The Hunter and Other Stories of Men

by David Cohen

  Everything’s loaded up in my car now, all ready to go, except for the Heckler & Koch, in its bag and towel, and the bullet box, in its bag and towel, still here under the sink. I’ll give the gun a clean, but I know it works fine.

  VARIATIONS ON A THEME BY THE DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORT AND MAIN ROADS

  1. Long-Term Parking

  The first thing to be seen is a red Subaru Forester, centred so precisely between the yellow lines you could swear that the bay has parked itself around the car, and that this multistorey complex has, in turn, erected itself around the bay. But if you look at the Daihatsu Terios to the left of the Forester, and the Honda CR-V to the right, you can see that they too have been reverse-parked to perfection – equal room on either side, rear tyres just touching the wheel stops, front ends neatly aligned with the outermost edges of the rectangular columns – as have the vehicles to the left and right of those, and the vehicles on either side of them, and so on all around Level 44. Note also the generous bay width, which, along with the extra height clearance, enables the Ford Transit to lie down with the Hyundai Getz.

  Those yellow lines embracing each vehicle draw your eye to the equally yellow directional arrows, which in turn seem to gesture towards the vast expanse of the steel-grey floor slab, its epoxy-resin sheen calling to mind the surface of a frozen lake. At this point, you note that there are no oil stains, just shimmering brushstrokes of light from the fluorescent strips glowing soundlessly overhead.

  When you shift your gaze from the floor to the gently curving walls and the rows of columns – pausing to appreciate the reflective-chevron corner guards, whose alternating black and yellow stripes somehow heighten the illusion of licorice- allsort sponginess – what strikes you most is the absence of shadows, of dark corners, of shady entrances to stairwells. The entire space is bathed in a factory-showroom brilliance, to which your eyes have already adjusted. Everything that can be seen, you are seeing.

  Returning your attention to the Subaru Forester, you contemplate the splashes of milky light on the unblemished paintwork: a red that almost matches that of the gleaming fire extinguisher mounted on the nearby wall, and the lid of that curiously pristine dumpster over in the corner. You could be forgiven for thinking that what you are seeing is not a car park interior but a perfect three-dimensional rendering of a car park interior: a promise of what’s to come. You could be forgiven for thinking that these vehicles, cleaned, polished and backed in so carefully, are ideal versions of themselves.

  At this point you notice that Level 44 is completely silent. But when you listen carefully, you sense that this silence is in fact made of an assortment of faint sounds you can’t quite identify or even describe. Do you hear the swish of a faraway boom gate periodically opening and closing? The paint-roller sigh of tyres ascending the internal ramps? The whirring of nearby ticket machines, even though there isn’t a pay station in sight?

  No matter how far your attention wanders along the neatly arranged rows of empty vehicles, it always come back to rest on the Forester. The longer you regard its metallic red exterior and pristine halogen headlights, the more familiar they seem, as if you are being reunited after a long separation, as if you’ve been wandering Level 44 in search of this mid-sized SUV and you have at last found it, or it has found you.

  Inspecting the concrete floor again you wonder, for the first time, why those yellow arrows point in one direction only.

  At the same moment it occurs to you that the Subaru Forester is indeed yours, and that it’s in far better condition than when you last drove it. Searching in vain for the keys, you realise that you won’t drive it again. But you are kind of glad because, although you may have arrived here earlier than you’d intended, the rates are really quite good, and you’ll never have to remember where you left the car. Also: you find some comfort in the knowledge that no matter how many people show up after you, everyone is guaranteed to find a parking space.

  2. Cones

  One, two, three, four, five. And back to the beginning. One, two, three, four, five. I’m already slightly tired of watching the cones, but I have to admit the picture quality is topnotch.

