Eyrie

~ ~ ~

Keely stood at the sink washing flour from his hands as Doris spun a lettuce beside him. From the kitchen window he saw Kai wading through fallen plane leaves. Gemma leant against the verandah rail, smoking pensively, alone. She’d been out there two hours; she’d hardly spoken all afternoon. Since the unsettling drama of their arrival — all that clutching and weeping in his mother’s arms — she’d withdrawn. As if she regretted the chaotic outpouring of need, the words, the mewling. And now she was shaky, remote, somehow defiant.

Do you have a plan? his mother asked.

No, he said. Not really. I’m sorry. I just…

It’s okay. See them safe first. Figure it out later.

Yeah, he said ruefully. That sounds like a plan.

Chip off the old block, then.

He saw her gracious smile, did what he could to respond in kind, but he knew she was just trying to steady his nerves.

So you didn’t witness this exchange, hear threats uttered?

He shook his head, told her about the encounter with the little thug in the lobby.

Doris seemed diffident, even sceptical.

She was a mess, he said. They both were.

Over a fifteen-year-old Hyundai.

You don’t believe her?

My instinct is always to believe her.

But?

Doris set the broken lettuce into a big majolica bowl and wiped her hands on her apron.

Well, my instincts haven’t always been infallible. I wasn’t there, Tom. I don’t know these people. I don’t have enough information to make a judgement. I’ve learnt some things the hard way.

Forty years ago you’d have taken them in without question.

Tom, love, I have taken them in without question.

Yes, I’m sorry. I’m just…

Caught up. It’s normal.

My head’s still reeling.

Doris took a cucumber and a jar of olives from the fridge.

You know she should be at a police station. Laying a complaint, making a statement.

She won’t go. I’ve tried.

Keep at her.

I can’t. She just shuts down on me.

Are you involved with her somehow?

Why do you ask?

To get some idea of the situation. And because of the way the boy watches you.

Kai? How?

As if he’s waiting for something. I don’t know. Waiting for you to take her off him? Waiting for you to do what men have done before? Who knows? He’s just very watchful.

He’s had a pretty crap day.

No doubt. Seems a lovely boy.

He is.

And she’s a very attractive woman.

Doris.

You didn’t answer my question.

I don’t know how to answer it, he said. And I don’t know why I should.

Fair enough, she said. As long as you’re still able to ask it of yourself.

Mum, I just couldn’t stand by and do nothing.

Of course not.

And I don’t need any ulterior motive to help them out.

She dipped her head in assent and rattled away at the cutting board, glancing up now and then at Gemma and Kai in the fading light.

Strange, isn’t it? she said. Seeing her again — a woman, a grandmother.

Strange doesn’t even get close.

I think my head’s spinning a little, too.

Full house again.

Doris smiled broadly, her pleasure finally evident, and just then Gemma turned and saw them. She looked guarded, even disgruntled, as if suspecting their smiles had come at her expense.

Thanks for this, he said.

Get the girl a drink. And run a bath for Kai.

*

Dinner was every bit as quiet and chary as the afternoon that had preceded it. Kai was silent. Keely and his mother did what they could to lighten the mood, but Gemma was shy, almost childlike with Doris. She hadn’t come inside until dusk, when Doris had gone out to coax her in. She was nervous with her cutlery, visibly anxious about the house and its furniture. To Keely she appeared sullen. Doris seemed to take it all in her stride. But he could see Gemma was already having second thoughts.

They ate the fish he’d fried and passed the salad around. After five minutes or so, having eaten very little, Kai withdrew to stalk the livingroom. Gemma ate in silence for a while and then pushed her plate back as if she had neither strength nor appetite to finish. Doris laid a hand on Gemma’s.

You’ve done a good job with Kai, she said. You’re a brave girl.

Gemma brightened, rose from her hunched posture, stretching in a manner that struck Keely as feline. She leant in towards Doris, actively seeking contact, and it gave him a queer feeling. She didn’t say much. Just gave that bashful, pleased smile as Doris stroked her hair and petted her.

In the livingroom Kai moved from shelf to shelf in his PJs, peering at the contents of every bookcase and cabinet, glancing up at the ochres and oils on the walls. He stopped before a Wandjina. Stared at that big mouthless face. The owlish eyes. The storm-power radiating from its head in thick brown rays. He turned and for a moment their eyes met — his and the boy’s — and he wondered what he made of it, this ancient depiction of the Mighty Force. But with the women having their moment it didn’t seem the time to ask him. They were watching him themselves.

He’s a delightful child, said Doris. A credit to you.

Does he remind you of me? Gemma said in a teeny voice he’d never heard before. When I was little?

That hair, said Doris sadly.

Keely wondered if Gemma could detect the melancholy in his mother’s voice. It unsettled him. He didn’t know what it meant. Wondered if he was jealous. Which was absurd.

But Gemma looked pleased. She kept smoothing down her dress, smiling at her hands.

The boy opened the atlas on the canted shelf. Keely finished up his fish. It was red emperor, would have cost Doris a bomb, and in the end only he’d eaten it.

Does Kai look like his mum? asked Doris.

No, said Gemma. She’s different.

They stretch us. Our kids.

And that’s just the start, said Gemma with a conspiratorial grin, in a voice more like her own.

Doris laughed knowingly and Gemma’s smile was suddenly warm and womanly, as if she’d declared herself. Maybe this would work after all.

I might go for a walk, said Keely. Let you gals compare gynaecological notes.

Look, said Doris. He’s set to bolt already.

Blokes, said Gemma.

I could show Kai how close the river is. Let you two ladies catch up.

Listen to him, said Doris. He’s gone all Mister Darcy on us.

He needs puttin to bed, said Gemma.

The kid turned a page of the atlas.

I’ll give you a hand, said Keely.

Gemma can handle it, said Doris.

Right, he murmured. Course.

All our stuff’s in binbags, said Gemma. I gotta find me work clobber.

You think you should go in tonight? he asked.

Yes, said Doris. We should go and make a report.

It’ll take bloody hours. I’ll be late.

I’ll come with you, said Doris. Maybe speed things up a little.

I’ve took sick days off already, said Gemma. They’ll give me the flick if I don’t show.

We’ll write a letter, said Doris.

I know how the bosses think. Tell em what’s happenin, you sound like trash, like a crim. Gives em the excuse they’re lookin for to sack ya and put in some cheap Chinks.

Gemma —

I need the job. I can’t lose the job.

Maybe tomorrow, then.

Have to think. Get Kai to school.

You think that’s wise?

It’s all he’s got. Gotta keep him in school. School’s the most important thing, isn’t it?

Keely caught Doris’s look of misgiving. He felt as useful as a hip pocket on a singlet.

Okay love, said his mother. You do what you think’s best. Now, I’ve made up a bed in the spare room. And there’s a mattress on the floor for Kai. I thought he’d prefer to be in with you for a few nights.

Gemma nodded abstractedly.

Will that be okay?

Gemma turned the handle of her knife back and forward across the plate. Funny, isn’t it? she said.

Funny?

Weird.

Doris patted her arm.

Forty-four and still bunked down at the Keelys’.

Yes, said Doris. Life’s a surprise.

It’s the shits, really. Scuse the French.

No, said Doris. You’re right. It is. You’ve got to work, you have a boy to care for, and a home you have every right to live in without feeling you’re under siege. If that isn’t the shits, then I don’t know what is.

We’ll sort it out, said Keely, conscious of how lame he sounded.

Perhaps we’ll talk about our plans in the morning, said Doris, getting up, drawing things to a close.

There’s only a week, said Gemma.

A week’s a long time in Stewie’s world, said Keely.

You’d know, would ya? Gemma said with a flicker of disdain.

I’m just saying.

If I had five grand, Tom, he’d be dead. That’s all it costs.

I think we can all leave it at that, said Doris frostily.

Keely turned in his seat and saw Kai in the doorway, taking it all in.

~ ~ ~

While Gemma showered, Keely and his mother did the dishes. Doris was taciturn. The set of her mouth was grim, almost disgusted.

He set a brush to the pan, scoured it of its ghostly outlines of fish.

He’s seen too much, she said.

No question.

The weight of it, she said. You can see it on him.

Keely didn’t know what to say.

You know why I can’t give her money.

She’s not asking you for it. Neither am I.

Keely scrubbed the pan until it glowed. He hadn’t been completely forthcoming with Doris. He’d been vague about the threat to Kai. And she was right, he hadn’t witnessed it. Not that he didn’t believe Gemma. She was scared. It was natural she’d be afraid for the kid. In her position you’d take any sidelong leer as a threat, wouldn’t you? But he hadn’t wanted to send Doris into overdrive right from the outset. He also needed to process what was happening, get his mind into gear. It was just that his head was so boggy and slow. As if his software were old or compromised.

Tom?

The pan shone where he hadn’t even applied the brush. Around the rim was an aura. The pan replicated itself on the tile-work, the window; it gilded his hands and made his head swim.

What are you doing? Tom?

He saw he’d braced himself against the windowsill. I’m alright, he said as much to himself as her.

You don’t look alright.

Thanks.

You’re exhausted. Here, let me finish this.

No, he said. I’m good.

I know you’re good, she said. What I’m wondering about is whether you’re well.

Too late in the day for a grammar lesson, Doris.

Well, she said, summoning all her matriarchal indulgence. Don’t drown in my sink. I like to keep a tidy house.

He grinned. But she was right there. Watching. Like that Wandjina painting. Owl-eyed. Taking him in. Him. In his freeze-framing jerks of consciousness. Washing. Sticking. Coming free. Grinning. Holding onto the sink like a geriatric.

~ ~ ~

Gemma drove herself to work in the accursed Hyundai. Before leaving she put Kai to bed with the door open and a lamp burning.

Keely watched it all happening as if he were outside the house looking in. He had to concentrate to keep up and there were constant jerks of energy coursing up his legs as if his body were repeatedly recovering from stumbles.

He sat in the kitchen trying to look casual. Doris retreated to her room, face ominously untroubled. Keely knew the boy was still awake. From along the hallway there was silence, only the light slanting from the door, but he knew Kai well enough to be certain he’d be restless. He hauled himself upright. Ghosted down the passage like a dirigible. Saw the kid lying in there beneath his sheet, examining his hands. He knelt beside the mattress.

Kai looked up, unsurprised.

This’ll only be for a few days, Keely said carefully.

Kai said nothing.

Are you comfy?

The boy surveyed his palms.

I know it’s a strange house. I mean, a different place all of a sudden. But it’s safe here. Doris is here in the next room. I’ll sleep in the lounge tonight. I’ll be right there, right along the hall. You can see me anytime.

Kai chewed his lip.

You want to tell me anything?

The boy breathed, wheezing slightly.

You want to ask me something, Kai?

There’s a letter, he whispered.

A letter? Where, mate? Who from?

No, said the boy impatiently. Here. Look.

He held out his palms.

Em.

Sorry?

It’s a em. See?

It took a moment to understand what the kid meant: the ragged letter M formed by the creases of his hand.

This one, too, said Kai. Em.

Well. Yeah. Look at that, eh?

I have a question.

Fire away.

Like, is it the same? For you?

Keely looked at the boy a second, then at his hands. He held them out. At the end of his arms his hands looked alien, improbable. The boy blinked and the sound of it was like cutlery chinking.

Not really, said Keely. Mine are a bit. Different.

Kai took a little while to digest this.

But what’s it for? he asked. M for what?

Well, M for whatever you like, I spose. They’re your hands, sport.

But what does it mean?

I don’t think it means anything, mate. It’s just a… just… just crease.

But only me?

Like a fingerprint, maybe. Yeah. Only you.

The boy settled on the pillow and reached for his arm. He wasn’t even close to sleep. And Keely couldn’t feel the boy’s fingertips. He was rattled.

You’re safe, he whispered prayerfully, needing it to be true, wanting to believe.

~ ~ ~

When Keely opened his eyes Doris was there, her silvery hair spilling over his chest.

Are you with me? she said.

Keely saw the ceiling rose behind her head. The pendant light-fitting like a halo.

Tom, love, are you with me?

As opposed to what? he replied. Against you?

Her hands on his neck and face were greasy. He knew the smell from childhood. Oil of Olay. Clearly Doris hadn’t heard about the animal testing. And now maybe wasn’t the right time. He was on the floor in the livingroom, and his limbs were treacherously slow, but he felt so alert. His mother clanked and rattled over him and he felt the boards under his arms, the Afghan rug prickling at his back. There was no getting around it. He’d checked out momentarily. He knew he should be terrified but right now he felt too embarrassed to be afraid.

I gather it’s not morning, then.

No, she said. It’s just after ten.

I wonder if that fish was alright.

It was fine, she said.

I must have tripped on the rug.

Maybe, she said, unconvinced. I was about to call an ambulance.

Call it what?

You’re squinting.

Am I?

Tom, are you taking something?

I wouldn’t steal from you, he said with a grin. Check my pockets.

Don’t worry, she said. I already have.

Through the jarrah floor he felt the fridge cycle off, shaking itself like a pup. A clock dripped. He felt the sound on his tongue.

Love, is there something you need to tell me?

I don’t think so, he said, levering himself by seven stages into a sitting position.

Doris sat back on her haunches. He looked at the big, saggy T-shirt, her bare legs. His mother went to bed in a Midnight Oil tour shirt. He never knew.

I fancy a shower, he said gamely.

Are you up to it?

It’s just water, he said.

I think I should call someone.

No, he said. Not tonight. You can’t do that now.

Doris pursed her lips.

I’ll be right in a moment.

Tom, we need to talk about this.

