Things I Did for Money

by Meg Mundell

  Memory has blanked out most of our ascent, but there was no music as Mick led me out of the cave, up through the hole we’d entered. Then we must have followed the anchor line upward. Come up no faster than your bubbles rise; pause at certain depths to let your body decompress: the golden rules. But I don’t remember any of that.

  What I do recall clearly is sitting on deck, hearing a voice whimpering, ‘Where’s Jimmy, where is he? My coin, my coin …’ Lucia was stroking my face, making soothing noises, shushing me. ‘That was close,’ I heard Mick say. ‘She was off with the mermaids.’ The skipper was wrapping me in a blanket. ‘What happened?’ said the Spanish guy, and I peered up to see him holding the camera, still filming, its black eye pointed at me. ‘She’s narced,’ the skipper snapped. ‘Turn that bloody thing off and bring her a hot cup of tea, with milk and sugar.’

  Nitrogen narcosis, also known by its more poetic name ‘rapture of the depths’, doesn’t hang around; the effects disappear within minutes. It can strike anyone, but more-experienced divers learn to read the symptoms early. Old salts like to call it the martini effect — once you’re sixty-six feet down, every extra thirty-three feet you descend equates to one dry martini on an empty stomach. I knew all this, once my head cleared, but I was shaken by what I’d seen down there: his face, so close we could have kissed, and then that awful moment when he vanished again. And then there was the coin. It was, as they say, no longer on my person.

  Lucia helped me dry off and get dressed, propped me on a pile of pillows in her cabin, plied me with blankets, shortbread biscuits and more tea. I felt foolish and adrift, like a petulant child, and couldn’t shake a sense of loss. I didn’t want to talk about what I’d seen, knew it was a hallucination, and after several attempts Lucia left the subject alone. What I zeroed in on was that coin. ‘You must have dropped it,’ said Lucia. ‘I pulled off your wetsuit myself; there was nothing except that bit of pottery digging into your arm. Christ, Hannah — you’re alive. That’s what matters.’ But I could not believe I’d let go of my treasure, let it sink back down to the ocean floor.

  She showed me what she and Will had found: two discoloured silver coins; a single tile with a pretty black-and-white rococo pattern; a small glass perfume bottle, almost intact. I held the tile, traced the lines with my thumb.

  ‘And what did Mick find?’ I asked.

  ‘Two gold coins,’ said Lucia. ‘Stuck in the cracks, near where you found yours.’

  I shot her a glance, and she gazed levelly back at me. I knew I was being childish.

  ‘Lucky him,’ I said sourly.

  ‘You’re upset,’ she said. ‘You’re still grieving.’

  She moved to hug me but I stayed rigid, feeling angry but faintly ridiculous, with my plate of biscuits and someone else’s worthless memento in my lap. She persisted, so I briefly returned the hug, then leaned back, ending it. ‘That man thinks I’m an idiot,’ I said. ‘Inexperienced. And I could tell straight off he didn’t like me.’

  Lucia shook her head. ‘That’s not true. It can happen to anyone, we all know that. Go easy on him, Hannah. He’s a bit grumpy lately, but it’s not personal. It’s been one hell of a messy divorce.’ She convinced me to lie down and rest, and sleep soon overtook me.

  When I woke up, the porthole was dark and the smell of cooking wafted through the boat. A knock on the wall, and Will poked his head around the curtain. ‘Hungry?’ He grinned.

  My head was clear now, and I swallowed my embarrassment, gave a bright reply. ‘So long as it’s not fish,’ I said, and followed him into the cramped galley.

  Everyone looked up when we came in, except for Mick, who was studiously pouring a round of drinks. The Spanish guy was heaping pasta onto plates, with some kind of ratatouille sauce. As I squeezed into the booth seat next to Lucia, the skipper passed me a tumbler half full of amber liquid. ‘Whiskey sour,’ he said with a wink.‘Put hairs on your chest.’

  Lucia rolled her eyes. ‘Just what every woman needs.’ We laughed, and ate, and everything was normal once again.

