Hard Light- Infamous

by Warren Hately

  “I’m not Teneille,” he said, feeling only slightly less silly than he expected delivering such a line.

  Lord appeared in the richly carpeted hall like a distant relative of his former self. Still tall and blonde, the ponytail had gone the way of his old heavy metal shirts. Dressed in an impeccable grey suit and loose tie, he stood frozen at the entrance to the next room, a well-tailored, nearly insubstantial blonde goatee the only direct change to his handsome narrow face.

  “Fuck a duck.”

  “They talk like that around these parts, do they?”

  They broke into mutual grins and Flanagan felt good enough to walk in and shake hands. Lord abandoned the formalities to grab him in a bear hug before quickly letting go.

  “Is that a coat or did you actually just turn the sheep inside out and crawl in?”

  “Very Han Solo. I caught a bit of rain in Midland,” Flanagan said. “It smells off, does it?”

  “Midland’ll do that,” the lawyer replied.

  “I’m sorry if I’m interrupting. I came to see you about my dad, Lord,” Flanagan said. “Jeez, did we really go around calling you that?”

  “Original, I know,” Lord replied. “Blame my parents. I guess they sort of set me up for it.”

  He coughed, looked down and said, “I was sorry to hear about Ollie.”

  “It’s been a while.”

  “Yeah. I tried to write to you, but the letter came back.”

  “When was that?”

  “Right after he died. I never realised he’d named me executor of the will. I mean, Jesus, when was the last time I saw him?”

  “My twenty-first, at the Uni Tavern,” Flanagan replied.

  “Must’ve impressed him.”

  They both gave a tittering laugh and Lord added, “I’ve got some papers for you. I wouldn’t mind tracking your mum down to cross a few Ts as well.”

  Flanagan nodded as if he had all the time in the world. There was a pause.

  “Where have you been, Mick?”

  “Overseas, mate.”

  “No shit,” his old friend replied. “I wrote to you in Canberra. They opened the mail, read the letter, folded it wrong and sent it right back without a word. Didn’t even write, just popped the whole thing in a pre-paid envelope. A government one.”

  Flanagan said nothing, motioning down the hallway filled with framed photographs. “I take it you got your degree?”

  “Yeah, all that work paid off. I’m still a rookie, though.”

  “Work?” Flanagan laughed. “That’s not how I remember it.”

  Lord was still chuckling as a red-faced man stepped into the hall, barely glancing at Flanagan before stabbing his face toward their host.

  “What’s going on? Where are the girls?”

  “Darryl Jacobsen, meet Mick Flanagan, an old friend of mine.”

  Jacobsen turned and looked Flanagan up and down for the second time. “You a footballer, son?”

  “I’m more used to kicking heads. What’s your excuse?”

  The older man eyeballed him a moment and then jerked his thumb at the doorway.

  “Lose this arsehole, Lord.”

  “Mick’s an old friend, Darryl,” Lord replied awkwardly. “We haven’t seen each other in five years.”

  “We’ve got a situation here, son,” Jacobsen answered.

  He glowered at Flanagan again and made the mistake of jabbing out a finger.

  “He can –”

  Flanagan’s hand was too quick to follow as he caught Jacobsen’s finger and twisted it aside. The older man coughed with surprise and pain and Flanagan put his knee into the side of his guts. Jacobsen went down and Flanagan grabbed the completely winded man’s fleshy face between thumb and forefinger.

  “The last prick who pointed at me like that drowned in his own blood,” he hissed.

  Tennyson was slow to move, but when he did, he chose discretion over valour, only putting a firm hand on Flanagan’s shoulder. It saved him from being the next target. As Jacobsen slumped on the thick carpet, Flanagan let him go and straightened.

  “Who’s the arsehole now, huh?”

  “Jesus, Mick,” Lord said slowly. “He’s my father-in-law.”

  Flanagan looked into his friend’s drawn and horrified face. Beyond the half-open doorway, a heavy-set woman cooeed amid rattling keys.

  “It’s open,” Lord deadpanned. “Come in, Glenda.”

  “Fuck . . . Sorry, Lord,” Flanagan muttered.

