The Promise

by Tony Birch

  Vincent and me sat on the bonnet of the car and lit up. I pulled the collar of my jacket up around my ears and buried my hands in my pockets.

  ‘He’s not the same man, old Buster. What happened to him?’

  ‘Told me while we were driving to collect you that he swore off everything, the drink, pills, the lot, about ten months back. He joined some step program, ten steps, twelve steps, I can’t remember how many. And he met this bird, Pam. She’s an alkie too. Off it but. They started going out and then moved in together. I have to say he’s better for it.’

  ‘He met her ten months back? But the baby’s five months old, he said.’

  Vincent looked over his shoulder and waved at Buster.

  ‘Don’t say a word about it. It’s not his kid. The father did a runner as soon as he heard she was up the spout and hasn’t been seen since. Buster stepped up.’ He dropped his butt on the road and ground it into the bitumen. ‘Who would have thought? Buster?’

  ‘Well, not me.’

  Back in the car Vincent fiddled with the radio dial, switching from station to station, hoping to calm himself with some quieter music than another marathon guitar solo. Buster’s next comment didn’t ease the mood.

  ‘Maybe he’s a creep?’

  ‘What do you mean? A creep? Who?’

  ‘This fella she picked up. You don’t know him from fucken Adam.’

  ‘That don’t matter. Juice is a professional. She deals with this stuff every day. If he was a creep she’d smell it straight off.’

  ‘Maybe not. He could be a real sly cunt. You know most serial killers are educated types?’

  ‘He’s no killer, Buster. I sat across from her flat last week. I was watching when he drove up for her. He’s skinny as a rake. And looks just like you’d expect from them university types.’

  ‘Like what?’ I asked.

  ‘Like he’s intelligent and a fucken goose at the same time.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean he’s not a nutter,’ Buster offered. ‘Brainy and a goose? That’s a bad recipe. I met blokes in jam like that.’

  Vince brooded over the discussion. He threw me the camera and grabbed the door handle.

  ‘Let’s go, Jackie. Buster, you stay here with the car.’

  ‘And the baby, Vince?’

  ‘Yes, Buster. And the baby.’

  We crossed the street to the front of the motel. I could see a bearded fella sitting behind the desk at reception with his back to the door and his head buried in a book. I followed Vincent along the driveway, into an open courtyard surrounded by motel doors, each painted a different bright colour.

  ‘Which one are they in?’ I whispered. ‘This is like the old days. Pick-a-Box.’

  He pointed to the rear of the courtyard and a light blue beaten-up Volvo parked in front of one of the rooms. I could see a dull yellow light behind the blind in the window.

  ‘They’re in there,’ he whispered. ‘That’s his car.’

  ‘You sure they’re in that room?’

  ‘No, I’m not sure, but I seen him pick her up in that car. We’ll try the door and run in. You spot them you start taking pictures.’

  ‘Pictures of what? She was supposed to have called you if she was humping him.’

  ‘Maybe she can’t call. My bet is something’s gone wrong with the phone.’

  ‘So you don’t think he’s a serial killer,’ I laughed, under my breath. ‘Buster might be a genius.’

  ‘Shut up, Jackie,’ he hissed. ‘I don’t want you waking everyone up. Just follow me.’

  We waited at the door and listened for any action inside the room. All I could hear was Vincent’s breathing. He wrapped a paw around the doorknob and tried turning it one way, and then the other. It wouldn’t budge. He stepped away and waved at me to follow him, around to a walkway between a high brick wall and the rear of the motel.

  ‘These places have a back door off the bathroom where you put out the rubbish. Our room is three doors along. We’ll try the door, or the window if we have to.’

  I didn’t hold out much hope. Seeing as the front door was locked, I expected the back would be too. I wished I’d stayed home and left the job to Vince and Buster, not that he would have been much help. I figured we’d be going home empty-handed.

  As Vince turned the door handle I heard something click. He opened it just a couple of inches and put his ear to the gap. Nothing. He opened it a little more, just enough for us to slip through. He nodded at me to follow. It was dark in the bathroom. I felt my way across the room, praying I wouldn’t bump into something and cause a racket. We reached another door. Vince opened it and crept into the room.

