Zigzag Street

by Nick Earls

  I sit in the bath till it pickles me and I listen to the hymns drifting down from the church up the hill. Greg comes in and shouts at me about breakfast, so I get out and feed him and put jam on a couple of pieces of bread for myself.

  I sit, wrapped in my towel and still feeling slightly pulped, and I watch TV. After ‘Rage’ finishes the options are not appealing and I flick around among the cartoons. I do not find them helpful. Even Sonic the Hedgehog pashes Roxy and gets a free chilli dog lunch. I guess I scored the free lunch yesterday, but there seemed to be a lot of effort required. And nobody pashed me. However, since Kevin was the only person in the vicinity, that’s probably fine.

  I do, however, miss the contact of lips. Any kind of contact really.

  Usually by this time on a Sunday Anna and I would be fighting over who got which bit of the Sunday Mail, as though any bit was worth fighting for. Perhaps it was only the principle that was worth fighting for, even though it was ultimately territorial and pointless. I want to call her and say, If it was the Sunday Mail it’s yours, and I’ll even bring it to you in bed.

  But I have to learn that if I even think this might be the answer, I’m asking the wrong question. This is probably originally a Jeff Ross theory, but maybe it’s right.

  In the afternoon, still afflicted by widespread stiffness, I play tennis very badly. And I get the extensive shitting on I expected about my Home Improvements cap, which I wear at an angle accused of being rakish, but that is determined only by the position of the sun. Not that anyone will accept this. The cap is regarded in its full ironic capacity, bearing in mind my limited achievements as an improver of homes. Jeff tells the others they’re being unfair, and says I’m only trying to make my status as a Toolman clear. There is some debate as to whether or not I have the equipment to be a Toolman, and for the next hour or so I am known by the name Toolboy.

  I ignore this, I concentrate hard, I play very badly. Sets breeze by, and Jeff pretends they don’t.

  He tells us afterwards that Tim played Veny Armanno on centre court at Milton on Thursday afternoon. Veny, saying he needed a break from some dilemma in the editing phase of his next novel, saying that his concentration was shot and he probably wasn’t up to much, won two sets to love. But this seemed temporarily immaterial to Tim, who raved to Jeff about centre court, about how much better it is out there, how it sounds like the real thing when the ball echoes off the condemned empty stands.

  And this, the sound of the real thing, is a hint of the pro tennis circuit, the big company we’d like to think we could almost keep, The Tour. Even though the only tour we’re ever likely to qualify for would involve a bus, a camera and singalongs. Despite this, I think it’s those centre court moments that keep alive an unspoken fantasy shared by at least some of us, as though, in our time, there will come a Tour where large numbers of people pay money to see tennis played by people over twenty-five who aren’t very good.

  12

  On Monday morning Deb has no new tats to show me, and as I tell her about my weekend I’m sure it sounds as bland as always to both of us. I can’t believe I begin my week by disappointing someone with my weekend.

  I went out Friday night, she says. I was planning to meet a man.

  A particular man?

  Oh, a very particular man. We had arranged to meet, but he bored me, so I ended up just pashing Tyson, my hairdresser.

  I thought your hairdresser was gay.

  So did I. So did he. Maybe it was just a moment’s indiscretion, but maybe it’s love. Who knows? He was divine and he was wearing red velvet pants, so … She shrugs away the inevitability of it.

  How was he in the pashing department?

  Oh, quite excellent.

  And exactly what quality is it that gives a man excellence?

  Oh, the tongue. He has an outrageous tongue.

  An outrageous tongue. Tyson the Tongue Machine.

  And for the next two days, Tyson the Tongue Machine will be all we talk about. Of course, by mid-week she’ll be telling me she doesn’t love him any more. She’ll have found some act she interprets as betrayal or a culpable lack of interest, or she’ll have fallen in love with someone else she’s bumped into. She once told me she dropped a boy because he wouldn’t have ‘Deb’ tattooed on the inside of his eyelid. I have always hoped she was kidding.

