Now Showing

by Ron Elliott

  ‘I’ll have to buy some seed on the way home from work.’

  ‘Hey, not to worry. I’ll hunt. Maybe head for the river – plummet out of the sun, and catch some salmon.’

  Adam turned around in front of the cage. ‘Well, how do I look? Gotta make a good impression on my first day.’

  ‘You look like mallee fowl. The female.’

  The sawing sound came again from above. Something heavy hit the floor up there, sending a fine spray of plaster down on Adam as he looked up. There were more cracks on the lounge ceiling, some quite big. Adam shook away his feelings of foreboding. ‘I’m going to be late.’ He grabbed his keys and his wallet and hurried out.

  Chris contemplated the door. ‘Look, I know what you’re thinking. Sad, lonely guy who talks to his canary. He wasn’t always like this. The fact is I’m all he’s got now. By the way, he can’t hear me. Sometimes I think he can when I focus hard on food, but mostly we have parallel conversations. It’s a species thing, I guess. Anyway, he was happy once.’ Chris raised his tail delicately and pooped. ‘Shit happens.’

  Adam caught a bus into the city, noting the bright colours the girls wore and their full hair. Young men had full hair too, often dented in the middle by the headphones of their Sony Walkmans. He was about to cross the road to his new workplace when he saw the pet shop. The shop had lots of fish in tanks but also some cages of birds at the back.

  There was a girl. She moved through the birdcages, filling each water cup from a little blue watering can with a long curved neck. She had a slender neck too. And long dark hair. She had a small nose and large dark eyes. She moved to another cage and tipped the watering can, like a dark feathered crane dipping towards a river, completely intent on the end of the water spout.

  Adam was about to go in, but caught the reflection of the GPO in the window. He turned and hurried across the road to his new job, his new life, perhaps to be reborn.

  ***

  As Adam went into the General Post Office, a uniformed postman entered the front door of Adam’s flats. He went straight up the internal stairs to the landing, where he knocked on the door of flat three.

  The hammering in flat four stopped, but then started again more vigorously.

  The door to flat three opened with a flourish. Mary’s full figure was barely held by her red underwear and black suspender belt. She wore stockings and high-heeled shoes and held a whip. She was panting.

  ‘Oh,’ said the postman. ‘I’m sorry, Mary. Are you busy?’

  ‘Practising my swing, Toby.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Toby, looking down at her shoes and losing himself in their angry sharp heels.

  ‘Toby,’ said Mary, firmly. ‘You didn’t ring.’

  ‘I’ve got a letter, for you. I thought I’d bring it ... straight up.’

  Mary softened. ‘Bring it in. We can steam it open together.’

  She held open the door and the postman shuffled in. She looked towards the hammering noise.

  ***

  Underneath flat three was flat number one.

  At a small table in the corner of flat one, Jane sat at Paul’s personal computer waiting for dial-up to connect her to the stock market. She had recently discovered Gopher, an application layer protocol that aided in finding documents from around the world.

  Paul sat at the kitchen table, the golden sphere nestling in the canvas bag open at his feet. Paul was taking his long-playing records out of a cardboard box to make room for the Princess’s Ball. ‘Are you sure we’re doing the right thing, Jane?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘I know this is an artificially fetishised object arbitrarily designated art by those in power and being owned by the oppressive monarchy lauding its wealth...’

  ‘Gouged from the oppressed.’ Jane was a university student, studying anthropology, sociology and social work.

  ‘Yeah. But...’ Paul was a university student too. He was studying occupational therapy. ‘Isn’t it also a symbol of, you know, the power of wimminhood. Like it’s the moon god and the tides and cycles.’

  ‘And it’s made of a shitload of gold.’ Jane scanned world gold prices on a special site on the internet devoted to stock prices. It was updated every day.

  ‘For setting up the wimmin’s refuge,’ said Paul, nodding at the ball. ‘We’re doing good here.’

  ‘Yep. Sell this baby and we’ll use that money to ... once I’ve moved it around a little, you know on the currency markets and global trading shit. The best wimmin’s refuge we can buy.’

  A knock on the door stopped them. The floor was covered with their burglar gear. There were two balaclavas on the sofa.

  Jane put her finger to her lips to signal for quiet.

  A woman’s voice called from outside, ‘Paul? Are you home?’

