Spotted Lily (27 page)

—43—

I parked in front of the Bunwup Cafe, which was empty, though there was a line of utes with dogs on their trays in front of the pub down the street.

Brett and I chose a round table in the middle of the unlit room. It was ten minutes to noon. The place smelt good. The lingering reek of broiled fat from breakfast made my mouth water. There was even a scent of geraniums from the collection of potted plants on the other side of the room, displayed on shelves low to the old, wavery board floor, on which the marks of recent broom sweeping showed through the forever-drizzle of talcum-fine dust. The business looked sadly ambitious. The smell of breakfast could have been the owner's own.

'Ready?' I asked.

'You didn't bring my bag, did you?'

'You didn't ask!'

I glared at Brett.

He gazed at me, and shrugged.

Three minutes late, still with no new customers, our appointment walked in.

Brett stood.

'This is Angela Pendergast,' he said, and the one he called The Omniscient strode over and said, as I had supposed he would, 'I know,' and didn't offer his hand, so I didn't stick out mine, either.

As soon as I clapped eyes on him, I wanted to laugh. He was the spitting image of what I had expected. In fact, he reminded me of a guy I saw briefly when I was a child. William Wheels was his name, if I remember rightly. He was at the Bunwup Agricultural Fair, in the middle of demonstrating how to run a sheep shearing power plant by natural muscle power, when he clutched his chest and toppled slowly off the seat of the converted Malvern Star (three gears). What I remember the most was how he fell, catching one long toenail in the pedal. The nail was so thick that I heard his foot break, but the nail didn't tear itself across. It was curved and yellow like a parrot's beak. When I asked Dad about it, he clucked with disapproval. 'Vegetarian,' he said, and though I wanted to stay and watch, he dragged me away.

I dropped my eyes to the Omniscient's toes peeking through their sandals. They were coated with grime. Otherwise, he could have been William Wheels twenty years on. Bushy beard, low-slung pot belly, stained flannel shirt. His shirt was open, and the V tattled the tale. That raw red flesh of the wattled neck and upper chest showed that the Omniscient was a meat eater of considerable appetite. From the ruddiness and roughness of his skin, he ate so much meat that a butcher would have been loath to hire him, for worry of too much meat loss from this bloke snacking from the display.

He chose my seat so I moved over and sat with my back to the window.  There was a moment of silence, which I thought I should fill.

'Shall we look at the choice?' I asked brightly, picking a menu out from between the HP Sauce and the salt and pepper shakers, and handed it to Him. The other menus had slid out over the table, so Brett took one and I took another. We each examined ours.

The menu was surprisingly ambitious. Steak and eggs, steak and chips, steak and veg and chips (frozen carrots and peas, heated up, if the usual is what that meant), mixed grill (all that plus a fried egg, grilled sausage, a 'lamb' chop, grilled tomato, and a grilled pineapple slice, and perhaps a sliver of lettuce and a piece of beet root), and for puds, the obligatory ice cream. The surprising newcomers were 'homemade soup of the day' and 'homemade pudding of the day'. The attached note read: 'Pumpkin Soup' and 'Lemon Pie'.

I'd just finished reading 'Pie' when a woman in an apron printed with cherries and cockatoos arrived like a gust of wind. She smiled as if all her Christmases had come at once. I craved the mixed grill, but felt inhibited.

Brett ordered first, choosing the pumpkin soup and the lemon pie. I said, 'I'll have the same,' and Omni grunted. 'He'll have the same,' I explained. She took our orders with such delight that I wanted to order seconds all round. She asked what we would like to drink and
when
, which astounded me. I took the plunge and ordered coffee, lifted my brows, and said, 'Three all round.'

Then she asked when we would like what to be served, a consideration that almost tipped me out of my chair.

Her heels echoed as she made herself scarce.

We began to talk of this and that, in the desultory manner everyone does when there is an uncomfortable area of discussion that must be traversed, held up by small talk.

'I heard about your book,' Omni said to me and then turned, asking, 'When do you expect to finish?' at which point Brett said, 'Quite soon.'

The Omniscient played with the screw top on the HP Sauce, squeezing the plastic container till a bead of congealed sauce popped out of the nozzle onto his beard.

