Whiskey & Charlie

by Annabel Smith

  One afternoon, a Sunday, Kristy was nagging him about cleaning the toaster.

  “I’ve never heard of anyone cleaning a toaster,” Charlie said. Her demands had gone from the reasonable to the absurd.

  “But crumbs fall out every time I move it,” she said.

  “So don’t move it.” He had given up trying to please her, because no matter what he did, it was never enough.

  “You’re disgusting, Charlie.”

  “It’s crumbs, Kristy. You could clean it every day, and crumbs would still fall out of it. It’s a waste of time trying to clean it.”

  “Fine, that’s fine. If you don’t want to clean it, you don’t have to clean it.” She went into the kitchen and unplugged the toaster, and as Charlie watched, she pushed open the window and threw it out. Charlie heard the crash as the toaster hit the ground, two stories below. He looked at Kristy, her red face, her tight mouth. She wore an expression of triumph, as though she had beat him, won a round in some twisted game of her own devising. Charlie grabbed his keys and walked out the door.

  “Where are you going?” she shrieked after him.

  “I’m going to get another toaster,” Charlie said.

  “You liar!” she screeched, leaning over the railing into the stairwell. “Tell me where you’re really going, you fucking liar!”

  At the unit, Charlie did unpack his toaster, but when he went back to the flat at ten o’clock that night, he didn’t take it with him. He was glad afterward that he hadn’t bothered, because he found that he couldn’t get in. Kristy had latched the door with the chain so he couldn’t open it more than a couple of inches. Charlie banged on the door a few times, more out of frustration than out of any conviction that Kristy might change her mind. Sighing, he went downstairs and stood in the street, pondering his options.

  It was too late to go to his parents’, and if he went there, he’d have to go through the whole miserable story, which was out of the question tonight. He could go to Marco’s, but there was nowhere for him to sleep except on the couch, and if he was going to sleep on a couch, he thought it might as well be his own. So he found himself once again back at his storage unit, looking through his boxes for his sleeping bag and a pillow. He even found himself a pillowcase, which was slightly damp and musty after three months in a box, but better than nothing. Walking back there, he had thought it would be like camping, the sort of makeshift arrangement he had loved as a boy. But when he was lying there in the dark, it was not like camping. There was no sense of fun or adventure. He was surrounded by storage units filled with other people’s unwanted things, bits and pieces of lives they had lived and then packed away and forgotten, and he felt sad and ridiculous. He got out of his sleeping bag, switched on the light, and began to pack away his things. Back into boxes went his record player and amplifier, his books and records. He unplugged the fridge and took out the remaining beers, put away the fan heater and the power strip. It was two in the morning by the time he had returned his storage unit to its proper use.

  He walked back to Kristy’s flat and knocked on the door until he heard her get up.

  “What do you want, Charlie?”

  “I just want to get my things,” he said calmly.

  “It’s two in the morning, Charlie. Can’t it wait?”

  “Let’s get it over with, Kristy.” He wasn’t angry anymore, just tired, and she must have heard that in his voice. She opened the door. Charlie went into the bedroom, turned on the light, and dragged his suitcase out from under the bed. She stood in her pajamas, watching while he pulled his clothes off hangers and threw them into the case.

  “Where have you been, Charlie?” she asked eventually. “Where do you go for all those hours when you leave the house?”

  Charlie sighed. There had been a time when it had seemed important to keep it a secret from her, to preserve some part of his life that she couldn’t criticize or try to improve, but it didn’t matter now.

  “I go to my storage unit,” he said. “I go to my unit, and I drink beer and listen to records.”

  “For god’s sake, Charlie,” she said. “You can’t expect me to believe that. Obviously you’ve got someone else. Do you go to her house? A hotel? You might as well tell me the truth. It doesn’t make any difference now anyway.”

