by Zane Lovitt
I lean forward, clasp my hands and bow my head, wanting to keep her calm. I gently clear my throat.
‘Rodney paid me to do something bad. And I did it.’
From far off I hear his shoes, sharp cracks against the hot concrete that circles this motel, every step a cannon firing. I’ve never heard shoes this loud. Perhaps he gets them specially made.
I pour more gin into a tumbler that is scratched and dimpled from all the drinkers that have stayed in this room before me. I slosh in the tonic and swirl it with my finger, waiting for the shoes to reach my door.
A soft knock.
Heat and light come at me as I pull on the handle. I look down while my pupils adjust.
‘Come inside quick,’ I say.
The shoes are expensive leather, tasselled, a deep sunset colour. The rest of his outfit is carefully casual, true to whatever catalogue he bought it from, right down to the summer jacket tossed over one shoulder. It all contrasts with the ruddy, asymmetrical face that smiles as he steps inside. I close the door and my eyes have to adjust again.
‘Nice to see you too,’ he says.
He lays his jacket on the bed and glances around. There’s the typical ugliness and stink of silverfish and this particular motel is built of concrete blocks, which makes the rooms like kilns this time of year. But also they’re soundproof. No one next door can hear what we say, accidentally or not.
I needed our meeting place to surprise him. This dusty motel outside Kerang, where there are more people-sized rocks than people, where the sun shines hard on absolutely everything, it’s a hard place to get followed to. Not that I expected him to get followed. But I could go to jail for what I’ve done, so I need the grand total of people who know about it to remain me and Rodney.
Through rimless glasses his eyes fall on the briefcase, closed and locked on the writing desk. He has the smallest mouth I’ve ever seen; even when he licks his lips it doesn’t get any larger than a ten cent coin.
I say, ‘I need to search you.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I can’t run the risk of you copying the disks.’
‘Are you drunk?’
‘Turn around.’
‘Do you think I’d have any idea how to copy these disks, even if I wanted to?’
‘Turn the fuck around.’
‘Goodness me. You are in a mood.’ He turns slowly. I slip my fingers under his collar, down his chest. ‘Last time you practically fell over yourself to get my business. Now you—’
Rodney giggles when I press his armpits, because he’s ticklish and also because he thinks this is stupid. ‘Hope the bloody maid doesn’t walk in,’ he quips. Then, because he wasn’t sure if I got it: ‘She’ll think we’re a couple of poofs.’
Roughly I raise his foot and tear off one of those fancy shoes and a sock. ‘Christ.’ He grabs hold of my head to keep his balance.
I raise the other foot and do the same. There’s nothing there. I step away and let Rodney fall back onto the bed. I pick up his jacket, squeeze it all over.
‘Happy?’ He’s less flippant now.
I reach for my drink, gulp some, wipe my mouth.
He asks, ‘Is something wrong? You seem anxious. Has something happened that I should know about?’
I put the drink down slowly, running through the various answers to that question. Something has happened, hasn’t it, John?
‘Nothing that concerns you,’ I say.
I open the briefcase and pull out a pack of cards, a laptop computer, a can of lighter fluid, a pack of matches, headphones and five CDs in clear sleeves. They’re labelled Fisher, one through five.
‘Sit down here,’ I say, indicating the chair in front of the writing desk. ‘And give me your phone.’
Rodney sneers, shakes his head. But he slaps the phone into my waiting palm.
‘A tad paranoid, aren’t we?’
‘After what you hired me to do, you’re going to accuse me of being paranoid?’
Rodney stiffens. He’s used to being the rude one. ‘I only did what any prudent man would do under the circumstances. I plan to have children with Kiara, do you understand? I have to be sure there are no skeletons in the proverbial.’
‘There are other ways of doing a background check.’
‘And I’ve done those. This was the last box to be ticked.’
Having made his point, he sits down in front of the laptop. The five disks perch primly beside it.
