Here Come the Dogs (10 page)

16

Her skin is frost –

She bites my bottom lip gently

and soon there's warmth.

We are trying to get a hold with our eyes,

but each of us is slippery with shadow.

I've ended up at Jimmy's house somehow,

but he's not here.

She moves her hands upwards

and bunches her hair with them,

then bites me,

She says ‘Solomon'

and I say ‘Scarlett',

at exactly the same time.

My breathing rights

and I turn away,

waiting for something

that this time,

The moon outside

We have sex again

and this time our skin stays cold,

and after several minutes,

She leaves soon after,

but I can still feel her eyes on me,

as if she is watching me

I head fake an imaginary defender,

spin down the sideline

and launch the ball from deep.

I didn't judge the angle properly,

so the ball hits the side of the backboard

and comes straight back to me.

The whole backboard shudders.

Who is Scarlett?

What is this?

Mercury is chasing something

down near the train tracks.

More noise complaints Mum reckons.

The kid's there again,

back against the fence.

He's not smiling this time,

just watching,

I ignore him,

and practise a Dirk Nowitzki fadeaway,

one-footed,

kicking out with the other for better balance,

narrating my moves in my head.

A train clacks past

and I make sure to put on

a little show for the passengers,

launching the ball from deep.

Splash.

I reach down and pinch my ankle.

The scar tissue is still thick.

I grimace,

remembering the gruesome surgery,

not being able to walk,

the constant pain.

A text from Georgie –

Delete.

Bounce, bounce.

Forty minutes later,

the boy is still there.

I sigh,

pass the ball to him

and he jumps up.

He starts shooting,

sometimes hitting the backboard,

His shot is flat and has no arc.

He's clumsy but springylean –

a bit of strength

for someone his age.

I take the ball and wordlessly show him

how to hold it,

the straight extension of the arm,

He nods and I pass the ball back.

He nails the next shot.

Finally I talk to him.

His name is Toby.

17

Aleks is early. He likes to be early.

He's in the carpark of Macca's, eating chicken nuggets, waving at little bush flies with his spare hand. He dips the nuggets in barbecue sauce and feeds them into the side of his mouth, chewing slowly. Then a cheeseburger and large fries. On the radio, a man with a nasal voice is talking about a new pop song.
Why do Aussie radio DJs always have the most bogan names?
he wonders. ‘G'day, listeners! It's Midday Madness with Kelly and Simmo on 103.7.' Aleks changes station and finds himself nodding along to a shock jock. He sips his Coke down to the ice. In front of him is a hedge blooming with wrappers and crushed cups. Beyond that, shimmering in the heat, is outer suburbia, that great maze of hidden monsters and freaks.

Some petrolheads are hanging out on the bonnet of a Supra, incongruously eating soft-serve cones, their biceps weighty but ineffective machinery. They all wear black singlets, snap-pants and gold chains, a baseline bleeding from the boot. One throws French Fries to pigeons. Another throws rocks to frighten them away.

Aleks rolls the blue bead between forefinger and thumb.

Wil turns up and climbs into Aleks' passenger seat. He's a well-built Fijian lad with a red kiss tattooed on his neck, just above his ex-girlfriend's
name. Dumb cunt. He's got a new tattoo on the other side, the postcode of the Town, crusty and flaking. He's a big boy, obsessed with MMA, but Aleks knows that he lacks balls. If it came down to it, this motherfucker would wilt like baby spinach in hot butter. Between mouthfuls of a burger, he talks about his newborn, also called Will, but the extra ‘L' is crucial. Wil's real name is Wilfred – something he is deeply embarrassed about and tries to keep a secret. Aleks only knows cos he once saw his passport. He wonders if Wil can speak Fijian and why he didn't call his baby something completely different if he hates his own name so much. He concludes that people are mysteries.

‘She's driving me crazy, bro, seriously. Wants this, wants that. New clothes, perfumes. You're farkin kidding me! Sending me bankrupt.' Wilfred spits out a pickle in disgust.

‘Ah, you gotta give it to em sometimes, brother. Show em you care, you know? Love is one and the same as loyalty,' says Aleks. The unspoken corollary is that it must be proved, again and again, through gifts, vocal affirmation, extreme violence.

‘Yeah, but I've got this new place now, ay? Landlord is a cocksucker, bro, I'm telling ya. Nice bloke, but a cocksucker. Puts the rent up all the time, bro. You're farkin kidding me.' He keeps talking and Aleks fades out. He's thinking about Sonya, at home, catatonic from Xanax. He wishes he could tell the boys, but has too much pride for that. Her problem had started long ago, when she had given birth to Mila. She suffered from severe post-natal depression, and hadn't been the same since. Maybe he should ask a woman what to do. But who? He doesn't know that many, besides the ones in his family, and he doesn't want them to know either. No, a long holiday would give her time to recover, get back to how she used to be.