  Charlie laughed. He couldn’t help it. It struck him as funny that he had told her the truth, and that truth was so absurd she couldn’t believe him. He realized he couldn’t be bothered to try to convince her he was telling the truth, that he could not begin to explain to her how he had come to spend several hours a week inside a concrete cubicle surrounded by the unwanted belongings of strangers. He could not explain it to himself.

  “A hotel?” he said. He laughed again. “That’s one way to describe it. The only thing that’s missing is the room service.”

  He slid the key to Kristy’s flat off his key ring and put it on the table, and then he walked out of the flat and closed the door. And as he walked down the stairs with his suitcase in one hand and his box of CDs in the other, he thought he had done Paul Simon proud.

  India

  The official job title was runner. Whiskey referred to the role as dogsbody or shit kicker. Charlie thought he could handle these names, at a push, but he drew the line at being called Girl Friday.

  “It’s just an expression,” Whiskey said.

  “The expression is Man Friday,” Charlie said, “as in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.”

  “For fuck’s sake, don’t be such a pedant, Charlie,” Whiskey said good-naturedly. “Do you want the job or not?”

  Whiskey was an advertising hotshot by then, working as a creative director for an agency called Mustard. The job on offer was working on an advertisement Whiskey had written, and Charlie didn’t want it, but he needed it. His dad’s affair and his parents’ separation had come as a total shock. He’d used it as an excuse to quit his job setting up expos at the new exhibition center, which he hadn’t liked anyway, and had mooched around his dingy flat, feeling depressed ever since. He didn’t know what he wanted to do, couldn’t stick at anything, owed money to his father and to Whiskey, to Kristy and to Marco, and he knew Whiskey was doing him a favor by offering him this job.

  Besides, he and Whiskey had been getting on better since their parents split up. Whiskey was the first person Charlie called when he found out; he knew Whiskey was the only person in the world who would understand how he was feeling at that moment. Charlie thought working together on this job might be good for him and Whiskey, give them a chance to get closer again.

  Whiskey promised him hard work, low glamour, and a fat paycheck, all of which turned out to be true. There was only one small fact Whiskey omitted to reveal—the advertisement was being shot in India.

  At the age of twenty-five, Charlie was continually revising his mental list of Places I Want to Go. At that time, the list was topped by Canada, Antarctica, and Peru. India wasn’t in the top ten; in fact, in the entire history of the list, it had never once made an appearance. If Charlie was going to go to Asia, it would be to Thailand or Indonesia, to lounge on the beach, drinking cocktails delivered to his hammock by beautiful girls in sarongs with delicate hands and flowers in their hair. It would most definitely not be to India, where, judging by what he’d seen on TV, every street was lined with beggars with severed limbs and people drank the same water they shat in. When he stopped to think about it, Charlie realized that India was not on his list of Places I’ll Go When I’m Older or even Places I’ll Go When I’ve Been Everywhere Else; that in fact, the only list India appeared on, a list where it occupied the number one position, was Charlie’s list of Places I Absolutely Never Ever Want to Go.

  So it was hard to fathom how, less than two weeks later, he came to be on an Air India flight to Mumbai, surrounded by the rest of the film crew, all of whom seemed to know a great deal more than Charlie about shooting adver
tisements in general and about this advertisement in particular. Charlie had no idea what a grip was, couldn’t have explained the difference between a producer and a director, didn’t know if a dolly was a piece of equipment or a member of the crew. More than that, Charlie was horrified to discover that the car they were shooting the advertisement for was constructed of a metal only marginally more hardy than aluminum foil and was widely known to crumple like a paper cup on impact.

  It had been a long flight, but as soon as they arrived at the hotel, Charlie tracked down Whiskey and confronted him with what he’d heard about the car’s safety record.

  “The first lesson of advertising, Charlie,” Whiskey said. “You don’t have to believe in the product; you just have to make other people believe in it.”

  “But it’s misleading,” Charlie insisted.

