by Rose Hartley
That’s because you don’t do your job properly, Bunny.
‘Do you sing?’ she asked.
‘A bit.’
‘Self-taught?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Me too. Hey, why don’t we do a duet next Prayer Time?’
The thought of Rueben roped into a duet with Bunny was exquisite, but the pained expression on his face forced me, out of humanity, to intervene. ‘What have you been up to, Bunny? How’s the marketing going?’
‘Wonderful,’ she said. ‘You know, I think right now the most important thing is office morale.’ She put on her Concerned Face. ‘After that meeting about the finances, I think people are feeling really down, so I’ve been talking to Agnes about redecorating the office to brighten everyone’s spirits.’
‘Redecorating?’
‘I’ve ordered some wall decals.’
‘Of what?’
‘Bible quotes, butterflies. I think we need to look upon the beauty of God’s creation. Once we can do that, we’ll really turn things around for the Nicholson Street Angels.’
‘Hmm, good thinking, Bunny,’ said Rueben.
By now she was at my desk, looking at my screen.
‘Spreadsheets,’ I told her. ‘Pretty fascinating stuff.’
She shot me a false smile and sauntered out of the room.
‘She’s such a fucking weirdo,’ I said.
Rueben smiled. ‘You’re jealous.’
Rueben and I were having a tea break in reception late in the afternoon, refreshing our memories of Shane Warne’s text messaging scandal by reading aloud from the stack of decade-old women’s magazines on the coffee table, when Hannah wandered through the door, a box of chocolates tucked under one arm. She seemed alert, nearly sober.
‘Got given them,’ she said. ‘They’re for the sheilas.’ The sheilas meant the women currently staying at the shelter. Hannah delivered messages from them to us, kind of like Moses. ‘Jackie wants to know if her psych appointment’s tomorrow.’
I had no idea who Hannah was talking about. ‘Josephine will know about that, but she’s not in.’
Bunny bounced out of her office and into reception at the sound of Hannah’s voice, creaming for some songwriting inspiration, no doubt. I suspected it was the main reason she liked to be near the Vulnerable. ‘Hannah! Have you brought those chocolates? You’re so lovely.’
‘Hi, Your Majesty,’ Hannah said.
Bunny self-consciously touched her flower crown.
The bell on the door jingled again, and Belinda arrived.
‘Saw you from the op shop,’ she said, giving Hannah a hug. They’d first crossed paths at the shelter, before Belinda was allocated a safe house. Belinda turned to Bunny. ‘The women need better shoes!’ she burst out. ‘I want you to put up posters about the kinds of donations we want.’
‘We can’t do that,’ Bunny replied, taken aback. ‘I mean, we can say we need good-quality items, but we can’t just say “give us better shoes”.’
‘People judge you by your shoes,’ Belinda insisted. I looked down at hers; they were pale-pink pumps in soft crocodile skin. Fabulous. ‘You wear shoes made of pleather, you may as well be a psychopath.’ Bunny was slinking backwards, nodding and smiling, so Belinda turned to me instead. ‘Some of the women in the shelter are trying to get jobs. How can they get jobs in shit shoes?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. But the thought filled me with motivation to finish the spreadsheet. Making sure the women didn’t have to wear psychopath shoes was something to work towards. It was time for those wealthy donors to cough up.
At quarter to five, Rueben got up to take his coffee cup to the kitchen and took mine to wash as well.
‘Can you grab the draft letter off the printer while you’re up?’ I asked him. ‘I want to proofread it once more before I give it to Agnes.’
‘All right.’
He returned a few minutes later, carrying only the clean mugs. ‘Didn’t print.’
‘Didn’t it?’
‘There was nothing on the printer.’
‘Oh.’ I hit print again, walked over to the printer to collect it, and then took it back into our office.
‘It’s five o’clock,’ Rueben said. He started packing up.
‘I took this comma out in the last draft, but now I’m thinking I should put it back in,’ I said.
‘Maggie, if you’ve got to the taking-commas-out-and-putting-them-back-in stage, the letter is done. Give it to Agnes in the morning, it’s home time.’
‘I’m going to stay here and go through the phone book,’ I told him. ‘I’m still on Toorak.’
