A Wrong Turn at the Office of Unmade Lists

by Jane Rawson

  She turned his hand over in hers and ran her finger across his palm. How long will you live Harry? she thought, and ran her finger down his lifeline, only it wasn’t there. Head line? Nope. Heart? Nope. What a weirdly smooth palm. Maybe it had been burned in the fire she thought. Yeah, probably. Though it looked more like he’d just been born.

  Where had Simon gone? Caddy didn’t really understand what her responsibilities to Simon were. Should they try to stay in touch? He’d be leaving today or tomorrow. She might never see him again. Was that what she wanted?

  She had no idea what she wanted. Surprise, surprise.

  Actually, that wasn’t true. She wanted Ray. Ray would make some kind of sense of all this.

  ‘Harry?’ She was whispering, a little bit dreading the moment when he’d wake up. Why wasn’t she overjoyed? ‘Harry?’ She touched his forehead with her fingertips. Harry’s forehead, there, under her fingertips. Harry, dammit! She rested her forehead on the edge of the bed again.

  ‘Morning, gorgeous.’

  She rolled her head to the side so she could see his face. ‘Harry.’

  ‘Has your mate gone?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Want to get back in here then?’ He gave her the ghost of a wink, then a shamefaced smile. ‘Hop back in here, go on.’

  She smiled too, and squirmed back under the acrylic blanket. She rested her palm flat on Harry’s belly, tucked her nose in under his ear and bit him gently on the neck.

  ‘Hello, Harry.’

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Harry?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Where’ve you been?’

  ‘Is this that old “wheely bin” joke?’

  ‘What? Oh! No. I just … look … oh, never mind. Never mind.’ She kissed him under his ear, on his temple and beside his mouth. ‘I love you.’

  ‘I love you too, gorgeous.’

  ‘Did you burn your hands?’

  ‘I’m not the one who was in a fire.’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah …’

  ‘You OK, baby?’

  ‘Yeah. Do I look older to you?’

  ‘Older?’

  Or like my hair’s different or something?’

  ‘Shit, did you get a haircut and I didn’t notice?’

  ‘Nah. I just wondered.’

  ‘You look perfect. Just like always.’

  ‘Sure I do, Harry. You have no idea how much I drank last night.’

  ‘Come here and let me taste, I’ll see if I can guess.’

  She ran her hand around to the small of his back and pulled him towards her. ‘I hope I don’t spew on you, I’m pretty sure this is the worst hangover I …’

  She was pretty sure that was how kissing Harry used to feel. Pretty sure. Was it always this good? She couldn’t quite remember.

  ‘Hey!’ Someone was knocking on the door. ‘Hey! Anyone in there?’

  ‘Just a sec!’ Caddy called out.

  ‘Time to check out,’ the voice called back. ‘Ten minutes.’

  ‘OK, thanks,’ Caddy pulled the blanket up a little just in case, but footsteps went off down the corridor and she could hear him banging on another door.

  ‘Want to get dressed? We gotta get out of here.’

  Caddy shook her head. ‘He said ten minutes. Get back in here, Harry. Ten minutes is heaps.’

  ‘Caddy, I don’t want to rush things.’

  That bit she definitely didn’t remember. ‘Yeah right!’

  She threw his shirt at him and started looking for her bra. ‘Alright, let’s get out of here then.’

  Simon had sorted everything out, which was lucky as neither Harry nor Caddy had more than a couple of bucks on them. Harry walked out the front, leaving Caddy to chat to the guy on the desk, who was asking whether they needed a moto to get home. Caddy was cracking jokes, because she realized the question of where home was was going to get messy. Should they go to Lanh’s? They couldn’t go to Lanh’s. They should find Ray.

  Clearly Harry already had ideas. He’d flagged a moto and was waiting for her to get on.

  ‘Harry, we don’t have a home.’

  ‘I reckon after a bit of a lie down and maybe a beer or two, you’ll be right. Man, you must’ve been shitfaced!’

  Fine. She got on the moto.

  ‘Down to Yarraville, mate,’ Harry told the driver.

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yeah, Yarraville. Near the corner of Francis and Hyde.’