  The laminated sign on the back of the door at the far end of the room says Traffic Offenders Program (Advanced Module). The name alone is confusing because I don’t recall doing the Beginner Module, or the Intermediate Module, or whatever other modules there may be. I’d always assumed there was only one program for everyone, a program that involved sitting in a room all day on an uncomfortable plastic chair, along with a bunch of other people on equally uncomfortable plastic chairs, watching an educational video. While there’s no denying that I’m in a room, sitting on a chair, watching a video (sort of ), beyond those basic components the program is really quite different from what I’d imagined.

  For one thing, there’s literally just me in this room; I’m completely alone here. For another, the chair, far from being uncomfortable, is very comfortable: ergonomically contoured, with what feels like a memory-foam seat cushion, so perfectly moulded to me that I’ve already lost track of where my arse finishes and the chair begins. True, I can’t move it around because the base is permanently fixed to the floor, but that’s the only downside of what is otherwise an ideal chair.

  The chair’s parked more or less in the centre of this (windowless) room, facing a screen mounted on the wall just a metre or so in front of me. What perplexes me most of all is the footage. It’s just a kind of close-up panning shot of a row of five orange traffic cones. The camera (is it a traffic camera? If so, the technology is really advanced) drifts from one end of the row to the other, and then the film abruptly ends, jump-cutting back to the beginning: left-to-right pan, return to the start, and so on. It runs for about ten seconds and there’s no soundtrack: no background music, no narrator talking about the cones to give them some sort of context. The camera moves in silence. But, as mentioned, the picture quality is second to none. In fact, I’d describe it as supernaturally good.

  Maybe all this is specific to the Advanced Module. Maybe the earlier-module people get lower-definition screens and less comfortable chairs and some other kind of footage. I don’t know why I’ve been fast-tracked, but the real issue is: I don’t know why I’m here at all. I recall nothing between the point where I was driving down Ipswich Road texting ‘LOL’ to my girlfriend and the point where I was sitting here – am sitting here – doing the Advanced Module. Yes, I clearly remember texting ‘LOL’ because she’d just sent me a photo of our dog doing something funny – admittedly not laugh-out-loud funny, so maybe ‘LOL’ was a bit of an overstatement, but that’s all beside the point. I can only conclude that somehow, in those few seconds when I was texting, the police spotted me, and now I have to do the program.

  So, to reiterate: I’m in the room, on the chair, watching the screen, the picture quality is superb – I really can’t help thinking it’s wasted on the cones, and yet I can’t stop watching. What with the comfortable chair and the crystal- clear image, I’m occupying a strange zone somewhere between utterly mesmerised and utterly bored. I count the cones, and I count the cones again. The camera dwells for a moment on each one, inviting me to do the same. It seems to be saying: examine each cone carefully; try to discern and appreciate its individual qualities. It seems to be saying: imagine these cones are people.

  But I keep waiting for the next bit, the bit that comes after the cones (whatever that may be), to begin. You might even say I’m desperate for it to begin, and I’m beginning to wonder if something’s gone wrong: a glitch that whoever is remotely operating this footage is unaware of. I’d contact the IT department or the AV department or whoever’s responsible for the footage, but there’s no phone in here; there’s nothing but the chair, the screen, the door and the laminated sign. Still, I’m pretty certain that sooner or later someone will walk through the door and the next thing that’s supposed to happen will happen. I could stand up and walk over to the door, maybe even open the door and see what’s going on
out there on the other side, but this chair is so incredibly fucking comfortable I literally can’t move. I’m halfway to being convinced that it was designed especially with me in mind. Meanwhile, there’s nothing else to do but watch the cones: one, two, three, four, five. And back to the beginning. One, two, three … I’m sure this will drive me mad sooner or later but the picture quality really is excellent.

  3. The Green Man

  The Green Man remained, locked mid-stride, his legs perfectly straight, his shoes like two bricks, his hands inexplicably sheared off at the wrist. Ted wondered if the signals had gone haywire. On a good day he was lucky to get himself and his rollator halfway across before the Green Man disappeared and the Red Man took over. Not now, though: the Green Man remained and the traffic waited while Ted, a solitary pedestrian, shuffled forward.