‘One for each session,’ I say. ‘Forty-five to fifty minutes each. It’s the last one, disk five, that’s got what you’re looking for. The others are less interesting.’
He picks up disk five and slides it into the laptop.
I reach out for the playing cards and refill my glass, give another finger-stir.
Rodney turns to me. ‘I’d rather not listen to these in front of you.’
‘That’s a shame.’
I crash onto the bed.
He doesn’t take his eyes off me. I lay out the cards and don’t look up. Maybe he’s thinking of something to make me leave the room. Maybe he’s waiting for me to glance up so he can give me his expectant face. Finally he rotates his body to face the computer. Puts on the headphones. Clicks play.
Gustafson says, ‘Come in, Kiara,’ right at the moment I press record. Their voices get louder, fuller, so they must be moving to the centre of his office.
‘Did you get caught in the rain?’ he asks.
‘I like the rain,’ she says back.
I’m parked in a thin, forgotten kind of alley that’s really an abyss between tall buildings, where it’s still raining twenty minutes after it’s stopped everywhere else. I can’t hear the drains sluicing water over the dumpsters because there are headphones clamped around my ears, but I can see it drizzling across my windscreen. Which is good. Because if a pedestrian glances at my car from the street, they probably won’t see me inside.
Gustafson says, ‘How are the wedding plans coming?’
Still distant, rustling, maybe taking off a raincoat, Kiara says, ‘We spent this morning sampling cakes.’
‘What did you settle on?’
‘Chocolate mud.’
‘Ah…my weakness. But tell me, what does a vegan chocolate cake have in it?’
‘Mostly avocado.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘I’ll save you some.’
Five weeks ago I broke into Gustafson’s office and found a single coffee table placed between two comfortable armchairs. On top of it sat a lonely box of tissues. I’d switched on one of four or five lamps despite it being daytime—his windows are heavily fogged, the walls a deep red. On his desk I saw a photograph of three men, brothers I would guess, wearing fly-fishing overalls, grinning like they’d just caught the biggest fish of their lives. One of them had blond hair, the one in the middle was a round man with a great Santa Claus face, his beard neat and trim. The third wore tinted prescription glasses.
I don’t know what he looks like, I’ve never seen him in the flesh, but with clues such as the admiring talk of cake and the kind of subtle exhalation I hear now as he sits down, I’ve concluded over these past five weeks that Doctor Gustafson is the fat guy in the middle of that picture.
‘How do you feel today?’ he asks.
‘I’m…’ Kiara knows this isn’t smalltalk. Her voice is on-mic and loud, so she must be sitting down too. ‘I feel good. Getting nervous, I suppose.’
‘About the wedding?’
‘I suppose.’
There’s a short silence.
‘To tell the truth, I’m exhausted. I spent the night at Rodney’s, and it wasn’t all sleeping…’ I hear the smile in her voice. ‘And that makes me feel good. I like that we’re like that.’
‘It can indicate a healthy relationship.’
‘Yeah…’
Gustafson says nothing.
She says, ‘And also, Rodney’s such a lad. I guess a part of me thinks, if I can satisfy him, he won’t need to be
with other women anymore.’
Gustafson says nothing to that, either. Dead air filters through my headphones.
‘It’s security, I suppose,’ Kiara says. ‘I haven’t known him very long. Only a few months really, and there are times I wonder if I know him at all. But our sex life is…really good. And I know he wants children too. Those are the things that make me feel confident about getting married.’
For five weeks I’ve listened to her talk about Rodney’s libido. As far as I can tell, she’s trying to convince herself that she can change him. Or that marriage will change him. Despite how obvious it is, and despite all the money she must be paying Gustafson, he hasn’t told her yet that she’s lying to herself.
‘How are the negotiations coming along?’ His voice is distant, echoing, like someone talking at the far end of a church. Hearing him wasn’t a priority when I taped the microphone in place.