Look, he said woozily. I’m up. It’s fine. It’s these bloody Afghans, they’re all trying to kill us. That’s a joke.

If you say so.

He surfed the hallway to the bathroom. There was a towel, a spare toothbrush. Dear, dear Doris, he thought. Always two kicks ahead of the game.

Afterwards, cleaner, clearer, he stood in her doorway. She was on the bed cross-legged with a book in her lap. She glanced up a moment and turned the page. On the dresser a little desk fan turned its head to and fro. He leant against the architrave with a nonchalance Doris wasn’t buying.

What’re you reading?

A biography, she said. Dorothy Day.

On the bedside table there were more hardbacks. From here he could see something about Paul Robeson, a Brian Moore novel, the Bill McKibben he’d given her at Christmas.

Feeling better?

Yeah. Good.

What was that about, Tom?

He shrugged. I don’t know.

You just fell down.

Tired. I guess. Bit of vertigo.

Nothing you want to tell me?

He offered a counterfeit laugh. I haven’t even slept the night yet, Doris. You’re starting in early.

Has this happened before?

He shrugged again and she pushed her specs impatiently back into her hair.

It’s nothing, he said.

The sleepwalking. You asked me about sleepwalking.

Let’s just drop it. There’re bigger things on.

Do you have headaches?

Just an ear infection.

You never said anything about —

Ages ago. And, look, I haven’t been sleeping too well. It’s nothing.

I’m worried you’ll fall in the bathroom, somewhere else.

I won’t fall.

But you’re big, love, she said, at the verge of tears. I can’t lift you up.

Mum, you won’t have to.

He went in and held her. She was cool and trembling. He could feel her. And his arms burned a little.

Really, he said. You’re making this into a big deal. And no, I’m not on heroin. Budgetary reasons, mostly.

She sniffed, suffered the embrace a moment, then pressed him away. He sat on the bed, guilty, mortified. She reached for a tissue and blotted her face with fierce detachment. The book lay face-down between them, wings out like a fallen bird.

It’s fine, he said.

If you say so. But Gemma and Kai. They’re here now.

Yes, he said, sensing a corner having been turned.

Doris straightened herself.

And now, to an extent, they’re my business too.

He nodded, waiting for it.

So you better listen to me.

All ears, Mum, he said, trying to match her tone.

I know you haven’t got a plan.

No, I’m just —

That’s fine. I understand.

But.

In the absence of a plan, you need a stance at least.

Stance.

A considered position. An act, as my younger clients like to say. You need to get an act. Even your father figured that much out — too late, I’ll admit.

What’re we talking about here?

Your own survival, for one thing.

Oh, Mum, I don’t think the situation’s that fraught.

Don’t be so literal. Just give yourself a bit of distance. That’s all I’m saying.

You mean from them? Gemma and Kai?

Doris nodded.

Geez, he said. You’re a surprise.

You’re trying to do the right thing, I know. It’s how we raised you, the both of you. But you save yourself first, Tom. That’s something I do know, it’s what I’ve learnt. You save yourself, then you look to the others.

Keely was confounded. He took a breath but she cut him short.

Perverse, isn’t it, how we could teach you that in the water but not on land, in life. We didn’t see it. We were such innocents.

You’ve lost me.

Swimming lessons, Tom. Lifesaving. How you approach a swimmer in distress.

You’re kidding me, aren’t you?

Feet first, ready to fend off.

Okay, he said, shaking his head. Wise as serpents, innocent as doves. Tick that box.

Tom, I’m serious. To save a drowner you need to be a swimmer. Remain a swimmer.

You’ve really thought about this.

For thirty-five years, she said with a heaviness that flattened his scorn.

Keely ran his hand over the dark dimples of her book. He slipped the page-marker back into the gutter, closed it and felt its heft.

You think you’d still have him if he’d been more of a swimmer, had an act?

She sighed and reclaimed the book.

Who knows, she said. When somebody burns that hot you don’t really expect a long haul.

But he never did have a sense of professional distance.

Not when it might have served him best. Nev was so bloody impulsive.

Being careful, though. After a while it grinds you down.

I’m not talking about your job.

Feels like submission, Doris. Being careful.

I don’t think you know as much about submission as you’d like to imagine.

But wasn’t I always too careful? Hasn’t that always been my problem?

Presently, I wouldn’t see it as your chief problem.

I didn’t want to make the same mistakes. Nev was like a bull in a china shop.

He was a giant surrounded by moral pygmies.

I’m not saying he wasn’t. I just wanted to be smarter.

Smarter?

More effective.

There’s no virtue in saying you’re not like Neville Keely, so don’t sit on my bed and talk bullshit, it’s insulting.

Sorry, he said, angry, humiliated, confused.

And don’t kid yourself, Tom. Your father was transparent. I could read him like the form guide. You’re not so different.

Keely got to his feet, anxious to disentangle himself.

How are you getting Kai to school tomorrow?

Gemma’s off at five, he said meekly. So there’s the car.

Right, Doris said, taking up her book. The car.

Chastened and bewildered, he took himself off to the couch and the livingroom and the long night ahead.

~ ~ ~

From the wind-ripped walkway on the tenth floor, Keely heard the school bell toll. He paused at the rail to watch the stragglers sprint indoors with their backpacks and folios and soccer balls.

He thought of Kai settling at his desk, examining the puzzle of his own palms as the teacher tried to launch the school day. The kid had been subdued all morning and silent on the drive down to the port. Keely didn’t dare mention the wet bed. Or the way he’d curled in beside him on the couch sometime before dawn. At breakfast Keely saw the sheets out on the line. The boy was already showered and dressed. Doris had him eating toast and staring at the sudoku on her phone. The Hyundai was in the driveway. Gemma asleep. His mother was quiet but there was conspiracy enough in her sunniness for him to know she’d dealt with everything seamlessly, as if nothing had happened. Doris had an act. She knew who she was and what she was doing. And he loved her for it.

At breakfast Kai said little, but he watched Doris assiduously. Just as he had last night at dinner. Perhaps he was trying to match this trim old bird and her noisy bangles with the young heroine in Gemma’s stories. Keely feared the legend had gotten out of hand. Blackboy Crescent. When moral giants strode the earth. But Kai didn’t seemed disappointed. Children fell in love with Doris. As a boy it shat Keely to tears, but this morning the spectacle revived him. If only he could project such calm authority.

He’d stirred for a second in the gloom, feeling the boy settle on the couch beside him. He savoured it briefly before falling away again. Only when he saw the washing line did he know he hadn’t dreamt it. And now, at the gallery rail, looking down at the schoolyard, he was ashamed of his self-absorption, his unctuous little moment of paternal fantasy. What about the kid? What’s it like to wake wet and frightened in a stranger’s house, to spare your grandmother and crawl in beside some old guy you hardly know? A sudden rage rose in him. At everything ranged against this boy. He had to do something.

He unlocked the flat and changed his clothes.

He wondered if he could convince Gemma to go to the police. She’d be awake just after midday; he had until then to make a compelling case. Failing that? There was Stewie. Maybe he’d negotiate. But Keely had no more persuasive arguments this morning than he’d had last night. And as for dealing with Stewie, he hadn’t the first clue how to parley with a bug-eyed speed freak. He had nothing.

He shaved. Brushed his teeth. With his own brush. He made his bed, straightened the place, and checked the fridge. Some piss-weak bit of him wished he could just stay. But he couldn’t leave Gemma and Kai to Doris alone. She had to work. There was the school run. Gemma’s shiftwork to deal with. He’d just have to suck it up and endure the couch a while. Until he thought of something. Or it all went away of its own accord.

He packed a few clothes, a couple of books and snatched up his pillow. He decided to swing by Gemma’s place. There’d be things she’d want to collect but he didn’t know what she required, felt squeamish about going through her stuff. He could bring her back this afternoon when they collected Kai from school. Needn’t do it now. But he’d check it out anyway. Satisfy himself.

At Gemma’s door a bit of paper flapped in the security grille. Just a yellow square, ruffled by the desert wind, a Post-it note held captive by the steel mesh. There was nothing on it but a solitary dollar sign scrawled in biro.

Keely looked about anxiously and stuffed it into a pocket. He was turning to leave when something else caught his eye. Behind the mesh, on the inner door, a second yellow slip. He pulled Gemma’s key from around his neck and unlocked the screen door. He snatched it up. Same adhesive note, same symbol.

Trying to stay cool he examined the flyscreen but it was undamaged. Short of unlocking the grille, there seemed no other way of depositing the second slip there. He knocked on the door, feeling like a fool but fearful of walking blindly into something. Like what, an ambush? Keely turned the key in the lock and eased the door back slowly.

The flat still smelt of cheese and toast and smokes. He could smell Gemma and Kai. But it was hard to read the place. Everything had been a mess when they left, chaotic where that shithead had kicked things about, after which they’d tossed stuff into rubbish bags and fled in a panic. Food on a plate. Clothes on the floor. The TV where Keely had set it back upright. There was no sign anyone had been in since yesterday. Not that he could see. But somebody had definitely been by outside at least. And maybe in here as well. That note inside the locked grille. Keely thought of the Mirador’s supervisor, a bloke who’d taken against him for his brusque refusal to engage all these months. No point asking him if he’d let someone in. Besides, this wasn’t even Keely’s flat. How could he explain his interest? Gemma’s business and his would be all over the building inside an hour.

He wondered if Gemma had come by last night before work. Or this morning after her shift. To collect something. But why would she take the risk? Had someone followed her into the building, waited until she was inside and left both notes while she was in the bedroom grabbing what she’d come for? Why not confront her then? Make their little threats in person. Seemed more their style. Unless they’d had cause to think someone else was in here with her. A bloke. Him.

He locked up. Jumpy. Freaking at his paranoia. Wondered if he should even tell her.

Down in the gated carpark he found the Hyundai where he’d squeezed it between a Kombi and a scrofulous Commodore. He was in the car before he noticed it on the windscreen.

He couldn’t see anyone — not in vehicles, nor around them. The bike shed looked deserted. There was a spill of suds emerging from the laundry door.

He started the car and waited a full minute, his pulse going feral. But no one. He buzzed the gate and rolled out into the narrow street. Under the jacaranda a Chinese kitchen hand smoked in his stained tunic. A smooth-cheeked hippy girl coasted by on a bike.

Bastards, he said aloud. You little shitheads.

All thoughts of a swim and a coffee evaporated. He had to get this vehicle out of town. Warn Gemma. Maybe the supermarket could give her work in a franchise a bit further out in the suburbs. Even if there was nothing more than bluster behind all this, she couldn’t stay here. He’d ask Doris about a refuge, support services.

He turned into a side street. Idled down the quay, checking his mirrors all the way. He wound slowly along the river and saw nothing but mid-morning traffic. But by the time he pulled into his mother’s drive, his hands were shaking.

~ ~ ~

Doris’s Volvo was gone. Conscious that Gemma would be asleep, Keely unlocked the back door and entered the house discreetly, but as he crept through the kitchen he heard the shower running. It was too early for her to be up. She couldn’t have had five hours’ sleep. He filled the kettle, set it on the stove and tried to steady himself.

The couch had been straightened. His pillow and folded sheets lay over one arm. There was no sign of Kai’s bed linen and pyjamas on the line outside. In this heat they’d have been dry hours ago. Doris had covered her tracks before heading off to work. She’d left a newspaper and a sprig of basil in a jar on the dining table. The kitchen sink was empty.

He sat a moment, listening to the kettle, trying to think. As the water ran and ran in the bathroom, nothing sensible came to mind.

He got up. Made a pot of tea. As he set the canister back on the shelf he reached for a couple of mugs with one hand and fumbled. Caught the first. But the other mug hit the floor and smashed.

The shower stopped running. He cursed himself and grabbed the broom. Handle looked fuzzy. Felt smooth in his fingers.

Who’s there? called Gemma.

Just me, he said, sweeping the shards into a pan.

Fuck, said Gemma in the doorway. I thought I was on me own.

Sorry, he muttered.

Geez. I nearly shat meself.

Broke a mug.

She’ll be happy.

Doris won’t care.

She rested her wet head against the doorframe, settling her nerves. Wrapped in a fluffy towel, she’d drawn a cloud of soapy steam into the kitchen. How could he tell her things were worse, not better? Was this the moment to say she should quit her job and move?

Couldn’t sleep?

In your little boy-bed. Feels wrong.

You should try the couch, he said.

He get off orright?

He nodded.

Lunch?

Could hardly fit it in his bag. Mum saw him right.

You sure it’s cool us bein here? I’m gettin a vibe.

It’s fine. It’s Doris.

I should make some other plans. But I don’t have any ideas.

Have a cuppa, he said. We’ll think of something.

Should just piss off up the coast — Carnarvon, Exmouth, Broome.

I think that would be smart, in the circumstances.

But, what about Kai? They’ll cut off me benefit. Won’t they? I’m not even declaring half me wages. And I won’t have a job.

Not right away.

Maybe go to the mines? But I can’t take a kid.

I dunno.

They’ll take him off me. I know it.

Gemma.

Put him into fuckin Care.

Here, sit down. It’s not that bad.

Keely got her into a chair, poured some tea and finished sweeping up the remains of the mug. She looked jittery.

Gotta be somethin, she said.

Yeah. Just need to think it through. You’re not on your own here, mate.

He found shortbread, got himself another mug and sat with her. She steadied a little, ate the biscuits quickly, with infantile greed.

Not exactly the old place, is it? she said.

No, not really.

Did you like it here?

I never lived here. She bought it about ten years ago.

Old. But fancy.

It’s a nice house.

