They didn’t. Instead the apartment block outside our window became filled with sad-eyed women who wore cheap tracksuits and sat on their balconies smoking cigarettes all day long.
We learnt there had been a slump in the property market and city apartments had become as cheap as chips. The apartment block next door to our office had been bought up by the government as cheap housing, and welfare recipients who’d had their children taken away from them were moved in. I couldn’t imagine anything worse than that. Sure, my own mum and dad drank too much, and maybe I got lucky because the government never took me away from them, but I would have never wanted the government to do that either. For people who drank too much, mum and dad did okay, and brought me up well enough. I can’t say whether that was the case for those women in the apartments or not. Mum and dad had stayed together and I knew they always would. Despite their drinking they had love in their lives. The women in the apartments next door to us seemed to have lost all hope of that.
I thought the ladies in the office would have some sympathy with the new apartment women, but they didn’t. The blokes in the office were disappointed, of course, and stopped looking out the windows. Stopped talking about nudie women too and started talking about football matches and all that sort of stuff that just bores me. Now the ladies in the office were the ones at the windows every day. Angela it seemed had set up a sweepstake. They’d number every floor of the apartment next to us, and given those poor women fake fancy names like Chantelle, Tiger Lily, Chrysanthemum, Keepsake and Holy Madonna. They all put in five dollars and pulled a name and a number out of a hat, the idea being that you might be the lucky one to get “the first sad-eye that jumped”. Angela’s words not mine.
I didn’t like what Angela was doing, but I had to admit that she was on the money. As dad had told me all those years ago, if you did live in one of those places what was to stop you from just jumping out of them? So the office women watched and waited, and one day, one sad woman way up on the twenty-sixth floor pushed a chair close up to the balcony and climbed up on it. We watched her as she teetered there. There was great excitement. Cheryl had the number of that apartment woman who had been christened Felicity. But after what happened I always thought of her as Felicity the Ladybird.
The ladies in the office saw her leap, then drop like a dead weight. They turned away from the window, saying things like “yuck, too gross, I can’t watch”, ready to start counting out Cheryl’s winnings. They were all cosying up to her, hoping she’d take them for a drink after work. The men in the office were still talking about football. Trent had chucked a sickie that day. Only I watched Felicity as she fell. It was the most amazing experience of my life. I had a clear view as she plummeted all the way down. I saw her as she struggled to rip off her clothes, pulling them from her body until she was naked and her white skin shone beautiful and translucent in the afternoon sunlight. Then, as she passed our floor, on her way to the concrete below, a pair of gossamer wings unfurled from her back, breaking her fall. Wondrous and sparkling they were and she hovered in mid-air for a moment, fluttering, then flew away. To find her children, I thought, and remembered a story that my mother had once told me how sometimes fairies get trapped in human form and forget their true nature and it takes a crisis for them to remember themselves again. Maybe. But I knew one thing for certain. Felicity the Ladybird was fearless, just like I’d imagined apartment people to be when I was a young kid.
I only told Trent about what I’d seen, not Cheryl or Kev or the others, and he seemed to understand and not think I was a fool. Two weeks later we saw another one drop. “This one ain’t got no wings,” Trent said, as we stood at the office window, and he was right.
* * * *
Geoffrey Maloney lives in Brisbane with his wonderful wife and three daughters. He loves writing and gets published often enough to make him feel good about the fact that he’s dedicated to an esoteric art.
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* * * *
* * *
Wives
PAUL HAINES
Part I: Greetings
The red needle on the speedometer crept towards the victory target. If it gets to forty kilometres, I’ll ask her. Jimbo peddled faster down Old Dookie Road, away from the stench of the fruit cannery on the outskirts of town.
He swerved through a potholed section of bitumen, avoiding the larger weeds that kept the road together. The needle dipped below thirty-five. He pushed his muscles harder, relishing the slow burn. The pedals took a life of their own, spinning faster and faster, whirling his legs along with them. Come on, forty, forty, forty, and Niki is mine. He imagined her saying yes then kissing him, with the tongue, like they had done when they were kids playing Wives in the tree hut. A long, slow wet kiss. Not like the reserved peck on the cheek, followed by the quick embrace appropriate for cousins in their late teens. Jimbo would hold her tight, her breasts squashing against his chest, until she pulled away. She always pulled away. He longed to see how those breasts looked now Niki was a woman.
Sweat slicked his bare back in the early evening sun. Though the summer’s burn was not so fierce this year, the breeze from the speed he was travelling barely cooled his skin. Once, his Old Man would’ve beaten him for riding bare back, but the Old Man was too weak to administer much of a hiding these days. Cancer had tamed that bastard.
Jimbo pumped the pedals harder. The spokes whined as the needle approached thirty-nine. Forty and you ask her to marry you. Forty, forty.
A klaxon blared behind him. The sound tore up Jimbo’s spine. The front bicycle wheel wobbled. A vintage truck roared past, engulfing him in dust and gravel. Someone shouted from the cab window. Jimbo eased on the back brakes, fighting to bring the bike under control. The front wheel hit a chunk of cracked cement, twisted sideways and locked. The bike jack-knifed and spun. Jimbo hugged the handlebars, staring at the receding truck through the dissipating cloud of dust. Turn of the century, maybe sixty years old, I reckon. Nnnghhhnn ...
