by Joy Dettman
A strange world. How many people spent their weekdays in this block of offices? Row after row of identical windows. People stacked on top of each other like a huge sandwich of humanity. She thought of the Turkey earthquake, imagining these concrete floors settling. How many would die?
She was on her way back to the street when number three lift disgorged its passengers and waited, its doors wide. Almost 5.25. Almost time-warp time. Just one more try. She entered and the lift moved, taking her where it would.
To four. And he was there, standing apart from two other businessmen, head and shoulders above them, but only a few centimetres taller. Not as tall as Ross, but slimmer, so he looked as tall. Tonight he wore a dark suit and it screamed expensive, but he’d make baggy Kmart shorts look expensive. The other suits faced the lift doors as it started its descent. He turned to her and smiled.
‘We’ve met before?’ he said.
‘I work on twelve. Phonepross. Telemarket.’ She always added the ‘telemarket’. Phonepross sounded like phone-a-pro. Crazy name. Queen Ratsus had probably thought that one up. She breathed deeply, lowered her chin. He didn’t know she had been riding the lifts for half an hour, waiting for him. He’d think she was just another worker eager to get home. She looked at her watch, shook her head, her foot tapping.
He studied her from his greater height. He saw the bobbed pale gold hair falling forward, the points meeting, framing an original face. A nice mouth; small, straight nose. He saw the long black coat, its collar turned high and he wondered who was hiding beneath it.
She glanced up and he smiled, studied her navy-blue eyes and dark lashes, the fine dark brows. No pencil, no mascara required, unusual in one so fair – or had her hair colour come from a beauty salon? Then her chin tilted down, her navy-blue eyes were cast down. He watched her right hand pick at pearl-pink nail polish. Hands bare of rings. It pleased him. Then the hands left off their varnish picking, as if aware they were under scrutiny, both diving deep into her coat pockets.
He looked down, past the pockets, beyond the hem of the overcoat and he saw an inch of black stocking, of slim ankle. He saw the small feet in platform shoes that made her four-eleven into five foot two. And he liked what he saw.
The lift filled on the second floor. Maximum load twelve, the sign said; second-floor workers didn’t work with figures; they kept herding in, giving him reason to move closer. Fifteen filed out at the ground floor like sheep exiting a pen.
‘You might be able to answer a question for me,’ he said, still at her side. Her eyes opened wide, surprised, pleased he had spoken. Her chin lifted and her hair flipped back. Clean. Fluid. Clear pale skin. A natural blonde, he decided.
Then they were in the cold, the fine day having given way to the chill of night.
‘I always wanted to know how telemarket girls know the exact second to call, just as I sit down for dinner,’ he said.
‘Ve have our means.’
He laughed, and she smiled. ‘Hey, what’s the difference between a financial adviser and a supermarket trolley?’ She shook her head, shaking raindrops from her hair. But she was looking at him, and he wanted her to keep looking at him. ‘The financial adviser can hold more booze but the trolley has a mind of its own. One of my clients told me that one today.’
‘I’ll have to remember it,’ she said.
He’d hoped she’d pick up on the line, maybe suggest a drink. No? Not tonight anyway. ‘No gain in standing in the rain, I suppose,’ he said. But he didn’t want to leave. Not yet. And she was in no hurry.
‘I thought the rain had gone up to Sydney. The sun was out when I drove down this morning.’
‘Where did you drive down from, Telemarket?’
‘Lakeside.’
He unsheathed and flipped open his umbrella, and for a moment it sheltered her. ‘Are you going my way?’ His open palm signalled right.
‘I’m parked to the left,’ she said.
‘It’s been nice talking. See you in the lift some time.’
He worked in her building! Hewitt and Rodes, Financial Advisers, were on four. Old coot Ron had a friend who had a friend who had consulted them. Old Ron said they were squatting down there like a flock of vultures waiting to fight over the savings of poor bloody old fools and they weren’t going to get his.
Not Sally’s financial adviser. He was a serene black swan. She watched him now as he flew away into the night.
