The Best Australian Stories 2014 (17 page)

Windy used to be a Senior Associate at the firm. Her name was really Wendy but she was from New Zealand.

Windy wasn't like Beth from Banking. She was dumpy, eccentric and an over-sharer, and more often than not sported expanding ladders in the calves of her stockings.

Windy complained daily of feeling sick in her stomach.

‘I just can't work out what it is,' she said one day, leaning over her secretary's desk. She clutched her belly, which had swollen to the size of a gigantic inflatable beach ball but hadn't yet developed multicoloured stripes.

‘Women hold stress in their stomachs,' declared her secretary.

‘It can't be stress,' said Windy. ‘It's probably indigestion.'

‘Every day of the year?' you asked. ‘Maybe it
is
stress.'

‘It has to be indigestion,' said Windy. ‘I can't afford to be stressed. I have a mortgage to pay.'

She pulled out her purse, twisted the clasp and flipped it open, revealing a crumpled photo stuffed into a plastic insert.

‘This is my house,' she said.

‘You keep a photo of your house in your purse?'

‘It motivates me to come to work.'

She handed you her purse and you took a closer look at the picture.

‘Hang on, this isn't a house. It's Civility Place.'

‘What?' She grabbed it back and stared at the photo. ‘You're right. How strange. When I first moved in, it was a cottage.'

The secretary rolled her eyes. You watched her open a new window on her computer screen. ‘Psycho,' she typed and clicked
send.

Another secretary halfway across the floor laughed out loud.

‘So,' you joked, ‘every day you've been catching trains from work to work from work.'

‘I suppose so,' said Windy. ‘I've never noticed. I'm just so tired these days. I don't look up at the sky anymore. Are there any stars left?'

A week later, Windy was in the middle of asking her secretary to order her a monitor-riser when she stopped abruptly.

Then she let out a shriek and proceeded to run silently in rectangular patterns around the edges of Level 403, slamming into the intervening glass, over and over again, until paramedics arrived.

It was impossible not to see and hear Windy's meltdown through the walls, floors and ceilings. Everyone pretended she was simply not there. They sidestepped her as they went about their urgent filing and practice-group meetings and two-unit coffee runs.

That night, the cleaners sprayed each of the affected glass walls and windows, and wiped them down with chamois cloths. They removed the cheek marks, the nose and chin marks, and the palm marks with the splayed fingers.

‘At least we know it's suicide-proof,' said Phillips Tom.

All day you think of the cleaners removing Windy's marks from the glass.

At five o'clock you pick up your keys and wallet. You leave your jacket on the back of your chair, a trick one of the guys once taught you, which apparently suggests to passers-by that one is still in the building when one is really out doing other things, like having a hotel quickie with the new girl from Payroll.

You wait for a lift. Phillips Tom is already there, jamming his thumb against the up arrow.

He looks at you with narrowed eyes and then, with a disdainful flourish, checks the time on his watch.

‘I,' you mumble, ‘I have a medical appointment.'

‘We have that conference call with the Chinese at seven tomorrow morning.'

‘I'll be on time.'

‘Good,' says Phillips Tom. ‘Now, go get a life.'

Serge is standing in the foyer, as always, with his hands resting in front of him, one over the other. You take him aside.

‘I need your bike.'

‘Pardon?'

‘I need it right now,' you say. ‘I can pay you half of what's in my bank account. You can buy twenty bikes with it.'

He picks up a phone concealed behind the birds of paradise.

‘Rob?' he says. ‘Can you cover for me?'

You've been passing your wallet from one hand to the other, and Serge notices they're trembling.

‘You okay?'

‘I have to get out of here.'

‘Follow me,' he says.

In the car park, he asks where you're going.

‘Far away. All those places you talked about. Tokyo, maybe.'

You transfer him the money on the spot.

‘Have a good trip,' winks Serge, handing you a pair of aviators. ‘Send me a postcard.'

Aviators on, you are riding out of the city, past beaches and over mountain ranges, and the whole time you are singing ‘Serge, Serge, the concierge', and you are overtaking slow trucks on highways, and you are passing bright lights and small towns, and the sun is warming your back, and the wind billows inside your shirt, and the air is crisp, and the birds are calling.

You are taking trains and buses and boats, and you are crossing seas to places where people offer you food in strange tongues and write you directions in unfamiliar scripts, and your hands are steady, and your soul is lifting, and the smiling face of a once young pop star with white teeth and white wings appears against a fluffy white backdrop of clouds and sings gently to you about a summer holiday in a place where the sun shines brightly and the sea is blue.

And then you slow down and begin to walk, and you discover a billboard filled with white-panted women, and you spy the word ‘HOTEL' emblazoned in bold on their buttocks, and the billboard is pointing you to an arched hedge.

