‘…but the biggest change,’ Bishop was saying, ‘this quarter, is the roll out of our new flexible work policy, which is being postponed, until the quarter after next.’
‘Sorry Greg,’ Sophie hissed from her seat. ‘The Flex-Work policy has been postponed indefinitely.’
‘Ah yes,’ said Greg, looking down at Sophie with an expression that suggested he’d forgotten who she was. ‘That’s right. People,’ – he looked back up to the audience – ‘only this morning Mark Hammond determined to postpone Flex-Work until we have a better handle on staffing needs. This means no part-time arrangements and no working from home. We’ll let you know as developments arise.’
Sophie said something else in Greg’s direction, which he listened to, his eyes on her, then relayed to the room. ‘My apologies, everyone,’ he said. ‘We won’t let you know about developments. If Flex-Work proceeds, we’ll let you know then. But we won’t keep you updated. Sophie? Is there anything else?’
The Botanic Gardens had always filled Miller with peace. When things at work got busy, or the pipeline overflowed, he could escape there for fifteen minutes, walk their grass-hemmed paths, gaze up through boughs of fig trees to the sky or out to the glinting harbour. Today, he ran to them from the office. He pulled his tie loose as he emerged from the building and tossed it onto the footpath. The sun was out, a cloudless sky. And yet, no peace came.
He walked by the greenhouse, and towards the pool, only half aware he was talking to himself. ‘How dare they?’ he kept saying. ‘The bastards.’ It wasn’t just his novel either. His concerns for it were only part of his outrage. What really wounded him was the broader, more diffuse measure of control H.G. Yates had employed by cancelling Flex-Work. He assumed, with anger, his email to Hammer may have tripped an alarm. ‘Fuck them,’ he yelled, and an old couple walking passed him jumped in fright.
He arrived at the Boy Charlton pool, turned left along the harbour’s edge, with its canopy of figs and squashed orange droppings from the fruit bats. He had no option, he thought, but to resign. The notion, at first, scared him. This was Sydney, after all. You couldn’t buy a sandwich for less than a tenner. But fear quickly became excitement. Thin at first, then fatter, until it had transformed into a voluptuous roundness, like the character he was yet to write.
When Miller was ten, he saw a man have a heart attack at a bus stop on Monday morning. His father was taking Miller to work for the day, to an office building on Market Street where his father spent his life. The man would have been fifty. To Miller, at the time, this seemed very old. Paramedics arrived within moments, as if they’d been waiting offstage somewhere, for exactly this to happen. To exactly this man.
The incident shocked Miller, but it wasn’t the body writhing on the ground and the blue gloves of the ambos and the defibrillator humming into action that’s stayed with him, all these years. It’s that his dad didn’t stop walking. He glanced at the fallen man and the scene in general, then carried on his way. It took Miller years to understand that his father, at forty-odd, had seen all manner of disasters; his skin was thick. But at the time, Miller thought him cold. Let me never lose my feeling, he told himself. Or thinks he did, looking back. He thinks, also, this was the germ that made him want to write. But of course it likely wasn’t, the germ being nothing more than a wish to be remembered. A desire not to fade wanly into nothing. God damn his ego-addled mind.
Hammer was sitting at his desk on the phone when Miller burst in. It was dark. The blinds were drawn. Document piles sat in heaps on the floor, the desk, over by the wall. Unfazed by Miller’s entry, Hammer waved him in, then put a finger to his lips and rolled his eyes, pointing at the phone, as if to say, ‘Bored, but can’t be helped.’
‘Sorry about that,’ said Hammer, a moment later. ‘My wife. Are you my three o’clock?’
‘No sir,’ said Miller and thought, never. Lose. My feeling.
‘My three fifteen, then? You’re early.’
‘Nope. Not that either.’
‘Then who are you?’
‘I’m Miller,’ said Miller and it occurred to him that his voice was shaking.
‘Miller,’ repeated Hammer, rapping the desk. ‘Miller,’ he said again, though quieter now, as if on the brink of a discovery. ‘Ah yes! Miller. Of course. Sorry. I forgot for a moment… there are just so many of you working here that… come, come. Take a seat.’
‘Thank you.’
‘What can I do for you? If you don’t mind, you’ll have to make it quick. I have a three o’clock.’
