No Neat Endings

by Dominic Carew

  We ate like the comfortable friends we were: in silence. As we drank the last of our coffees, though, I sensed Lyle’s unease return. His knees were bouncing again. He was biting on his nails.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, not wanting him to overthink it. ‘Let’s do this.’

  En route to the Kowalski house we crawled through morning traffic. I’d called work to take the day off. My boss and mate, Jim Farling, knowing Sarah had left, said I could take a week if I wanted (unpaid, naturally). God bless his financial heart.

  The house, painted dark grey, had a red front door. Lattice along the eave gave it class. A fig tree outside busted up the footpath; its thick, old branches were heavy with green.

  ‘Nice joint,’ I said, parking where I could. I looked across at Lyle. ‘You stay here mate, okay?’

  He stared at the dash board.

  ‘Okay, mate,’ I said, and started towards the house. As I walked through the quick inner-city air, I thought about what Sarah had said to me, not that long ago. That soon, maybe next year, we should move away from Sydney. Go up north to Lismore, Byron, or even inland. Live among the trees and animals. My response came fast and, in hindsight, was likely hurtful. ‘Are you kidding?’

  The truth was, I loved Sydney. More going on here than anywhere else this side of the dateline. Good luck scoring an equivalent variety of food and beaches in the hinterland. Plus, the people. Where else would I find myself at some geezer’s house in Redfern, collecting my mate’s things because his roomies had singed his body hair one night on the wines, scarred his stomach with a whip, and who knew what other kinky assaults that’d freaked him too much to return?

  I arrived at the front step and took the charming brass knocker in my hand. Before I’d used it, though, the door opened. And there stood Kowalski, just like the photo, only now he wore a bright pink dressing gown. He was smirking. Atop his lip a thin moustache, mouse-coloured, somehow lewd, twitched with his mouth.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said. He glanced over my shoulder at the blank space behind me, then looked into my eyes. ‘And who might you be?’

  He had the kind of face you see on scientists who’ve been holed up in labs too long. Pale. Slightly yellow. I was studying it when he frowned and drew his mouth into a small, tight ‘o’. ‘You’re here about Lyle aren’t you?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I am.’

  ‘I have to tell you,’ he said, handing me a cup of tea across the kitchen bench, ‘Ellen and I like Lyle a lot.’

  So I hear, I thought.

  ‘When he left last night, we were very upset.’

  ‘To be honest, Alvin,’ I said, ‘so was he.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘He called me in a state.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kowalski, looking out through the back windows onto the courtyard, with its mossy sandstone slabs, its potted palm. ‘I can see why he might’ve been. Ellen and I too.’

  At that moment, in that dressing gown, sporting that moustache and speaking in such thoughtful tones, Kowalski seemed about as camp as a man could be.

  ‘It was the stuff he had,’ he said, sipping his tea. ‘That cactus stuff he brought back from Salvador. It made us a little wild.’

  ‘Cactus?’

  ‘They used to give it to tribesmen. You know. Amazonians with big wooden bars through their noses, heading off to war. We don’t know where he got it. Neither does he.’

  ‘He doesn’t have the best memory,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ said Kowalski.

  ‘Look,’ I said, warming to the bloke, but not wanting to get tied up too long, ‘I’m not here to discuss what went down the last few days. I’ve heard Lyle’s side of things. I’ve been around long enough to know there’s at least another side. I’m just here to get his stuff.’

  Kowalski looked at me like I’d told him his mother had died.

  ‘Lyle says things ‘went down’?’ he said, his eyes gone hangdog. ‘But it was fun and welcomed and…it was all very lovely, Clint.’

  ‘Then how’d he lose his body hair?’ I said. ‘And get that awful scar, mate? Look,’ I said, not wanting to get into it. ‘It’s not my place. Where’s his room, Alvin, if you’d please? He said he left his bags and a surf board.’

  He looked down at his tea, clearly thinking.

  ‘Alvin?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, looking back up. ‘Yes. It’s just down the hall there, to the right.’

  The bag, the board, the backpack, were each in a different place to where Lyle had said they’d be. I slung the pack over my shoulder, put the board under my arm and lifted the tonne-weighing travel bag with difficulty in my left hand. Right, I thought, let’s go. But as I made my way down the hall, a figure emerged from the bathroom and stood on the floorboards behind me. I stopped, looked over my shoulder; she had her hair towelled up in a conical heap. It must’ve been Ellen.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘what do you think you’re doing?’

