by Peter Marks
Simon met Nathan’s rabid grin with a blank expression and let him continue uninterrupted knowing the only way to stop Nathan was to allow him to exhaust himself.
Or to shoot him.
‘It sucks eh? Great... brilliant.... Bloody Philistine,’ Wright’s face turning the colour of a matadors cape, ‘...no extraneous verbiage, no ponderous pontificating, the sheer economy of the summation is stunning. It sucks. Good to see all those years repeating second grade have given you such a solid grasp of the Queen’s English. What may I ask does it sucks mean? Is it French for fantastic or Latin for the murder of one friend by another... are you implying that its got no bite....no teeth. Are you inferring that anyone who reads my waffle should get a good shot of novocaine prior to perusal,’ Wright shrieked in petulant rage. Mock rather than real. Rolling eyes around sockets he rolled up a sleeve. Mimicked the sharp insertion of a steely hypodermic into the purple by-ways.
‘Novelists novocaine,’ he indicated.
‘They won’t need it,’ Simon sighed, gently patting Wright on a sloping shoulder trying to console him, actually trying to calm him sufficiently to shut him up. ‘Your writing’s a more powerful sedative than any drug I know of. You could make a fortune by selling the stuff as a general anaesthetic.’
‘Yeah, who knows, in time it may even replace politicians or the inevitable coma a few minutes conversation with you brings on,’ Wright added in reprisal.
Simon ignored the insinuation. He was still counting the shoes lodged amongst the leaves outside.
‘Ignorant bastard,’ Wright hissed, ripping the pages from his friend’s clammy grasp and dove into the cupboard.
He shoved his work to the back of the shelf and so beyond criticism. Rifling through a pile of magazines on the same shelf, he found the current issue of American Penthouse and whirling around, thrust the publication filled with clinical photographs of naked young girls at the Times Literary critic.
‘This is more your style Shambles,’ he knew. ‘Sorry its not the braille edition but you’ll have to be satisfied.’
‘Not likely....’
Simon was busily flicking through Wright’s gift when Wright interrupted his stares.
‘You could at least have feigned interest,’ Nathan sighed.
‘In what?’
‘My writing.’
‘I should have fainted instead,’ Simon smiled, nonchalantly flipping to the centrefold.
‘I can arrange that,’ Wright offered. ‘More fool me for soliciting an opinion from one so qualified ...Why your eminence in the arts is legendary. Sir Simon Shambles...,’
‘Hambles’ the Peer corrected.
‘Shambles,’ Wright repeated. ‘Sir Simon Shambles, Phd in Disney, Diploma in Dyslexia and ghost writer to the afterworld. Simian Simon, Poet Laureate to the terminally deaf. You know, I bet the only literature you’ve read is scrawled on the dunny wall down at the pub.’
Simon looked up. ‘Well go scrawl your epic on the wall at the pub and then maybe I’ll read it,’ he sneered and went back to ogling.
‘You’re a degenerate,’ Wright testified, watching incredulous as his friend breathed moistly, carnally over the flowing curves of a young woman who was blonde, fleshy and exposed. And stapled to the page so she couldn’t move or flee from such lascivious attentions.
‘You’re warped,’ Simon responded.
‘You’re married.’
‘You’re the degenerate. Every disgusting habit I ever learned I learned from you ...you pervert.’
‘What about Christianity?’
‘Except Christianity.....anyway that’s a religion not a habit.’
‘Try explaining that to a nun.. anyway....’ Wright thought with a grin, ‘I don’t have a wife. I have to get my thrills vicariously. What’s your excuse?”
Wright already knew the answer.
Wright knew the wife. She was a nice enough girl but certainly no raving beauty so he put his arm around Simon to console him, thinking that marriage was tough enough without having to wake up every morning next to something that looked like it been hatched in a lab.
Simon, now wearing an arm which wasn’t his, stared blankly and wondered if Wright had turned gay but seeing Wright leering hungrily at the crimson gash beyond the bush between the legs of girl in the magazine, decided that gay was the last thing Wright was.
