by PJ Mayhem
‘You haven’t ever mentioned the fruitologist being Polish?’
‘Well, no, I think this guy—who I’ve christened “Thuga”—could be a relative from the old country who comes and goes on special missions.’
‘Who’s the godfather, do you think? This guy or your guy?’
‘Thuga is definitely the godfather of the operation. The fruitologist seems more in charge in the shop. He’s not old country at all—definitely born here. I think he’s the local head. Everyone but Thuga seems to have been born here, so it makes sense that he would be the organiser.’ I pause, partly for dramatic effect and partly to take a breath so I can continue. ‘But now I have a problem. I was so caught up trying to figure it all out when Thuga came into the café that I have no idea what Jack said to me. I hope it wasn’t anything too flirtatious that’ll get back to the fruitologist. I might get whacked and packed off to Poland in cold storage.’
‘The plot thickens.’ Jane’s smile quickly becomes a laugh. I’m grateful she’s right beside me on my midnight fantasy express.
‘Whichever way it goes, I’m done for. No matter what, now I have to get to know the fruitologist just so I can figure out who’s who and what they’re up to. You know I hate an unsolved mystery.’
‘What happened to Ms Middle-of-the-Road?’
‘She forgot to take a driver reviver, fell asleep at the wheel and drifted off course, momentarily at least. Was bound to happen eventually, all that straight and narrow is exhausting, constantly reining myself in. Actually exhausting and boring.’
‘There’s no harm in the adventure and entertainment of a little off-roading or whatever. But I don’t get why don’t you put your fantasies to good use—less dead otter and Miss Marple, more Mae West again.’
‘Yes, well we both know how that went down. That aside, it’s not like I haven’t thought about it, but the logistics are all wrong. If they had space for a chest freezer then I might be able to just have a normal mojo-manifesting fantasy about the fruitologist taking me from behind as I bent in to get some frozen berries or something but alas the only way he can take me from behind with their setup is if I’m up against the fridge getting my yoghurt—I’d be far too unsteady when I’m on my tippy-toes getting fresh nuts. And if any man thinks he can come between me and my sheep’s milk yoghurt, he has another thing coming!’
‘So between suffocating you under salad greens, possibly poisoning your yoghurt and feta and now packing you off to Poland in an icebox—not to mention commercial radio—do you really think he’s a good choice for you?’ The mirth has suddenly slipped from Jane’s voice. Why did she ask if she was going to get upset about it again?
‘So what’s happening with Operation Baby Jane? Any more thought?’ I attempt to scramble back to safe territory, a smile plastered to my face.
‘Monday’s the big day.’
‘What?’ I feel my smile slip. I’m all for it if a child is what Jane really wants but there’s no need to rush into it. ‘Shouldn’t you perhaps give it some more thought?’
‘Calm down, Kismet, I just mean I’m planning on telling Mum that I’m considering it.’
‘How do you think she’ll take it?’
‘Hard to say. You know she can be pretty unpredictable.’
Maybe I’m not the only one at risk of turning into my mother here.
16
‘No, James, just tell them. They’re three and five—they don’t need a choice. No … no! You are not putting me on to them to tell them to do it. They’re your children too!’
I hear Stephanie’s voice before I see her on Sunday morning, those brilliant Capricornian boundaries directing her husband over the phone. I run to catch up to her.
‘Let me be sure I understand,’ Stephanie says between our dessert plates being whisked away and our coffees arriving. ‘He looks mostly like a younger Kevin Costner but also Tom Hardy, David Beckham but only the way David Beckham looks sometimes, David Hardy and the lead guy from NCIS but younger again?’
‘Yes, sort of—well, not really—there’s just something that reminds me of the fruitologist in all of them.’
‘How is that possible, Kismet? They look nothing alike. And now when you see them you take them as signs?’
I shift in my seat. ‘Yes.’
‘Those and every sports brand logo you see, as well as the sausage dogs?’
Stephanie laying the cold, hard facts out on the table like that does make it all sound a little questionable. If I didn’t have a bit of a headache from my sleepless night, I would have been more on point and not revealed all those signs to her. Although there’s no need for the ‘I can’t believe you just said that’ look she’s giving me; a look she normally reserves for James.
