by Tim Winton
Where is he? Jesus Christ, Tom, what the fuck?
Keely sagged against the fridge, fists against his temples. She pushed past him.
You, she said at the boy grinding sleep from his eyes in the bedroom doorway.
Gemma grabbed him up fiercely and Keely caught Kai’s glance across her shoulder as she hugged him.
Keely pulled himself around to face the kitchen clock. It was 6.52. Which meant he was supposed to be at work in eight minutes.
What’re you fuckin doin? she hissed. What happened?
Nothing happened. I think he let himself in.
Gemma rounded on him. You don’t even know?
I only just saw him now. He was asleep on the floor.
Jesus Christ, she said, lowering the kid to his feet and hauling him towards the door. You didn’t even hear him come in? You let him sleep on the floor?
He looked at Kai, saw the key on its shoelace against his pigeon chest.
He’s alright, Gem, he’s safe.
No thanks to you.
All I did was go to sleep in my own flat.
Pissed as a stick.
No, he said.
She dragged Kai past him and out onto the gallery.
The boy looked back hopefully. Keely tried a reassuring smile but the kid was not fooled.
At Bub’s he was a man hauling his own corpse through a swamp. The air in the kitchen was miasmic. He felt the grease settling on his skin and he drew it hot into his lungs with every breath. He was queasy, lightheaded, sore and clammy, so unsteady others had to jostle and dodge him. Kids, most of them. Taking the piss. He saw their mouths move, their eyes roll. Sound seemed to come and go intermittently. Everything around him – light, noise, space itself – felt sliced and diced. The morning towed him along a little way, sluiced past him, washed back to get him. Time was choppy. Fitful. Endlessly interrupted. Like a broken signal. Dirty coronas hung over every passing object. He worked, aping his own movements, head fluffy as the suds rising in his face. Bub looked disgusted. The chef – that squirrelly hipster with all the earrings and the pirate get-up – had the shits with him. Scowling, flashing his ruined teeth. Keely stayed at it all morning, digging deep; he was determined. But the Hobart cabinet had racks backed up beside it and the benches against the sink were head-high with pans and trays, everything, clean or dirty, glistening horribly. And then in the prep-hour before lunch he found himself just hanging against the trough, hands jerking in suds. Vertical. But useless.
Suddenly the chef was screaming. Something he couldn’t hear. The bloke was brandishing a cleaver at him from across the room and next moment Keely was on the reeking mats amidst a forest of clogs and legs. I’ve been struck, he thought. That idiot’s actually thrown the thing at me, cut me down. No sound at all. And then, like an approaching cataract, a rush of noise overtook him – laughter, cutlery, music – and he was wrenched to his feet.
Fuckin plonker, said some kid.
Go outside and get yourself what you need, said the chef without a hint of camaraderie. Ten minutes. Or piss off now.
* * *
Keely sat on a milk crate in the reeking alley as a waiter and a kitchen hand played hackeysack during their smoko. Bub appeared beside him, squatting on the step.
Everything alright, Tom?
Yeah.
Sure?
Soft, mate, that’s all.
Bub glanced at him sceptically. Keely’s younger workmates propped and kicked and giggled amidst the weeds and the flattened cartons.
Geez, mate. You must need the money.
I need something, Keely thought. But all he could manage was a thin grin.
Go home, said Bub. God’s sake, go to bed.
I’m fine, said Keely. Sorry about the fuss.
Behind them in the kitchen a tub of plates smashed. It was like a mortar blast between his temples, but he got up, wiped his bacon-greasy hands on his apron and watched Bub go.
Hey, he said to the kids with the hackeysack. You know a speed-freak called Clappy?
The kitchen hand shrugged and stooped to pick up his little beanbag.
Ask Gypsy, said the waiter.
Nah, he’s off the gear, said the kitchen hand.
Still, he’ll know.
Gypsy? said Keely. Are you serious?
The waiter sniffed and the kids resumed their game.
