Comfort Zone

by Lindsay Tanner

  Jack looked along Albion Street and saw a tall, erect figure heading at a brisk pace towards them. He was more than a hundred metres away, but Jack recognised him. It was Jeffrey.

  ‘Fuck! We can’t go up there! It’s the ASIO bloke. He’s after me!’

  ‘What the …’

  Now the roles were reversed. Jack grabbed Matt’s arm and turned back towards Lygon Street. He hustled Matt across to the other side of Albion Street, hoping to get out of Jeffrey’s line of sight.

  ‘Come on! Got to get out of here! Hey, there’s a tram coming. Let’s grab it!’

  Now Jack was the source of the magnetic force. As they reached the kerb, the doors of the tram started to close, and impatient drivers next to the tram started inching forward in anticipation. With a supreme effort, Jack hurled himself at the rear door, and squeezed his right arm and shoulder through the doorway. The door sprang back open, he tumbled inside, and Matt followed him in. They both collapsed onto empty seats, completely exhausted. Much to Jack’s relief, the tram was almost empty. They had the rear section to themselves.

  ‘What was all that about?’ Matt asked.

  ‘I was going to ask you the same thing,’ Jack protested, panting loudly as the initial tickle and dribble of hayfever crept through his sinuses.

  Matt stood up and moved right to the end of the tram.

  ‘Shit! He’s there! Following us!’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Karl. In a purple Commodore. Three cars back. He’s seen us!’

  Jack stood up.

  ‘Don’t look! Don’t look!’ Matt slumped back onto one of the seats, hunching his head deep into his shoulders and stretching his legs out in front of him. His face was red and twitchy. The urbane, unflappable facade was slipping.

  Jack also did his best to disappear into his seat. His height made this difficult, so he tried to align himself with the pillar at the end of the tram to create some cover.

  ‘What’ll we do now?’ he asked Matt. He feared that Jeffrey was also following them. ‘Why doesn’t he just dump the car and hop on and grab us?’

  ‘Because there’s more than one door. Might lose us, and then he wouldn’t have the car any more. By the time he’s back in it, we’re gone.’ Matt was thinking clearly again.

  ‘So what’s going on?’

  ‘Like I told you, I owe them. And I can’t pay. Not yet anyway. So they’re coming after me.’

  ‘I thought we’d fixed that, at least for a few days.’

  Matt looked at him with an odd expression, scepticism and incomprehension spreading across his face.

  Jack explained his arrangement with Rowan. He didn’t mention the demand that he act as a drug courier. If the dealer was still chasing Matt with violent intent, surely that meant all bets were off?

  ‘Not that Rowan’s reliable.’

  ‘Thanks for trying, anyway.’ Matt sounded grateful.

  ‘So what now?’

  ‘I don’t know. Get off in the city? Hop down one of the lanes or something? Could always go into my work. Can’t follow us there.’

  ‘There’s a thought,’ Jack said, tossing his head back and flashing a sardonic grin. ‘You turn up in wankerland with a scruffy cabbie being chased by a drug dealer. Makes sense to me.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, suppose you’re right. So let’s get off in the city. Probably better split up.’

  ‘Still there?’

  Jack checked again.

  ‘Hard to tell. Big white van’s in the way.’

  An uneasy silence descended as the tram trundled down Swanston Street towards Queensberry Street, having collected a few more passengers outside the university. Two men in drab outfits got on at Queensberry Street, and walked along the length of the tram as it pulled away from the stop.

  Jack and Matt were too focused on the threat to their rear to realise what was happening. The two men spoke to each passenger in turn, and then reached the rear section of the tram.

  ‘Can we see your tickets, please?’

  ‘Oh … er … sorry, got on in a hurry, bit of a fuck-up … ’ Jack mumbled in reply.

  Matt stood up, flaunting his Zegna suit, gold cufflinks, and silk tie at them.

  ‘Sorry guys, can we pay it on the spot? This do?’ He extended his hand towards the closer of the two men, with two fifty-dollar notes very visible within it. The inspector looked at his colleague.

  They were interrupted by the tram coming to a shuddering halt at Victoria Street, prompting a good deal of lurching and stumbling. For once, Jack didn’t curse cowboy tram drivers.