She’s changed.

Well, she’s an old lady now.

Not that, she said. All this stuff. Way she talks. Kai, he’s such a delightful child.

He shrugged. Doris’s accent was as broad as ever but it was true, the vocab had moved up a peg or two.

When I was little I wished she was my mum. Pretended she was, sometimes. Like her and Nev were me oldies. She let us think it.

Think what?

That she loved us. Like we were family.

Keely didn’t know what to say. Because that was how he remembered it. And it had irked him, as a kid. Not that much had really changed. Last night Doris had nursed her like a frightened child. Hadn’t he seen Gemma luxuriating in the attention? So what else had happened that he hadn’t noticed? Probably nothing. Gemma had endured a long, dull shift, an entire night in which to mull over every detail, letting any tiny change become a disappointment.

She’s still Doris, Gem.

Well, Kai thinks she’s the duck’s nuts.

Yeah, he murmured. But you’ve filled his head with all these stories.

They’re true.

Only up to a point. Neither of them was a superhero. They’re just people.

Maybe she’s just puttin up with us.

Oh, mate.

Like we’re gunna break somethin, mess her house up. Ask her for money.

I don’t think so.

And now you think I’m not grateful.

No, he said. It’s a wrench. The sudden move, being in someone else’s place.

It just wasn’t what I expected.

Keely wondered what it was she had been expecting. He thought Doris had done pretty bloody well with only thirty minutes’ notice. Okay, maybe she wasn’t quite so ardent as she’d once been. But Gemma was a grownup now, not a little girl. And there was the boy, taking it all in. Of course Doris would be a bit more circumspect. Anyhow, she was an old woman. All this was out of the blue. On her doorstep. In Mosman Park.

It’s strange, he heard himself say. You know, seeing someone again after so long.

Gemma shrugged. Almost pouting. He felt a twinge of annoyance. Then talked himself down. The trauma. You couldn’t expect something as petty as good manners.

What if she doesn’t want us here?

If she didn’t want you here, you wouldn’t be here. She’d have written you a cheque the moment you arrived. To get rid of you.

Gemma blinked, considering this, but she seemed unconvinced.

She didn’t mind me when I was little. When I was cute. Didn’t have a girl in Bandyup then, did I?

Gemma.

She thinks I’m rubbish.

Oh, that’s just bullshit.

You don’t know, Tom. You’re like a kid.

I’m like a kid? he said, flaring up.

I’m not stupid, she said.

No one’s saying you’re stupid.

She knows you fucked me, Tom. She can smell it.

He let out a mirthless laugh. Not literally, I hope.

Look at you, gone all red. You can’t even think about it in your mum’s house, can you?

Don’t be daft.

Look at you.

Why are we even discussing this? There’s stuff we have to deal with.

Come on. Why don’t we do it now? Right here on her kitchen bench.

Why’re you doing this?

Frightened of his mum.

I thought it was respect, he said.

Same old goody-two-shoes, she muttered, sinking in her chair, tightening the towel across her breasts as her animation subsided.

He got up and tipped his tea into the sink.

I need a fag.

Not in the house, he said dully.

Don’t worry, Tommy. I’ll take me filthy habits outside.

He let her go, watched her out on the verandah as she fired the thing up and sucked on it angrily in the hot, dappled light. He wished he could reassure her. Wished just as fervently there was somewhere else she could go.

He saw her mug on the table and, thinking it was empty, snatched it up. Tea flew everywhere. Before he’d even found the dishmop the stain was deep in the wood.

~ ~ ~

It was one of those late-summer days when the river, blown hard against the lee shore by the easterly, smelt rank. Like something left too long in a pot. The thin stews of his early teaching days that languished on the stovetop, half fermented overnight. The sun drilled through his skull and he was glad when they reached the shade of the cypresses beneath the bluff.

Gemma hadn’t spoken since they left the house. She’d come along at his urging but dawdled and sulked enough to make him regret it. If only he’d brought a pair of Speedos. The sloughy river-bend was hardly inviting, especially now the wind corralled the jellyfish against the bank. The water was brown and chunky as a dishful of steeping mushrooms. He imagined hauling himself through it, all those slick domes sliding down his chest and thighs. Not pretty. But even that would have felt like a few minutes’ reprieve.

He sat out under the limestone crag where the grand old marri reached across the water. And there it was. The bird’s wingbeats were effortless. It banked and soared on an updraught, turned and eased away, keening. It looked weightless, as if the heaviest thing it carried were that plaintive, querulous call.

Your idea of a good time, she said, lighting another fag.

He surveyed the tangled bush, the dancing insects. A bit of remnant wildness. It reminded him of the swamp. Faith and him. The ragged gang of Blackboy Crescent kids plodding single-file through the melaleucas.

Used to be yours, too, once, he murmured.

She said nothing. Blew a jet of smoke that ripped away in the wind like a current with its own angry energy. She flicked ash.

Listen, he said. I’m happy to pick him up this afternoon.

You don’t look good, she said.

I’m fine.

She bit her thumb, tilted the cigarette away from her face. And glanced at him.

There’s something wrong with you. Doris can see it. I can see it. Everyone ’cept you can see it.

I think it’s better if I get him today.

And why’s that?

He pulled the little yellow Post-its from the pocket of his shorts and flattened them on the rock beside him. Out here in the dappled shade they weren’t nearly as unnerving.

Cunts, she said wearily.

Does Stewie have a key? he asked.

Course not.

And Carly?

She shook her head.

I think they know someone, he said.

In the building?

Seems like it.

She looked sceptical.

So, I figured it was smarter for me to collect him.

Like, because you’re smarter’n me. That it?

Of course not.

Cause you’re the big fella.

Keely tore at a clump of sedge.

Fuck em, she said. It’s my car. He’s my responsibility.

Okay, but listen —

Anyway, they really think I’ve got the money.

What possible difference can that make?

I drive me own car. I pick up me own kid. They don’t decide what I do.

I understand the sentiment, but —

You don’t get it, Tom. If I hide, it looks like I haven’t got the money.

Wouldn’t it be better if they knew you haven’t?

Now? Are you jokin? They’d go nuts. They think I’m good for it.

Shit, why?

You, ya fuckwit. Isn’t hard to google it, or whatever the fuck people do. You were all over the telly, in the paper, ya must have money.

That’s how these dickheads think?

It’s how anybody thinks.

So glad I had that shave, he said bitterly.

Well, sorr-ee!

We’re all bloody sorry now.

The moment he said it he could have torn his own tongue out. He sat there with the hot wind baking his face, yanking at his sleeve.

I’ve got a week, she said. Six more days. Because they think I’ve got it. I’m half a chance of lasting the week if they still think I’m good for five grand.

I don’t understand the logic.

It’s not about logic.

She ditched the fag into the water. Got up and picked her way back down the track.

Keely snatched up the little yellow notes. The adhesive edges had lost their stick. They were dusted with limestone grit, a couple of addled ants. He held them up, let them flutter in the easterly. By way of standover action they looked pretty low-rent. But maybe she was right. What did he know? The whole thing still seemed melodramatic. And yet there it was, that sick, falling sensation. Sitting here on a rock, safe in the shade. With something dark and hot rushing at him like so much wind.

~ ~ ~

Doris came in at three and tossed her satchel on the kitchen bench. Keely looked up from the table, whose surface he was still rubbing with oil.

Where’s Gemma?

Doing the school run.

Do I detect a certain atmosphere?

I spilt tea on your table.

I’ll live, said Doris, pulling open the fridge door. But I see neither of you kids has thought to do any shopping for dinner.

I’ll go in a minute.

Perhaps I should’ve pinned a note to your shirt, she said grinning. She went through to her room and came back in a faded sleeveless summer dress that showed how thin her arms had become. She stood at the kitchen bench a moment. Divining the situation, it felt like. She took an orange from the bowl beside her.

Good day? he asked, getting in first.

Not bad. Luxury of being a part-timer.

Anything interesting?

Nothing cheerful.

Try me.

Just documents for the Ward inquest.

Oh. God.

Indeed.

And?

Even seeing the medical reports — it’s beyond belief. They cooked that man alive, basically. In the back of a prison van. Fifty-seven degrees, that’s how hot the metal got. What’s that, 130-something in the old money? He was in there half a day, nearly a thousand kilometres, and neither guard thought it was a big deal that he was without airconditioning.

I forget what he was even arrested for.

A traffic offence, she said, beginning to peel the orange. If that man had been a sheep there’d be people marching in the street. But he’s just an Aborigine.

What about charges?

My guess, she said, toiling arthritically, is that neither guard will be convicted.

And the private contractor?

She looked over her specs at him and he saw the answer in her cocked eyebrow.

Business first, he muttered.

So, not a sparkling day. I thought by now I was unshockable.

You want me to help you with that?

I can still peel an orange.

Sorry.

Anyway, she said, how’s Gemma?

He shrugged.

Does she cook?

Well, yeah. Of course.

We’ll let her cook tonight, she said before biting into the orange.

What d’you mean? Why?

Doris pulled a paper towel from the roll to blot the juice from her chin. Don’t give me that look, she said. It’s not a test. I thought it might help her settle in, give her a sense of control, bit of normality.

Okay. See your point.

She’s not helpless. Doesn’t want to feel helpless.

Please don’t say the word, Doris.

Empowerment? That word? If I had to see you on the news every night calling an ecosystem a precious asset, or a tourism icon, then you can suck eggs and let me say the E-word.

Keely raised his hands in surrender, glad she smiled.

I’ll be gone at seven, she said. Tickets for the Vaughan Williams.

Oh, he said. Who you going with?

Well, she murmured, pausing to swallow a mouthful, I had hoped you’d come. But since I booked it, things have developed somewhat.

Ah. Damn. Sorry, but I can’t leave Kai.

No. Of course not, she said. I wouldn’t let you.

Bum, he said. I love Uncle Ralph.

I know that.

Which piece is it?

The oboe concerto.

Ouch.

Yes, it’s a shame, she said, rattling her bangles and then straightening all of a sudden. Listen, why don’t you go anyway? I could stay with Kai.

But you love Vaughan Williams.

Doris shrugged and took another bite.

Mum, I couldn’t.

We’ll see if Kai’s comfortable with it. If he’s iffy I’ll leave him with you.

Thanks, he said, looking hopelessly at the watermark in the jarrah. Really. But you go.

Come on, then, she said. I’ll finish this on the way to the shops.

*

There was a peaceable languor to Doris’s riverside quarter where the shady streets smelt of cut lawns and lavender. They walked in equable silence, eking out the orange, segment by segment. An Audi slid by sedately and when they saw the personalized plates they both erupted in laughter. MINE, it said in powder blue. And in that moment of lovely wordless understanding he thought of what he’d lost and all there still was to hold onto.

The little retail enclave was bustling. He followed, like a boy shopping with his mum, mortified by how quickly he subsided into the role. But it was worse than that, weirder than just his own submission, because after a few minutes he could see that Doris was not so much shopping for their dinner as parading him through the cluster of neighbourhood businesses. She twirled her plaits in the butcher’s and jangled her ethnic hardware in the fruit and veg shop, chatting with those she passed and everyone who served her, and as the glances of cashiers and floral dears became ever more obvious, his irritation mounted. Clearly people knew and liked Doris. Their curiosity about Keely was palpable.

Well, she said when they were back on the street. You caused a stir.

Oh? he said. I didn’t notice.

I don’t think they quite believe you’re my son.

Well, he said. Sometimes I find it hard to credit that myself.

I always said I had a son, she said loftily. But maybe I sounded like a lonely old duck spinning yarns.

Okay, Doris, he said. Point taken. You’ve had your fun.

Heading downhill, they sought the mottled afternoon shadows of the planes trees that lined the street.

What are you thinking? she asked.

Nothing, he lied. He was wishing he’d been more forthcoming about the situation with Gemma.

Kai’s a curious little boy, she said, steering him into a backstreet of heavily pruned peppermints.

He doesn’t really remind you of Gemma at all, does he?

No, she said. Apart from the situation, the damage. Gemma was only cunning. Kai’s bright.

Cunning?

She had to do what she could to survive. You had the sense she’d endure. Suffer, Doris said bitterly. But endure. Kai seems more fragile.

He doesn’t believe he’ll ever grow old, he said, hating himself for letting it out, relieved he had. He thinks he’ll die young.

Well, she said without emotion. That’s upsetting.

It kills me. Hearing him say it.

Maybe he’s a realist.

What do you mean? he said, horrified. What are you talking about?

You’ve met his father, I gather.

Seen him.

Can you imagine him growing old?

Keely thought about that. I guess the odds aren’t great, he said.

And where are all the other men in his life? she asked. Maybe there just aren’t any examples of a benign old age. How can he conceive of what he’s never seen except on TV? Gemma’s father’s dead. She hasn’t mentioned her daughter’s father.

She doesn’t talk about it, he said, still troubled. You think she’s cunning?

Was, I said.

Still, you sound —

Does he ever give an indication of hurting himself?

Kai?

Does he talk about it, give you that impression?

No, he said, unable to bring himself to mention his sense of dread, the pernicious image of the kid standing at the balcony rail, leaping. It was always there now, like a dark thought, something shameful he could suppress but not expunge.

No, he said again. Not really.

Well, that’s something.

Yes, he said, unconsoled.

How to express his fear that the kid was enchanted by something obscure and awful, some terrible certainty? Because it was as if the boy were leaning out towards it, resigned to meeting it, only seeking what lay in wait for him. How could he tell her that? What would Doris hear except confirmation of his own mental unravelling?

