Comeback

by Lindsay Tanner

  Once past the entrance area, he did a quick scan of the room. Eight or nine elderly Chinese-looking people were already sitting at the front. A couple of tall, thin African men were leaning on the side wall and laughing. A few other seats were occupied, mostly by older women who looked like the ones Jack had seen at the Tenants Association.

  A lot of people were milling around near the entrance. Jack recognised Michael Dempsey in animated conversation with a group of young people who looked like students. Standing behind them was an old mate of sorts, Jim, who was carrying an armful of copies of Green Left Weekly. He had known Jim for many years, and apart from the lenses of his glasses getting thicker and his hair getting greyer, his appearance hadn’t changed at all. Jack waved to him, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  Just as Jack noted the arrival of the volatile giant, Marko, he heard a friendly ‘Hello!’ from beside him and felt a light touch on his arm. He turned to see Emily smiling broadly, and felt a surge of adolescent nerves.

  ‘Hi, how are you? Thought I’d come along for the show. Seeing as I did the posters and all that …’ Sounds really lame, he thought. Better shut up.

  ‘Great to see you. Good crowd turning up, too. I was a bit nervous … you never know with these things.’

  ‘Supposed to start about now, isn’t it? Reckon we should sit down?’

  ‘These things never start on time. Maybe ten or fifteen minutes.’

  ‘You going to speak tonight?’

  ‘Doubt it. Wait and see.’ She grinned mischievously at him. ‘Hey, Bruno!’ Emily turned slightly and greeted a pale, skinny young man with dyed black hair, a black jacket with silver studs, and multiple piercings. ‘Have you met Jack?’

  ‘Hi, mate’, Jack responded without enthusiasm. Looks like he’s going to a fancy dress party as Sid Vicious.

  ‘Bruno’s a muso. Plays bass …’

  ‘I’m with We are the People. Played the Tote a few times …’

  ‘Which people?’ Jack asked, unable to help himself.

  ‘You know, the people. The 99 per cent.’

  Jack looked mystified.

  ‘They’re doing a CD soon’, Emily interjected. ‘It’s going to be great.’

  Jack cast a sceptical eye over Bruno and said nothing. He looked back at Emily: ‘We’d better get a move on …’

  ‘Yeah, let’s grab a seat. Great to see you, Bruno. Hope it goes well …’

  More people were spilling into the crowded entrance area. Jack saw a dark-haired man in a shiny suit standing next to an angry-looking young woman covered in badges and piercings, and once again marvelled at the variety of people who relied on the ugly concrete towers for shelter. It was grim on the outside, but a hive of diversity underneath. A wasteland and wonderland all in one.

  ‘Better get those seats while they’re still going’, he prompted Emily, who’d turned to say hello to someone else. Jack didn’t see much point in standing up for the whole meeting, even if he was next to Emily.

  ‘Let’s sit on the end here’, she said, shepherding him towards seats about two-thirds of the way back. ‘Might have to get up and help out at some point.’

  They were sitting behind a small group of young, scrawny types who had ‘druggie’ written all over them. Bad skin, bad teeth, sunken cheeks, straggly hair, fading tatts — all the hallmarks were there. Suppose they’ve got to live somewhere he thought.

  The hubbub began to subside, as if the crowd knew the meeting was about to start. Michael Dempsey stood up at the front table and held his hands in the air, pleading for silence. By the time he’d got to his third sentence, the room was more or less quiet.

  ‘ … and after Tom’s explained, it’ll be time for questions and discussion.’

  A small, compact man in a suit behind Dempsey stood up and began to outline the proposal for the regeneration — as he called it — of the estate.

  ‘Who’s this guy?’ Jack whispered to Emily.

  ‘He’s like an adviser to the minister or something.’

  His speech was so monotonous that Jack began to suspect he was trying to sabotage the meeting by boring everyone to sleep. A sigh of relief rippled across the room when he finished.

  ‘And now’, Dempsey continued, ‘it’s time to hear from Tom. For those of you who don’t know, Tom is General Manager, Special Projects at Auspart, the developers.’

