by Linda Jaivin
And I still hadn’t asked ZakDot about that policewoman.
Bomb shell
The VIP touched down at Canberra’s Fairbairn airport. It was around one in the afternoon. This afternoon. Verbero didn’t say a word to me the entire flight. I kept expecting him to ask about the bag of cocaine, which he didn’t. I fretted about what I assumed was going to be a testy encounter with Destiny.
The car was waiting. We glided down the smooth, shaded roads of the little country’s neat little capital. Soon we were crossing over a bridge across the lake. We’d be at Parliament House in minutes. Danger has a way of making me a little reckless. I broke the silence. ‘So tell me, Verbe-wo, were you using me for a delivery boy or were you trying to frame me? I’d like to know.’
Verbero’s eyes went to slits.
The car disgorged us onto the green green grass of, if not home, at least the House of Representatives.
‘Well?’
‘We haven’t got all day.’ Verbero strode towards the ministerial entrance, clearly expecting me to follow.
I stood my ground. ‘What makes you think I haven’t already gone straight to the police with it? You know, I could go on Trixie Tinkles’ program and tell the world just what sort of business is being run out of the prime minister’s office.’
Verbero stopped mid-stride and turned to face me. ‘But you won’t,’ he stated.
‘What’s to stop me?’ I wanted to know.
He snickered. ‘For one thing, I’m sure you don’t want your arty-farty pals seeing the home movies we made at the Bunker.’
‘Home movies? What’re you talking about?’
His voice turned smug. ‘You’re an observant little cunt. I’m surpwised you never noticed the video cams concealed in your bedwoom. I nearly laughed me hole off watching you two.’
It took me a moment to figure out what he was trying to say. Then it struck me. ‘Surely, you wouldn’t…’ I gulped. ‘I mean, doesn’t Des…the prime minister have more to lose than I do if those get out?’
‘Not weally. Politicians are wegularly caught in bed with all sorts of people—media moguls, big business, the whole bloody mining industwy for Chwist’s sake, and it doesn’t do their caweers no harm.’ He slapped a pass into my hand and shoved me towards the door.
‘You’ve gone pale,’ he smirked. ‘Listen to me, Walker. You’ve done something to her. She’s losing it. She’s not the leader she was. I had hopes for her. Now, they’re gone. Don’t think I’m not onto you, either. You and Twimalkyo and all those art faggots, you had this planned fwom the start, didn’t you?’ He pointed a finger at me.
‘You think I’m just doing this out of self-intewest. I want what’s best for our cuntwee, Walker, and the bottom line is that culture does a lot more harm than good. The citizens of this cuntwee elected us because we pwomised to do away with culture, we had a mandate. But you people, you saw your opportunity and you leapt at it, didn’t you? Don’t intewupt.’ He lowered his voice. ‘I knew that once she’d had a taste, once it was in her system, in her bloodstweam, she’d never be able to get enough. I’ve seen it before, you know. Before the Twoubles. People would say they’re just going to one play, one dance performance. Next thing you know, it’s art openings, book launches, subscwiptions to the opewa. It doesn’t stop there, either. Soon they’re bleeding money into collections, patwonages, sponsorship, begging the government for more festivals, wicher pwizes. If she doesn’t get off this thing now, we’ll be wight back where we started fwom. Twoubles. Twoubles. Big Twoubles.’
‘If she’s made up her mind, she’s made up her mind. What can I do about that?’
‘You’re the cweative one. You’ll think of something. Dissuade her.’
‘From what exactly?’
‘She’s going to make an announcement tonight. She wants to weverse all of Clean Slate’s policies. Go back to the old ways.’
I was an Art Hero. I mentally patted myself on the back. ‘And if I don’t?’
‘Miles Walker, you’re dead.’
By now, we’d woven our way down several long, blue-carpeted hallways, past the offices of the Ministers for Payback, Travel Rorts, Spin Doctoring, Power Lunches, Networking, and Death and Taxes. We turned a corner and stood before two massive doors. He pushed them open. They led into an antechamber furnished with a sofa and two chairs, upholstered in a garish orange. There were more massive doors leading off the room to both the right and the left; straight ahead was a courtyard with a waterfall, the same one, I realised, that Destiny had described to me. The waterfall was flowing. This was her office. She was in.