  He turned for the door and went through it even as two women, unmistakeably mother and daughter, came up the last steps. Tipping an imaginary hat, Flanagan hurried past them and down to the Fairmont flaking rust at the curb.

  He never could control the shaking. It came like the absence of a conscience whenever violence flared. Something deep within, some reptilian part of his brain found it helpful to ride the adrenalin like caffeine shakes, eyes leaking insincere tears.

  He gripped the steering wheel again like his life depended on it, heart skipping along just beneath his tongue. He fired the engine into life as soon as he was able, slowly shifting the machine out of neutral. He wasn’t even looking up – preparing to indicate and floor it blind – when there came a rap on the window.

  It was Tennyson. They locked eyes for a moment and Flanagan sensed some kind of fatherly disappointment amid the concern seeping through the safety glass. His friend held a slip of paper. Flanagan rolled down the squeaking window.

  “Give me a call tomorrow,” Lord said, passing the card across with two fingers. “We’ll catch up. There’s a problem with Darryl’s daughter. Teneille’s sister. He’s not normally like this.”

  “I wish I could say the same, Lord. I’m sorry.”

  Lord frowned as if shuffling through a series of lenses and wondering which one to use.

  “Are you alright, Mick? You didn’t just get out of jail, did you?”

  “Jail?” Flanagan gave a gentle laugh over the growl of the engine. “No, nothing like that. I’ll speak to you tomorrow or . . . soon.”

  “Tomorrow,” Lord said.

  Flanagan accelerated away from the kerb and out of sight, shifting up through the gears until he could’ve been any other moron hooning down a suburban street.

  THREE

  FLANAGAN LET THE weekday rush hour lead him towards Fremantle without really thinking about it. Adjusting the money roll in his jeans, his eyes were transfixed by the ocean as it appeared through the right-side window, a hazy red sun ready to plunge on invisible tongs into the cooling sea. Freighters dopplered across the horizon by a trick of the light particular to that time of day, and he calmed as he counted them and wondered where they were bound.

  Swimming back from East Timor seemed like a bad idea in anyone’s book, but now coming home seemed the worse mistake. Seeing the ships, the wanderlust came bubbling back like acidophilus. He’d promised himself a rest when he got home, but now all bets were off. Nothing was as he’d expected.

  Flanagan rolled into Fremantle past the strangely out-of-place car yards, and he eased the Fairmont into a departing Holden’s bay out the front of The Overflow on Cantonment, just a few yards down from the derelict Woolstores with its crowd of truants. The sound of skateboards cracking on brick and concrete competed with the cries of gulls on the lookout for hot chips, a whiff of a breeze from the harbour invisible only a few hundred metres away something life-restoring Flanagan wished he could bottle.

  Although the view wasn’t good, he sat for a while mulling over memories of the port city from his university days, coming down Stirling Highway to chase girls, watch bad cover bands and brawl with the occasional Yank sailor. The skaters hadn’t improved since then, though their musical tastes had mellowed and now they went armed with camcorders and iPhones, each one a teen Narcissus in baggy shorts.

  He briefly thought about Randy, but pushed the thought away. He took the carry-all with him from the back seat when he went into the bar.

  The Overflow did a good trade on
a pricey range of fish and chips. Gutted already, Flanagan ordered a steak sandwich, then crossed to the long teak bar and politely ordered a pint from a young thing in a short black apron and tattered jeans who didn’t seem keen on giving him the time of day, let alone a drink.

  Although the rain had ceased, successive ranks of gloom marched across the sky as he wandered out back with his beer and metal table number, the yard just as he remembered it with a chain rope separating drinkers from the open lawn behind the Film and Television Institute. He’d barely sat at a table before the barmaid appeared with a fifty-cent piece.

  “Forgot your change,” she said, pained with a smile.

  Flanagan sighed and sucked beer and waited for his meal and thought about what the hell he was going to do. It wasn’t long before he was gently shivering in his t-shirt and jacket, the cool climate something his body had long forgotten. When the meal came, he shifted inside as a gruesome duet opened up on slide guitar and standing bass in the next room, showing about as much interest as Flanagan did as they wended their way half-drunkenly through the few country numbers even city crowds could hum.

