Lingerie For Felons

by Ros Baxter

  What I really wanted was to tell Heidi how I was feeling. These arrests seem engineered to send me into a spiral of self-reflection I just really didn’t need. My life was complicated enough without having to think about it. I usually managed a pretty good line in denial and avoidance. And that was just fine. And then I would get arrested and somehow I’d be pushed into all this ‘thinking about my life’ crap. Where am I up to? Where is it going? And the answer right now is ‘nowhere fast’.

  Heidi took my hand. ‘Are you really worried, Loll?’

  I chose to ignore that question for the moment, along with the whole scary array of possibilities it opened up. ‘Oh hey, get this. They called me “The Ringleader”. Isn’t that great? Well, you know, it’s probably not going to go down so well at my hearing, but still…’

  ‘Wow,’ Heidi confirmed, shaking her head and scowling at me. ‘Finally. Recognition of your greatness. Snaps to you. How did it go down? How come you were the only one they got?’ She was scrunching her face up, trying to visualize the scene.

  ‘We had enough time to get away,’ I started. ‘But I needed to stay a little longer.’ I rubbed the big, purple bruise on my arm where the big man had grabbed me, and told her about the workers. ‘I needed to buy them some extra time.’

  She sighed. ‘Why, Lola?’

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘It was our fault. The cops wouldn’t have even been there if not for us. And the supervisors couldn’t have cared less. I had to make sure they got out—’

  I broke off suddenly because Heidi had developed this really stricken look on her face. And somehow I knew it wasn’t just about my story. She was looking slightly over my shoulder and to the left, with her mouth open. I had what they used to call a ‘presentiment of doom’.

  I didn’t want to look. ‘Okay, Heids,’ I said through gritted teeth. ‘Just tell me. Don’t make me look.’ I was imagining several possibilities.

  One: my brother and Dick wielding swatches of fabric and talking about table settings and whether releasing doves was too cheesy — as if you should have to ask. If there is anything weirder then a gay military wedding, I swear I do not know what it is.

  Two: my sister. She called earlier to invite me to a post-court dinner party tomorrow night. I’m sure she has her own news. The woman is a shameless up-stager.

  Three: my parents. They were even more nuts than usual lately. Mom had taken to these long grandma naps in the afternoon, and calling about the weirdest things.

  And anyway, it’s not that any one of those possibilities was necessarily so horrible, but I just really selfishly wanted this time with Heidi. I only had an hour or so before I was back on duty, and I felt possessive of this short window to debrief with her.

  Even if she was being unhelpfully sarcastic.

  ‘It’s Wayne,’ she whispered. ‘I swear to God that is Wayne walking down the street towards us.’

  Oh, no. What the hell was this?

  Was this guy destined to show up only when I’d been arrested? Do I subconsciously activate some kind of invisible distress signal, like the bat beacon thingy, unbeknown to myself, at times of danger or crisis? And what the hell good is he anyway? He always makes things worse, with his stupid kissing and his great big hairy hands and his —

  ‘Oh my God. Rocket.’ He sounded genuinely surprised.

  I could see Heidi was about to go into a whole obsequious wow-Wayne-fancy-this-how-amazing-to-see-you routine and I wasn’t having it.

  ‘Don’t “Oh my God. Rocket” me.’

  I knew there was no way he’d been accidentally walking down the street where I used to live, past the café where we’d had God knows how many coffees, and spent God knows how many hung-over Sunday mornings lazing around.

  Don’t try to pull some gee-is-that-you crap with me, Wayne. I know you too well.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Ah, lovely to see you too, Rocket. Glad time hasn’t dulled your sweet nature.’

  Wow, his accent was still so broad, like he’d been living in the outback for the last five years. He sounded kind of annoyed, but he was still grinning that impossible grin. And he looked good, damn him. He was wearing these really cool sweat pants and a grey, worn-looking t-shirt. And he was leaner than I remembered, but still huge. And he had more than a hint of grey in his hair. I guessed he was 36 now. It suited him, of course. I realized with a horrible jolt of self-disgust that I really want to see him do something badly.

  Anything.

  Cook. Sing. Age.