Wil is now talking about a new video game. Aleks has never liked video games or computers. For nerds and fat cunts, he reckons. Better to be outdoors. And violence on a screen could never equate to the real thing. Wil is gesticulating expansively and is wearing a childish grin. Aleks decides that he might be soft, but he is good-hearted. Dumb and good-hearted – a terrible combo.

A white guy, Dave, pulls up next to them in a Holden driven by another man. Dave has the lean look of a starving mongrel, and when he smiles, it's sardonic and without kindness. Yellow teeth, oily skin, no sense of loyalty, no honour, no culture – Aleks can't stand him, thinks he is trash. Aleks can tell that Dave is thinking exactly the same about Aleks, that he is unworthy of Australia, a stain that can't be removed, a necessary evil.
At least the cunt fears me,
thinks Aleks.

Aleks and Wil climb into Dave's car. The driver is Dave's brother, a good-looking white boy, who says nothing. Wil talks the whole time, still munching a burger, spraying flecks of cheese and meat patty everywhere. Aleks cringes when Kelly and Simmo introduce a new song on the radio. In the song, a man sings about meeting the woman of his dreams, then losing her in unexplained circumstances. He sings of searching the earth for her but never finding her, only signs of her presence: in shopfronts, in clouds, in trees.

The men arrive at the house. It has a simple facade, paint peeling, fibreglass roof. There's a tyre swing, an oleander bush, some broken gnomes and an old hose in the front yard. The door is unlocked and they enter without knocking.

It's filthy inside. The floor is hard to see beneath the food wrappers and pizza boxes, bottles and chicken bones. A half-dismantled Harley Davidson sits in one corner, surrounded by parts. Two small children are sitting on the floor, stupefied. They barely look up when the door opens, and Aleks can smell them from the doorway. A man is lying on the couch and starts when he sees the men enter. He has long black hair and a sweaty singlet.

Aleks speaks in a low voice. ‘Mark?'

The man nods. Aleks gestures to the kitchen table. On it is a CB radio tuned to the police channel, and a photo of a handsome, suited man in front of Big Ben. It looks out of place. ‘Come here, brother. Sit down.'

The man stands up but doesn't walk straight to the table. He goes to the sink and takes a long drink of water from the tap. It goes all over his unshaven chin. He wipes his mouth and then sits down. Wil and Dave
stand behind him. From the CB radio they hear a low and steady stream of male voices. Aleks switches it off and the only sound now is a weak fan and cicadas outside. He picks up the photo and realises the well-dressed man is Mark. ‘You know who I am, brother?'

The man nods. Aleks continues. ‘Look, I don't know what you done. But I got two jobs to do. Number one. The man who sent me wants his cash, understand?'

‘. . .'

‘Speak up, brother.'

Mark is unseasonably pale and the sweat shines on his Adam's apple. He clears his throat and when he speaks again sounds surprisingly posh. ‘I told him last time. I don't have it right now.'

Aleks shakes his head. ‘I'm not messing around this time, brother.'

Mark looks away, then mumbles, ‘In the laundry. Linen closet.'

Dave leaves the room. Aleks leans close and there's sweat on his forehead too. He smiles, ignoring the stench of the man's breath. ‘Number two. How do I say this? The man who sent me can't have scoundrels like you running around saying they played him for a fool, understand? So there's a couple ways of doing this. Either you can carry on, make a scene, and there'll be a lot of blood – it'll be messy. Or you comply, all right? We'll bandage you up nice and tight, cut off the blood flow. It won't hurt a bit. You can take it to emergency and they'll sew it right back on. No problems.'

The man looks at his children on the floor, as if they might provide an excuse or answer. They look like twins, perhaps four years old.

Mark looks back to Aleks, as if seeing him for the first time. ‘You gonna do this in front of my kids? Mr Janeski, it's no good for them to see their father —'

‘
Father
?' Aleks' voice suddenly loud. The children look up. ‘Father? Frying yourself up on a glass barbecue all day. Look at yourself. Look at them. Haven't eaten in days by the looks of things. Half high off the fucken secondhand ice smoke. And you're handling fifty large. Fifty thousand bucks and your own kids are starving. You fucken
disgust me,
mate.'

However, Aleks nods to Wil, who ushers the children into another room. For a few moments, there is only the sound of the fan and cicadas, before Wil returns. Aleks feels like a cigarette but smiles benignly and speaks to Mark in a low voice. ‘This is the way it starts again for you, brother. Give and take, give and take. That's what the world's about right there.' He suppresses a cough. ‘I once knew a man who was a soldier. He had two kids, just like yours. And just like yours, these kids had never done sin, never even thought it. Their father went for a walk to the market one day and when he was gone, another soldier came to their door. But this soldier, he was from the army their father was fighting against. He was starving, wounded, begging for water. These children led him into the house, gave him bread, drink. They let him sleep. As he did, they tied up his hands. When the soldier woke up, they're sitting there, watching him. At first he was confused, like what the fuck's goin on? But soon, he's full of poison, brother. He spat at them, cursed their country with every name under the sun, cursed the diseased cunt they were born out of, called their mother a whore, a Jezebel . . . Those children, they'd killed him by the time the sun went down and their father returned. The point? There is no point, brother. It's just a story.' He smiles for a moment but then his face becomes grim. He wants to ask the man how the fuck he got in this situation, how he had squandered all of his opportunities, but instead he says, ‘So, brother. You're gonna co-operate, aren't ya?'

