Eyrie (30 page)

K
ai was fidgety, restless from being cooped up in the flat all day. Their Scrabble game felt desultory. The kid was not really interested.

BARGS isn’t a word, Keely told him. At least he thought that’s what it said.

The kid shrugged. He’d been distant before, but not this sullen.

What about Mario? We could play that.

Kai sniffed disdainfully.

What is it, mate?

You cried.

What?

Last night. When you was sleeping.

Oh, said Keely with his spirit sinking – something else; it was endless. Did I?

I got scared.

The kid ran his hand through the lidful of unused tiles.

Why were you scared?

The boy looked away.

Kai? Why were you scared?

I dunno. Just the bawlin.

Kai pushed the tiles around the board – the game was toast now.

Is that all? Really? Honestly?

The boy shrugged. He looked at his palms.

Was I sleepwalking or something? Did I do something strange?

Cryin, that’s all.

Well, blokes cry too, you know.

The kid’s scepticism bordered on contempt.

But we do, he said. Even if we have to do it in our sleep.

Kai lifted the board and funnelled the tiles back into their box.

My dad, said Keely. He cried, you know.

The boy pressed his lips out sardonically.

True story. He wasn’t some action hero, mate. He didn’t spend all day biffing bad guys. He was a minister, like a priest. Just a bloke. I’m just a bloke too.

Can I watch TV?

I spose, said Keely.

He stood behind the couch awhile, watching the boy thumb through the channels. In fifteen minutes the school bell would ring.

Gemma came in, blotchy from the heat. She set down the bags of groceries and opened the fridge. He stood close, so Kai wouldn’t overhear.

Nothing, she said.

I might take a look.

What’s the point? Kai’s not even down there.

Just to know what this little prick looks like.

Stupid bloody car, she hissed.

He peered down from the gallery. The side street was gridlocked with parents in vehicles. People of all shapes hung at the chain-link fence and smoked outside the seedy restaurants and shops across the road.

He wished he still had binoculars. He wanted to see faces but from up here people were only figures, bodies whose postures he couldn’t read. And the longer you stared, the less innocent they seemed. Everyone began to look sinister. Lurking, plotting, in gaggles of colour and movement, indistinct behind the rippling hot updraughts. But they were just folks, parents, aunties, older siblings, waiting to collect their kids, walk them to the pool, the airconditioned shops, cricket training, dance lessons. He had to let them be people. Even the bloke at the corner. In the beanie. Black tracky-dacks, blue singlet, reflector shades. On a day like today. A woollen hat. Pity’s sake. Folding his arms. One leg cocked against the wall. A small bloke.

Keely pulled the door to behind him and headed for the lifts. Probably wasn’t him. But he needed to know.

As the lift door peeled open he startled an Indian granny emerging with a fully laden supermarket trolley. He stepped aside, smiled like a cretin and caught the door before the lift set off again. The school bell echoed up the shaft. At the fourth floor two emo kids tried to squeeze a desk and an office chair in, and after a few moments of trying to help them, he got out and took to the stairs.

By the time he got to the ground floor he was blowing and his spine felt as if it had been hammered up through the base of his skull. He bowled through the lobby and out into the hot light, shuffled breathless to the corner, but at street level everything was different. A blur of moving bodies, the sun glancing off vehicles as they purred by. Shopping bags blowing free, snagged in jacarandas. Hijacked supermarket trolleys abandoned in every alley. Spilt drinks, gobbets of food on the pavement. Gulls feasting, fleeing, banking back for more. A truck in reverse, all beeps and diesel fumes. And kids, hundreds of them still fanning out everywhere. He wondered how many had noticed Kai’s absence today, whether there was a single girl or boy in this spreading mob who’d actually missed him, who’d even notice if he never returned.

He wheeled around, causing mothers and infants to clutch and cower. He climbed onto a street bench to scan the crowd. There were single men, blokes in suits, tradies in hi-viz, but no solitary lurker he could distinguish from the endlessly moving parade, no leering thug in tracksuit pants and gamy runners, no fag, no tatts, no beanie. He was too late.

He pushed back through the crowd, conscious he was bothering people now, frightening them a little. He was a fool to have come down. He’d left Gemma and Kai up there alone and whoever he’d seen wasn’t just gone – he could be anywhere.

The lift wormed its way uncertainly up the shaft. He willed it on, shuffled in agitation and the Sudanese woman with the little girl in cornrows avoided his gaze. He knew what he looked like – there were others in the building: you saw them jounce and fidget every day, sweating and panting by the laundromat. Keely smiled at the woman reassuringly, but it only seemed to alarm her more.

