by Joy Dettman
She stared at the blood and at the great boil-like pimple on his neck. He caught her eye, blushed, and his finger moved to his neck. Old coot Ron belted his elbow.
What was with those two?
Pimples picked up his apple, picked at a pimple on its red skin.
All of that height, cowered by an overbearing old coot with stinking feet.
What was his name? She’d worked with him for almost ten months and didn’t know his name. Had she heard it? Colin Carbuncle? Wally Wimp?
She shivered, and Cocky’s arm behind her chair fell to her shoulder, squeezed. He was crowding her; everyone had to know they were a twosome, that they’d shared some high drama at the weekend.
‘I’m pretty certain it was the car I saw driving off that got her,’ he said. This was stuff straight out of Blue Heelers. Cocky had his listeners on the edge of their seats. ‘It was black, or that real dark green, and going like a bat out of hell.’
Famous eyewitness Cocky. He’d got his face on television last night. Was there anything he hadn’t done?
‘The cops’ll be crawling all over your place again tonight, babe. You might be better off staying with me for a few days.’
Eyes stared. This was something new. Another romance blooming in the workplace? Toy boy Norm had got off with married Red. She’d left her husband to set up house with a ratty moustache. He’d left his wife and the kids.
Ron took the floor. He started his favourite recitation on Asians and Aborigines, and an argumentative greenie told him that Australia was part of Asia and they had more right to be here than the white man.
‘And where would bloody Australia be if it hadn’t been for the white man?’
‘A fucking sight better off with one less of them,’ Sue said.
‘Stop it. Stop it, all of you. A little girl is dead and you don’t care.’
‘Not my bloody fault, is it,’ Ron said.
Varicose rose to her aching legs and left for the toilets. Then they were all up and looking at their watches as they wandered back to staff the phones, to sell the unsaleable to those who didn’t want to buy it. Pimples gangling in behind, always behind, but head and shoulders taller than the rest, he stood out in the crowd.
And the great grey hulk bore down on him, a man o’war under full sail. And she did it. She blasted him out of the water. ‘You no good for me. Go home, watch video. I have no place here for you,’ she said. ‘You go now.’
Pimples’ face became a mottled puce. He gangled, looked at Ron. Cringed.
‘Useless little bastard.’ Ron’s dentures click-clacked.
No words of defence. Pimples walked.
‘You coming back late. Everyone. You thinking this office is for fun here. No.’ Ratsus’s finger stabbed the air. ‘You wanting to work or you not wanting work. Is not material to me. Yes, but my job is material. You not doing you job then I losing my job. Or right? Ratsus Sydney are doing two times what we doing last week. We lose the big client because you are all lazy.’
Sally watched Pimples’ back disappear behind a partition, watched his head walk off alone. No more jackhammer finger breaking through the concrete scabs. No more big, staring baby blues.
Then the argumentative greenie got the chop. Ratsus, still weeding her patch, caught Varicose attempting to creep back to her station. Too big to creep, too visible in her black, wide as Ratsus but not as tall.
‘You too. You, the big one. You go. All lazy people. Australia is full of the lazy people. You watching video too. Be happy.’
Varicose drew herself up to her full height and her rounded chin lifted. ‘My name is Joyce Rogers, and I was going home anyway, and I can’t afford to own a video on what you pay me,’ she said, joining the greenie at the lifts.
Ratsus gulped air for the next burst. ‘In Australia you having it good for too long. In Australia you –’
Pimples wasn’t waiting at the lifts. Where had he gone?
‘In Australia you are not understanding of what the working ethic is about. You –’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake! If you don’t like the pee in our pool, then no-one is forcing you to swim in it.’
Heads turned to face Sally. Jesus! Had she said that?
Old coot Ron’s dentures dropped, hobbling a tongue that wanted to buy in; he always had his say, but jobs were not easy for a man over seventy to come by, and bejesus, didn’t he know it.
The spaceless space grew silent. Shuffling feet stilled. Ratsus was silent, her mouth jammed open. Air sucked in for the next burst had no place to go. Sally watched the trapped air swell behind the old queen rat’s eyeballs as they sought, found Sally.