  I sank that whiskey faster than I usually would. Felt my blood level out, the tension in my shoulders fall away. The water out here was choppy, and the boat rose and fell, slapping down hard and following the tug and surge of those duelling currents. When Will spilled sauce all down his front, the skipper offered him a baby’s bib some relative had left behind on a past trip, and Will tied it round his neck with great dignity, pulling a haughty face.

  My glass was nearly empty when I caught a gleam amongst the melting ice cubes. I glanced around, but the others were all talking and laughing, seemingly oblivious. When I fished the coin out and held it up to the light, the table fell quiet. Then Will let out a low whistle. ‘Well, well,’ he said theatrically. ‘What have you got there.’

  I looked at Mick, unsure of what to feel. Angry? Patronised? Grateful? ‘What’s this?’ I asked, stalling.

  He shrugged. ‘It’s yours. You found one, so did I.’

  They all stared at me expectantly, like grandparents watching a child unwrap a birthday gift. ‘Finders keepers?’ said Will hopefully, half-raising his glass. Mick grinned at me then, his face creasing up like a cheeky kid, and I smiled back. Held my own glass high.

  ‘To Saint George and that poor old dragon,’ I said. ‘Gone but not forgotten.’

  Later, watching the video at home, I fast-forwarded the bit where I lay gasping on the deck, skipped over the raw distress that no one should have had to witness. But I watched the last scene several times. I’d shot it from the pier in a blustery wind as the boat pulled out from the marina, heading up the coast to drop the others home. The weather had cooled, so the Spanish guy had put his T-shirt on, much to Lucia’s disappointment. The skipper was out of shot, steering, but the others waved goodbye in unison. All except for Mick. As the boat drew away into the distance, he just stood there with one hand aloft, making the OK signal for the camera.

  THE CONE MACHINE

  I’ve made a million ice-cream cones. It starts at eight and ends at six, five days a week, twenty-six cones a minute, for nine years. That’s a lot of cones. If I stacked all the cones I’ve ever made into one huge pile it would stretch halfway to Pluto.

  No one else operates the cone machine. It’s all mine. When I switch it on in the morning it gives me a little beep. All day we stand in the window together, my back to the street. When I open and close the machine it’s like a big flapping mouth — it opens, I pour in the mixture, close the lid, wait nineteen seconds, the machine beeps, I open the lid, take out the flat discs and roll them into cone shapes, stack them up all neat. Then we start over. The cone machine reminds me of a big, helpless baby bird — sees me coming and that big mouth flaps open.

  Anyway, this morning we’re building up a good rhythm when I notice that Frank, one of the ice-cream servers, keeps looking out the window all edgy. I wonder what he’s looking at but I don’t ask — Frank can be kind of uppity. Art student, just a young guy with some fluff on his lip, but ready to take on the world. We’ve had a couple of run-ins over status. He thought rolling some ice-cream into a ball and jamming it in a cone was some kind of performance piece, so I had to set him straight: without your cone, you can forget it, buddy. The cone comes first.

  So Frank’s looking out the window every two minutes, staring right over my shoulder, and it’s getting distracting. I don’t want to break my flow so I wait till I’ve got a batch of batter cooking. Then I click the lid shut, turn, look out into the street.

  And there’s this man. And I know he’s not looking at Frank: he’s looking at me.

  I only have about fifteen seconds, so I play it cool, look right back at the guy like it’s no big deal, so what if he’s staring. Then, real casual, I shift my eyes and start looking at something else, further over to his left. It seems like a long time before the machine finally beeps and I can turn back
around again.

  His face is familiar but I just can’t place it.

  Frank is putting on a Broadway show for a pretty girl who wants a vanilla choc-chip, so I have some time to think. There’s dough build-up in the corner of the machine’s mouth, and I wipe it down all nice with my sponge. Pour out the batter, close the lid, wait nineteen seconds.