You wander down the green tunnel and it is rustling around you, and you are dreaming of white high-waisted pants and white terry-towelling robes and white bubble baths and crisp white sheets when you begin to hear a familiar
whump, whump, whump.

There, at the end of the tunnel, are those six revolving blades.

Serge is standing in the foyer, one hand resting over the other. The birds of paradise seem to have been rearranged by an ikebana artist of unsound mind. Their stems have been driven into metal stakes and they peck at each other as if in pain.

You find you are wearing a sleek new suit and holding an expensive briefcase in one hand.

‘Konnichiwa,'
says Serge, bowing. ‘Welcome to Civility Place.'

You say nothing in response. You take off his aviators, drop them on the glass floor and crush them with the heel of your designer shoe.

‘Shame,' says Serge. ‘They weren't a bad pair.'

A stream of Beths from Banking, wearing shiny black heels with red undersides, clack past you to the lifts. You follow them.

‘Good morning,' says the lift in its smooth voice. ‘Phillips Tom is waiting for you in the conference room on Level 1200.'

Around you, the Beths assemble. They take sips through straws from bottles of juice branded with ugly purple cows with bad teeth.

‘What flavour is that?' you ask them.

‘Fruits of the Valley,' they say.

‘Does it really taste like fruits from a valley?' you ask. ‘What fruits even grow in valleys?'

‘It's everything we could have asked for,' they say in the voice of the lift, ‘and more.'

As the doors close, the automated voice of civilisation announces that you are rising to Level 1200, to the very top of the hill, to the very peak of the world, into the clouds, into the sky, and beyond.

The Sleepers Almanac

Something Special, Something Rare

Rebekah Clarkson

It was not the first time Graham and Liam Barlow had sat in matching chairs on the wrong side of a school principal's desk. Graham folded his arms across his chest and cocked his chin towards his son.

‘Was it by accident, or on purpose, Liam?'

Liam shook his hair from his forehead. He began to open his mouth as the telephone rang shrill on the desk. The principal picked it up and raised an index finger midair.

Graham tried again to remember the principal's name. Using someone's name was a persuasion tool. Graham had learned that in the government program he'd done years ago, the New Enterprise Incentive Scheme. His enterprise hadn't worked out; landscaping was hopeless with a crook back, but excellence is a state of mind put into action, they say, and that's why Graham had called his new business Winners. The name was just right: relevant, memorable, a good ring to it. Winners would specialise in supplying medals and trophies to sporting clubs. Graham had a pitch ready for the Hahndorf Football Club, once the president returned his calls. He'd put Troy Campbell into his Contacts so as to be ready and while the principal talked he dragged his thumb across the bluetooth in his jeans front pocket. He wished he'd left the earpiece switched on and attached. He was a businessman, with work to do and people to see. He wouldn't even be here if Jenny hadn't refused to leave TAFE for the afternoon. She'd missed enough lessons looking after her mum and dealing with all Sophie's dramas, she said, and Liam's school didn't need them both to go in. Plus, she said, it was embarrassing.

The principal was making professional cooing sounds into the phone and nodding slowly.

Graham pulled his fingers into fists, resting them on top of his thighs, like kids do in the front row of class photos. Supplying the medals and trophies for Hahndorf Football Club alone would set Winners off and running. He tightened his fists till his knuckles turned white. Then there'd be word of mouth. Then you'd get your tennis, basketball, netball, hockey, all the carnivals. Other towns through the hills and the Fleurieu Peninsula would jump on board. Everyone would know that Winners had the best products and service, that online wasn't easier or cheaper, though how to make it cheaper
and
profitable really would depend on the bulk orders coming in. That was his biggest hurdle. It wasn't as if he didn't have a business plan.

‘That's as stupid as a birth plan,' Jenny said when he showed it to her. ‘You haven't factored in bad luck. Or bad timing. Or bad genes.'

The principal hung up the phone and pursed his lips. When he spoke, it was quiet and deliberate, just like the doctor after Jenny had been in labour for twenty hours.

‘Well, that was Mrs Callow from the emergency department. Josh has concussion. And he's been given six stitches across his left eyebrow.'

The principal paused, but Graham knew what was coming next. The kid could have gone blind. It was always about someone nearly going blind.

‘You know, Liam, if your light saber had been just a couple of centimetres lower, just a fraction lower …' The principal lowered his chin, leaned over the desk.

Liam looked up and turned to Graham.

‘Accident?'

The principal stretched back in his chair and put his hands behind his head.

‘How do you think you'd be feeling now, Liam, if Josh was blind in his left eye?'

Liam's mouth flinched to one side. ‘Not good?'

‘No, that's right. I don't imagine you'd be feeling very good, would you?'