  The doors opened, and a young woman in a lurid red-and-yellow top and bright-orange leggings flounced up the rear steps straight into the midst of the four of them as they were recovering their balance.

  ‘You dickheads again? Don’t you ever knock off? Why don’t you stop picking on people …’

  Waving her arms and abusing them, she stepped between the two inspectors and grabbed one of them by the arm. Then they were all distracted by a loud bang: one of the other passengers had dropped a heavy bag.

  With rat cunning honed by years of taxidriving, Jack pushed the woman hard in the small of her back, so she crashed right into the ticket inspectors.

  ‘Come on!’ he yelled at Matt. Matt reacted with admirable speed, and as the inspectors fought to extricate themselves from the woman’s arms and legs, they leapt down the steps and off the tram.

  Jack and Matt hit the ground running. There were no cars to dodge this time, so they ran straight across to the footpath and up Victoria Street. They were running uphill, which Jack didn’t appreciate, but it seemed like their only option. The sinister Karl could still be lurking nearby, and who knew where Robert Jeffrey was?

  Matt ran hard up the hill, his arms pumping rhythmically in an easy, fluid motion. Jack tried to keep up, but kept drifting back into a hobbling, stumbling jog. He knew he wouldn’t be able to keep it up for much longer.

  It was a calm, pleasant night, framed by occasional bursts of light, misty rain and the subtle fragrance of early spring. The absence of wind was at least something: like most late-middle-aged men, Jack didn’t do much running. And he couldn’t remember the last time he’d run uphill.

  As they neared the Cardigan Street intersection, passing several grey, unlit office buildings, Jack noticed a large crowd of people loitering on the footpath at the corner.

  ‘Matt! Matt!’ he gasped at his fellow fugitive, who was about to reach the edge of the crowd, about ten metres ahead of him. ‘Mingle in, go in!’

  Matt slowed to a walk and began to wriggle his way into the throng. Jack followed him, wheezing loudly as he walked. He could feel his hayfever awakening.

  ‘Sorry, folks, excuse me! Sorry, late again. Whoops, sorry, never mind.’ Matt eased his way into the heart of the crowd with irresistible charm.

  In spite of the street lighting, it was relatively dark, which would make it hard for anyone to identify them. It also gave them some chance of disguising the fact that they both looked out of place. Matt was from the right age-group, but he looked very over-dressed in his expensive suit amongst a group of people in smart-casual wear. Jack just looked old and daggy.

  They worked their way around the corner and a little way along Cardigan Street, and came to a halt at the side of the building that occupied the corner.

  Jack was still panting, as hayfever symptoms now clogged his sinuses. He bent over and rested his hands on his knees. Matt also took the opportunity to catch his breath, though he was in better shape than Jack.

  ‘What now?’ Matt asked.

  ‘Can’t we …’ Jack’s reply was drowned out by a deafening roar that emanated from a spot immediately behind their heads. They jumped in fright and turned around. Jack’s insides rattled.

  The roar had come from a very tall Count Dracula, sporting a black ca
pe, with blood dripping from protruding teeth. He was standing right behind them on a step in a doorway they hadn’t noticed.

  Jack and Matt weren’t the only ones who were shocked into momentary silence. Then, to a chorus of shrieks, giggles, and shouts, Count Dracula announced in an oily baritone: ‘Welcome to my castle, victims. Please pass this way into the torture chamber.’

  Jack looked up and saw a lurid red-and-purple sign that read ‘Dracula’s’. Now he knew where they were. Dracula’s was one of Melbourne’s most durable theatre restaurants, a place for young suburbanites to enjoy a night out with a difference. Once or twice when he had been doing an afternoon shift, he had dropped a cab-load of raucous young women there. Short skirts, plunging necklines, too much make-up, and a few sav blancs in them already, they were primed for a big night out.

  He’d never been inside Dracula’s, and he wasn’t attracted to the people who had, but he was very grateful for this opportunity to check it out. At least he would be surrounded by fake demons rather than real ones.

  As the crowd began milling around the entrance, he whispered to Matt: ‘Better go in.’

