Waiting (22 page)

His T-shirt is brown and full of holes. She is worried he is letting things slide. The last time he wore clean clothes was days ago. They check the washing routine he must himself comply with. Danni knows the old and demented will not often notice the state of their clothes, or notice too much, dragging off new clothes they somehow find disgusting. But Dazza is not one of them.

Yeah, says Dazza My health. Stuffed. Look at this, pointing to his immense stomach and overhang: a shocking apron of fat. Heart. Lungs. Seeing those skinny sheilas on TV I reckon there's a… breathing carefully, ie: gasping in enough air to carry on… no longer thin man inside this fat one.

Big has come sticky-beaking from the kitchen, looks at him kindly; but he isn't by nature especially kind.

Do you mean a separate thin man curled up in front of you, a hanger-on as it were, or an essential thin man that is the real you?

Yeah, that. The last one. Like some whacko men say they're really… a woman in a man's body.

Really?

Um.

Big all but sniggers.

Yeah, I've heard about blokes like that. Glad I'm not one of them.

For reasons no one can guess Big does not react to some things others would and would aggressively. Little considers it his womanly side but the fact is Big simply fails to register the slight, he is slight-blind. He is lucky. He rubs his whiskery chin as Daz stands there but doesn't register any larger behaviour. In fact Big has never put forward any explanation whatsoever for his cross-dressing, and given the everydayness of it in the hostel, saying nothing remains the rule. All the same, it seems to the occupants that Big has an opinion on everything, and a theory for everything; for everything, that is, except himself.

I hope you survive until Christmas then, Daz.

The phone rings loudly and then stops. The second silence of the evening breaks out through the rooms. The bloody thing rings again. Daz thinks, saved by the bell. It does happen sometimes, it must for the saving to exist, clichés borne of real truths and all that. The Sheriff groans and walks stiffly over to it. Yeah he says and hears the long delay of overseas call centres trying to get through. Instead of hanging up he stands there picking his teeth, waiting for the labouring Indian voice. As usual it arrives without a hello or gday mate just the boring questions.

Am I speaking to…?

Yes you are. Definitely speaking to.

No Sir. I am being serious.

You are seriously mental, mate.

The Sheriff's favourite is the Kwok game. Pretty much over now, no calls for months. God knows who was making the calls and why they were making them. They were not getting the better of him. No. The Sheriff is a pragmatist. A man who watches and listens and does what has to be done.

Hello (yes, a greeting. That means it is a call made from within Australia). Can I speak to Mr Kwok.

Mr Kwok, ah?

Yes. I want Mr Kwok please. Put Mr Kwok on please.

Kwok?

Mr Kwok.

How do you spell it?

Kay yu O Kay.

Nah I meant Mister.

No. Am I speaking to Mr Kwok?

No but will Mrs Kwok do?

I prefer Mr Kwok. Is he there?

No but what's wrong with Mrs Kwok?

Orright speak to Mrs Kwok.

Jeez mate sorry she's not here

Not? But you said she was…

Nah mate I didn't. I asked if you wanted to speak to her not that she was here.

Please is Mr Kwok?!

Kwok – that sounds like a Chinese name.

Yes, yes, Chinese.

Mate, do I sound Chinese?

Oh you not Mr Kwok?

The Sheriff hasn't worked for years. He needs light relief. This is much better than getting annoyed and copping high blood pressure. They keep ringing for the Mr they never get. At the library computer once, Big asked Little to search for Kwok and by chance they saw Kuok. Of course, the phonetics, the pronunciation, of u as w as in kuan or Szhechuan. They eventually found out the Kuok Group was a business in Malaysia somewhere. It may not, agreed, be funny.

It worries Little that this Chinese taunting is insulting and if the insult is strong enough the game is racist, not that anyone is going to cop this stuff so politely, and she says so to Big who carefully bats it away for once. The Sheriff is startled, waggles his head. If the silly buggers won't take no for an answer then they can take his playing silly buggers instead.

