Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat, page 7
Then I thought I saw more movement, this time near one of the twisted waste containers that yawned together—kind’a like a grotesque metallic elephant’s graveyard—further down the road near the entrance to Burritt Street. Eureka. It was her. She was standing discreetly near the container, but then she moved out into the middle of the street. I found it laughable because—as she glanced first to the left, then to the right—she resembled any good little citizen who checked for traffic before crossing the road, following Hector the Road Safety Cat’s instructions to the tee.
I clenched my hands into fists and a spasm of pain arced through my right shoulder. It was getting to be a familiar sensation. Especially at this point in Activities when I was so bloody tense. I rotated my shoulder muscles a bit, but stayed in the doorway as she approached, unaware of my existence.
In the cloaking rain, this apparition could have been anyone at all—except that nobody was allowed out on the streets outside the Dome after nine at night. The only exceptions were police and people like me. She certainly wasn’t dressed like a cop and there was pretty much no chance it could be another Seeker.
Then I noticed the limp and I was dead sure.
I came to, back there on the crowded tram, in exactly the same position I’d been in when my mind had slipped the noose: on the seat, with my cheek pressed against the moist glass. I felt like I was falling backwards and sat up and checked myself.
A dream. The dream. That’s all it was.
I turned and, clutching at something to distract me, gazed at a nearby gent. He was leaning back in his seat, a vague grin tweaking the corners of his face, his eyes closed, as he likely indulged in some rumpy-pumpy on his idInteract.
I leaned over and unplugged him.
pasta à la bollocks
The street was as vacant as it always was at this time of night. I was headed home, walking along the footpath, when a police car pulled over and spun its fancy lights. The nearest copper, seated in the passenger side of the crate, leaned out the window and scowled at me. His breath trailed condensation and condescension, the latter likely mixed in for its soothing effect on perps.
“Oi—what’re you doing there, mate?”
“Walking my dog.”
He glanced about, his scowl mutating into a downright menacing glare. “So—you’re a smartarse, mate, are ya?”
“You’re giving me way too much credit.”
“You fucking smartarse cunt.” The cop started opening his door. His partner was already approaching from the other side of the car, nightstick in hand.
“Hey, calm down, sorry I got up on my hind legs and cracked foxy, but you birds trying to rope me made me nervous. Look, I’m going to reach into my pocket nice and easy to pull out my wallet. I’m not going for any kind of weapon, okay—so don’t get jumpy on me.” Both cops were close enough that I could read their shiny plastic name tags: Cortez and Daniels. They were kind enough not to drill me and I cautiously handed Cortez my Branch ID.
After a quick call to home base to confirm the details, my man shoved the wallet back at me, spat at my feet, swore, got back into the car with his partner, and drove off. Damn, I hated cops. Not that this made me special—nobody I knew liked cops. Maybe their wives.
On the other hand, cops weren’t exactly avid fans of Seekers either—we were a bit above the law and they didn’t take kindly to that. Besides, Seeker Branch was essentially a covert operation and while Joe and Jane Public (generally) either hadn’t heard of us or didn’t understand exactly what it was we did, cops knew enough about us to be a bit fearful—after all, nobody was safe from Relocation.
As per custom, as soon as I boarded the damp and mouldy elevator in my building I turned my back to the camera and lit a cigarette. A drag later, a curt announcement came over the speaker: “Smoking is prohibited—please extinguish your cigarette immediately or face a fine of five thousand dollars. Offenders will be prosecuted.”
Well, it was worth a try. Eventually those sensors had to break. I flicked the cherry off and ground it underfoot, saving the gasper for when the sluggish box finally reached my floor and the doors grumbled aside. I trudged along the corridor, tried to fix the number on my door again, unbolted the locks, and went in. The apartment was worse than the elevator. It smelled stale, too—and of something else as well, an odour that was vaguely menacing. Opening a window would generate more problems than it’d solve, so I switched on the aircon instead.