‘You it is who talk the ratsus racism to me? You, who I have give to the hundred opportunity.’
Faces turned away, disassociating themselves from Sally’s mad mouth, and from her truth, truth she’d heard spoken a hundred times in the tearoom, in the coffee shop, in the toilets, on the roof. Old Ron’s head was down. Even he knew that truth must be hidden behind beetroot sandwiches and tearoom doors.
‘You spit on opportunity. You are lazy ratsus. Always late. Always with excuse. My poor mother is sick.’ She’d grown huge and the bodies crammed into this space heard her power, knew her power. She sucked more air.
The space around Sally was widening. Sue fiddled with her hair. Christmas green all gone. Shock of red with flecks of purple today.
‘Rat’s arse,’ Sally corrected. She walked to the whiteboard and wrote the words there, in red, underlining them, a tutor instructing her class. ‘The – rat’s – arse. What he sits on. And this job is rat shit, which is associated with the rat’s arse, and I’m sick of shovelling it.’ She walked back to her station and picked up her bag.
The hulk was ready to explode, transistors glowing, electricity flashing, she stared at the whiteboard.
Rat’s arse? Rodent? Dirty black thing with flea? So it was no more the ratsus. So now it was the rat’s bum? Trapped air given a lead, rolled. It found a breach and escaped in a long drawn-out squeal. She tensed her huge buttocks, tried to hold it in, only extending the length of the squeak-squawk. Then, in front of a hundred eyes, she deflated.
Confused by her diminishing size, she click-clicked away fast to her rat pad, but she got the last word. ‘You . . . you going from my office. Out! Now! Go!’
Sally was already walking.
Sue caught her eye, winked, waved. Poor Sue, granddaughter of a Collins Street specialist, daughter of a barrister, not good enough for her professional family. Didn’t finish university, did she? Poor dropout Sue, pushing her failure up her family’s nose with her nose ring. Working day and night to pay off the bank, trying to do the impossible.
But the banks were like Queen Ratsus. They demanded the impossible, and if you couldn’t give it to them willingly, they took it, took your house. Sue knew. Spiked red and purple hair, a tattoo and nose ring were her armour against this grab-all society. But armour rusted away. She’d go under, just to keep her house. She’d let her hair go back to common mouse and she’d go back to uni so her father would pay out the mortgage. If you can’t beat them, join them.
Varicose and the greenie had taken the lift down. Not a sign of Pimples. Sally glanced at the corridor leading to the toilets. Maybe he’d walked down.
She looked into the dark cavern of stairs. Smell of musty dust, smell of mice, and sort of . . . homey. ‘Hello,’ she yelled. Hollow, like the houses and flats she had emptied; her words bounced back. She shrugged, and her hand reached into her pocket and came out with her smokes. Just one more on the roof, just for old times’ sake, just to show the hard old bitch that one of her mice would leave when it was good and ready.
Up the concrete steps then, over the butts and the grime, up, up to the roof, just to say goodbye to the view, to wave goodbye to the beetle people and the matchbox cars.
Flying Away
He was up there. He was standing on the concrete ledge and he wasn’t picking his pimples either; his arms were spread
wide. A gangly aeroplane, poised for take-off.
He swayed when he heard the door, and Sally’s mouth opened, a scream wanting to get out; she held it back, her throat muscles closing around it as she continued forward, clenched fingers crushing the cigarette packet.
She had mentally stood on that ledge a thousand times. She knew that place intimately. So easy to jump. No use changing your mind halfway down. No bungee-rope doctor to pull you back, pump your stomach, sew up slashed wrists, not if you jumped.
Had to say something. What would a social worker say?
‘The condemned man always gets a last smoke.’ She was no social worker and he didn’t accept her offer, which was to the good because she couldn’t find her lighter and her cigarettes were bent. Then she found it, straightened a smoke, lit it and sucked, her eyes never leaving him. ‘I lost my job too. Varico – a couple of others got the shove.’