  Jane glared.

  Paul grabbed the golden ball, straining to lift it as a key went into their front door lock. ‘Paul, are you decent?

  Jane had her embroidered, patchwork shoulder bag up and over her shoulder. She strode towards and out the door as it opened.

  ‘Oh, it’s you Jane. Hello. Paul?’

  ‘Muuuuuum,’ said Paul, frantically sticky-taping the top of the box.

  ***

  Adam stood on a walkway above the biggest mail-sorting room he had ever seen. Letters raced along conveyor belts where girls grabbed them and read the postcodes in an instant, flicking them to the correct suburb, where they bounced into large canvas bags ready to go out to the suburban branches. Other letters and packages continued on to International, where more girls grabbed and checked and tossed them into other canvas bags with countries written on them. The bags would be trucked out to a loading bay and taken by vans to the suburbs and airport where they’d be sorted again and put in smaller bags and given to posties who’d cycle along streets and put each letter, each package, each important communication in the letterbox of the person it was meant for. It was fast and efficient and moved like clockwork. It was the postal service and it connected everyone to everywhere in the world.

  ‘Wow,’ said Adam.

  ‘Yeah, whoop de do,’ said Howard coming along the walkway to grab the rail next to Adam. ‘And it will all be gone soon. So don’t get too settled.’

  ‘Why, what’s happening?’

  ‘I know you’re from the country, mate, but you gotta have heard about fax machines.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, think about it. If all you have to do is push a button to send your stuff, you don’t need a stamp and you don’t need a postbox. Everyone’s gunna have a fax machine, so goodbye mail. Don’t even start me on barcodes. That’s why we gotta make hay, mate.’

  ‘Hay?’

  ‘The chicks, mate.’

  Adam looked to see Howard winking at him and wondered if he was missing some reference to his country background. ‘Chicks, right.’

  ‘Look at all these chicks.’ Howard waved his hand down across the sorting room below. ‘Some of those girls in sorting get so ripe during their shift, they’re ready to pop. She’s new.’

  Howard leaned forward peering down at a blonde girl, battling to keep up with her pile of letters. Howard looked back to Adam and gave a leer. ‘Wouldn’t mind bending her over the counter and playing post the parcel, eh?’

  ‘Sure is a big place.’

  ‘What?’ Howard sounded like he’d been insulted. He glared at Adam, then demanded, ‘You tellin’ me you don’t want to fuck her brains out?’

  ‘I don’t even know her.’

  ‘What’s to know? Look. Nice arse. Good tits.’

  Howard was staring at Adam, waiting.

  Adam said, ‘Right.’

  Howard scowled.

  Adam said, ‘She seems nice. Yum.’

  Howard shook his head. ‘I know where I’ll put you.’

  He led Adam through sorting and down past the loading bays and further down some wooden stairs, past cleaners’ rooms and further along a concrete corridor where plumbing ran. He talked about a new
television show called Baywatch and about an actor called David Hasselhoff who had been in another television show before with a car. It was clear that Howard wanted to be this actor and to be with the actresses especially one named Erika Eleniak. Howard confided, ‘I got two Playboy spreads of her. Hope they do some more.’

  Howard stopped at a small desk which was covered in packages. A desk lamp with a very strong globe illuminated piles of loose letters in trays.

  ‘This’ll be you, hot shot. Lotta people can’t write their own name, let alone anyone else’s. You work out where they meant them to go.’

  There was a magnifying glass on the desk. Some black paper and white. Dusty bottles of fluid.

  Howard pointed to a bookcase filled with street directories from around Australia, including the country towns. ‘You look up addresses. Me, I like looking up dresses. You can wear ’em if you like.’

  Adam sat down at the desk. The left arm of the chair was loose.

  Howard said, ‘The last guy did this job is now in a psychiatric ward. Keeps saying, Station Street. Station Street. So many Station Streets.’ He grinned at Adam before he walked back along the corridor whistling.

  Adam looked at metal shelving behind his desk. There was dust on some of the packages and frayed string around bundles of yellowed letters. On the wall at the end was a metal sign with painted letters. It said Lost Mail Department.

  Adam picked up the top letter on his desk and read, ‘Gardiner Street? Gardenier?’ He brought up the magnifying glass. ‘Gandieve? Gandierri. Gardair Street.’ He reached for the local street directory.

