A Wrong Turn at the Office of Unmade Lists

by Jane Rawson

  ‘Hey. Can you help me pull that body up here?’

  He shrugged, looked at the body. ‘Sure, what you got for it?’

  ‘I don’t have anything.’

  ‘You think I should do it for nothing?’

  ‘Look, I’m doing it for nothing.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You can’t just leave him in the gutter – he’ll get hit again.’

  ‘Makes no difference to me.’

  Caddy just stared at him.

  ‘Yeah, alright. Hang on.’ The man went through his pockets and found a pair of sunglasses. Caddy looked closer. Not her sunglasses. ‘OK,’ he said, putting them on. ‘Let’s do it. Maybe he’s got something good on him.’

  The body was heavy, but the motorbikes gave them a wide berth as they tried to roll him back up the gutter. Between the two of them, they dragged him over to the pile of trash and propped him by the wall. Caddy started looking through his pockets.

  ‘Hey!’ said the man. ‘You find anything, it’s mine.’

  ‘I just want to know who he is, alright?’ No one had ever found Harry’s body.

  He had a wallet with an ID card in his pocket. She wrote the name down in her notebook, with no idea what she’d do about it. There were also two five dollar bills. Hmm. The argument with herself didn’t last long; it wrapped up pretty fast once she noticed the rubbish guy looking over her shoulder to see what she had.

  ‘Here you go,’ she said. ‘One for you, one for me. Thanks for your help.’ She tucked the wallet back in the body’s pocket and headed off, ignoring the protests from Mr Trash. This time she looked down before stepping out into the road, and noticed it was stained black where the body had been. She scuffed it with her toe – it didn’t look like blood or any kind of body juice she’d ever seen. It was more like a shadow that didn’t move. Weird. She looked at her watch. Four forty. She took a deep breath and strode into the flow, never hesitating or changing direction.

  On the other side she staked out a patch of shade in the dust under one of the trees near the statue of Saint George. She pulled off her pack and used it as a pillow, lying back in the dirt. She had soap now: she could afford a little dirt. She closed her eyes and began to wait.

  She remembered the bulldog, and started to laugh. Really, you almost never saw a dog like that. Kelpies, yappy little terriers, heeler and staffy crosses, sure; they were all over the place. But not a proper dog like that. She thought she might only have known it was a bulldog from pictures she’d seen. She was pretty sure she’d never seen a real, live British bulldog before. So why had she been writing about one in her story?

  She sat up. She had, hadn’t she? Several weeks back she’d been writing about a bulldog. She pulled her pack round in front of her, and took the notebook from the top pocket. She flicked through the pages … blah blah blah, trains, tunnels (did she ever write about anything that didn’t happen to her?) … here it was, a conversation between Sarah and Simon, holed up in a tunnel far under a big city after all the trains have stopped running for the night.

  ‘I have eight hundred bucks and I have to get myself a dog, Sarah is saying. And I know what I want. The only thing I want, in this whole horrible big old world, is a bulldog. I want a British bulldog, and I want to name her World War Three.’

  ‘You’re an idiot.’

  ‘So, I take my eight hundred bucks to the bulldog kennel, the British bulldog kennel …’

  ‘Get on with it, will you?’

  ‘You have somewhere to be?’

  ‘I could be sleeping. I could be working on my needlepoint.’

  ‘You don’t know needlepoint.’

  ‘I could so easily have learned by now.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Oh, please. Just get on with it, OK? Eight hundred bucks, and you go to the kennels …’

  ‘And anyway they tell me, not eight hundred, but twelve hundred. TWELVE HUNDRED BUCKS for a dog. Twelve hundred bucks. Do you believe this?’

  ‘No. I mean, it’s not true.’

  ‘OK, sure, I don’t have eight hundred bucks. But if I did – even if I did – I could not buy myself a British bulldog and name her World War Three. Because they cost twelve hundred bucks.’

  OK, it wasn’t the weirdest thing in the world, she’d grant you that. But it was pretty weird. Maybe a six on a scale of one to ten. She kind of wanted to go back to the bar and see if the bulldog was still there. She hadn’t imagined it. She wouldn’t have imagined the snoring; she had no idea that dogs snored. Maybe she’d seen it somewhere, out of a corner of her eye or something, walking around the city some time. And it had got into her head and from there into her story. That was probably it.