  “There’s nothing misleading about it. We’re not pretending the car will hold up well in an accident; all we’re saying is that driving one will increase your chances of getting laid.”

  “You’re encouraging people to buy a car that will endanger their lives. It’s completely unethical.”

  “Grow up, Charlie,” Whiskey said. “You don’t make money out of ethics. So if your little lecture’s over, I’d like to go to bed. We’re due on set at seven.”

  x x x

  Charlie was not on set at seven. When the phone rang, he was still in his hotel room, working out how soon he could get out of India.

  “Where the fuck are you?” Whiskey asked.

  “I can’t be part of this, Whiskey. I’ve changed my mind. I’m going home.”

  “Jesus Christ, Charlie, you’ve got to be kidding. I could name at least twenty people who would have killed for an opportunity like this, but I stuck my neck out and gave it to you. And now you’re going to piss it up the wall, like you do with every decent chance you’re given. What exactly is your problem?”

  “I told you already. It’s totally unethical. I don’t want to be involved in it.”

  “I can’t believe I’m listening to this shit. Since when did you become Mr. Holier-Than-Thou? Let me guess, you’re also becoming a vegan.”

  “You can take the piss, Whiskey, but I know what’s right.”

  “So what’s your plan then, Charlie?”

  “I’ll get a flight back as soon as I can. End of story.”

  “Think again, little brother. If you fly home without doing the shoot, then you’ll owe us for the flight and the deposit on your hotel room.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says your contract.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Bullshit nothing. Check the small print.”

  Whiskey was silent for a moment. Charlie wondered if he was bluffing.

  “Do you know how much a flight to India will set you back?”

  Charlie did not know, but he imagined it was a four-figure sum, a sum he could not afford to add to his already substantial debt.

  “Still want to leave?” Whiskey asked. “Say the word. I can replace you within an hour.”

  Charlie drew a zigzag pattern on the letterhead stationery on the hotel’s tiny desk.

  “I haven’t got all day, Charlie. I’ve got an ad to shoot, and believe it or not, your little tantrum is the least of my worries. Either you can get your ass on this set pronto, or I can send you a bill for two grand. It’s up to you.”

  “All right,” Charlie said eventually.

  “All right, what?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Good,” Whiskey said. “I’ll expect you by eight.” And he hung up.

  In the taxi on the way to the film studio, Charlie made a decision. He would fulfill his contract. He would turn up on set and do whatever was required of him. He would get through these next couple weeks, collect his pay, fly home, and try to forget about the whole thing.

  x x x

  As a runner, Charlie was at the bottom of the pecking order. The client, the creatives, the other crew members—anyone and everyone could make demands of him, but most of his instructions came from Susie, the assistant director. It soon became evident that Whiskey would be spending most of his time schmoozing the client, who was unusually particular and wanted to deal directly with the creatives, so Charlie thought it shouldn’t be too difficult to keep out of Whiskey’s way.

  It wasn’t a huge crew. People soon worked out that Charlie was Whiskey’s twin brother. Charlie gritted his teeth through the usual round of initial responses: You’re like peas in a pod! How do people tell you apart? He thought the difference should be fairly obvious when he was wearing shorts and T-shirts and Whiskey was never seen in anything more casual than pants and shirts, but people still managed to mistake him for his brother.

  It was a disadvantage with the crew, being Whiskey’s brother. It was not that Whiskey was disliked particularly—at least no more than any of the other creative directors they worked under—but there was a line drawn between the agency people and the rest of the crew, and Charlie sensed he made people uncomfortable, because they didn’t know which side of that line he fell on. He tried to make it clear that he didn’t expect any special treatment, but in those first few days, he knew he was on the outs.

  Charlie decided he didn’t care. He wasn’t here to make friends. He had no desire to go out and explore Mumbai. He wanted to forget he was in India at all. Three nights in a row he went straight from the set to his hotel room and drank the minibar dry. Since they were double rooms, the hotel thoughtfully provided two rounds of each drink on their menu. Charlie started with the gin and vodka, moved on to scotch and bourbon, and finished with Baileys. He didn’t like Baileys, but it didn’t matter. By that stage, he would have drunk anything.