  When I stared back at him the man didn’t even blink. He had a grey kind of stare, what you might call relentless. The kind of stare that usually belongs to someone you knew a long time ago, back in your past. Back when things went a little bit wrong and crazy for a while there.

  I run his features through the old memory banks: thin wispy hair, mouth like the slit of an envelope, dirty blue overalls. Kind of tall, about my age. Which is to say, fifty-ish or thereabouts.

  Nothing — I draw a blank. But it’s bothering me.

  ‘Pauline!’ The machine is beeping. I flip up the lid and see the discs are turning that golden brown that means they’re on the verge of overcooking. Quick as a flash I flip them out and start rolling before they go hard.

  Frank is saying, ‘Pauline. Hey. Check out that freaky dude over the road. Been staring in the window for ages.’ Frank’s holding his scoop in front of him like it’s a goddamned Oscar or something. I realise he thinks the man’s staring at him. Right, maybe he’s a talent scout from Hollywood.

  I don’t answer Frank because I’m busy. Like he should be. It’s getting hot outside and customers are lining up at the counter. I’m on top of the cone situation but as usual not everyone is pulling their weight.

  That face. As I pour and flip and roll, I think hard.

  Let’s be honest: everyone has a time in their lives that it’s best not to talk about. Things go off track, the situation gets weird and the people caught up in it do strange things. Everyone has done stuff they wouldn’t want to tell their mother. You just put it behind you and move on — you’ve got to.

  I’m running a few scenarios over in my mind, because something tells me that face comes from one of those times.

  I mean, there was the robbery. It sounds drastic when you put it like that, but it was an amateur sort of thing. A big mistake, really. And it was a long time ago, thirty years at least.

  Back then I was seeing a guy who had a few issues with unpaid debts. Herb was always nice to me. We went to the movies, dinner and drinks, to see bands. Now and then he’d buy me a present for no special reason. Herb wasn’t a bad guy, he was just no good at maths. This was Sydney, back in the days when everyone was running some kind of racket, or so Herb reckoned. Not me — I had a good job in a flower shop — but every so often I’d lend him money.

  In the beginning I always got back more than I’d started with. But after a while things stopped adding up and we agreed I wouldn’t give Herb any more credit. Then he borrowed money off an acquaintance to buy a car and some other things. And that’s when the real trouble started.

  What he got up to business-wise, most of the time I didn’t want to know the details. That’s how it is when you’re young. It’s only later you learn to read the signs, stay away from certain kinds of people. Like the ones who are no good at maths.

  Sometimes I’d worry. ‘Pauline,’ he’d say, ‘I stick with the small stuff. No one ever gets hurt.’ I believed him, he never liked violence. Came round all upset once ’cause he saw some guy kick a dog, kept talking about it for ages. I had to make hamburgers to distract him.

  The robbery wasn’t my idea, I was just the driver. Herb and his best friend Andrew planned it. I remember feeling guilty when I rang my boss, put on a croaky voice to get the day off work. Like I said, I was young.

  I had to take the car and wait in this side street and start the engine at exactly 3.40 p.m. But at 3.47 I started to get worried, because if everything had gone right they should have been running down that alley towards me at exactly 3.42. When Herb came sprinting round the corner and jumped into the backseat of the car it was almost ten to four. He pulled off his balaclava and scrunched himself down on the floor.

  The windows were wound up tight. I drove under the speed limit and ignored Herb, who was telling me to hurry. He was huffing and puffing, almost like he was crying.

  My chest was thumping. I knew something had gone wrong. That’s when I realised: this was bad, this was not for me, and after today I had to get right out of the whole situation.

  When I found out Andrew had been shot in the stomach and died on the way to the hospital I felt real sick. Andrew was a sweet boy, not much older than me. On his birthday Herb and I got invited on a picnic with his family. We sat in the sun with Andrew’s parents and sister, eating our chicken and pavlova, laughing at the ducks with blobs of cream on their beaks. They were normal people.

