Waiting (30 page)

That's pretty good parking, my man, says Big, noting the metre gap front and back of the car.

Haven't lost my touch, says The Sheriff, just like riding a bike, eh.

Except he is lying, the car in front parked after he had and closed the gaps.

I'm getting in, he grumbles, and wrenches open the heavy door.

They drive in erratic shoves of speed as The Sheriff re-acquaints himself with the artistry of steering, and changing gears, and accelerating or not. Stopping at red lights is straightforward but Big and Little notice his indifference to stop signs. Big tells him that these hexagonal things in red require the car be stationary before… but The Sheriff is not wasting time stopping for no good reason, he is used to getaways, and sign or no sign the car hurtles ahead whenever the road is clear. Life is short.

At the first house, he stands outside smoking while they go inside. Just like the old days, if there was dress-up business among the bosses, the suits, not the knuckles. And he doing the movie role thing, standing out there keeping guard. The driver. The man. This is good.

At first, Big is subdued, looking the place over without comment. Ignoring the grot, the rot, the poorly maintained rooms and, especially, for some reason suddenly annoying him, the terrible aluminium window frames. They are crooked and they are split and too many of them sag out beyond the vertical. It is awful. It isn't even secure. He could stand outside and wrench the bloody window right out of the wall. And yet she wanders around happy and in bloody heaven, cooing almost, making little lip pouts like a man about to engulf a pie! She can't be serious. Half-way through his Look at The Storage Space… she notices that Big is scowling. Big scowls say more than Big words.

At the next house he thumps around from room to room then jumps ship and stands on the pavement talking to The Sheriff while Little is still inside.

And third time no longer lucky, despondent after one shocked glance at the carpets, he waits for her in the garden. When she emerges all glowing and enthusiastic, regardless of the mess, he shudders and shouts and then sinks down onto a small garden bench.

I'm sick, he groans. I'm unwell, I can't take it, this is wrong all wrong and it's quite clear my opinion doesn't count for anything. For anything. I can't stand up!

He raises his hands as if to worship the wintering tree above him but then slumps down into melodramatic silence.

They sit in the car, on the seats as shabby and unstitched as the curtains on the second house. His clothing makes him feel stupid and alien and there are even more old clothes on the backseat, beside Little, slumped there like Big's unhappy mind. Shabby, unhappy, unavoidable. She is going to ignore his rudeness; he will disappoint her and make her unhappy, too, if he can; but she knows him well enough to wait him out. Tomorrow he will have wiped the experience from his awareness. And she will have gained a much better idea of the market. The houses are terrible. Yes, they are, and they are quite good enough for them!

Julia and Her Man

When Julia returns she has with her a silent man made of muscles, a man who wears singlets to make a statement of his muscles. And tatts. And shaved head. As quickly seen as a shudder is felt and yes he may be handsome, if a threatening rapper sort of look is your fancy. Maybe, in the wrong light, but up close he is hard in his eyes, and his glaring at the inmates in their chairs in the common room and then the kitchen is hard all the way through the walls and that's saying nothing. Why has she brought him? Any house has its status quo and their hostel is no different, in ways vulner­able to strangeness as much as strangers.

Just one nutcase can blow it all down. They don't talk about this. But every new voice in the corridor could be the end of it. Might walk in behind that voice and turn out to be an utter bastard. It's not a house full of irritating students. Innocents. Nearly everyone here has been hurt and maybe hurt a great deal and that brings a serious look to their faces, now this tanned and tatted-up bloke has walked through with their pretty Julia who had gone awol.

And worse when she eventually removes her dark glasses. Her black eye, or purple-and-green eye, too obvious to ignore. Sammy is staring at her. Tom walks past talking about the postie and the news of the week when he stops talking and puts his hand to his mouth and thinks of Jesus.

It's OK, Julia assures them, she has has been involved in some silly stuff, all her own fault and all done with now, they needn't worry about her… Little is sitting on her bed and when she hears this odd speech she steps into the corridor to see and gasps.