Don’t feel like this, her head warned. He’s class. Slow your heartbeat. Still that ache for a stranger’s touch. ‘As if he’d ever look at me.’
But he had looked at her. He’d ignored the guys who got into the lift with him and he’d stood beside her, walked out with her, really looked at her.
Swans live long. They mate for life.
What am I thinking?
I’m thinking that I want to flap my crippled wings and learn how to fly at the side of a swan. That’s what I’m thinking.
Her car was cold tonight. Poor little car, waiting in the car park all day. Bought new by Mrs Bertram in the late ’70s, Ross had given it to Sally when his mother died. It cost a lot to park it in the car park, but she felt safe in it when she worked late.
Tonight the car knew its driver had been disloyal to Mr Fixit Ross. Its starting motor growled and complained for a long minute. But the motor coughed, it caught and the little car carried her out onto the roads where its windscreen wipers swiped at fine rain and its heater worked overtime to warm the fickle feet of its driver. Its lights scanned the road ahead, brakes at the ready, aware that the driver’s mind was not on the job tonight, but away, planning treachery.
In Lakeside, Sally had worked hard at doing the right thing, even if she hadn’t wanted to do it. She’d become the original mush-mouth. What a wonderful, caring daughter, people said. What a lovely quiet girl, they said. Always so eager to please, they said. She’ll make Ross Bertram a good wife.
Only Sally knew that she wouldn’t make him a good wife, because only she knew that she wasn’t really Sally mush-mouth. Not underneath. Not down deep. The thirteen-year-old was still in there somewhere.
She used to know how to fight for what she wanted. Even before Daddy had died. She used to fight with Shane. He was Mummy’s boy and younger, but as big as her. She’d elbow him at the dinner table. He’d punched her one day and she’d hit back with her gold bangle, made his nose bleed. She’d pushed him off his trike and made him skin his knee. Hid his football under the house. Nicked his bag of jelly babies and ran with them to Raelene’s house and they’d eaten the lot. And Carol Rigg. She’d hosed Carol Rigg that day. At eleven she’d known who she was. Then Mrs Bertram had come into her life and bad Sally had been forced underground.
Well, she’d just crawled out of her hole, stunted but still alive. She was stretching, she was reaching high. She wanted to sleep with that elegant black swan. She did. And it was that warm earthy want she read about in Sue’s books, that weak-kneed, heat-in-her-belly want she’d never felt for Ross.
Sue was a manhunter, always on the prowl. She said that the only reason she hadn’t kicked her husband out six years ago was because he’d been good in bed. Even in the early days, sex with Ross had not been some grand passion – more a payback for what he and his mother had given her. She’d stayed with him because she owed him.
‘Like a prostitute,’ she said. ‘Paying my bills on my back.’ Her cigarette butted in the overfull ashtray, she lit another then glanced at the fuel gauge, hit it with her knuckles. Sometimes it stuck. It wasn’t stuck. It was empty again.
Her blinker on, she edged across the traffic to the left lane and swung a sharp left into a service station. While fuel was metered in she looked at the cars whizzing by. How could the earth hold enough petrol to keep filling them up?
Leave that one to the Arabs, Sall old gal. That’s why they have earthquakes over there. Sucked all the filling out to sell to the cars of the world. Probably. That’s why I’m having an earthquake. All of me got sucked out to kee
p Mummy going.
A sleek black car pulled in to the next pump. She couldn’t see the driver. Maybe it was her black swan’s car. He’d looked interested. If she had been Sue, she would have asked him to go for a drink, and he probably would have accepted. That’s what people did in Melbourne.
The petrol cap replaced, she walked by the black Mercedes. A woman was filling it, not the black swan, but Sally knew where to find him, and she was going to see him again. She was going to pursue him until she caught him. Maybe she wouldn’t know what to do with him if she did catch him, but she’d worry about that later.
That week she bought a packet of condoms at the supermarket, placing them safe in the zip compartment of her bag. Just in case. How she was going to ask her elegant swan to use a condom, she didn’t know. She bought a cask of wine and two wineglasses, then decided that he looked like a Jim Beam man, so she bought a small bottle and a whisky glass. Vegemite glasses might be good enough for her. Not for him.
