‘This is what they’re reporting,’ one of the men said. ‘Fucking water polo.’
‘He’s smart. Smartest leader for a while.’
‘Raskolnikov was pretty smart too, mate, and he contrived to split an old lady’s melon with an axe.’
‘You’re being hyperbolic.’
‘Nah, mate. See, Raskolnikov wasn’t just smart. He was tragically conceited about it. Thought his intelligence exempted him from tiresome shit like not murdering people. Well, you’ve seen him in a room. Not just the smartest man there, but the smartest man alive. So imagine all the shit he’ll contrive.’
‘You’re not being fair. He’s serious.’
‘About his own brilliance, sure. And what’s that meant? It’s meant a refusal to consult or delegate. You can’t run the country like that. You get logjams. Now add his indecision, and the service is frozen. We’re entombed in ice, mate. We’ve doubled our hours, and halved our efficiency.’
‘There’s no playbook for this. It takes time to figure out the levers.’
‘Mate, he’s ignored the fucking levers. They’re called ministers.’
‘I just think it’s too early to write him off.’
‘Bullshit. Time’s irrelevant. These types don’t change. Indecisive, imperious and paranoid — shit combo, and it’s killing us. I’m telling you, if he’s awake and brooding at 4am, and the Political Muses sing to him a plan for transforming Queensland into a giant aquarium — well, fuck, that’s what he’ll do. And if by 4pm the Muses have retracted their advice, and the astonished ship of state has to be turned around, then so be it. It’s no way to run a country.’
The secretary’s door opened. The Wizard, in navy power suit and clown face, strode towards us. ‘Isn’t our new speechwriter special?’
‘He’s a balladeer for our national project,’ John said.
‘How lovely.’
She strode back into her office. We followed. Her office had impressive views of Canberra’s empty roundabouts.
‘Toby, I get the feeling that you’re defective,’ the Wizard said. ‘Were you dropped on your head as a child?’
‘Not literally.’
‘Was your father combing your hair, and then accidentally-on-purpose punctured your fontanelle?’
‘No.’
‘Perhaps your family joined a sex cult when you were young, and it warped your sense of boundaries?’
‘You’re really fixated on childhood, aren’t you?’ I said.
‘In my experience, it’s where defective personalities are born.’
‘Secretary, the cricket policy is insane. And if you must know, I’m recently heartbroken. It’s given me a kind of nihilistic carpe diem vibe.’
‘“Nihilistic carpe diem” is a contradiction, Toby.’ She turned to John. ‘Why did you hire this freak?’
‘He seemed normal on Skype.’
‘This is the second time you’ve fucked me today, John,’ she said. ‘You will now crawl to the Minister’s office and apologise profusely. And if his office wants your help cleaning this shit up — and they won’t — then you’ll do whatever is asked of you, even if that means spinning this as a hoax perpetrated by Little Lord Fuckleroy here. And John?’
‘Yes?’
‘Get those fucking prawns under control. I can smell them from up here.’
John nodded, nervously scratched his face and smudged his whiskers. Then the Wizard stood, signalling that the meeting was over.
I was confused — I hadn’t been sacked, an outcome I think I had subconsciously desired. But as John and I shared the lift in oppressive silence, I realised: You can’t be fired here. I could give a poltergeist a suit and call him a media officer, and guess what? He’d shift furniture and scoff at punctuation, but would still take home more than a teacher. I suppose he wouldn’t need a suit, but whatever.
The elevator doors opened. ‘I’m going to counsel you,’ John said.
‘Counsel me?’
‘Yep.’
‘You?’
‘Yep.’
‘That’s it?’
‘Unfortunately.’
It all made sense now. I was professionally immortal. We all were. The dreamers, drunks, and lechers. The idle and parasitic. The saboteurs and whistleblowers. The good, the bad. All of us were fixed to a profuse and infinite teat — the cost was suffering the indifference and derision of the Minister’s office.