Violence always alarms her. Even after years in this rooming house, and what she has seen and became accustomed to in earlier houses, and more of it than she ever imagined. Tom is looking intensely at Little but anyway she thinks Tom never sees her. Not just her. That Tom never really sees anyone on the inside, in his brain, in there among the sounds of his religion and gossip and the untold stories and trivialities he must breathe with. Julia uses this diversion and disappears into her room where the tat-man has already gone. Which means, as Little thinks about it, tat-man already knows which room is Julia's. Umm.

Then out comes Julia and tells them ‘Ray' will be staying with her a while. Not forever. (No one stays forever, unless you count the ones who die.) Ray is her old boyfriend from way back but her rapid neck movements do not give this announcement any great authority. It's not in the rules though and that means against the rules and not the kind of thing… She is about to go, then reconsiders: Just until Christmas, she tells them.

Ah, Christmas, smiles Tom. That will probably be alright then.

He has a terrible secretive lust for Julia.

He's looks hard, adds Julia, but he'll stay out of your way.

That's all right, my dear. Christmas. Hey, the postie is going barmy with this year's Christmas mail. All the good deeds. His bike is weighed down like the donkey into Bethlehem. A humble man.

Big has walked in and he can't (he never can) resist:

Delivering The Good News, is he? he says. His head waggles and his brain moves and Little's voice in his head is saying you don't have to say everything that comes into your head, except he has to:

But was Christ humble? he asks. I ask you. Wasn't he too assertive, too courageous to be humble – you think about it. Took a lot to do what he did. That's supposing he did.

Julia stares at them. Already past tense and for a looker like Julia this is not good. So recently returned so quickly forgotten. These men are something else, she thinks, and turns back down the corridor to her room to be with the boyfriend-till-Christmas.

But Tom is not to be moved.

I think, he announces, we all need a sign of spiritual need. More than a deluge of card-mail for the humble postie. I hear people are getting out of superannuation and spending a bit of Christmas spirit, but that does not mean buying presents. Good deeds, yes. We know the right thing to do, it's built into us from above.

From Above with a capital A?

You are all mischief today, Big. I can tell that for all your arguments and jokes that deep down you are a believer.

Big snorts.

That's what you Christians always say. You are so solipsistic.

Superation? What? It is The Sheriff asking.

Superannuation.

Waddaya mean? People didn't get out – they got ruined. Even I know that. They've got nothing left. If I had any to lose I'd be very upset with the white collars, I can tell ya. Those super CEOs are a bunch of cunts.

Charming, says Tom.

Eh? Well, what am I supposed to say?

What else could you say?

I could say they're fucken cunts.

Big was thinking about something far worse: How dare Tom call him a Christian.

Family

On the tram and sitting side by side, sitting very nineteenth century upright like old ladies among the daily riff-raff, Big and Little make a dignified if weird couple for silent eyes, and those of children. On their way into the city, the tram stationary and then easing forward again. Then, abruptly in front of them, swishing and noisy by intent, steps Julia.

Ah, she says and swoops down onto the seat opposite them. Just who I wanted to see. Little I must tell you something, love. I've been thinking about it and you must do it, you must say yes it really matters.

Her knees are bone to bone with Big's. For some reason she has lodged herself there but is addressing Little, whose own knees are so much closer in and near the window. And Big, whose knees they are, is wondering why people do such odd things. He does not like Julia. He pushes at her knees irritably.

You must promise to say yes, says Julia. You must.

What? You haven't said…

Big sighs towards his left, ignoring this woman he thinks less of and more immoderately than another might, but then he is less susceptible and she is all show. They have nothing in common. Whereas his sighs are a real talent. She is aware only of urgency in her mouth, the need to get her lips and purpose into agreement.

Your mother. You must go and see your mother before she dies. Now promise me.

