Plane Tree Drive

by Lynette Washington

  Above the music, a door slams and Kerry emerges, teary and puffy but somehow still sophisticated and beautiful. She runs for the front door and in a screech of expensive tyres, she’s gone.

  Jennifer waits for Alexander to race out after her, but he doesn’t. She wanders aimlessly around the unfamiliar house, expecting to find him tearful and bereft and despite it all, wanting to console him. But he’s nowhere.

  She thinks, I’m coming down and everything looks stupid and ugly and pointless. She heads for the backyard to be morbid in private. All that remains in the empty pool are sharp salt stalagmites growing on the little blue tiles, pointing up at the stars. An orb weaver spins a web in the tangled garden. From nowhere a pair of arms fold around her waist, a flop of silky fringe tickles the back of her neck, and Alexander sighs into her ear, ‘JenJen, will we ever get it together?’

  And in those few words, with Alexander’s arms around her and his body pressing into hers, what she hears is: I choose you. I choose you.

  Jennifer knows she is fooling herself. He is in pain and confused. Kerry has probably told him she’s had enough of his stupid friends and their idea of fun.

  But. Finally, finally, someone has followed her and it’s too much to ignore.

  She turns to him and although she doesn’t want to, she picks a fight. It’s the only way she knows how to talk to Alexander.

  ‘Something tells me you and Kerry have already “got it together”, more times than I care to think about. Anyway, it’s not the getting together that’s the problem, it’s the staying together.’

  In the process of her little speech she’s extracted herself from his arms, managed to make herself angry at him, and ruined a perfectly perfect moment that could have turned into a romantic moment.

  ‘Are you deliberately misunderstanding me? Since when is “get it together” a euphemism for sex? And why are we even talking about sex? And Kerry? I was talking about you and me.’

  ‘Clearly not a topic at all related to sex.’

  ‘Clearly.’

  What is that she detects in his voice? Bitterness? Distaste? Sadness? Regret? She can’t tell.

  ‘So did Kerry finally get sick of us all? I wouldn’t blame her if she did.’

  ‘It’s not about “us”, it’s about her and me. It’s just not working.’

  ‘You might think it’s not about “us”, but it is. We are vultures. Carnivorous. Ruthless. Kerry was the weakest link. Only the strongest survive and earn our friendship.’

  ‘You might be right about that,’ he sighs.

  ‘Oh, look at that, something we can agree on,’ Jennifer says sourly.

  ‘JenJen, why do we do this?’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Pick fights with each other.’

  ‘You’re fun to fight with. You bite back.’

  Alexander takes a step towards her, his hands held up.

  ‘What about a peace offering? I don’t want to fight with you tonight.’

  Jennifer feels like snarling, I’m not a replacement! You can’t come to me for comfort when your girlfriend walks out on you.

  Instead, she says, ‘Peace offering? Exactly what is on the table?’

  ‘Sometimes I want us to be…different…kinder. I care about you, JenJen. Can’t we have both? Can’t we challenge each other and…I don’t know…love each other too?’

  Jennifer wants to kiss him right now, there is nothing in the world that matters more. Not a damn thing. This is the grand moment she’s been waiting for. I’m going to do it, she thinks. She takes a step and hears a sharp gasp from behind Alexander.

  Kerry.

  Alexander turns to her and drops his arms. Jennifer flees making a much noisier and less stylish exit than Kerry did, in her backfiring Corona.

  The sun has set and it’s dark in my studio. Hours have passed and I’m still staring at the canvas, only now it’s not blank. I’ve painted Alexander’s face. I stand up and put my fingers to the wet paint on his lips, drag them down and smear his chin, which I’ve painted with exaggerated lines that make his intractability look more like my own. I put my paint-wet fingertips to my lips and send him a kiss.

  STEVO

  I Go To Rio

  The woman sits on the tall stool in front of me and asks for a flight to Rio de Janeiro. I have to look up the airport code: GIG. Won’t forget that again.

