Letter to George Clooney

by Debra Adelaide

  Did Emu Plains even have a CBD? Drew had doubted it. His butt was still there, unless she had picked it out and binned it. Mrs Zhang was meticulous like that, which was why she was his accountant. It went with her failure to invite him to call her Georgina, and her persistence in calling him Drew, as if he were somehow subservient to her and she were paying him to perform a routine task, not the other way around.

  It didn’t matter that his sculptures were exhibited the world over, and were being sold right now, in galleries in San Francisco, in Philadelphia – in Miami, of all places – the whole reason he needed his Certificate of Residency and had to organise the ITIN urgently, before the USA IRS scooped a great hole in his fees like a hungry bulldozer. It would always be like this. He worked with his hands and got his clothes dirty; his workplace was a Nissen shed. Mrs Zhang was a clean trim accountant in an office. It was she who had given him the ‘Contacting the ATO’ card. She had picked it out of a clear plastic box on her desk and handed it over like a strip of prescription sedatives. Use it sparingly, was the implication, there won’t be any more.

  The smokers’ stares followed him into the building. The entrance was a tight empty space, grey glass and grey steel, yet nothing seemed to reflect, his shadow captured and absorbed as he walked through the glass doorway, as if he had entered a dimension where light and shade flattened into one. The automatic door slid back behind him with a disturbing electric hum. Ahead of him was an escalator, and as he stepped onto it he registered how clean it was, how shiny, how unlike a public escalator. The ones at Central Station had been sticky underfoot, dull with a paste of commuter grit and industrial grease, and had thrown a draught of foetid air onto his face with such hostile force it was as if CityRail were, for some perverse occult reason, both punishing him for entering its domain and forbidding him go back outside. He had felt filthy as he’d stepped out into Eddy Avenue, glad to expel from his lungs the pungent station air that still inexplicably smelled of coal dust, eighty years after the introduction of the electric train engine.

  Now he felt trapped again, in a sterile airlock. Above him he could not see where the escalator ended. There were no other doorways. As it silently glided up he glanced back at the door he had entered. Would it reopen to let him out? The tinted glass allowed him a shaded view of the herd of smokers, a few of them now breaking away from the pack, grinding butts under their feet and eyeing the entrance with distinct dismay. He placed his hand on the escalator’s glossy belt, already feeling intrusive. At the top there was a row of security turnstiles, and more glass. He tripped off the escalator and looked around. There was still no sign, but now, a couple of people walking through the turnstiles, waving ID cards over the electric scanners. Grocery items, checking themselves in and out. Two people, tobacco-scented, brushed past him from behind. To his left was a wall, more dark tinted glass, to the right a polished stainless steel counter and two guards dressed in grey. Nowhere else to go, except for the escalator down.

  He approached and placed a hand on the counter. One of the guards stood and watched his hand. He took it off the counter and put it in his pocket. As they each watched, a faint misty impression evaporated.

  Drew Saltman cleared his throat. ‘Is this the ATO?’

  Both guards were female. The seated one had hair the shade of Dijon mustard. After several long seconds the one standing behind her, portly and short, like a mug of beer, hinted it might be, without actually speaking.

  ‘But there’s no sign,’ he said.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Neither blinked. The portly one placed both hands on her belt, above her gun. Drew smiled, feeling the millisecond his lips stretched that it might have been a mistake. Impassive, bland, might have been better.

  ‘Security,’ she finally said.

  ‘So how do you enter?’ At this, Dijon mustard stood up – she too wore a gun – and they both stared at him with unclothed suspicion.

  ‘You don’t.’

  He attempted to explain the nature of his quest – it was beginning to resemble something mighty and epic – ‘And so my accountant said I needed to obtain the certificate in person from the ATO. That’s here, right? Even though there’s no sign.’ He said this with a final shot at levity but as soon as he’d arched an ironic eyebrow and looked around for the non-existent sign and smiled, he knew it was a mistake. Inwardly, he was cursing Mrs Zhang. And his handprint was on the counter. Fingerprints.

