Disappearing off the Face of the Earth

by David Cohen

  ‘For fuck’s sake!’

  ‘Sorry, Ken. What are you doing?’

  ‘Nothing.’ I switched the cameras back to real time. ‘Just checking the security system. What is it?’

  ‘Someone else has disappeared off the face of the earth: Unit 102.’

  ‘Fucking brilliant.’

  Bruce and I went up to the abandoned unit to perform the padlock ceremony. As he cut through the padlock with the boltcutters, I noticed that a fluoro light in the corridor had just begun what I called its death flicker. I averted my gaze. Bruce noticed and said, ‘I’ll replace that asap.’

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘You might want to remove some of the cobwebs, too. It’s filthy.’

  When we opened the roller door, we saw dozens of boxes, all double-ply cardboard, all identical in size and shape. When it came to box management, tenants showed varying degrees of attention to detail. Some randomly tossed their possessions into boxes they’d found behind a supermarket at the very last moment. Others wrote a brief description of the contents on the boxes themselves. Others numbered their boxes and kept a list saying which box contained what. Those in this last group occasionally went to extremes, documenting every single item in each box, down to the last packet of staples. But it was one of the eternal mysteries of self-storage that even tenants on the anally retentive fringe were capable of disappearing off the face of the earth, leaving their worthless but painstakingly itemised possessions behind.

  But the contents of 102’s boxes weren’t worthless at all. They comprised another collection: this time, little figurines – hundreds of them – made of porcelain. Most of them appeared to be Victorian women holding fans. There were also soldiers, some clowns, a man playing the accordion. Lots of animals, too: horses, cats, dogs. They all looked hideously ugly.

  ‘I remember her now,’ Bruce said. ‘Jane. Jane McMath. Yeah … we had a little chat.’ Another Bruce-ism: ‘We had a little chat.’ Sometimes I got the feeling that everything that came out of Bruce’s mouth was a pre-existing catchphrase. The man was a walking game show.

  ‘She was getting on in years,’ he said. ‘I mean, she wasn’t old old – maybe seventy. Still perfectly in command of all her faculties. Drove her car to the shops every Thursday. She told me she lived on her own with her antique figurines, which she’d been collecting for decades.’

  ‘So it seems.’

  ‘From what I could gather,’ Bruce continued, ‘her only real human contact was the cleaning woman, who came once every couple of weeks. I think she quite looked forward to the cleaning woman coming around – bit of human company – but then she started suspecting her of stealing the figurines, just one every time so it would be hard to detect. She couldn’t prove it was the cleaning woman, but who else could it be? It started driving her nuts. She ended up sacking the cleaning woman, but then she started thinking: they’re safe for the time being, but what if someone comes along? What if someone else gets access to my house, legally or otherwise, and takes the antique figurines I’ve been collecting forever and are worth a fortune? She became quite fixated on it. So in the end she decided that the only way to keep them all safe and secure was to lock them up in storage.’

  ‘Seems to defeat the purpose,’ I said.

  ‘It’s very sad,’ Bruce agreed.

  ‘So they’d fetch a pretty decent price, then?’

  ‘I believe they would,’ Bruce said.

  ‘But why, after all that, would she just disappear and leave it behind?’

  ‘Ken, people go missing all the time.’ Bruce, who’d been examining the figurines, returned a little porcelain rabbit to its box. ‘It’s just one of those things. Look at the statistics: someone is reported missing every fifteen minutes. The figure’s something like thirty-five thousand per year in Australia. Now, granted, most of them are found, even though it could be years or even decades later. But there’s that small percentage – something like half a per cent – that are never seen or heard from again.’

  ‘You seem to be pretty knowledgeable about all this, Bruce,’ I said.

  ‘I read a lot, Ken. I’m interested in mysterious phenomena. So this woman – old, eccentric, bit of a misanthrope. Lived alone for years. Like our friend Stelzer in Unit 117, she was a recluse. Isolated. Who would even know she was missing?’