The bike crunched into the road. The handlebars bucked, whacking Jimbo in the jaw. He bounced upwards, spun head over tit, and crashed back on to the side of the bike frame. It scraped to a halt with a screech of bruised metal.
He lay there as the dust settled, his chest heaving, waiting for his mind to climb back into his skull. In the distance the klaxon blared again.
That’s fucken Wazza’s truck! What’s that cunt doin’ back in town for Christmas?
~ * ~
It took forty minutes to drag the broken bicycle the last five kilometres into town. Jimbo’s back initially stung with sweat, until the sun cooked the scabs shut. He’d been lucky not to break anything.
By the time he got home, the sun had almost called it a day, though it still seemed reluctant to leave the horizon. Jimbo was going to be late for the pub. He dumped the bicycle in the shed against the wheel blocks supporting the Old Man’s prize Ford Commodore. The bastard would never get round to restoring that piece of shit, especially not now. As soon as the Old Man carked it, Jimbo was going to sell the car to one of them collectors in the City.
He snuck round to the back door, edging past the homebrew kit he was supposed to clean out this weekend. He didn’t want to get in a row with the Old Man about the bike getting bust up. Be no good heading down to The Aussie late for happy hour with that buzzing round my brain.
The flyscreen door was locked.
“James? Is that you?” his mother called from the lounge.
“Fuck,” he said under his breath. Payday was supposed to be a good day. Not this. “Yeah, Mum. It’s okay, I’ll come round the front.”
“No, no, no, I’m up anyway. I was about to get your father another beer.”
Jimbo listened to her slippers shuffling on the kitchen lino as she limped to the back door. She fumbled at the latch. Her mouth dropped open when she saw him.
“James! What happened to you?”
“Ssshhh.” He nodded in the direction of the lounge before giving her a kiss
on the cheek. “Came off the bike’s all. I’m okay.”
She winced as he walked inside. “Oh, ya poor thing. Let me help ya clean this up.”
“A shower will be fine, Mum. I’m catching up with Fitzy and Dave down The Aussie.” He slipped a twenty from his pay and pressed it into his mother’s hand. “Get ya self something nice, eh?”
“Thanks, love.” She limped over to the fridge. “Can I fix ya something to eat before ya go out?”
“Mel! Where’s me beer?” the Old Man grunted from the lounge.
“No thanks, Mum, I’m running late as it is.”
“Hey!” the Old Man called again. “Is that you, boy?”
“Yeah.” Jimbo peeled a fifty from his pay and put it next to the breadboard on the kitchen bench. “Ya money’s in here. I’m catching up with a few of the boys down the pub. I’m late.”
“Get ya lazy arse in here, boy. I got something to tell ya.”
Jimbo grabbed a beer from the fridge and went into the lounge. Even though the blinds were shut, the room felt stifling. The brick house was designed to keep the heat in during winter. In the summer you could cook meat on the walls. An old fan rocked from side to side as it blew hot air around the room. The Old Man sat in his rocker watching old TV files on the screen. It bathed him in enough light so the skin cancer crusting his nose and cheeks cast shadows on the rest of his face.
Jimbo tossed the beer at him. “What?”
The Old Man caught the beer then paused his show. He was watching that old show about four women living in a city called New York and the lovers they kept having every week. Lovers, not husbands. Why the Old Man wasted his final years watching crap like that, Jimbo didn’t know.
The Old Man cast an eye over Jimbo’s scrapes. “Yer late.” With a grunt, he opened his beer. “Doin’ a bit a overtime, eh?”
“Someone’s gotta pay the bills.”
“Yep.” The Old Man raised the bottle to his mouth and gulped. Beer trickled through the cracks in the corner of his mouth, down his chin, and onto his bare gut. His grey chest hair glistened in the glow of the screen. “Aaahhh. That’s what sons are for, boyo. Don’t ya forget it. Daughters are no good cos they just fuck off, eh? End up giving their money to the wrong family. Like ya cousin.”
“What?” said Jimbo.
His mother shuffled beside him and gently squeezed his elbow.
The Old Man took another swig. “Nicole’s scored some fancy job in the City. Bet ya horses ya won’t be seeing her again. She’ll meet some high-flyer, get married and that’ll be the end of it, if you arkse me.” He pointed a scabbed finger at the screen and chuckled. “Just like those bitches, eh Melinda?”
It felt like a knife to the gut. Not Niki. Any of the other girls could leave for the City, but not Niki. Jimbo stared at his mother, looking for a lie in the lines of her face, but found only sympathy in her faded blue eyes.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he said to her.
“I’m sorry, James. I didn’t want to spoil your night,” she said softly.
“She was never going to be yours, boyo,” said the Old Man. “Ya Uncle Frank hates my guts. Reckons I fucked that slut he married and we know that ain’t true, don’t we, Mel?” The Old Man glared at his wife, challenging her. “And anyways, Nicole’s too good-lookin’ and far too fucken smart for the likes a you.”