‘Well,’ said Miller, ‘you see. It’s interesting. I was just walking in the gardens. I’d been at the staff meeting. Sophie, HR, mentioned. Or was it Greg Bishop. Something about Flex-Work not going ahead.’
Hard to get the words out. Story of his life! He looked at Hammer and noticed his mouth had turned from a simulacrum of a smile to a straight slit. His boss brought a knuckle to his lips and rubbed them.
‘Flex-Work,’ Miller went on, ‘has been cancelled, I believe. And. Well…’
‘Listen Adrian,’ said Hammer, mistaking Miller for another Miller, ‘you’re one of our best accounts guys. We really appreciate,’ he drank a glass of water quickly, then banged it down, ‘your effort this quarter. I think you’ll find that,’ he stood up and went to the side of the room where another table sat, and sifted through some papers, ‘the pay rise will be handsome, at the very least.’ There was a pause. ‘Where’d I put the financials? Alice! Can you come in here?’
‘What is it, Mark,’ his secretary said, walking through the door.
‘I had a pile of financials here, covering APAC.’
‘They’re over by the printer.’
‘Ah yes, and MENA?’
‘With APAC.’
‘Yes. Good.’
‘Your three o’clock is here.’
‘Mmm,’ said Hammer, looking at the document he’d picked up, licking his finger and turning a page. ‘Let them in.’
Miller left the office enraged. Before he walked away, he glanced over his shoulder to look at Hammer once more. He was seated back down, his gleaming bald head in a document, his three o’clock pointing to graphs or figures or words on the page in his hand. There was something remarkably blank in his expression. No joy. No rapture. But no anguish either.
The next day, his email said: ‘I resign.’
And that was that.
Two and a half years later, Miller sat in the back row of a packed room at Walsh Bay on the opening night of the Writers’ Festival. Soon he’d have to stand up, he knew, but for now he sat still while people filed in and took their seats and chatted about the books being launched. The air was abuzz. He hated that word. Women held champagne flutes like microphones and men held beers, like little trophies, up to their faces, hiding behind them, he thought, the posers.
The place stank of cologne.
The wankers.
‘Miller,’ a lady whispered. ‘Psst, Miller!’
He didn’t turn around. He knew who it was and what she wanted.
‘Miller. Come and get the drinks.’
He stood up – a kid being dragged from class – and went with her through the doors. They walked down the corridor that led to the kitchen where the sandwiches lay stacked on platters; the beers and wines waited on trays.
‘Please,’ she said, flustered, ‘do your job tonight.’
‘I always do my job.’
‘Ha.’
‘It’s true. Just ask around.’
‘Yeah yeah. Just take the drinks, will you.’
‘God,’ he said, walking back to the room. But he didn’t have anything else.
He stood around for the next hour, tray on palm, watching writers read. How dead the words sounded. Truly. The books were called, what? He hadn’t caught their names. He wasn’t listening anymore. He wasn’t even feeling. He was thinking about his last job. The one on the building site. Two months back. With the guy named Rob, who’d had that really sweet weed he’d some
times shared around. What was that stuff they’d spread on the cement each day, before they’d gone home? He’d had a job before that too. In a deli, selling sandwiches to suits on Clarence Street. On his break he’d sit out back, by the wall there, not even alive to the way the sun had somehow angled in through gaps in the buildings, landing on the bricks in a steep and shifting parallelogram of light. Radiant. Vivid. Who gave a shit? Miller didn’t anyway, not since stopping writing, six months after H.G. Yates, when he realised, in fact, he had very little to say. And even fewer means…by which to say it.
Literalists at Love
‘You don’t have to come tonight if you don’t want to.’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘Fine then. Don’t come.’
‘Okay.’
Will You Please Not Be a Wanker, Please?