  ‘Nah, serious mate, I don’t reckon there’s a way through to there.’

  ‘Just go straight down Whitehall, no worries.’

  ‘You from around here?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m from around here. I’m from Yarraville, bro. Can we get on?’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘You want me to find someone else?’

  ‘Nah. Alright, I’ll take you as far as I can.’

  Caddy’s guts started hurting. The hangover didn’t help, but it was mostly anxiety. Harry was going to freak. Then she might freak. Then this guy would see them both freak. She didn’t want that.

  ‘Hey mate,’ Caddy reached across Harry and tapped the driver on the shoulder. ‘Maybe just drop us near the old Yarraville Gardens, yeah?’ They could pay, he could go, and she could deal with Harry by herself.

  ‘Orright, no worries.’

  ‘I don’t know if you should be walking, love,’ Harry was half turned, looking at her all concerned. She really wasn’t sure this was the Harry she remembered.

  ‘I’m alright, really. Walk’ll do me good, sweat some of this booze out.’

  The driver dropped them off on Whitehall, a couple of streets before the gardens, ignoring Harry’s suggestion they should just go all the way down to Francis. Harry, meanwhile, seemed to be ignoring the burned trees and blackened buildings which, for now, was fine by Caddy.

  ‘You sure you’re OK to walk?’ he was asking her. ‘Head OK?’

  ‘Harry, you notice anything different?’

  ‘Is this about your hair again?’

  ‘Not me. Round here.’

  Harry put his hands on his hips and squinted at the surrounding buildings. ‘Nah, same old shithole. Chuck us your pack, it’s too heavy for you.’

  She handed it over. ‘That way?’ she asked, pointing towards the burned out shell where the storage units used to be.

  ‘Sounds good to me.’

  Maybe he needed glasses. She needed glasses. Beer glasses. God, she thought, that is not a good joke.

  ‘We could drop into The Commercial for a pot or two if you like,’ he said.

  Alright, she nearly said, stop reading my mind. But, ‘sure,’ she said instead. He couldn’t ignore The Commercial. Right? Right.

  ‘Guess they’re closed,’ he said, five minutes later when they were standing in front of the pile of blackened timber and bricks that, three years ago, had been The Commercial Hotel.

  ‘Yeah, guess so. Harry,’ she turned and looked him in the eyes. ‘You know there’s no pub there, right?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  This would be so much easier if she didn’t have the world’s worst hangover. God, a shower would be so good. Remember those? Maybe Harry was right. Maybe they should just go home. He could lie in the hammock and drink a beer, and she could have a long, long shower. Five full freakin minutes. Yeah.

  ‘Harry.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘I was thinking of asking you the same thing.’

  ‘Really, where’ve you been the past two years?’

  ‘Really, I’ve been having a beer.’

  ‘Nothing else? What else happened since I left.’

  ‘Australia lost a one-dayer against us. At least, they looked like they were going to.’

  ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘Oh, a guy came over to fix the fence. But it turned out he wasn’t the fence guy, he was just kind of lost.’

  Caddy chewed the end of her thumbnail off, spat it on the ground. She squinted up at the s
un.

  ‘Harry, our house is gone. I thought you were dead. I’ve been homeless for more than two years. I don’t have a job.’ It’s only a bit of a lie, she thought.

  And Harry was thinking, ‘Who was that guy? What was he saying to me about being imaginary?

  ‘Yeah. The house was gone,’ he said to her. ‘The house was gone. I went in to get a beer and there wasn’t anything there. So I came to look for you. Like, I’d just been lying in the hammock drinking a beer and thinking I should come look for you, after the fire and all, to let you know I was OK. And I was lying there and this bloke just showed up, a Koori bloke. I thought he’d come to fix the fence, y’know?

  Caddy nodded.

  ‘So I offered him a beer, but he said no. He asked me if I was imaginary. And then he left again, and I went to grab another beer before I came up to find you. But the house was gone on the inside.’

  He looked at her like he thought maybe she could explain all this. She ran a finger over the tiny wrinkles by his eye, smoothed his eyebrow with her thumb.

  ‘Cad, I didn’t bring the dog.’