We returned to the fishbowl. It was time for my counselling.
‘Okay,’ John said, clapping his hands angrily. His smudged cat face was quite distracting. ‘Let’s do some counselling.’
‘Okay.’
‘Before you arrived, life was simple. Now it’s not. And I hate you.’
‘This isn’t really working for me, John.’
‘I’m holding a mirror before you.’
‘The therapeutic mood is normally much cooler, John. More detached, less accusatory.’
‘My professional diagnosis, Toby, is that you’re a naive wanker and I should never have hired you.’
‘What did the secretary mean when she said you’d fucked her twice today?’
‘What?’ John squinted.
‘Are you sleeping with the Wizard?’
‘No.’
‘Really?’
‘It’s complicated.’
‘The sex is complicated?’
He glared at me. I smiled, immortal. ‘Is that it?’
‘No,’ John said. ‘Jason from security is coming to talk about the prawns, and he wants you here.’
‘Me? Why?’
‘Because you’re the only one on the floor who began after it started.’
‘And what about you?’
‘My seniority frees me from suspicion.’
‘What’s Jason been doing?’
‘Investigating.’
‘Investigating?’
Jason tapped on the glass door. John gestured him in. ‘Who are your suspects?’ Jason asked, sitting down.
‘Don’t have any,’ John replied.
‘Why not?’ Jason was very pale. ‘Fuck, I can’t stand much more of this smell.’
‘You want some water?’ John asked.
‘What’s that gonna do for me?’
‘Are you okay, mate?’ John asked.
‘You have no idea, man.’
‘What’s going on, Jason?’ I asked.
‘Dunno if I want to get into it.’
‘Go on,’ I encouraged.
‘I had this prawn cocktail once in Bali, yeah?’ Jason said. ‘Worst mistake I ever made. That shit was funky. Like, criminally funky. Just creamy poison. One month later, me fiancée leaves me. Splitsville. Said every time we made love she couldn’t get the image out of her head of me lying on that bathroom floor spraying sewage. Like a broken fire hydrant, she said. What do you call it when you say one thing is like another thing?’
‘A metaphor,’ I said.
‘That’s it. The missus had a few. Arse bells. Mud flute. Muck trumpet.’
‘Was your fiancée a musician?’ I asked.
‘I can understand it, in a way,’ Jason said, ignoring me. ‘I bench a hundred. She loved that, you know. My strength. But those prawns smashed me. What can a prawn bench- press? I’ll tell you: fuck all. Don’t have arms. But they got me. Got me good. Shit, I don’t want to talk about this anymore.’
‘Have you begun interviewing our floor?’ John asked.
‘I hate metaphors,’ Jason said.
‘Jason,’ John said.
‘I loved her.’
‘Jason.’
‘What?’
‘Have you interviewed the floor?’
‘Yes.’
‘And?’
‘Nothing. Everyone denies it.’
‘Waterboarding.’
‘Jesus,’ John said.
‘That’s how they got Bin Laden. I saw it in that documentary, Zero Dark Thirty. And it’s cheap. Plank, bucket, and a cloth. I can go to Bunnings today.’
‘Jason, that wasn’t a documentary,’ John said. ‘And we’re not torturing my staff.’
‘It’s not torture. It’s more like giving a dog a bath.’
‘It’s not a bath,’ I said.
‘They call it “simulated swimming”,’ Jason said.
‘Simulated drowning,’ I said.
‘What do you mean, it wasn’t a documentary?’
‘It was a dramatisation,’ I said.
‘Based on first-hand accounts.’
‘That were disputed.’
‘They found him, didn’t they?’
‘I think the issue with the film, putting aside the morality of torture, was the centrality of it in finding Bin Laden.’
‘Did they, or did they not, give that motherfucker a bath?’
‘I can’t stress this enough, Jason,’ John said. ‘It’s not a bath, and we’re not turning my floor into a black site.’
