by Nick Place
‘Of course. He rang to say he was sorry you were dead but after that, there wasn’t much to say.’
‘So he bought it?’
‘Sure. Why wouldn’t he? We all did. Even me, you bastard.’
She sounded as though she was on the brink of crying.
‘Babe, I’m sorry. I couldn’t tell you. The less who know, the better. I promise I’ll make it up to you. In a big way.’
‘I’m so glad you’re alive. I’m just glad you’re alive.’
‘And kicking, Sophie. Listen, just sit tight. Wildie and I weren’t the only thing that got out of that car in one piece. Let me make the most of that and when I can, I’ll send for you, okay? It goes without saying that you don’t say a fucking word in the meantime.’
‘How dumb do you think I am? Jenssen would have my arse too, Stig.’
‘Yes, he would. I’ll be in touch, okay?’
‘Sure …’
Silence stretched down the line until she said, ‘Jesus, babe.’
‘I know. I’m sorry. But it will be worth it. I promise. Love you.’
‘Love you too, honey,’ she said.
Stig hung up.
And so did Sophie.
Sitting in the sunshine, wrapped in a towel, gazing down on Byron and smoking a home-made rollie, the scent of marijuana drifting through the room, Karl Jenssen said: ‘Where is he?’
‘Melbourne,’ Sophie said, reaching for the joint. ‘I heard a tram in the background, the stupid fuck.’
The Friends of the Planet door clanged as usual. Jake could never get used to those bells that hung off it, crashing into the glass. It took him a moment of steadying them with his hand before he looked around – and there she was, sitting behind the counter, watching him with one thin eyebrow raised over those amazing grey eyes.
‘Nice entrance, Jeff,’ Lou said.
‘Jake.’
‘Oh sorry. Jake. I’ve always been crap with names.’
‘It’s okay. We hardly know each other,’ he said, feeling himself blushing for no apparent reason. ‘I really like that T-shirt,’ he stammered to divert her attention, pointing randomly at the shirts hanging over her head.
Lou turned and gazed at the shirt before reading, deadpan: ‘“Abortion is murder. Hang them high.” Really? You love that one?’
‘Umm, the one next to it,’ Jake said weakly. ‘“Vegan future. Valid future.”’
‘You’re a vegan?’
‘You bet,’ Jake said, thinking he might have been wrong about the Star Trek connection. He’d really better look up that term. ‘So, um, we were talking about a coffee to discuss my idea. Is there a day that would be good, you know, for you and everything?’
Lou stood up and swung her arms behind her head, her chest straining against her shirt before his eyes as she stretched and yawned. ‘What about now?’
‘Now?’ Jake was trying to look anywhere but at the two undone buttons of her shirt. He’d taken a late lunch break to come here, hoping to catch her when she wasn’t busy – but this he hadn’t expected.
‘Yeah, I’ve got cabin fever. Warren is in the back somewhere. He can keep an eye on things. HEY WAZZA? CAN YOU MIND THE DESK FOR A BIT?’
‘Sure,’ came a voice from the kitchen area.
Jake looked at all the empty tables and chairs in the café section at the front of the shop. ‘You don’t want to just grab a coffee here?’
Lou was already at the front door. ‘Nah, I need to get out.’ Then she leaned in, smelling of something Jake couldn’t quite grasp – soap? sandalwood? – and whispered, her breath thrilling his neck, ‘Plus the organic coffee they serve in here is nothing but weak mud.’
What she didn’t mention was the guy who worked behind the counter at Soul Food, a café just down the street on the other side of the road. He and Lou had been appraising one another for a while. Turning up with another man, even one as dodgy as this supermarket geek, would keep counter boy guessing.
Blissfully ignorant of all this, Jake walked tall down Smith Street in his kick-arse hat, his cool T-shirt and streetwise jeans, accompanied by the hottest hippie chick on the planet. His heart soared. When one of the ever-present Smith Street desperados shuffled up, yelling that she needed three dollars for a fare to Ballarat, Jake gave the woman a five-dollar note. He was living large.
They managed to avoid being killed by a tram as they crossed the street and headed for the Soul Food Café: All organic. All the time.