Keely knew he should tell her about the boy’s dreams, at the very least. The drawings, the outline he seemed to have already filled with his own body. But Doris was so vigilant. He could feel himself beginning to fall to pieces under her gaze. And he could see it now, his mother stepping in, catching him, relieving him of responsibility. Half of him wanted that, to be found out, sent home, set free.

But this squalid little skirmish was all he had now. He was in it with them. Wasn’t he? He had to be. Even if he was shitting himself. Not quite present and accounted for. Pressed into service. But this was his chance to mean something again. He’d do whatever it took to keep them safe. Wondered if Doris could sense the wildness teeming beneath his skin.

*

They walked a while in silence. To break the sense of clinical observation, Keely relieved his mother of the shopping. He was shocked that he hadn’t even noticed her carrying it all until now. Made a lame joke at his own expense but was upstaged by crows as they fluttered down to heckle and strut on the grassy verge ahead, voices high and boastful.

Listen to them, said Doris. Like jockeys before a sauna.

You didn’t really answer me before, he said, emboldened. About Gemma. You said she was cunning.

It’s not an indictment, Tom. Kids use what they have, to survive.

But what do you make of her now? Honestly.

She’s a battler.

A battler.

I know. Sounds patronizing. But she’s got more starch than her mother. She’s woken up to blokes. And she’s done okay with Kai, all things considered. But of course it’ll never be plain sailing. She’s a damaged girl and he’s a troubled boy. She’s not a person of boundless resources. She’s doing what she can, what she thinks best.

Is it me, or are you a little wary?

Doris kneaded her hands. The bangles clunked and chimed at her elbows.

We always had such low expectations of Bunny.

I wasn’t really talking about her mother.

Bunny had a rough trot, no doubt about that. But, looking back, I wonder if she wasn’t a bit dim and lazy as well. She got used to being helped, being absolved of accountability. I think, despite ourselves, we got caught up, Nev and me, making her the victim, only ever seeing her as, I don’t know, prey. She was passive enough to begin with. We didn’t expect enough. We didn’t really help.

Well, you were about saving the kids, I guess.

Yes, she said. From her, as much as him, truth be told. All that sixties optimism, love. We infantilized the poor woman, indulged ourselves. At her cost, I think, and our own.

So what’re you saying?

Gemma wants me to be her mother again. To pretend I am. And I won’t do it. I can’t. I’m hard-pressed as it is — being yours, Faith’s.

So that’s it — a professional distance?

It’s not my profession, Tom.

I never thought of you as dispensing kindness with quite so much calculation.

I suspect Gemma’s a little confused by kindness.

Jesus!

Don’t speak like that.

You should bloody talk!

Tom, people sometimes confuse simple decency with investment. You help them, therefore you must love them, require something of them, desire them, need them. And then you’re expected to forsake everyone else for them.

What’s this, Social Work 101? Ayn Rand in the Antipodes?

No, Tom, it’s half my life.

Well, he said. You sound like a jilted lover.

Doris offered up a saintly, suffering smile and the birds lifted testily from the grass.

Sorry, he said. That was mean.

True enough, though. In a way.

I can’t — Mum, I don’t understand.

Listen, I was young. Vain. Idealistic. Of course I adored Gemma. Because she was adorable. I favoured her, tried too hard to compensate for what she’d missed. And a lot of that came at Faith’s expense.

She’s never mentioned it.

She’s not a whinger, said Doris. Faith’s smart. She never had to be adorable. But she was always generous with Gemma. Took her cues from us, poor thing. These other kids had needs greater than hers or yours. From Faithy we expected too much.

And from me?

Tom, you never shared your room, your clothes, your dolls. You weren’t cannibalized so thoroughly in the name of charity.

Fair enough, he said, all the more irritated because he knew it was true.

So, what is it?

Nothing, he lied.

Not true.

He walked beside her a few moments and then just said it. You sound so cold-blooded, that’s all.

And you seem unwilling to face what’s real. Gemma made herself loveable in the way some needy kids do. To survive they cultivate you. They want so badly and they take compulsively. They learn to manipulate you. No one can blame a little girl for seeking comfort. But I think I crossed a line somewhere, flattering myself, thinking I really could be her mother, that she could be one of my own. It’s a wonder Faith ever forgave me.

You mean you’ve talked about this?

Tommy, it’s our grand theme, the pea under our mattress!

She never said.

Maybe you never listened.

They came into her street and Keely looked through the treetops to the broad reach of the river glittering in the afternoon sun. He wished there could be a settled interval, just an hour or so when he could let himself believe he knew what was what. Nothing was solid anymore, nothing felt safe or ordinary.

So you regret all that? he asked. Everything you and Nev did?

No, she said. I just wish I hadn’t been so romantic about it, so vain. I wish we’d known more, that we’d done a better job.

A horn sounded behind them. Gemma’s car rattled by and turned up into the drive.

Remember, she’s changed, too, Tom. Like I said, she’s not her mother. And neither am I.

~ ~ ~

On the way into central Perth, piloting the Volvo around the river’s edge beneath the bluffs and the park, he wondered if Doris had given him the ticket simply to get him out of the house. To have some time alone with Gemma. Take stock. Perhaps even take charge. He still felt awkward leaving Kai with her on only the boy’s second night in a strange house. It seemed flaky. But Gemma had no objection and Kai seemed indifferent. Maybe it was just Doris bunging on the charm and rattling the Scrabble box. All the way down Stirling Highway and into Mounts Bay Road he’d worn himself ragged with second-guessing, until his head felt like a tinful of bees. Why couldn’t he just take his mother’s offer as a gift? Why make so much trouble for himself? Some things were what they appeared to be.

*

At the concert hall he slunk down the aisles feeling underdressed and pitifully unaccompanied. Took his seat beside an elegant old couple. Peered at the program. Anything he’d learnt about classical music was picked up second-hand in Doris’s slipstream. Delius, Elgar, Britten. The Brits, for God’s sake. God’s little joke on their prickly republicanism.

He caught the older woman beside him glancing surreptitiously. Felt himself wither. Rescued by the dimming lights and the soloist striding onto the stage to warm applause.

Keely’s pulse quickened. A stab of apprehension. He was the same at any live performance, suddenly anxious for the players. So stupid; these people were professional musicians. But the way his throat narrowed they could have all been kids at a school recital. His kids.

And before he knew it, before he could get his thoughts under control, the concerto was up and running. From the soloist’s first brazen thrust he was captivated by her impish confidence. Such a naff instrument, really, the oboe, but she went at the thing like a jazzer. You could feel the ripple of indignation roll across the hall. Maybe it was the woman’s bebop stance, the way she appeared to goad the rest of the orchestra. Keely sweated on the sense of resistance in the room, the squirms and clucks. All this wild fingering, he felt it could come apart at any moment, yet he was swept up in it, fraught and amazed by the soloist’s reckless brio as she began, sally by wheeling sally, to win first the stage, then the auditorium and finally the piece itself, looking all the while like someone glorying in the peril she’d exposed herself to, beating the odds with a smile in her eyes and a hip cocked against all comers. She was nailing it. Surfing it. Riding the storm into the aisles, past their greying heads and through the bars and braces of their ribs, skating home on the glory of having dared and won. Bravo, he thought, fucking brava, whatever. He was filled, overcome. And like an idiot he began to weep, silently at first and then in tiny, shaming huffs that were drowned, thank God, by the roaring ovation. The air felt too thin. Keely could not applaud; it was too much. He held his knees as if his legs might fly off, sobbing like a village fool until the silver-haired woman alongside him, a dame of some provenance if posture counted for anything, placed a neatly folded tissue in his lap as if he were an ancient bridge partner whose little weaknesses were old news.

There’s the Elgar yet, she said.

I’ll never make it, said Keely.

Come on, she said. No guts, no glory.

~ ~ ~

Doris was still up. Her hair was out and her bifocals shone as she closed the biography and stood. He dropped the keys in the bowl on the bench. It was too warm in the kitchen. Something about his mother having gotten to her feet seemed off.

So? she said with only a thin smile.

Unbelievable, he murmured. I’m wired. I’ll never get to sleep. Kai alright? What is it?

Gemma had a call, said Doris. Before work.

He stood there with that falling sensation.

Something unpleasant. A kind of threat, I think. She wouldn’t say.

Shit.

She took the call outside, said Doris. We were having a nice evening. Up until then.

Was Kai in bed?

No.

She didn’t say who it was, what they said?

No, but whatever it was, it wasn’t nice. She was upset. And then Kai was agitated.

And she still went to work?

That was what she said she was doing.

I’ll call her.

Her number’s there beside the fruitbowl if you don’t already have it.

Keely snatched the cordless phone from the bench and thumbed in the digits. A recorded message.

She never turns it off at night, he said. In case Kai needs her.

But he’s here with us. And she won’t need any more calls like the one she’s had.

Can’t she screen them?

You’ve never had calls like that.

I’ve been threatened, believe me.

Don’t be ridiculous.

Okay, I’m just saying. I don’t know what I’m saying. But, hell. I think I’ll go down and check on her, he said, grabbing up the Volvo’s keys again. You mind?

Would it matter?

What’s that? he said abstractedly.

Tom, she’s at work. How will you check on her? They won’t let you into the supermarket.

I don’t really know. I just need to make sure.

What you need is to think clearly. She needs to go to the police.

She won’t go, he said. No cops, no refuge.

Just sit down for a moment.

I can’t, he said.

Stay, she said. Go to bed. Please.

Mum, I can’t, he said, pulling the door to. I just can’t.

*

Traffic into Fremantle was light. In the distance the Jurassic container cranes of the port loomed like some sort of lurid arena spectacle. Keely had no idea what he was doing. This aimless driving about. But anything would feel better than lying awake half the night at Doris’s.

He crossed Stirling Bridge. Turned away from the harbour and headed inland a little on Canning. Bitsy clumps of retail. Traffic lights. Car yards. The Cleo.

Pulled into the empty parking lot in front of the shopping complex on the hill. Sat idling a moment beside the concrete bunker where Gemma worked. No sign of her car. No vehicles anywhere except those flashing by out on the four-lane. And then it occurred to him. Basement entry. He eased up to the end of the building, angled onto the ramp and crept down the steep decline. But halfway down he came upon a boom gate and was forced to reverse out. Parked the Volvo on the street and walked back down.

The underground carpark was well lit and so much warmer than the night above. Foetid, even. Over by the lifts, slotted in behind a Subaru and a couple of unloved Corollas, was the blue Hyundai.

He pushed the call button for the lift and waited but the doors didn’t open. He tried again and a crackly voice spoke from the pipework overhead.

Sir, if you’re not an employee, you’ll have to leave.

Keely looked up, saw the sinister dome of the CCTV camera.

Sir? said the voice. We can escort you out if you’re lost.

Keely grinned like an imbecile, showed the camera his palms and left.

He lapped the block in the Volvo and pulled into the alley behind the supermarket. Refrigerated trucks chuntered against the loading docks but the big roller-doors were shut. He fished out his phone and called her, but got the same message. Maybe it was enough to know the building was secure, that there was surveillance. Because if she was at work she seemed to be safe.

So why didn’t he feel reassured?

He rolled back down Canning towards the bridges. The wharves with their penumbra of yellow against the dark sky. The streets into town were empty. Even the drunks in the park next to Clancy’swere gone. The East End was desolate. A few gulls squabbling over food on the pavement outside the Woolstores. Disposable cups, newspapers in gyres against graffiti walls.

Rolled by the old Mirador. Counted lights on the top floor. Nothing at his, nothing at hers. All clear.

He drifted along the Strip with the windows down. The midnight news came on the radio. He switched it off. The street-sweepers were not yet trawling the alleys but the pubs were closed and the last evicted drinkers were plundering kebab shops and hailing cabs. There were modest altercations at the kerbside but this was a long way from the standard welter of puke and broken glass that graced the precinct at weekends. A few cafés were still open to service the late-shift bohemians and confused old men. On the Market Street corner a couple of Euro-hippies strummed and bojangled at pedestrians, whose indifference did not deter them.

South Mole. Victoria Quay. The old passenger terminal. Crossed the tracks again. The warehouses, backstreets. Round House, the Roma.

Everything familiar. His town. Doing what it did in the weekday wee-hours. Nothing to be agitated about. Riding around like a bored hoon.

*

Just before one he buzzed himself into the Mirador carpark.

Rode the lift to the top floor. Along the gallery the usual night noises: thudding bass, scrambly TV atmospherics, gurgles of plumbing and conversation.

The flat was hot and closed up. Out on the balcony the air was cooler. The cranes of the port flashed and lumbered. Closer in, on the pavements below, there was nothing moving but blown trash and gulls that looked like blown trash. Gloom, tranches of deep darkness, spills of light. He could feel the pending, aching nearness of something about to happen. The streets, so familiar, now a maze as much as a neighbourhood. Their very emptiness made him uneasy. Caused the roof of his mouth to itch.

A horn sounded. Freight train wending its way around the water to the old bridge. Rumbling, squealing on the bends. White quills of masts bristled on the marina. The sea beyond winking out measures of distance and depth, flashes of warning.

Gemma’s balcony was dark. All well. Not feeling it.

Before locking up he rolled the knife drawer out and snatched up a few cards of medicine. Just to get him through the next day or two, while he was gone. Found a Coles bag and stuffed them in. Necked a couple of the Valium for a steadier.

Out on the gallery the wind caused the plastic bag to rustle against his leg. And the moment he turned from his door he could see something hanging from the grille at Gemma’s. It hadn’t been there when he arrived. Or at least he hadn’t noticed it.