  The brown leather strap of her bag is almost the same colour as her skin, and is the same width as the shoulder of her tank top. She puts her green beaded necklace in her mouth and sucks on it like a nervous child.

  ‘Return?’ I ask.

  Masses of tight dark brown curls spring out around her face and look like they could never be brushed. They bounce on her bare shoulders, even when she is still. She spits out the necklace so she can speak.

  ‘No. One-way. I’m going home.’

  Her eyes flick to the floor before her expression catches up with her words and she remembers to smile.

  From the stool she is much higher than me. They do that on purpose – so that the customer feels uncomfortable and doesn’t settle in for a chat about bus routes in Cairo or the safety ratings of minor airlines in Russia. It also means the customer is conveniently able to look down their sales consultant’s blouse, or directly at their groin, as they prefer.

  ‘Can I have your name and date of birth, please? So that I can start building a quote?’

  She gives them to me.

  ‘Contact number? Email?’

  She gives them to me.

  I have all the Key Information now and she is in our database. We can stalk her with advertising and QuoteBeats.

  ‘Great, thanks, Juliana. I’m Stevo by the way,’ I say, pointing to my name tag. ‘Do you have a preferred airline?’ I use her name, the way I have been trained to, to create a false sense of friendship between us.

  ‘The cheapest.’

  She has an accent I find both charming and confounding. It makes me hang onto each syllable to make sure I’ve deciphered correctly.

  ‘Okay. What date do you want to fly?’

  This should be an easy fare. In theory I could add a sizeable commission to the base. But her eyes flick to the carpet every time she speaks and the necklace keeps going in and out of her mouth and it makes me reluctant to rip her off.

  I type in ADL–GIG and the date and give her the cheap options: Aerolineas Argentinas and Emirates. I explain to her about the layovers associated with each flight, heavily emphasising the benefits of Emirates – making 23 hours in Dubai into a selling point – because this month we have a deal with them and if I can sell another five Emirates fares I get a free return airfare to any Emirates destination. It’s a helluva reward and no one else in my office is even close. I really want that free flight. I want to go to Casablanca, walk into a piano bar and say, ‘Play it again, Sam.’

  ‘Dubai? I don’t know. That’s a lot of extra miles. I’ll take the Aerolineas flight. Do you need a deposit now?’

  This is the easiest sale I’ve ever made in the four years I’ve been doing this job. They always try to get you to hold the fare while they shop around and come back to you with a quote they want you to beat.

  ‘You’re sure? Dubai is amazing! Have you seen the shopping malls and the indoor parks? It’s like nothing else on earth!’

  Desperation is creeping in. Nothing kills a sale faster than desperation mixed with a sniff of insincerity. It’s obvious she doesn’t care about shopping malls or indoor parks. I’m an idiot.

  She shakes her head, glossy curls bouncing away, and waits for me but the only sentences I seem to be able to form are not appropriate. Why are you so anxious? Have you always sucked on your necklace, since you were a child? Did you need braces for that? What’re you going home to? What’re you leaving behind? Is there a who? Or is it just a what?

  ‘Aerolineas, please. Do you need a deposit?’ she repeats.

  I snap out of it.

  ‘$200 is fine. And the rest within the wee
k. Is that okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  She fishes around in her purse and hands me flat and tidy notes – straight from the ATM – then she’s gone before I remember to tell her to bring her passport in.

  ‘What was with that commission? You could have doubled that, easy,’ says Ruby from the desk next to me.

  ‘What?’ I say, catching up too late.

  ‘You just blew Casablanca, Stevo,’ Ruby shakes her head. In this line of work there is no greater goal than an airline reward. And no greater chump than me.

  But Casablanca seems unimportant now. Because I’ve fallen in love with a girl who’s going to Rio and I have five days to sell five more fares. Emirates fly ADL to GIG. The image of Sam sitting at his piano crooning ‘As Time Goes By’ is replaced in my mind by Peter Allen swinging his maracas as he dances around his grand piano singing ‘I Go To Rio.’

  I’m going to Rio.