  Hillary comes out of the lift laughing and says, Barry’s stopped smoking again. I think you should know that. On the weekend. And he’s looking shaky already.

  Barry stopping smoking is not a good thing from any perspective but his own future health. He has tried before and each time he’s become very tense very quickly, and it hasn’t worked out well.

  And we’ve got a meeting with him at ten.

  A meeting.

  Yeah. About the bank in Thailand.

  The bank in Thailand.

  Yeah, one of those things you’re working on. One of the reasons you come here. Other than the now-defunct power station and the computer games.

  Is there any possibility of having the meeting about the computer games? I think I could cover that.

  Trust me. This is the best time to have it. His concentration’s shot to bits, so all you have to do is think of a few short, clear things to say and stick to them. I thought you’d been working on that approach anyway.

  She leaves me to go through the file and says we’ll talk at nine-thirty. I like her a lot. I think it’s in her eyes, the way she delivers the backhanded compliment deadpan and her eyes let you in on the joke. This is insane. Every time I talk to my boss I spend a long time thinking about how much I like her. She makes some passing remark about my slackness, so I show an interest in developing a pathological attachment. There’s Hillary, with her perfect life, her career, her baby, her high-flying husband. Doing nothing more than noticing me and it goes straight to my pants.

  I focus hard on the task and the meeting at ten with the smoke-free Barry Greatorex.

  Barry the Great and the peripheries of glory

  Barry the Great has been called, in sophisticated company, the smartest man ever to leave New Zealand. He is a man whose admirable past is constructed of relentless near-glories, and he hasn’t forgotten any of them. He nearly rowed for New Zealand. He nearly played cricket for New Zealand as a keeper-batsman (but the selectors unfortunately ‘turned conservative’, and we think he sweated out a couple of seasons in fourth grade in Auckland before his knees gave way). He nearly entered the New Zealand Parliament at the urgings of the PM of the day, who said he needed more like Barry in his cabinet. He once took Hillary into his office to tell her confidentially that he was being head-hunted. This turned out to be Barry’s way of saying he had applied for a job. When he didn’t get it he told her ‘I’ve thought about it, and I realise my work’s not done here. I’ve got more to do at Shelton’s yet. Not that it wasn’t tempting’.

  At nine-thirty Hillary is back, checking that I’m ready. We talk it through and together we come up with a plan.

  At ten Barry is pacing, trying to distract himself from the pain of withdrawal by looking out his window. Unlike my office, Barry’s has a real view, but today it’s clearly not enough. He is tense indeed, and his face is puffed up like a toad. Every time he breathes out it seems to be with some intent, some undisclosed but heavy purpose, and he keeps slapping his hands together. I wonder if he might be psyching himself up to clean and jerk his desk.

  So, he says, his eyes flicking between the two of us. What’s our position?

  Hillary looks at me.

  I think it still has problems, I tell him. I think it doesn’t comply with Thai foreign investment law.

  They don’t think that in Sydney.

  They can think what they like.

  He nods, looks out the window. Looks back. So, what’s our position?

  Repetition always unsettles me. Is this a lapse in concentration? Is it the same words but a new question because of the different context? Do we get stuck in a loop if I give the same an
swer? Hillary is making her right hand, which only I can see, into the shape of a gun next to her thigh, and discharging it down at the floor. I look back to Barry and reinforce my cool, serious demeanour.

  Well, unless there’s a change in the numbers, or a change in Thai law, I think there’s a problem.

  Can you put that to them in Sydney?

  Sure.

  Is there any way, Hillary suggests, that you can take the particular problem clauses and come up with alternatives that’ll keep everyone happy?

  Good clauses. We could do with a few of those. I’ll look at it. Maybe it’s possible. Of course, if we try that everyone’s legal sections will tell us it doesn’t conform to their standard documents.

  But can it be done? Barry again, sniffing the hint of some minor glory in brokering a solution that may win him hearts in New York. It’s unlikely. They hate him in New York.