From a distance it looked like an out-of-season Christmas decoration. Up close it was a leprous teddy bear suspended by one leg. Keely swore and yanked at it. The bear tore free but the snared leg hung twisting in the easterly, leaking sawdust and lint that blew in his face and caught in his eyes. He pulled at it madly, broke the dirty packing string and got it off, but by then it was little more than a hollowing scrap of fabric. He stuffed this and the mutilated bear into the shopping bag and headed at a trot for the lifts. Halfway along the gallery he caught a brief flare in the street below, as if someone were lighting a smoke.

The lift down was ponderously slow. No one in the lobby. Nobody outside the laundry. He shoved the bear into the garbage skip. Couldn’t see anyone in the carpark, but the lighting out there was patchy.

Got to the Volvo without actually breaking into a run. For a few moments sat peering out. In the side street, a flicker of movement. Someone there. Definitely there. So he started the car, buzzed the gate open and rolled down the ramp without lights. As he swept into the street he snapped on the high beam and saw them. Beside the stranded shopping trolley, the parked bike, the yellow-topped recycling bin. A tall, white-haired bloke in pinstripes. And a smaller figure in a tracksuit. One smoking. The other busy on his knees.

Keely took the corner too fast to be safe. Launched out onto the main street wildly. Like a fool. Like a man who couldn’t tell if he was relieved or ashamed. Traffic lights. Side street. Esplanade. Rail lines. The shimmer and open space of the marina.

The sardine dock was deserted. He pulled up and got out shakily. The tarmac glittered with scales. He strode out to the planked jetty, feeling the sparks in his fingertips, pacing under the jaundiced lights until he got his breath back and trusted himself to think again. Underfoot the reeking timbers bore all the hallmarks of night-owl anglers — bait bags, beer cans and stomped blowfish. A few gulls worked through the scuzz of pollard and bait scraps. Out in the pens, boats nodded at their moorings and light flecked the water.

He leant against a wooden pile. It still had the warmth of the sun in it.

Wondered if he should have kept the teddy bear. For proof, evidence — he didn’t know what.

He had to bring this matter to a head. Another kind of man would have had it sorted by now. No use hiding and hoping these nasty pricks would go away. No point reasoning with them. What this situation required was swift and sudden violence. Stop them in their tracks. Disable them. But that just wasn’t in him. He could imagine it easily enough, fantasize. But he’d never do it.

So whatever happened to whatever it takes? That bit of steely resolve had lasted all of an evening.

God, why couldn’t Gemma just go to the cops? Or pack the car, take the boy and drive north? What the hell was he supposed to do? And why him, anyway? How long could he live like this, waiting for the hammer to fall? Wouldn’t it be better to just bring it on, spare himself and the others the misery of anticipation and make something happen? That’s what the old man would have done. And, okay, there was often carnage in his wake. But that wasn’t all carelessness. Shit happened. Keely knew how merciful it could be, a decisive nature.

He needed a bit of that huge, headlong, loving force. Kindness with a backbone — wasn’t that Nev’s mantra? Why was it so hard to summon? Why wasn’t it simply there, bubbling up instantly the way anxiety did, the way this festival of second-guessing did? Couldn’t blame that on too much school, too much soft-handed generational success. It was something lacking in him. Something in the shape of him. This empty thing he’d become.

He ran his hands over the soft grain of the jarrah post. Rested his forehead on its edge a moment. Drew himself back. From torturing himself with Nev, making the poor old bugger some mythic paragon again. Like the superhero Gemma had turned him into for Kai’s sake. This business would not be resolved with an honest bit of biffo and some sorrowful Kumbayah. It was going to take more. Worse. Better. Cleverer. No point wounding them; they’d be back. If you couldn’t get them arrested you’d have to kill them. And you weren’t killing anybody.

What you needed was a few minutes’ confidence. Not the sort you got from being built like a brick shithouse, but the kind you got by being convinced. Determined. Wasn’t it hot, hurting conviction that had fuelled you all those good years? Didn’t you have some warrior in you then, when things were only as hopeless as they’d ever been, when despite that you still went at it like a good and faithful servant? With only your backbone to lean on. And the pride of still giving a damn. You could have stood before Nev then, him and his Mighty Force. With your head up.

This is it. The bounce off the bottom.

You want to walk away. But you don’t walk away.

Because here you are. Shining in the dark. Poisoned head radiating power. Parked two blocks from the problem. Smarter. Bursting. With nothing left to lose.

~ ~ ~

Across from the decaying row of houses, a spare parking bay. He backed into it and switched off the ignition. There was a light on upstairs and music audible even at this distance. Although it was nearly two, it was evident that neighbours were well-enough acquainted with Stewie’s nature to refrain from complaint.

Keely thought first about a molotov cocktail. Simple procedure. But you couldn’t set fire to a house adjoining so many others. You couldn’t set fire to a house full stop. That wasn’t smart. Just thuggish. Cowardly.

But he was here now.

And now was the moment. Whatever he was going to do would happen now.

He restarted the Volvo, pulled out, floated around the block. There was no alternate point of access, no rear lane. Unless he could scale a wall and scuttle over the tin roofs of the markets and leap down into Stewie’s backyard. And then what? Be caught like a wharf rat in a kero tin?

Outside the football oval, in the shadow of the weatherboard grandstand, he parked, killed the engine and switched on the interior light. No. There would be no scaling of walls, no window-breaking. No fire, no charging in full of piss and vinegar. He wasn’t dealing with a neighbourhood drunk here. This was a snaky, drug-addled sociopath. Who required something a little weird, something asymmetrical. Immobilizing. Paralyzing. Keely would never pound a man’s head in, but he could surely fuck with his mind. Knew a bit about that, didn’t he?

Reached for the glovebox, inspired.

There was a ballpoint, of course, and a pocket torch, a tube of hand-wipes, a notepad. Dear, dear Doris — ever prepared. Wedged into the pad was a blank and sun-faded postcard. Rio de Janeiro. The monumental statue on the mountain was all blotchy, the colour chemicals on the card were failing, but the image was plain enough — Cristo Redentor. Photographed from above, across the figure’s shoulder. And beyond the great head and the Redeemer’s outstretched arms, the teeming city below. Roiling chaos at his feet. The watchful Saviour. It was perfect. Christ the Redeemer, why not? Enough Nev in that to make you smile.

The ballpoint was dry and the ink a little lumpy at first but with the notepad as backing, he got his message written quickly enough.

Then he took the notepad and began to draw. Words wouldn’t be necessary. But it was hard work, trembling as he was, suppressing the spasms of laughter that welled up in his neck. He couldn’t believe he was doing this. He felt bloody fabulous.

He tore each picture free and laid them on the console beside him. Yes. If they wanted to play funny buggers, then this was a start.

There was no one in the pedestrian mall. As he strode beneath the frangipanis that overhung the limestone wall of the row, he felt adrenaline sparking in his lips and teeth and fingertips. The stone was rough underhand, as alerting as a cat’s tongue. Up ahead, the music was an approaching headache. The urge to laugh evaporated. He willed himself on.

The wooden gate to Stewie’s place was only slightly ajar and without the churning bass from upstairs the noise from the hinges might have been disastrous. Keely picked his way up the path onto the junk-strewn verandah and bent carefully to slip the postcard beneath the flywire door. There. Jesus on the doorstep.

Then he took the first sheet of paper. Threaded it into the ruined flyscreen.

As he turned for the path, he reeled momentarily, seeing spots. The sudden welter of smells around him pressed in. Wood rot, the inner soles of shoes. Dry mortar. Sea air. Incense. Clove cigarettes. Hash. Sweat. Sardines. Garam masala.

And.

And.

For a couple of seconds he thought he’d puke. Found the verandah post in the dark. Hung off it a while. Staring back at the red glass of the fanlight over the door. Pulsing in time with his blood. That colour. The angry music.

He felt a nail in the post rake his palm and the pain pulled him up. He impaled another sheet on it.

Then he launched himself clear of the verandah, plunged down the path and glanced off the open gate, reeling into the street to rub his hip and get his breath. He was two doors down before he felt the last sheet in his hand. He hesitated. And went back. Shoved it bloodied into the letterbox beside the gate.

And ran like a maniac.

~ ~ ~

Clambered up from the couch with a start. Fuck. It was ten o’clock. In the a.m. Mouth tasting of rusty nails. Doris’s house. Hot. Bright. Silent. And his hand smarting. A divot gouged from his palm. Felt worse than it was.

A terse note on the table. From Doris. Saying she’d given Kai his breakfast and driven him to school herself. That the boy’s sheets were on the line. And please bring them in before Gemma wakes up.

He leant against the bench with a groan.

Crept into the bathroom. Stood beneath a cold bolt of water. Drying off, he caught a whiff of tobacco smoke.

Gemma was sitting at the kitchen table with a coffee and a fag.

I woke you, he said. Staring at the note in her hands.

Bloody hot, she said. I dunno how you can sleep in it.

Pfizer, he said.

What?

Merck. Aventis.

What’re you talkin about?

Nothing.

He crossed to the livingroom in his towel. It was awkward rifling through his cabin bag for clean clothes, dressing in plain view: underpants, shorts, T-shirt.

Gemma wore nothing but a stretched and shapeless singlet. Her hair was crushed, damp with sweat. He noticed the points of her nipples, the back-curving thumb as she held the cigarette aloft, elbow in hand.

He’s wettin the bed, she murmured. And no one tells me.

I guess we didn’t want to make you feel any worse, he said, pouring himself a coffee.

She squinted through the smoke. We?

I know, he said. All this.

No shit.

Why don’t you go back to bed? he asked. You’ll be knackered tonight.

I told you. It’s too hot.

I gather there was a call.

Doris. Does it all, does she?

He let it go. He didn’t feel well. The coffee was thin.

Where were you? she asked. Last night. When I was at work.

The concert. Remember?

After.

Why?

Why not tell me, Tom? I want to know what you’ve done.

Done? he said carefully.

She nodded slowly, regarding him through the haze she put between them.

Just drove around, he said.

In your mother’s car.

Like being young again.

He got up, tipped the coffee down the sink.

I think we’ll go home, she said. Me ’n Kai.

He glanced back at her but Gemma’s eyes were averted. She twitched the fag with her thumb and sniffed.

Something’s happened?

I’m over it, she said. I want me own things, me own bed.

But it’s not safe, he said.

It’ll have to do.

What about Kai?

He’s not happy here.

But you said it yourself: he loves Doris.

Home with me he doesn’t wet the bed.

Keely drew a breath, but said nothing.

Have you got a gun?

A what?

You heard me.

No, he said.

She drew on the fag. Blew smoke at the ceiling. Didn’t think so, she said. Couldn’t even afford to buy one.

I don’t want one, he said.

You’re broke.

I told you I was.

Thought you were exaggeratin. But she says you haven’t got a pot to piss in.

So now you know for sure.

Look at ya, she said with a scornful grin.

What?

Never been skint before, have ya?

He spread his hands on the table.

You’re soft, Tom. That’s the thing.

You wouldn’t know, he said.

Believe me, she let out with a laugh. I know.

Tell me what he said.

Who?

You know who. On the phone.

It’s bloody hot, she said. Let’s go for a swim.

He’s texting you.

Carn, it’s hot as hell. Let’s swim.

I thought you were moving back to the Mirador.

Thinkin about it.

How does he have your number, anyway?

Where’s close?

Gemma, how does Stewie have your number?

She gave it to him, orright? Carly. The silly little bitch gave it to him. She’ll never fuckin see me or the boy again.

You don’t mean that.

I want a fuckin swim.

The river’s close.

Stinks, she said. Fuckin shithole.

Okay, he said, with puffs and sparks behind his eyes.

Fuckin jellyfish and brown water.

I said okay, alright?

Don’t shout at me, mate! I’ll bloody go on me own and you’ll be walkin.

Fine, he said, retreating to the lounge and the crackly bag of pills.

~ ~ ~

Bad thought, but the water was like novocaine. So cool at first, delicious and silky, stalking him pore to shivery pore before the numbing warmth sank in and clumsiness took hold. He felt heavy beside her, annoyed by her sudden playfulness, shamed by the hard-on he got the moment she clung to him. Steadying herself.

Gemma was no swimmer. But the way Keely felt today it was just as well. He looked about. After the shabby free-for-all of South Beach, Cottesloe was a total scene, a kind of flesh pageant.

The pair of them bobbed tiptoe on the sandbank, ducking modest waves. Laughing a little. Well, she was laughing. Keely squinted and held her hand and felt the weight of water roll by. Today a real swim was beyond him. The sun too bright. Sand in his veins.

Your wife, said Gemma. Doris loves her. Reckons she’s beautiful. Says she’s smart.

Ex-wife, he murmured. But yes, yes.

Screwed another lawyer.

Don’t want to talk about that.

And you dropped yer bundle.

Told you that already. Keely rose to his toes as a swell pushed past.

This before or after they sacked you?

I said I don’t want to talk about it.

Don’t mind talkin about my shit, but, do ya?

Before, he said. All happened before.

But Gemma seemed to have lost interest. She’d turned to survey the amphitheatre of sand and grass, the fatuous tearooms, the preening oilers and cruising hipsters on the terraces.

Makes ya sad, dunnit? All them young, beautiful things.

Why?

Doesn’t make you think of bein young? she said, grabbing an arm and hanging off him.

Didn’t notice, he said.

Liar.

What are you talking about?

What do you call this, then?

She brushed a hand across his shorts and laughed. He couldn’t tell what was scorn and what was simple exuberance.

I’m going to swim, he heard himself say.