The Old Man chuckled again, his finger picking at the crust of a scab on his nose, and resumed watching the file.
~ * ~
The Aussie was packed. Sweat beaded on the inside of the windows, cigarette smoke choked the air, bodies jostled and pressed against each other in the battle for the bar, and the drum and guitar band shook the walls with a cover of the old Noll and Barnes classic ‘Dancing in the Streets’. There were even girls on the dance floor.
Jimbo stood at the front of the queue of blokes outside. Keats and Mason, this evening’s bouncers, were armed with baseball bats and wore lightweight body armour.
“Hey, Keats,” said Jimbo. “How many girls here, ya reckon?”
Keats screwed up his face and tapped the end of the bat into the broken pavement. “I dunno. Thirty?”
Jimbo nodded. “Pretty good odds tonight, eh? About one in ten.”
“I reckon.” Keats scratched at the raw scar splitting the stubble on his head. “Ya cuz’s in tonight, mate.”
“I know. S’posed to be meeting up with her. Ya gunna let me in?”
“We’re full, mate. Gotta wait for some cunt to get thrown out. Shouldn’t take long but. Some outta-towners in tonight. Lotsa cash for the ladies. They’ll piss off the local boys for sure.”
“How long’s the wait?”
“Maybe an hour. Maybe more.” Keats looked up from the cracked pavement and gave Jimbo a slight nod.
“How much?” Jimbo asked.
Keats grinned, his mouth full of gapped stubby teeth. “A tenner or a blowie.” He struck the baseball bat against the cement. “Up to you.”
A fucken tenner? When did the price go up so much? Jimbo fingered the thin roll of notes in his pocket. “Sure. When do you want it?”
“Still recovering from the last one. Heh, good ole Gaz, love his work. Meet you in the bogs about nine. You can do me then.”
“No worries, mate.” Jimbo strode into the crowd festering inside the pub. At least Keats never took long to come.
* * * *
Fitzy slammed down a shot of tequila, grimaced and wiped his fat lips with the back of his hand. “Ya missed her, Jimbo. She left maybe an hour and a half ago.”
“Shit.” Jimbo stared at his empty glass. Booze burned in his belly, its heat not yet reaching his brain. A bicycle wheel on a twisted bike frame spun crookedly in the base of the glass.
They’d scored a cubicle near the toilets. Crammed around a chipped laminated table, they sat on cracked leather seats that gushed springs and stuffing. Beer glistened on the table surface under the fluoro lights and ash overflowed from the upturned tray. Jimbo drew an arrow through it.
“Wanted to tell ya herself ‘bout the job.” Dave wiped the last dregs of his shot from his scraggly red beard.
“Hey boys!” a voice boomed in Jimbo’s ear. A tray holding a fresh bottle of homemade tequila plonked onto the table. “Let’s get pissed!”
Six-foot-three of gangly legs and beer gut grinned at them from a heavily stubbled face. A few strands of shiny black hair had snuck from beneath the red trucker’s cap on his head. The broken nose bridging the twinkling blue eyes were easily identifiable though.
“Fucken hell! Wazza Wilson, you old cunt.” Jimbo rose from his chair and clapped his arms around him. “Ya ran me off the road this arvo. Haven’t seen ya in years. What the hell are ya doing back in Shepp?”
“It’s Christmas, boys. Thought I’d pop in on the folks on my run to Mildura. Deliver the cash to me Old Man in person.” Wazza eased himself into the cubicle and began pouring shots. “That Keats is a big ugly looking bastard these days. Had the nerve to ask for a blowjob to get in here. That cunt needs to get himself a woman.”
“Not that easy, Waz,” said Jimbo.
“There’s a bit a pussy in here.” Waz swigged from the bottle and indicated the dance floor. “Fucken hell. Look at Sledge!”
Sledge, a heavy set guy rumoured to have got and kept his job because no one could beat him in a fight - fist or knife - sat at the bar flashing cash and booze around while a girl perched on each knee. He was also the foreman down at the Cannery and most of the boys weren’t likely to go him for fear of losing their jobs.
“Yeah, half of the pussy comes from the House. Too expensive for us young blokes.”
“Shepp’s got a House now? A formal House?” Waz asked.
“Yeah, the Cartel moved in a couple a years ago. Shut down the brothels real quick.”
“How much a go?” asked Waz.
“Two hundred.” Dave had a smirk on his face.
“That’s not too bad.”
“It’s over two week’
s wages!” said Jimbo. “We can’t fucken afford that, Waz. Maybe you can with ya City job an all that. We sure as fuck can’t!”
Dave laughed. “What ya saving for, Jimbo?”
Jimbo gave him the finger. “You’ll never get married, cunt.”
“And you’ll never get laid, she-virgin!”
“Hole’s a hole, mate. I want more than that. I want a wife.”
“Don’t we all,” said Dave. “There ain’t enough to go around and I don’t wanna die saving for one and never had no pussy.”
The Year's Best Australian SF & Fantasy - vol 05 Page 15