  Whether the two heard or comprehended his explanation was impossible to ascertain. Portly, sticking a tongue in one side of her mouth, barely broke eye contact to glance at the photocopy of the document, one of Mrs Zhang’s other clients’ copy of the Certificate of Residency, which he unfolded in front of her. It was now very creased. She glanced at his face – still smiling, too nervous, would he never learn? – then at her colleague, then pushed it back.

  ‘Can’t help you with that.’ She posed with her hands on her belt again, the left one a whisker away from the holster.

  ‘Well. How do I get in then?’ He gestured past the turnstiles. ‘Someone in there must be able to help me?’

  Another big mistake. Dijon and Portly drew breath and shook their heads in unison.

  ‘Can’t. Be. Done,’ Dijon finally said.

  ‘Not at this office,’ Portly added. ‘Public not admitted here.’

  Any amusement Drew Saltman felt in the situation vanished. He had got up earlier than usual. He had spent two hours on the train. Breakfast had been a CityRail doughnut, not even fresh, and a weak, lukewarm coffee. He deserved better.

  ‘Look, I’ve been told to come to the ATO to get this form.’ He waved it now, like a crumpled flag of surrender. ‘This is the ATO. You’ve more or less admitted to that. What am I meant to do?’

  Staff, meanwhile, were walking back and forth through the entrance having waved their security cards over the turnstiles. In fact it seemed very busy, a peak period, though it was not yet morning tea time. Some of them glanced at him. He watched them. All of them ATO employees, none of them lesser mortals such as himself, abject members of the mere public. Ordinary taxpayers, the rest of the population. How dare these guards with their grindstone stomachs and badly tinted hair treat him like this. He was a taxpayer, therefore the tax office was funded by him; they should be serving him, not treating him like toenail fungus. Even the smokers here, universal pariahs that they generally were, were higher on the pecking order, waving their passes and gliding through to the inner sanctum.

  Some of this he was framing mentally, to renew his protest, when Portly said, ‘There’s another office.’

  ‘Oh.’ Drew almost smiled. ‘Good. Where?’ He folded the document and slipped it into his pocket.

  ‘Around the corner.’ She removed her hand from her holster to wave in a large semicircle, in the direction of the rest of the city, taking in Liverpool Street and the commencement of the eastern suburbs, around all of Circular Quay, and Darling Harbour, back through Chinatown, to here where they stood, the epicentre. That was a large corner. He asked for a street name.

  ‘Lang Street. Not far.’

  Had he heard of Lang Street? He thought not. Around the corner, he knew reasonably well. Pitt, Liverpool, George Streets. In the other direction, Campbell, even little Cunningham Street nearby, back to George, beyond that Sussex. No Lang Street. Perhaps it was in Chinatown, a warren of street names he’d never fully learned. Mrs Zhang would be pleased.

  ‘Where, exactly, is Lang Street?’

  Again without breaking eye contact – how did she do that? – she produced a photocopied map and flicked it across the bullet-proof counter with her forefinger.

  He picked it up. It was only an A4 sheet of white copy paper, 80 GSM, but the map was so remarkable that he would keep it, as proof of an experience so strange he might have invented it; one that, had he not already suspected it, confirmed that he had embarked on much more than a mere quest for a one-page document and was instead o
n an epic journey, the significance of which would probably remain opaque for years to come. Not until he was an old man perhaps, settled by the fire in his mountainside home, with a pipe and a bottle of whisky by his side, would he fully understand the nature of this journey, and explain it to yawning bug-eyed grandchildren. He would be like an old pirate, an ancient mariner, a fount of fabulous tales of far-off lands. Or a creature from fairytale perhaps. He would be Bilbo Baggins, enchanting little hobbits with tales of fire-breathing dragons and hoards of treasure. The map was just a hand-drawn sketch, presumably by an employee of the ATO, but it was or would be as valuable as the Magna Carta.

  Open-mouthed, he gazed at it in childlike astonishment. True, it was not yellowed and bloodstained, but in other respects it was exactly like a pirate’s map, semi-literate but imaginatively illustrated. Few of Sydney’s main streets were spelled correctly. But who cared for spelling when on the high seas to saucy adventure!