I pulled the White Pages website up on my screen, and started copying and pasting names, addresses and phone numbers into the ‘5 Richest Suburbs’ spreadsheet. Like Rueben had said, it was painstaking work. My hand was going to get sore from clicking.
‘I told you, it’s going to take forever.’
‘I know.’
He sat back down. ‘Okay, I’ll do Brighton,’ he said. He turned his computer back on. ‘Send me a link to the spreadsheet in Google Docs.’
‘Really?’ I knew he was probably doing it because he cared about the work, but a small, selfish part of me hoped that he wanted to stay late with me, too.
‘Yeah. You want to order pizza?’
‘You don’t have to stay, this was my dumb idea,’ I said.
He smiled. ‘I told you, it’s not dumb.’
‘You said it’s not terrible. It is pretty dumb.’
‘What do you want on your pizza?’
‘Salami.’
Bunny stuck her head back in to say goodbye. Christ, three times in one day?
‘Bye, guys.’ She wiggled her fingers at Rueben.
‘Bye, Bunny,’ he said, resignation in his voice.
By 10 pm I had a headache and a violent cramp in my hand, and the room was full of the odour of empty pizza boxes. On the plus side, I’d finished all of Toorak and some of Portsea, and Rueben had finished Brighton. I wanted to have the spreadsheet completed by Wednesday, so I had decided to do the unthinkable: email myself the spreadsheet and finish it the following day, when I didn’t have to go to work. I took a deep breath and pictured it: every woman in the shelter with a pair of pale-pink crocodile-skin shoes.
‘God, I’m sore,’ I complained.
Rueben looked up from his spot on the floor. He had taken to stretching every twenty minutes or so, contorted in strange yoga poses. Right now, he was on his knees with his arms reaching in front of him. Pose of the child, I knew that one.
‘Why don’t you stretch out your spine a little?’ he said.
‘Rueben Blackwood. Criminal, IT guru, yogi.’ I got down beside him and copied his movements. ‘Hey, that actually feels amazing. But the carpet smells like wet dog.’
‘Separate your fingers, too. Like this.’
‘This?’
‘No.’
He took my fingers, just the ends, and spread them out one by one, like daisy petals. Then he brushed his thumb over them. Sparks might have shot from my fingertips, I don’t know.
I couldn’t stay in child’s pose after that. I rolled onto my back, aware of Rueben’s body next to me. I breathed in and out slowly, as if I could train my heartbeat to not betray me just by concentrating hard enough. The carpet scratched the skin of my shoulder blades and I suddenly felt cold, like maybe I needed a warm man to lie on top of me. Rueben was breathing deep and slow too, like a cat. I blinked against the harsh fluorescent lights above us, and when I looked back at him there were patches of bright white against his eyelashes, and even though I knew it was just the afterglow from the fluorescents, it still made him look like he was made of silver. He was all raw nerve, or was that me? I smelt salt and butter as he leant down to brush his lips against my cheek. Why didn’t he go for my waiting mouth? I was frozen, wanting more, not able to speak in case I ruined it.
An unwelcome noise broke in from beyond the reception desk, the sound of a ke
y in the front door and the confused rattling of the knob. Rueben and I rolled apart. I was just pushing myself up off the floor and dusting my knees when Agnes entered the room. I could tell it was Agnes without even turning around because of her distinctive shuffle, usually quite pleasant to my ears because she was one of the few sensible people in the office, but tonight I was so angry at the interruption I wished she’d fall flat on her face or choke on a mouthful of dry Milo. When I turned around, my hand reaching unconsciously to check my hair, Agnes’s face said it all. She was not fooled by the faux nonchalance. She glanced from me to Rueben and back again.
‘What are you two still doing here? It’s past ten.’
Rueben recovered faster than I did. ‘We’re targeting a new group of donors for the fundraiser. Thought we’d stay late to put the list together.’ He sat down at his desk as if nothing had happened.
‘Well, all right.’ As if to fill the awkward silence Agnes began telling us about her ordeal with the electrician at the men’s shelter and how she thought she’d just pop back to the office to collect her thoughts and her folders before she went home for the night.
‘I’m off too,’ I said. ‘I think we’ve almost finished here anyway.’