  I could hear the fluoro light flickering in the corridor; it sounded like a big, dying insect. I wanted to get a move on, but I knew we wouldn’t resume work until Bruce had concluded his mini-lecture.

  ‘So what happens to this zero-point-five per cent?’ I said. ‘Where do they go?’

  ‘There are various theories, Ken. Have you heard of a time slip?’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A time slip. It’s when you enter another dimension or a parallel universe.’

  ‘And how exactly do you do that?’

  ‘Have you heard of lucid dreaming?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘but I’m sure you have.’

  ‘I’ve read that if you practise lucid dreaming – dreaming while you know you’re dreaming – there is the danger of entering another time line or world, so you cease to exist in this world.’

  ‘Is that what you’re suggesting happened to this woman – Jane McMath?’

  ‘I’m not saying it has. But at the same time, I’m not saying it hasn’t. I keep an open mind.’

  As Bruce espoused his theories of time and space, he bounced the broken padlock in the palm of his hand, appreciating its solid weightiness like he had with the one from Unit 117. Bruce never used to do that; I notice these things. It was a new addition to Bruce’s repertoire of obsessive-compulsive behaviours. Like the straightening of the trolleys, it appeared to calm him and satisfy his need for order. But there was another, more significant detail: the padlock was a Sargent and Greenleaf – just like the one on the door of Unit 117.

  Seven

  I wanted to take the porcelain figures straight over to Kelvin’s place. I wanted to see his face when I unveiled the collection. Not that his face would look much different from his usual face, which maintained pretty much the same expression no matter what happened. But there would be a subtle realignment of his features as if to say, Yeah, not bad at all. But that evening I had a more pressing matter to attend to.

  Ellen Kruger and I had been seeing each other for nearly five months. But then, out of the blue, just when I thought things were getting serious, she cut off all contact and was now avoiding me altogether. I knew she had various emotional issues of her own to deal with, but still I was baffled by this abrupt change of heart, and she refused to explain. She wouldn’t even answer my phone calls.

  It was time to drive to her house for a confrontation.

  Ellen lived in a brick house in Eight Mile Plains. Instead of driving into the driveway, I parked by the kerb across the road and sat in the van, gathering my nerve. It was an odd situation and I didn’t really know how to proceed. I needed to put on a CD to calm me down, or psych me up. Currently I was listening to Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s 1971 album Tarkus – the one with the weird armadillo on the cover. I liked to take a break from King Crimson every now and then. It’s important to have a bit of variety in your life; besides, Greg Lake was a member of King Crimson when they recorded In the Wake of Poseidon, so it wasn’t such a big leap.

  Even though I was sure I’d left the CD in the machine – I’d listened to it as I drove in to work that morning – I found it in its case, nestled in the door compartment. Alzheimer’s: that’s all I needed right now.

  I sat there listening to Tarkus and thinking back to the day, four months earlier, when I’d first met Ellen.

  She ran a small business that sold electric mobility scooters for the elderly, and she rented one of my bigger units to hold surplus stock. Back then I only knew her as Unit 40. One evening I was cleaning out the unit next to hers and she appeared, wearing a red tracksuit and Nike trainers. As it happened, I was wearing a red tracksuit at the time, too, and I made some joke p
ointing out the coincidence. We struck up a conversation. She told me all about her scooter business, and I said it sounded interesting.

  ‘Would you like to take a look?’ she said. ‘They’re pretty cool.’

  It had always been my policy never to get personally involved with a tenant. I rented them the space and they used it as they saw fit, within certain boundaries; I didn’t enquire into their affairs, and they extended me the same courtesy. Bruce was the gregarious one; he liked his little chats with the clients. But since I happened to be there, and I liked the look of Ellen, I agreed.