  Looking at the pairs of bottles lined up on his bedside table, Charlie was reminded of the animals boarding Noah’s Ark. He was watching cable TV with the sound turned down, and he remembered a song he used to sing at playgroup:

  The animals went in two by two, hurrah! hurrah!

  The animals went in two by two, hurrah! hurrah!

  The animals went in two by two, the elephant and the kangaroo

  And they all went into the ark, for to get out of the rain.

  Once he was past the white spirits, he didn’t bother with ice and mixers or even with a glass. He sat on the neutral hotel bedspread, wrapped in a fluffy white hotel towel, and as he flicked between channels with the remote control, he drained the little bottles in one go.

  There would be no more conversations with Whiskey about their parents’ separation, no more conversations about anything. He would not speak to Whiskey unless he absolutely had to, either there in India or back in Australia. The new phase in their relationship was already over. It had lasted less than two months.

  x x x

  On the fourth day of shooting, Susie was in a flap.

  “Johnno’s in the hospital,” she told Charlie. “Sick as a dog; they think it’s dengue fever. We had to fly someone in last night to replace him. His name’s Jason. Will you get him to sign these forms? He’s a tall guy, dark hair.”

  Charlie took the forms over to the catering table where a few members of the crew were standing around, having their morning tea.

  “Holy crap!” the new cameraman said. “I thought for a minute you were Whiskey.”

  Charlie put his hands up in mock surrender. “Not Whiskey,” he said. “Just cursed with the same face. I’m Charlie.”

  “Jason,” he said, shaking Charlie’s hand and laughing. “I thought we were going to get busted for taking a long break. I downed my coffee in one go.”

  “Well, if in doubt, I’m the one who looks like a slob.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. You’re not going to give us a motivational speech then?”

  Charlie felt suddenly that everyone was watching him, waiting to hear how he would respond
to Jason’s question.

  “God, no,” Charlie said. “I hate Whiskey’s little pep talks. I think he’s full of shit, actually.”

  There was a pause. Charlie was sure everyone agreed with him, but no one dared to say so. He was hungover for the third day in a row, but still sharp enough to realize that two weeks of drinking alone, night after night, wasn’t his best option. He wanted people to know where he stood.

  “The better you know him, the worse he gets,” he added.

  There were a few laughs then, and Charlie felt the tension pass.

  “Good for you,” Susie said when the others had moved off.

  Charlie wasn’t sure what to make of her comment. Was it a good thing to badmouth your only brother in front of a group of strangers?

  But it turned out Susie was right. After that incident, things changed with the rest of the crew. All of a sudden, Charlie was on their team, part of the gang, privy to their nicknames and in-jokes, included in their invitations.

  x x x

  It didn’t take Charlie long to work out where the term runner had come from. His job was to run errands—anything and everything that was needed to keep the shoot running smoothly and the client happy. He bought printer cartridges and makeup brushes, desk fans and ice buckets, sequins and gold trim, even a miniature plastic palm tree. He picked up and delivered film, ran call sheets from the office to the set, organized taxis to take the client, the talent, anywhere they needed to go. He made hundreds of cups of tea and coffee, ferried bottles of chilled water around the set endlessly. In the first few days, whenever he received a request, he asked, “When do you need it by?” But once he discovered the answer was always “Five minutes ago,” he stopped asking.

  The days on set were long and exhausting, but most nights when he finally finished, Charlie found he was too tired to sleep. He wasn’t the only one. There was always someone who wanted to go out into Mumbai and try a restaurant or a bar, or failing that, he’d end up in someone’s room, cutting up lemons on the bedside table with his Swiss Army Knife, ordering ice from room service to make another round of gin and tonics (Bombay Sapphire, of course).