‘Stay,’ Verbero commanded, knocking on the right-hand set of doors and disappearing inside. I sank into a doughnut-shaped chair.
A minute later Verbero reappeared. ‘Go,’ he said, pointing to the door. Destiny was seated in a high-backed brown leather chair at the desk on the far end of the spacious office, her back to me, contemplating the empty bookshelves along the office’s back wall.
I looked around. My eye was always drawn to paintings, and I immediately noticed Churchill’s Cap d’Antibes hanging not far from Destiny’s desk. The right wall was panelled in the most luscious wood, broken in the middle to reveal a series of shelves, each one containing a single, exquisite ceramic pot. I guessed that it had not occurred to Destiny that bowls might also be art.
She swivelled around to face me. ‘I think you forgot to say goodbye.’
‘Never can say goodbye,’ I sang weakly.
‘That’s it! That’s exactly it!’ she cried, so loudly that I looked over my shoulder. What was she talking about?
‘You see, Miles, thanks to you, I’ve had a piphany!’ she exclaimed, rising out of her seat and coming round the desk towards me. She was wearing brighter colours than I’d ever seen her in. Her hair was loose on her shoulders.
‘Oh, yeah?’ I said, backing up against the heavy doors.
‘Culture is everywhere, Miles.’ She rushed to where I was standing, took my hands and pulled me towards one of the orange disco chairs. ‘It’s everything. It’s the music on the radio, the food you eat, the magazines at the dentist’s office.’ She whirled around, pushed me into the chair and plopped herself down in my lap.
‘Please don’t,’ I pleaded weakly. ‘Not here. Remember what happened to Bill Clinton.’ Her eyes glittering, she twisted so that she could wrap her arms around my neck as she spoke.
‘We’re not like that here,’ she said. ‘We’ve got a different political culture.’
‘Nice use of the word “culture”,’ I said. ‘Now can I go?’ She wasn’t listening.
‘I’ve got it, Miles, I’ve finally got it. Culture is everything, even the furniture we sit on…’
‘Well, maybe not this furniture.’
‘It’s movies, cafés, even graffiti. I read all about it in a book, and there was this guy called Basquiat…’ She pronounced his name ‘bass-kwee-at’. She wriggled in my lap. Little Miles semaphored back his own unruly exhilaration.
‘Yes, I know who you mean. Prodigy of Warhol.’
‘Who?’
‘Never mind.’ I wrenched her hands off my nipples. I noticed that she no longer ended all her sentences in a question.
‘It’s people, like, sitting in department store windows for a week, it’s rows of dried fish tacked onto a gallery wall. It’s artists shitting paint out their bums onto canvas, it’s big green puppy dogs outside the MMCEA!’ She frowned. ‘We’re going to have to get that building back from those South Americans,’ she observed. ‘Remind me.’
‘It’s also painting, drawing and sculpture,’ I said, tugging my shirt back down. ‘Could we do this somewhere else? This is too weird.’
She grabbed my hand and pulled me out into the foyer, where Verbero was speaking quietly into his mobile. He looked up long enough to give me the evil eye. We passed straight through to the set of doors opposite. We were now in her private dining room. The room was long and thin. A stretch limo of a table extended
almost from one end of the room to the other; it was fashioned from blackheart sassafras with a central panel of marble. One end of the room had doors leading, presumably, into a kitchen. The other faced out onto the courtyard. Floor-to-ceiling mirrors next to both the window and the kitchen door made the room seem even thinner and longer than it was. She backed me up against the table.
‘I love the portrait, by the way.’
I tried to push her away, but my hands somehow landed on her breasts. She had the most womanly breasts I’d ever seen. Just one last, tiny feel and I’d never touch them again. ‘Look Destiny,’ I panted. ‘I have to talk to you about Verbero. He’s playing some sort of game.’
‘I doubt it.’ She shook her head. ‘He hates games. Won’t even play Go Fish with me on the VIP. Anyway, let’s not talk about Verbero,’ she said, sliding down my body and, unexpectedly, grabbing me by the ankles. Next thing I know, she’d hoicked me onto my back on the table and was tugging off my boots and socks. I stared up at the marquetry on the ceiling.
