Work in Progress

by Paul Thomas

  Just when it seemed nothing could get her off the subject, I asked if, with the benefit of hindsight, she had a theory on what had tipped my father into his downward spiral. She said she didn’t want to talk about it any more and went to bed.

  I could take my mother in limited doses but Felicity and Murray constituted a far less palatable brew. He was a real estate agent. The attributes that make an effective salesperson are not those you’d look for in a desert island companion but, even so, it was impossible to believe that Murray’s personality was an asset, professionally speaking. But he’d seen the Ponsonby/Herne Bay property boom coming so while he was a fuckwit who’d had only one idea in his life, it was a good idea and had made him a well-off fuckwit.

  They lived in a beautifully restored villa overlooking Westhaven Marina with their expensively educated kiddies and his-and-hers BMWs. The trappings weren’t the issue: I knew and liked others who lived in similar style. What made Murray tiresome and ultimately repulsive was his noisy certainty that there was nothing more to life than more of the same — more money, more property, better lifestyle — and his noisy contempt for those who didn’t have the acquisitive urge or simply weren’t very good at making money.

  To Murray, society was a meaningless concept. People fell into three categories: the demi-gods with helicopters and ocean-going pleasure boats and a home on every continent; the ordinary rich; and the burdensome rest. Everyone in the third category, from the salaried white-collar brigade all the way down to the feckless underclass, was despised. He resented every cent of tax he paid, and gloried in every scam and shortcut that enriched him at the expense of the state or the sucker on the other end of the deal. And all of it — the nouveau riche vulgarity, the fascist instincts, the dog-eat-dog rorts and rip-offs, the lack of any sense of national identity (apart from skinhead jingoism on sporting occasions) — was justified by one thing: the fact that he’d worked fucking hard to get where he was today.

  Those villas didn’t restore themselves, you know. I used to put in a full day’s work, then go home, get changed and strip and sand and paint till midnight. Same with Flick. Fifteen years of holding down day jobs and spending our nights and weekends making old dumps look good enough to double our money.

  Do it once, do it quick, bank the cheque.

  So don’t come to me for a hand-out. I don’t collect a pay cheque for doing fuck all all week. I’m on commission: sell or starve. Flick and I didn’t work our arses off all those years for other people’s benefit. We did it for us and our kids.

  The worst part of it was that he’d converted Felicity to this miserable set of attitudes. She looked good; she and Murray brought their ferocious self-enhancement ethic to bear on their physical appearances via the gym, Pilates and annual half-marathons. Below the surface, though, there was nothing left of the person she used to be.

  I had dinner with them and two other couples, their closest friends. I felt like I’d infiltrated a cult. A cargo cult that worshipped the Lear jet.

  Then there was the funeral. Imagine it backstage at Miss World, the contestants checking each other out: Christ, get a load of Miss Ukraine — if she was any more butch, she’d have to shave twice a day. And don’t tell me Miss Brazil’s tits are for real; that slut’s had more surgery than a Siamese twin.

  The old-timers ran the rule over one another as minutely as their eyesight would permit, trying to work out who would outlive whom. Old George isn’t too steady on his pins; he’ll be lucky to make the millennium. Crikey, what’s Jack trying to do — drink himself to death? He looks like a marinated plum. And as for Bill … I tell you what, I saw faster-moving snails in the garden this morning. We should do this more often, dear.

  At Felicity and Murray’s it was all about money: how to make it, how to keep it, how to spend it. You were defined by how much you had and how badly you wanted more. At the funeral it was all about death and how long it could be kept waiting. When my father’s contemporaries pawed me with their mottled mitts and peered into my face, they weren’t searching for a trace of their dead friend. They were trying to remember what it was like to be unafraid of time.

  There were eulogies from a bridge pal and a former colleague portraying my father as a one-dimensional figure with no existence worth recording outside the bridge club or the college grounds. They evoked a dusty anachronism: courtly, particular, stuck in his ways. Despite having known him for decades, they apparently hadn’t noticed that he had a keen sense of humour and the absurd. On the other hand, there was no mention of the fog of despair into which — Logan notwithstanding — he’d receded, so perhaps they felt on safer ground with the sensible public individual than the sad clown.