He broke free and struck out through the surf to deeper water but every turn of his head sent his brain spilling like unsecured cargo and it crashed against the bulwarks of his skull until he could take no more. He rested a moment, floating on a sudden pulse of nausea. His hand stung. Starbursts went off behind his eyes. He sculled back gingerly. Whole ocean curving away beneath him. Shining hard and horrible.

Staggered to shore.

Down a long barrel. Gemma. On a towel. In the sun. Golden. Breasts pooled against her ribs. Startled. Snapping her phone shut. As he reeled up, dripping, at the other end of the telescope.

Christ, she said. What’s wrong?

Nothing. Just. J-j-j-just…

Steadied himself. Hands on hips. Gemma sat up. Shielding her face from the bursting sun. Her limbs shone. Smoothed by water, light. Belly soft. And a glow hung over her every movement, flaring and trailing white as if some kind of phosphorescence were upon her. Felt he was standing too long. Looming over her. Saw he didn’t know her, not really. Wondered if he even liked her. Wished she’d just shut up, leave him alone. Wanted to say it, but they bounced in his head, the words. Clotted his jaw. Ground it shut. Till his teeth went into his soft, glowing brain.

Why couldn’t he sit down?

Tom, you’re starin.

Head, he said. H-h-ha.

What? What’re you sayin?

Car, he said.

What about the car?

Ahr, he said.

Staggering through shelters. Volleyball games. Across towels and glistening, leaping limbs. Towels. And scowls. Howls of outrage. The light rode right through him; through his eyes, his throat, into his belly and balls. At the steps he stumbled. Stuck. And someone caught him by the arm. Canting there.

Christ, she said. All I wanted was a breather.

Rippling steps. Leaning trees. Hot tar. The horizon lurching, oceanic. The car. The ground turning as he fell into the roasting interior. Round in circles, tighter loops and whirls. Gemma drove fast, spinning him into the roof, his lap, the green furze of golf links, screaming, slapping his belly through the cowling of his head.

~ ~ ~

Hours after the room stopped spinning, Keely lay on the couch, eyes tightly closed, throat burning, his fingers sore from holding on, unable to believe it was over. The house stank of disinfectant. A fan oscillated nearby, but he couldn’t think about oscillation or rotation of any sort, not now the vertigo had finally wandered away like a storm seeking carnage farther afield. The floor pulsed slightly, as if there were still a swell running. But the turmoil was gone.

A car door slammed. Then another.

Don’t wake him up, said Gemma near the back door.

The fridge opened, closed with a rattle of bottles and jars. Keely dozed a moment, woke to the slight give in the cushion beside him. Heard the boy’s wheeze. When he opened his eyes Kai was there, studying him. Shirtless, pigeon-chested, his arms pitifully thin.

The car really stinks, said Kai.

Sorry.

Do you still feel crook?

I feel a bit better now, Keely croaked. Where’s your nan?

Kitchen. Look, said Kai, holding a book of some sort too close. It’s you.

Keely pressed the boy’s arm back gently and struggled to focus. It was an old clipping glued into a scrapbook. And there was his grinning face beside a startled Carnaby’s black cockatoo.

Where’d you get that?

The lady. Doris. It’s a whole book on you.

That’s a special bird, he murmured. Not many left.

Says it’s dangerous.

No, said Keely. Endangered. Means they might all die out.

Extinct.

That’s it.

The boy twitched the scrapbook back in order to peer at it again.

They mate for life, said Keely. They’re all left-handed.

Habitat, said the boy, quoting from the headline.

That’s the big problem.

For birds.

For all of us.

The boy drew his gaze from the clipping slowly. He examined Keely’s face, blinked.

Habitat, he said. Seven letters.

Extinct, said Keely. Also seven letters.

Kai peered at him, counting.

You think you can beat me? Keely said. Just cause I’ve had a bit of an ordinary day? Just because I’m not right in myself?

The boy lost command of his face a moment. His shy grin betrayed him.

~ ~ ~

Despite Doris’s best efforts, dinner was a subdued affair. Keely couldn’t tell whether Gemma resented having to cook or if she was simply nervous. The food was fine, but Keely had no appetite. He was still getting over his complete failure at Scrabble and Kai seemed crestfallen, even resentful. Things had started out normally enough, but a few minutes in Keely began making elementary mistakes. He couldn’t distinguish an E from an F. Ds and Bs confused him. Kai seemed to suspect him of playing dumb and looked more and more affronted, but for minutes at a time the letters of the game became inscrutable to Keely and it was difficult to tamp down his creeping panic. The call to dinner had come as something of a relief.

When the meal was finished, Gemma excused herself and retired to the bathroom and Kai sat on the couch to watch television. Keely got up to help with the dishes and caught Doris’s eye as she took up a saucer and tilted it his way discreetly before tipping butts and ash into the bin. He shrugged.

She’s not well, he murmured.

Oh, it was her that was sick?

Yes, he lied.

Faith called. She’s home safe.

Pulled the bank out of a nosedive, has she?

Some foundation in Geneva is asking about you.

They contacted her?

She bumped into someone. In London.

She’s touting for me?

She was approached.

I doubt that.

A climate change thing.

Now, there’s a defeat I haven’t suffered yet.

I looked them up, she said. They seem good.

Who was this person?

She can’t say.

It’s Harriet, isn’t it?

No, it’s not. I wrote down the number.

And the name?

Apparently you just call the number.

What is this, Secret Squirrel?

I’m just passing on the message.

Why couldn’t she call me herself? he said, setting down a plate with more force than he’d intended.

You need me to explain that? The fact she’s even bothering to do this for you seems angelic to me.

Keely did not respond. He was puzzled. What could be bugging Faith?

Tom?

Yes?

Did you hear me?

Yeah, he said. It’s good of her.

You won’t call anyway.

Probably not.

Well, she said, wiping her hands and cracking the freezer door. No need to trouble you with details, then.

The shower thundered through the wall. It seemed to get louder the longer the water ran. Doris stood at the sink, appeared to hesitate over the hot water tap.

Perhaps we’ll wash these later, she said.

Okay, he murmured. Think I’ll just go for a walk.

You don’t remember, do you?

Remember what?

Faith. Your behaviour.

He made for the door.

It was still light outside and the air was hot and motionless. Gemma’s car stood in the driveway, all its doors and windows open. The interior reeked of vomit and disinfectant. The street hissed with sprinklers. The sky was a starless blue and the ground felt firm enough underfoot.

All the local shops were closed. He walked on out to the highway and found a big servo where they sold hot food, car parts, homewares and stationery. On a rotating stand he found a promising selection of postcards. He bought one of every kind. The surfing koala, the colour panorama, the arty black-and-white, a wildflower, a shark, the body beautiful, and the sleazy double entendre. He sat at a table with a Coke and a felt pen and as punters came and went from the pumps on the tarmac he went to work. The eye. The memorial cross. The Luger pistol. On the last card, the one featuring a Great White with gaping maw, he wrote a message: Coning soom…

He returned them to their packet and walked back to Doris’s as darkness fell.

Gemma was in the drive, wiping out the car again. She gasped as he stepped up behind her.

Jesus Christ, she said. As if I haven’t had enough today.

Sorry, he said, copping a little spray from the bucket as she tossed the rag down in disgust.

Bloody useless.

Stewie, he said. What’s his surname?

That scumbag. Who cares?

I just need to know who I’m dealing with.

Knowin his name won’t help.

Just tell me. Please.

Chrissake! Name’s Russell. Wish I’d never heard it, meself.

And you remember the address?

What are you, thick? You were there.

I know the house, he said. But the number.

I don’t remember. Four, six. Somethin like that.

Okay, he said. The name’ll do.

You’re in enough shit already, she said, closing the passenger door.

You think?

Doris found your stash.

Stash of what? he said.

Your pills.

Oh, he said. That. I get these headaches, that’s all.

Tipped em down the toilet. I shoulda known. Figured you were just a boozer.

It’s not like that.

I’ll bet it’s not.

It’s complicated.

Yeah, mate. They all say that.

I spose they do.

I mean, Jesus, Tommy. I thought I could trust you.

You can.

Yeah. What choice have I got anyhow?

~ ~ ~

He set Gemma down outside the glass doors of the supermarket and waited until the uniformed guard arrived and let her through. She went in without turning or waving. Keely sat there a minute or two. Trying to reassemble the plan in his head. Had to concentrate. To keep it clear. It was exhausting. But it was still there. He had it.

So he drove on in to Freo. The Mirador. Into his flat for a couple of those bigboy codeines. Quick scout around. Over to Stewie’s. Rolled past, to the next block. Got out and walked back. Casual. Copped the house number. Six. Shoved a card into the letterbox. Said the number to himself over and over, all the way back to the car. To calm himself. To remember the number.

Pulled in beneath the big old ghost-wall of the empty prison. Wrote it all out. Steady as he could manage. Then headed east. Canning. Great Eastern. Flashes of river. Towers across the water. Glitter in the far hills.

Halfway to the airport he remembered his promise. Pulled into a servo. Did what he could with the steam-cleaning gizmo. But he’d never used one before. Began to think it was making things worse. Had some taxi driver watching him, shaking his head. But just ploughed away until Gemma’s money ran out. Him being short. And Doris not feeling magnanimous tonight.

Climbed back into the swampy pig of a thing and rode on inland with the smell revived and the damp seeping into his clothes. But it sharpened him. That smell of bile. Kept him focused.

Driving into the hot, dry western night with all the windows down.

He put it together. Made the run he’d mapped out for himself. Well, not completely to plan. Got lost a couple of times. Distracted, really. But he got it done. With the pain backing off he rode them all out, those cards in their motley envelopes, stamped and addressed in every variation he could make of his own handwriting. Which was none too steady tonight, hard for even him to recognize, truth be told.

Posted the first at a street box in Midland, the second at the Inglewood post office, another outside a 7-Eleven in Cannington. By the time he reached the northern suburbs the Hyundai’s interior was nearly dry but the carpet still had a whiff to it. He tooled around a huge, empty shopping complex in Morley until he found a mailing point. There was a box near the aquarium at Hillarys and as he headed back south there was another by a glass-strewn bus stop along the wilds of Marmion Avenue.

It was late when he coasted down the hill at Blackboy Crescent. For some reason he had trouble finding it tonight. He skirted the restored wetland and idled along the edges of the park where once he’d kicked the footy with neighbourhood kids every evening until dark. The bounding silhouettes, mothers bellowing, the ball hanging in a spiral climb against the sky. The memory skin-close. And strangely consoling. I was happy here, he thought. The world made sense. All of us together.

He drove down the coast feeling buzzed. Another salvo gone. Every card a mind-bomb. From all points of the compass. Encirclement.

And he yelled through the open windows. Blowing down West Coast Highway, lane to lane, light to light, light from true light.

Our name is Legion, Stewie! For we are many!

The thought of it. That little tweaker. Getting all these cards. Day after day. All with different postmarks, styles, messages, pictographs. It buoyed him. You’re surrounded, Stewie. Outnumbered. Just see the little numbskull turning them over, licking his lips. The girl there, too, probably others, passing them across the table, scoffing, anxious, eyes like schooling fish, searching out any hint of alarm in the others, the paranoia beginning to smoulder. Fuckheads.

Keely had no need of violence. He was smart. Black-ops. He’d always been good at this shit.

Had a tenner left from the steam-clean. Which kind of confused him. But he angled into a servo anyway and found a spinner rack. Bought a few more cards.

~ ~ ~

And then he was walking along the gallery. The Mirador.

Quite suddenly there.

And there was nothing hanging from Gemma’s door but the last wafting bit of string. He unpicked it carefully and shoved it in a pocket. His own place was stale but with the slider open it cleared soon enough.

There were messages on the machine — an odd one from Faith and something terse from Doris. He didn’t want to call her but the tone of his mother’s voice alarmed him. Jabbed in the number.

What do we need, Tom? she said the moment she picked up. And he saw it was late. Very late.

Tell me, she said. Do we need a neurosurgeon or just detox?

I’m fine, he said. I’m home. It’s alright. I’ll be at yours in the morning.

You need help, love.

I’ve got work, he said. Need sleep.

Work? Why lie to me?

But it’s true.

What are you really scared of?

I just need to sleep. I’m really sorry.

He hung up and stood alone in the little flat a minute. Thought of the trail of sand and spew he’d left through her house, the bag of pills she’d found stuffed in a corner of the couch. Within reach of the child. Not good.

Time for bed. But he was too stirred up.

Then he remembered. Tomorrow wasn’t Thursday. So, no job. Just Gemma to collect at dawn. As promised.

Set the alarm. For five.

Slumped into the chair, turned on the TV. More fat-people shows, cooking shows, forensic investigations, Jeremy fucking Clarkson. Flicked it off.

Fished out the latest cards. Spread them on the kitchen table. Every last one of them a tit joke — something to behold. He found a pencil, a biro, a felt marker. Worked his way through the icons: eyes, gun, cross. In the knife drawer there were envelopes and stamps. In beside his last sheet of Temazepam lay the boning blade he’d taken off Gemma.

He lined up the cards, addressed the envelopes and sealed them. There were stamps enough. He’d make another run tomorrow. Keep it up until Stewart Russell was a blithering mess.

~ ~ ~

Grainy half-light. Sky green-grey above the desolate carpark. The glass doors peeled back. The bloke in uniform stepped aside to let a dozen workers out onto the sick-lit pavement. In their pastel tunics and smocks they were variously festive, weary, sociable, anxious to be on their way. Gemma and a tall, lithe young man lingered in the supermarket entry. His hair was long and fair and his movements outsized and antic enough to make her laugh and push him away playfully. She turned and caught sight of Keely parked across the deserted tarmac, and as she came on, stepping from the kerb, clutching her shoulder bag, she spun girlishly and shot the bloke a wave.