  ‘Ah, here we are,’ he said, pointing to a spot endearingly labelled GOLBOURNE ST. Portly almost looked proud. Drew’s frank admiration inspired a spark of helpfulness for she leaned over and pointed where, just like buried treasure, X marked the spot. Lang Street. According to the map it was four blocks away. The map included a sketch of a pointy object labelled WESTIFIELD TOWER CENTER POIN, and next to GROSVERNOR ST were recognisable images of the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. Not quite Ken Done or Martin Sharp, but clean, clear images all the same. Presumably the theory was that if the misspelled names misdirected him, these landmarks would reorient him.

  Clutching the precious map, he thanked the guards, but they had already turned their backs on him. He descended the clean steel escalators and exited, the doors hissing smoothly open and then shut behind him. The air was pungent with street smells. The smokers had gone and the moisture laid by the early morning rain was now rising in visible wisps from the footpath, as if deciding to join the rest of the warm day after all. Leaving GOLBOURNE ST, he would go around the corner, down George Street, turn left at the Harbour Bridge, take ten paces south past the enormous fig and presumably reach another vast and unnamed building, an outpost of the empire that was the ATO.

  It was not that easy. If he walked, he would miss his next appointment with a designer in Surry Hills. He hailed a cab.

  ‘Lang Street,’ he said clearly and slowly as he always did in Sydney cabs.

  ‘Why?’ the driver said, swivelling around.

  Drew Saltman thought for a moment. Would he divulge the location of what was evidently a great secret? Would he surrender this easily his hard-won information?

  ‘There’s nothing there,’ the driver continued while Drew wrestled with his conscience.

  ‘Yes there is. The tax office.’ He couldn’t help himself. He was incorrigibly charitable. The driver shrugged and sped off down George, one hand on the wheel, shouldering the cab past buses and scattering pedestrians while Drew reassessed his moral position. Driver probably didn’t even pay tax anyway.

  He was coughed out at the smallest street in the city. Opposite was a park, a very Sydney park with the usual Port Jackson figs and a representative pine – Norfolk Island, he thought – flanked by a long neat row of motor scooters. To the left was a large building, no windows, no street access, a sign saying Suncorp Group, but no sun. The cloud cover was now dense, such was the remarkable changeability of the city’s weather this time of the year. He walked around the entire small block, a triangle, and found no trace of any premises, came to rest opposite a flight of pebblecrete steps so steep it was impossible to see what lay at the top. He consulted the map again, tucked it in his pocket and swore. He was standing right beside the first of the row of motorcycles, many of them Vespas, pale green, cream and red. He felt severely tempted to tip the first one over and watch the rest tumble down the sloping street like shiny dominoes. He crossed the road and commenced up the stairs, where at least from the top he might obtain a better view.

  However, at the top was an astonishing sight. A glass doorway and a sign proclaiming Australian Taxation Office and featuring the national coat of arms. Drew Saltman smiled. And the sun came out again. He smiled wider. The native animals of the coat of arms had never seemed more friendly. How he loved the kangaroo, the emu. What benign creatures they were. They blessed him above the doorway as, sun-kissed, he wiped his feet on the mat, and stepped through into a large and nearly empty room. Before him was a row of vacant waiting chairs, to the left a bank of computers, mostly unattended. There were no guards. And no other customers. From a small reception desk someone smiled back at him. Still smiling, Drew approached with the limp unfolded photocopy of Mrs Zhang’s other client’s certificate of residency.

  Almost reluctant to speak – he would break the spell, surely – he spread the page out on the reception desk and asked, ‘Am I at the right place? The public office of the ATO?’

  ‘That’s right. Can I help you?’

  Can I help you? He sighed with pleasure.

  ‘Yes, I need to obtain a document. One of these, a certificate of residency.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I can get one here?’ Drew felt his body tense. It was starting to sound a little too easy.

  ‘Sure can.’