Rueben and I busied ourselves shutting down computers while Agnes loitered, as if she was a chaperone who shouldn’t leave us alone. We all walked out into the evening air together.
‘Goodnight,’ Rueben said. He smiled a crooked little smile and a river of desire flowed through me.
‘Yeah, night,’ I replied, and walked off as if my thighs weren’t burning.
The next day was warm and sunny. I spent the entire morning working on the spreadsheet, burning through my phone’s data and sweating in the caravan. A bedroom, air conditioning, a functioning kitchen with running water, and Lord, dear Lord, a full-size bathroom with a shower and bath: these all seemed like unfathomable luxuries. I kept banging my head on the ceiling above the fold-out table – it was lower there than in the centre of the caravan – and tripping over clothes on the floor, and I had to walk to the pub every time I needed the bathroom. But I promised myself I would finish this spreadsheet and find the Angels a major donor.
At lunchtime, I bit the bullet and called Centrelink again.
‘There’s been a mistake,’ I said, ‘another one,’ and explained that I’d filled in the form correctly to contest my debt but hadn’t been paid my Newstart Allowance for the fortnight. There was a long, uncomfortable pause while the woman on the other end of the line clacked some keys to look through my file.
‘About that,’ she said. ‘We’ve rejected your claim to continue receiving Newstart while we process the paperwork. You’ve also been removed from the volunteer program. If you want to claim Newstart, you’ll have to go online and put in a new application. And, of course, you’ll have to look for a full-time job.’
‘But I have a job,’ I said faintly. ‘I mean, I like my volunteer position at the Nicholson Street Angels, and I’m working on a big campaign for them right now.’
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘That’s the way it is.’
‘But . . . do I still go in to work tomorrow?’
I could almost hear her shrug. ‘You won’t be paid for it, so if I were you, I’d use the time to start looking for a job.’
I felt sick. All that work I’d put in for the Angels, and Centrelink could just pull me from the program with one swipe of a pen? Since Agnes hadn’t said anything yesterday, I assumed that no one from Centrelink had bothered to inform her that my period of volunteering was up, and given the amount of clerical errors they’d made so far, I decided to operate on the assumption that I had some time. Just a little bit of time to prove beyond a doubt that I was essential to the Angels’ financial wellbeing, so they’d offer me a paid job. As long as I didn’t tell anybody, even Rueben, about the extent of my Centrelink problems, I might be able to hang on long enough. I got a weird sensation in the torso area from thinking about Rueben. I imagined it was a similar thing to what dogs feel when they get so excited they pee on your feet. Either I was becoming incontinent, or I wanted to impress him.
In the early evening I called Jen and left her a message.
‘It’s been a week since we last spoke,’ I said, ‘which is, like, a year in Jen and Maggie time, so to fill you in on what I’ve been doing: writing in spreadsheets, breaking into my mother’s house, trying to get Rueben to sleep with me. I’m working hard, it’s a new thing I’m trying. To be honest, I think it’s barbaric. Hard work is terrible, I don’t know how you stand it. Anyhow, I’m so desperate for a lasagne I’d almost buy one, except I don’t have any money. Um . . . call me? Oh, and I’m parked on Bradley Street, near Mum’s. In case you’re looking for me. Bye.’
I had intended to say I’m sorry, but apologies don’t work too well over voicemail.
I was as crusty as a picked scab the next day, aching all over from sitting in one position while working on the spreadsheet, but I rolled into work on time just the same. I had real hope for once, the kind that wasn’t predicated on someone giving me something I hadn’t earned. This hope was founded on the fact that I thought I’d done a pretty good job with the letter and my extra research. The Angels were going to make a killing out of it, I told myself, and I nearly believed it. The men’s shelter would have proper heating put in; women fleeing abusive relationships would find decent job training and work outfits. The potential for success was there, I just had to make sure everything lined up. I would hand Agnes the letter as soon as I walked in, and just as she was ready to heap praise on me for that – Wonderful, Maggie, you’re amazing, you’ve saved us! – I would hit her with the next thing, the list of rich potential donors and the specially targeted letters that asked for $500 instead of $50. We had over two thousand names on the rich list and even if only one per cent responded, it would still bring in ten grand.