She opened the passenger door and flopped in, smelling of deodorant and tobacco and something sugary.

Snake? she said, shoving a cellophane bag his way.

Keely glanced into the snarl of bright colours. Recoiled at the cloying whiff of industrial additives.

Buckle up, he said.

Yes, Dad.

He passed her a takeaway coffee and she grunted. Refrigerated trucks pulled onto the street and the sky was bronze already. He steered them down the promenade of car yards and furniture warehouses, out across Stirling Bridge and up the four-lane towards Doris’s. Gemma lit a fag and reefed her hair free of its band.

You been busy, she said, sniffing.

You have no idea.

Feet’re killin me.

But you seem happy enough.

That new bloke, she said. French or somethin. Like a bloody TV show. Talk about laugh. Been there a week now. He won’t last.

She sighed and angled smoke out the window.

Kai orright? she asked.

I slept at mine, he said.

Gemma hoisted herself up in her seat. You shoulda said.

Yeah.

Well, that’s bloody ordinary.

I spoke to Doris. It’s all good.

Says you.

So, it’s okay to leave him in the building on his own, but leaving him safe with my mother’s not on?

Don’t try and lecture me. No position.

Fair enough. I should’ve called. But your phone’s off.

Well, duh.

Okay.

Where’d you go, then?

Just for a drive.

She blew smoke and gulped the coffee. He saw the red splash of a post box and veered into the forecourt of a deli.

What’re you doin?

I just need to post something.

He reached behind him, pulled out a plastic bag.

Jesus, what’s all that? What’re you up to?

Nothing, he said, turning the addresses away from her. Just business.

Business, she said. Don’t make me laugh. What kind of business would you do? Second thoughts, don’t even tell me, I don’t wanna know.

Suits me, he said, getting out.

At the box he shoved the cards through the slot, wishing he’d waited and spread the postmarks again for the fun of it, for the chance of further bafflement, but having them on him had become a little nerve-racking; it was better to send them off before he mucked anything else up. As he turned for the car, Gemma tossed the paper cup onto the bitumen. He picked it up without comment and dropped it into a bin.

~ ~ ~

As Gemma took another of her interminable showers Keely sat in the yard beneath the noise of stirring birds. Almost fully light now and the morning easterly stirred the trees. Beyond the aimless trails of rustic paving the grass was unkempt and snarls of bougainvillea had colonized the hibiscus and frangipani. The big motley plane tree rested hard against the fence and last year’s leaves lay everywhere like the remains of a betting plunge. Parked in beside the leaf-shingled shed, the dinghy gave him a pang. He’d been putting it off but he knew he had to give it up, job or no job.

A blur of movement at the corner of his eye. Kai’s face at the window. He waved.

The boy came out onto the deck in just his pyjama shorts. Hesitated, then came on down to join him.

I went looking, said the boy. I didn’t see you.

This weekend, said Keely. Let’s put the boat in the water, go see that bird again. What d’you reckon?

The boy nodded.

Can I get in?

Now? Sure.

Keely strode over, hoisted him up. There were deep, heartrending dimples above his shoulderblades. Kai clambered to the rear thwart, reached for the tiller, and the moment he assumed the posture of skipper his solemnity failed him. Such a grin of pleasure. Transformed. And Keely felt a vicious sweep of feeling. If anyone should touch this child. Anyone.

*

At breakfast Doris was brisk. She moved at such speed there was no spare moment in which to pull her aside, make an apology, explain himself, give undertakings. He wanted to reassure her but she hurtled by, citing a meeting at eight, her only breaks in momentum the little fussing pauses over Kai that seemed like in-jokes between her and the boy, brief but lavish gestures of affection that Kai drank up. Doris was hurt. Keely could see that. And angry. Now she was moving in on Kai. Making the save.

She crashed out the door in a dark suit, her satchel and handbag clutched to her hip.

In the wake of her departure, with Gemma already in bed, he waited as Kai dressed himself for school. Saw his own pillow and folded sheets on the couch. Protruding from beneath them, a sheaf of papers. Too neatly collated and placed to be accidental. When he riffled through he saw they were sheets from a legal pad. But this was not Doris’s work. A list of words.

On the sideboard, beside the ancient Scrabble set, was a dictionary — the Concise Oxford.

*

Traffic was slow on the highway. Kai sniffed furtively now and then but was not talkative.

So who won last night? Keely asked as they sat in a snarl by the rail crossing.

Doris.

She’s a terror for those little words at the end.

The boy nodded absently.

You working on your M-words?

Kai leant forward, opened the glovebox, rummaged through. Keely saw a hairbrush, a jar of Vicks VapoRub.

M is a good letter, said Keely.

Three points, said Kai.

And there’s only two of them. Isn’t that right?

The boy flipped the glovebox shut and held out his hands. For a moment Keely thought it was the preface to a game, some joke Doris had taught him. And then he saw the creases in his palms.

Two, said Kai.

~ ~ ~

Driving by Stewie’s again was tempting fate. He knew it, but couldn’t resist. After all, what did he expect to see — doors and windows thrown open in panic, speed-freaks tearing at their hair, a taxi being loaded with binbags?

As it happened, the place looked undisturbed. Office drones trudged by, a bloke hosed the pavement at the pub on the corner, hippies coasted past on bikes in the direction of the Strip.

He drove to South Beach, swam a ginger lap. Watched a bloke with his granddaughter building a sandcastle at the water’s edge.

Outside Stewie’s again, later in the morning, in the shade of a casuarina, he waited for the postie to swing by. Nuts. Being there, lurking in that blighted car. But he wanted to see something. So badly needed to witness some action, evidence of an outcome, a stirring of the pot. Oh, to see the look on Stewie’s canine face. Yes, he wanted that. Next time he’d send a parcel, a courier. Ramp this thing up. Lay siege. Full campaign.

But nothing was happening. No postman. No movement at all.

He drove back to Doris’s. Keyed up. Frustrated. Crept about in the cool refuge of the kitchen. Made himself a sandwich. Felt all his mother’s oil paintings watching, unblinking, expectant. It welled up in him. This urgent desire to see something happen, make it happen.

Stalked carefully down the hall. The door to the spare room was ajar. Gemma lay asleep in a singlet and undies, a hip and thigh exposed, one arm dangling from the bed. The soles of her feet were yellowish, heels cracked. The top sheet was rucked into a wedge where she’d kicked it down. On the floor beside Kai’s mattress were a few books, his laptop. Keely snuck in, grabbed the Acer.

Out on the kitchen table he booted the thing up, hooked into Doris’s wireless network. And keyed in the name.

It was too good to be true. He had to stifle a bark of delight. The little turd was on Facebook. There were several Stewart Russells and even more Russell Stewarts, but here he was, plain as dog’s balls, Stewie himself. Mista Gangsta. A wall of crim poses and tattoo displays. Arms across the shoulders of vamping molls in titty tops. Likes to PARTAAAAY. Approves of Black Eyed Peas, Wu-Tang Clan, Funkmaster Flex and a solid block of names that meant nothing at all to Keely. Has twenty-seven friends, lucky lad. What a cohort. What a boon to the culture.

And there she was. Carly. The girl from the happy snap in Gemma’s kitchen. A sexier, stringier version of that young woman. With kohl-ringed eyes and a fuck-you snarl. Still friends. Still in contact.

Keely sat back. Head spritzing.

Should have thought of it sooner. Because it really was tempting. All it would take was a new email address. A girl’s name. And a slutty photo to go with it. Some lame story he’d spin to Stewie about having bumped into him at a pub. Then, pretty soon, after a bit of Liking and Friending he’d be rattling around in Stewie’s hood. Talking shit. Sharing pics. Mixing in. Like a shadow-self. Just biding his time. Until he started lobbing a few grenades into his world. All he’d need was a bit of footage from a phone. Say, Stewie at his front gate. Doing something apparently harmless. But with an inflammatory caption. Along with his street address. Something impossible to ignore. Didn’t need to be true. Better if it wasn’t. KIDDY FIDDLER IN OUR MIDST. Some mad vigilante thing. And — click — upload it to YouTube. Flick it to all Stewie’s friends. Blam. Out there. Wildfire. It’d be a frigging riot. In five minutes it’d be viral. Pestilential. Exactly the sort of no-holds-barred guerrilla campaign he’d never let the kids in the movement unleash, regardless of how often they pleaded for it. Couldn’t happen to a nicer fella. Surround him with phantoms. Grind him to a gibbering pulp.

He shut the machine down. Crept back to Gemma’s room, set it beside the boy’s mattress.

Food for thought. But he’d need money. And a little help. Postcards were only going to get him so far.

~ ~ ~

After school Kai ran to the car. Buckled himself in, cranked up the window and locked the door.

Not such a good day, then?

The boy slid down in his seat and said nothing.

Fancy a swim?

Kai shook his head.

Right, he said. Back to dear-dear Doris’s. I’ll give you a game.

The boy gave him nothing.

How about a kick? There’s gotta be a ball somewhere.

Silence.

What about the boat, Kai? We’ll squirt out on the river, eh?

Kai looked sceptical. They settled in for the grinding crawl up the four-lane. Keely got nothing more out of him.

When they walked into the kitchen, Gemma was up and Doris was home, still in her silk blouse and skirt. There was a cheerful air in the room that seemed to falter the moment he arrived. The women fussed over the boy, who was still out of sorts but suffered their attentions with patience.

Any requests for dinner? he asked.

Doris’s bought steak, said Gemma. And there’s spuds and salad.

Okay, he said. Excellent.

Doris deftly avoided his gaze. He cancelled all plans to quiz her about the day. When there was frost on the lawn all you could do was wait for things to thaw. He went outside. Raked leaves halfheartedly until dinner.

At the table the women got to reminiscing.

We used to say you looked like some movie star, said Gemma.

Bollocks, said Doris, dragging her hair free from its workday bun.

Nah, it’s true.

What about yourself? said Doris. Who were you — Bo Derek?

Women, he thought. What a marvel they are.

He washed and dried the dishes as they kicked on, laughing and sledging till nightfall.

*

At eight, when Kai was in bed, Keely announced he was heading out for a stroll.

Gemma ironed her work smock. Doris was thumbing messages on her phone. He caught his mother’s glance at the bowl on the bench: the car keys.

Just a walk, he said with a bland smile.

I need some air meself, said Gemma, her rare animation undiminished.

Haven’t you got work? he asked.

Not till nine. It’s a stroll, not a hike, right?

Keely shrugged. He would have preferred to go alone but now he was snookered.

Doris paused a moment, stared at the tiny screen of the phone, as if it really were the focus of her attention.

You mind, Doris? asked Gemma.

Go ahead, said his mother. I’m not going anywhere.

*

By the river the air was still and thick. Gemma prattled excitedly. There was no relief from the heat, his sense of entrapment. Under the trees the foreshore smelt of fallen figs, cut grass and dog shit, and from the narrow beach came the sweaty low-tide odours of brine, algae and stranded jellyfish. The moon hung above the towers of the city. It shimmered on every bend and reach of the river.

She does look like an old movie queen, don’t you think? You probably can’t see it cause she’s your mum.

Whatever you reckon, he said.

And what about me? Who did I look like?

I don’t remember.

Bullshit, she said.

The mown grass was soft underfoot. Tiny waves lapped and sighed onshore.

Mate, I’m not really in the mood.

Come on, she said, who did I remind you of? Would it kill you to say a name?

Fine, he said ungraciously. I thought you looked like Farrah Fawcett.

Gemma gave a little moan of satisfaction.

I guess I wanted every girl to look like her, he said. It was a long time ago.

But Doris still looks like Julie Christie.

Keely sensed he was expected to say something here, pay Gemma some courtly comment, but the idea irritated him. He didn’t understand why her happy mood should irk him so.

The grassy riverbank ended at the limestone bluffs. In the moonlight, the pale fingers of stone shone through the shadow-patches of trees. The track was narrow but white enough to be distinct. They wound on through the undergrowth.

Nico says I look like Brigitte Bardot.

And who’s Nico?

New bloke at work, the French one. He’s a real card. They’re gunna sack him for sure. He opens stuff, food packets. Like chocolates and things. Last night he’s trying to get me to eat em, says I deserve it, says he wants to build me up, says it makes him feel good watchin me eat. There’s cameras everywhere and he’s got me duckin down behind the shelves and the trolleys, and he’s stuffin things in me mouth, the dirty perv. He’s like twenty-eight or somethin.

I guess you’d better be careful, then.

Tired of bein careful, she said. Where are we goin, anyway?

Keely said nothing until they were beneath the great silver trunk of the dead marri. Under moonlight it was stark, smooth, impossibly beautiful, like a stylized theatre prop. It looked dreamy there amidst the dark presences of living trees. The way it glowed. Cantilevered over the water, owning the night. Hard to imagine an ordinary bird alighting on it.

He sensed her beside him, craning to stare. He felt her hand in his.

It’s not there, he said, almost relieved.

She yanked on his arm. He remembered then, she was on at nine. But she dragged him further into the bush, away from home. Was suddenly facing him, stepping in to pull him close. Her tongue was hot in his mouth.

Hey, he said. You’ve got work.

There’s time.

For what?

I need to draw you a picture?

No, he said.

Carn. I’m goin fuckin mental.

She kissed him fiercely and took handfuls of his hair. Their teeth clashed and she laughed.

But there’s nowhere, he said.