  Felicity made an effort to splash a little colour onto this study in grey but while she provided a few snapshots of a happy family under a benign paternal regime, the years of righteous overtime and upward mobility and absorbing Murray’s crude and spiteful Social Darwinism had cooled her heart and deprived her of the capacity to treasure human foibles and fallibilities. And when all was said and done, my father was a wage slave, a worker bee — dangerously close, in fact, to being a loser. He’d given his working life to one employer; he’d been an acting head of department any number of times but hadn’t lobbied for bigger things or sought a fast track. He’d collected the weekly pay cheque. He hadn’t sincerely wanted to be rich.

  To top it all off, I’d had Reverend Logan popping up like Banquo’s ghost and passing on a cryptic warning from beyond the urn. If ever a man was entitled to make a beast of himself, I was that man. And there was no better guide and companion in that cathartic exercise than my old friend and partner in crime, Associate Professor Chas Harley.

  He was talking to Felicity. I could tell it wasn’t going quite as he’d expected.

  I butted in. ‘Ready when you are, Chas.’

  ‘You’re not leaving?’ Felicity demanded.

  ‘Watch me.’

  ‘What’s the rush?’ she said. ‘For crying out loud, Max, it’s Dad’s wake.’

  ‘I wondered what all these people were doing here.’

  ‘Well, you’re certainly behaving as if it’s slipped your mind.’

  ‘By all means, Felicity, be the last to leave. You’re more than welcome to the kudos attached to that. I happen to have reached saturation point. You right, Chas?’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s your call.’

  ‘Well, then, let’s get the fuck out of here.’

  Felicity’s jaw snapped up and she dragged in air through flared nostrils. ‘I don’t bloody well believe it,’ she hissed. ‘Today of all days, it’s still all about you. You really are a fucking selfish prick, aren’t you?’

  Over the years I’ve tended to fight fire with fire but I didn’t want to prolong this spat or embarrass our mother by escalating it to a full-on sibling brawl of the sort that can end in blood libels and bitter tears. Not today of all days. So I said, ‘Whatever,’ and walked away.

  My mother pouted when I told her I’d had enough. ‘You think you’re the only one?’

  ‘I do, as a matter of fact,’ I said. ‘You can handle it, Felicity can handle it, I can’t. I’m not proud of it but that’s just the way it is.’

  Her expression softened and she laid a hand on my forearm. ‘It’s all right, dear; off you go. It’s mostly sentimental waffle anyway.’

  I kissed her on the cheek. ‘Thanks, Mum. I’ll stay at Chas’s tonight so I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  ‘Don’t forget, Max: you’re a married man these days.’

  I stared. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I remember what you two used to get up to,’ she said equably, ‘and when I was speaking to Chas a little while ago I was left in no doubt that he’s still very much the bachelor gay. I’m just saying, don’t you let him lead you astray.’

  ‘It’s not going to be that sort of night,’ I said.

  ‘Well, I’m sure you’ll start out with the best of intentions but boys will be boys.’

>   ‘Except we’re not boys.’

  ‘Maybe not but you haven’t exactly settled down, have you?’

  ‘Shall we talk about this some other time?’

  Chas had the motor running.

  ‘Fuck me,’ I said as I got into his car. ‘I’ve copped the lot today, up to and including Mum telling me it’s high time you and I started acting our age.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘What the fuck did you do: give her a blow-by-blow account of your sex life?’

  ‘No, but now that you mention it, I did get the impression she wouldn’t mind a vicarious thrill. Meanwhile Felicity, who used to guest-star in my fantasy life, has turned into a redneck bitch from hell.’

  ‘That’s what happens when you marry a real estate agent. Did you meet brother-in-law?’

  ‘Briefly. He struck me as a complete cunt.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure he strikes most people that way. So what does that make Felicity?’

  ‘Shit, she’s not the first to fall into that trap,’ said Chas. ‘Many perfectly fine people marry their exact opposite, then shed every attribute that made them worth knowing and adopt every attribute that makes their spouses unbearable. Fucked if I know why. Yet another reason not to get married.’