“Hi, honey,” I called. “I’m home.” It was the start of a dumb joke that V and I had shared, something we’d introduced to help us laugh, however unevenly, when she’d first gotten sick and become housebound. She’d yell out her punchline, “Me too!” with a distinctive flourish, and always from the bedroom of our old apartment. I could recall the qualities of her voice better than the details of her face. Calling out had remained a sad tradition with me after she was Relocated—something guaranteed to remind me that she’d been ripped away from me. I’d mostly kicked the habit, but this time there was an actual response.
“Okaeri, babe—and about time, too.” Laurel stepped from the kitchen into the lounge room carrying plates of something that looked distantly related to pasta. She was clad in a disheveled apron with large pink oven mitts over her cocktail gloves—a sort of Marcel Duchamp take on the iconographic ’50s housewife. “You were supposed to say ‘todaima’, by the way.”
“Huh?”
“Todaima. It’s Japanese—kind of like ‘Hi, honey, I’m home’. Then the pretty little domesticated housewife says ‘okaeri’.”
“Ah-hah. And people call me obscure.”
“That’s because you are. So say it.”
“Todaima.”
“Okaeri! By the way, you don’t believe in house-cleaning, do you? It took an hour to make a dent in the dishes—the rest should probably just be thrown out—and I swear there’s something sinister lurking in the shadows over there.”
“His name’s George,” I joked, tossing my coat towards the couch, but I hadn’t accounted for how waterlogged it was and missed completely. I left the coat on the floor and sat down at the table with Laurel.
“Pasta à la bollocks, good sir.” She gestured towards my plate.
“Okay. You’re kidding.” She arched one of her brows and her brunette fringe obscured the other eye. It was cute. I dared a taste. “It’s delicious—you’re liberal with your peppercorns, hey?”
“It helps nullify the taste of the rest of the ingredients from your fridge.”
“My fridge—? Um, don’t take it personally, but I think I’ve lost my appetite.”
“More, then, for the chef.” Laurel gave me a look of mock indignation, then seized up my plate and scraped its contents onto her own.
“Cook, methinks. A chef would have set the fridge on fire.”
“Malcontent. No one ever complained about my cooking before.” Laurel’s good cheer vamoosed as the accidental reminder of previous partners hung in the air. Someone she cared about must have been Relocated at some point—that’s how most of us had been harangued into doing the day job we collectively held down—but she played the details close to her chest and nobody knew anything, not even a name. I never understood why Seeker Branch preferred recruiting the way they did—you’d think there would be plenty of volunteers for such a racket. Probably it had something to do with the psychological trauma they knew we were going through.
“It’s funny how things conspire to remind you,” I said in a cautious tone.
“Anyway, I couldn’t find anything to drink in this shit-hole.”
“The apartment’s on the wagon. I’ve got some Siamese vodka closeted away, but I wouldn’t inflict that on my worst enemy.”
“At least you don’t have roaches stealing nips of your alcohol. Shocking, given the state of this place.”
“So long as they paid their share of the rent and did chores, I wouldn’t mind.”
“When’re you going to invest in a bigger rubbish bin and get this dump condemned?”
I laughed. “Nah, we’re two peas in one very squalid pod, sunshine.”
“It’s been a long time since I’ve heard you laugh, babe.”
“I’ve been saving the chuckles for a rainy day.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, it’s always raining out there.”
“I should laugh more, then.” I shuffled around in my pocket and produced a plasti-blister of Zamperini. “Wanna get gowed-up? Hot off the press today. A friend of a friend got these for a case of depression. Feel like dropping a couple of tabs, along with a nice bottle of bubbly?”
“Champagne? Really? Are you getting all classy on me, Floyd? That stuff costs a fortune. Or are you going to go on the cheap and do the synth ring-in instead? That stuff gives me a shocking headache.”
“Yeah, right. C’est moi.” I winked at her. “Let’s go classy. Fuck the cost.”
“I’m always up for anything—you know that.”