  A lamp sitting on a bedside table was on. Next to it was an empty magnum of champagne. A huge television set sat at the end of a king-size bed. It was switched on with the sound down, and was showing an old black-and-white movie. Juice lay on top of the bed, naked, wrapped around the body of a man, all white skin, freckles and grey fluffs of hair. They were dead to the world.

  ‘What’s she fucken doing?’ Vincent whispered in my ear.

  ‘Not humping his arse off, that’s for sure,’ I answered. ‘Looks like the show’s over. And the shot.’

  ‘No, it’s not. Get the camera out and take a snap of them just like they are.’

  He stood on one side of the bed, me on the other. I looked down at the couple. He had lipstick smudges all over his face and more on the side of his neck.

  ‘Not just a head shot, Jackie. Get his hand in the picture, just where it’s resting on her arse there.’

  ‘I know what I’m doing, Vince. You’re not Quentin Tarantino.’

  I stood back and took the shot. The flash hit the professor between the eyes. He reared up, almost knocking Juice off the bed. I could see the attraction. She had a hell of a body. She moaned and squinted into the light. He leaned across her, reaching for the bedside table and a pair of glasses. He fumbled with them, put them on and looked up at me.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he asked, reasonably calm for a man who’d just discovered a pair of intruders beside his bed. ‘Who are you?’

  Juice sat up, covering her eyes with one arm as she pulled the sheet over a very expensive boob job.

  ‘Vince, what are you doing here?’ she screamed, as if she didn’t know what was going on.

  He laughed like she’d told him a dirty joke.

  ‘What am I doing here? Fuck off, Juice. The plan. Remember? You and—’ he pointed at her companion, ‘we’re … me and Jackie are supposed to be here. Don’t play dumb. What happened to the call?’

  I wasn’t happy about him using my name. I’d never met Juice, and she had no idea who I was. He could have called me by any name. Like Bob.

  She was pissed off with Vince.

  ‘I’m not playing dumb. You’re the idiot here. I told you I’d call you if the job was on. I’d call you at midnight, I said, and then again when you got here.’ She thumped the mattress. ‘Did I call you? Did I fucking well call? No. Because there is no job, Vincent.’

  She turned to the professor. He was battling to get a word out.

  ‘I’m sorry about this, Paul. There’s been a mistake made. My friend here is not too bright.’

  ‘What is he doing here?’ he demanded. ‘And what are you doing?’ he asked me, pointing at the camera.

  ‘Fuck you, Juice,’ Vince screamed. ‘Don’t think you can fucken scam me. You’ve gone alone on this. I bet you’ve found a way to fleece this prick all for yourself.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ She ran a finger lightly along one of Paul’s hairy thighs. ‘Ignore this fella, darl. He’s an old boyfriend of mine. A bit overprotective, aren’t you, Vincie. Means well. You can piss off. And your mate here with the camera.’

  Paul jumped out of bed with a sheet wrapped around his chest. He looked a litt
le like a Roman in a toga.

  ‘You must leave now. Both of you.’

  Vince picked up the empty champagne bottle. He was about to whack Nero over the head with it when there was a knock at the door.

  ‘See,’ Juice hissed. ‘You’ve brought trouble here, with all your noise.’

  ‘I can’t be found here … with you,’ Paul whined.

  She patted his thigh.

  ‘You’ve already been found, lover boy, by this amateur papa-fucking-razzi.’

  The second knock at the door was louder.

  ‘Jackie, get the door,’ Vince ordered. ‘Don’t let them in, even if it’s the Jacks.’

  I opened the door. Buster was standing on the doormat, nursing baby Florence. His teeth were chattering with the cold.

  ‘Let me in, Jackie. She’ll freeze to death out here.’

  I followed them into the room. Juice, the professor and Vince stared up at Florence, and her big brown eyes and wisps of dark hair. The bottom half of her face, from the tip of her nose down to her small soft chin, and the front of her pink grow suit, were smeared in chocolate.

  ‘Fuck. What did you do to that kid?’ Juice screamed. ‘We’ll have the welfare in here.’

