and the rest of me was thick enough.’ Charlie tried to smile but the story came hard. ‘And I never really wanted it, but the fighting in the ring was a party compared to what I had to put up with at home.’

  ‘Were you good at it?’

  ‘Maybe I learned a little. But just for local clubs and things like that. Not for the big game or overseas, that’s for sure. But whatever I had going I managed to throw down the toilet.’

  ‘Does that mean you didn’t try?’

  ‘I did my best to keep the old man happy. I kept showing up. But boxing’s something that first you have to give your body to, then more importantly your entire heart and soul. If you don’t, watch out. For me the real fight was always with him. Or maybe I’m making excuses. There were distractions as well … we can leave that part till you’re older.’

  Ricky was staring at him now. Really staring.

  ‘What?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘You’re talking about girls.’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘One thing,’ Ricky looked at his glass while he thought about it, ‘one thing I really hate is the way my dad looks at girls. Wherever we go. He thinks I can’t tell. But I can.’

  Charlie twisted his fingers together. This wasn’t any sort of thing that he ought to be hearing. Family stuff—and most of all Charlie didn’t want to hear it in relation to Holly Banks, a woman always so kind to him.

  ‘Let’s ring your ma, she’ll be worried.’

  ‘She’ll be asleep. She was drinking.’

  ‘Drinking?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You mean after your dad left?’

  Ricky nodded, all eyes.

  This Charlie Smoke didn’t want to hear about. ‘We might need to tell her in case she’s worried,’ he said. ‘You think she knows you’re not there?’

  ‘I climbed out my window. After she went to bed.’

  Charlie looked at the wall behind the boy, wondering what to do.

  ‘Can’t I stay? Just a bit?’

  ‘But then you have to go. This isn’t your home and we have to think about your mother.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘So, because of this thing with the fire, maybe you’ll end up at a different school?’

  ‘I don’t really want to change.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘There’s this, uhm—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘A special girl, maybe?’

  Ricky actually squirmed in his seat.

  ‘Come on,’ Charlie said, relieved to have found an easier
topic. ‘We’ve all got a secret crush somewhere.’

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘At my age?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Let’s stick with you.’

  ‘I’m not one of the cool kids.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘They get everything and girls like them.’

  ‘See where these guys are in ten, fifteen years. You’ll have it all over them.’

  ‘How would I?’

  ‘Because you’re smart.’

  ‘No one cares about that.’

  ‘And you seem to think about things.’

  ‘I’m fat and I’m ugly.’

  ‘You’re kidding me, right?’

  ‘No girl’s ever going to like me.’

  Charlie considered the boy’s face. He wasn’t complaining or whining—instead it was as if Ricky wanted Charlie to show him the way out. The way out of his troubles at home and a way out of believing he’d never be anything but unattractive to girls.

  ‘Okay, listen. This stays a secret between you and me?’

  The boy gave an enthusiastic nod. Charlie left the kitchen and went to the living room. He pulled open the bottom drawer of his old cupboard and lifted out the even older photo album that was there. It always remained hidden under never-used linen and lace doilies. Charlie didn’t bring the entire album over, because that would open up a lifetime of memories, but he found the one photograph he wanted.

  Returning, he sat back down and gave the picture to Ricky. And there he was, an unhappy kid name of Carmelo Fumo. The boy studied this other boy, from a world more than forty years back.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘You told me you’re going on fifteen, Ricky?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘That’s me, same age.’

  Ricky’s eyes widened in a sort of awed disbelief. ‘No.’

  ‘How’s that for a “cool kid”? Then and a long time after there wasn’t a girl on the planet who’d go for me.’

  ‘But you’re so blubbery. Look at the size of that stomach …’

  ‘All right, all right.’

  ‘Your face looks like the moon.’

  ‘Jesus, enough, you’re killing me.’

  They laughed together.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nothing. Time happened. Just maturing, growing up, then the training of course. But I was one very unhappy kid, that’s for sure.’