  CORALIE AND LEYTON

  The Theatre

  Driving down Plane Tree Drive, on my way to work in the city, I shut the vents in my car. The pollen from the plane trees, like yellow puffs of fairy floss, has bothered me since I was a child.

  Faraj used to live on Plane Tree Drive and I briefly consider an unscheduled visit to try to find out where he is now. Why he couldn’t live with his carer, why he wouldn’t talk to me, why he vanished, slipping through the cracks of a system gaping with holes. There are a thousand whys I can’t answer about him. All my instincts are screaming at me, telling me he needs me. But I know the answers aren’t here anymore. And because the Department doesn’t know where he is, my instincts can scream all they like, it’s no use.

  Nearing the corner of South Road, where the theatre is, old memories settle over me. The curl of the purple and green ornamental façade, crumbling at the corners, the doors pushed closed with rain-warped, drafty gaps. The empty billboard. Tunes whisper to me as I come closer, songs long gone and impossible to forget. Days of rehearsal and nights of fevered performance prickle my skin. People tucked close in the crowded backstage, hours of preparation in the green room, giggling leotard-clad girls and mothers fussing over hair and makeup.

  The traffic is bad this morning, even on the Drive, and I wonder if I’ll be late for work. I mentally check my diary for early appointments as orange cones direct traffic away from the theatre and squash us into one lane.

  Sitting in the right lane, creeping forward towards the theatre, I watch a man in a hard hat yell instructions into a walkie-talkie, gesticulating aggressively to someone in a bobcat. Machinery, scaffolding and fences engulf the theatre.

  Are they doing it up, or pulling it down?

  I feel sick all day. As I talk to clients, I barely register any of it. I go through the motions; grant temporary extensions, book inspections, call Family Services three times, sit on hold forever. I try to retain a veneer of compassion, even though there is so little left in me.

  Then Faraj comes in again. I still don’t have any housing to offer him. I ask why he can’t go back to Ahmad and his dark eyes flick to the floor and stay there. He doesn’t answer. I ask him a hundred questions, just to keep him close for a while. I tell myself that while he’s with me, at least, he’s not being hurt. But who am I kidding? He carries his hurt like a torch. There is no escaping it. And none of the questions I ask change the fact that I can’t give him what he needs. I’m stalling. Hoping to get to the bottom of him. I give him a list of shelters and he takes it, but I know full well he will choose to sleep rough rather than go to one of those places and I don’t blame him.

  I knock off at five and race through the city, driving recklessly. Pulling up on South Road, I watch from my car. The crane is still. The men in hard hats and bright jackets are gone – all but one. He wears a suit underneath his safety gear. He is looking up at the sky. Imagining what? Ten sterile storeys?

  I jump out of the car and dodge the peak hour traffic to cross the road.

  ‘Hey!’ I call out.

  His gaze drops from the monstrosity in his mind and turns to me.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ I ask.

  ‘We’re tearing it down.’

  The words register brutally, as if they are wedging into my brain with a block splitter. I reach out and curl my fingers through the wire fence. The worn and patchy velvet on the chairs, the embellished wallpaper, the ancient splintery floorboards. All gone. The chandelier. Oh, the chandelier.

  ‘Are you okay?’ the man asks, obviously sensing an old duck like me might pass out any second of the day, forcing him to write up an incident report.

  I ignore him and walk back to my car.

  Sleep doesn’t come easily. I spend half the night fending off my husband’s knees and elbows. Eventually I fall into a dreamless torpor that is broken by the canaries. They don’t care that it’s the weekend.

  I shower, dress, eat and drive to the theatre.

  It’s quiet and Plane Tree Drive is deserted. The houses are silent, sitting placidly in the shade of the plane trees. It’s still early; the frost is still on the grass. I walk to the stage door and try the gate: bolted and chained. I return to my car and haul out the heavy bolt cutters. After working in public housing for a lifetime you learn a trick or two. As I try the chain I wonder what will give first – my bones, or the hardened steel – then the lock snaps and I ease the gate open. Signs scream at me to WEAR SAFETY GEAR AT ALL TIMES and REPORT TO THE OFFICE BEFORE ENTRY TO SITE.