  Buster was more than a little insulted.

  ‘Back off, bitch. There’s nothing wrong with her. She’s just had a couple of biscuits. Off Jackie here. It’s not my fault. This stuff sticks like shit to a blanket.’ He turned to Vince. ‘Did you get the picture you needed? I’ve got to get her home. She won’t sleep in the car. She’s overtired and getting real grizzly.’

  Paul crawled across the floor, gathering his clothes.

  ‘I have to leave. I shouldn’t have come.’

  ‘Yes, you should have,’ Juice purred. ‘You did come. Twice.’

  There was another knock at the door. The clerk from the front desk burst in without an invitation.

  ‘I just saw someone come in here with a newborn. This is a single room. I want you out.’

  He looked down at the floor, at the professor covering his face, up at Juice’s marble-sculptured breasts, me with the camera in my hand and Vincent armed with the magnum of champagne. Finally he turned to Buster and the chocolate baby. He put a hand to his mouth.

  ‘What have you done to this baby? This is an outrage. I’m calling the police.’

  Buster couldn’t have felt more insulted if the man had called him a dog. Nursing Florence in one arm, he wrapped his free claw around the clerk’s neck and lifted him off the ground.

  ‘You’re calling nobody, shit for brains. I’ve done nothing with this kid but take good care of her. You got that?’

  The clerk couldn’t answer while he was being choked to death. I didn’t want Buster killing him, and us getting done for murder.

  ‘Ease up on him, Bust. Throw him in the bathroom and lock the door. We have to sort something here. I’ll clean the kid up for you.’

  ‘Let me take care of her for you,’ Juice offered, ‘I love babies.’

  Buster squeezed a little harder on the clerk’s neck. He didn’t look too comfortable about giving up the baby. Vince walked across the room and tapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘Come on, Buster. She might not look it, but Juice is real maternal. And I don’t need this bloke listening in on our business. Put him in the bathroom. Please, mate.’

  Buster released the clerk. He fell to the ground spluttering. Vince took the baby and handed her to Juice while Buster dragged the clerk into the bathroom and kicked the door shut.

  Vince waved the magnum around like a baseball bat.

  ‘Okay, professor. Down to business. We’ve got a nice shot of you cuddling up to your girlfriend. You can have it splashed all over the place, with copies sent to your missus and the news. Or,’ he slowly twirled the magnum in the air as if it was a magic wand, ‘you can pay us for the picture. You can keep it in your wallet or ditch it. Your choice.’

  I could hear a siren off in the distance, getting closer. The baby was trying to latch onto Juice’s nipple as she wiped Florence’s face and hands with a tissue. The professor was defiant.

  ‘This is blackmail. I will pay you nothing.’

  Vince stood over him and lifted the bottle in the air.

  ‘Call it what you like. But you’ll pay, cunt. Name a price or I’ll smash this over your head.’

  The professor covered his face with his hands – as a blue swirling light lit the room.

  ‘The Jacks!’ Vince screamed. He dropped the bottle and headed for the back door. ‘Jackie. Buster. Go. Go.’

  I followed Vince, Buster grabbed the baby from Juice and ran after us. We raced along the walkway, down the side of the motel and across the road. I dropped the camera and turned to pick it up. A speeding tow-truck was heading for Buster and Florence. Swerving to miss them, the driver ran straight over the camera, smashing it to pieces. I watched his tail-lights vanish into the distance. Vince looked down at the broken bits of plastic and metal scattered across the road.

  ‘Fuck,’ he whispered. ‘There goes the money shot.’

  ‘I don’t reckon he would’ve paid up anyway,’ I tried consoling him. ‘Stubborn prick.’

  ‘Anyway,’ Buster offered, ‘they might be in love.’

  ‘Love?’ Vince spat. ‘They couldn’t be in love. She’s a prostitute, Buster. Been under everything but the Titanic.’

  ‘Don’t matter,’ Buster shot back, smooching Florence on the cheek. ‘If there’s hope for me, there’s hope for all of us. Juice in there. The professor. And you. Yep. There’s even hope for you, Vince.’

