by Zane Lovitt
Tomlinson stands, achingly slowly, still grinning at Gant. Not even looking at the cop with the black hair though they’re face to face. The name on the officer’s pin is Correll, and he’s handcuffing Tomlinson, hands in front.
What makes Tomlinson look at Correll is Correll whispering, ‘A month is long enough to make a special friend inside, isn’t it, Spacka?’
No one else hears it. Not Spacka’s girlfriend, not Sergeant Gant, who’s turning away now, looking mournfully at his watch. Not me, standing at the door, trying to keep hidden from even the police because I’m just a reminder of what they’ve failed to find.
Tomlinson stops grinning. He blinks twice and his eyes go dead. Correll stares back into those eyes and says, ‘I’ve heard that’s what you’re into.’
None of us hears that either.
But Tomlinson does.
His face spasms, like those uninhibited moments right before you belch. His lips and eyes squeeze shut and his head jerks back and forth in tiny chicken pecks. But all his preparation is over in an instant and he lunges forward, not at Correll but at a sandy-haired giant who isn’t looking when Tomlinson rips his name pin from his breast and wheels it into Correll’s left eye.
He might be handcuffed, but Tomlinson stabs Correll twice in that eye and once in the nose before anyone turns to look.
Correll screams and Becky screams, but over the two of them Tomlinson screams the loudest, a throaty cackle with the psychopath right there inside it. The giant and Gant grab hold of him but he stabs Correll two or three times in the other eye before they get control of the arm holding the pin and blood is spouting like spring water from Correll’s face but he’s not making any noise now because the shock has overwhelmed him and he hits the floor and Tomlinson’s trying to get down there to hurt him some more but six uniforms are holding him up and Gant has got Tomlinson’s hair and everyone’s shouting for an ambulance or for help and Becky’s shouting that they’re all bastards.
The way Gant pulls on Tomlinson’s hair, Tomlinson’s face is angled at me. Amid the storm of struggling and shouting, his body tense with fight, Tomlinson locks eyes with me, this little person all the way over here. For a moment.
Me, who’s not a cop, who’s peeking around the door from outside the flat.
Me with my boggle-eyes. Me with my myth of Kevin Tomlinson that’s been proved violently true.
And he smiles at me, hungry and jubilant, like he knows everything that’s going to happen to me from this day on. And he’s going to enjoy it.
‘Crikey,’ says the barman, softly. ‘How was the cop?’
‘Blind. Both eyes. And apparently he went a little nuts. I suppose you would.’
‘My word,’ he says, distracted. He’s been polishing that glass right through my story. But not because I’m a spellbinding storyteller.
‘Didn’t this Tomlinson bloke go to jail?’
‘Sure. He got eight years. But this all happened a long time ago. He’s back out again.’
It’s been fifteen minutes since Tomlinson left the Fountainhead. He’d have reached Victoria Parade by now.
‘A lot of criminals act like they’re crazy,’ I say, getting ready to ask the obvious question. Properly this time. ‘Then it turns out they’re just ordinary people, only they want you to think they’re crazy. But Spack Attack Tomlinson is the real deal. A genuine maniac.’
The barman’s wrinkled brow furrows deeper.
I watch him now, with his big happy shirt and his big friendly nose. This big man with his big pores, he’s wiping the same glass like he’ll get three wishes if he does that for long enough. I bet I know what one of those wishes would be.
I say, ‘So?’ And rest my face on my hand, propped on the bar.
He looks up from the floor, glares back. ‘What?’
I have to raise my head from my hand to speak. ‘Why did you give him the wrong directions to the Boatswain’s Club?’
‘Hey?’
‘You sent him to the Blue Fandango.’
‘No.’ He shakes his head urgently, laughs. ‘I didn’t.’
‘The Boatswain’s Club is on Elizabeth Street, not Locust Lane.’
He laughs again, shakes his head. Shrugs, shakes his head again, shrugs again. ‘That’s what I told him. I told him Elizabeth—’
‘You sent him to the Blue Fandango. A bondage club. A bondage club that’s got a sign right there on the street that says: No Women, No Straight Men.’