  ‘What dog, sweetheart?’

  ‘Our dog. Cad, do we have a dog?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Yeah, I didn’t think so. But there was one of those sausage dogs in the backyard and I thought it was ours, but now I’m not so sure.’

  ‘A dachshund?’

  ‘Is that what they call em?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Cad, it was like the universe had turned inside out. I went in to grab a beer and it was like all of space had got caught in our kitchen.’

  ‘I’ve been there,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, you used to cook stuff in there.’

  ‘No, in that space, in the blackness. It’s called The Gap.’

  ‘Didn’t you just go to the market to get something for tea? Where’s everything gone, Cad? What’s this Gap stuff?’

  ‘It was the fire. It all burned.’

  ‘But they put it out, Cad. It was fine.’

  ‘Maybe in your world only the inside of our house got burned.’

  ‘My world?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve got no idea Harry. Serious though, you want to go back into the city? We could go to a bar, have a vodka or a beer or something. Figure this out later. Yeah?’ She smiled at him, tried to get him to smile back.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, frowning at the ground. ‘This shit is whack!’

  ‘You’re an idiot. Give me a kiss.’

  ‘Yeah, OK. This damn cat would also really like to pee, I reckon. Can she go for a run around before we go?’

  They headed back to the park and let Skerrick out of the pillowcase, poured some water into a bowl they made from a plastic bag, and lay down in the dust under the remains of a tree. Caddy pushed Harry’s T-shirt sleeve up and kissed him on the curve of his shoulder.

  ‘I don’t feel imaginary,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘I just said you don’t.’ She ran her hand over the curve of his bicep. ‘What happened to your tattoo?’

  ‘My what?’

  ‘Nothing, I think it was a dream I had.’ But he had had a tattoo there. It had said Amy, which was why she didn’t like it all that much.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  DON’T GO

  In among the undergrowth at Hanging Rock, Ray was trying to find his sunglasses.

  ‘I just got to grab those bastards, and then I’ll show you,’ he was saying to Farren, who was telling him there was no rush, he was enjoying the view.

  ‘Right,’ Ray brushed some dirt off his sunnies and hung them by one arm from the neck of his T-shirt. ‘Ready. OK, look, I should warn you …’

  ‘You already did.’

  ‘Yeah. Just want to make sure you know what you’re in for.’

  ‘Frankly, I have no idea.’

  ‘Well, the theory is we wander on over there and a second later we’re in the centre of the city. That’s the theory. But I wouldn’t want to make you any iron-clad guarantees.’

  ‘Yeah, you said. Some sort of shimmery haze or something. Hey look, it’s fine. I’ve got my boy’s school play tomorrow night, as long as I’m back for that it’s fine.’ He grinned at Ray and rubbed his palms together. ‘An adventure! I’m so up for it. Where do we go?’

  ‘Just over that way a bit,’ Ray pointed to a clear area in a scrubby bit of bush.

  ‘We just walk on through?’

  ‘Yep, just act like you’re on your way to the other side of the trees.’

  ‘OK – la la la,’ Farren broke into a fake unconcerned whistle as he strolled into the clearing.

  ‘See,’ said Ray, making a quick sidestep to avoid a refugee’s cooking fire. ‘Just like that: we’re there.’

  ‘Very impressive! Hello, little girl. No, I’m afraid I can’t give you any money. If you’d like to come with me I can buy you an apple. Huh,’ he turned to Ray, ‘I guess she didn’t want an apple. So! That’s some magic transporting device you have there. Any idea what you’re going to call it?’

  ‘I thought I’d leave that to you creative business types.’

  ‘Well Ray, I have to say it’s a pretty killer concept. Probably a few kinks we need to iron out – the whole howling blackness thing we could probably sell as an add-on – but I think it’s a goer. I’ll get one of my business analysts to do a few trips with you, come up with a spec for the product. Shall I have my people talk to your people?’

  ‘I’m a little short on people right now. Maybe we could have a drink together for starters?’

  ‘I like the way you think. I know a little wine bar by the law courts – whaddya say?’