  SNARE

  Nothing much moves around here but the trains. We’re two stops off the end of the suburban line. The trains come and go every half hour, in both directions. A little longer on Sundays. Forty minutes, sometimes an hour if they’re running late. I time them on my watch and write everything down in the notebook I carry around. Then there are the country line and goods trains. They can thunder by the back fence at any hour, rattling the dishes and knives and forks and spoons in the kitchen cupboards. A couple of times we’ve had pictures knocked off the walls.

  We’ve been here for six years, from when I was eight. My mother ran away from my dad. I don’t know exactly why. She’s never told me and doesn’t want me asking. I remember that the police were often at our house. And he kicked the front door in one time, when she tried locking him out.

  That’s all I can tell you. Except that she blames him for my stutter and my eyes blinking. Said so to the doctors at the hospital I went to for years. I’m supposed to be on medication. I was for a long time. When I started high school she said I was responsible enough to look after the pills myself, so I stopped taking them. I flush them down the toilet or feed them to next-door’s cat. It doesn’t seem to mind. I still blink too much now and then and get stuck on words, but not when I write them down. I don’t speak much unless I have to.

  The first night here we slept on the kitchen floor because the other rooms were full of rubbish and a sort of scratching sound that had to be rats and mice. A diesel going by the back fence shook the house so bad I thought it was an earthquake until I heard the whistle of the train heading for the crossing on the highway.

  With some help Mum fixed up the house. We dragged the rubbish out of the rooms, made a bonfire in the yard and burned the lot. Grandpa drove down from his farm and stayed with us for a few weeks, the old van loaded with tools and paint and pieces of wood. He worked hard, fixing windows and doors, and plastering and painting the inside. At the end of his stay I sat on my bed in the freshly painted front room and listened through the open window to them talking, out on the front verandah, holding a glass of beer each. After all the work he’d done he tried talking her into selling the place and moving to the farm with him. When she said no, for the third time, he went into his overalls pocket and handed her some cash.


  ‘Get the floors sanded with that. I’d do it myself, but my back wouldn’t last. We can work on the outside paint job later in the year when it’s warm.’

  The next week I helped her empty the house of furniture and a man came around in a van with Sam the Sandman painted on the side. He took the years of scratches and stains out of the wooden floors with a fearsome machine and varnished them like new. Sam had the quietest voice I’d ever heard and soft curly hair and a beard to match. He came back a couple of weeks later to check that she was happy with the job and then turned up a couple of days after that and started scraping the dry and blistered paint off the weatherboards. When I got home from school that night he was still working, and stayed on for dinner. Before too long he was sleeping over.

  Except for the trains it’s dead quiet in our street. Our neighbours are mostly old Greeks and Italians. Theo, our next-door neighbour – not the one with the cat, he’s on the other side – has lived by himself since his kids left home and his wife died. He gives us vegetables out of his garden. I’ve been working for him for the last two years. He offered me the job by showing his knotted, bony wrists over the front fence.

  ‘I have the arthritis. Work my arse off for the factory. My hands are fucked up, all. You clean the chooks couple days a week, shovel shit, hose, water. I give your mother eggs, fresh. Every day. You dig in the garden I give vegetables. Tomato. Beans. Everything.’

  So I clean out the chook shed on Sunday and Wednesday mornings before school. I worked out quick that Theo is lonely. He sits on an overturned bucket, watches me work and smokes as he talks.

  ‘You know, when we were at factory, Aussie boys bludgers. All of them. All the time. Drink, drink, drink. Do fucken nothing. You work hard. You good boy.’

  I sometimes try answering him but my tongue won’t work and I spit bits of words out like chips of wood. Theo doesn’t mind.

  ‘You get stuck. No worries. I speak. You listen.’

  He sends me home with a cloth bag full of eggs. I wash my face and hands then run down to the highway for the bus and ride the half hour to school. I keep to myself, up the front behind the driver. The Islander boys run both the bus and the schoolyard. They take no shit. There are also the Vietnamese boys, and the Africans, but not enough of them to take on the Islanders, even if they joined forces. I have no friends at school and hang out with the losers nobody wants. We don’t move far from the patch of grass near the front office, where we can be seen and it’s safe.