  The Green Man remained, heading screen left to some unknown place beyond the frame, but with an enviable sense of purpose. Something definitely must have gone wrong, as Ted was quite sure that the people in charge had no intention of extending the Green Man’s time; on the contrary, they wanted to reduce it by tiny increments, thinking no-one would notice – but Ted had noticed, and he knew that one day the Green Man would be little more than a fond memory. Then that prick the Red Man would reign supreme, forever standing to attention, squarely facing the pedestrians, his shoulders oddly hunched as if he were holding an invisible suitcase in each hand (or at the end of each arm), while Ted remained stranded at the kerbside, leaning on his rollator.

  The Green Man remained, his uniform a grid of brightly lit cells. The rollator glided forward, Ted close behind. But the median strip remained out of reach, as if unseen road-widening machines were pushing it a little further away with each step he took. And all the while the traffic waited, six lanes of it extending far into the distance, oddly patient, almost reverent. Ted couldn’t see the drivers through the tinted glass, but he knew they could see him.

  The Green Man remained, glowing behind his window, high up inside his yellow box. Ted eased the rollator forward. The road put up no resistance: all Ted had to do, it seemed, was hold on and allow himself to be gently reeled in to his destination somewhere on the other side. He looked at the waiting cars and felt as if he were crossing the surface of a life-sized map.

  The Green Man remained, back straight, chest puffed out, torso angled slightly forward. Ah, to be the Green Man, forever young, held up by eternal legs: no rollator for him. Admittedly, his hands were missing, but you can’t have everything.

  The Green Man remained, overseeing the cars from on high. They sat perfectly still: a photograph of traffic.

  The Green Man remained, and Ted kept his eye on the median strip. No matter how much road he and his rollator covered, they could never seem to get there. But the thing was, his legs weren’t tired. In fact, he no longer needed the rollator, and he noticed that he was walking erect. Even though he still had a lot of ground to cover before he got to the other side, he wasn’t concerned, because he somehow knew that the Green Man would give him as long as he needed. And the traffic would wait. Everything seemed to be saying: Take your time, Ted. It was an odd sensation, one he hadn’t felt before, but all things considered, he had to admit it was quite nice.

  WASHING DAY

  After the divorce, Angus moved into a one-bedroom, second-floor unit in a small block. The building was little more than a brick-and-cement cube divided into eight smaller cubes and surrounded by a car park. Apart from a welcome mat of dry lawn at the front of the property, the closest thing to a natural phenomenon was the single Hills Hoist that emerged, tree-like, from the concrete slabs at the rear of the block. Angus had intended this modest abode as a stopgap: he’d find a job, restore order to his world, and then find a nicer place to live. But weeks slipped by, then months, until it could no longer reasonably be described as a stopgap; it was just a gap.

  None of the other residents seemed to notice the harshness of the surroundings – or if they noticed, they didn’t care. Angus wasn’t surprised to discover that they were all men – single men, as far as he could tell. Henry, who lived right next door to Angus, was a sixty-five-year-old widower and full-time smoker; Angus could hear his hacking cough through the wall. Colin, a few doors along, worked for Australia Post and wore a cardigan. Mario from number 5 was an affable forty-year-old, but every now and then neglected to take whatever medication he was on and would, without warning, howl obscenities at the night – usually just as Henry’s coughing had begun to subside. Angus’s next-door neighbour on the other side was Troy, the youngest and, with the exception of Angus, the most recent arrival. He’d never lived away from home before. Whenever Angus passed Troy’s window, he was engulfed by what seemed to be equal parts foot odour and rancid vegetable oil. Chris, divorced, worked for Connex. Angus knew this because he’d once seen Chris in an orange vest emptying rubbish bins at Camberwell station, and felt slightly envious because Chris didn’t have to use the overpass but was allowed to walk directly across the railway tracks to get from one platform to the other. Angus had yet to meet the other two residents, men of indeterminate age he saw only as they were entering or leaving their dingy flats at the front of the block. He had no idea what they did for a living, but they both wore ties.