  Maybe. Maybe it can. I can look at it. This week.

  It probably needs to be addressed at an organisational level, Hillary says, as well as the legalities of this contract. I think we’re likely to see this type of issue arising more and more. So maybe we should both go to Sydney to sort it out, when Rick’s looked at it.

  Barry approves this course of action. We leave him to the crisis of his biochemistry and go back to the lift.

  Nice work with the gun, I say to Hillary when the doors shut. I was just sticking to my short, clear things, like you said, and you bring out the gun on me.

  Oh yeah, and you didn’t deserve it? Rick the straight shooter? Clint fucking Eastwood more like, she says, and laughs at me. I might have said short, clear things but I don’t recall saying spaghetti western. The only people who shoot straighter ride into town with a black hat on and a mouthful of chewing tobacco.

  She has a bizarre and appealing sense of humour, an obscure preoccupation with western imagery and a range of silly signals, designed to challenge my composure when cool is required. Some days I think it’s the only intimate thing in my life. Bad train of thought. In my mind I go the finger pistol and blow it away.

  Oh, come on. He was getting all Brando on me, I tell her. So, what’s our position? So, what’s our position like the room was loaded with bugs and I had to speak back in code. I was fine. My response was entirely appropriate.

  They can think what they like? Cowboy. And you used to be so thoughtful, so careful with your responses.

  Trust me sheriff. Trust me. At least I wasn’t the one playing fairy godmother with the happy clauses.

  And I’m thinking, why am I like this? Where did this straight shooter thing come from? Is it just because I really don’t care about the bank in Thailand? Or because I don’t care if I’m right or wrong any more? Do I think it’s impressive? I think I was thoughtful. I think my considered opinion was one of my assets. And I just don’t consider the way I used to.

  This new approach seemed to work with Barry, and that worries me even more. I think I liked it better when I frustrated him with my caution, when my entire work practice was geared around making no mistakes.

  But now that I think about it, that does seem a while ago.

  13

  At home that night, among all the junk mail, is an envelope with Kevin Butt’s address crossed out and ‘Richard’ written on it somewhat shakily in blue biro. It contains a cassette and a scrap of paper which says simply, ‘A token of my appreciation’, and underneath, quite unnecessarily, the name Kevin J Butt.

  The tape has no indication of its contents, and this does not reassure me.

  I go inside, feed Greg, and load it into the stereo. I hear Kevin’s voice.

  G’day young Richard. As I am very appreciative of your assistance with the stump on the weekend last, he says with the obvious style of a person reading a prepared text, and understanding something of your musical interests, I have today recorded in my kitchen a few of our favourite songs. Should you happen to look out of your back windows, you will also see that I noticed that your grass was in need of doing and I have attended to that too. I hope this is okay by you. Then, as an afterthought, And I hope you enjoy listening to these songs as much as I enjoyed recording them for you. Thank you, and good night.

  There follows a small amount of throat clearing and a few practice notes, then a version of ‘Rose of Tralee’ that could make the deaf weep. There is so much slide going on with that guitar that I’m surprised he doesn’t hurt himself, and at times his interpretation is so individual it’s only my guess that I’m still hearing ‘Rose of Tralee’. He drags his way through a few more of the classics, evoking fond memories of the stump uprooting and ends with one for you and me mate, a lively, up tempo ‘Pub With No Beer’.

  So in the midst of this life of quality I make a friend in the neighbourhood.

  At least the lawn looks good.

  For dinner tonight I sit at the red Laminex table and rest my head upon it. I am not inclined to cook, or to eat.

  14

  So I am the one designated to invent the alternative clauses that will make everyone happy.

  Hillary reassures me that I’m just the boy for the job, and I tell her I shall take my obvious surfeit of happiness and direct it to this important purpose.

  I try hard to focus on the screen, but I keep finding myself thinking of other things, or quietly whining my way through the infectious melody of ‘Rose of Tralee’. My Can of Worms screen saver emerges and chews its way through my document. I tell Hillary this will all take careful consideration, as there are several competing interests and I must achieve a delicate balance.