Well well. Have a look who it is. See him? By the bar? Nah. It’s Grant. Remember? McGaskill. Old Gassy. The G-bone, he called himself one summer, convinced he’d cracked the secret to women. G-bone? More like free-bone. Guy was a common house-whore. Still is, judging by that shirt. What? Yeah, kind of. For a while anyway. Then he got too cool and started brushing everyone. Meredith Mooney was the reason. One of those guys. Yep, that’s what I reckon. Girlfriend comes along then, ‘Seeya friendships, got a missus now, byyye!’ Mate, hate’s a very strong word. I don’t use it lightly. Besides, old Gassy wasn’t worth the trouble. Hate makes a bloke crook in the head if he doesn’t keep an eye on it. Nah. Not hate. More like disrespect. Remember Alice Beret? The actress he dated in twenty fifteen? Like, good effort and that, she was famous – C-grade, but still – and yeah, you’re right, he did get that big new job at the same time. But it wasn’t those things that bothered us (besides, I wouldn’t do his gig for a million bucks, he can have it bro); what shat us, boys, what wasn’t okay, was that smugness he had about him. ‘Member the Country Road shit he wore? ‘Member his hair? Hats off to you, eh, like you’ve worked hard and your chick’s alright – just quietly, she was a coke-head with a hairy back – but good on him and that, like, I’m not having a go for his choice in girls. But. Did he have to dress… so gay? Those pointy brown shoes without socks? Hello. News flash: you are NOT Italian. ‘Member what he said to Bryce that time? I’ll never forget it. Nah, to Bryce, he said he was moving to Newtown…for the culture. Yeah! Nah, Newtown, with his missus. Who was he kidding? Like, good luck surfing after work in Newtown. Spend your arvos in some lesbian café. Nah, he said he did mate. Course he said he did. But all my money on the fact that he didn’t. Gassy? Newtown? He woulda hated it. Now? Don’t even know. Maybe still there. Don’t even know his chick sitch. Single? Not likely. Guy like that. Doesn’t have the nerve to go it alone. Doesn’t have the balls to stick by his mates, either. Does his own thing. Looks out for himself. You know, I’ve a good mind to serve him my thoughts if he comes over here. Nup, I would mate. Tell him what everyone’s thought for a long time. Don’t give two hoots if it causes a stir. Wanna bet? Think I’m not game? Watch me. Here he comes right now. Hey Gassy mate. Oi Gassy! Oi Grant mate. What? No, it’s me. Huh? Phil. Cropley, Grant. From Narra? No. Ocean Street, Narrabeen. Cropley, I said, Grant. With a ‘P’, mate. Yeah, that’s it. You got it. Finally. Well done. Still sharp, mate, and looking good to boot. Pure Blonde? Thought so. But anyway, Grant. The reason I stopped ya was, well, me and the boys here, we were just talking, and we wanted to ask you a favour. You’re in a rush? Well I’m not surprised. Old G-bone always did have places to be. What’s her name, aye, aye? Nah. This won’t take long at all, don’t worry, you’ll be off to your chick in no time. Or is it a bloke? Ha! Only kidding Gassy. Yeah, so back to that favour. If you’d care to oblige. Of course, you may not wanna, in which case go off on your way, without changing, and that’s fine, for us anyway. It’s you we’re worried about. It’s you, Gassy, that needs the help. And if you do us this favour, you’ll help yourself. What is it? Oh, it’s actually quite simple. We’re just hopin’ that you might consider, please, not being a wanker. Please? Grant? Did you hear me, mate? Oh right. Walk off then. Look at him, boys. Off he struts, into the crowd, like he didn’t hear a thing. Ha! What? Nah mate, he heard. Bloody oath he heard. Are you kidding? Course he knows who I am. That was all front, mate. He knows exactly who I am. I’m Phil Cropley mate. The Crop-Duster. Everyone knows the CD.
Numbers Men
I’m sitting at the kitchen bench and Jill’s standing with her wine by the sink. It’s maybe nine o’clock. The kids are in bed and I’m telling her what it was like when my father died. How my sisters cried for weeks, sometimes together and sometimes alone in their rooms but always loud enough for me to hear it through the walls. I was seventeen. Alex and Hannah were nine and thirteen, respectively. Jill keeps saying, ‘I didn’t know that,’ shaking her head in disbelief. ‘You never told me that.’
I tell her I didn’t cry very much. Well, actually, I didn’t cry. My sisters thought this strange. I didn’t seem to mourn at all, just got around like nothing had happened. ‘That’s not like you,’ my wife says, which is true. Nowadays I cry when the sky is pink. Or when Fern, our youngest, reads at a school assembly. Or when Sarah shoots a goal in netball. I’m a banker so maybe that has bearing. Numbers men, I’ve noticed, are sensitive types. Our work is abstract. We deal in concepts removed from human feeling. We’re starved most of our lives of it, alone in our offices with computers and spreadsheets. It doesn’t take much then, out in the world, for our hearts to go to pieces.