The morning chef’s studied machismo wasn’t just irritating, it was silly. It was as if he’d worked up an act to imitate the celebrity bad boys of New York and London. The pirate scarf, the earrings, the sea-leg swagger. Gypsy might have been a good-looking dude in his time, but he was ravaged. Probably in his early forties. Looked a lot older. Even before the stunt with the cleaver Keely hadn’t liked him. It wasn’t just the posturing, it was the sourness, the lack of generosity. As if a roomful of people scurrying to keep things afloat deserved to be shat on.
Yesterday, after his shift, the chef had sat out at a street table in his checks and clogs, necking espressos and passing comment on women as they swept by. And he was there again after lunch today as Keely stepped out into the shade like a man delivered. The day was over. Thank Christ.
There was an old bloke with Gypsy, an Italian gambler he recognized from around town. The chef shook his hand and the geezer cranked himself to his feet and gimped off. Keely hesitated, then sat down uninvited.
Ah. The fainting dishpig, said Gypsy. That had to have been embarrassing.
I guess it was.
This is my table.
I think it’s Bub’s table.
And, what, you’ve come to apologize for being a pussy?
I wanted to ask you about a couple of blokes.
You look familiar. Which bothers me.
Maybe we were in Sunday School together.
That’ll be it.
Tom Keely.
That your name, or the bloke you want me to tell you about?
No, it’s me.
Hang down your head, Tom Keely, sang Gypsy. Hang down your head and cry.
Bloke called Stewie Russell – you know him? He’s got a mate called Clappy.
The chef’s eyes narrowed.
Why would I know two little shits like that? Shitlets. Small pieces of ordure.
So you do know them.
Never said that, said Gypsy. Fellas you met inside, are they?
Here? I don’t think so.
Fucksake.
Oh. Inside.
The chef uttered a sardonic laugh. Christ.
No. Nothing like that.
Figured you for a lag. Bub giving an old mate a second chance. He does that, bless his cheap little heart.
I need some information.
Mate, if you’re looking to score you’re talking to the wrong bloke.
I just wanted some advice.
A bloke looking as fucked as you, talking about shits of a certain species, sounds like you’re in the market for advice I don’t give anymore. Wake up, mate, clean yourself up. Leave me out of it.
I wanted to clarify something. A situation.
Tom Dooley. In a situation. Who’da thunk it?
I need to know who I’m up against.
Gypsy circled the espresso cup on its saucer, shunting it round with a be-ringed pinky.
There’s just something I have to deal with, said Keely. For someone else. I need to know how dangerous they are.
Smaller the stakes, the nastier the fight, Dooley. Morons. And what could be worse?
How d’you mean?
Nitwits with nothing to lose. They’re not people you deal with. You walk away. Or find some mates to fix it for you. And if you’ve got those sort of mates don’t talk to me anymore, I don’t wanna know. I’m not shitting you. Don’t even come near me. These little cunts are only ever a few weeks from fucking up. They’ll be banged up in Casuarina soon enough. Your ‘friend’ needs to cash up or keep his head down. Now move on, Dooley, you’re frightening the ladies.
Kai was fidgety, restless from being c
ooped up in the flat all day. Their Scrabble game felt desultory. The kid was not really interested.
BARGS isn’t a word, Keely told him. At least he thought that’s what it said.
The kid shrugged. He’d been distant before, but not this sullen.
What about Mario? We could play that.
Kai sniffed disdainfully.
What is it, mate?
You cried.
What?
Last night. When you was sleeping.
Oh, said Keely with his spirit sinking – something else; it was endless. Did I?
I got scared.
The kid ran his hand through the lidful of unused tiles.
Why were you scared?
The boy looked away.
Kai? Why were you scared?
I dunno. Just the bawlin.
Kai pushed the tiles around the board – the game was toast now.
Is that all? Really? Honestly?
The boy shrugged. He looked at his palms.
Was I sleepwalking or something? Did I do something strange?
Cryin, that’s all.
Well, blokes cry too, you know.
The kid’s scepticism bordered on contempt.