‘No…’
‘All right,’ I grunt. My elbow slips off the bar and I sit up a little straighter. ‘But when Tomlinson comes back and stabs you in the neck with that umbrella of his, don’t go telling me then you didn’t—’
‘I used to work at the Boatswain’s Club,’ he blurts, gripping the wooden edge of the counter, staring at it.
That cuts my annoyance short.
He’s finally stopped polishing that clean, clean glass. He says, ‘It’s one of those pretentious joints, right? Like when you buy a pack of cigarettes and the bartender opens them for you and pulls one out of the pack. I was always shit at sucking up to patrons…I hated it. And they sacked me. Some teenager with big tits got my job and now I’m stuck pouring drinks in this shithole.’
A car horn bleats right outside and a pained voice responds, ‘Fuck off.’
The barman doesn’t seem to hear them. He says, ‘People come in here all the time looking for the Boatswain’s Club, but I send them to that faggot bar instead because…Just to get my own back, you know?’
His words hang there, glued to the air around us.
He says, ‘I guess I’ve made a mistake.’
‘My word,’ I say.
I take another sip, then another small one, and I shake my head, try to change gear.
‘It’s no big deal. He’ll get lost in the rain. Someone will give him directions. He’ll find his way to the Boatswain’s Club.’
The bartender nods, trying to believe it. His tongue works back and forth across his bottom lip, seeking reassurance. He says, ‘Maybe he isn’t that crazy anymore.’
‘Maybe not.’
He waves the glass in the air as he speaks. ‘Maybe prison sorted him out. Maybe he got treatment. He looked good, yeah? Well dressed. Maybe he’s a normal person now.’
‘Sure,’ I say.
‘Like you said, all that…that stuff…’ And he points at me. ‘That was a long time ago, right?’ But even as he speaks, his eyes skip over to the door, wondering if it’s about to open.
I say, ‘A long time ago. Yes.’
He nods, satisfied, then turns to shelve that glass with the rest. He reaches it up to the wooden mantel above the register.
The girl over in the dining area laughs, a shrill giggle, not that loud—but it’s enough to make the bartender flinch and he drops the glass.
It smashes on the floor.
For a moment he doesn’t move, paralysed but still standing. Then he lowers his hands to his knees and he stays like that for several moments.
The rain isn’t getting any lighter. If anything it’s more intense. The noise of the street is like a meteor approaching.
I finish the last of my drink. ‘I can go find him for you.’
At first he doesn’t respond, still bent over like there’s something on the floor that’s more interesting.
Then, softly, he says, ‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘What will you do if you find him?’
‘Spin him a line. Get him to the Boatswain’s Club. Make sure he forgets all about you.’
Slowly, he straightens up and rests himself on the bar. ‘You can do that?’
Not being able to hadn’t occurred to me. I say, ‘Yes.’
‘You’d do that for me?’
I try not to smirk. ‘I’ll do it for that bottle of Old Forester up there on your top shelf.’ I point.
He turns to look. When he turns back he’s thinking. ‘Will you find him in time?’
‘That red umb
rella of his should stand out well enough.’
The barman tries to see through to my deeper layers. ‘How do I know you’ll really do it? How do I know you won’t just take the bottle and go home?’
I lean forward on the bar. ‘I’ve got a better one. How do you know the story I told you is even true? Perhaps I made it up to shake a bottle of whiskey out of you and I’ve never seen that guy before and I don’t even know his name.’
‘Is that what this is? Are you having me on?’
‘Nope.’
He sifts through it all in his head—the clock, the Old Forester on the shelf, the half-drunk stranger who, as it turns out, isn’t the one having the bad day. Then the tension evaporates, and there’s nothing in his eyes but cool acceptance.
He goes back to the shelf and, tiptoeing briefly, brings down a bottle of Old Forester whiskey. I’m trying to show him my disapproval, but again he can’t interpret it, so I tell him, ‘The sealed bottle.’