  ‘I don’t know that marriage per se is the issue. I didn’t turn into a clone and neither did my wives.’

  ‘Yeah, but you’re different,’ he said. ‘Not everyone has your sense of self, ego if you like …’

  ‘Not everyone’s a fucking selfish prick, in other words?’

  ‘Correct. It’s a well-known scientific fact that people who aren’t fucking selfish pricks are fifty times more likely to surrender their individuality upon entering the state of matrimony. The other thing in your favour is that, philosophically and temperamentally, you’re not the marrying kind. I know you keep doing it but it’s not your natural state.’

  ‘Is that why you didn’t come over for the wedding?’

  ‘Come on, mate, you know I’ll go anywhere for a piss-up and a few laughs. It was just bad timing.’

  ‘Clashed with a Queer Theory conference, did it?’

  He shook his head. ‘This chick got up the duff. It was all pretty loose but I figured I ought to be around when she had the scrape.’

  As we went down the ramp into the carpark beneath Chas’s apartment building he said, ‘So, are you committed this time? I mean really committed?’

  ‘I’m older and wiser.’

  ‘Is that a yes?’

  ‘You’re an intellectual,’ I said. ‘You work it out.’

  Chas had a nifty little pad at the bottom of Parnell Rise. We got out of our funeral kit and into a bottle of Moët and a few fat lines of cocaine. Coke was like dessert wine and other people’s cigarettes: I never turned them down if they were on offer but didn’t miss them when they weren’t. Drugs are one thing I’m relatively sensible about.

  That set us up nicely for the evening, which began in a raucous Italian restaurant halfway up the rise. Chas wanted to hear about my work in progress. Rather than lie, I changed the subject.

  ‘Do you reckon I take after my father?’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘It’s a theory. I don’t go along with it but maybe I can’t see the wood for the trees.’

  ‘Well, let’s consider this proposition,’ said Chas. ‘Your old man was a solid citizen, a devoted husband and family man …’

  ‘As far as we know.’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘Do you know something I don’t?’

  I shook my head. ‘No. Neither of us knows fuck all, if the truth be told. We’re just assuming he was all of the above.’

  ‘On pretty good grounds, I’d have to say. Your track record, on the other hand, is an appalling litany of exploitation, infidelity and betrayal. He was a gentleman, you’re a cad; he held down a proper job for however many fucking years, you’ve never done an honest day’s work in your life. Need I go on?’

  ‘He spent a lot of time on his own — as I do.’

  Chas sighed and nodded but not because he thought I had a point. ‘He probably spent too much time on his own doing stuff he didn’t enjoy. You’re doing exactly what you want to do. There’s no fucking comparison.’

  Coked up and carbo-loaded, we were on our second margarita in a nearby bar when a young woman walked up to Chas and kissed him, at great length, on the mouth. Far from being taken aback, he gave as good as he got.

  Eventually he remembered me. ‘Max, this is Emma, my special friend. Emma, say hi to my old pal Max Napier, the distinguished novelist.’

  Emma epitomised aggressive post-feminist sexiness: pretty but not innocent, with brazen cleavage, a flat, tanned, bejewelled stomach and a sublime backside showcased in fiercely tight trousers. Little was left to chance or the imagination but she was relaxed in the hot glare of strange men’s desire because this was her time and place.

  None of this came as a surprise. Men and women often part company over what constitutes an attractive heterosexual male but Chas was one they could agree on. For as long as I’d known him, this self-perpetuating consensus had clung to him like a mysterious past. Early on he cultivated a persona modelled on the late rock star, delinquent and poet manqué Jim Morrison. Twenty years on he still had his looks, his figure (thanks to a devotion to jogging that his hero would surely have scorned) and the ability to blur the line between charm and manipulation.

  I was wondering where Emma’s materialisation left the boys’ night out when we were joined by her friend Christine. They were the classic Friday night double act: the hot chick who has to beat them off with a stick and her parasitic friend who feeds on the beat-offs. Under different circumstances we would have been a one-night stand made in heaven: she lacked Emma’s chiselled glamour and taut sexuality while I came a long way second to Chas in looks, patter and, crucially, cool.