  This introduction was greeted with groans, mumbles, and sniggers. It was clear the audience was unfriendly.

  ‘Okay, okay, give him a go’, Dempsey pleaded.

  ‘Auspart has a proud history of building high-quality, affordable apartments. That’s our business: our name is short for Australian apartments’, the developer began.

  ‘We’re proud to be part of this innovative, ground-breaking project that will provide a range of different-sized apartments, through the public sector and private sector working together to create better outcomes. Can I turn to some of the details, which you can also check on the displays at our office in Drummond Street …’

  ‘Christ, who is this bloke?’ Jack whispered to Emily. ‘Sounds like the bloke who used to be on The Price is Right. Serious wanker.’

  Just as he was wondering if he should try to escape — and how he could persuade Emily to come with him — a stocky man in the front row leapt to his feet and strode over to the speaker. For a moment, it looked like he was going to hit the developer, but he just stood beside him and started to harangue the crowd.

  ‘This is just a pile of corporate capitalist bullshit! These guys just want to make big profits, flog off a pile of yuppy flats, and drive public tenants out to the far-outer suburbs. Are you going to stand for this crap, being lectured by this shark, when the government won’t even do proper maintenance to your flat now, let alone invest in new public housing?’

  ‘How come this bloke can just pop up and start speaking?’ Jack whispered to Emily.

  ‘His name’s Richard Fletcher. He’s a councillor, belongs to some group called Socialist Alliance. He’s very hard-line pro-public housing. Thinks this will destroy it, force us all to move out to Craigieburn or somewhere like that.’

  The developer wasn’t going to tolerate the rude interruption for long. He resumed his speech, doing his best to talk over Fletcher’s ranting.

  ‘The public-housing units will be five-star …’

  ‘Check out the rubbish development these crooks did over in Watsonia …’

  ‘… quality that will be a big improvement …’

  ‘ … cladding’s already falling off …’

  ‘… and tenants will get real choice …’

  ‘ … just rip-off merchants, this bloke’s in bed with the Mob …’

  The developer suddenly lurched at Fletcher and grabbed him by the collar, dropping the microphone as they crashed into each other. Dempsey stood up and then froze, unsure about what to do. The two men pushed and shoved while they held on to each other’s shirt and jacket, like two footballers making a show of strength while avoiding throwing actual punches.

  Jack was enjoying himself. As long as Emily wasn’t under threat, he didn’t mind if a brawl broke out.

  As people in the crowd tried to intervene in the ridiculous wrestling match, Jack felt a spray of water from above.

  ‘What the … Who’s got the …?’

  He leapt to his feet and looked up and around. Others were doing likewise. Emily grabbed his arm and hissed in his ear: ‘It’s the sprinklers!’

  Somehow, the sprinkler system had switched itself on. Maybe someone was smoking, or had burnt some toast. It didn’t make any sense.

  Across the room, people were leaping to their feet, knocking over chairs, pushing to get past others, and doing their best to shield their faces and hair from the spray.

  It was a lot more than a mere sprinkle. Jack’s clothes were already almost saturat
ed. Emily’s bright-red hair was now hugging her head, dripping and dishevelled. She tugged at his sleeve, urging him to get moving.

  Confusion took over quickly, and any sense of order and composure vanished. While some stayed calm and weathered the drenching stoically, others reacted with outright panic. As Jack and Emily started moving towards the door, the room collapsed into chaos.

  Marko stood thrashing around under a sprinkler near the back of the room, flailing his arms at the drizzle as if swatting flies. People nearer the front tried to wrestle their way through the crowd, making it harder for anyone to exit. A couple of agile young men huddled under the front table, and a few enterprising souls found spots where the sprinklers couldn’t quite reach. A scrawny, weather-beaten woman in a floor-length skirt stood on a chair in the middle of the room and danced in and out of the spray, swaying rhythmically in time to imaginary music. An elderly Chinese woman slipped on the wet floor, and only narrowly avoided being trampled before a younger woman came to her assistance.