  ‘Sounds just my speed. How about instead of that you come down to Market with me for a few VBs? My shout.’

  ‘Ah, cultural exchange. I’m all about cultural exchange right now. Let’s do it.’

  One of Ray’s sports sandals was really starting to rub. He thought he might be getting a blister. Perhaps the Velcro had come loose. He stopped for a moment to adjust the strap, and watched Farren’s designer-jean-clad arse wander on oblivious. He’d better get something good out of this. Maybe it was a mistake – dorky day-trippers stumbling into The Gap, chatting up his coat-check dame. What if Farren chatted her up? Damn. He needed to stop her from ever meeting Farren. And all wandering into his San Francisco, pointing at stuff and acting like tourists. Maybe he shouldn’t do this. But man, the money. The things he could do with the money.

  Like what? Seriously, it wasn’t going to be enough money to make all this better. Not enough money to let him sit in the Medallion Club at the footy every week, or shop at Woolworths, or go to wine bars. To have kids that could go to school. Maybe enough money for some new sports sandals and a moto of his own. Maybe a little more. Maybe.

  Farren realized he’d stopped, was calling out to him.

  ‘What up, Ray?’

  ‘Just fixing my shoe. There. She’s good.’

  ‘Come on dude! Let’s go slam down a few green grenades.’

  ‘Yep. I’m right now. To Peira’s!’

  ‘Sure, whatevs.’

  Outside Peira’s, Jason was trying to sell his phone battery to a hillsider, and all was right with the world. There was Caddy, sitting at her usual table with a half-drunk vodka and tonic in front of her, a john by her side with his hand on her knee. Who was, apparently, the imaginary Kiwi from Ray’s last visit to The Gap. Which was a little bit not the way things were supposed to be.

  ‘Caddy!’ Farren had thrown his arms wide, embracing the whole world of sticky tiled floor, sluggish fans and bleakeyed children. The clean smell of him wafted over her and she looked over her shoulder to see Peira digging out the highpriced menu.

  ‘Hey Farren, how’s things?’

  Harry looked up from the copy of CitiXtra he was reading. ‘Hey bro.’

  ‘Hey.’ But Harry was reading again.

  It was th
e imaginary Kiwi, Ray was sure of it.

  ‘Hi Ray!’ Caddy half got out of her chair to kiss him on the cheek. ‘Ray, this is Harry.’

  ‘Oh, hey br … hey!’

  Ray gave a tiny half-wave; for a minute he felt like Queen Kate on the balcony of Buckingham Palace. ‘G’day.’ For a second Ray was about to say something about The Gap and being imaginary and all of that, but it all seemed too hard. Instead, he went with ‘so’d you guys get up?’

  And Harry was about to ask him what had happened to the inside of the house, but instead he said, ‘You bet we did. You were all out for 138. Piss weak!’

  ‘Ah, you wait.’

  ‘Yeah, yer all talk.’

  And Caddy was about to ask if they somehow knew each other, but then she remembered what Harry had said about the Koori fencer and she knew that they did, so she asked Peira for another vodka and tonic.

  And Farren was behind her wrapping his arms around her and planting a big wet one on her neck.

  ‘Farren,’ she said. ‘So lovely to see you.’ And for a minute she felt like Queen Kate at a garden party. ‘This is my husband Harry. Harry, this is Farren; he’s a friend of Ray’s, we go to the football sometimes.’ And then she thought about stabbing herself in the eye with a fork, but luckily her drink showed up and there was no cutlery that she could immediately lay her hands on.

  ‘Yeah, g’day.’ Good old dependable Harry. ‘Who’s your team?’

  ‘Go Doggies!’

  ‘Nice.’

  ‘Yours?’

  ‘I’m a rugby man.’

  No one ever knew what to say to that.

  ‘So, Ray!’

  ‘Yes Caddy.’

  ‘How’ve you been?’

  It was weird being watched while she talked to Ray. She felt she should be putting on some kind of a show for Harry and Farren. Harry and Farren – there’s a phrase she’d never aspired to hear. Did Harry really think he’d last seen her yesterday? This must be so weird for him. Who were all these friends she suddenly had – had she been hiding them from him for years?