Was usually more morose than gay.
Hand thrust in his left pocket, Wright adjusted a partial erection and headed for the door suddenly bored with proceedings. He was bored any time the conversation or situation didn’t revolve around him but he was also smart enough to understand that he couldn’t possibly compete with young naked nubile flesh.
Simon didn’t move. He was reading. (Was perving actually).
‘How about a coffee?’ Wright enquired, walking backwards to retrieve the Penthouse from a drooling companion before throwing the girls back in the cupboard and restarting for the door wondering what he’d done to deserve such honest friends. And such harsh critics.
Nathan stopped in the hall at the head of the stairs. He loitered by a potted palm that was healthier than anything in his room. Including him. Jenny called this particular specimen of greenery Harry. Nathan called it overgrown and gave it a swift kick.
Simon hadn’t followed so Wright returned to his room to discover the flesh collector rummaging in the wardrobe searching for sin. Wright swept him aside.
‘If you’re that desperate, you can borrow it if you like but don’t let your wife see it or she’ll geld me next time we meet...’ Nathan pleaded in honest fear. ‘And I don’t want any of my girls soiled! Make sure you take good care of them, I want this ink flesh returned in mint condition, I don’t want to have to steam the pages apart like last time. God knows what was gluing the centre spread together,’ Wright accused, shuffling in the cupboard.
Locating the magazine, he passed it over to Simon who stood silent. Simply smiling, he grasped the gift in hands the size of pizza trays. Christ, Wright thought, looking at Simon looking simple, so this is the man who questions my genius!
Actually no-one questioned Wright’s genius. There was no genius, no question.
________________
Nathan did realise that there were friends out there who were not as honest, or brave, or simple as Simon. Friends who certainly wouldn’t dare tell him even if they thought his writing was rubbish, chicken shit acquaintances who would say it was wonderful but Wright, being a contrite bastard, would correct them. Say they were wrong and the writing was crap whereas the Simon’s of this world called it crap so Wright said it wasn’t. Either way, it was still crap.
________________
Chancing that Jenny had taken her wrath on a picnic, they snuck downstairs. At the bottom Wright motioned to Simon, whispered for him to be as quiet as possible just in case she was still about then, as added insurance, he decided they should remove their shoes so sock footed and silent, the two of them tip-toed past her room. Crept stealthily on down the hall, on past the photo of Queen Elizabeth II (to which Wright had added a moustache and vampire teeth so that her regal highness now bore a striking resemblance to his Aunt Minnie). Clutching removed shoes firmly to still chests, they hardly dared breathe as they shuffled on. Each step was light and noiseless, dull heartbeats pounding against stilled chests.
There was an audible sigh of relief when they finally made it unscathed. Safely in the kitchen they found sanctuary. Then a note written on a sheet of paper large enough to be mistaken for the tablecloth.
In red letters larger than the inscriptions on tombstones, and equally ominous, was this:
“I’ve gone to the gym. If anybody rings tell them I’ll be home at 6.30. If Nathan reads this then be warned you bastard, vengeance is nigh....
Love and kisses... Jenny”.
Wright was relieved to find that she’d gone out. and settled on leaving home at 6.29 precisely, deciding to relocate an ant farm in he
r bed - then emigrate immediately. He made some coffee wondering where he could buy a herd of cannibal ants while Simon was looking in the cupboards for something to eat.
‘I had a shit of a dream this morning,’ Wright sniffed suddenly, words tumbling from the corner of a slanted mouth as he slumped into a chair by the table, then, removing a pencil from his top pocket, began mutilating Jenny’s message.
Nathan often did this, made statements totally unrelated to anything previously raised.
Sometimes this was done just for the sheer amusement of hearing his own voice but this time the purpose was to elicit some psychoanalytic response to his dreams. He was always doing this; was always looking for answers to the inane.
‘What about?’ asked Simon, leaning disinterested against the refrigerator, tugging at his trousers.