He took the gallery at a trot and his knock on Gemma’s door was too emphatic. He saw the momentary flash of the spyhole before the chain slid back.

Oh, Tommy, she said. Go and take a shower. You bloody stink.

T
hey ate dinner together. Gemma cooked, almost defiant about it. Keely had no appetite but he knew better than to leave food on his plate. Things felt strained enough between the three of them as it was.

He was at the sink afterwards, trying to find something amusing about being elbow-deep in suds again, when Gemma’s phone chirped on the bench behind him. Kai was in the shower. He heard her cajoling him from the bedroom. Tonight her fractiousness had a hint of wear in it, as if she were running out of fight. Maybe she’d go south after all. He’d call Doris.

It was just a single chirp, a message.

He reached for a towel and dried his hands. When he opened the phone there was no text, just an image. One of three.

Kai at the school gate. That round face, the unguarded gaze, the white hair to his shoulders. The second pic was the teddy bear. Horrible and yellow against the door grille, hanging as he’d found it, dangling from one leg. And the third was Gemma. Walking in the street. Carrying her shopping. Taken this afternoon.

He sensed her in the doorway before she spoke.

The fuck you doin?

Close the door, he said.

Bloody tell
me
what to do.

Please, Gemma. Close the door.

She glowered but pulled it to. The water ran on in the bathroom. He gave her the phone. He didn’t know how he was going to tell her about the teddy bear, the fact he’d found it and said nothing. Best he didn’t go there. Her face was instantly wild.

Get him into bed for me, will ya?

What’re you doing?

Makin a call, she said, moving past to the sliding door. She stepped out onto the balcony and closed it behind her. He rapped on the glass. Watched her a moment until she turned and glared. She motioned for him to leave her alone. He went through to the bedroom, called to Kai to wind things up in there, that it was time for bed.

Kai and he were paging through the raptor book without much pleasure when Gemma appeared in the doorway.

Be out for a few minutes, she said.

Where? he asked.

I’ll be back for work.

Stay here, Gem, he said, conscious of Kai’s attention. Really. I mean it.

Just something I forgot, she said. A girl thing.

He got up from the bed and followed her to the door. Gemma, I’m serious.

Don’t forget the chain, she said, averting any attempt at discussion.

And she was gone. He went back in and sat on the bed. It was a while before Keely noticed the boy surveying his sun-damaged hands. Kai drew his own from beneath the sheet and turned them over, examining them. Keely laid a hand on the boy’s palm. Kai seemed uncertain about this. He lifted it a moment as if weighing it. Then he ran a finger across the veined back of Keely’s mitt, the lined knuckles. Keely’s hands were pulpy from hot water and looked a little swollen. He had no idea what the boy was thinking. He let him turn his hand over, trace the creases in Keely’s palm.

You’ll get big old blokes’ hands like this one day, said Keely.

I wake up and I’m the same as you, said Kai. Like, I’m dreamin. Then I
am
you.

See? That’s imagining. You’re seeing in your head what it’s like in the future, to be a grownup, to get old.

No, said the boy, giving Keely back his own hand. That’s not it.

*

Gemma came in at eight-fifty. She was shaking and glassy-eyed. She smelt bitter but had no time to shower before work.

Where’d you go? he whispered, pulling the bedroom door to.

I told you, she said, shucking her dress and pulling a tunic from the plastic laundry basket on the coffee table.

What happened?

Don’t ask me, it’s a lady thing.

I don’t believe you.

It doesn’t matter what you believe, she said, zipping the tunic and stepping into her shoes.

Don’t go, call in sick.

I can’t, she said, tipping a compact and brush onto the kitchen bench. Not tonight.

Keely watched Gemma assemble herself. It was a mystery to him that a woman could arrive as a ruin and reconstitute herself in moments. There was still something shaky about her as she smoothed herself down and checked her reflection in the sliding glass door but she had assumed an armour that hadn’t been there a few minutes before. He didn’t believe she was going to work tonight. But why the uniform?

Can you stay? she asked, turning for the door. Will you be here?

Of course. I’m on at seven.

Okay. Good. I’ll be back in plenty of time.

Whatever it is, Gem, don’t do it.

Just work, she said.

I don’t want you to.

She shot him a game smile as she pulled the door to and after she was gone he puzzled over the false note it struck.