  ‘Well, that’s wonderful.’ He looked around again. There were four other employees in sight. ‘You know, it seems very quiet here, for a government office.’

  ‘Yeah.’ The receptionist leaned closer and lowered his voice. ‘That’s because no one knows where we are!’

  Drew stiffened. The man’s frank glee was unnerving.

  Standing straight again, he spoke louder. ‘Just take this ticket and sit over there. You’ll be called soon by our next available customer service officer.’ He pointed to the row of empty seats opposite the customer service officers.

  Drew Saltman took his ticket and sat. The receptionist, still smiling, pressed a button on his desk. The other four employees, waiting by their computers, stared at Drew. He wondered which of them was the next available customer service officer. The receptionist gave him a reassuring nod. The customer service officers waited. Drew felt like an actor in an improvised play. Some offbeat street theatre that conscripted innocent and good-humoured passers-by. During the reverential pause, the receptionist and the first customer service officer exchanged glances and raised eyebrows. Surreptitiously, in case there were concealed cameras waiting to humiliate him, Drew looked around to confirm that he really was the only customer, the only person in a queue. Which made it therefore not a queue.

  It had been a disaster, that night out.

  Sitting in the row of otherwise vacant chairs staring out through the glass doors into the sunshine of Lang Street, he could see the tops of the fig trees, above them the cold blue sky plastered over with chubby clouds, the sort that contained cherubs with long golden trumpets in Christmas cards of his youth.

  It was before Mrs Zhang had moved offices and they had wound up a meeting well after six pm. He had extended an offer for a drink at the nearby bar as a courtesy, expecting she would refuse. He had already mentally downed a solitary schooner of Coopers and was on the 7.22 pm back to Woodford when she surprised him by agreeing. Perhaps that had flustered him, led him to taking her elbow a little more eagerly than he should, or taking it at all, as he steered her down the street and across the road to Harry’s Bar, but when they were seated at the window with her gin and tonic and his beer, he may have been looking rather too smug.

  Normally she responded to his jokes with a tight smile, the sort that said, yes I find that amusing but watch yourself. He appreciated this sense of humour. So few of his friends liked the dry wit. His ex-wife had, he’d discovered too late, no sense of humour at all. But Mrs Zhang. She had a way of watching him sideways and allowing her mouth to flicker. Or tremble.

  Perhaps it was the second schooner. Or the third. But at some point he realised Mrs Zhang was still mashing the lemon of her first drink with a straw. While he was asking questions about a
husband. Or lover. Or maybe he’d just said boyfriend. And she’d said something about living alone and going home to a man, which was beyond confusing. The man might have been her father. He was sure the Mrs was ambiguous. Whatever. She had risen quickly, grabbed her coat and bag and walked off before he’d barely realised. On the train home he’d tossed his mobile phone back and forth in his hands, before finally pocketing it. And then the next morning when he went to ring, replaced the receiver. Whatever he had said – or maybe had failed to say, that was also a possibility – he would only make it worse. She was so proper. She still hadn’t asked him to call her Georgina. He would not ring her. It would remain professional, as it should. And besides, it was only a companionable drink. It was not like he’d asked her for sex.

  His ticket number was called out. Number 32. Had there already been thirty-one customers through the premises this morning, all subjected to the same bizarre courtesy? Perhaps in a moment someone would call ‘STOP!’ and the director would come over and shake his hand, slap him on the back, thank him for being such a good sport and hand over free tickets to the screening. He approached the four customerless customer service officers a few metres away with the feeling that if this were not a staged performance, it was then possibly some kind of occult ceremony into which he had stumbled. Either way, it was not the public service as he had known it, all four decades of his life. The first customer service officer waved him closer to his desk and Drew sat down again.

  ‘Can I get one of these, a certificate of residency, please?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  Drew Saltman had to ask twice more before Parmod (his name was on a lapel tag, no surname, just like in the supermarket checkouts) waved the receptionist over. Perhaps the entire office was a sort of training outfit, thought Drew, as the receptionist and Parmod conferred behind the computer screen.