  The girls and I were making small-talk of such creaking awkwardness that I sensed they were on the verge of cutting out the middle man when Chas returned from the bar with a fresh round of drinks and an icebreaker: ‘By the way, Max, Christine is doing our creative writing course.’

  ‘Really?’ We locked eyes as the penny dropped. Reluctantly I cut to Christine: ‘How’s it going?’

  I half-listened to her answer, which took the form of an exposition jam-packed with unsubstantiated assertions and inexact superlatives, darting hostile glances at Chas, who was understandably giving Emma his undivided attention. By the time she and Christine left on their inevitable pilgrimage to the bathroom, I’d built up a powerful head of steam generated by the ambush and Christine’s pulverising critique of the late twentieth century novel.

  ‘Nice work, arsehole,’ I snarled.

  Chas opted for wide-eyed bemusement. ‘What?’

  ‘The double date. I don’t recall putting in a request for female company.’

  ‘I don’t recall you being averse to it.’

  ‘She’s into magic realism, for fuck’s sake. Don’t tell me you had no idea how profoundly averse I am to discussing magic realism with a creative writing student.’

  ‘Fuck, Max, give the poor bitch a break; it’s not every day she gets to meet a real live published novelist. She’s excited; her little head’s bursting with things she wants to talk to you about. Once she’s got it all out …’

  I mimicked his shrug. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means normal service will be resumed; we’ll be four people having a drink on a Friday night.’

  ‘Four people or two couples?’

  He grinned crookedly. ‘You do the maths.’

  After another round of cocktails in another bar we drifted back to Chas’s place to hoover up the rest of the cocaine. Despite the hedonism, the conversation was relatively elevated. Emma turned out to be another literature head, recently embarked on a doctoral thesis on Ronald Hugh Morrieson under the supervision of none other than Associate Professor Chas Harley. Unfortunately there wasn’t an opportunity to int
errogate him on the ethical implications of this overlap.

  I was sharing a sofa with Christine, who couldn’t sit still. Each shift and squirm brought her closer until our thighs came into contact. I could have moved or gone to bed but I was curious. I wanted to see how this set-up would unfold.

  Unsubtly, as it turned out. Chas and Emma were on the opposite sofa. She was lying back with her legs across his lap and during a lull in the conversation their horseplay segued into foreplay. Christine giggled, exerting unmistakable pressure on my thigh. It had been a big night but I wasn’t drunk or high enough for whatever they had in mind. I announced I was off to bed.

  No one tried to talk me out of it. I began a parting speech but Christine said she’d crash on the couch so we’d see each other in the morning. I brushed my teeth and retired to the spare bedroom. There was movement and murmured conversations followed by traffic in and out of the bathroom, as if everyone was calling it a night. Seven minutes after the other bedroom door closed (my watch had a luminous dial), mine opened. Christine came and sat on the edge of the bed; she was down to her camisole and knickers. She understood I didn’t want to do anything and that was cool but would I mind sharing the bed? The couch was uncomfortable and she wasn’t used to the street noise.

  I said okay. She slid in. I lay on my side facing the wall; she followed suit, cautiously fitting herself against my back. It was a single bed and that arrangement was probably the most efficient use of space. We stayed like that for quite a while. Eventually I rolled over and one thing led to another.

  This is how it unravelled:

  I’d made a courtesy call to my publisher’s New Zealand arm. Another of their overseas authors had pulled out of a writers’ festival in Christchurch at the last minute so they arranged for me to take his place. I didn’t mention this to Christine; I thought it would only complicate things. I actually told her I was heading straight back to Sydney.

  Kate had been badgering me to let her see my work in progress. I’d fobbed her off, not wanting to admit that I’d spent a year writing pornography and not having come up with a credible cover story. My absence was too great a temptation and her rummage through my computer files turned up the manuscripts of four pornographic novels as opposed to the budding masterpiece she was expecting. Her subsequent search unearthed the porn that Walter had provided for research purposes and the cheque book and bank statements relating to my secret contingency fund, which contained $9613.