  Although these men lived close together, their lives never actually intersected; they merely brushed against each other for a few minutes here and there as they went about their business. This was fine with Angus. He immersed himself in the minutiae of daily life, studiously avoiding any sort of bigger picture. Even he was amazed by how quickly he reverted to the solitary ways of his bachelorhood, as if his marriage had itself been a stopgap, a three-year interruption in a life of comfortably meaningless solitude loosely stitched together with short-lived relationships, intermittent bouts of employment, and doing the laundry. Even if his world had fallen into a heap, Angus still made a point of regularly washing his clothes. He always felt slightly better equipped to face another day knowing that he had a clean pair of socks to put on.

  So every Sunday morning, he carried his plastic basket containing a week’s worth of dirty clothes out to the little communal laundry just opposite the Hills Hoist. The laundry had a flimsy lock, the type used in public toilet cubicles, and the interior was littered with empty detergent boxes and time-stiffened towels nobody wanted. An old hose lay tangled up just inside the door, and a few rusty gardening implements leaned against the wall, covered in spider webs. Surprisingly, the single coin-operated top-loader in the corner worked, although it contained enough accumulated lint to knit Colin a new cardigan. The lethargy infecting the block had, it seemed, reached its apotheosis in this neglected laundry. Angus never saw anyone else using the washing machine, and the Hills Hoist remained bare but for the few garments that had been hanging there since before he moved in: more towels, some mismatched socks, several pairs of threadbare underpants that were now a uniform grey – and, curiously, a brassiere. Angus could only conclude that a former resident – perhaps the last woman to have inhabited this block of flats – had left it behind, possibly in her haste to get away.

  Angus’s bedroom window overlooked the Hills Hoist, and he would occasionally gaze down at this solitary relic of a female presence, thoughtfully stroking his stubble-covered chin like an amateur archaeologist pondering the lifestyle of the bra’s former owner. After a time he tried to picture her: reconstructing her, as it were, from the broad straps and large cups of this anonymous undergarment. The best he could manage was a big, shapely pair of breasts attached to a faceless woman, but that was sufficient to arouse him, and then he had to think about something else. On Sundays, as he tipped his clothes into the washing machine, he found himself regarding the garment through the dusty slats of the laundry’s single window. He imagined laying his head between those soft, warm breasts.

  One Sunday morning Angus was in the laundry, sitting on the rusty folding chair that somebody had conveniently placed in front of the top-loader at some po
int in the distant past. The machine was halfway through its rinse cycle – another fifteen minutes or so until he could remove the clothes. Usually Angus just started up the machine and then returned to his flat, coming back down after thirty-five minutes when the washing was done, but today he just couldn’t be bothered, so he sat there in the laundry with his thong-clad feet resting on the top of the machine, watching them vibrate in time with the motor, listening to the clothes being tossed about inside, and wondering if he was succumbing to the torpor that hung over the block. He glanced out the window at the Hills Hoist, and his eyes followed the movement of the brassiere swaying as the wind picked up. Once again, he thought of the woman who had once inhabited that garment. Each time he imagined her, she came into focus a little bit more. By this stage he pictured her clearly enough to believe with some conviction that she was a shortish woman with olive skin, thick hair and black eyes. She laughed often, and her laugh was warm and slightly wicked.

  Angus watched the bra swaying back and forth on its peg. It hypnotised him. He could feel his penis straining against the fabric of his tracksuit pants. He looked away from the window and tried to think about something else, but couldn’t think of anything else to think about. He concentrated on the hum of the washing machine, laying his flat palm on the lid and feeling the vibrations move through the conduit of his hand and into his body. It didn’t help. He needed to relieve the pressure of a long sexual abstinence. But more than that: he longed to meet a woman like the owner of that bra. In fact, he wanted to meet the owner of that bra. He couldn’t say why, but he was certain they’d hit it off. He told himself that she must be out there somewhere. For a moment he actually thought about tracking her down, or even re-creating her, mad-scientist fashion, from nothing more than a piece of intimate apparel.