  Man, her hips were hurting. She lay back down again, holding her notebook over her head and flipping through it. She stared for a while at the dead guy’s name – Tarkin Collins – and thanked him in her head for the five bucks. If she found his family she guessed she’d have to find some way to get that five bucks back to them. Still, she should probably try to find his family.

  ‘Hey, sis.’

  Ray sat down in the dust beside her.

  She’d never known if Ray’s red hair was natural or whether he coloured it. If anyone could get hold of hair dye, it would be Ray.

  ‘Ray!’ She couldn’t hide how happy she was to see him. It wasn’t just the money; really, it wasn’t. There wasn’t much in Caddy’s life these days. She’d decided a long time ago that there never would be, then Harry came along and ruined it all. She’d gotten a taste for permanence, and Ray – late, unreliable, devastatingly casual in everything – had become her rock. There was Ray, and then there were all the other boys. These days Caddy smiled at a lot of boys. She drank with a lot of boys, and if boys invited her back to their place she usually went. Ray was the one who held her hand.

  He was doing it right now. ‘Sweetness, how have you been?’ He kissed her cheek. ‘You look tired.’

  ‘Beautiful, Ray,’ she said. ‘You mean I look beautiful.’

  He kissed her again, in the curve where her throat met her chin. ‘How have you been, gorgeous?’

  ‘Yeah, OK. Just pulled a dead guy out of the gutter. You know a Tarkin Collins?’

  Ray looked into the sky, his eyes shaded by yellow tinted wraparounds. The sides of his mouth curved down. ‘Nope, don’t think I do. You want me to ask around?’

  ‘Yeah, sure. He seemed like a family man though, you know?’

  ‘You mean, like not someone I’d know?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I’ll ask anyway. Tarking Collins?’

  ‘Tarkin. Yep.’

  ‘That’s better. Tarking is a bit too much like Farking.’

  ‘You’re an idiot.’ She hugged him close. ‘Hey Ray?’

  ‘You’re squashing me.’

  ‘Sorry. Hey Ray, do you know anyone with a British bulldog?’

  He unwrapped her from around him, held her at arms’ length. ‘What is this, anyway? Who wants to be a millionaire? No, I don’t know anyone with a British bulldog. I did know this guy once, had a pug-labrador cross, that any use?’

  ‘Not so much.’

  ‘Interesting you should mention bulldogs, though. Do I have a treat for you!’

  ‘I don’t know, Ray; do you?’

  ‘I certainly do.’ He was fossicking around in his bumbag. Ray was the only guy she knew who would even think about trying to get away with wearing a bumbag. From among the small bills and packs of chewing gum, he pulled out two tickets, which he held triumphantly before her.

  ‘What are they?’ She squinted in the sunshine.

  ‘ Yo, sis: these are two tickets – for you and for me – to the Top End Bulldogs versus the Carltingwood Maglues. This Friday.’

  ‘You’re joking?!’

  ‘No jokes, young lady. This is the genuine article. Two tickets for one whole game of football at the Rinnai Stadium, Docklands. One ticket for you, one ticket for me.’

  ‘Sweet, Ray! How did you …
oh, never mind. Thanks!’

  ‘There’s a catch, of course. Though maybe you could think of it more as a bonus.’

  ‘Of course there is. Will I be watching any of the footy, Ray?’

  ‘You can probably see the whole game. But afterwards, well, you might have some other business to attend to.’

  ‘Are you pimping me, Ray?’

  ‘You’re so crass, sugar. But yes.’

  Caddy blew out her cheeks and slumped back on her bag. ‘Who is it this time?’

  ‘OK, so I met these guys, never mind how. They’re in the carbon credits business, cleaned up big time in the 2010s now they’re mostly living large on their investments. This one guy, he’s all married and stuff, you know, but he’s interested in a little something, y’know …’

  Ray picked up a stick and began digging a little hole in the packed, dry clay at his feet.

  ‘Dirtier?’

  He looked up. ‘If you like, honey. I think I sold it as “realer”. You know, a bit more streets.’