He was deaf, or already gone from this world, her words were not reaching him. She glanced back at the stairs. No help down there, so she edged a step closer, and two more, and she was at the ledge. A fast glance down. No tree below, no awning to catch him, just a brightly wrapped snack bar on wheels, beetles tumbling out, more beetles queuing to get on.
‘What if you land on someone?’ she said. He didn’t hear her. ‘Think of the poor coot who’d have to clean up the mess,’ she said. Had to say something but shouldn’t have said that. What did people say? What did they do in suicide situations?
He wiped at his nose with his wrist and it wasn’t the right thing to do on a ledge. Her cigarette fell to the concrete and her hand reached out to grab a leg. Couldn’t reach. But he regained his balance and her hand blindly snatched and straightened a second cigarette as she stepped closer. Not that she could do much if she did grab one of his legs. She’d go over with him, give them two for the price of one.
Smoke drifted by him; he turned his head. ‘Smoking makes me dizzy now.’
He could talk! But dizzy wasn’t good on a narrow ledge. The hand holding the cigarette dropped to her side as her heart rate hit two thousand revs a minute, on idle, and she looked at the sky for help. Black clouds rolling in from the bay. Rain coming to wash this heat away. Thunder in the distance.
He swayed to the left, or was it the clouds, or was she swaying? ‘My grandfather hates my guts. I got dumped on him when I was five. All I ever get at home is what a moll my mother was. I’m going to do it,’ he said.
‘Not in front of me, thanks. I’ve already watched my father and three little brothers die. What’s your name?’
He glanced at her. His feet were too big, the ledge too narrow, the wind growing, blowing, wanting to snatch him, sweep him away.
‘Sit down,’ she ordered. ‘You’re making me dizzy.’ She didn’t have the right tone to command obedience. Ross’s dogs knew that.
‘Bloody old Razakenowskie bitch. I make enough sales.’
‘Razakenowskie? I call her Ratsus. What’s your name, I said?’
‘You want to sell it to the newspapers? Get on television like that cocky little dickhead.’
‘I just asked your name. People do it every day.’
‘Who cares?’
‘I care.’ Mrs Bertram had said that to her once, and it had worked too; it wasn’t working for him.
‘You’re like everyone else. You’re full of it.’
‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself and get down.’
‘What would you know about anything? People like you have got it all.’
‘That’s me, born under a lucky star.’ She looked at the clouds and at the lightning like fireworks over the bay. A beautiful city from up here. You could see the big picture from this roof – and she wanted it. ‘That’s me,’ she said. ‘I’ve got everything, and what I haven’t got, I’m going to get.’ Then she began speaking of her father and the boys. Didn’t know why. It just seemed like the right thing to do at the time.
She spoke of her mother, and the families she’d lived with, and once she began she couldn’t find a place to stop, because she was remembering stuff she hadn’t thought about in twenty years.
It got him sitting down, his long legs straddling the ledge, his big red-rimmed baby blues staring at her. Maybe he was just waiting to hear the end of the story before he flew, so she didn’t let it end. She sucked more smoke, and told him how her own mother hadn’t liked her, even before the accident, because she’d been her father’s girl. And how one night her father had stood her on the kitchen table and got her to sing a song for Grandma and Papa, and how Mummy had thrown a screaming fit and they’d had to call the doctor.
She spoke of the night her father died, and how she’d sat on the wet grass and watched the car burn. She poured it all out and, right or wrong, it got him off the ledge, got him standing by her side, looking sorry for her, or still sorry for himself but asking if he could have that cigarette, please, and he’d pay her back later.
Later was good. It was very good. She gave him the crushed packet and lighter.
‘You probably read that in a horror novel,’ he said, bent smoke in his mouth.
‘I don’t read horror. I lived it. But now I’m into fantasy.’
He lit up with shaking hands, and he stood there smoking, still holding her packet and lighter, so he couldn’t pick his pimples. ‘I’m not going home,’ he said.