The sausage dogs are no secret to anyone who knows me but the others I don’t even try to justify. I bring out Ms Middle-of-the-Road and give her control of the wheel, which keeps the conversation on the straight and narrow for the rest of the afternoon.
‘I’m coming back to your place, you don’t mind, do you?’ Stephanie says as we leave the restaurant. ‘James has to learn to get a handle on parenting. He’s hopeless. The kids know he’s a pushover and they play him. There’s only one way he’ll learn. If someone has to drown at bath time, then so be it.’
‘Sure. No problem.’ A life is a small price to pay to teach your husband a lesson. I know she’s joking but I do have a minor flash of concern that I will be implicated as an accessory if one of them really does drown. Doing time for aiding and abetting Stephanie teaching her husband a lesson won’t look good on my resume, let alone the negative karma of it.
‘I’ll be gone by six thirty. He’s got very clear instructions that their dinner is at seven. I need to arrive just after that to make sure they’re fed.’
‘Of course,’ I say as I flag a bus. To be honest I’m a bit edgy; I hadn’t planned for this. Unplanned things grate against the flow of my energy.
‘Oh, a bus, how fun!’ Stephanie is bursting with the enthusiasm of someone who doesn’t endure public transport, day in, day out. When Stephanie isn’t behind the wheel of her supermummy SUV, James runs her around, like today chauffeuring her into the city.
‘I won’t be training or bussing it home, I wouldn’t know how. I’ll take a cab, but this makes me feel like a tourist,’ she continues, bouncing slightly on the seat. A very un-Stephanie move.
As we’re getting off she starts thanking the driver, ‘Thank you—’
Oh no, don’t you dare.
‘Please don’t call him “Driver”—he knows what his job is,’ I hiss at her. It’s one of my bugbears and her overenthusiasm for the novelty of my nightmare reality has worn my tolerance thin.
At first when I see the figure step out of Jack’s café as Stephanie and I are walking back to my place, I’m not absolutely certain it’s the fruitologist. Side on, it’s hard to tell. I slow my pace slightly, and he turns and walks in the same direction we’re heading. From behind, I’m sure it’s him. Having mastered How to Tell a Fruiterer by his Footwear, I’ve moved on to How to Tell a Fruiterer by his Bald Spot. It comes in handy for differentiating between him and Raymond when I do manage to look up. I’m also becoming quite familiar with the way his T-shirts pull slightly against his shoulders and back muscles.
I wonder what he’s been doing in Jack’s café? He’s not carrying a coffee. I very much doubt he’s been in there saying, ‘Keep your hands off my Kismet.’ For a start, he doesn’t even know my name and Jack knows me as Fiona anyway—we were on a first-name basis well before I converted to my spiritual name.
I surreptitiously observe the fruitologist. Careful not to give any reaction that will alert Stephanie to something being afoot, I ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘totally’ at appropriate intervals.
You’d think I’d be excited to share him, but I feel slightly protective of him. I have no idea why. I mean, I know why I don’t want to tell Stephanie it’s him. She’d be likely to march right up and lasso him
with some sort of project plan about how she thinks our relationship should play out. That would be after she’s assessed him from all angles to see if she deems him worthy relationship material and interrogated him about his intentions. I wouldn’t even put it past her to ask for a full medical history back to his grandparents, what his salary is, whether he has a super fund, its balance, and if he owns any property. She might even check his teeth while she’s at it.
I’d die of mortification a hundred times over.
As Stephanie continues to list James’s parenting shortfalls, I watch the fruitologist. He walks into the pub and alarm bells start clanging in my head. Is he an alcoholic? Is he a pokie addict? Is he off to watch sport on Foxtel there? Or worse, is he off to pick up virtually in front of my very eyes?
Maybe the fruitologist really is dying and was off to the pub to drown his sorrows. As I walk by PGGG the next morning, I don’t catch a glimpse of him or his generously proportioned sneakers, nor do I hear a single off-key lyric. I realise that he could disappear and I wouldn’t ever know who, when, what, how or why he’d gone or what this Singing Fruitologist debacle has been about.