‘But you were sensitive when I met you,’ Jill says, discounting this theory. ‘Before you started banking.’
She’s right, of course.
‘And you told me you watched those Disney films as a kid and…’
‘I take your point,’ I say, cutting her off.
‘Oh honey,’ she says. She comes to the bench and sits down. ‘What happened?’
Behind her, through the kitchen blinds, I notice a car pull up outside the house. It could be a neighbour being dropped off, it probably is, but for a moment the brake lights burn in the darkness and the engine faintly rumbles and I feel a great rushing fear inside me. A car door opens. Someone gets out. There is laughter, the sound of the door being shut, then the car drives off and is gone.
‘I thought that was…’
‘What?’ she asks, not turning around to look, quite possibly oblivious to the car outside.
‘No one,’ I say.
‘Tell me,’ she says, leaning back on her stool. ‘I want to know what happened.’
‘Well. You know it was aggressive, don’t you? That the doctors gave him three months and he died in six, aged fifty-two. Did I ever tell you, though…I’m not sure if I mentioned this, but my father and I were exactly alike.’
It was in our bones, Mum used to say. The way we looked, yes, the way we talked and walked and used our hands, but it was deeper than mere physicality. We had the same mind. It was, Mum told us both at dinner once, a wonder we couldn’t read each other’s thoughts. When they fought, when she levelled accusations at him, that he was lazy around the house, say, or that he drank too much, I couldn’t help but feel their sting.
Before he got sick, he’d take Alex, Hannah and me to rugby league on Sundays while Mum worked. Sometimes we’d go for pizza after. Whenever a waitress served us, she’d remark to him how lovely we were. What lovely kids. How lucky he was. He’d smile at them, these women, and they’d stop talking for a moment and look at him, like they knew him and were trying to work out who he was. That’s how I first thought of it, anyway. It always gave me an uneasy feeling, seeing him stare up at a waitress, his eyes full of what I now think of as life.
‘You never told me any of this,’ Jill is saying.
I’m about to say that, yes, I know, when the phone starts ringing. We look at it, bleating on the wall. I’m closer. I could reach out and pick it up from where I’m sitting, but I don’t.
‘Honey?’
‘Let’s leave it,’ I say. How odd, I think, for so
meone to use that number.
‘Pick it up.’
‘Hello?’ I say.
It’s quiet, it sounds like someone waiting, trying not to breathe.
‘No,’ I say, watching Jill. ‘We don’t need a subscription to that. We have Netflix. Yes. Okay,’ I say. ‘Thank you.’
‘Go on,’ she says after I hang up. She refills our glasses, then reaches over the bench and rubs my arm. ‘Keep going, honey.’
I take a sip of wine, lean back in my chair, fold my arms. ‘Well,’ I go. Well.
I’d learned he was sick on a Saturday morning. The night before, I’d slept over at a friend’s a block away, though not before ducking home to grab a change of clothes. When I walked into the house, I saw them huddled in the kitchen, sobbing. They didn’t hear me come in. They hadn’t expected me. I stood there watching them sob. They finally looked up and noticed me, startled. Frightened, as if they’d been caught in the midst of a crime. Their faces were wet all over, glazed with sticky tears. Mum told me to please leave, the only words she could speak, leave son, please. I spent the night at my friend’s, wide awake and staring at the ceiling, trying to work out what the hell had happened. Alex and Hannah, I later learned, were at our cousins’.
They sat us down the next day and told us. My father couldn’t look us in the eyes. He sat on the lounge, his head down, as if he’d done something wrong. Mum held out her hand and traced a little circle on her palm. ‘Your father,’ she said. ‘They’ve found the tiniest smudge on your father’s lung’. Of course, it wasn’t tiny. He was dead in six months.
‘And you didn’t cry.’
‘No.’
‘Not once?’
I look at Jill. She isn’t drunk yet. But she’s not sober either. Her eyes have that droopy look I’ve watched at parties and in restaurants and here, at this bench, for the last eight years. Usually, I’d be feeling pretty good right now, watching Jill get drunk, and drinking. Talking about our lives. Our memories. We do that. While our girls sleep in their beds upstairs, safe and dreaming. But tonight, I know, won’t be like this.
No Neat Endings Page 11