  And she says, Good, but warily.

  I stay till six-thirty, but I’m not sure that I get anywhere. Perhaps all I create is confusion. I go home, as though there’s any less confusion there.

  Greg’s fleas are going crazy, multiplying at a quite unsustainable rate but appearing to sustain it so far. I actually wonder if there’s any of Greg left in there at all, or if the fleas have hollowed him out and are now operating his limbs in order to maintain the pretence of a cat. I take him to the vet. The vet is not impressed.

  He should probably have come in a while back, she says. He’s not looking good.

  I realise it would be stupid at this point to say I’ve been busy, as I would only end up getting an oblique lecture about the responsibilities of pet ownership. Then I’d have the choice of taking it on the chin, or explaining myself as a victim of circumstances. That it took a death and a trashing to bring Greg and me together. My theory, that every conceivable interaction has the potential to lead back to the trashing, holds. I choose to say nothing, and I try to look contrite.

  He’s really quite infested, she’s saying, and he’s reacting and he’s starting to scratch. Have you noticed the scratching? You must have noticed it. He starting to break skin.

  I nod.

  Have you noticed it?

  Well, I’m out during the day.

  This is clearly more like a confession of neglect than an answer, so I am compelled to go on.

  He’s my grandmother’s cat, actually. And she hasn’t been well lately, so I’m helping look after him. It’s not ideal, but hopefully things’ll be back to normal soon.

  The problem with this is that every time I go the lying option, I tell a different lie. And I don’t keep track of them. I’m scattering lies all over town to avoid talking about the trashing, and I expect this will backfire soon enough.

  The vet, of course, displays compassion when she hears the lie, and this only reinforces the likelihood that I will lie again.

  She says we will need to use a strong flea wash and if that fails, or if Greg keeps scratching himself, we may need to cut an ice-cream bucket and fit it around his head while we apply something else.

  So now I am turning the cat into a loser too. A month or so ago he was entirely functional and flea-free. In a week’s time he could have patchy hair loss, widespread self-inflicted wounds and an ice-cream bucket around his head. And they say people grow to resemble their p
ets. I think I’m dragging him down.

  The vet says, You might find that even if this works he may have a few fleas left. Probably the easiest thing to do if that’s the case is wash him with some dilute Martha Gardener’s Wool Mix. But give it a few weeks first.

  Wash him with what?

  Wool Mix. You know the stuff? Just make sure it’s mixed in with a lot of warm water, and rinse it all off after you’ve washed him.

  I take him home. I explain to him the importance of the flea bath and how calmness is essential. I tell him this is for his own good.

  At first he fools me by crouching down low and giving a long whining growl. This intensifies when I drench him and rub the liquid into his fur. I tell him how good he is, how well this is going. I start to wash it off. He loses it.

  Every one of his muscles spasms at once and he rips up my arms like a fearsome wet gremlin and over my shoulder, landing on the floor with an inelegant splat. He runs for the door and out into the backyard. I chase him, but he’s gone.

  I am standing in the dark, quite alone, with no cat sounds apparent in the relative quiet. When I go back into the light and see the mess, I realise that the sensation I took to be water running down my arms is in fact blood. I have several slashes to each forearm, running from my wrists halfway to my elbows. I rinse my arms under the tap and the bleeding continues.

  I sit on the steps for about twenty minutes with each forearm wrapped in an old towel. The moonlight reveals a recently cut lawn but not a hint of cat.

  When I check my arms again they are still oozing blood. This is really pissing me off. I realise I can’t go to bed like this. I can’t do anything until this is properly sorted out.

  I find my Medicare card and walk down the hill to the medical centre, the towels wrapped again around my forearms.

  I explain my predicament at the counter and I’m taken straight into the treatment room, where I sit for more than half an hour listening to the waiting room TV through the wall and bleeding patiently. Just after the third time that I’m told, It won’t be long now, a doctor walks in.