‘The financial agreement?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t know. I try to have nothing to do with it. And I told Rodney that. I said, this was your idea, you and Barry figure it out. I know they haven’t agreed on anything yet. And I know they both hate each other, but that’s all I know.’
‘What do you think will happen, if they don’t reach an agreement?’
‘They will. I’m really not worried about it.’
More silence. I’ve never been to a shrink, but I’m guessing all this silence is normal.
Gustafson says, ‘I’m wondering if you’re ready to talk about what happened. To your sister and her boyfriend. You gave me some broad strokes at our first meeting, but…Do you feel ready?’
‘Ummmm…’
He says, ‘You’ve been reluctant so far. And that’s fine. There’s no pressure.’
I wind up the levels on the receiver and on the laptop, but there’s only hiss.
She isn’t responding.
This morning I refilled a Jameson’s whiskey bottle with cheap bourbon and stashed it beside the driver’s seat. Now I reach for it and unscrew the lid and take a swig. These ‘broad strokes’ happened before I got this job, but Gustafson’s been tapping her on the shoulder like this for all of the five weeks I’ve been listening. And every time he does I get a sick twist in my guts and I have to ease it with something. Then, every time she doesn’t talk about it, I reward myself with a drink. And since she’s never talked about it, every week I’ve been getting soused right here in my car.
She asks, ‘What’s the rule? With doctor-patient privilege?’
I drink.
‘I’m bound by my professional code and by law not to break your confidence.’
‘But is it really that clear cut? I mean, there must be exceptions.’
Drink.
‘Not really.’
Silence. I hold the bottle ready.
She says, ‘I know I’ve wasted a lot of time in here. I’m sorry.’
Drink.
‘You don’t need to apologise. The impression you gave me, when you first came here, was that you wanted to make a clean breast of things before your wedding. Would you say that’s true?’
‘Yes.’
And I take the opportunity to finish the bottle. Which is a shame, because what she says next makes me want a drink more than ever.
‘You’re right. I might as well get it over with. I just don’t know how to tell it.’
‘Let’s start with what you remember about that night.’
Then she tells her story, and my laptop computer records every word in twenty-four-bit stereo. Clear and sharp and perfect.
The thing is, it wasn’t self-defence. Glen was drunk and he came up the stairs at me and shouted something…I don’t remember what. I could smell alcohol, not just on him but everywhere in the house, and I asked him if he’d been drinking. Stupid question. He shouted at me that it wasn’t my business. Called me a slag and told me to piss off. He didn’t hit me or even threaten me. He just stood there, on the top step, and I remember thinking he was waiting for me to do it. I thought he knew that’s what I was going to do. Like he was daring me to, the way he was yelling. So I pushed him, just my palms against his chest, but I did it as hard as I could.
He lost his balance and reached for me. If he’d reached for the banister he’d have been fine. But he reached for my arm and I pulled it away and he went back and his legs…his legs folded up and he dropped and I screamed. I know I screamed because that’s all I’ve thought about since it happened. Not because of the guilt. Just because…I didn’t know for sure if anyone heard me. Like, if Glen’s neighbours heard me then they’d know that someone was there.
He fell backwards and I screamed and covered my mouth to stop the noise and I turned away. I heard him go down the stairs and straight away I started crying. I think I was bawling before he reached the bottom. I think I’d been about to cry all that afternoon, since Steph had come over, and this was all it needed. He was at the bottom of the stairs, against the sideboard, and one of his arms was on a funny angle. It was pulled back sharply behind his head and when I saw it I thought he must be dead. No one’s arm could look like that if they weren’t dead. But I ran down the stairs and he was breathing, but not awake. His eyes were half-closed and I could only see the whites of them, like his eyeballs were turned all the way back into his head. That’s how he looked. I didn’t want to touch him. I didn’t want to leave fingerprints on him. I thought, if I leave fingerprints, I’ll go to prison. So I was thinking pretty clearly like that, I guess.