Big is astonished to the backs of his eyes. He knows immediately the woman is right. She is spot-on. She has seen to the heart of it – and she has been good enough to say so. Even if it is inside a mode of public transport. He is almost moved. Little stares at her.

What's it to you? Little says in return. Why should my mother… why are you (her emphasis is not nice) talking to me about my mother? Promise you?

Ah, says her man in skirts. Little, I think what she's saying is…

I don't care what she's saying. It's none of her business.

Julia sits back as if hit, her eye still discoloured from when she was. And Big begins to wonder if his own words of prejudice have in the past poisoned Julia in Little's opinion, and a quick guilty feeling comes to him and feels, as it always does, like a sudden loss of appetite.

No, no, he says.

No, says Little, and not as he meant it. Glaring at the woman.

Well stuff you then, says Julia. And she stands up, bangs past Big's knees and pushes her way down towards the front and drops firmly into a seat. In her different way Little is angry that Big took the trollop's side, under the influence of her black eye and sex appeal. And she wishes she had done it – the black eye.

After five minutes the grumbling and repetition happening inside her makes sounds in her throat he knows too well and will have to wait out.

I don't know what to add, he adds later. Your mother is a worry. Probably wondering about you, typical of those who are unwell. Expecting visitors even if they don't like it and then complaining about it and (he speeds up here knowing Little will interrupt) you're right you're quite right, I agree entirely she has, never. Never. Made you personally welcome in that way, not at all no. Now you know she intends to do the right thing. By you, with the um, money etc, so perhaps a … quick fly in fly out visit will warm her heart a little.

Her heart! Warm her heart! Little is scornful. She hasn't got one! None of them have.

Perhaps I'm being a trifle cliched. You're right, no heart. But you know what I mean. About her will. So if we think of it as a strategic visit then…

Little is a whinger but her problem is she can't sustain it. Her gripes about most things live on for a bit, then she weakens, and it annoys her. She'd like to have a raging temper, to be temperamental and frighten people with rages. To blacken the atmosphere with her rages. To be a real bastard. But when Big clearly has her and his/her own interests so much to heart, as they are talking about hearts, what is she to do? So it fades within her. He knows to be discrete, even delicate, another one of those contradictions people speak of, like big men who are said to be light on their feet. That one categorically false in Big's case, but light on her feelings, yes, alert to her well-being… yes. Quite how to, though, is different.

Later that evening they are touchingly gentle with each other and after some small kissings and a kind of sensory scuttling about Little settles her small but capacious self into sleep. Meaning an unacknowledged agreement. Later, and not until the next day, she thinks she may even say sorry to Julia, who maybe isn't such a one as Big has made her out to be.

This Adelaide visit is the next big thing. Next morning, the idea of a quick visit seems quite a treat, an adventure to look forward to. But only if they include scary, too, because it will be scary. Do they have enough money for both of them to fly across to Adelaide without touching The Kitty, or will it be Little going it alone? Which she does not, does not at all, like the sound of. There will be rellies. It will be messy. Anything like this, with planning and timetables and procedures at airports and… strange people, any other people, is scary.

If there are summer specials, if these come up with Virgin Blue – and if they go again to use the library computer to check for these daily – it could be promising. If they take it easy for the next few days, perhaps accept a St Vinnies dinner or two. Be Frugal. Afford two fares. As men who behave like mums, such as Tom the born-again, like to say: Be Frugal, Big has said before, In Moderation.

Of course, as soon as they walk towards the library and attempt to cross the street a damburst of traffic rushes in front of them. The number of cars is akin to the seventh wave and burdens the overweight and the not so light on their feet. Then a tram. Then sudden rain. They also soak, who stand and wait.

The library is busy, all the computers being used by enough children to make Big growl of little tykes. He likes the sound of it. Plus several neatly-dressed pastel shirt and black trouser types. Have they nothing better to do? Or dress in? And why are there children during school hours lounging and rasping in mid-adolescent voices, though voices is too kind a word for the noise they make, and throwing themselves into the library-order bean­bags like little children? For God's sake.