He sat up till midnight. He felt the urge to call Doris, to speak to Faith, but he didn’t know what he could say that wouldn’t sound as if he were coming to pieces. But he was okay tonight. He was straight, sober, making himself useful. He had a job to go to in the morning. He was not mad.

The Mirador gulped and whistled. He paced the unblemished carpet of Gemma’s livingroom, he watched the channel lights, the low constellations of tankers riding out in Gage Roads.

It was only night, just an ordinary darkness, and he was still and merely himself.

T
here was a weird vibe in the kitchen at Bub’s. A sort of repelling field, a fraught space that nobody would enter. After yesterday’s little fiasco it stood to reason. But it gave Keely the creeps the way the hackeysackers surveyed him in sideways glances, exchanging round-eyed looks and shrugs. Gypsy offered nothing but scowls and glares. The volume of the kitchen music was hellish, as if the chef had dialled it up for purposes of punishment or mastery.

Bub seemed fine, if somewhat distracted. Saturday mornings the joint always got smashed and Keely knew he needed all hands, even him at a pinch. The work was hectic and unceasing, a wave they all rode for fear of being overtaken.

The first lull didn’t come until ten. Keely made himself a heart bomb – a four-shot espresso that filled a tumbler – and he was perched on the back step when Gypsy’s spattered clogs appeared beside him. Keely made space for him to pass but the chef squatted close by, gazing out across the blighted little yard, all rings and fingernails and greasy curls, rubbing the burns and scars along his hands and forearms.

What the fuck, Suds?

Sorry?

Are you insane?

I hope not. Have I done something?

Well, that’s cute.

Just give me time to get this down and I’ll come in and fix it up, he said chugging his coffee.

Hardy-fuckin-ha. What’ve you got, a death wish?

I’m not with you, said Keely, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, properly rattled now.

The events of last night
. Ring a bell, Suds?

Keely shook his head, set the glass down on the step beside him.

You’re a smartarse, mate. I don’t like it.

Maybe you could explain the problem.

Chrissake, mate, don’t insult me.

I actually don’t know what you’re talking about.

A bloke gets dragged from the water last night at the sardine wharf.

Okay. I’m listening.

And just after midnight someone
I
know sees someone
you
know rolling by on a gurney in the A & E. All wet and untidy. Both his legs broken.

You’re shitting me.

I don’t need to be shitting you, mate. You need to be shitting yourself. You fucked it up.

Keely swam to his feet. He gazed over Gypsy’s head to the flashes of movement in the kitchen, a rectangle of fluttering shadows, momentary visitations, blurs more abstract by the second.

You think so?

Well, Jesus, even this little scumbag’s got friends. The cops’ll be heartbroken he didn’t drown, but now they’ll have to show some kind of interest in who mowed him down.

In a car?

Ran him down. Into the water.

Nothing to do with me.

So why do you look like you’re about to pass a fucking kidney stone?

Keely had nothing to say; he was too busy chasing his own thoughts.

This is a bloody small town, said Gyspy. A village of village idiots. People talk.

So let them.

Those kids in there. They know you were asking about a certain couple of dipshits. And they sent you to me. But I need to stay sweet with old Bub. I can’t afford any trouble. So I’m not happy, Suds.

Fair enough.

You asked me, I didn’t know who you were talking about. Right?

Alright.

You’re just some derro off the street, I don’t know you, we only spoke the once.

Keely shrugged.

And if I were you I’d piss off. Or take steps.

What kind of steps?

Mate, I’m not even here, said Gypsy, getting to his feet and dusting himself off like some sort of potentate regaining the dignity of his station.

Keely stood out in the yard. He stared at the coffee glass on the step, the jam-tin of butts, the row of fat drums, the wheelie bins, the big plastic skips.

He wondered if Bub would let him go early, whether this in itself might attract attention. He had four hours to get through. Gemma and Kai would be locked in the flat, that was something. But he had no idea who was in traction and who was still out on the street. Whoever had gone into the drink last night had likely consented to a meeting, with someone known to them. Neither Stewie nor his noxious mate was likely to give the cops anything. They’d want to fix this themselves. But money would hardly be sufficient now. From here on this would be about revenge.

He dug in behind the apron and pulled out his phone. His fingers were slippery and unsteady but he found the number.

What is it? she said.

You have to ask?

No idea what you mean, she said.

Kai alright?

Bored, she said. I bloody hate Mario.

Have you thought about . . . travelling? The key is still at my place.

Thinkin about it.

Don’t go anywhere till I get back, alright?

Keely thumbed through a few sites. He had his own ideas about pissing off, but the other alternative – the taking steps business – that was another matter.