  ‘I’m streets as they come,’ Caddy stretched, wiped her damp palms on her shorts and pushed her hair behind her ears. ‘No worries. What’s the payoff for you? How’d you price me?’

  ‘I didn’t. I told him you were my sister.’

  ‘That’s nonsensical.’

  ‘This is a long term game plan, Cad. He likes you, great; he keeps coming around for more and I hook up a few sweet deals to separate him from his money, we get the commission. He doesn’t like you (or he likes you too much, which is much more likely) and tries to bail, we threaten to tell his wife. The first plan is better, obviously. A guaranteed weekly income, much less chance of drama.’

  ‘So I’m like some sort of corporate gift?’

  ‘You’re a showbag, Cad.’

  ‘Great. And what’s in it for me?’ Caddy watched as a fight broke out between two crows pecking at something squished into the library steps.

  ‘He’ll probably give you some presents, you get to stay a night in some nice hotel, shower and stuff, clean up on free toiletries.’

  ‘You know these guys always want the full experience. The whole “come back to the humpy and have your breakfast in the settlement” thing. It always ends up costing me at least an oat bar, and what do I have to show for it?’

  ‘OK, fair enough. It’s not cool for you to take the risk while I take the profit. Would a fifty sort you?’

  ‘It certainly would. What should I wear?’

  ‘Can you do tastefully dirty? Like no actual faeces or anything.’

  ‘Fuck you, Ray!’ She punched him in the solar plexus.

  ‘You need soap or something?’

  She was about to tell him she’d just bought some, then thought better of it.

  ‘That’d help.’

  ‘You know Peira right?’

  ‘Of course I know Peira.’

  ‘OK, she’s holding a stash of Pears for me, the real deal.’

  Caddy looked suitably impressed.

  ‘Tell her I sent you and that you need a bar.’

  ‘Do you think I’ll need a note from you or something?’

  ‘Don’t be an ass. Hey, so what’s with the notebook, Cad? You writing a new story?’

  Ray was about the only person who had ever read through a whole one of her stories. Since Harry died, that was.

  ‘Yeah. I’m writing this thing about two kids who are trying to …’

  ‘Don’t tell me! I want to figure it out for myself. Can I have a look?’

  ‘Yeah, I spose. It’s only a bit done though, y’know? It’s mostly just an idea right now.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I know: “It’s silly, you won’t like it, blah blah blah”.’ Ray was putting on a high-pitched whine which Caddy assumed must be his impression of her.

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘You shut up. I’m trying to read.’

  He started from the start, like any serious reader would:

  We set fire to the Christmas tree and we squat by the edge of the basketball court to watch it burn. It’s starting to rain so I turn my collar up to stop the water dripping down my neck. From a bar across the street I can hear football – it’s getting colder and I guess Super Bowl is coming up.

  By the time we hear the sirens the tree is already just smouldering black. I’m disappointed by how quickly it’s all over.

  As they’re hosing down the tree, we head for the underground station. All along the sides of the roads people asleep over vents, dogs curled up outside tents, dogs curled up around people and one guy, arms out of his sleeping bag, wrapped around a sleeping Rottweiler, spooning his Rottweiler.

  ‘Get your dick out of that dog,’ I tell him. But I knew he didn’t really have his dick in the dog. He was just hanging on to it. It’s cold out, these days.

  Down the escalator into the station. We slip into the bathroom while the attendant isn’t looking, me and Simon, both of us in the one bathroom (women’s: the men’s stinks) and light cigarettes and wait while they start closing the place down. He sleeps a little, curled on the cold floor. I draw pictures on the tiles with the end of a burned match – a tree with a cow under it, a squirrel as tall as the cow’s ear. The squirrel is whispering something to the cow, but the cow can’t hear it. Or maybe the squirrel’s saying something the cow doesn’t want to hear – I don’t really know.

  ‘Simon?’

  He’s pretending to be asleep.

  ‘Simon?’

  I roll pellets of toilet paper between my fingers, wet them in my mouth and drop them into his ear. Some of them roll out on the floor; some stick there quite nicely. I fish through my bag for a pencil. I write messages onto pieces of paper from out of my pockets; roll, wet, drop. I want to push them into his head, into his brain.