Graham wasn't feeling very good. He visualised his shop locked up again, the hopeful, hand-printed ‘Back in 5 Minutes' sign stuck on the door with Blu Tack. He was going to have to close for half a day again tomorrow, in order to drive Jenny down to her mum's in Modbury North. Jenny was refusing to drive on the freeway. You're not going to die from driving on the freeway, Graham had told her, over and over. It's not the freeway per se, she told him, it's the trucks. She said she had a panic attack whenever she saw one coming up in her rear-vision mirror. She said she froze and when they passed, her whole car shivered and the first time it happened she had tears in her eyes and her life flashed before her like people say it does when you have a near-death experience. She wouldn't drive on the freeway, she said, because a man couldn't raise a girl without a woman around. This was so illogical, so off the point, that Graham hardly knew what to say back. And it miffed him; it wasn't as if Jenny had an all-star relationship with their daughter. Apparently, his was worse.

‘Liam, what do you think you could do, to make this right with Josh?'

Graham wondered if he needed to spell it out to the principal himself: the kids were just mucking about; it could have been Liam's eyebrow with six stitches; and it wasn't a light saber, it was just a stupid stick. There seemed to be a fine line when you were in this position and Graham never really knew – was he meant to be on Liam's side or the principal's side? He knew which side he
felt
he was on. He felt it like a ball of fire in his gut.

‘Say sorry?'

Graham's hands flipped over so that his palms were now facing up. He shuffled forward to the edge of his chair.

‘Okay. Well, that's a start,' the principal said slowly. ‘How do you think you could show Josh that you are sorry, Liam?'

Graham fell back into the chair. He'd seen the school's pamphlet on redemptive justice; this was going to take a while. At the previous school, they just suspended the kid. Straightforward. Except for the three-strikes rule, which meant that Liam had been expelled and none of that or anything else had been straightforward at all. They'd ended up moving house, moving everything; a fresh start. He rolled his neck anticlockwise. This was not the way to run a new business – not being there. He turned his attention to what Liam might do in the shop for the rest of the week if he got suspended. There wasn't much he could do. Rearrange the trophies? Paint more road signs to try and direct people to the old mechanics shop behind the disused servo on Hutchinson Street? He was under no illusions; Winners was in a rubbish location – you couldn't even see it from the road – but the rent was minimal. It was for now.

And then he thought: maybe Liam could man the shop while he drove Jenny down the freeway to her mum's? Kill two birds with one stone.

‘Graham, what are your thoughts here? Liam's only been at our school for six months. Yet this is the third time he's been involved in an incident with another student where someone has been hurt by Liam's actions. What are your thoughts here, Graham?'

Graham felt himself heat up. He turned again to Liam. The way he sat slumped in the chair, with his legs splayed out in front made the roll of fat around his middle sit up like a sponge cake. The boy needed more exercise, or he'd be on the road to prediabetes like his mother. On the clean short carpet, his sneakers looked old and scuffed, the laces frayed and too long. He couldn't see his son's eyes through the hair flopped over his face. He'd thought he was the luckiest man alive to have a pigeon pair, a girl and a boy. He thought of Jenny again, probably home from TAFE by now. She was doing Certificate III in Aged Care and in less than eight months, she'd be qualified to get a job at Seven Oaks retirement village. They just needed to hold on until then, cash-flow wise. She was trying to lose weight too. Her biggest problem was using up all her points mid-morning with a Mars Bar or Snickers and then spending the rest of the day feeling cranky. None of this seemed an appropriate match to the principal's question. Had there even been a question? He shrugged.

‘I understand that Liam was expelled from his previous school as a result of similar behaviours. Was there any kind of intervention done then, or since?'

Graham levered himself up to a straighter position. He cleared his throat; there was a cobweb in it, snagging over the word.

‘Intervention?'

‘Well, I'm not suggesting there's a specific problem, or what the problem might be, but I'm wondering if there's been any testing done? We've got some pretty aggressive behaviours here. Behaviours that, frankly, I'm not happy to have at my school. I think it would be good for Liam, for everyone, if we tried to get to the bottom of it.'

‘Maybe Liam should spend some time at home, with me?' Graham offered. ‘To cool off. Liam said it was an accident, and personally I believe him. He's a good kid.'

His eyes wandered again over his son. Sometimes looking at Liam was a bit like looking at himself, but a hidden, unknown part of himself, like an internal organ, his liver or his kidneys. It made Graham feel sentimental and protective and repulsed, all at once. He tried to focus his thoughts. Liam was a good kid. He just had a bit of growing up to do. Graham felt a sudden clarity and wash of affection.