  By 4.30 that afternoon Adam had deciphered three letters, one parcel and had found out the GPO’s policy on mail addressed to Father Christmas and Not Known At This Address, which Adam had correctly surmised was more a lost person rather than a lost address. He hoped he had done a fair day’s work.

  ***

  Outside the GPO Jane and Paul sat in a battered white Rover 2000 TC.

  ‘It was an honest mistake,’ said Paul again.

  Jane didn’t even turn to him.

  ‘She wasn’t to know,’ Paul continued to explain. ‘I had to keep wrapping it. As soon as you left, she said, what’s in the box and I grabbed the paper and started wrapping it. And I had to think of something heavy and I said paperweight, then she got more sticky tape to help. I had to write a fake address or it would have looked suspicious.’

  ‘I don’t blame her, Paul. You and your father have so terrorised her, she has no role left in life but cleaner.’

  ‘She likes cleaning. Last time I told her she couldn’t clean the flat anymore, she cried.’

  ‘You and the dominant male patriarchy have stripped her of any other identity. Now you spit out her husk, empty and used. She only knows slavery.’

  ‘Yeah, if men didn’t subjugate and torture wimmin we wouldn’t have lost the package. Sorry, Jane.’

  Jane turned from watching the GPO to examine Paul. His eyes showed no trace of piss-taking whatsoever. ‘Okay,’ she said finally. She turned back to the GPO. ‘So if the address you put on the package is false, it must be here. They’d have some lost property part. Let’s go.’

  Paul checked for a break in the end-of-day traffic. ‘She must have needed a wheelbarrow to get it to the post office.’

  ‘And now we’re going to have to steal the bloody thing again.’

  Paul looked at Jane in alarm, which is why he didn’t see the office guy coming across the road.

  ***

  Adam didn’t see the Rover either, partly because it didn’t indicate but mostly because he was focused on the pet shop and the girl he’d seen in there. The car lurched out suddenly making Adam push both hands at the bonnet before it stopped. He looked up to see two hippies inside, the girl glaring and the guy looking fearful.

  ‘Sorry,’ yelled Adam as the car continued out into the afternoon rush hour.

  She was at some fish tanks wiping the front glass. An older man sat at a computer on the counter. ‘The budgies aren’t moving this year. Who would have thought budgies would go out of fashion?’

  She didn’t seem to be listening. She was looking at a large cod. ‘Fish are so cold, aren’t they?’

  They hadn’t noticed Adam drift into the shop.

  ‘They’re cold-blooded,’ said the man.

  ‘Not like birds,’ she said. ‘Birds feel everything, I’m sure.’ She smiled.

  Her smile looked a little sad, but optimistic too. Adam thought her smile was full of hope.

  The man said, ‘They feel hungry and thirsty, that’s for sure. I better finish the aviaries before we knock off.’ He headed out the back, leaving Adam to watch the girl wiping another tank, until she sensed him and looked up.

  ‘Hi. Quiet day?’

  She thought a moment then said, ‘Peaceful.’

  He smiled. It was warm in the pet shop. She was looking at him, so he said, ‘Ha,’ and when she kept looking, ‘I wish.’

  She nodded but started to get impatient.

  ‘Oh, um, I’m here for birdseed. Do you sell birdseed?’

  She glided behind the counter where there were shelves stacked high with birdseed packets. ‘What kind of bird?’

  ‘A canary. Named Chris. I guess that’s an advantage working in here. The peace?’

  She put a packet of birdseed on the counter. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Um, look. Maybe you better make it four packets. No five, to be sure,’ he added, taking control.

  ‘That’s a lot!’

  ‘Yes, it is isn’t it? I’ve moved. Need to stock up. Don’t want my bird running out. My name’s Adam. What’s your name? Chris was out of food this morning, so he’ll be hungry.’

  ‘Evelyn?’ she said it like a question, as though she wasn’t sure. Then she looked at the five packets of seed on the counter, perhaps suspicious.

  ‘Not sure whether maybe he’s got worms or something. You know if canaries get anorexia or anything?’

  ‘Let me check,’ said Evelyn doing something with the computer. ‘We’ve got a new thingie, Know Your Pet Bird, and it’s got lots of bird information on it. There might be something under feeding.’