“I’ll whiz down to the bottle shop, then. Stay tuned.” I snapped up the remote to give her something to watch while I was gone and immediately chanced upon a film I recognized. “Ah-hah!”
“What—?” Laurel managed to get out between mouthfuls.
“This flick—it’s generally hated by the critics, but I think it’s brilliant.”
“You don’t say.”
“No, seriously, this one is super-special. It’s called That Certain Feeling, and was made back in 1956. Bob Hope plays a neurotic ghost-writer for a comic-strip artist played by George Sanders himself.”
“George Sanders? Any relation to the good Colonel?”
“Ha-ha.” V would crack the same joke just to annoy me, because she actually knew who George was, and what he meant to me.
“A sensitive topic?”
“No, not really. Just a fraction. Alright, yes—he’s no relation to Colonel Sanders at all, okay, so no more wisecracks.”
“Understood. So are you going to tell me why you’re all upset?”
“I’m not upset.”
“Okay. Why the big interest in this guy Sanders?”
“Simple. In his day, George Sanders owned the best voice in Hollywood. It was top notch—urbane, disdainful, snobbish, and menacing all thrown together. He was also known as a bit of a crooner in his time. You might remember him from The Falcon Takes Over.”
“The Falcon? Related to The Maltese Falcon, that Bogart film you forced me to watch again the other night, right?”
“No, completely different. That’s a Dashiell Hammett story. But we did watch The Falcon Takes Over a few months ago.”
“Oh, of course! How silly of me.”
“Look, the falcon bit isn’t important. Anyway, he had a series of notable roles, my favourites being the cad in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir and his venomous theatre critic in All About Eve. Oh, and he was the villainous tiger in The Jungle Book. He wrote his autobiography titled Memoirs of a Professional Cad, then died from an overdose of sleeping pills in 1972.”
“He killed himself?”
“Yeah, and get this—he left a suicide note that read: ‘Dear world, I am leaving because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck.’ And that was that.”
“Right. Nice note. And you remember it verbatim?”
“I guess I’m an avid admirer, sad to say.”
“Obviously.” Laurel nodded over at the TV screen, where Bob Hope was busy chattering away. “So what’s this particular movie about?”
“The pompous Sanders character desperately needs to get Hope back ghost-writing for him, you see, because his popularity is fading—they had fallen out over a petty disagreement.”
“Which was—?”
“Petty. Not important. Anyway, to make things trickier, George is about to marry Bob’s ex-wife, played by Eva Marie Saint, and is also adopting a kid as a publicity stunt.”
“Sticky.”
“Don’t worry—the neurotic cartoonist gets the girl and all’s well at the end. But you have to listen out for Sanders’ classic line, ‘Get that tobacco-stained mountain goat out of here’. It does me in every time.”
“There’s a goat?”
“No—he’s referring to the dog.”
“Huh?” Laurel may have been shaking her head, but she had a lopsided grin planted on her face at the same time. “Floyd, I’m lost.”
“I know. Just watch it anyway, and I’ll be back.”
Later, we were lying on the floor together wrapped in a doona. Her arm was under my head as she used her other hand to stroke my hair, the lights were dimmed, and I was feeling like sleep was about to whack me over the head. Both of the champagne bottles I’d picked up were long empty.
We were listening to The George Sanders Touch: Songs for the Lovely Lady, which—according to the album’s liner notes—delivered with it “a worldly touch: a gentle caress one moment; a vice-like grip the next.”
“That’s odd,” I said under my breath. The whole apartment seemed to be shimmering like jelly in the light from the lamp and the TV.
“Uh-huh. Sleep, my sweet.”
“I don’t think I can. Can you tell me a story?”
“About anything in particular?”
“Whatever comes to mind.”
“A story, huh?” She turned her head just a fraction and gazed up towards the ceiling. “I know one,” she said. She took a deep breath before beginning:
“We’d been driving for what seemed like forever. I remember counting the white posts drifting past.”