  I was about to reply when Kowalski appeared in front of me. Now, I was trapped between them, in this dark terrace hallway, with all of Lyle’s shit.

  He didn’t say anything for a moment. And neither did she. They just stood there, blocking me in.

  ‘Oh,’ Kowalski said at last. ‘This is Clint, deary. Lyle’s friend.’

  ‘You know where he is?’ said Ellen.

  I opened my mouth, ‘He’s…’

  ‘He was quite upset,’ Kowalski said, ‘about last night. He called Clint to help him out. It seems, deary, there’s been a misunderstanding.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Well,’ said Kowalski, walking right up to me. ‘Lyle seems to think we burnt him.’

  A silence. I heard the shower dripping. I could smell toast and Ellen’s lotions and the other mixed odours of their lives.

  ‘But that’s outrageous,’ she said, and she sidled around me and stood beside her husband. She looked just like the photo too. ‘How does that explain this?’

  At first, I didn’t know what I was looking at. She was wearing a towel, I could see that much, but the light was dim. And then I saw it clearer. A criss-cross mesh of raw, burnt skin along her cleavage.

  ‘Jesus,’ I said.

  ‘Now Clint,’ said Kowalski, clasping his hands at his navel. ‘We’re not the types to beckon trouble. I’m a behavioural psychologist, Ellen’s almost finished a doctorate in the same field. We have busy lives. But if Lyle’s going to say that we burnt him, that we scarred his stomach, shaved his head or did anything else of the sort, we’ll have to tell people what really happened. Okay?’

  I looked at him, at Ellen’s boobs. I looked down at the shit I was holding. It kind of made sense. Lyle had lost his marbles on a jungle plant. The free-loving couple had let him have his way. Now he couldn’t remember what he’d done. I gazed into Ellen’s eyes. I could feel my face grimace from the weight.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, and they nodded, solemnly it seemed, and took me to the door.

  Through the window in my living room, you could see the green tops of fig trees a block away, shaped like rain clouds, full of shadows. Lyle sat on a milk crate, looking at them. He hadn’t said a word since we’d returned from Pitt Street. I’d told him what they’d said on the drive back. He’d listened, nodding his head, frowning, as if it were possible. I couldn’t be certain, but there on that crate, I supposed he was trying to remember.

  Over the next two days, we did our own things. He went off in the morning, looking for work, but giving up by ten, then going to Bronte to surf. I spent my time buying furniture on the cheap. Online mainly. And at old antique stores on Enmore Road. I’d taken Jim’s offer to have the week off.

  On Thursday, just as I’d restocked the flat with the bare basics, I received a text from Sarah. Shit. My heart sped up. What the hell? My palms got wet. I’d known her four years and with one little text she’d made my guts turn, and not in a bad way.

  ‘Can you meet me?’ she asked. I wrote back within the minute saying that, yes, yes, I actually c
ould.

  We sat at a small, square table on the edge of the footpath, inches from traffic, at a vegan café she’d always liked. Her hair, gathered in one thick braid, hung to the left and covered her breast.

  ‘So,’ she said, as our almond milk teas arrived. ‘You’re living with Lyle?’

  I took a sip. I hated this stuff, but today, with Sarah looking so beautiful, it tasted okay.

  ‘Word gets around,’ I said.

  ‘The guy’s nuts, though, isn’t he Clint?’

  ‘Lyle’s alright,’ I said, and I meant it, even though he was definitely nuts. ‘He just ends up in strange situations. He doesn’t have good equipment, Sare. But his heart’s a brick.’

  She eyed me like a seabird scheming someone’s chips. She’d always liked me for my expansiveness, the fact that despite my choice of work, its lack of depth or meaning, I gave people a go, put up with them, no matter what they did or where they hailed from. But when it came to Lyle, she had her reservations. She thought him unsound ethically. His promiscuity and his drinking and his tendencies for wild nights out, had put a moral cross against his name. She thought me naïve not to see it. Now, though, she wasn’t about to go into all the details.

  ‘As long as he’s not getting you in trouble,’ she said.

  She turned her head then, looked at the traffic, whose rattles and screeches were shaking our cups. ‘I feel really bad, Clint,’ she said, still turned away. ‘About taking the stuff.’ It was almost a whisper.