  Jack was now completely soaked, and no longer cared about the sprinklers. Emily chuckled as they picked their way past toppled chairs and tangled bodies towards the door.

  ‘Lucky it’s not a real fire! Imagine what a shambles that’d be!’

  ‘Yeah’, Jack replied. ‘Lot of people freaking out because of a bit of water.’ He hovered close by her, taking care not to touch her unnecessarily, but making it clear he was there to protect her from the crowd.

  The wrestling match between Fletcher and the developer had finished, but several other bouts of pushing, yelling, and grappling had broken out towards the front of the room. An elfin, grey-haired woman was screaming at the Auspart manager while apparently trying to remove his jacket.

  A scruffy, well-built youth reached for a fire extinguisher stowed behind a pillar. He tore off the safety clip, and took aim at the developer.

  Tom was only a couple of metres away, and the force of the spray made him stumble backwards and trip over an upturned chair. He cannoned into Dempsey’s back, sending him flying.

  After hitting Tom with another decent burst from the extinguisher, the young man turned and began spraying the retreating crowd around him. Although they were already drenched, they rushed to escape beyond his range.

  Jack’s eyes widened in amazement as he watched the scene unfolding in front of him. He shook his head and muttered to himself: Complete fucking madness. These people are nuts!

  They finally extracted themselves from the crush, spilled out into the cold night air, and started shivering almost immediately as the biting south-westerly wind ripped through their sodden clothing.

  The sprinklers stopped just as they got through the doorway. That’d be right, he grizzled to himself. Still, doesn’t matter much now.

  As he and Emily huddled against the wind, Dempsey called out: ‘Who’s got the key to the storeroom?’

  Emily turned to Dempsey, who was still caught in a crush around the door. His straggly hair was now shaped into ridiculous ringlets.

  ‘Hasn’t Mary got it?’

  ‘Yeah … think that’s right. Have to see if I can switch the stupid fucking things off, work out what happened.’

  ‘Bit late now, isn’t it?’ Jack sniggered to Emily.

  It wasn’t clear that Dempsey had heard him, but his response suggested he had: ‘Might come back on again … probably on some automatic computer thing …’

  Most of the crowd had now escaped. Some people were already heading off, but most of them were milling around aimlessly, as if expecting the meeting to continue outside.

  Richard Fletcher emerged with the developer, still berating him as they dribbled out into the open. These guys never give up. Still, at least he’s not trying to strangle him anymore, Jack thought.

  ‘Hey, Mary’, Emily called out, ‘Michael’s looking for you. He needs the key.’ Prim, grey-haired Mary looked more unruffled and presentable than the people around her. ‘Mary’s our president’, Emily whispered as she introduced Jack.

  ‘I’ve given it to him. Must have malfunctioned. It’s a new system — probably didn’t install it properly.’

  A bedraggled figure appeared in front of Jack, who stepped back, startled.

  ‘Where’s my money? You owe me a hundred …’ Phil mumbled at him.

  In the dim light, it was hard to tell if Phil had been in the meeting and got drenched, but he stank of stale sweat and booze — probably cheap port, Jack reckoned. His dirty, torn jacket billowed around his face as he leaned in towards Jack.

  ‘Arsehole! Lent it to you fair and square …’ He grabbed Jack’s arm.

  Jack wrenched himself away, took a step back, and stared at the pathetic, swaying wretch.

  ‘Piss off home and sleep it off, Phil. You’re blind. Told you, got the wrong bloke.’

  ‘Haven’t got a home. Want my money …’

  ‘Can you help us clear up, Jack?’ Mary interjected. ‘Looks like an awful mess in there.’

  He leapt at the chance to escape.

  ‘Yeah, sure.’ Emily squeezed his arm, and he turned away from Phil.

  As the last few people trickled outside, they squelched their way back in and surveyed the shambles left behind.

  Most of the floor was covered in water. Tipped-up chairs were strewn across the room. Odd bits of paper floated in the puddles. A couple of cheap handbags lay under chairs in the middle of the room, and a stray back-pack stood against the side wall. The fire extinguisher was lying on the floor near the head table, presumably now empty.