  ‘What about tickets?’

  ‘I don’t mean sit back and enjoy the fucking show!’ Jack hissed back with an exasperated look. ‘Just lie low for a bit.’

  The growing crush added weight to his argument. Doing anything else other than going in would have been difficult. So they dribbled in with the rest of the crowd, trying to look inconspicuous.

  It wasn’t easy to see inside, as the only lighting was some kind of purple fluorescent lamp. Jack and Matt swam with the tide of the crowd along a corridor decorated with ghastly torture implements, and came to a large, open room full of tables and chairs, lots of dark curtains, and more blood-curdling decorations. It was all rather high camp, but Jack wasn’t paying much attention to the decor.

  ‘Let’s hang here — wait till they’re all in,’ he whispered to Matt.

  There was no sign of Count Dracula. Jack couldn’t make out any staff in the crowd, but he was sure they were there somewhere.

  It took ten minutes for the crowd to filter into the main room. Some sat down straight away, while others stood around talking and laughing. As Jack’s eyes adjusted to the gloomy lighting, he observed a couple of staff members in outlandish costumes walking around urging people to be seated.

  They found themselves on the edge of a group of about eight or nine people, most of them female. The women were all wearing high heels and short skirts, and seemed to have their hair on special display. The men were much less noticeable, apart from very garish ties. They were all making a lot of noise, and appeared to be quite drunk, so they didn’t notice Matt and Jack.

  ‘Thommo! Thommo!’ one of the women screeched across the group to a man who was wrestling playfully with another man next to him. ‘What’d you do with my smokes?’ Her cries disappeared in the general confusion.

  ‘… that stupid bitch in Accounts …’

  ‘… nearly two hundred just to get my hair done …’

  ‘… they’re fucking hopeless, mate …’

  And so the inane chatter of the big night out continued.

  Across the room, others were now starting to take their seats. Matt and Jack looked at each other, and then sat down on the outside of the nearest table. They could see the rest of the room from where they were sitting, and they had their backs to the wall. Jack couldn’t see any sign of the people they were running from — although he didn’t really know what Karl looked like, so he wasn’t absolutely certain. It was very hard to see people on the other side of the room, but he reasoned that this also meant that anyone over there wouldn’t be able to spot them either.

  ‘That bloke in here?’ he whispered to Matt as soon as they had sat down.

  ‘No, don’t think so.’

  Their new friends still hadn’t noticed that their group now had a couple of ring-ins. The drunken banter continued.

  ‘Rowie! I’m never listening to you again …’

  ‘Do you see the guy in the Dracula gear? I tell you, it’s that guy Geoff — you know, the one from Marketing. Swear it’s him …’

  ‘Have another drink, Johnno …’

  ‘Fuckin’ is! Bet you!’

  ‘Hey! Where’s my seat? Find us some more seats, will you?’

  It didn’t take them long to work out why there was a shortage of seats.

  ‘Hey, who are these guys? They come with you, Lisa? Hey, mate, this table’s reserved.’

  A woman in a shiny gold dress who was at serious risk of exposing her breasts with any unusual movement stumbled against a chair leg as she moved around the edge of the table, and half fell onto Jack.

  ‘Shit! Sorry, mate, ignore him, he’s a dickhead.’

  She steadied herself against the table with her left hand, and reached up automatically to protect her neckline.

  ‘Tracie! You fell on the wrong one! Other one’s a lot cuter!’ This salvo was greeted with much giggling and guffawing.

  As Tracie endeavoured to right herself, Jack raised his left arm in an instinctive gesture to protect himself. At just the wrong moment, she slipped again and lurched forward. Jack’s wrist brushed against the exposed part of her breast.

  ‘Hey! Enough of the groping, dickhead!’

  ‘I wasn’t … she … hey!’ With a speed that belied his drunken state, one of the men reached over and grabbed Jack’s shirt collar, jerking his head and upper body sideways.

  Jack wrenched his head away and grabbed his assailant’s wrist. As things were about to get right out of hand, Matt intervened.

  ‘Hey! Cool it! Leave it — we got other things to worry about.’