I thought about calling an ambulance, but then I thought, he’d tell the police I pushed him. And I’d go to prison for sure. You know, it’s not that prison loomed that large in my head. It’s just that, without me, Steph would be out in the world. With Glen, probably. She’d have nowhere else to go. All of this went through my mind in a few seconds.
I went back upstairs and got Steph’s suitcase and packed it. Then I went room to room, getting everything I thought she’d need, which is what I’d come to do in the first place. The bathroom and everything. There were empty bottles all over the house, just beer bottles everywhere, like he was collecting them. For Steph to clean up, I suppose. She wasn’t always such a doormat, but she got that way, living with him.
And I kept saying to myself, I must be in shock. I must be in shock. This is what it’s like to be in shock. But I didn’t feel sick or numb or anything. I stopped crying and I got her things, clothes, her diary. Then I took the suitcase down the stairs and I had to step over Glen. I kind of looked at him but only quickly. He hadn’t moved. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing then.
No one saw me leave. I mean, I have to assume that now. When I got home, Steph was watching TV, curled up on the couch. And I remembered how, earlier that day, I’d wanted her to move in, you know? I was so angry about what had happened, all I could think was that she had to get away. So what if my flat is too small? But then I got back home, lugging her suitcase into the loungeroom, and there she was with her eye all swollen up, and I thought, this is it. This is what my life is now. Every moment was going to be about Steph. And Glen. This was going to infect everything.
She looked at the suitcase and she asked me if I’d seen him and I said, ‘No. He wasn’t there.’ And that was the end of it. She kept on watching TV. I sat down and watched it too.
In my rearview mirror I see it’s raining again.
Gustafson says, ‘What else can you tell me about how you felt?’
There’s rustling and a moan, like Kiara is stretching, waking herself up.
‘I felt terrible. I half-thought the police would be waiting for me when I got home. I expected it every day for three weeks. And then, one day, there they were.’
‘What did they say?’
‘They said Glen was dead. They said his partner at the bike shop had broken into the house. He found him. Glen had been there all that time, they said.’
‘And during that period, only you knew what had happened to him?’
‘Yes.
’
‘What was that like?’
‘It was like…’ I can hear Kiara reaching, trying to be truthful, ‘It was like running in the dark. Knowing you’re going to hit something and hurting with the anticipation. For all of those three weeks, Steph had been talking about going to see Glen, and I’d say no. Give him time. Let him know he’s done wrong. Make him…’ Kiara’s voice breaks. She sniffs back tears. ‘Make him come to you.’
She breaks down, muffles her sobs with something, probably her hands. Gustafson waits. I wait too.
In the rearview I can see all the way to the end of the lane and across the street to a shopfront, though I can’t see what it sells. There’s clothing on mannequins in the window, but it’s strange-looking clothing. The mannequins look strange. The water splattering across the back windshield makes it difficult to see.
Kiara composes herself. ‘So when the police came over… Helping her through that was the hardest part. The police said Glen had been alive for about twenty-four hours before he’d finally died. Steph blamed herself, for not being there.’ Kiara honks mucus into a tissue. ‘She has this thing where she cries so hard she starts to choke, and I have to slap her on the back to make her breathe. She’s been like that since we were kids—’
‘Okay,’ Gustafson says. ‘Let’s keep talking about you, though. No one suspected that you were involved?’
‘No. They said Glen had some ludicrous amount of alcohol in his blood when he died. It was like the police were trying to convince me it was an accident.’
‘What about Stephanie? The police suspected her?’
‘They asked her questions. She told them he’d hit her but she didn’t know he’d fallen.’
‘And they believed her? Just like that?’
Kiara inhales quickly so she can laugh. Which takes a few seconds. She’s making a point.
‘They took one look at Steph and knew she was the most truthful person any of them had ever met. She can’t lie to anyone. She’s…it’s like this switch in her head that never got flicked. Like, she trips up on her words, speaks in noises…That’s the beauty of Steph. I don’t think for them there was ever a question of foul play.’