  ‘Can you start stacking the chairs, Jack? I’ll take the bags over to the office.’ Emily was by nature practical and organised. As Jack was on foreign territory, he was glad someone was giving orders and that the task he’d been given was nice and simple.

  He had almost finished stacking the chairs when Emily and Mary returned with a couple of mops and buckets, and a handful of dish-cloths. They all set to work mopping up.

  ‘Hope you don’t get a monster bill for all this water’, Jack joked as he wielded his mop with vigour.

  ‘Maybe all that body heat triggered the sprinklers or something. A new system … who knows?’

  ‘Plenty of hot air, that’s for sure’, Jack responded. It was ridiculous, but he was enjoying himself. He had got used to his wet clothes, and was quite pleased to be sharing this strange experience with Emily.

  It took them over an hour to complete the clean-up. Mary — who had been coming and going like a general on a battlefield — pronounced herself satisfied, subject to a final once-over in the morning.

  As Jack finished his final bit of mopping, he realised Emily had disappeared.

  ‘Hey, Mary, where did Emily go? Is she in the office?’

  ‘No, I was just there. She went out to put some stuff in the bin ten minutes ago. Haven’t seen her since.’

  Strange, Jack muttered to himself. After a token check of obvious places, he realised that she’d gone home. He wasn’t impressed. Here he was, wet through, bending his arm for the cause, and she’d just nicked off home without even saying goodbye.

  Perhaps this odd behaviour was caused by her illness. Maybe she just needed to lie down. Jack sighed, and trudged back up the ramp to Lygon Street to wait for a tram. It had been a funny old evening.

  5.

  The drenching the night before underlined the urgent need for Jack to pay a visit to the laundromat. It was a long way short of his favourite chore, but as he’d proved unable to organise himself into a flat with a washing machine, it was unavoidable.

  As the light began to fade, he staggered down Lygon Street to the tiny local laundromat with a very large green garbage bag full of washing slung over his shoulder.

  One of the few side-benefits of driving taxis was easy access to a supply of coins for moments like these. Though credit cards were now almost universal, he
still had to keep a cash float in the cab to cater for the occasional passenger who used notes and coins.

  Sitting in the laundromat watching the huge tumble-dryer rotate, Jack once again chewed over his problem with Worksafe. He kept jumping back to Emily and the Tenants Association, until somehow the two things became jumbled up in his mind. His idea of using the public meeting as a way of bumping into Emily hadn’t worked out quite as he’d expected. Romance was a bit difficult when you were saturated. And her mysterious disappearing act at the end had left him a little confused.

  Surely the Worksafe stuff was minor, just a nuisance involving a bit of annoying time-wasting. Deeper instincts responded differently, though. He’d spent most of his adult life in a state of low-level conflict with regulators and law enforcers. Experience had taught him these that encounters were always costly. Even when he was innocent, they gave him plenty of grief.

  The Worksafe problem might serve as a good excuse for calling Emily again. She might even be able to offer him some advice. Franklin certainly hadn’t been much use.

  He shovelled hot clothes out of the dryer and back into the garbage bag, and set out for home. The crisp, slightly chemical air outside was welcome relief after an hour huddled inside the hot, stuffy laundromat. Jack rounded the corner into Albion Street, his garbage bag slung over his left shoulder, and headed into the twilight gloom.

  As he passed a short laneway, two men appeared, one on either side, walking in step with him.

  ‘Doing your washing, Jack?’ asked one in a friendly tone.

  ‘Er, yeah. Bit of a hassle.’ Who are these guys? Jack kept walking. He glanced at both men, but didn’t recognise either of them. It was getting dark, and he sensed they weren’t walking with him just to be sociable.

  ‘Bit of a drama next door a few days ago, they tell me.’

  ‘Yeah. Poor bastard fell off a ladder …’

  ‘You’re not involved though, are you, mate?’ The tone was still friendly, but there was steel in his voice now.

  ‘No, nothing to do with me. Got this Worksafe summons.’

  ‘It’s a bad business, Jack. Going to get nasty. I’d steer clear if I was you.’