  A bright American lady’s voice came up saying, ‘Feeding problems and your canary,’ but Evelyn turned down the sound and read the written information silently.

  Adam hoped he hadn’t said the wrong thing about anorexia. He’d meant it as a joke really, but Evelyn was serious as she looked through the computer. And thin. Not that she looked unhealthy. Simply thin. ‘I’m going to get a computer,’ he said. He noticed the computer had a little picture of an envelope which meant it could receive e-mails.

  ‘No. Nothing like that mentioned here. Maybe he’s lonely.’

  Adam felt a little jolt at that idea, but before he could decide whether to change the subject or pursue it, Howard walked in.

  ‘Adam! You getting a pet rock or something?’ He grabbed a huge bag of dried dog food.

  Adam hurriedly paid for the seed.

  ‘Buying your dinner, huh?’ He winked at Evelyn. ‘This explains a lot, you know. You gotta eat more meat, mate.’

  Adam took his change and the packets, looking only at Evelyn. ‘Thank you, Evelyn,’ he said, but she was attending to Howard.

  ***

  A scarf was draped over the lamp in the bedroom of flat one. Neil Young’s Harvest whined on the cassette deck in the lounge. Jane lay on her back on the bed completely naked with Paul’s face between her legs. Her eyes were closed, relaxed, but her concentration was mounting.

  Paul looked up at her from where he was kneeling fully dressed on the floor. ‘How much do you think we can get for the ball?’

  ‘Don’t stop, I’m nearly there.’

  ‘I was thinking about the wimmin’s refuge.’

  ‘Think about licking. Go!’

  Paul waggled his jaw from side to side, and ducked his tongue back to lap more vigorously.

  Jane shuddered a little. ‘Fuck the women’s
refuge,’ she whispered. ‘I want to be rich.’

  ‘Whaw id oo ay?’ mumbled Paul.

  That did the trick. Jane’s back arched. She gasped loudly, bucked and wheezed in a long groan as her stomach kicked and kicked and her climax ran on, until she had to sit up and push Paul’s head away. She lay back again, limp.

  Paul sat back on his haunches, grinning like a puppy. He looked up her legs to where she was pink and wet and open. He stood and started to undo his jeans.

  Jane’s eyes sprang open. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Love?’ said Paul, confused. ‘We’re making love.’

  ‘We’ve talked about this, Paul.’ She rolled away from him and sat up, her feet on the floor on the other side of the bed. ‘You’re being selfish again.’ Her back glistened with sweat.

  ‘But ... You initiated it. I think it’s wonderful – that we decided not to make love unless you initiated it. To break down the male-dominated, woman as sex object, power thing. But you initiated it.’ Paul had become whiny.

  ‘Now you’re being every bit as demanding. I’ve had some pleasure, which I thought was a gift from you. Wimmin always make those sorts of gifts, without expecting anything in return. But you, being male, have to try to turn it into a transaction. You cheapen it. You spoil the gift.’

  Paul’s pulsating cock shrank back until it became just a penis in his undies. ‘I never, ah, thought of it like that.’

  Jane stood. ‘Maybe we’re making progress in our relationship. I’m going to take a shower.’ She headed to the bathroom, calling back, ‘What’s for dinner?’

  ‘Mum left some pasta. Fettucine in pesto.’

  Paul sat on the bed. When the shower started, he considered begging. He hadn’t had sex with Jane in twenty-four days and was starting to become distracted. He grabbed a tissue and was starting to work on taking the edge off, when Jane called, ‘After dinner we’ll go and get some dynamite.’

  ***

  Adam entered the vestibule to the flats with a lot of boxes. Most of them were large and held the various components which would make up his Commodore personal computer. There were other boxes holding software and others of complimentary software such as Microsoft Excel for Windows 3.0, Compton’s MultiMedia Encyclopedia and a game called Civilization. He hadn’t been able to find A Compact Disc Compendium of Useful Information for the Owner of Pet Birds. There were also the boxes of birdseed. The bus driver had been reluctant to let him load so many items onto the peak hour bus, but there had been so much interest, and as it worked out, considerable combined wisdom, from the other passengers about their operation that folks shared out the packages and also came out at Adam’s stop and helped load him up with it all before they went on their journey again. A couple of people suggested Adam should probably buy a car, which was very good advice, he thought.