‘Would you like to come around for a drink, Brent?’ she practised. Or John. Or Rick, maybe. ‘Would you like to come around for a drink one night, Rick?’
It was just a game she was playing, but all week she played the game, creating for him a background, a past, and a future where she would be. Sally and her black swan living, loving, dining at classy restaurants with his family, Sally watching her p’s and q’s.
I bet he’s got brothers. I bet he’s got grandparents somewhere, still snapping their bills at each other in some well-feathered nest. And we’ll live at his flat – no, his penthouse, high above the city. Palatial, sparsely furnished. Expensive pictures on the walls. Dark landscapes. No. Moonscapes. And we’ll make love on a water bed between black silk sheets.
A slow week, that one. She looked for her black swan in the mornings and when she went down at lunchtime. She rode the lifts at 4.50 and 5.15. No sign of him. Then on Friday, she remained late at her workstation when others ran.
Ratsus was pleased. ‘You scratching my back. I scratching yours. Or right?’ she said. She didn’t know about the 5.25 time warp.
And he was there again, in number three lift at 5.25. A creature of habit. Tonight he walked out to the street with her.
‘Lovely weather for ducks,’ he said.
‘And for swans.’
‘You barrack for the Swans, Telemarket?’
She laughed, amused by her own words. ‘No. No. Not really. I used to be a Footscray supporter.’
‘Why Footscray?’
‘A friend used to play for them.’ Ross, too easily relegated to friend, but he had been a friend before he became her lover, so it was no lie. She continued walking at the side of the black overcoat, away from her car park. Companionable, they unfurled black umbrellas, the petite blonde stepping quickly in her high-heeled shoes at the side of elegance.
‘What are you doing tonight, Telemarket?’
‘Going to the casino with my girlfriend, Mr Midas.’
He laughed at her quick reply. ‘The name is Matt,’ he said. ‘Matt Marsden.’ He offered his hand, and she took it and her heart leapt high.
‘I’m Sally. Sally Telemarket De Rooze.’
‘Nice talking, Sall. See you soon.’ Slowly he released her hand and he took out his keys, pointing with them into the dark cavern of a small car park. Close by, a blue station wagon beep-beeped and its rear lights blinked.
What a clever car. It wasn’t the black Mercedes, but it looked new and it called its owner to its side, claimed him. And why not? He was worthy of claiming. Soon Sally would claim him too. She’d beep and he’d come to her side, but tonight she had a longer walk to her little Datsun that didn’t blink or beep.
‘Matt. Matt Marsden.’ She said his name as she looked at the hand he had held so long. ‘Matt Marsden.’ He had bestowed on her the precious gem of his name. And she loved it. ‘Matt and Sally Marsden.’ It rolled from her tongue.
As the crow flew, South Yarra was no distance at all from the heart of Melbourne. In Lakeside Sally could have driven the few kilometres in minutes, but Melbourne was an impenetrable mass at 5.30, a pile of slow-moving metal intent on blocking her way, lights stopping her, the city beast fighting her at every turn. She made it to the flats and the bike was in her space again, so she backed up and parked out front, not wanting to fight him tonight. She wanted to think beautiful thoughts of Matt.
‘Would you have time for a drink tonight, Matt?’ Sally practised. ‘Can I offer you some cheese, a biscuit?’ What did people eat with Jim Beam – or did they eat with it? She was stepping from the shower when the phone rang. It would be Sue still wanting to go to a pick-up bar instead of to the casino.
‘No, and make it fast. I’m naked,’ Sally said.
‘Wish I was there, love.’
‘Oh, shit. Don’t tell me, Ross. Please don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.’
‘She’s really into it this time. Collapsed in the main street. Sleiman wants to talk.’
One way or another, Glenda De Rooze was going to drag her daughter home.
‘I’m going out tonight, Ross.’
‘Who with?’
‘Sue. Oh, shit, Ross. What’s she trying to pull?’
‘Stop your swearing. That’s not going to fix anything.’