  I had some grey too, of course. You don’t keep blacker-than-black hair beyond your thirtieth birthday. But I was determined the world would never know about it. Don’t even get me started on how unfair it is that men are actually allowed to show normal signs of ageing, and women have to pretend to be suspended in some cryogenic bubble in which our hair, features and bodies are preserved at the exact instant of hitting puberty. I don’t even know any sixty-year-old women with grey hair in New York City. It seems acceptable to let a few sneak through after seventy but before that, it’s simply a sign you’ve given up on yourself and might as well grab your shopping bag and go sleep under a bridge.

  ‘And Heidi. My God, you look amazing, sweetheart. It’s so good to see you!’

  I put a restraining arm across Heidi. I was absolutely not letting her hug him. He belonged to her past. My past. Our past. You know what I mean. She looked a bit annoyed with me. Too bad. My ex-boyfriend. I get to choose how palsy we are with him.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, all right. Leave her alone. What are you doing here?’

  Maybe he didn’t hear me the first time.

  ‘Just jogging past?’ He looked hopeful, like I might believe him. But he quickly saw from my face that it was a vain hope. ‘Okay, no. You’re right. I heard about yesterday.’

  I made an unintelligible squeaking noise in the back of my throat. ‘My parents. I am definitely going to kill them this time. They promised me.’

  He was quick to their defense. ‘No, no, Rocket. Settle down, love. It wasn’t them.’

  I start doing a mental inventory of friends and family. Clearly Heidi had been very surprised, so not her. Steve? Emmy? Vera? It could have been Vera. I looked at Wayne and I could tell he was getting worried.

  ‘Now, Rocket, stop planning some sick revenge on your poor bloody friends and relatives right now. It wasn’t any of them. It was me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ My eyes narrowed at him.

  ‘I’ve sort of…got a source at the NYPD.’

  ‘A source?’ I spluttered. ‘What are you, a narc? Have you given up being a shipping magnate for a life undercover? What’s going on?’

  ‘No need to be so melodramatic, Rocket. It’s not like that. I just worry, that’s all. Especially after you dropped off the face of the earth on me last time. And you forbade your parents from talking to me.’

  ‘Huh,’ I snorted. ‘You try forbidding Mom from anything. If she stopped talking to you, she was probably just tired of you. Like an old toy. You probably started to bore her.’

  Heidi snapped. ‘Jesus, Lolly, do you have to be so mean to him? He hasn’t done anything wrong, just walking along the street, minding his own business.’

  ‘Heidi,’ I snarled. ‘He’s just admitted to stalking me. Don’t stick up for him.’ I inclined my head at Wayne. ‘Go on then. Explain yourself.’

  ‘We-ell,’ he started. ‘I sometimes have to deal with the police on various issues. The feds mostly. Licensing matters. Staff problems. Pirates.’

  ‘Pirates?’ Heidi suddenly looked very focused. ‘Like real pirates? Like “arr, arr, pieces of eight”?’

  Wayne laughed and his big head tipped back, showing his Adam’s apple bobbing around. ‘You know, Heidi, you kind of sounded more like a German Shepherd than a pirate just then. But well, kind of, yeah. Real pirates still hang around a bit. But they don’t have wooden legs anymore, I’m pretty sure. Least, I’ve never met one who did.’

  ‘Okay, Sinbad,�
�� I interrupted. ‘Get on with it.’

  ‘Well I just mentioned to one of my contacts —’

  ‘So Wayne,’ Heidi interrupted, ‘are you, like, really rich now? I mean, the only people I know of with police contacts are drug lords and really rich people…’

  Wayne laughed again. ‘Well, I’ve done pretty well out of the shipping thing. It’s been hard. But good, you know? The company was just about on its arse when I got it. It felt great to turn it around, slowly —’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, all very commendable,’ I agreed. ‘I’m sure you really cleaned up the place, sacked all the dead wood, made the place more efficient, et cetera. God is smiling on your capitalist ass right now.’ Wayne was frowning properly at me now. Good. I felt my tension start to lift. ‘So,’ I continued. ‘You were explaining about the stalking…’

  ‘Anyway,’ Wayne went on, looking at me like Luke used to look at me when we were kids just before he gave me a Chinese burn. ‘So I mentioned to one of my contacts that if he could keep an eye out… Anyway, he rang me last night and told me about what happened. Are you okay, Lola? It sounds like it got pretty intense there for a while. You’ve been charged, huh? Trespass, and break and enter? And maybe assault?’