‘Fine.’ Jason shook his head.*
[* ‘I don’t get this, Toby.’
‘Get what?’
‘The dates are all over the place here.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘They’re referencing a film, yeah, that hasn’t come out yet.’
‘No, they’re not.’
‘You’re not fucken reliable, mate.’]
‘What else can you suggest?’
‘Surveillance. I’ve been looking into some spy shit. Tiny cameras. Motion sensors, night-vision. Can order them. Just need to figure where to put ’em.’
‘How much?’
‘One, two grand.’
‘Is this authorised?’
‘You’ll have to speak with the secretary.’
John rapped his pen on the table. ‘I’ll ask her today. And none of this leaves this room.’
Having recently considered the department’s liability under OH&S laws, the Wizard quickly authorised the operation. Sick leave was up dramatically, and the elevator was now conveying the stench to other floors. When the cameras arrived, John, Jason, and I stayed back late and discreetly positioned them.
The cosmic Sherpa
Sky News was defending pedos again. This seemed to be happening a few times a week now.
‘The teacher in question here has merely asked a 12-year-old boy to lick his penis like a kitten licks milk.’
‘There’s no sex.’
‘None.’
‘I’m bewildered by the conviction, to be absolutely honest.’
‘Well, there’s an agenda here.’
‘There’s absolutely an agenda.’*
[* Garry says he’d ‘fucken love them to try that shit in here’.]
Cam the Intern was completing his replica of Westminster Abbey made entirely of erasers. ‘There’s 2,684 in total,’ he told me proudly, as he glued together the final pieces of the second tower. Inspired, I asked Abigail to order 4,000, so I could build St. Stephen’s Basilica.
A week later, John was yelling for me. I was no longer grateful for work, and fervently hoped he was commissioning another time-travelling hit on an infant tyrant. ‘The Minister is speaking at the opening of the Newtown Gallery of Bad Art.’
‘Jesus.’
‘That’s the brief.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t ask why, Toby.’
‘The Minister doesn’t even like good art.’
‘And Stanley wants you there.’
‘At the launch?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they fucking hate you, Toby.’
This had Stanley’s fingerprints all over it. Despite having the Arts portfolio, the Minister was proudly philistine. There’d be few people he loathed more than gallery owners who curate ironically. But Stanley had obviously spied an opportunity to boost his master’s inner-city cred, even if it required the Minister assuming the role of lame uncle, and deferring to the maddening pretensions of his hosts.
Today, I suspect some crude arithmetic: the gallery was in the Minister’s electorate, a swathe of inner Sydney that the Greens, commensurate with gentrification, had been slowly encroaching upon for years. Offering funding and his imprimatur to the gallery might be useful, because the only people who could appreciate a gold-plated dumpster filled with dead possums were Greens voters.
I can now imagine Stanley in his yacht shoes and undercut, studying the results of the previous election, gravely determining that the Greens might be a threat, and believing that this blandly cursory analysis was richly insightful. ‘The Greens have opened a front on us, sir,’ he would say. ‘We must fight them in the cafes, in the galleries, in the memes.’
I went online to find the gallery’s prospectus. For $40,000 you could purchase a skateboard with a coiled turd on it. They only accepted BitCoin. Beneath a photo of a man ironing a Whopper were these helpful words: ‘$hrillst3r fucks shit up … sick of the mental dungeon.’
That the Minister would attend this event, much less feign respect for it, was surprising. Stanley’s pitch must have been persuasive.
I opened a blank document, typed the word ‘Art’ and stared at it until its familiarity began dissolving. Then I kept staring until it was a small, alien arrangement. ART. A.R.T. A … R … T … The phone startled me from my trance. It was Stanley. ‘It would be hard to fuck this up, Toby,’ he said, ‘but if there was a man for that job, it’d be you.’
‘Appreciate it.’
‘The Minister can’t be a try-hard. He can’t be seen to be ingratiating.’
‘The whole point is for him to ingratiate himself.’