But we do, he said. Even if we have to do it in our sleep.
Kai lifted the board and funnelled the tiles back into their box.
My dad, said Keely. He cried, you know.
The boy pressed his lips out sardonically.
True story. He wasn’t some action hero, mate. He didn’t spend all day biffing bad guys. He was a minister, like a priest. Just a bloke. I’m just a bloke too.
Can I watch TV?
I spose, said Keely.
He stood behind the couch awhile, watching the boy thumb through the channels. In fifteen minutes the school bell would ring.
Gemma came in, blotchy from the heat. She set down the bags of groceries and opened the fridge. He stood close, so Kai wouldn’t overhear.
Nothing, she said.
I might take a look.
What’s the point? Kai’s not even down there.
Just to know what this little prick looks like.
Stupid bloody car, she hissed.
He peered down from the gallery. The side street was gridlocked with parents in vehicles. People of all shapes hung at the chain-link fence and smoked outside the seedy restaurants and shops across the road.
He wished he still had binoculars. He wanted to see faces but from up here people were only figures, bodies whose postures he couldn’t read. And the longer you stared, the less innocent they seemed. Everyone began to look sinister. Lurking, plotting, in gaggles of colour and movement, indistinct behind the rippling hot updraughts. But they were just folks, parents, aunties, older siblings, waiting to collect their kids, walk them to the pool, the air-conditioned shops, cricket training, dance lessons. He had to let them be people. Even the bloke at the corner. In the beanie. Black tracky-dacks, blue singlet, reflector shades. On a day like today. A woollen hat. Pity’s sake. Folding his arms. One leg cocked against the wall. A small bloke.
Keely pulled the door to behind him and headed for the lifts. Probably wasn’t him. But he needed to know.
As the lift door peeled open he startled an Indian granny emerging with a fully laden supermarket trolley. He stepped aside, smiled like a cretin and caught the door before the lift set off again. The school bell echoed up the shaft. At the fourth floor two emo kids tried to squeeze a desk and an office chair in, and after a few moments of trying to help them, he got out and took to the stairs.
By the time he got to the ground floor he was blowing and his spine felt as if it had been hammered up through the base of his skull. He bowled through the lobby and out into the hot light, shuffled breathless to the corner, but at street level everything was different. A blur of moving bodies, the sun glancing off vehicles as they purred by. Shopping bags blowing free, snagged in jacarandas. Hijacked supermarket trolleys abandoned in every alley. Spilt drinks, gobbets of food on the pavement. Gulls feasting, fleeing, banking back for more. A truck in reverse, all beeps and diesel fumes. And kids, hundreds of them still fanning out everywhere. He wondered how many had noticed Kai’s absence today, whether there was a single girl or boy in this spreading mob who’d actually missed him, who’d even notice if he never returned.
He wheeled around, causing mothers and infants to clutch and cower. He climbed onto a street bench to scan the crowd. There were single men, blokes in suits, tradies in hi-viz, but no solitary lurker he could distinguish from the endlessly moving parade, no leering thug in tracksuit pants and gamy runners, no fag, no tatts, no beanie. He was too late.
He pushed back through the crowd, conscious he was bothering people now, frightening them a little. He was a fool to have come down. He’d left Gemma and Kai up there alone and whoever he’d seen wasn’t just gone – he could be anywhere.
The lift wormed its way uncertainly up the shaft. He willed it on, shuffled in agitation and the Sudanese woman with the little girl in cornrows avoided his gaze. He knew what he looked like – there were others in the building: you saw them jounce and fidget every day, sweating and panting by the laundromat. Keely smiled at the woman reassuringly, but it only seemed to alarm her more.
He took the gallery at a trot and his knock on Gemma’s door was too emphatic. He saw the momentary flash of the spyhole before the chain slid back.
Oh, Tommy, she said. Go and take a shower. You bloody stink.
They ate dinner together. Gemma cooked, almost defiant about it. Keely had no appetite but he knew better than to leave food on his plate. Things felt strained enough between the three of them as it was.