I've been in Chinatown, he says. Treated a bloody sight worse by them I can tell you. This isn't face to face…

The Chinese can be an abrupt race, admits Big, unwilling to take sides on this one.

The phone really does ring throughout the days with these silly calls from Nepal or Jaiphur or Vladivostok, flogging credit cards no one can afford, or roofing treatments for the new environment (what happened to the old?), or cladding to suit the modern home… you come along to our indoctrination course.

Someone rang once to spruik a seminar on How to Sleep. For fuck's sake, The Sheriff, said, I can help you get there for nothing.

I met a few Chinese wool classers, Big says apropos of his inner associations. Did you know the Chinese have been in the land of Oz since the 18C?

Sammie has come in.

Jesus. Where did you meet them?

When I was a shearer's cook up in Queensland.

You wurra shearer's cook?

Strangely enough that is what I said.

When you wurra cook, Sammy is pissed and oh dear he's going to ask it: didya wear ya skirt?

I did. You think of it, Sammy, a big chef's apron is very like a skirt and I wore a skirt underneath it and when I took the apron off I always walked through the dining quarters to test the response to my cooking.

Why didya wear the skirt, I mean in fronta shearers!

Have you ever seen a shearer after he's been sitting on one of the wide-top Kookaburra stoves, one stoked to the steel with Mallee roots? Beyond shimmering, my boy, it gets almightily red.

There is a pause as Sammy waits for a thought to arrive, if thought it is. Then asks: And what didja do before you wurra cook?

I was in the Nashos.

Nashos? What that?

National Sevice, I was a Vietnam vet they conscripted by bloody draft and fancy talk. I was in the last lot to go.

Ah, you was a soldier! Did you kill any of them Viet Cong?

I might have. Depends.

Yeah?

Yeah.

Depends on what.

Whether the bloody gooks could read English or not.

What? Whatdoya mean? Were you a spy or a scout, I mean. Did you crawl around in the jungle and send messages back to base?

I sent messages, yes.

Real dangerous stuff, you mean?

Big is enjoying this. He hasn't had this much fun for yonks.

Well, come on! Sammy's voice is rising in frustration. What did you do?

Have you heard that saying: they also serve those who…

Nup.

Well, I served in a different way so you could say they also serve those who stand and…

And what?

Type.

Type?! Sammy is getting frantic, it doesn't make sense.

Yeah. Bugger getting shot. I was a soldier in the typing pool.

What? With girls?

No, you idiot, with the other soldiers who didn't want to get shot.

All this idiocy has driven our lawman back out to the front gate of his daydreams and the sun of afternoons. Yes, days and nights pass faster and slower than time in this place. Time has nothing to do with it. Time has no narrator. There's no logic to time and the time-line of a life does not make sense until the person is dead, the line ruled underneath them equally significant. Retrospection is by definition not the most obvious inner tick of present tense. The synchronous is. And here is more of the same.

Two young men walk past doing their version of Mick and Bianca. They are standing there talking to one another until it's clear one of them is on his mobile and if he stops the other stops and vice versa because they are mirror-versions of each other. If that isn't tautological. As they seem to be. They stand almost touching, so the words might be coming from either and intended for the other. Except when on such a rare moment some caller has cut between them. Heard but not seen. They both have fair hair cut Number one, stubbly albeit soft faces, and the same even, very gentle tans on their faces and arms, and presumably all over their nakedness, because they look naked even with their clothes on.

They walk in long shorts with zip pockets, both pairs the same brand and colour, and sandals crafted in leather and both the same again, and especially obvious their signature image, perhaps, the dark glasses, their shades of black glass and, curved past the eye towards the ear, those black wings without any curve for the ear, but keeping straight on, marking their skulls. From the side it appears like texta lines from the eye to rear the of the head.