Mark looks out the window. Then he slowly places his hand on the table, smiling as if he's merely playing along with a prank.

‘Good boy,' says Aleks.

Wil pulls out a length of rope and tourniquets Mark's arm tightly from the wrist, winding it up and out so that the hand is almost white and bloodless. Wil hands Aleks a cleaver. The type they cut up smoked ducks with in Chinatown. Aleks holds it to the light and looks at both sides, then inexplicably, sniffs the metal. It's sharp enough to shave with. Dave comes back into the room, holding a bag. Wil holds Mark in the chair now, as he's started to struggle, realising that the situation is real, and Dave seizes the bound arm and holds it on the table. Mark's eyes are
wild, looking from Aleks to his hand to the door of the room where his children are. The door like a blank piece of paper.

The man's mouth isn't working properly and his vowels sound misshapen. ‘No. No, please! Aleks. Mr Janeski —'

‘Just relax, all right brother? Spread those fingers. That's it. Don't worry, brother. I won't take it off at the knuckle. I'll do it right here so they can sew it back on. No problems at all. That's right, brother. Relaaax.'

The men part ways with handshakes, no words. Wil still has vomit on his chin.

Aleks goes for a long drive. He then makes his way to a suburban tavern and sits behind the wheel for another hour. He finds a hat at his feet and pulls it low. He climbs out and stares for a minute at the gym bag next to the tins of paint. He hadn't even had to use it – fear always the strongest weapon. The carpark is mostly empty, besides three cars and a motorbike that appear and vanish in irregular blinks of light from a streetlamp. Behind them a pale copse of eucalypts, the limbs upflung like ballet dancers.

As soon as he enters the tavern, the bouncer asks him take his hat off. Aleks stares. The man's mouth twitches with recognition and he shrugs his shoulders deferentially. His voice is way too high for a man of his size. ‘Sorry, mate. They're just the rules.'

‘Rules?' Aleks grimaces then takes his hat off. He pats the bouncer on the shoulder and for a second feels sick, really sick, as if he might faint. All this violence. For what? ‘No worries, brother. You gotta earn a living. I understand.'

He buys a beer and exchanges a fifty-dollar note for coins. He heads straight for the pokies, sits down and his face is lit by the lurid buttons. There are fluro pyramids floating on the screen and for a moment he wishes he were somewhere else. But where? He keeps drinking and there's something therapeutic about the rise and fall of his money in the poker machine. He is tapping the pokies with one finger. He stares at the
finger and slowly shakes his head. He takes a break to smoke outside and the stars are dizzying. The streets veer off in every direction, lined with the abstract shapes of buildings and bushes. He stares upwards for a long time, then says to himself aloud, ‘
Neznam
.'

I don't know.

He buys more cigarettes, withdraws more cash, drinks more schooners. It takes the edge off, but only slightly, like a headache tablet for a deep wound. There is an old man playing the pokies who looks like he has endured a lot of pain, or at least witnessed it. He seems at peace somehow but Aleks pities him nonetheless.

Aleks rolls the bead in his other palm, the gold flecks demonic to him now. Yes, surely it is hell that lives within the bead, broken pieces of a gold mirror reflecting his private hell. He wishes he could split it between his thumb and forefinger like a nut and crush what is within. But he can't. It's too beautiful, too unbearably beautiful.

Some lads, all wearing high-vis work jackets, come in and one of them recognises him. They're drunk already and talking loudly. ‘Oi. It's Janeski,' says the youngest of them. Aleks hasn't seen this halfwit in a long time.

‘Aleks!
Kako si
?'

‘
Dobar
,
brat
.'

‘
Kay si be
?'

‘
Eve be
.' Aleks tries to smile. Once, when both were on holiday in Ohrid from Australia, Aleks scored some Albanian coke for him so that he and his dumb cunt mates weren't beaten senseless looking for it. The younger fella, it seems, wants to pay back the favour.

‘
Zhimi maika brat,
I swear to God, bro, I swear on my mum's life, nah nah nah, I swear on
your
mum's life. We could invest in a whole kilo. Pure white.' The boys laugh.

Aleks, even in his drunken state, stares at the lad as if witnessing a thrown boxing match where the loser is unintentionally but fatally injured. ‘I don't know what you're talking about, champ. I think you got the wrong bloke.'

‘Oh . . . yeah.' The bravado instantly gone. ‘Sorry, Janeski. Sorry.' For
a moment there's nothing but the bleep of poker machines, then Aleks looks at him.