He wiped his beard with one hand and put the sauce back in the centre of the table. I noticed that he didn't screw the top down again, which meant that the sauce was going to dry up and do the same thing to someone else. I screwed the top back into place.

Brett coughed.

Seven minutes later, our food arrived with a flourish. There was a doily under each of the bowls of pumpkin soup. I crunched on two seeds in the lemon pie. At another time, I would have licked my plate. The coffee must have been the most expensive instant available in Bunwup.

Brett looked to have enjoyed his as much as I, though our guest only picked at his food, and finally shoved it away.

He fidgeted like someone who hates babies and is in charge of the hospital's incubator wing, and furthermore, is dying for a smoke.

Brett sat as if his powers of thought had been lost, or petrified.

I didn't know what to say, so I began with something inane.

'Too bad about all those people who died in the earthquake in Turkey.'

No one said anything.

The Omniscient explored his nose with a parrot-beak fingernail.

He found something after a while, which stretched out for quite a ways before it swung, slapping against his finger like a piece of cooked spaghetti.

He ate it.

'I always wanted to ask,' I asked. 'Why did you kill my father?'

I'd clearly interrupted him. 'Who's your father?'

'And my brother?'

'Who?' He was done with his homemade lunch, and now looked toward Brett, who shrugged and looked to me.

'Leave him out of it,' I said to Omni. 'Was it your sense of humour to stuff my brother's cry for help, with wheat?'

'Who?'

'Angus Fabre Pendergast, born Bunwup...'—automatic-memory-repeat, suddenly interrupted. 'But why are you asking me? Don't you know everything, plan everything, give us all our best chance in life, for us to screw up as we will?'

'Barring accidents and incidents,' He squeezed a hefty pimple in his beard, and inspected its contents.

That disfiguring blush I sometimes get rose up my face. 'But you make the accidents and incidents. Don't you!?'

He burped.

I sang into his face, 'He knows when you are sleeping. He knows when you're awake.'

His chuckle was rich with nastiness. 'Santa Claus, my dear ... Angela? Now, I hear—'

'You don't give a fuck about any of us,
do you?
'

'What do you mean?'

I whispered, so I wouldn't yell. 'What about Bhopal? Why are they suing ... what was the name of that company? when they should be suing you?'

He jutted out his beard. 'It was their fault.'

'What's an accident?'

'Their fault,' he repeated, like a bloody
cockatoo
. 'Aren't they being sued?'

'Exxon Valdez,' Brett said under his breath.

I pointed to the Omniscient. 'Exxon Valdez!'

'What about it? No one was killed there,' he said, taking a toothpick from a little holder shaped like a cane toad.

He didn't care. 'No
people
,' I said, accidentally sticking my elbow into my coffee cup.

He snickered. He actually snickered.

'Think of the penguins!' I said.

Brett threw me a startled glance. Well, I had never cared before, but that wasn't relevant now.

'Too far south,' said the fat slob. 'Think again.'

I couldn't for the life of me remember. 'Well, a helluvalot of something was killed.'

'Women!' he laughed, and rolled his eyes at Brett.

Brett's paper serviette must have slipped off his lap, for he bent his head under the table.

I kicked out when he pulled at my leg. There was
nothing
like 'Women' to get me riled. I was just opening my mouth, when Brett bit my leg.

'Here. I'll help you,' I announced helpfully, and ducked my head underneath.

'What the! Ouch!'

When our heads were both uncomfortably upside down and close, Brett took his mouth off my leg. 'Careful,' he whispered.

It was
way
too late for that. 'Frankly,' I laughed. 'I don't give a damn.'

And I banged my head on the table's underside on the way out from under, which didn't add any sugar to my coffee, so to speak.

I was ready, as the saying goes where I escaped from,
to chock a brown dog
. For a whole couple of seconds, I fought against the idea, and lost the fight.

Across the table, Brett stared at me. No. More than that. He actually pleaded with me with his eyes. They begged me, from the depths of their great dilated blackness, not to upset this slob at our table. I reached across and patted his hand.

'Sorry Brett, but this bastard...'

Kicking back my chair, I stood so close to the one called Him that his neck jerked backwards like a chook's.