“When is this story supposed to be set?”
“It’s not important.”
“Yes it is.”
“Shh. A long time ago.”
“It’s just that it sounds like you’re out driving in the countryside.”
“Maybe all this happened before they closed the city? Stop paying so much attention.” She gave me a dirty look before continuing. “I was using my coat as a pillow and at one point my head lolled against the window with a dull thunk. I thumped my head against the glass again, this time intentionally, then again. My father didn’t so much as look over. He never took any risks, always driving way too slowly even though we had hours of travel ahead of us. ‘Are you cold?’ I heard my dad ask, ‘I’ll turn up the heat if you are.’”
“How old were you?”
“Fifteen. It was a long time ago. A lifetime. I was mixed up. I was being shipped off to a boarding school out in woop woop. I spent most of my childhood at a private girls’ school that tried hard to cauterize all signs of individuality. It was all very cultish. You know how school-life can be.”
“I seem to recall.”
“Not that I had any real reason to complain. I wrote a lot, but other than that time just passed by. I had no ambition. I’d like to believe that I’ve matured since then.” She propped herself up on one elbow before leaning over and kissing my cheek.
“I know you have.”
“You’re sweet.”
“It’s been known to happen.” I got up and brought back a bottle of Chinese rice wine I’d picked up on clearance while I was at the shop. I filled two small glasses and passed one to her, which she swept up gratefully. The stuff was a pretty despicable drop, but at least it was better than the aforementioned Siamese vodka.
“I just want to put enough distance behind me and the past and live for today,” she continued. “You know what I mean? It’s frustrating to know that I’m not far enough away, and may never be. I hate that there are things outside of my control. It’s just not fair, you know?” She looked at me. “God, I’m talking a million things today. Am I making any sense at all?”
“Reasonably. I get the drift. Go on, sunshine.” The tone of her voice was soothing, even while the content troubled me. I wanted—and needed—to know more about her.
“I—I never tell anyone this—my mother died of cancer when I was twelve. I only ever told one of my friends at school.”
“Jesus. I’m sorry.”
“It was a long, long time ago, Floyd.”
“Still.”
Laurel gazed up at the ceiling. “I soldiered on like nothing happened, and I guess I still do. I think the lies I created hurt as bad as the truth did.”
“That sounds familiar.”
“I know, babe.”
“What did your mother do?”
“She was a lecturer in Japanese and Russian studies at Melbourne Uni.”
“Wow.”
“That was how she met my dad. And—I want to love my mother but I don’t think I ever really knew her. My father forced her to give up her career and have a family. Have me. He made her someone she wasn’t. And I guess I blamed him for my mother’s death, too. But I also blamed myself.” Laurel looked at me, her eyes filling up.
“Cancer wasn’t either of your faults. So, let’s change subjects—who was the friend you did tell about your mother?”
Laurel startled me by laughing out loud with unrepressed joy. “I met Valeska when I was in my second year of high school. That would’ve been, what, sixteen years ago? Oh god,” she laughed again then settled down a bit. “The first time I met her, she smiled the most beautiful smile I think I’ve ever seen. My heart skipped a beat. She had dark, charcoal coloured eyes and this shock of pillar-box red hair that was all dreads and sprung outwards in every possible direction.”
“I gather she was cute.”
“Breathtakingly.”
“Do you have any snaps?”
“Nothing.”
“So what happened?”
“She became my best friend—and a wee bit more than that. My first love. She made me realize I wasn’t such a hub of disarray after all. Valeska changed my life.”
Laurel lifted herself up to a sitting position on the floor. She peered down at me as she finished off her drink. Then, holding her arms aloft, she very slowly removed the cocktail gloves. I’d never seen her do that before. Her uncovered hands and wrists were pale.
“Valeska always wore gloves,” Laurel said. “I guess I picked up the habit. I have her favourite pair stored away for safe keeping. It’s all I have left of her now.”