  The robbery was the end of me and Herb. I was sad, but the two of us, it was all wrong. Deep down I’m a straight sort of person and he just wasn’t. And Andrew … nothing could ever fix that.

  Herb left immediately. We hugged outside the train station for a long time but we never said goodbye. Who knows where he is now — in jail, married, dead. It was better to lose touch. I try not to think about it.

  The thing is, there was a third guy. A con man Herb knew. I don’t remember his name. He knew all about the bank, the layout or whatever. I’d guess he was the brains behind the whole thing. (Herb definitely wasn’t.)

  The other guy was meant to get some of the money from the bank but that’s not what happened. Herb got much less than he’d expected — I never asked the details.

  After Herb disappeared, the con man was looking for him. Two nights later I was awake, couldn’t sleep, when the phone rang. And this voice just said, ‘You better tell me where Herb is.’ I hung up, got out a suitcase, put everything in it and called a taxi.

  I didn’t take a cent. I didn’t want it. I moved to Brisbane and worked in a knitting factory and tried to forget the whole thing. After that day, my life went down a different track. This is what I promised myself: no more risks, no more numbers that don’t add up. No phone calls in the night. No surprises.

  But every so often I still have the dreams. They’re all coming after me: the police, Andrew’s parents. And that guy. I’ve forgotten his face — I just saw him once through a window, a long time ago. But I do remember he was kind of tall.

  There’s only so long you can daydream when you’re making cones. The machine can’t do the job all on its own.

  Obviously I haven’t been paying attention because everything’s gone haywire. My cone stacks are leaning cock-eyed all over the place, the poor machine is beeping like crazy and I’ve dripped batter all down its chin. I wipe it off and survey the situation: we’ll need to boost our output by twenty per cent for the next fifteen minutes to get back on track.

  Frank’s still looking out the window, all nervy. But with him you can never tell how serious a situation is — it always seems like he’s over-acting. I want to ask, Is the guy still there? But he must be, or Frank would just get on with what he’s meant to be doing and stop looking outside every ten seconds.

  I struggle to get back on top of the cone situation. The machine flaps its mouth open, all eager for the batter, beeps happily, gives me round after round of perfect circles. But I just can’t concentrate.

  That terrible time. I worked so hard to forget it. And now it’s followed me, it’s standing right across the street. I can feel that stare pressing into the back of my skull. Messing with my routine, disturbing my peace. Relentless.

  And I start to get mad.

  Normally, nothing shakes me. When that lady went into labour right in the middle of the ice-cream parlour, what did I do? Called out to Lucille, who made the milkshakes — ‘Lucille, would you please get on the telephone and call an ambulance immediately? I believe we have a lady here who’s about to give birth.’ I stayed calm, none of this squawking an
d flapping. Kept making cones, told everyone to stand back, while Lucille held the lady’s hand. She came back one day with her husband and baby and bought two double scoops of honeycomb delight, our most popular flavour.

  I’ve seen it all: kids having tantrums, junkies arguing over change, old men with shaky hands dropping their ice-creams on the floor before they’ve even got them near their mouths. None of it has fazed me in the slightest. I just keep doing my job.

  But not today.

  I was just a girl. What happened back then was not my fault — how can I be blamed for it now? The past should stay where it belongs.

  I wipe my hands on my apron. And then I do something I’ve never done, not in nine years: with a store full of customers waiting to be served I reach around to the back of the cone machine and flick the off switch. It gives a little sigh and the light blinks out. Then I click the lid shut, screw up my apron and throw it off to the side and push through the customers, straight past Frank — now his face looks truly surprised — and march outside.

  The man on the footpath opposite has not moved. His eyes are fixed on me. But I am full of anger, a great rolling ball of anger that blasts everything in its path. People scatter and I cross the road without looking. Cars honk. I don’t care.

  I storm right up to the guy until our faces almost touch. That grey stare doesn’t flinch. I’m not scared. He’s come for me: well, here I am.

  ‘What in the hell do you WANT from me?’

  He blinks once with those big, staring eyes. And he says, ‘Ice-cream?’