‘I was rich. Then suddenly I was rich but legless.’
‘Pissed?’
‘No legless. One of my fins was missing.’
Simon opened the fridge and finding something that interested his thirst, drunk hungrily from an almost full bottle of orange juice.
‘Which leg?’ he enquired between loud slurps.
‘Which leg what? Which leg was missing or which leg wasn’t?’
‘Which one was left.’
‘The right,’ Wright decided after a moments hesitation, exploring his lower calf to check that it had indeed been just a dream - that the leg wasn’t wood and that he wasn’t turning Pinocchio.
‘Probably something to do with repressed sexual urges. All dreams are you know. Deb...’ Simon began. Wright looked confused. ‘The wife..’ Simon turned to confront the confused,’ you remember the wife....short girl..blond hair....mother of my children....’
Nathan nodded. He hadn’t seen her since last Christmas and Wright was in no hurry to redress the situation because that day she’d also gotten annoyed with him and hurled his best shoes at his head. She’d missed as usual (Nathan was an artful dodger) and they’d followed the mass exodus out the window to the promised land to end up in the Israel tree (where they still were).
‘....well she was reading’
‘Puts her one up on you, you illiterate turd.’
‘...she was reading Cleo the other day and apparently all dreams are sexual,’ Professor Simple said. Nathan looked dubious. ‘.....True.’ Simon reaffirmed.
‘I also dreamt fish ate my feet.’ Nathan confessed.
‘Fear of impotency.’
‘Bullshit. Fish ate my feet! Not a huge phallic eel or a great white whale with yawning, toothless gums resembling the lower anatomy of your wife,’ Nathan submitted. ‘Your wife doesn’t have teeth down there does she?’ He enquired, head cocked to one side, upper teeth biting into lower lip.
Simon considered the possibility. ‘Only when she’s got a headache.’ he decided. ‘But fish and feet are still sexual.’
‘Metaphors?’
‘Exactly.’
‘No they aren’t.’
‘Well what then?’
‘Just dreams. In this case a dream about fish and feet.’
‘So...?’
‘It was a warning. Nothing sexual. Probably my spiritual guardian warning me not to stick my toes in the Yarra.’
‘Why?’
‘There are Piranha loose in that river.’
‘Yeah?’ Simon exclaimed, suitably astounded.
‘Yeah and Himmler is giving Hebrew lessons in Tel Aviv.’ Wright laughed, walking across the room to the cupboard in the corner. Sweeping the rubbish from bench top to the floor, he began fossicking in one of the drawers until he found a blunted steak knife, then sat down to manicure some fractured finger nails.
Simon was wandering aimlessly about the kitchen before he stopped at the notice board to read the various messages scrawled in messy freehand on small scraps of coloured paper dotting it. Then pensively, slowly, he turned to Wright and asked him why he wrote.
A surprised Nathan sat perplexed by the question. Brow creased, furrowed with lines of parallel folds, he stared at the ceiling in search of an answer to what should have been a relatively simple question. He started to speak but stopped abruptly, catching the words before anything intelligible came out.
Nathan suddenly realised that he’d never really thought about it that deeply. That he’d never asked himself why he wrote. Only what to write.
‘Well?’
‘It’s good therapy,’ Wright fumbled.
‘It’s paranoia on paper,’ Jenny added from the gloom of the hall. Shhiiit Wright gasped, shooting bolt upright and fleeing terrified straight into the pantry.
Point made, laughing loudly, Jenny told Simon to give her regards to Debra and the kids then said good-bye.
She was almost out the kitchen door when she yelled to the hiding Nathan that she was going to the gym now and expected a four page letter of apology before she returned. Wright grimaced. Letter bomb more likely he thought, cringing amongst the groceries in the small, easily defended room pissed off that her note had given him such a false sense of security. Not trusting her, he began barricading himself in the alcove with packets of Corn Flakes large enough to feed Ethiopia.
And the Sudan.
‘Therapy?’ Simon queried, telling him to come out. Or surrender.