‘Living with a miserable grandfather might be better than living with a nutcase mother.’ She told him about the purse full of pills, and the psychiatric hospitals, and how her mother had blamed her for the accident. How she’d wake her up in the night to say, ‘You killed them.’ And how, one night, her mother had mixed her a glass of chocolate milk with half a packet of pills in it.
‘And you’re the first person I’ve ever told about that. And it’s true.’
This wasn’t the time or the place to feel good, but somehow, as she had poured it out on him, something dark was lifting from her shoulders. All of her life she’d covered up for her mother. She’d lied to welfare ladies, lied to the schools and Mrs Bertram. She’d burned Marian’s death certificate her mother had obtained just to deface. No more cover-up. She was dobbing, and it felt so right.
He handed back her cigarettes, and his hands empty, he picked a pimple. A crater filled, spilled. ‘I’m still not going home. That miserable old bugger won’t let me live this down.’
‘Don’t tell him. There are plenty of jobs in call centres.’
He looked at her. ‘Don’t tell him? He bloody knows, doesn’t he!’
And suddenly she knew too, knew why he hung around old Ron. ‘Not miserable old bugger Ron?’ she said.
‘He’s my grandfather.’
‘Shiiiiit! I’d jump if I were you.’
‘I’ll have another smoke first. I’ll pay you back.’
She gave him another bent smoke and leaned with him, staring down at the movement below as thunder rolled, moving in on them. No rain yet, but the earth felt cleansed.
‘Did you ever hear that song kids used to sing at school? A man fell out of an aeroplane at forty thousand feet,’ he said, flicking ash to the wind.
‘And he ain’t gunna fly no more.’
‘They scraped him off the tarmac like a blob of strawberry jam.’
‘Raspberry jam,’ she said.
‘Strawberry.’
‘Raspberry.’
‘We used to sing strawberry. You made me think of it when you said about someone cleaning up the mess.’
‘I always knew I should have been a social worker.’
A half-smile lifted one side of his lips. Maybe she’d talked him down, actually saved a life today. And maybe he hadn’t been planning to jump anyway. But it didn’t matter. She felt good.
‘I’m Michael,’ he said.
‘Want to go down for a coffee?’
‘Dunno what I want. I’ve been thinking I might give Joyce a call. She’s got a bungalow to rent. She’s only asking fifty bucks a week for it.’
‘Joyce who?
’
‘Joyce Rogers.’ His large hands cupped the air fifty centimetres from his chest, then he blushed one of his better maroons.
Symbol of Love
Downstairs Sally watched him wander off to find a phone. She went into the coffee shop; he wasn’t the only one who didn’t want to go home.
Few customers around at this time, a male reading in the corner, a deaf couple talking with their hands, cigarettes adding emphasis. Sally sipped hot coffee and lit up while her mind wandered back to Saturday night and Ross.
She’d slept with him by default that first time, slept with him because his mother had died. Slept with him by default again on Saturday night.
She’d been on such a crazy high when she’d come home from the karaoke bar, up there somewhere, straddling the moon, dreaming dreams again. Hadn’t dreamed those dreams in years, if ever.
‘Oh, Ross,’ she’d said when he’d opened her door. ‘I am so happy I’m going to burst.’ She’d bear hugged him and danced him to the kitchenette. ‘I’ve never been this happy in my life.’ Wrong thing to say. She’d known it as soon as the words were out of her mouth.
‘Me too, love. I’ve missed you like you wouldn’t believe.’ And he’d kissed her.
No way out of it after that. She’d looked for a way out. They’d had coffee. She’d tried to explain her happiness, but he’d never listened. She’d told him about getting up on stage and singing ‘Runaway Girl’.
He hadn’t liked that song ten years ago. ‘Good for you, love,’ he’d said, his head on her pillows, uninterested in her triumph but smiling a lot and waiting for her to put the light out, get into that bed.
Gold dust, moondust all around her on Saturday night and no place else for her overflow of happiness to go.
So she’d . . . she’d made love to him.
‘Who’s that sleeping in my bed?’ she’d said, and she’d jumped him.