  When she unlocked the door and I saw all the scooters lined up in neat rows, I said, ‘Holy shit!’ I hoped she’d take that to mean I was impressed, which I was in a way, but more than anything I found it pretty grim. It was like a glimpse into the future. It made me think about getting old and losing the ability to go anywhere without the help of a machine. It reminded me that my time was slowly but surely running out; I was just watching the days roll over, until the day that didn’t roll over, and everything simply came to an end. Occasionally, I’d had elderly tenants pass away. Their spouses or children or siblings came to rummage through the contents of their units, although sometimes nobody came, and the things left behind met the same fate as any other defaulter’s goods: sold or tossed into a skip. When that happened, I knew that these tenants, or ex-tenants, were so estranged from their families that their families weren’t even aware that they’d died. Maybe nobody else in this world knew, either. These people had disappeared off the face of the earth long before they’d actually died.

  After that, I didn’t feel like going back to my office alone, so I invited Ellen to have a cup of tea with me. It was a bit awkward at first, but then she started telling me about herself. I was surprised to hear she’d never been married.

  ‘You get to a certain point,’ she said, ‘when it just seems too late. Younger guys want a younger woman, and so do most older guys. When I do get involved with someone, he’s usually a bastard or – in one case, anyway – a psycho. Give me a bastard over a psycho any day.’ She laughed. ‘Some choice! Anyway, for the past couple of years I’ve just been focusing on developing the business.’

  ‘Age is irrelevant,’ I said. ‘You’re very attractive.’

  And she was. She had the smoothest, whitest skin I’d ever seen, and plenty of soft flesh underneath it. I like an ample woman. I don’t think I’m too bad-looking, either, even if I’ve lost some hair, and gained some weight since I stopped working out. But the important thing is, I know how to listen – at least, I know how to remain silent while someone else talks – and Ellen valued that above all else. All she wanted was a receptive ear, and when I gave her one, she didn’t hold back; I listened while she unburdened herself of many woes and grievances, going all the way back to something unsavoury her stepfather used to do.

  ‘And he threatened to have me locked away if I ever mentioned it to anyone.’

  Fucking hell, I thought, bit early on in the piece to be telling me this. My father, while always up for a game of Test Match, used to lock me in the garage for hours as a form of punishment, but I was hardly going to lead with that. Besides, his locking me in the garage, while a bit excessive, wasn’t the bad part. The bad part was that I hadn’t done anything wrong. An example: he once locked me in the garage for stealing two hundred dollars from his wallet. The thing was, I hadn’t stolen two hundred dollars from his wallet. That would be a bit obvious, wouldn’t it? Ah, but I hadn’t stolen the two hundred dollars in one hit, had I? No, I’d been stealing one dollar a day over a period of two hundred days, or maybe two dollars a day over a period of one hundred days, thinking he wouldn’t notice – just like Jane McMath’s cleaning woman – but however you sliced it, it amounted to two hundred dollars of his hard-earned cash, so it was into the garage with me. I realised much later that that was an early sign; the tumour was fucking with his brain. But with Ellen, as with anyone else, I observed my usual policy: the less said about it, the better.

  I said, ‘I wish we’d known each other back then. I would have done away with your prick of a stepfather.’

  ‘Oh, you’re sweet,’ she said.

  One thing led to another, and the next thing you know, we’d taken off our respective tracksuit pants and were fucking on the inflatable rubber mattress I kept in the office for when I couldn’t be bothered driving all the way home – which was quite often.

  Afterwards, she left, and I thought, Well, that’s that – business as usual from now on. But a week later, there we were again: cup of tea, sympathetic ear, then onward to the inflatable mattress for some mutual comfort. On the third occasion, we didn’t even bother with the cup of tea. I gave her a 5 per cent discount on her rent after that – not that she asked for one, and not that I could really afford it; it just seemed like the right thing to do.

  One evening, she invited me over to her house. I couldn’t expect her to put up with the rubber mattress forever. Her place was a lot more comfortable; it was also spotless and extremely tidy. I opened her wardrobe while she was in the toilet, and I noticed that all the hooks of all the coathangers were facing in the same direction. Her socks and underwear were carefully compartmentalised.

  The visits became a weekly thing. I looked forward to them more than anything else. I know that some men don’t like always going to the woman’s house – they think it means surrendering control of the situation, or something like that – but personally, I preferred it that way. I was kind of embarrassed by where I lived; it was a bit run-down. Besides, Ellen’s place was much closer to Hideaway. I told her I was going to invite her over for dinner, but I deferred it, week after week.