‘You know what I did the other night?’ she asked, leaning over and nibbling on my big toe. ‘I ate in a thigh restaurant.’
‘Pardon?’ I gasped, trying to wriggle away. That tickled. ‘A thigh restaurant?’
‘You know,’ she replied, looking up, ‘with food from Thighland?’
I suppressed a chuckle. ‘You mean you’ve never…’
‘Nup,’ she said. She was undoing my belt and tugging at my pants. ‘Never ate thigh, never tried Chink, never even had a fluffle.’
I raised my backside so she could get my trousers off. ‘You gotta be careful with felafels,’ I said, as she hooked her fingers into the waistband of my daks. ‘People have been known to die with them in their hands.’
She looked at me blankly.
‘It’s not important,’ I said. Then I suggested, ‘After you get through the food bit, you should try books.’ I was being mean, I know. It was getting hard to think straight.
‘Books!’ she cried. ‘Like literature ‘n stuff?’ She unzipped her skirt, which dropped to her ankles with a satiny swishing sound. ‘Y’know, I could write a novel.’ Meditatively, she unbuttoned her blouse and tossed it to one side, where it landed on the sideboard, shrouding the silver tea service. She was now wearing nothing but a lacy red bra, red French knickers, a suspender belt, translucent black stockings and red high heels; she looked like one of Egon Schiele’s erotic drawings. I loved Egon Schiele. ‘I might read one or two first, though, just to make sure no one’s got my idea. You ever read a novel, Miles?’
I nodded, and rolled my head to the side. I could see her plump arse and the fleshy white tops of her thighs in the mirror on the end wall. I could also see the soles of my feet and my head. I stared at myself. Was this the face of an Art Hero?
‘Which novel was that? Maybe I’ll start with it. Write it down later for me, will you?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘I can tell you’re being sarcophagistic,’ she said, raising her chin slightly. ‘I think you should be pleased now that I see the light.’ She liberated me from my shirt.
‘You see, Miles, I’m a changed woman. I love culture. I love it so much.’ She grabbed my feet, pulled them up so that my legs were fully extended and then pushed. I slid towards the centre of the table, my buttocks squeaking on the precious wood.
‘It’s gone way beyond just appreciating’—she clambered onto the table and straddled me, her knees on the sassafras, my arse on the cool marble—‘representational painting.’
I surrendered. I reached up and drew her down to me. Little Miles drove straight past the lax French border patrol and straight into her warm wet chunnel. Little Miles was a heat-seeking missile and he had certainly found the hottest spot—in Parliament House, anyway.
Missile. The word hung in the airy space in my head where my brain had once been. She was riding me like a jumping castle. I moaned. My buttocks made a chirping sound as they bounced about on the sassafras and marble.
‘You know,’ she grunted, ‘this is the table, ohhh, where I entertain, mmm, dignitaries?’
‘Like this?’ I gasped.
‘No, silly.’
Missile. The word was tapping on my skull for attention. Shit! Fuck! I needed to warn her about tonight. Maddie, ZakDot and Thurston. Blowing up the ship. ‘Destiny,’ I bleated, ‘we have to talk.’ I could feel my balls tighten.
She pinched one of my nipples between her fingers. ‘I know,’ she cooed, ‘I know. You were right all along. I’ve decided to make an announcement tonight, at Trimalkyo’s party.’
‘The…party…bomb.’ My syntax was in my perineum.
‘It will be a bombshell,’ she said, climbing off me and jumping down from the table. She grabbed me by the wrist, jerked me off the table and slammed me against the side wall, which luckily was slightly padded, covered in grey silk like an upmarket brothel.
‘Destiny,’ I pleaded.
Like a mad ballroom dancer, she spun us around again so that now she was backed against the wall. She raised one leg and wrapped it tightly around my waist. Little Miles had gotten over his slight disappointment of moments earlier and was now doing the cancan inside the one-woman Radio City Music Hall that was the leader of the nation.
‘I see now,’ she said, ramming her hips into mine, ‘that culture is the life of the nation, it is the soul of the people, it is what makes life worth living. Oh, oh, I’m going to organism!’ With this observation, she tipped her head back, arched her spine and screamed.