An incoherent growl came from somewhere in my throat.

'Yes, you!' I pointed. 'I'd like to kick you so far, you'll be picking  stardust outa your apricots.'

He goggled.

Didn't matter to me. I was off. 'Or how bout to Bullamanka, where they, uh,  once boiled a preacher to soften their boot leather...'

His mouth opened wide as a snoring drunk, which only inspired me more.

'...and they're still as ropeable as, uh...' Watching his expression, I lost my track. But ways of speaking were coming back. 'They're still as ropeable as a...'

I lost my track again, and almost lost my stride, but one long drink of a look at the sum total of Himness in that chair, compared to his reputation, and I felt restored.

'There's not enough milk of kindness to be squeezed from you,' I yelled, 'to soften the foreskin of a
windchapped blowfly!
'

The toothpick stub fell out of the fat slob's fingers.

Brett picked another one out of the holder and offered it, only to have his hand slapped away—by both of us.

'Go on,' said the fat slob.

He didn't need to. I wasn't finished yet. 'Why, you're no better than a poke in the eye with a burnt stick. You're omniscient as a broken radar screen.'

He was laughing so loud that I had to yell.

I was
hopping
now. Hopping with both feet.

The woman with the cherried apron bustled up from the back, crooked her head at our little nativity scene, and must have judged that I was in control, for she flashed me a thumbs-up and rushed to the front door, swung the OPEN sign to CLOSED, and scuttled back to the nether regions.

I was feeling that same drunkenness I once felt just after I drank half a bottle of vodka—the same feeling I felt fifteen minutes before I was sick for the rest of the night.

A hand gripped my arm.

'Go to buggery, Brett.' I shrugged, keeping my eye-to-eye with his Omniscient One. 'This is my fight.'

The grip tightened, and Brett's hot breath wetted my ear. 'Angela!'

'Later, Brett!'

I tried to jump away, but he held me in place. He tightened his grip so much that I remembered the time he did that long ago, and cried out.

'I wondered when,' the fat slob said. He looked at Brett as if Brett had barely passed an exam. 'She's your responsibility,
Brett
,' he sneered.

'Yes, Master,' the Devil said, and bowed respectfully. But he let go of my arm.

I ran to the other side of the fat slob. 'No, Master!' I sneered at him. 'You're not
my
master.'

'Angela!'

'Later, Brett!'

I kept my eyes on the slimebag, and didn't look away.

'Mister Merciful,' I sneered.

'Life wasn't meant to be easy,' he tossed back.

That did it.

'You're not even original!' I screamed. 'You're nothing!'

I could have sworn he was taller than me.

'Nothing!' I repeated.

He was definitely shorter.

'Nothing!' I shouted.

His head didn't reach the top of the chair.

'Nothing,  nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing ... . nothing! NOTHING ... NUH ...
THING!
'

He was now the size of a bloated tick. And he couldn't even run. He was riveted by my eyes, until I ended that with my sole.

'Nothing!'

Even the splat he made was unimpressive.

~

In a moment, I was wrapped in Brett's arms, and he smacked great kisses against my forehead.

'Dead!' he laughed. 'Calloo! Callay!'

The floorboards groaned at the pounding of gumboots as he danced around the room in a jig of a thousand influences.

'You did it, Angela!
You did it! You killed The Omniscient!'

I had to sit. 'Did you want me to?'

'Of course!'

'How did you think I could?'

'Your potential, Angela. Your potential!'

He pranced over and touched my head with a finger, then pranced away.

'That was it?'

'It's beginning.'

'And you?' I had forgotten about him.

'On the way.'

'What is that supposed to mean?'

But his back was to me and his steps were so loud and fast, he didn't hear me.

I sat there and watched him.

This was THE EVENT that was to CHANGE EVERYTHING.

Why did I feel embarrassed to be in the same room with him? He reminded me powerfully, all of a sudden, of an old woman who used to sing in the centre of Sydney during lunch hour. She wore a green tutu and sang with her ear to a conch shell, laughing with the joy of living, though she slept on the street. Another homeless person.

Needing to break the mood, I opened the door to the back and called, 'Yoohoo! Ta for the privacy! Our business meeting is over! Could we have some—'