‘Therapy,’ Wright restated thoughtfully, sitting one pack atop another with all the surety of a professional bricklayer, working quickly to build a barrier that Jenny would have to eat her way through to get at him. Between boxes, and more certain now, said: ‘It gives me some-one to talk to when there’s no-one around to listen...’
‘...sort of like talking to yourself.’
‘...sort of, but less psychotic.....’
Chapter Thirteen
THE TENT? PEG
IT WAS TOUGH for Kelly refused to be lured back. Nathan’s hitherto girlfriend hadn’t returned the plaintive phone calls (or the books or records she’d borrowed for that matter). She hadn’t dropped by or replied to the lurid letters he’d slipped under her door in the dead of night. She was stubborn and incorrigible. And incommunicable.
He missed her terribly.
________________
So he took action. First he sent her money through the post, then his left ear (which was actually only the skin from a fried frankfurter. Tragically, this only convinced Kelly she was safer away from the madman).
Only after five dozen roses, a truckload of chocolates, a sterling silver eternity ring engraved with her name and the ring’s valuation, two threats of Wright refusing to suicide and a firm divorce contract giving her custody of the books and records did she finally relent. Kelly had held out for a week or so but she finally collapsed under the sheer weight of Wright’s frenetic grovelling and apologising. Or so Nathan thought.
Actually, it was the persuasions of others that finally broke her resolve. It was Nathan’s friends, those he forced to share his sorrows, who rang her pleading for their collective sanity. They begged, they threatened, they lied and said how wonderful Wright was. When that failed, they bribed. They offered her a Swiss bank account and jewels and riches untold if she’d just come back and stop Nathan moping around, whining to them about hurt and lost love. They promised her anything she wanted so long as she made him cease forcing them into corners where he harangued them with philosophical murmurings about life and women and the cruelty of affections. When she still wouldn’t budge, they warned her that Nathan was in mortal danger. They said that if she didn’t return soon then they’d shoot him (if he continued to refuse their suggestions to suicide).
Guilt got the better of her. Nathan got the better of her. She returned.
Much to her disgust she’d missed him terribly.
________________
Months passed and that emotion soon aged. Badly.
________________
Popping hair perfect around the door of the crowded lounge, Kelly said good-night to the rest of the household.
They were still firmly ensconced in front of the television. They were spending a quiet night at home rugged up warmly, sitting scattered around the lounge eating potato chips and sipping cheap wine from frosty glasses arguing over what to watch next.
Unlike the child Wright, she had manners. Politely, Kelly said her farewells before leaving. Wright just left. He just walked out the front door, shutting it loudly after him, before realising he’d forgotten something. The chauffeur to be precise. Kelly was driving.
________________
And Nathan was missing when she finally escaped the lounge some time later having been swept into conversation midway through the farewells. She called his name but there was no answer. She upped the volume and called again. Still no answer so she began searching the hall for him. Then the toilets, then all the rooms, then the closets (which were his usual hide out).
‘Nathan you prat, where are you? Stop playing games, we’re late!’ She scolded, searching the dark recesses of the closet under the stairs.
He wasn’t there of course. At the time Nathan was outside gazing up at the pin points of light glowing strong and bright from the dark void heavens. Eyes up, he searched for the Southern Cross. Finding it, he then scoured the black sky wondering if there was a Northern Cross or an Eastern Triangle. Or maybe a Western Rhomboid? Wandering, star gazing about the front garden, he heard Kelly’s sweet voice screaming death threats at him from inside the house.
The cretin Copernicus stopped his astrological survey and walked back to the porch that fronted the Asylum. Crouching, his head to the tiles, he put an ear to the ground and listened as Kelly screamed loudly in absent abuse, her voice escaping muffled from the thin crack beneath the red front door.
We’re late because you took fifteen bloody minutes to say good-bye, Wright thought as Kelly kept searching and calling. She kept asking where he was so, when she finally arrived back in the hall after a room by closet search of the place, he told her.