He was at the sink afterwards, trying to find something amusing about being elbow-deep in suds again, when Gemma’s phone chirped on the bench behind him. Kai was in the shower. He heard her cajoling him from the bedroom. Tonight her fractiousness had a hint of wear in it, as if she were running out of fight. Maybe she’d go south after all. He’d call Doris.
It was just a single chirp, a message.
He reached for a towel and dried his hands. When he opened the phone there was no text, just an image. One of three.
Kai at the school gate. That round face, the unguarded gaze, the white hair to his shoulders. The second pic was the teddy bear. Horrible and yellow against the door grille, hanging as he’d found it, dangling from one leg. And the third was Gemma. Walking in the street. Carrying her shopping. Taken this afternoon.
He sensed her in the doorway before she spoke.
The fuck you doin?
Close the door, he said.
Bloody tell me what to do.
Please, Gemma. Close the door.
She glowered but pulled it to. The water ran on in the bathroom. He gave her the phone. He didn’t know how he was going to tell her about the teddy bear, the fact he’d found it and said nothing. Best he didn’t go there. Her face was instantly wild.
Get him into bed for me, will ya?
What’re you doing?
Makin a call, she said, moving past to the sliding door. She stepped out onto the balcony and closed it behind her. He rapped on the glass. Watched her a moment until she turned and glared. She motioned for him to leave her alone. He went through to the bedroom, called to Kai to wind things up in there, that it was time for bed.
Kai and he were paging through the raptor book without much pleasure when Gemma appeared in the doorway.
Be out for a few minutes, she said.
Where? he asked.
I’ll be back for work.
Stay here, Gem, he said, conscious of Kai’s attention. Really. I mean it.
Just something I forgot, she said. A girl thing.
He got up from the bed and followed her to the door. Gemma, I’m serious.
Don’t forget the chain, she said, averting any attempt at discussion.
And she was gone. He went back in and sat on the bed. It was a while before Keely noticed the boy surveying his sun-damaged h
ands. Kai drew his own from beneath the sheet and turned them over, examining them. Keely laid a hand on the boy’s palm. Kai seemed uncertain about this. He lifted it a moment as if weighing it. Then he ran a finger across the veined back of Keely’s mitt, the lined knuckles. Keely’s hands were pulpy from hot water and looked a little swollen. He had no idea what the boy was thinking. He let him turn his hand over, trace the creases in Keely’s palm.
You’ll get big old blokes’ hands like this one day, said Keely.
I wake up and I’m the same as you, said Kai. Like, I’m dreamin. Then I am you.
See? That’s imagining. You’re seeing in your head what it’s like in the future, to be a grownup, to get old.
No, said the boy, giving Keely back his own hand. That’s not it.
* * *
Gemma came in at eight-fifty. She was shaking and glassy-eyed. She smelt bitter but had no time to shower before work.
Where’d you go? he whispered, pulling the bedroom door to.
I told you, she said, shucking her dress and pulling a tunic from the plastic laundry basket on the coffee table.
What happened?
Don’t ask me, it’s a lady thing.
I don’t believe you.
It doesn’t matter what you believe, she said, zipping the tunic and stepping into her shoes.
Don’t go, call in sick.
I can’t, she said, tipping a compact and brush onto the kitchen bench. Not tonight.
Keely watched Gemma assemble herself. It was a mystery to him that a woman could arrive as a ruin and reconstitute herself in moments. There was still something shaky about her as she smoothed herself down and checked her reflection in the sliding glass door but she had assumed an armour that hadn’t been there a few minutes before. He didn’t believe she was going to work tonight. But why the uniform?
Can you stay? she asked, turning for the door. Will you be here?
Of course. I’m on at seven.
Okay. Good. I’ll be back in plenty of time.
Whatever it is, Gem, don’t do it.
Just work, she said.
I don’t want you to.
She shot him a game smile as she pulled the door to and after she was gone he puzzled over the false note it struck.