  The barmaid was a little kinder supplying coins for the pay phone just inside the door where he’d come in. With one nervous hand, Flanagan retrieved a denim-stained fold of paper, numbers and names in black ink in a more careful hand than he now possessed.

  Ted Lysaght was one of those old schoolers who recited his own phone number before asking who was there. Flanagan’s voice almost broke when he replied.

  “Michael.” Uncle Ted pronounced it like a punch in the gut. The big man sucked in a troubled lungful of air and asked, “Where are you calling from, son?”

  “Fremantle,” Flanagan replied. “I just got back today. Where’s mum?”

  “Anne? Jesus,” Ted replied and could be heard sucking on his false teeth. “Mate, we’ll have to catch up. Sorry about your old man.”

  “Are you?” Flanagan shrugged and glanced out the open door to the street as heavy droplets started down. He happened to look at the bar and saw the henna’d blonde move away from where she’d been watching him.

  “Well, what am I supposed to say?” Ted asked.

  “Old Errol would be glad,” Flanagan found himself replying. “Never liked him, dad always reckoned.”

  “Neither would you, find your daughter knocked up by some . . . some little Irish . . . bastard.”

  “Is that what you were going to say, Ted?”

  When his uncle said nothing, Flanagan pressed him again about his mum.

  “You’ll have to ask your sister, Mick. She’s shacked up somewhere down your way with that Kraut girlfriend of hers.”

  “Girlfriend? Jesus, I’ve only been away five years,” Flanagan strangled a laugh. “Was I walking around with my head up my arse before?”

  “Answered your own question there, I think.”

  “Thanks very much, Sarge.”

  “It’s Senior Sergeant these days, Mick,” Ted said.

  “Bully for you.”

  “You should’ve joined the force, boy. You know it’s what Errol wanted.”

  “My mum would’ve done a shit,” Flanagan said.

  “What did you do instead? Gone for five years doing what, young Mick?”

  “Maybe I’ll tell you some day,” Flanagan replied. “Right now, I don’t know why I called. Thought I missed you lot, but I’m already remembering what a complete pack of cunts you were.”

  He hung up and ordered another drink. The girl said nothing, just pouring in the stillness of a flat Tuesday, dark rain clouds turning into night. When Flanagan went back for the third and a shot of Jack, he had a line ready.

  “Guess I’ve got to keep buying drinks if I want to talk to you.”

  “The money doesn’t go into my pocket, mate,” she said, managing a smile at last.

  Flanagan screwed up his mouth a minute and pondered as she glanced at him over the taps. She was uni-aged, plump but attractive in a Fremantle way, the unruliness of her hair matting into dreads caught up with a purple embroidered band. When she finished serving, he dropped twenty on the bar and told her to keep the change.

  “Big spender,” she said. “You looked kinda miserable over there on the phone.”

  “It’s a hell of a thing,” he agreed and downed the whiskey. “I just got home after five years away. I don’t know what’s worst: my dad’s dead, my mother’s divorced, my sister’s a dyke, and my best friend’s a lawyer.”

  “Jesus, that’s hard.”

  “Tell me about it.” He drank two thirds of the beer and she refilled it for him.

  “I’m Tess.”

  “Tess? Flanagan.”

  “No first name?”

  “Not one I’ll cop to.”

  The girl hummed and poured herself a middy.

  “So where have you been?”

  “Overseas. Thailand. East Timor. Indonesia. West Papua.”

  “Wow, what were you doing there?”

  “A bunch of things,” Flanagan said with his eyes on the banister. “Nothing I really want to talk about.”

  “What do you want to talk about then?”

  “You,” he replied. “You’ve got to be much more interesting than me.”

  *

  HE WOKE IN the heaving dark after dreaming the girl was going through Randy’s carry bag. Throwing himself from the bed and into the corner of the cluttered room, it was a wonder Tess didn’t wake.

  Flanagan crouched there until his breathing settled. Though the night was cool, Tess kept an oil heater in her cosy room and Flanagan wore only his Bonds t-shirt and a faded pair of boxers. Eventually he gave up on the military-style squats and sat slumped against the wood-panelled wall and unzipped the American’s bag.