  The alley behind the theatre is disgusting these days. Sheets of newsprint like urban tumbleweed. Corners used as a urinal and worse. Bits and pieces of shabby lives scattered into a windblown wound. In my sensible shoes, I pick my way through it to get to the stage door.

  Not much has been done yet. It looks like they are still setting up the machinations of their destruction. The stage door is unlocked, presumably the locked gates are considered enough protection for the old building, so I walk into the dark corridor that leads to the green room. As a child, I ran these corridors barefoot, leaping and laughing as we practised the routines in any space we could find. Later I brought my own daughter here for her dance concerts.

  The green room is a sad place; empty, hollow, cold. It was never decorated gloriously like the rest of the theatre, but had always been filled with the warmth of a hundred bodies and needed nothing more.

  I keep walking and find my way onto stage. I am ten again, dressed in flowing pink tulle and sequins, arms and legs smeared in orange Leg Tan, eyelids electric blue, hair scraped into a painful bun. I spin and stretch; each step is like putting on an old coat. Mum and Dad smile when we take our bow. Their pride glows like lanterns. We scamper off stage, in our excitement forgetting the strict instruction to exit stage left in a tidy line with toes pointed and chins high. That doesn’t matter. All that matters are the waiting hugs.

  Now, I sit on the boards and wind my arms around my waist, allow myself to be flooded with melancholy. Until a sound disturbs me. A bird, no doubt nesting in the old ruins. The birds will lose their home too. There will be no place for them in this new structure. I briefly consider trying to catch them but my husband won’t tolerate any more strays being brought home. And my neighbours already complain about my squawking canaries.

  Monday, Monday. It always comes around too fast. I take the quick route to work, unable to bear the thought of being stuck in traffic in front of the theatre as a wall crashes down. But by the end of the day my curiosity, and many years of habit, get the better of me.

  The man is there again, looking up at the sky. Again. Either he has very little imagination or he is trying to predict the weather. I walk up to the fence and clutch the cold wire.

  ‘Hi,’ he says.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘It’s going to be beautiful. They’re calling it Theatre Apartments and there’ll be a monument.’

  I scoff. ‘Huh!’

  He looks at me closer.

  ‘Do you know this place?’

  ‘Bette
r than you do if you think anything else could be more beautiful.’

  ‘But it’s crumbling. It’s dangerous. No one uses it anymore,’ he says.

  ‘You don’t throw things away because they are crumbling. You nurture things that aren’t strong,’ I say.

  He pauses for a while, trying to understand. I can see he wants to. But he can’t. He lives in a world where things that aren’t perfect are replaced. He’s so young.

  ‘I’m Leyton,’ he says.

  ‘Coralie,’ I say as I walk away.

  ‘See you!’ he calls out.

  I make it a habit. I drive the long way to work to make it easier to get through my day, and on the way home I go and see what layer they’ve torn down. Elements are thrown into bins to be reused or dumped. At least some of it will be recycled. The floorboards will be sanded and oiled and used to fancy-up some rundown eastern suburbs mansion. The glass doors might be used by someone wanting to add character to their severe modern home. The ragged red velvet curtain will be dumped.

  The man isn’t looking at the sky today. He is smiling at me.

  ‘I have something for you,’ he says.

  He strides towards a pile of rubble at the back of the site.

  ‘Come to the side gate,’ he says. ‘I’ll let you in. You don’t need your bolt cutters this time,’ he winks.

  He unlocks the new padlock, opens the gate, slips a fluoro jacket over my suit and puts a hard hat on my head.

  ‘Sorry, I’ll be fired if you don’t wear it.’

  He is still smiling his goofy smile.

  ‘This way,’ he says.

  We walk through the front doors, now just empty frames.

  ‘Watch your step,’ he says.

  ‘Okay,’ I say, thinking that I couldn’t fall in this place in a million years; I know it too well. But he’s right. The floor isn’t there anymore – just struts and dull, tired dirt remain. I pick my way over it and follow him to the foyer.