  ‘Simon?’

  I hate this part, the part with the sitting, and the slow, slow waiting. With Simon pretending to be asleep.

  ‘Simon?’

  Nothing.

  ‘Simon?’

  The lights go out.

  ‘OK,’ he says. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Hey Cad, that’s good stuff! I want to read the rest.’

  ‘Off you go then.’

  ‘I will, I will, but I gotta run. Some guys, they want to move a pallet of nicotine patches. Will you bring it’ – he waved the notebook at her – ‘to the footy?’

  ‘Sure’

  ‘So are we cool? That’s all OK for Friday night?’

  ‘Yep, no worries. Thanks for cutting me in.’

  ‘Of course. No one else would be good enough.’ He kissed her cheek again and passed her back the book.

  As he was getting up to leave she remembered. ‘Oh! Ray, you know Lanh?’

  ‘From up Racecourse? Yeah, I know the guy.’

  ‘Yeah, he says he needs to see you. Hey Ray, he sent me in here today with a load of Vodka Cruisers for some bar down Drewery. You ever had a Cruiser?’

  ‘Nah, that stuff’s for girls. Was it the bar with the cane door?’

  ‘Yeah, the one with the bulldog.’

  ‘Why do you keep going on about bulldogs?’

  She didn’t bother answering. Instead, she counted days. It was Tuesday today, she had five dollars which would have to last her until Friday, unless she managed to track down the Collins family, in which case she’d probably have minus bucks. ‘Ray, can you front me ten dollars till Friday?’

  ‘Ten?’

  ‘Yes please.’

  ‘Promise you’ll show up?’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘Looking all pretty? And trashy?’

  ‘Yes Ray.’

  He dived into the bumbag again and pulled out a five, and another five. ‘Here you go sis, I gotta go. Meet me at gate five at six thirty, OK?’

  ‘OK’. She hadn’t been to Docklands since the fire. ‘See you there. Thanks, Ray. Oh, and if you see anyone wearing my sunnies, can you buy em back for me? I’ll pay you back.’

  ‘No worries.’

  He headed off down
Swanston, his flip flops kicking up dust, lifting his chin now and again to a customer or a client. She lay back and closed her eyes. What now? Seemed like she had two options. One: go track down that cute boy Lanh, see if he wanted to go watch some YouTubes, her shout. Two: go down to Peira’s, pick up her cake of soap, see if she could swap it for her sunnies. Maybe even pick up a new pair.

  She didn’t want to seem too keen. She already had a date for tomorrow night. She’d head down to Peira’s. This time of the day, a vodka and tonic would really hit the spot.

  A BLOKE COULD DO A LOT WORSE

  Ray had got his start hawking second-hand blockbusters and alternative bestsellers on the footpath – Vikram Seth and Michael Riley, Paolo Coelho and Dan Brown, Life of Pi and JK Rowling all piled in together in cardboard fruit boxes. From there he’d moved on to bigger things, of course: supply of rare alcohol and endangered luxury goods, getting his clients into the city’s most exclusive venues, and his least-proud venture, pimping out his friends. He’d hung on to the original business by doing a small but respectable line in rare and antique documents, usually for a higher class of clientele than used his regular services.

  A couple of months ago Peira had hooked him up with a peacekeeper who was looking to sell off some maps his father had acquired on active service about thirty years earlier. The maps themselves had been printed sometime in the 1940s, by various cartographers working in disparate locations. The maps were of nowhere special – some were from the area around Melbourne, there was a topographic map of California, one of what was then India, maps of Poland and Prague and the Netherlands. There was no particular logic to the packet, but the soldier was asking for some fairly big money for them.

  Ray liked the way they smelled, and because he’d had a really good week on the horses, and because sometimes he just did stuff because he felt like it, Ray bought them. The peacekeeper had told him that he could make a serious profit selling them to the right people, but that if he was the adventurous type he might gain more from using them himself.

  That was pretty much what he’d said: ‘Are you the adventurous type, mate? Cause if you are, I’d recommend hanging on to those little beauties and giving them a try yourself.’

  ‘Giving them a try?’ Ray had asked.