The whole dying thing makes perfect sense. Perhaps, on the few times I’ve managed to ask him how he is and he has been civil enough to manage a mumbled reply, he’s been telling me that he’s dying. And I seem like a heartless bitch who doesn’t even flinch at the news because I haven’t understood him. There are so many possibilities that he could have twanged out: ‘terminal’, ‘contagious’, ‘mad for you’ (unlikely, but a girl can live in hope), ‘fine’, ‘good’, ‘well’, ‘OK’. Those last four are a bit dull. If he’s coming up with responses like that then he’s far too boring for me. I know for sure that I have ‘interesting and amusing’ right at the top of my What I Want and Need in My Next Male Love Relationship list.
A lack of response on my part to ‘mad for you’ certainly wouldn’t encourage his heart to creep any further down his sports-branded sleeve. And of course if he is dying it’d explain why he isn’t acting on his affections for me. I mean, it’s not as though the Universe is going to send me someone who doesn’t have affections for me as my destiny.
I’ll have to conceal some secret device and record his response next time I go in, which I am planning on doing tonight, for Mission Elicit Personal Information. Then I can upload the recording and press a button like ‘reduce nasal tones’ (I’m sure there’s a technical word for it) to clarify his response so I know what I’m working with. I’ve always fancied myself as a blonde version of Olivia Benson from Law Order: Special Victims Unit.
By 9.15am, I’m already bored. Which is not surprising given I’m at work tackling the compliance report again. My mind runs back to the fruitologist. After my last false alarm, I know it’s unlikely that he really is dying but I’ve been ambling along, operating on the premise that I have the rest of my natural life to get it together with him. All the time in the world, as they say.
Well, not all the time in the world. I consider how long I might like the rest of my natural life to be. A reasonable period, I conclude, but that still takes some defining. Not too short and not too long. I decide a minimum of thirty-seven and a maximum of forty-five years will probably fit the bill. I don’t fancy hanging around after eighty. It’s not so much the years themselves; part of the problem is the aesthetic. It’s not like I’m ageist and have something against old people or that I find them unattractive, I just don’t really fancy the whole ageing thing for myself. And naturally I cry at those old couples in nursing homes celebrating their trillionth wedding anniversary who appear on Today Tonight and A Current Affair.
I know it’s putting the temple in front of the incense sticks but I can’t stop myself running away with a fantasy of the fruitologist and me in old age. I imagine sitting with him on the porch of a nursing home, holding his gnarled, overworked hand, staring into his seagull eyes (that will be watering quite a bit by that age, I imagine), tufts of grey hair sprouting from his ears, his lopsided smile probably missing a tooth or two by then as well.
‘You didn’t ever have children?’ the interviewer asks in my fantasy.
‘No, we were all we ever needed,’ I respond. The fruitologist nods, or maybe that’s Parkinson’s—I haven’t worked out that part of the fantasy one hundred per cent yet. We each share a little about the tangled web of misunderstandings and tortuous beginnings of us getting together.
‘But it all worked out in the end,’ the fruitologist says as he clutches my hand and gives me a camera-shy peck on the cheek.
‘Fiona—the report. How’s it coming along?’
Broomstick’s bark jolts me from the world I’m lost in, saving me from a vision of a tragic end at the fruitologist’s graveside when he’s ninety-two or thereabouts. To be honest I’m a little relieved, all that thought of commitment and spending thirty-five years with someone had begun to make me feel a bit claustrophobic.
Speaking of claustrophobic relationships—I’ve just got my focus back on the report back when Catherine calls. ‘Fiona, I have favour to ask.’
‘More likely to get one if you play nicely and call me Kismet.’ I have to whisper the last bit because I’m at work.
I hear Catherine’s ‘Hmph.’ But she concedes: ‘Oh OK, so, Kismet, it’s like this: I’ve organised a date night for Brian and I.’