***
Stig stopped to check out some vintage footy jumpers in the window of a collectables shop. One looked a lot like the guernsey he had worn as a junior playing for Yarraville in the Western Region Football League, just after the club fell out of the VFA. The Mighty Villains, as the club had once been known. Now he’d heard they were the Eagles, combined with bloody Seddon. Footy wasn’t the same.
The Wild Man was checking out the shop assistant in a clothes shop: spectacular legs ruined by leggings cut off at the calves, which seemed to be the fashion in Melbourne, but made no sense to a Queenslander. Either wear leggings or let bare legs do their thing. The girl caught Wildie looking and gave him a stare, then grimaced when the Wild Man slowly grabbed his crotch and thrust in her direction.
They continued along Smith Street, Stig planning to scope Friends of the Planet in search of his old girlfriend. But then, shit: there she was, right in front of him, weaving through the traffic and hurrying to get out of the way of a tram, maybe a hundred metres down the street. Stig took a half-step into a doorway to look at her. Damn, did she do justice to his memories. She still had that body, even if she insisted on wrapping it in tie-dyed dresses and mottled stockings, her hair held back by what looked like a crocheted headband. No doubt about those tits though, swinging under a half-buttoned shirt. And the legs had lost nothing in his time away. Stig had a lot of fond memories of being tangled amongst those legs. And still well groomed, under the hippie façade, he’d bet. Louie’s shocking secret: she hadn’t fully bought into the hairy, unwashed greenie scene. But you had to make it to her bed to find out.
What Stig couldn’t believe was the dweeb she was walking with. Some nerd in a ridiculous hat, kind of shuffling to keep up with her, and wearing black business shoes with jeans. He was saying something and she laughed, but politely, not with much enthusiasm. And then they were gone, stepping through the door of the Soul Food Café.
‘Hey Wildie,’ Stig said. ‘You want to meet my girlfriend?’
‘Isn’t she your ex-girlfriend?’ The Wild Man replied.
‘Only until she sees me again. Come and meet Louie.’
***
‘Admit it,’ Cecy said. ‘You’re enjoying yourself.’
‘That’s a big call,’ Laver replied as they cruised east along Gertrude Street.
‘You know you are.’ Cecy just behind his shoulder as they rode. ‘The sun’s out, you’ve had some good coffee, you spent half an hour checking out some industrial design shops, you got to read the paper cover to cover.’
‘I call it quality police work.’
‘You even look like riding isn’t such an ordeal anymore.’
‘I have to admit, my arse is only hurting me badly today, not absolutely killing me.’
‘Thanks for sharing,’ she said.
‘And my legs are feeling better. The sun helps. But I’m not sure I’d go all the way to “enjoying myself”.’
‘Keep telling yourself that. Be so much more fun sitting at a desk at St Kilda Road, drinking instant coffee, sleep-deprived, trawling paper records, looking for white-collar crime.’
‘Is that what you think my life used to be like?’ he said, swinging around in the saddle to look at her – and then almost running into a door swung open by an oblivious woman getting out of her car.
Heart pounding, he concentrated on where he was riding for a bit but then admitted, ‘Actually, that was a fair chunk of most days. I’d be gagging to be out in the sunshine on a day like this.’
‘
Well, there you go.’ Cecy sounding dangerously close to smug.
‘Except for the pointless and futile nature of the work,’ he added.
‘Jesus,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘The example you set.’
They turned left onto Smith Street and Cecy said, ‘I had the weirdest dream last night.’
‘You were a real cop who got to ride around in cars?’
‘No, I was at a rock concert and I had to fight my way to the stage because my band was on.’
‘What was the band called?’
‘The Theatre of Cruelty.’
‘Good name,’ Laver said. ‘Is that an actual band?’
‘No idea. It was just in my head.’
Laver, thinking he’d have to mention it to Damian, continued: ‘So then what? You played the gig?’
‘No, I realised that I had to arrest the lead singer. I had to arrest him for a whole bunch of minor offences, the sort you learn at the academy by the hour but in the real world, they don’t matter at all.’
Laver laughed. ‘Attagal. The Chief Commissioner would be proud of you. So did you make the arrest?’