I can imagine he wouldn’t last long at the Boatswain’s Club. He’s a man who doesn’t like to be at a disadvantage. Now, as he swaps the half-empty bottle for the full one, he exhales, gentle and long, like I’m testing his patience. Like this is the last favour he does for me and I should stop asking.
Before he offers me the bottle he says, ‘You are going to find him, right?’
The bell rings, and the fear is back in his face. His eyes bug out at the door like it’s a horde of Indians come to ransack the camp. But it’s two businessmen fresh from the office, dripping wet. They trot to the counter and one of them says, ‘Two Johnnies, rocks.’
I yank the bottle from the bartender’s grip, don’t say anything. I feel his eyes on my back as I reach the door.
The man says, ‘Hey barman, two Johnnies, on the rocks, please.’
As I step out into the rain, I hear him say, ‘Hey barman, why the long face?’
Leaving the Fountainhead, I hear the two men laugh.
TROY
1
APART FROM THE chains and the dumbbells and stripped-back style of a prison rec room, the first thing you notice is the mirrors. They cover each of the walls, all of each wall and the ceiling, so you’d have to lie face down on the floor if you didn’t want to look at yourself.
Not that these guys have that problem.
The mirrors multiply everything a thousand times over. When I first step in the door I don’t see three topless men lifting weights and bulking up, I see a whole army doing that, reflected dimly against the makeshift gymnasium, all of them focused hard on what part of their body they’re making bigger.
So focused that they don’t see me. This is a big shed at the end of George’s driveway, and George didn’t invite me here tonight, so we’ll probably get off to a bad start, me and these beefcakes, if only one of them will take their attention off themselves for a moment. They grunt and sometimes yelp with exertion, then smack the weights down with a metallic thunk. Everywhere is the stink of sweat and supermarket baby oil and there’s eurotrash house music playing softly on a small tape deck. They could play it a whole lot louder if they wanted to—it’s not like George’s neighbours are going to come and complain.
Jimmy, the one with the thickest neck, is the first to see me. He’s working his forearms, kneeling at a wooden bench with two massive black dumbbells, when he catches one of my reflections. Even when he sees me, his face full of angry suffering, the one like he’s passing a kidney stone, he doesn’t seem to care. He’s got a good burn going. He doesn’t stop his reps or his sets.
Ross is a white man who wants to be Greek. He swings his leg back and forth from a metal frame, raising and lowering an impossible stack of black tiles using a cable that’s hooked around his ankle. Each one of these weightlifters wears a loose-fitting singlet, tiny, tight shorts and sandals, but Ross’s pale skin doesn’t set off the outfit like the olive brawn of his companions. When Ross sees me, he does a double-take and blurts a cry of disapproval.
‘Oi!’
George looks up from where he’s changing weights on the bench press. There’s no recognition, just a startled kind of curiosity at how a stranger could so brazenly wander onto his property. He opens those black eyes wide, waiting for me to say who I am. I don’t.
So George says, ‘Who the fuck are you?’
George took up bodybuilding at high school because the other kids used to tease him. Also because he was scrawny and hairless and hated himself. Only, you start pumping weights at a young age and all that protein that should be making you taller is instead making your pectorals bulge out in big circles. And look at the result: George is only four and a half feet tall.
Jimmy lets out a roar and drops the dumbbells. They thud against each other on the padded mat beneath him. His eyes roll back in his head, then his head rolls forward, his arms outstretched on the wooden bench like he’s worshipping the nearby rowing machine.
‘This is a nice set-up you’ve got, George. Good and big,’ I say, smiling the best I can. ‘Do with a few more mirrors, though…’
‘I think you might be in the wrong place, mate.’ George says this loud. Thin lips sneer unpleasantly, lined by dark fluff that’s the fashion in Greek nightclubs, and this seems to be the only place on his body he’s willing to grow hair. Everywhere else, including the top of his head, is waxed and shiny.
I say, ‘No, George. I’m looking for some black.’
This rouses Jimmy from his stretching. He’s just as built as George, with a golden hue, even under these ticking fluoros, that might be a spray tan. I’ve spoken a magic word. Suddenly I have his attention.