‘A date night?’ I know she can tell from the way my words hiccup that I’m laughing at her on the inside.
‘Yes, a date night—sort of. I’ve got us tickets to a soccer game—I’m trying to get him interested in something masculine. All the other mothers at school’s husbands are into that or AFL or something and Brian doesn’t do any normal manly things to connect with them. I’ve organised a restaurant I really want to go to beforehand though, so there’s something in there for me.’
It sounded like it was all about Catherine to me. She really didn’t know when she was on to a good thing.
‘So where do I fit into this?’ I ask.
‘I need you to mind the kids. You know normally I’d ask Mum but it’s a generational thing. Everyone does date nights these days but she’d go getting those ideas of hers, thinking we’re on the cusp of divorce or something. I can’t endure another one of her Mumterventions over nothing again so soon.’
‘Indeed, and where would she be able to pin all her hopes without her perfect son-in-law being “the son she never had”? It’d be like pulling at a loose thread and her world would unravel before the two of you had even got to the entrée!’ I agree, enjoying a rare sense of comradery with Catherine.
‘But there’s one problem. It’s Saturday fortnight, which is …’
‘I know what Saturday fortnight is. It’s something we’re not mentioning because it’s not happening.’ It’s vital that Catherine does not utter the B word—I’ve banned any mention of it this year. Thirty-five is fine but once you topple into thirty-six you’re a snowball hurtling towards forty and I’m not ready to be anywhere near forty. ‘And there’s nothing I’d rather do than spend the night with Sammy and Sonja, so of course I’ll do it.’
‘Great, thanks, Fiona. I’ve got to go but I’ll see you at lunch on Sunday.’
I don’t even take a gym break at lunchtime. I’m under the pump. I need to get the report done by 6.45pm—though that would be pushing it—so I can make it to PGGG and carry out Mission Elicit Personal Information.
Jane phones at 5.30pm.
‘Kismet, do you want to meet up for a drink?’
‘Sorry, I don’t think I can. I have to get this dharmaed report finished today. Broomstick needs to send it off to the board tomorrow.’ I try to keep the tightness out of my voice. It’s not Jane—I’m going to be down to the wire so I need every second.
‘Just tell Broomstick to fuck off!’
‘I know. It should be easy right? N. O. Two letters, all I have to do is put them together and say them.’
‘Exactly! So pack up your desk immediately, tell her to fuck off
, walk out and come meet me at Bar Monk.’
‘She’s not here to tell. I’m sorry, I really can’t tonight.’ There’s no way I can tell Jane that I’m giving priority to Mission Elicit Personal Information. She’d skin me alive and use me as some sort of installation, hung against a backdrop of a wall graffitied with ‘The fruitologist is a effen C!’ before I’ve got a chance to defend myself with ‘Sorry but the Universe works in mysterious ways’. It’s not like I’m choosing the fruitologist over Jane. She’d got Saturday.
‘How did it go with your mum?’ I ask, updating some figures in the Statistical Comparisons of Long-Term Savings against Initial Outlays in Compliance Implementation table of the report.
‘That’s what I was going to tell you about. Seriously, if Broomstick needs it done tonight, she should fucking well be there doing it herself.’
‘I know, but once this is done I’ll get my life back. Give me a quick snapshot of what happened with your mum now and we’ll do full disclosure when we catch up.’
‘Not great. She thinks she’s too young to be a grandmother.’
‘She’s sixty already.’
‘Sixty-two this year but you know how she is.’
I do—the opposite of my mum in nearly every way. ‘Maybe we can catch up Friday?’ I offer, already feeling guilty about choosing to carry out my mission.
‘I’ll see. I might be catching up with that young barman I did the feature wall for. But it’s really not that hard, Kismet. Just say NO! If you don’t say it, things are only going to get worse.’ And she’s gone.
I shoot her a quick text: Love you! Let me know about Friday. Kxxx
I hate un-ended endings and if I don’t send something to smooth the water I won’t be able to concentrate on getting this Buddha-begotten report finished.
‘Fiona, don’t you have a home to go to?’ Desmond says as he struts by my desk like a peacock.