‘No. The lead singer turned out to be a giant, some kind of South American gangster about twice my size. He sort of waddled towards me and the crowd was chanting for me to give him a head job on stage. I could either arrest him or go down on him, and I couldn’t work out which I should do.’
‘Jesus, Cecy.’ Laver had no idea how to respond to that, instead turning his attention to check whether the usual gang of crazies were behaving themselves in front of the Woolworths. He wasn’t in the mood to tackle hobos or drunks.
Cecy was right beside him. ‘I’m sorry. Did I shock you? What sort of dreams do you have, Rocket?’
‘Takes more than that to shock me, unfortunately, after some of the human behaviour I’ve seen over the years, including my own.’
‘Do you dream?’
‘I actually have the same one, over and over. An old police friend of mine, Flipper, and I are in the Soggies and the guy I shot, Coleman, is shooting at us. I’m yelling at him to stop, that I don’t want to kill him again but he just keeps firing.’
‘So what happens?’
‘He keeps shooting so I kill him.’
They were past the Woolworths. All quiet.
‘Wow,’ Cecy said. ‘Then you wake up?’
‘No,’ Laver said, pulling off the road and swinging a creaking leg over the bar of his bike. ‘I used to, after his dead body opened its eyes and looked straight at me. But now he keeps on firing and kills me as well. The dream’s not over until we’re both dead.’
Wondering if he should mention the ghostly form of Coleman in his apartment most nights. Deciding against it. ‘Want a drink?’
‘We just had a coffee.’
‘We’ve ridden at least two hundred metres since then. I want a water.’
‘Where’s your water bottle?’
‘Those things look unhygienic. I prefer pure water from plastic bottles.’
Cecy sighed. ‘No wonder I barely work up a sweat when I ride with you.’
He thought about crossing the road to the 7-Eleven, but then wondered if they’d have water in the Soul Food Café.
***
No sign of the hot waiter, Lou realised as they came through the door. There was the chick with the shaved head and the nose ring, and the other waitress Lou was pretty sure she’d seen playing in a band at the Tote a few weeks ago. She was in stripey stockings and a T-shirt, looking sexy. Lou smiled to herself at Jake’s reaction, his eyes almost falling out of his head at how the T-shirt barely covered the waitress’s butt.
They got a table by the wall, Lou sitting on the bench seat and Jake taking a chair, his back to the coffee machine. Jake fascinated by the guy at the next table, with a twirly moustache and a red jacket like Michael Jackson used to wear. He looked like he was out of a circus. The café wall had flowers painted on it and a huge woman’s face painted in yellow on the ceiling. The room ran deep, with lamps and couches and maybe a bar down the back. There were no cafés like this in Kew, that was for sure.
The waitress with the shaved head came over, and Lou noticed she had a tattoo of flowers snaking from the back of her neck to under her ear; the big new thing in town. It looked okay. Lou ordered a strong latte. Jake went for a hot chocolate.
‘How’s that whole vegan thing going for you?’ Lou asked.
‘Good,’ Jake said. ‘Why?’
‘You just ordered a hot chocolate.’
‘Yeah.’ Jake was still checking out the people at the other tables like he was in a zoo.
‘Never mind. So, these stickers?’
‘Yep,’ said Jake, tuning back in and looking slightly startled.
‘You’ve been working on this idea for a while, huh?’
‘Oh months,’ he said. ‘It’s frustrating watching people grab the brands that are so bad for the environment and not do anything about it.’
‘Like which brands?’
‘Huh?’
‘Which brands are you thinking of specifically?’
Jake waved a hand. ‘Oh, you know … some of the washing powders. Detergents. That tissue company that is right into wood-chipping the Otway forest.’
She nodded. ‘OzSoft.’
‘Yeah, that one,’ he said, leaning to his right as the waitress delivered his hot chocolate and placed a latte in front of Lou, who was still weighing up whether this guy, middle class and largely clueless, was for real.
‘So, how serious are you about this idea of yours, Jake?’
‘Oh, very. I really want to do it. If I don’t try to make a difference where I can, I hate myself. Anyway, mine’s a pretty meaningless job if you don’t look for worthwhile aspects, and this is one.’