  How lovely she was, even now, on this hectic road, her face and hair and long pale neck a picture or a sculpture against the urban mess. I knew, from the way her voice had dropped to a hush, that this’d be the start of our reunion. Last time she’d left, taken the furniture, the bedding, the toiletries and the rugs, she’d said the same thing. An hour later, we were making up. And out.

  She turned back and looked at me. I readied myself for a peace offer. I ran my tongue across my lips. I even considered where we’d put the bed. In the same spot or somewhere new. But she didn’t go any further. She drank the last of her tea and stood up, reached into her purse and dropped the spare keys on the table before me.

  ‘Good luck, Clint,’ she said, and walked away.

  I didn’t know why, but I felt worse that afternoon than I had when she’d left the apartment. Worse, too, than the times before. Something in the way she’d let the keys fall, limply, with finality, as if her hand would never again close around them, or me. It hit me hard, and I sat at home all afternoon on the crate (I couldn’t bring myself to sit on the new lounge) and thought about my life. I was thirty-three. I had maybe two years before my hairline went from receding, to non-existent. I wasn’t fat, but I wasn’t in great shape either and if I got much more of this Aussie sun, I’d be a forty-year-old prune, croc-faced, lizard-backed. The only saving grace was my income, which was good, and getting better by the quarter. But I could hardly keep my heart warm by logging into net bank every night and nuzzling up to my laptop. Sarah had left me this time and she wasn’t coming back. Quite simply, Clint Fisher didn’t have what it took. She wanted a saint, or someone, at least, with a moral compass wide enough to see the world like she saw it. God, what bullshit.

  I stood up from the milk crate. I had a beer in my hand, which I finished off. I added the bottle to the empties along the window sill. Jesus. I’d finished the six pack. Keys turned in the door.

  ‘Clinty McClint Face!’

  Lyle stood in the doorway wearing his boardies. His feet were caked in dried sand. He was arming his surfboard and holding a case.

  ‘I see you’re on the cannies,’ he said, nodding at my bottles. ‘Don’t worry. I’ve got the same idea.’

  He walked across the living room, put his board against the wall and the case on the crate.

  ‘Man,’ he said. ‘I just had a filthy surf. Shit everywhere at Tama.’

  ‘Shit?’

  ‘Storm water maybe.’

  He did smell a bit.

  ‘Did some thinking, though,’ he said, ripping open the box of tins and handing me one. It was warm, but I took it. ‘I think that Kowalski bloke was right. I keep having these flashbacks. Think I got pretty flipped that night.’

  I just looked at him, necking my beer.

  ‘It’s funny how you forget things, eh?’

  I burped.

  Over the next three hours, as the afternoon ebbed and a golden syrup light began its trickle through the windows, Lyle and I got shitfaced on cheap tins of Mythos he’d nicked from the back of a bottle-O.

  ‘You shouldna done that,’ I said, but I didn’t press it.

  By eight, we were on the vodkas. He kept going into the kitchen to make us new ones as soon as we’d finished, squeezing in limes that Sarah had abandoned. The mixture tasted funny, tart, with a furry catch in the back of the throat. I assumed the limes had turned and thought nothing of it. Lyle kept gazing at me, though, from his seat on the new couch, a wide, goofy grin on his face, and I couldn’t help but feel he was up to something. This occurred to me at nine p.m. At eight a.m. the next morning, I dove into the harbour at Circular Quay, as commuters headed to work in suits, iPhones and Samsungs riveted to ears. I’d left Lyle hours earlier, in Kowalski’s courtyard, masking tape tied like snakeskin around his arms, candlewax burned into his hollowed cheeks. I didn’t mind. By which I mean, he’d be alright. Myself? I had a mission to complete. A long swim, naked, across the harbour. Away from my troubles, and my rusting heart. My head was shaved for the journey. And my limbs were full of fire. For the time being, Sarah wasn’t in my thoughts, and for this, if not one thing else, I was grateful for my friend.

  The New Guy

  Rossman sat bolt upright in our meeting, at the bank, in the clearance section, diligently taking notes. His hair had just been cut, his tie was perfect; he’d only this week joined our firm. Our agenda: stationery supply. Gilroy said the staplers didn’t work. ‘That’s a good point,’ I said and I went to ask what others thought – I expected a lengthy discussion – when someone’s tummy gurgled. I couldn’t be certain, but I believed it was Rossman’s.