  Is that why she broke it off? I wondered as I sat in the van outside Ellen’s house, listening to Keith Emerson bang away on his Hammond organ.

  Eventually, I forced myself to get out of the van. Ellen’s house was in darkness except for a dim light coming from her bedroom, just to the right of the front door. I knocked at the door but there was no answer. I knocked again. Ellen opened it but left the screen door locked.

  ‘Was that you parked out there for the past hour?’ she said. ‘You’re lucky I didn’t call the police.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to freak you out. I just wanted to talk.’

  ‘Nothing to talk about.’

  ‘But there is. What’s going on with us? Why are you just shutting me out like this?’

  She looked at me as if I were subhuman. ‘You’d think I’d have developed a sixth sense by now.’ She shook her head. ‘Why can’t I learn?’

  ‘Ellen, I know you’ve got … a lot on your mind, but am I not entitled to some answers?’

  ‘Go or I call the cops!’

  I really couldn’t fathom this reception. I stood there on the coir doormat, staring at the screen door. It was a humid night, and as I looked at her through the screen – she was barefoot, and wearing terry-towelling shorts and a singlet top – my dick hardened, forming a horizontal tent in the front of my tracksuit pants, the same pants I was wearing when we first met. Poor timing, but I couldn’t help it.

  ‘Can I just come in for a cup of tea?’ I adjusted my erection to make it less conspicuous. ‘Ellen?’

  The hall light went out. I could see there was no point pursuing this tonight. I reminded myself that she was dealing with some emotional issues, and I’d have to be a bit more patient. Fair enough. If there was one thing I had a lot of, it was patience.

  Eight

  On the way home from Ellen’s house, I stopped by the construction site again, just to see how it was coming along. But it hadn’t come along at all.

  ‘Keep up the good work,’ I said aloud.

  The night was dark enough as it was, but the night around the building site had its own special thickness. I walked the perimeter, my hand on the fence, my head awash with memories of Pharaoh’s Tomb Box Hill North.

  As it turned out, I quite liked the job, but Ron Wood and I didn�
�t hit it off. He would ultimately play a part in the unpleasantness that led me to leave Pharaoh’s Tomb. It could be that Ron had had it in for me from the beginning. I got the impression that he, like several previous bosses, resented my intelligence. I’d probably pissed him off on day one by exposing his ignorance about ancient Egypt and The Rolling Stones. Maybe he’d realised from the outset that I was destined to run my own show, to achieve financial independence, whereas he was destined to operate this franchise. By this point I’d been in regular contact with Uncle Dennis, and although he was forgetting a lot of things, or at least the words connected to those things, I could tell he supported my goals, whereas Ron Wood, sensing that I would surpass him sooner or later, had to resort to power games.

  One day I came in to work late because I’d only slept a few hours the night before; insomnia has been my close companion for as long as I can recall. Admittedly, I should have notified Ron, but I’d slept right through the alarm. I leapt out of bed, put on my green and yellow uniform, and drove straight in. I managed to walk in via the staff entrance without being seen, but when I came out into the reception area, Ron was there, accompanied by a trainee – a girl with lots of black hair and lots of black make-up. The goth look didn’t quite gel with the Pharaoh’s Tomb uniform, but she still looked good. Ron looked as prematurely middle-aged as ever, even though he’d tried to combat this by rubbing some sort of product into his hair to give it a spiky look.

  He looked at me. ‘Buddy, what do you call this?’

  ‘I call this “me arriving at work a bit late”,’ I said.

  He shook his head and smiled this particular smile I detested – essentially the smile of a man who never smiles.

  ‘Two and half hours isn’t a bit late – it’s a lot late.’

  I already felt like crap due to lack of sleep. Now Ron, a fat man in a polo shirt, saw fit to humiliate me in front of the stunning goth trainee. What really stung was the fact that Ron was some ten years my junior. And the trainee was probably five years his junior.