I Am the Messenger (3 page)

No one says that, though.

You can’t.

Especially men.

We men think we
have
to be good at it, so I’m here to tell you I’m not. I should also explain that I honestly think my kissing leaves a lot to be desired as well. One of those girlfriends tried to teach me once, but I think she gave up in the end. My tongue work is particularly bad, I feel, but what can I do?

It’s only sex.

That’s what I tell myself, anyway.

I lie a lot.

Getting back to Audrey, though, I should really feel complimented that she won’t even touch me because she likes me more than anyone else. It makes perfect sense, really, doesn’t it?

If she ever gets down or depressed, I can make out the figure of her shadow through the front window of the shack. She comes in and we drink cheap beer or wine or watch a movie or all three. Something old and long like
Ben-Hur
that stretches into the night. She’ll be next to me on the couch in her flannel shirt and jeans that have been cut into shorts, and eventually, when she’s asleep, I’ll bring a blanket out and cover her up.

I kiss her cheek.

I stroke her hair.

I think of how she lives alone, just like me, and how she never had any real family, and how she only has sex with people. She never lets any love get in the way. I think she had a family once, but it was one of those beat-the-crap-out-of-each-other situations. There’s no shortage of them around here. I think she loved them, and all they ever did was hurt her.

That’s why she refuses to love.

Anybody.

I guess she feels better off that way, and who can blame her?

When she sleeps on my couch, I think about all that. Every time. I cover her up, then go to bed and dream.

With my eyes open.

There have been a few articles about the bank robbery in the local papers. They talk about how I wrestled the gun from the thief after chasing him down. Quite typical, really. I knew they’d make more out of it.

I go through some of them at my kitchen table, and the Doorman just looks at me like always. He couldn’t give a shit if I’m a hero. As long as he gets his dinner on time, he doesn’t have a care in the world.

My ma comes over, and I give her a beer. She’s proud, she tells me. According to her, all her kids have done quite well except me, but now she at least has a glimmer of pride in me to glimmer in her eye, if only for a day or two.

“That was my son,” I can imagine her explaining to people she meets on the street. “I told you he’d amount to something
one
day.”

Marv comes over, of course, and Ritchie.

Even Audrey pays me a visit with a newspaper tucked under her arm.

In each article, I’m known as twenty-year-old cabdriver Ed Kennedy, as I lied to every single reporter about my age. When you lie once, you have to make it uniform. We all know that.

My bewildered face is plastered all over the front pages, and even a guy from a radio show shows up and tapes a conversation with me in my lounge room. I have coffee with him, but we have to drink it without milk. He’d stopped me on my way out to get some.

It’s a Tuesday evening when I get home from work and pull the mail out of the letter box. As well as my electricity and gas bills and some junk mail, there’s a small envelope. I throw it down on the table with everything else and forget about it. My name’s written in scrawl, and I wonder what it could possibly be. Even when I’m making my steak-and-salad sandwich, I tell myself to go into the lounge room soon to open it. Constantly, I forget.

It’s fairly late when I finally get around to it.

I feel it.

Feel something.

There’s something flowing between my fingers as I hold the envelope in my hands and begin tearing it open. The night’s a cool one, typical of spring.

I shiver.

I see my reflection in the TV screen and in the photo of my family.

The Doorman snores.

The breeze outside steps closer.

The fridge buzzes.

For a moment, it feels like everything stops to watch as I reach in and pull out an old playing card.

It’s the Ace of Diamonds.

In the echoes of light in my lounge room, I let my fingers hold the card gently, as if it might break or crease in my hands. Three addresses are written on it in the same writing as on the envelope. I read them slowly, watchfully. There’s an eeriness slipping over my hands. It makes its way inside me and travels, quietly gnawing at my thoughts. I read:

45 Edgar Street, midnight

13 Harrison Avenue, 6 p.m.

6 Macedoni Street, 5:30 a.m.

I open the curtain to look outside.

Nothing.

I get past the Doorman and stand on the front porch.

“Hello?” I call out.

But again, there’s nothing.

The breeze looks away—almost embarrassed at having watched—and I’m left there, standing. Alone. The card’s still in my hand. I don’t know the addresses I hold, or at least not exactly. I know the roads but not the actual houses.

It’s without doubt the strangest thing that’s ever happened to me.

Who would send me something like this?
I ask myself.
What have I done to get an old playing card in my letter box with strange addresses scrawled on it?
I go back in and sit at the kitchen table. I try to work out what’s happening and who has sent me what could be a piece of destiny in the mail. The visions of many faces reach me.

Could it be Audrey?
I ask.
Marv? Ritchie? Ma?
I have no idea.

There’s something in me that advises me to throw it out—to throw it in the bin and forget about it. Yet, I also feel pangs of guilt even for thinking of discarding it like that.

Maybe it’s meant to be,
I think.

The Doorman wanders over and sniffs the card.

Damn it,
I can see him thinking.
I thought it might be something to eat
. After sniffing one last time, he pauses a moment and reflects on what he’d like to do next. As always, he shuffles back to the door, turns half a circle, and lies down. He gets comfortable in his suit of black and gold fur. His big eyes glow, but they also fall deep with darkness. His paws stretch out on the crusty old carpet.

He stares at me.

I stare back.

Well?
I see him think.
What the hell do
you
want?

Nothing
.

Good
.

Fine
.

And we leave it at that.

It doesn’t change the fact that I’m still holding the Ace of Diamonds in my hands, wondering.

Call someone,
I tell myself.

The phone beats me to it. It rings. Maybe this is the answer I’ve been waiting for.

I pick it up and shove it to my ear. It hurts, but I listen hard. Unfortunately, it’s my mother.

“Ed?”

I’d know that voice anywhere. That, and this woman shouts into the phone, every time, without fail.