Lou made her decision. ‘I think you should put the whole thing down on paper – recycled paper too, Jake. Don’t mess this up with Rachel through clumsiness.’
‘Who’s Rachel?’ he said, looking confused.
‘The manager of Friends of the Planet. Pay attention. I’ll have a read of the proposal first, to see if it’s in language and a format that she’d like, and then maybe we could present it together.’
‘You’d do that? Present it with me?’
‘Sure. I deliberately left the suburbs behind because I couldn’t handle how apathetic, how uncaring your average person out there was about the environment. So many plants and fauna and species going out of existence every day, the rainforests still being mowed down in Brazil and elsewhere, and bastard companies still testing cosmetics and shit like that on animals. It makes me sick. And the thought of getting something going in the heart of a middle-class suburb like Heidelberg is very exciting – if you can convince your boss to do it.’
‘Oh, I’m sure I can. Don’t even think about that.’ Jake’s eyes darted nervously. ‘It will be totally fine.’
Lou sipped her coffee. ‘So, what’s the wording on the stickers going to be?’
‘I wanted to talk to you about that.’ He leaned forward. ‘Do you have any ideas?’
‘Oh, plenty,’ she said, glancing up as the café door opened. And then forgot all about stickers.
At first the two tall, tanned men were framed by the bright sunshine outside. But now she could see them. One with bright-orange hair, a thick beard and thick, blocky tattoos; a circus freak, but huge. The other, buff and tanned in a singlet, somebody she recognised in an instant, just by the way he moved. Somebody who’d thrilled her and then disappeared literally overnight. Somebody who even now gave the bad-girl side of her a surge, at the same moment that the loyal Friends of the Planet employee felt pure rage.
Jake, seeing her face change, turned to look at who she was looking at. Physically startling as he saw the big redhead but then, worse, realising the other guy in the singlet was the one who’d scared Bindi at the Friends of the Planet. Who was now smiling at Lou like a cat that’s found the mouse out of its hole.
A predatory smile was
Jake’s first thought.
Lou’s arms folded across her chest as Stig said, ‘Well, look who it is. Louie, Louie.’
Louie not saying a word, just staring at him and past him to Wildie.
‘This wild man is a friend of mine,’ Stig said. ‘A buddy from up north. I thought he might like to meet you.’
‘I’ve got nothing to say to you,’ she said.
‘Oh babe, don’t be like that. We’re lovers, remember.’
Watching the pudgy-faced kid she was with digest that and trying not to laugh. Stig slid onto the bench, sidling right up to Louie’s hip so she could feel his heat, as Wildie took a chair from another table and sat down next to the kid, staring straight at him.
‘Mind if we join you? Catch up for old time’s sake.’ Stig gave her a big smile. ‘You’re still looking fantastic, Louie, although I’m not sure about the new hair.’
‘I don’t want to talk to you. You should be across the road, talking to Rachel about those funds that mysteriously disappeared about the same time you left Friends of the Planet.’
‘Now don’t be like that. I haven’t seen you for ages, and you go straight to unsubstantiated rumours.’
Wildie moved in his seat and grinned. ‘Mate, something you didn’t tell me about?’
‘Nothing to tell. A misunderstanding, I guess.’
‘Bullshit,’ said Louie, arms still tight across that great chest of hers.
‘Why don’t you play nice, hottie?’ Wildie said. ‘We’re a lot more fun to be around if you’re not so hostile.’
‘And your new best friend threatens strangers. Charming.’ Louie’s voice rising.
‘Oh geez, babe, relax,’ Stig said. ‘I didn’t remember you being this uptight.’ Now looking at the guy sitting across from her, dwarfed by the Wild Man – physically and in sheer presence. He was sitting frozen, staring at his cooling mug of hot chocolate.
‘Who’s your little buddy, Louie?’ Stig asked. ‘You got a new boyfriend?’
‘None of your business,’ Louie said. The kid looking at her in surprise as she didn’t deny it.
Leaving Stig to ask the kid directly, ‘Where do you fit in, fella?’
But the kid only looked at him and swallowed, as though contemplating speech and failing. Jesus, thought Stig. Louie has dropped her standards.