  Jack froze, and then, right at the worst possible moment, exploded into an enormous sneeze. The tension dissipated and he released his grip. He stood up slowly, raising his arms in the universal gesture of non-belligerence.

  ‘Er … sorry. Must be in the wrong spot,’ he mumbled at the two men hovering next to him.

  ‘Yeah, mate, table’s reserved.’ His accuser tried to sound menacing, but he took note of the fact that Jack was about six inches taller than him, and decided to claim victory and let the matter rest. He’d made a sufficient effort to protect Tracie’s honour.

  Matt stood up, looked at Jack, and prodded him into action. ‘Let’s go!’ He grabbed Jack’s arm, and they squeezed through the crowd around the table, and edged their way back towards the entrance to the room. It wasn’t easy: they stumbled, tripped, and shoved their way past several groups of excited, noisy party-goers, and eventually found the spot where they had come in.

  As they stepped into the dark passage, a staff member dressed as the Grim Reaper noticed them.

  ‘Hey! Can’t go down there! Sorry.’

  Matt turned to face him.

  ‘Mate’s crook! Got to get him out of here! Gets claustrophobia, has fits, throws up, all that sort of stuff. Think he’s an epileptic or something …’

  The Grim Reaper didn’t query this implausible array of symptoms.

  ‘Er, okay. This way.’

  ‘Thanks, mate, sorry. Happened once or twice before. Just can’t hack it, I guess.’

  Jack did his best to look ill. He was in awe of Matt’s improvisation abilities.

  The Reaper hustled them into another, narrower passage they hadn’t previously noticed, as its entrance was partly obscured by a suit of armour.

  In a matter of seconds, they were outside, breathing fresher air and standing on an uneven cobblestone slope next to a small carpark.

  ‘You’ll have to come back through the main …’ The Grim Reaper was very solicitous.

  ‘No worries, mate, better get him home.’ Jack marvelled at Matt’s ability to take charge in moments of crisis. He was able to draw on some hidden aura of authority that ensured people would do what he wanted.<
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  He was feeling the effects of the last half-hour’s efforts, so it was easy to simulate symptoms for the benefit of the Grim Reaper. He bent over and generated a convincing coughing and retching fit. The Reaper turned and walked back through the doorway, and the heavy door slammed shut behind him with a loud bang.

  ‘Shit, that was close,’ Jack said, as he took in their new surroundings.

  ‘Yeah, narrow escape from suffocation by glo-mesh and cheap perfume!’

  ‘What now?’

  ‘Who knows? Better check for signs of the baddies.’

  ‘What about the tram goons?’

  ‘Long gone, I’d say. Might see them again if we get a tram back.’

  Jack walked around the corner of the building and poked his head out into Cardigan Street, looking so obvious that it defeated the purpose. There was no sign of the purple Commodore, Jeffrey, or the ticket inspectors.

  ‘Karl would’ve seen us get off the tram, so he knows we’re around here somewhere. Better lie low for a while,’ Matt said.

  Jack was still breathing faster than usual, and his slight wheeze was faintly audible in the still night air. He leant against the wall and put his hands in his pockets. He rummaged around until he found his cigarettes and lighter, and took a deep draught of the fresh, rain-washed air that offered a welcome respite from the cloying atmosphere they had just escaped.

  ‘Want one?’

  ‘No, thanks. Not keen on dying just yet.’

  ‘Funny. Haven’t killed me.’ Jack hated anti-smoking zealots, and could be relied upon to bite hard whenever anyone chipped him about his smoking.

  Matt ignored him. ‘So where’ll we go?’

  ‘There’s a pool room across the road I know. Your guy’d never find it unless he’s a regular. Run by the bloke who used to run Matt’s Blue Room in Nicholson Street.’

  Matt had clearly never heard of Matt’s Blue Room, but that didn’t matter.

  ‘Sounds good.’ He stood there for a few moments, looking at Jack, then asked: ‘Hey, how come you say your name van Doon?’

  ‘What in the fuck’s that got to do with anything?’ We’re on the run from drug enforcers, spies, ticket inspectors, and God only knows who else, and this guy’s worried about how my name’s pronounced, Jack thought.