  ‘The stapler next to the printer’s impossible to use,’ Gilroy went on. ‘It doesn’t grip the paper.’

  ‘What about the one by the guillotine?’ said Adams. ‘It snapped apart months ago.’

  ‘And the staples themselves,’ said Mary Birch from accounts. ‘Don’t get us started on those.’

  It seemed a new supplier was called for, stapling being critical to our work, but as I made to say so, my elbows on the table and my hands clasped together, another gurgle came from Rossman’s direction. This one louder, more severe, than the first. We looked at him. We couldn’t help it. His pen scribbled on for a beat, then stopped. At first I thought the pause would end, that Gilroy would continue as before or that Mary Birch would speak, but neither of these things happened. Silence billowed out like smoke (or gas) above us. Thicker and thicker. And Rossman, growing redder in the face with every moment, sat eyeing his notepad while the gurgles within him clamoured over themselves to be heard.

  ‘Rossman,’ someone said at last. ‘Are you alright?’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ he said. He grimaced.

  ‘Are you sure, dear?’ said Mary. ‘You look rather unwell.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Rossman. Another rumble. A pop. A crack! He clutched at his stomach with his free hand. With his other, he held his pen above his pad as if to show us he was willing, despite the discomfort, to press on.

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘If Rossman says it’s nothing, I’m sure it’s nothing.’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ said Rossman.

  ‘Good,’ I said, still uneasy, ‘Why don’t we set up a meeting with Penmans, over on Pitt Street? See if we can’t get a new supplier?’

  ‘Right away, Mr Cooley.’

  ‘What’s that, Gilroy?’

  ‘I said, right away.’

  ‘Sorry, you’ll have to speak up.’

  There was too muc
h noise from Rossman.

  ‘I WILL CONTACT THE SUPPLIER THIS AFTERNOON. AFTER THE MEETING.’

  ‘THANK YOU.’

  ‘WHAT?’

  ‘I SAID THANK YOU GILROY.’

  ‘I CAN’T HEAR YOU. CAN YOU SAY AGAIN?’

  ‘I SAID, SEE, WHAT I SAID WAS… AH GODDAMMIT, ROSSMAN,’ I lost my cool. ‘DO YOU THINK YOU MIGHT POP OUT FOR A MINUTE?’

  He looked up from his pad. He popped out. We waited for him to come back but he never did. That night there were reports in the news about a man exploding on a train. His body and face: unidentifiable. They had to carry him away in sealed bags.

  Dozens of them.

  The Episode

  After getting home from the marriage counsellor, Clive went and stood by the window. He put his chin in his hand and looked out at the courtyard. The winter had turned the paving stones to moss. He rubbed his jaw. The sound of stubble against his palm filled the room. Behind him, in the kitchen, Prue stood at the bench and watched him. She had her hands flat on the counter, her weight resting on them. He knew this because that’s how she did it. They’d been married eight years and lately, when she watched him, she did it like that, as if he were a child and she his mother, whose patience had all but ebbed. She was waiting for him to turn around and talk to her. The counsellor had said they needed to get things in the open. The good and the bad. The time for silent treading had passed.

  He took his hand from his chin, put his thumb and finger to his eyes and pressed at their corners slowly, his other hand on his hip. He felt conscious of how he looked to her. He wore a blue collared shirt, jeans that bit at his crotch and a pair of brown leather shoes they’d bought six weeks ago, back when they’d started seeing the counsellor. He remembered the day clearly.

  He remembered standing in the hallway, an hour before their appointment, wearing his new shoes and a pair of slacks. He had just showered and shaved, nervously. His shaggy brown hair was wet; it clung to his skull. Down the length of their hallway she’d gazed at him. In her new blue dress, her hair loose and thrilling around her delicate face, she looked pretty, and sophisticated, like always. He’d watched her watching him. He’d thought she might laugh. When instead she’d started crying, he’d gone to the bedroom and stood by the full-length mirror. He looked clean. He would’ve looked smart too, had the slacks, which he hadn’t worn in years, not been stretched around his massive thighs, the waist-line swallowed by his purple gut. He took it in his hands and squeezed; so much skin, and fat. He squeezed till the flesh went white. He suddenly felt he could eat a horse. She walked down the hall and into the room that afternoon and hugged him. He stood there, holding his flesh in his hands, as she tightened her grip around him. They stayed like that, awkward and silent, until he broke away. He went to the bedroom window.