  I exploded. ‘Oh. My. God. There is no confidentiality in this town,’ I squawked. ‘The whole system is completely corrupt. It’s really none of your business, you know. And anyway, your informant —’

  ‘Source,’ Wayne corrected me.

  ‘Oh, sorry, yes. Sounds much more respectable, you crook. Your “source” has it wrong. Well, not all right anyway. They’re still tossing up criminal damage as well. So there you go. Yes, I am well and truly in the poop. Happy?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ Wayne sighed. ‘Are you?’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I barked at him.

  ‘It means, are you okay? Are you scared of going to court? Are you alright?’

  ‘Oh, lovely,’ I hissed at him. ‘So you’ve come to gloat. You think I’m some kind of failure too. Just because I keep getting arrested and I still just do part time math teaching.’

  Wayne’s eyes widened. ‘What do you mean “too”?’ He looked very dark and his lips were thin and tight. ‘Who says you’re a failure? Who told you that?’

  ‘Hey, don’t look at me,’ Heidi squeaked. ‘I’m her biggest fan.’

  ‘Second biggest,’ Wayne bit out. ‘So who thinks you’re a failure, Rocket?’

  I deliberated for a minute. Why not? I had to talk to someone about it.

  ‘Me,’ I muttered. ‘I’m 33 for chrissake. It’s all crazy and everything makes me angry, but I’m going to die and have done nothing about anything. This shitty world is still going to be filled with shitty people doing shitty things to each other and —’

  ‘Oh, Rocket,’ Wayne purred, reaching for my arm.

  ‘Don’t you “oh Rocket” me,’ I warned him darkly. ‘You’re part of the problem. You had to go off and be all successful. Get rich. Not that I care about money, but good lord, couldn’t you just have been averagely successful? Did you have to buy a freaking shipping line? And turn the thing around? And end up with contacts in the NYPD, like Donald freakin’ Trump or something?’

  Somehow, during all of this, Wayne had parked his enormous frame in a chair at the tiny little table Heidi and I had been drinking coffee at. He looked like Goliath.

  ‘Rocket,’ he started again, picking up my hand. ‘Don’t you get it? You’re the most successful person I know. I met you when you were twenty-three, and you cared about everything. You changed how I thought. About everything.’ He was smiling like he was remembering something. ‘I can’t look at anything, I can’t read the bloody news, I can’t go to a dinner party, without your voice in my head telling me about stuff that needs fixing. And you do that for everyone.’ He paused. ‘Doesn’t she, Heidi?’

  Heidi nodded meekly, tears in her eyes. ‘You go on, Wayne, you’re doing well.’

  ‘Well,’ he continued. ‘That’s why I’m here, really, today. I was hoping I could find you. I’ve gotten involved in something new, and it’s really exciting. And I wanted to tell you about it. See if maybe you were interested in being involved.’

  ‘Oh yeah? What is it?’ I wasn’t mollified. What did it matter if he said I was great? It was probably just the dull echo of all that great early-twenties sex going to his head. He knew nothing about my life now. How hard it was. The compromises.

  ‘Green fleet shipping,’ Wayne announced with this big smile. ‘It’s amazing, Rocket. It’s going to change the world. Change how we ruin the world. Stop us doing it, even. Shipping’s an environmental disaster, but this new way has really low emissions. Totally renewable. And lower chance of spills. We don’t need to poison the earth. We can…’

  Oh great. Just fantastic.

  Now not only does he get to be Richie Rich, but he also gets to save the world. My job. Thanks very much. This was like some ‘Single White Female’ thing. But, you know, with a boy. Not content to corrupt my friends and family and bring them to the dark side, now he’s stealing my life mission. I think I was happier when he had no conscience.

  ‘Sounds great. But I don’t need any favors, thanks. I’ve got my own stuff. I’m busy.’

  He looked at me, his shoulders slumped, his mouth a tight line.

  Good. Hope one of his eco-friendly ships sinks and he’s in it.