‘You missed my qualifier. The Minister can’t be seen to be ingratiating.’
‘Fine.’
‘The Minister’s subtlety will be the real art that night. He can’t pretend to understand their interests, but he does understand the importance of artistic expression in a healthy democracy.’
‘Stanley, that’s neither artful nor subtle.’
‘See you at the speech, Toby. Bye, bye.’
I googled ‘inspiring art quotes’.*
[* ‘Don’t mind some art. I’ve seen this hyper-realistic stuff, yeah, which makes you think, “How the fuck did he do that with some hair and toothpaste?” [A brush and oil paint.] Skilful shit, and I respect it, but it doesn’t give the imagination much to do, does it? Leaves ya cold. Which is why I’m fucken drawn, Toby, to the more impressionistic shit. If you’re gifted, a few strokes can suggest the world, but your mind’s gotta work a little. Quiet work. Very subtle.’]
The gallery was a repurposed flour mill, with a skate bowl sunk in the middle. When I arrived, two naked skaters were making gracefully entwined patterns. A DJ was playing Tom Waits backwards. Waiters in baggy denim overalls offered trays of drinks and raw salmon. I declined the fish, took the wine, and found a quiet corner to hopefully dissolve in. I looked around at the art: from the floor rose a giant pyramid of dead beetles, against which rested its title card: ‘Pancreatic Summer’. Next to this was a plastic squid with a Rubik’s cube for an eye. Enigmatically, it was untitled.
The organisers had the power to discomfort the Minister, and they clearly cherished it. It elevated their stature, that they might lure a politician to a cave of decadent, self-conscious oddity and refuse to limit his embarrassment. When the Minister arrived, nervously ushered in by Stanley, a waiter swooped and offered him the tray of salmon hors d’oeuvres. He smiled awkwardly and took one. ‘What do you think of the art, Minister?’ the waiter asked him.
‘Oh, very nice. Very nice.
’
The Minister’s speech wasn’t scheduled for another half an hour, and, wanting the company of neither Stanley nor the anxiously performative bohemians, I stole outside to smoke cigarettes and finish my wine in a laneway. When I returned 25 minutes later, I noticed that the skaters had stopped and were now licking the wheels of their boards. Then the gallery’s director approached me, her eyes as large as the government’s contribution. ‘You’re the Minister’s writer,’ she slurred.
‘Yes.’
‘This is sparkles.’
‘What is?’
‘Sparkles,’ she repeated, and began chewing her hair.
I looked around: the gallery was in the throes of a lush madness. A man was delicately performing CPR on the beetles. An orgy had begun beneath a canvas soaked in blood and Japanese mayonnaise. Before the stage, the Minister was passionately expressing his respect for Stanley while massaging his shoulders. What the fuck was going on?
The Minister, now one of the few fully clothed people in the gallery, jumped on-stage and hugged the director before taking the mic. Then he theatrically threw his speech away, eliciting whoops of pleasure from the crowd. Sweat discoloured the pits of his RM Williams shirt. A few patrons began filming him with their phones.
‘Gubbermint,’ the Minister began, while chewing his lip into a red pulp, ‘is a flend of the arse.’ Stanley was waving excitedly at him, trying to alert his man to the shocking amounts of blood pouring from his lips. The Minister slowly deciphered the gestures, and pressed his hand against his mouth.
‘Blesus,’ he said, smiling. ‘Been chewin’ my bips.’ Then he silently stared out at the crowd for a full minute, swaying gently, absorbing their intensity. ‘Government,’ he repeated, his enunciation vastly improved now that he wasn’t cannibalising himself, ‘is a friend of the arts.’ There was enthused applause. Even those engaged in the orgy stopped and offered their hands. ‘This fish is superb,’ he said, and gestured the waiter over for more. Well, as we later learnt, dear reader, that fish was soaked in brine, LSD, and remarkably pure MDMA.
The Speechwriter Page 10