Ross’s eyes flick to George. George offers nothing. He stares into me. The music has stopped and in the silence the sweet chirp of suburban crickets trickles in from the night outside.
Slowly, George steps over the bench press and approaches, swinging his arms out from his body like his muscles are just too damn big. He stops well out of reach, giving me the look: confusion tinged with a distant sense of relish because I might be someone he can get angry at. The leather weight belt that’s tight around his waist emphasises his triangular frame, but his height invites comparisons not with the winners of bodybuilding contests, but with the trophies those winners take home.
Before I can properly formulate the wisecrack, George says, ‘I think you definitely got the wrong place, mate. We don’t got none of that shit.’
‘I heard you do.’
‘From who?’ He juts his chin at me. ‘Who says?’
‘Everybody says, don’t they?’
Spend any time around bodybuilders and you’ll hear about blaxitarine, dubbed black, a superhormone designed to grow the cells in your muscles and bones and to do it faster than any other anabolic steroid. Nastier, too.
It used to be that the side effects of steroid abuse were innocent enough: acne, infertility, premature baldness. But the way a mean-spirited cartoonist would draw you arguing with the supermarket cashier, that’s you when you’re on black.
If you were buried in a mineshaft and your only hope was to punch your way out, black could help you do it.
If you had to fight off a zombie invasion all by yourself, black might be just the charge you need.
Or you could end up like the guy in California, who levelled his neighbour’s home, a whole weatherboard house, using just a baseball bat.
‘You better fuck off, mate,’ George says. His eyes are bugging out at me like he’s using voodoo. ‘We don’t want no skip cunts in here.’
I point to Ross. ‘What about that skip cunt?’
Ross flinches at my words, but a smile draws across his chin. He’s excited too, I suppose, because I’m asking for it. With his eyebrows raised he takes two steps towards me and intends to take more but he’s forgotten his ankle is still chained to the machine and he goes down hard on one knee.
George doesn’t take his eyes off me. He whispers slowly, ‘What did you fucking say?’
Ross unhooks the chain and rises quickly to
his feet, humiliation radiating from his round face.
I say to George, ‘I think he heard me.’
The energy in George is building. He scans me from my feet to my head, searching for a reason not to decapitate me with a single punch.
‘You a pig?’ He laughs like he’s figured it out. ‘You’re a pig, hey…’
‘I’m not a pig. I’m just an ordinary bloke looking to improve his muscle tone.’
Black is the only substance they test for at the International Federation of Bodybuilders. Not because it’s dangerous. They just got tired of competitors stepping up on stage with blood pouring out of their nose. That’s another side effect—the membrane in your nose breaks open when your heartbeat speeds up.
Ross is two feet taller than George. I can tell because he’s standing next to George now, cross-armed and vacant even as he’s concentrating. Jimmy’s watching, chewing on his bottom lip like it’s gum. Ross is an orphan who never had anyone to look up to until he met George, but all I could find out about Jimmy is that he owns the ‘73 Charger parked outside in the driveway and he loves it like a son. He doesn’t let people wear shoes when they’re inside it.
‘Shit,’ says George, grinning. His teeth have been straightened since the last time I saw him. ‘You don’t need black, mate. You need a good diet, you know? Lots of amino acids and that. Don’t they teach you nothing at police school?’
He laughs, turns to Ross and Jimmy, who laugh in turn. It’s an outlet for the energy pulsing through the veins in their foreheads, in the reds of their eyes.
I say, ‘Why don’t you shut your wog mouth and get me the black.’
I’ve never called anyone a wog before. It’s kind of thrilling.
Another story going around is, a guy on black drew a picture of his wife on a concrete wall and bashed it until his arms were bloody stumps.
Subtly, Ross hops from foot to foot with excitement. ‘Awww, mate.’
He speaks like a Greek, with George’s same rhythms and drones. George is still glaring at me, chomping down on his lower lip just like Jimmy, trying to figure me out. He takes another step closer.