I was heading for oblivion. My balls tightened, my stomach muscles clenched. Just as I began to come, I felt a hand roughly grab my shoulder, pull me off her and, before I knew what or who or why, a big male fist slammed into my nose. I saw stars. Then I saw Verbero.
Found objects (1)
It feels very late. It must be almost midnight. Verbero comes in. He’s changed back into his suit. He puts his stash into the inside pocket of his jacket. He pinches his nose a few times, sniffs and folds his arms in front of his chest. He tilts his head back and, looking down at me, begins to speak.
‘Okay, Walker, let me paint you a picture. Kca kca kca. First, I’m going to take off your gag. And then I will loosen your wopes, but not totally. You’ll still have to work at getting fwee. By my weckoning, this will take you at least five minutes. You can then do as you please. You can cheer on Destiny’s new policies and even fuck her over the dessert table, for all I care. You’ll both be histo-wee soon enough. You see, not long after I picked you up, my men made a second visit to your warehouse.’
So, I was right.
‘You artists weally are slobs, aren’t you? You’d hardly cleaned up any of the mess they made on their first visit. And you’re a lazy mob, too. Evewyone still in bed, though it was nearly noon. The cocaine was on the dining table. Most convenient. While my men were wecovewing the bag, they noticed something intewesting. It was sitting on top of a pile of papers. The papers included the bluepwints for this ship as well as wecipes for bombs big enough to blow it up. There were all manner of calculations on one scwap of paper as to how to time depth charges to go off at midnight. Natuwally, my men thought I might be intewested in these plans. They called to tell me about them while you were banging the pwime minister in her pwivate dining room.’
I feel myself going very very pale.
‘As you know, I have a weal pwoblem with Destiny’s new passion for culture. It doesn’t fit in with my plans for this cuntwee at all. I thought about it while she was abusing me for coming in and knocking you out cold. Oh and she abused me, all wight.’ Verbero paused and sniffed. ‘She said some personal things which I can tell you I didn’t like at all, Walker. Like you, she has noticed that I have been wunning a little business on the side, and she wasn’t happy about that. But that’s neither here nor there. The bottom line is, it doesn’t matter anymore. You see, by the time you manage to fwee yourself, your fwiends’ bomb will be going off and you and Destiny and all the west of your art
y-farty poofter fwiends will be histo-wee. The culpwits will be caught by the police, and you, though dead, will be implicated. No one will know about Destiny’s change of mind, and I will go on Twixie Tinkles and evewy other bloody television show in this cuntwee and talk about how she was a martyr to the cause. Widing the inevitable wave of sympathy, I will announce my own candidacy, wun for parliament and—’
A sudden banging on the door causes us both to look up.
‘Open up! Police!’ A female voice.
Verbero signals me to stay quiet. I rattle my chair and make strangulated noises from behind the gag.
One vicious kick from outside and the door explodes inwards. ‘Freeze!’ I see, as in a vision, Senior Constable Grevillea Bent, gun held out at arm’s length, her left arm supporting her right wrist, just like in the movies. She is the sexiest woman I have ever laid eyes on. She winks at me. I am faint with relief and joy and lust.
‘Okay, Svengali,’ she says to Verbero, that tough little mouth of hers working into a sneer. ‘Hands up, face the wall. No funny stuff.’
Verbero protests. ‘I fucken mean it,’ she scowls. I love a woman who swears.
Verbero pivots slowly and faces the toilet door. Puts his hands up. She turns to me. ‘Remember these?’ she says as she pulls her handcuffs out of their pouch and secures him to the sink.
I nod. Kinky.
‘You just be a good boy.’ She pats Verbero on the arse. Then she frisks him up and down. She finds the bag. Titanium white. Whistling, she puts it in her own pocket, making sure the top is well sealed. She also relieves him of his key chain.
‘You’re going to be in big twouble, you know,’ he growls. ‘You don’t know who I am. I know my wights.’
She listens to this with her green eyes wide open and her mouth curved into a perfect little ‘o’ of mock surprise and fear.
‘Big time coke dealers like yourself usually do, in my experience. We’ve had our eyes on you for a long time, Verbero. Using the prime minister’s office to conduct your thriving little business. Cheeky as. Ever hear of ministerial codes of conduct? No? Well, you’re no different from the rest, then.’