“Yeah, hi, love.”

“Don’t ‘Yeah, hi, love’ me, you little bastard.” Great. “Did you forget something today?”

I think about it, trying to remember. No thoughts or memories arrive. All I can see is the card as I turn it in my hands. “I can’t think of anything.”

“Typical!” She’s getting a bit ropable now. Aggravated, to say the least. “You were s’posed to pick up that coffee table for me from KC Furniture, Ed.” The words are spat through the phone line. They’re loud and wet in my ear. “Y’ big dickhead.” She’s lovely, isn’t she?

As I’ve alluded to earlier, my mother really has quite a swearing habit on her. She swears all day every day, whether she’s happy, sad, indifferent, everything. She blames it on my brother, Tommy, and me, of course. She says we used to swear our heads off when we were kids, playing soccer in the backyard.

“I gave up trying to stop you,” she always tells me. “So I figured if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”

If I can go through a conversation with her without being called a wanker or dickhead at least once, I’m in front. The worst thing about it is the sheer
emphasis
she swears with. Whenever she calls me something like that, she spits it from her mouth, practically hurling it at me.

She’s still going at me now, even though I’m not listening.

I tune back in.

“…and what should I do tomorrow when Mrs. Faulkner turns up for morning tea, Ed? Should I just get her to put her mug on the floor?”

“Just blame me, Ma.”

“Too bloody right I will,” she snaps. “I’ll just tell her that Dickhead Ed forgot to pick up my coffee table.”

Dickhead Ed.

I hate it when she calls me that.

“No worries, Ma.”

She goes on for quite a while longer, but again I focus on the Ace of Diamonds. It sparkles in my hand.

I touch it.

Hold it.

I smile.

Into it.

There’s an aura to this card, and it’s been given to
me
. Not to Dickhead Ed. To me—the real Ed Kennedy. The future Ed Kennedy. No longer simply a cab-driving hopeless case.

What will I do with it?

Who will I be?

“Ed?”

No answer.

I’m still thinking.

“Ed?” roars Ma.

I’m stunned back into the conversation.

“Are you listening to me?”

“Yeah…yeah, of course.”

45 Edgar Street…13 Harrison Avenue…6 Macedoni Street…

“Ma, I’m sorry,” I say again. “It just slipped my mind—I had a lot of pickups today. A lot of work in the city. I’ll get it tomorrow, all right?”

“You sure about that?”

“I’m sure.”

“You won’t forget?”

“No.”

“Good. Goodbye.”

“Hey, wait!” I rush my voice through the phone.

She comes back. “What?”

I struggle to get the words out of my mouth, yet I have to ask her. About the card. I’ve decided I should really ask everyone I suspect of sending it to me. I may as well start with Ma.

“Yes, what?” she asks again, a bit louder this time.

I let the words out, each one tugging and pulling at my lips as they fight to stay in.

“Did you send me something in the mail today, Ma?”

“Like what?”

I pause a moment. “Like something small….”

“Like
what,
Ed? I don’t really have time for this.”

All right. I have to say it. “It’s a playing card—the Ace of Diamonds.”

There’s silence at the other end. She’s thinking.

“Well?” I ask.

“Well what?”

“Was it you who sent it?”

She’s had enough now, I can tell. The feeling reaches a hand through the phone line and shakes me.

“Of course it wasn’t me!” It’s like she’s retaliating for something. “Why would I bother sending you a playing card in the mail? I should have sent you a reminder to pick up”—she raises her voice to a roar again—“
my goddamn coffee table
!”

“Okay, okay….”

Why am I still so calm?

Is it the card?

I don’t know.

But then, yes, I
do
know. It’s because I’m always like this. Too pathetically calm for my own good. I should just tell the old cow to shut up, but I never have and never will. After all, she can’t have a relationship like this with any of her other kids. Just me. She kisses their feet every time they come to visit (which isn’t that much), and they just leave again. With me, at least she’s got consistency.

I say, “All right, Ma, I was only checking to make sure it wasn’t you. That’s all. It just seemed like kind of a weird thing to get in the—”

“Ed?” she interrupts me, complete boredom attached to her voice.

“What?”

“Piss off, will you?”

“All right, I’ll see you later.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

We hang up.

That bloody coffee table.

I knew I was forgetting something when I walked home from the Vacant Taxis lot. Tomorrow old Mrs. Faulkner will show up at Ma’s place wanting to talk about my heroics in the bank a few days ago. All she’ll hear is that I forgot to pick up the coffee table. I’m still not sure how I’m going to fit it in my cab, anyway.

I force myself to stop thinking about it. It’s irrelevant. What I need to focus on is why this card’s turned up and where it’s come from.

It’s someone I know.

That’s certain.

It’s someone who knows I play cards all the time. Which
should
make it either Marv, Audrey, or Ritchie.

Marv’s out. For sure. It could never be him. He could never be that imaginative.

Then Ritchie. Highly unlikely. He just doesn’t seem the type to do this.

Audrey.

I tell myself that it’s most likely Audrey, but I don’t know.

My gut feeling says it’s none of them.

Sometimes we play cards on the front porch of my house or on the porch at someone else’s place. Hundreds of people might have walked past and seen us. Once in a while, when there’s an argument, people laugh and call out to us about who’s cheating, who’s winning, and who’s whingeing.

So it could be anyone.

I don’t sleep tonight.

Only think.

In the morning I get up earlier than normal and walk around town with the Doorman and a street directory, finding each house. The one on Edgar Street is a real wreck of a joint, right at the bottom of the street. The one on Harrison is kind of old, but it’s neat. It has a rose bed in the front yard, though the grass is yellow and stale. The Macedoni place is up in the hilly part of town. The richer part. It’s a two-story house with a steep driveway.