‘He always helps his mother around the house, puts out the rubbish, carries in shopping bags from the car. Rakes the leaves for his gran. He's not a bad kid. We have got his ears tested. No problems there. Excellent hearing, actually. He just gets a bit overexcited, is all. Loves his
Star Wars.
Wants to be Bear Grylls. You know what boys are like.'

Graham tried to laugh but couldn't get any traction beyond the first few syllables. It often went like this; he couldn't think of anything to say, but then suddenly he could. It was like finally seeing the face in one of those swirly optical illusion paintings, the way it all came together in his mind. It occurred to him to tell the principal that Liam's great-grandfather was a light horseman in the First World War.

When Liam looked up at him and smiled, Graham wasn't sure whether he wanted to cuff his son across the head or pull him into a hug.

*

The suspension wasn't allowed to be like a holiday, the principal told them. And Graham had to come back to the school in the morning to collect schoolwork from Mrs Murphy. He also had to be available to supervise Liam at least till the end of the week. Graham told the principal that, being self-employed, this wouldn't be a problem. He added that he had his own business. The principal just nodded, ushered them out, and said, ‘Right, then. Good, then.'

They pulled open the door of the front office and felt the frigid late-afternoon air cut through their windcheaters.

‘And Liam,' the principal called, ‘I want you to really have a think about how Josh might be feeling; not just now, but tonight, and tomorrow, and for the rest of this week.'

Liam called back over his shoulder, ‘Righto.' His voice sounded light and carefree, Graham thought – exactly as though he was about to go on a holiday.

*

‘It's all the video games,' Jenny said later that night when they were lying awake, the wind knocking the broken awning against the side of their bedroom window. ‘I saw it on
Today Tonight,
violent video games.'

‘Nahsnot.' Graham rolled over to face her. He ran his hand across her hip and down her thigh. He picked up her hand and shifted her wedding band between his fingers. They'd hocked her diamond engagement ring eight months ago, right in between his job at the potato factory and a two-week stint at the abattoir. Remembering the boning room still made him twitch. He hadn't even got to the kill floor, but he'd seen it, and those two hours he'd spent locked in the coldroom had made their way into dreams. He wondered if the engagement ring would fit Jenny again now, or not quite, even if he could get it back.

‘Well, Soph doesn't play those games. She don't bash other kids up.'

Graham laughed quietly through his nose. ‘Don't be ridiculous, love.' Sophie was small and stringy and kept to herself, like him. And she was a girl.

‘You should shave off that moustache,' Jenny said. ‘Makes you look shonky.' He smiled and rolled back onto his own pillow.

‘Maybe we should do more things as a family,' she said. ‘Maybe we should get a dog.'

Graham lay still, mulling over the bits of rope and lackey straps he'd kept from the shed at their previous place, something he could use to strap up the awning.

*

Liam sat at the front counter of Winners the next morning playing Solitaire on the old computer, his head resting sloppily in one hand. Graham had coached him for half an hour on answering the phone smartly but decided in the end it was best to switch the line through to his bluetooth. Putting in the landline didn't really make sense anyway; it just seemed more professional. But the boy's voice still hadn't broken and it didn't sound right, the way he squeaked, ‘Good morning, Winners' – more like a question than a fact. It didn't really look right either, the boy in charge. Graham wondered when it would, how long it would take for him to fill out in the right places and lose the puppy fat and look like a man. Handing a thriving business over to your son must be an awesome feeling. Graham had thought about it a lot, had even wondered about calling the shop Barlow and Sons, Trophies SA. But he did have a daughter too. She hadn't shown any interest, but she wasn't interested in anything these days, and Graham wasn't sexist. She'd come round. He'd settled on Winners when he imagined Sophie and Liam telling their school friends, ‘Our dad's the manager of Winners.' When Graham first came up with the business idea, he'd imagined himself becoming a sort of identity in sporting communities. He didn't know how it would happen exactly, but when he'd had this dream, he pictured the Graham Barlow Award. A trophy for something, maybe not even for a sporting achievement – maybe it would be for the display of a virtue, like never giving up.

‘Who's number one?' he asked his son as he pulled open the heavy glass door to leave the shop.

‘I am,' Liam smiled back.

As he looked back over his shoulder at the old petrol bowser, Graham saw that the set-up looked more like a garage sale than a proper business. He needed more stock, pure and simple. The opportunity to actually pick things up, handle them, feel their weight, was his point of difference with the major suppliers. He needed crystal trophies, fusion metal and acrylic, maybe some of those glass paperweights. Branching into corporate and giftware would make a lot of sense. It wasn't as if Graham lacked vision or ideas. What he lacked was capital, but his credit rating was rubbish. A loan for a Trotec laser engraver was what he needed most. At the moment, he'd have to send things away, not just for sand blasting but for any engraving at all. The truth was, Graham was just purchasing his stock from the online competitors.