‘What am I going to do with her?’
‘I’d get up here if I were you. Have a talk to him. I think he’s planning to send her back to the . . . down to Melbourne again.’
She sighed. ‘I’ll call Sue. If I can’t get her, then I’ll be up there tomorrow.’
Sue was still at work. She took the call but she wasn’t happy. Sally wasn’t happy either. She packed a case fast and was halfway down the stairs, cigarette in hand, when the bikie overtook her, or tried to.
‘Smoke in your own space,’ he said.
Without his helmet he looked less African and more Maori, maybe an Islander. All men she measured by Ross, and this one was as tall, or he appeared so on the narrow stairs. Long-limbed, broad across the shoulders, not to be tangled with, she decided as she stepped to one side, an apology on her tongue. But the apology tripped over on its way out. She’d spent her life apologising for being alive and he’d picked the wrong night to take her on.
‘You park in your own space and I’ll smoke in mine,’ she said, stopping there, the cigarette like a weapon before her. The world was full of it, everybody telling you what you couldn’t do and where you couldn’t do it.
‘You’ll be a wrinkled-up old hag before you’re thirty,’ he said, slapping the cigarette from her hand, grinding it beneath his bikie boot.
‘And you’ll be in jail for assault.’ Her voice high with surprise, she shoved him in his black-clad knee with her case, then, using it as a barrier, continued on slow, right down the middle of the narrow staircase to the front door, expecting a push, or a knife in the back, but ready to give him a run for his money if he tried it.
‘Power to the bantams of the world,’ he said at the door.
‘We’re just another minority group. Get used to it.’ She ran out to her car, parked in the street; he walked down to her parking bay.
‘Smartarse moron,’ she said, tossing her case in the boot. ‘But I’m a maniac. I shouldn’t have done that. What’s got into me?’
Frustration had got into her. Anger at the two-hour drive before her and Mummy manipulator supreme at the end of it. Mummy, who wasn’t going to give up until she got her way. She always got what she wanted, first from Daddy, then from Sally. Always had. Always would. Some things are concrete cast.
Games
It was close to nine o’clock before Sally reached the hospital and found the car park full. She pulled in to the kerb beside a no-parking sign. The narrow-gutted little road prickled with no-parking signs; residents in this street had gone on the warpath two years ago, angered by cars always blocking their drives.
And she didn’t need a parking ticket. She drove around the block, looking for a space, aware that her mother would be
waiting, eager to relay her fake collapse in all of its glory. No space. No space anywhere for Sally.
‘And I’ve had enough of her games, and it’s too late anyway. Visiting hours are almost over.’ She pulled the wheel around, turning onto the road that led to Ross. Two kilometres out, she aborted that visit. Didn’t want to see Ross. Let him think she’d gone out with Sue.
‘Matt Marsden,’ she said, and she drove to her mother’s flat.
The front door opened readily to her key, and there was no dripping tap to greet her, only the musty smell, the dusty smell of home. She turned on the exhaust fan and the gas heater before walking to her room. There she changed her sheets, wiped some of the dust away with a pillowcase, then tossed it with the sheets into the washing machine. A mess of towels was stuffed in the laundry hamper. She tossed them into the machine. Angry now, cleaning, putting junk away, slamming drawers and doors, shoving empty packets into the rubbish bin, kicking the bin.
What had happened to the Home Help lady, or had she taken one look and retired defeated?
Out of laundry detergent. That was normal. There was a dribble left in a bottle of woolwash; she emptied it over the towels, then added the last of a packet of bleach. Solidified. It would dissolve.
The kitchen bench tidied, washed down, she turned to the cluttered table, tossing more junk into the bin. Filthy tea towels were added to the load in the washing machine. She reset it, gave it a second cycle with an added dash of dishwashing detergent, then used more of the detergent to wash the floors and the bath, the toilet. Her mother didn’t use much dishwashing detergent. Always plenty of that left.
It was late when she filled the bath and sank gratefully into deep water. Comfortable and well-known, this bath; for an hour she lazed there topping up the hot from time to time, using her toes as fingers on the tap.