  I knew a bit about the environmental impacts of shipping. But of course I wouldn’t have known how to go about starting up a clean shipping enterprise if you paid me.

  But as I watched him sitting there, looking really sad and disappointed, I mentally kicked myself. Twice.

  ‘Look, Wayne,’ I offered. ‘It’s...it’s great. Honestly. Just amazing.’ I worried that it still sounded kind of churlish, so I tried again. ‘Honestly. I’m... I’m so proud of you.’ It didn’t hurt to say it as much as I thought it would. ‘But why me? Why are you here? What do I know about shipping? And my life’s complicated. I told you last time…’

  ‘Yeah,’ he agreed. ‘I remember what you told me.’

  He was frowning at me, and he had every right to. After that phone call, way back in 2001, he had every right to think we were going to pick up where we’d left off. I mean, I had said I was coming over. I had asked for his address. And then I had failed to show up. He’d been waiting outside my place the next day, looking hopeful and happy.

  But in between that hasty call and the next morning, there’d been a world of pain.

  I didn’t know Clark had it in him to be so vicious. He’d been almost gentle as he told me that I was self-destructive and destined for misery. That thrills, chemistry, didn’t make people happy. That I was throwing away the most sensible thing I’d ever have. And I kind of believed him. I’d always felt that I was kind of flawed. And Clark had been nothing but good to me. He’d offered friendship when my life was pretty chaotic. And he hadn’t wanted that much in return, really.

  Just for me to be sensible too.

  So, when I’d seen Wayne standing there, the day after I broke up with Clark back in 2001, I couldn’t face him. He seemed somehow emblematic of my messed-upness. I saw a disastrous life ahead of us, where we disagreed on fundamentally important things. Maybe we would have a few more years of killer sex before our own incompatibility slowly poisoned us, like lead in your drinking water. I couldn’t bear it.

  So I’d told him a crazy fib. And it had made him go away.

  ‘It’s alright, Rocket,’ Wayne whispered. ‘I know you didn’t get married, like you told me you were going to. I found out last week. I ran into Raelene. She saw you at the dry cleaners. You told her you weren’t married…’

  I’d done such a thorough job that day. I can lie so well when required. I’d even told him that the phone call the night before had just been wedding jitters.

  ‘Wayne,’ I croaked. My throat felt really dry. ‘I didn’t marry him, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t…’

  I was sea
rching for the right word when Heidi’s eyebrows started doing their crazy dance again. This time she was looking over my right shoulder. How could this scene get any more insane? But, obviously, with all the madness, I’d lost track of time…

  ‘Mommy!’

  Before I knew what was happening, two fat little arms were around my neck and my face was being covered with chocolate kisses. ‘I missed you! Grandma said you were at the Big House. Don’t you want to live at our place anymore?’

  I wanted to keep my face buried in Eve’s neck forever. I knew the scene I would confront when I emerged would be difficult, or worse. But you can only hide so long behind a four-year-old. The little critters don’t stay still long enough.

  Within seconds, she was twisting out of my reach, launching herself at Heidi with an ecstatic ‘Aunty Heidi, Aunty Heidi, can I lick your froth?’ Heidi speechlessly handed over the remains of her cappuccino and gave me a look that said ‘oh dear’.

  Stripped of my cover, I was forced to finally take in the scene.

  Wayne was speechless as he took in the little blonde girl who’d been holding hands with Clark seconds before. Wayne’s beautiful, dark face was a picture of pale confusion.

  Clark, on the other hand, normally so pale, was looking darkly furious.

  Eve, finely attuned to all the social nuances of any given situation, was looking quickly between all of the grown-up faces. She studied Wayne earnestly.

  ‘Are you the Australian?’

  Three pairs of eyes pivoted immediately towards her. Clark glowered at me.

  This was so unfair. I’d never mentioned Wayne to Eve. Now Clark would have that to be annoyed about as well. I already knew from Mom and Dad that he was furious about the arrest. Clark was up for re-election in the state senate this year and he’d told me he didn’t need the mother-of-his-child creating any more issues for his campaign.

  Hang on, that makes it sound like he’s become some really mean, calculating politician. It isn’t like that. For the most part we manage to get on really well, but apparently a child out of wedlock is baggage enough. He keeps saying I need to grow up.