I settled in at my desk, waiting for the right moment to talk to Agnes, which was after she’d had her coffee. Rueben wasn’t in yet, which was unusual. Normally he got to work ten minutes early.
At nine-thirty, I detected the chemical waft of instant coffee floating in from the kitchen and I knew it was time. I casually slunk into the kitchen, holding the pink folder containing my fundraising letter.
‘Hi Agnes. Is Rueben sick today?’ I asked her, trying to sound nonchalant.
‘Yes, he called this morning. Gastro. I thought you’d know about it already,’ she said, eyeing me meaningfully.
‘No, I didn’t know.’
‘Ah. Perhaps I misunderstood Monday night’s little escapade.’
I felt my cheeks grow hot. ‘No, ah, we’re not . . . together.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘I’ve finished the fundraising letter.’ I held out the pink folder. ‘I’m really interested to know what you think.’
She didn’t take it. ‘Bunny already wrote a letter.’
‘What?’
‘Bunny wrote a fundraising letter. She gave it to me on Monday night. It’s good, actually. I have to admit I was surprised. It didn’t even contain her usual choice phrases, like “reach into your heart for the homeless” – it was very matter of fact.’
I was dumbfounded. My mouth opened and closed like a fish for a couple of seconds. The ceiling fan whirred quietly.
‘I don’t—’ I began, then stopped.
Agnes checked the time. ‘I have to go. Just focus on collecting those email addresses for the follow-up. It was a good idea of yours, this letter. Haven’t forgotten that.’
She smiled briefly, picked up her coffee and left. The temperature in the kitchen seemed to have risen by a few degrees. I ran a hand over my forehead and came away with sweat.
That bitch stole my idea.
I almost followed Agnes into her office to demand she read my letter, which I was sure would be better than Bunny’s, but I stopped short when I realised that I had absolutely no credibility at the Nicholson Street Angels. All Agnes knew about me was that I
was the idiot who tried on sunflower-print onesies in the op shop and rolled around on the floor with the sexy IT guy late at night. Bunny had worked at the Angels for a lot longer than I had and had presumably never done such things. She was also the marketing coordinator, so even if my letter was objectively better than hers, Agnes would probably assume Bunny’s would bring in more dough.
‘Fuck fuck fuck,’ I whispered. This was a bad day for Rueben to come down with gastro. I really needed his advice. I was struck with a wild, paranoid thought: what if Rueben was faking his illness to get out of work, and had conspired with Bunny to steal my thunder? Were he and Bunny at a prayer meeting somewhere right now, clapping hands and swapping notes on how to spice up the missionary position?
I looked up Rueben’s address in the personnel files, then shut down my computer and left the office without saying goodbye to anyone. I needed to do some serious drinking.
Chapter 22
I drove to Smith Street, knowing the right anaesthetic was waiting for me among the clean-skinned bottles that populated the new American-South-style bottle-o that was manned by a bearded hipster. Smith Street was quieter, calmer and cleaner than usual; the street sweepers had been through this morning and the sun was out. The bottle-o rose up from the pavement like a perfect, pink erection; a beautiful, neon-lit specimen touting the specials. The sign could have added, ‘Just for you, Maggie, you hot mess.’ I parked the car, sidled in like a dog in heat and dry-humped the display case of discounted wine. White wine was cheaper than red by a dollar so I bought white, never minding that it wasn’t refrigerated. Six dollars to forget my life. Especially to forget that I had gathered that six dollars together by cleaning under the mats of my car for the first time in three years, and that I was paying in five-, ten- and twenty-cent pieces.
Maybe Rueben really was with Bunny. Maybe she was a good option for him, what with her musical inability and her upswept red hair and her earnest commitment to Doing Good Deeds. Maybe jail had warped his mind, maybe those grey halls and right angles and echoing noises of steel on steel had made him want a woman who was soft and lovely, if an idiot. I knew my reasoning was ridiculous, and that Rueben thought Bunny was a numpty, but I drank down the lukewarm acid in the bottle all the same. Bunny had well and truly screwed me. I could do her job with my eyes closed, but she was going to get all the credit. Agnes might have offered me a job if my fundraising letter was a success, but now I was going to have to start collecting cans out of bins for cash.