  A hundred thousand in US notes didn’t look as impressive as it should, shrink wrapped in plastic with a tiny tear at one end. He’d already tossed all Randy’s personal effects, including his waterlogged mobile phone. But the bag was a keeper. He checked the safety on the Colt Python, a mean-looking chunk of nickel-plated iron accompanied by a plastic baggie of speed loaders. Then he zipped up. Tess still hadn’t moved, flat on her stomach, naked as the day she was born, honey-and-cream skin finding full expression in the perfect curve of her bare ample bum.

  He climbed back onto the creaking futon with its orange sheets and turned on his side, back to her, staring out the window at the lights of White Gum Valley and Beaconsfield arrayed on the rise around Fremantle Harbour like the campfires of some gathered army. With the window partly open, they were close enough to smell the sea breeze, Tess’s room on the second storey of the Manning Street house. Trendy, staunchly Italian Wray Avenue was a stone’s throw away, the sidewalk lined with cafes, a grocery store, a bookshop, a bent pollie’s office – everything you could ever need.

  “What are you thinking?”

  Her arm slid around his neck with the unfamiliar smoothness of a woman. His own arms were only slightly less hairy than the average ape. The Australian-ness of her gently lilting voice and the smell of her were new, yet old and familiar, so different to the women of south-east Asia. Flanagan closed his eyes and allowed his head to rest, her curling wrist a pillow.

  “I was wondering how often you bring blokes back with you from the pub,” he said, the smirk conveyed in his voice rather than his face.

  “Would you believe me if I said you were the first?”

  She nipped his ear as Flanagan shook his head.

  “Not many, anyway,” she said, tongue probing around and then thrusting in. “I don’t exactly have guys falling over me.”

  “I don’t know why that is,” he replied, rolling over and on top of her in the same easy move. “You got to be careful with that falling business, anyway. A girl could get hurt.”

  Tess lifted her hips up to meet him.

  “Oh, I dunno, I could cushion a fall. What do you reckon?”

  “You could at that.”

  He slid into her slowly and watched her bro
wn eyes cloud over, going dark and faraway before she closed them completely, white imperfect teeth teasing her lower lip. Flanagan stroked a wisp of hair away from her brow and kissed her as he changed angle. Tess gave a soft moan and Flanagan dipped his head, bowing into her.

  Later, mistaking her asleep, he sat naked on the bed’s edge rolling a cigarette from her makings. Like a sleepy siren, she sat up resting on one hand, unleashed hair spilling across her shoulder and one heavy boob.

  “There’s some hash around if you want it.”

  “I’m OK.” He swallowed slowly, then licked his lips to get the paper wet, finishing the seal in one deft swipe.

  “You’re not some bloke from the country, are you?”

  “Me? No,” he replied. “Born in Midland.”

  “You get them, that’s all, rough-looking characters like you, they come down and doss in South Freo at the boarding houses there.”

  “Maybe I should try my luck down that way then. I need a place to stay.”

  “You can stay here.”

  “I thought I’d be staying with my dad. Wasn’t looking forward to it too much. We’d fight like fucking cats. Always did, silly bastard.”

  “You said he died,” Tess said softly.

  “Yeah, he topped himself.” It was easier to speak with the girl behind him, her softness and sympathy as obvious and unspoken as her paper-thin confidence.

  “Cancer,” Flanagan spoke again. “That’s what they said.”

  “They?”

  “Well, some real estate agent, actually. He sold the house.”

  “Jesus, that’s how you found out?”

  Flanagan glanced over his shoulder and then back through the wood-framed square of night air. A gull swept past the window like an albino bat in the dark.

  “No. I went to the house.”

  “Have you got other family? What about your mum?”

  “I have a sister . . . yeah, and a mum. Allegedly.” He sighed, pinched his eyes for a moment and then lit the smoke. “Apparently my mother left him, three or four years back. It’s two-and-a-half years since he died, so I don’t know what I’m so cut up about.”

  “You are cut up, are you?” She pilfered the cigarette and took a quick drag. “You don’t sound it, but still, it’s been two years . . . It’s still new to you, right?”