One might think, considering the oddities of the species collected in the hostel, even the likely noise of raised voices banging on about something lowered, the two young men might stop and listen, even say something for God's sake. The Sheriff stares at them and tempts them to speech. Anything. He is as intent as a cat. They might show a mere flicker of attention to the side, but no, never, except for this time when a mobile call comes in. They look straight ahead every day and on every pace of the pavement, they stare eyes-straight (except they're not) quick-march ahead, as if that stare is never going to happen or is hidden by the very black shades they wear and the total lack of expression on their faces. They eat organic

When It Really Matters

When Jasmin rings Angus from her office she keeps mumbling about staff cuts at the University, at all the Universities, at all the new extra ultra criminally corporatised Universities, and how when push comes to shove they are such fucking creeps of the fucking system they were set up to challenge, to question, to critique, but when it comes to funding problems they react with predictable results – laying off staff. They are as bad as banks. Should she be looking over her shoulder? Is she publishing enough? Why hasn't she won big research grants for the University?

His mobile or hers is breaking up, the sound warping and stop-starting. He is certain she has said slaying of staff so when he tells her this she breaks out of her bad mood and laughs. It must be the heat.

Perfectly justified griping he tells her, and she says yes it is but it ain't very romantic and it isn't why she's ringing. She suggests that if he's free after work they could meet somewhere in Lygon St for a drink, she nominates a Carlton wine bar, at 5, 5.30? As it's Friday there's no reason to rush home afterwards. It's the blend of the practical and the cooing he likes, or imagines, because neither character is actually in her voice, so he agrees, as long as she realises that he'll have to come straight from work, no fancy washing and dressing this time.

There is no cool change in the eaves outside her office. If anything it is hotter than before. Even walking the short distance to Lygon St makes her hot and dampness gives way to plain sweat. She can feel it under her breasts, a sweaty chest a sign of humidity if ever there was one, a slow sense of being-awash. Australia's southern states are becoming… tropical? Who now dresses to think? The clothes maketh the mentation, perhaps, as rags render us human. As a thinking person Jasmin has worn a dress with a light hem so she can lift it away from her legs while she sits at her desk in the un-airconditioned office. She lifts the cotton back into her lap and reads very serious things while looking like a schoolgirl. This lightness and practicality has made her walking in a summer skirt seem more a flighty show, as girlie as she truly isn't.

When she steps into the bar she sees Angus standing and swinging his head about like an ex-racehorse in one of those hills paddocks. He is still in his work clothes. She is not Lady Chatterley, but here he is, looking like the gamekeeper, or gardener… she feels a sudden embarrassment. She does, however, as they embrace lightly and kiss, feel the small happy changes within her, of his scent and her response. He is wearing a work singlet. Something dizzy and inducing about this, not work-scent left over from muscles under strain, and nor is it cardio-vascular sweat. Just him, the lion.

They don't like the way I'm dressed, he tells her.

Ha. I can't think why.

My Sunday best? Sunday afternoon that is. I went inside to see if you were here and they gave me the once-over from behind the bar. I should have remembered this was a Uni drinking hole. What does that mean: professional, neat, not shirt and tie? Long time since I was at Uni.

Were you a Uni student? You never said.

Yeah. I thought I'd told you. Didn't finish.

Still, he is right: as he nears the bar the two staff tilt their heads towards him. One of them looks back over the bar and down at his boots and then says something. Angus stands at the bar in what she sees is mock surprise. She hopes it is.

I must remind them of real work, Angus jokes, addressing her then facing the barman. I could iron my singlet. Would that help? What if I told you it cost $120?

He indicates the mirror on the wall behind the bar.

I think I could look at my fine self all day.

The barmen, however, don't need to turn.

Jasmin, do you want a drink? one of them says to her. But Angus keeps on:

I am a dapper man in a bow tie and sports coat. Who can tell just by looking at me that I am hiding a terrible secret. Eh? Do you serve a man by his tie or his best intentions?

Yeah mate, the barman says. Angus is describing the man beside him in the mirror.

The barman is polishing a glass

Jim, he says, in here every week since he retired in 1986. You dress for the occasion, don't you Jim?

Angus turns to look at Jim.

Howdy do, sir, says Jim, Top of the afternoon to you. In vino veritas etc.

A cordial man, Angus sees, but completely pissed by 5 o'clock. Angus looks futher along in the mirror.