She lifted her skirt and guided him down urgently. The stones bit into his knees and a dog barked somewhere as he nuzzled deep between her thighs. She twisted her fingers in his hair and pulled him away and he knelt there, looking up uncertainly into the pale cascade of her hair.

Say somethin nice, she panted. Nothin dirty, just somethin nice.

But Keely could barely speak at all. He was breathless, mindless with lust.

Christ, she said too loud. They used to beg me. Couldn’t you say I’m pretty? Is it so bloody hard to say?

You want me to stop?

You think I’ll let you stop now? she said, stepping out of her pants.

I’m sorry. I wasn’t expecting anything.

Just shut up, she said, grabbing his hair again.

He didn’t dare pull away. He stayed where he was until his knees felt lacerated, until she cursed him and whimpered and smacked the back of his head and began to sob.

~ ~ ~

Gemma wasn’t long gone when Doris emerged from her room to fill the kettle and set it on the hob. Keely was still at the table. Stuck. Just following his hands. Watching the jangly pattern of his own fingers. Pressed them down in the end, those hands. To manage the tremor.

Hot, said Doris.

Keely felt his mouth move. But nothing came. He didn’t want this. To be here. In this bloody tangle.

You okay?

He nodded.

Such a shame, she said. She was in such good spirits at dinner. Felt like we’d — I don’t know — broken through, a little.

He clamped his hands together. And then Doris dropped something onto the table. At his elbow. Kai’s sketchpad.

We need to talk about this.

She opened it about halfway though. The kid had been busy. There were a lot of new drawings organized in crude panels like storyboards. Each sequence featured a rudimentary superhero, a bearded, bear-like colossus. Fists swinging against all comers, legs planted wide, his boots black as his whiskers.

No prizes for guessing who our hero is, then, he said.

And this later one, the fellow with the sword?

Doris leant close. Turned a few more pages. She smelt of coconut shampoo. Tapped the page with a gnarled finger. And there he was himself. A man with a black eye. Like a half-masked Zorro. Dishing out the same rough justice as Nev. With a weapon, no less. The boning knife had become a scimitar and pools of blood lay about, black as Keely’s cartoon shiner.

He showed you these?

Let’s just say they came to my attention.

You don’t miss a trick.

Don’t even start me.

Mum, I don’t know what to do.

Perhaps you should think about why you’re doing anything at all. Whether you’re a fit person. In any sense.

What’re you talking about?

I think you know exactly what I’m talking about.

No, he lied.

Oh, Tom.

I told you the situation.

Which situation?

Well. Gemma’s situation.

Even with that you can’t be straight. You think I enjoy saying this, seeing you do this? Wake up, Tom. Look here. Right in front of you. This anxious little boy. Just look at his pictures.

What the hell do you want me to do? What’m I supposed to do to fix this?

You could start by paying attention.

Jesus. I’m fighting for this kid, Doris.

I think your mind is elsewhere.

That’s a disgusting thing to say.

Maybe after you’ve been to the bathroom and washed your face you’ll come back and still feel the same way.

Keely lurched back from the table and as he stood the chair capsized behind him.

Don’t, said Doris as he headed for the door. Please. We need to discuss this.

He was past listening. He wanted darkness. To be unseen. But there was moon out in the yard, light in the street, the sky bulging at him like a milky eye, and he just kept walking.

~ ~ ~

Still scratching his bites, Keely rode the six-thirty to Fremantle.

He’d woken radioactive on the back deck with Gemma squatting beside him. He knew how it must look. Him lying there on the boards in last night’s clothes. As if he’d gone out and got trashed. Then been locked out by Doris. But it wasn’t like that. He didn’t think so. Because although there were gaps he knew there’d been no booze. No pills. He had no money, for one thing. He’d just been walking. Barefoot. Along the river, the leafy streets, under drooling lights. Moth trails. Electric flashes of sky. Until his legs gave out. And then he was in warm sand by the river. Ferry lights, red and green. Then some bastard kicking him awake. Shitheads sporting with him in the cold glare of high beams. Running through gardens. Dogs. Patches of wild bush. He fell, lay a long time. Awake. In the wailing air. And when he finally tottered up the steps to the back door he found Doris had locked it. Prudent, that; he wasn’t taking it personally. He didn’t dare bang on the door. Just lay on the warm deck, waiting for morning. To die. To sleep. Dreaming of dogs streaking from the dark. And waking there, sore, stiff, mozzie-flogged, flayed like a Filipino penitent. With dawn in the wings. Gemma there. Confusing, the way she stroked the thin shell of his head. Like a girl with a horse about to be taken out and shot. She produced a tissue. Blotted his eyes.

What? she whispered. What?

Panadol, he croaked.

It was Thursday. His first day of work beginning in less than two hours.

*

He reached the café on time. Actually he was early. And Bub seemed surprised, as if he’d forgotten the offer or expected a no-show.

Second adolescence, comrade? Bub said, pointing at the lumps on his face and neck.

Bites, he murmured.

That’s all we need, he said. A malarial dishpig. Come on.

Bub led him through to the greasy fug of the kitchen. Gave him a cursory briefing of the racks, the machine, the flow of the benches and sinks. He pointed out the hipster over by the stoves, a bloke in a chef’s jacket and pirate bandanna, scowling at his knife-roll as tongues of flame rose from the hobs behind him.

Steer clear, whispered Bub. Psycho in clogs. Thinks he’s a genius.

What is he really?

A third-rate cook trying to stay off the gear. Why else could I afford him? Why else would he be doing breakfast?

Keely took down an apron. There were pans waiting already and trays of glasses, coffee cups, saucers queued up in front of the old Hobart. His feet hurt. The drum-and-bass on the stereo was torturous. Bub slipped back with a double-shot and a slice of apple cake. Then he left him to the fifteen-bucks-an-hour reality of scraping scum and scouring glassware.

~ ~ ~

At two he limped in ruins to the Mirador.

Day one, he told himself. Fresh start. And feeling so damn fresh, too.

Rode the lift up alone. So far past tired he felt tipsy. Began to giggle.

After a tepid shower he sat on the balcony to let the sea breeze cool his feet. And the sudden respite brought the whole weight back down on him. The look on his mother’s face. The gnawing fear in those missing chunks of evening. And these savage impulses twitching in him.

Things weren’t going to work at Doris’s. Not now. Best he moved back here. Maybe Gemma would stay. Doris could brood over Kai like Yahweh over the formless deeps. She could make herself a neat little intervention, call in the kiddy squad. She knew what she was doing. And any fuckups that followed would be her fault.

He took a couple of mother’s little helpers and lay on the bed, breeze rifling through him.

The building clanked and gurgled. He felt a moment of kinship. Here we are, he thought, beige and past our prime, haggard but hanging on. He sniffed at the chicken fat and lemon detergent in his puffy fingers. Caught himself drifting. But he had Kai to collect at three. Having promised Gemma. Promised himself. He sat up quickly, so fast there were bubbles and specks behind his eyeballs and the room spun and for a second he thought it was the vertigo returning. Went hand over hand to the armchair. Fell in. Let the air settle. He was okay. All safe. All good.

A dove alighted on the rail of a balcony along the way. It lifted its shoulders, twitched and fell.

He thought of Kai’s little storyboard. His cartoon self. Brandishing the scimitar. Wished he’d never seen it.

*

At the school gate the boy stopped in his tracks, obstructing the path. You could see him register the absence of a vehicle. Not dismay; he was too blank-faced for that. But the hesitation was eloquent enough. He was shunted aside by kids at the rear. Stood there until Keely went in and extracted him.

Your nan’s got the car today.

There’s a Volvo, but.

Doris needs it for work. We’ll take the train.

I can’t.

It’s easy.

The kid crowded him, pressing so close Keely almost stumbled.

Can you see? said Kai.

I’m fine, mate. I just need room to walk.

Is he looking?

Here, said Keely. Give us your bag.

He was there, said the boy, taking a handful of shirt.

Who? One of your mates?

I come out and he’s there.

What? he said, stopping at the corner, looking down onto the crown of the boy’s head. Who?

The kid’s hair fell forward, he pressed his brow to Keely’s side and pulled on his shirt. Wouldn’t lift his head; it was maddening, but a chill flashed through Keely.

Kai? Who are we talking about? Who’s there? Who’s watching?

Can we go? said Kai.

Keely cupped the small head against him and swivelled to scan the street. The boy’s limbs snarled against his, almost tripping him. He felt impatience and alarm in equal measure. Just couldn’t get free enough to move properly. It was a crowded side street. Purring vehicles. Adult faces. Darting, chirping children. No one he could distinguish as a threat. And yet Kai clutched him, trod on his feet.

Please? said the kid.

The word resonated against Keely’s belly. He swept the boy up and hoisted him onto his back. Threaded the little bag onto his arm. And made for the station. The kid’s nose pressed hard to his neck, Keely broke into a shambling trot.

When they got to the platform the train doors were chiming. He bullocked his way aboard and nearly sat on the kid as he fell gasping onto an empty seat. Kai turned his head away from the window. The train pulled out of the terminus.

For a couple of minutes Keely let him be. He was too breathless anyway. They rolled along the quays, rode the giddy span of the bridge over sheep ships, car carriers, containers rising from the deck of something blocky and orange. And then they left the harbour behind. The derricks and funnels quickly gone.

Keely sat against the graffiti-clouded glass. The boy retained a fistful of his shirt, scanned the carriage again. The train smelt of feet and bubblegum. The aircon was freezing but the afternoon sun scalded everything it touched.

Kai, he said again. You can tell me.

Is this the way home?

This is it, mate. We’re on our way. We get off in a few stops and walk to Doris’s.

Is there a taxi?

No, mate. We’re walking. What is it? What’s bothering you?

Kai stared at the high-schoolers cavorting down the carriage, the raw-boned Christian Brothers boys poking and sledging each other. The sulky state-school chicks thumbing their phones, buds in their ears.

The sea flashed by in silver glimpses. Keely unpeeled the sweaty little hand from his shirt. Took it in his.

C’mon, Kai. Just say.

He’s watching.

Who?

At school.

Not a kid? A teacher?

No.

A stranger?

Clappy.

Clappy. That’s a man?

Kai dipped his head. Retrieved his hand. As if from habit he turned it palm up and scanned it.

Someone called Clappy, said Keely with a pulse in his throat. And he’s watching you.

The train slid into the station at North Fremantle. The boy nodded, stiffened as the doors opened, scoped the carriage while the train got under way again.

This only happened today?

Kai shook his head, gaze averted.

And not just after school?

The boy pressed his lips together.

Where does he watch from?

Across.

And you know him? You’ve seen him before?

Kai studied the grimy floor of the carriage.

It’s okay to be worried. And it’s okay to say it. I’m right here. Tell me, how do you know this bloke, what does he look like? Is he tall or short?

The train pulled up at Victoria Street. The boy blinked and dropped his head again, his face obscured by hair.

Just one thing at a time, said Keely, backtracking. Tell me how you know this fella.

The doors chimed. Rumbled shut.

Kai? This is the bloke who came to the flat. Isn’t it?

Kai took another fistful of Keely’s shirt.

Keely stared down into the pale blur of the kid’s hair. A cold feeling in his gut. Too familiar. And he knew. It had been coming. This carnage. Since before he even knew this child. It was this all along, not destiny but a chance.

The train stopped. Got going again.

No need to worry anymore, he said.

He tried to turn the kid’s head his way but Kai resisted.

They pulled into a station. Girls in straw boaters got on. Christ, this was Claremont. He’d missed their stop.

~ ~ ~

By the time Doris came in, Kai was sprawled before the TV, as closed off as he’d ever been. And Keely was finishing the Margaret River chardonnay he’d found in the fridge. He’d filched a couple of Panadeine Forte from his mother’s bedside table. Should have felt calm. But it was six already and there was still no sign of Gemma.

Well, said Doris, setting down her satchel and slipping off her jacket. Just help yourself.

He didn’t acknowledge her. Thought about Wally Butcher. Now there was a bloke who’d been handy in his day. No shortage of stories about him fighting his way out of a corner. But Wally was in his seventies, fat as a fart and in serious need of a hip replacement. Wal wasn’t going to be any use to him.

Have you eaten? asked Doris. Either of you?

Kai’s had a sandwich and some fruit juice.

That’s all?

He’s not hungry.

What about Gemma?

No idea.

And where did you go today?

Work, he said.

What work?

I wash dishes. At Bub’s. It’s very fulfilling.

And every day’s payday, by the looks of you.

Sorry, he said. I was planning to leave. Go home. But something’s come up.

You’ve had an argument?

Haven’t seen her. But I need to speak to her. Before I go.

Where did you get to last night?

Doesn’t matter where I went. I wasn’t drunk, okay?

But tonight’s another night.

So it seems.

Doris busied herself at the fridge and pantry. She brought out garlic, tomatoes, capers, anchovies. The makings of a puttanesca, from what he could see. She slid a pan onto the stovetop and drew a knife from the block.

You’ve got your work duds on, he murmured. Let me do it.

Pass me that apron, she said.

Mum, really.

You’ll end up taking a finger off.

He handed the apron across. You know anyone with a caravan somewhere? he said in little more than a whisper. Somewhere discreet?

No one in this town has a caravan anymore. And if they did they wouldn’t take it anywhere discreet. Where’ve you been the last ten years?

What about a beach house?

I’ve already asked, she said. Stephanie gave me the keys.

Stephanie who?

Does it matter?

You’ve organized this? He heard how stupid he sounded. Where is it?

Eagle Bay.

Legal Bay, he said before he could catch himself.

The heavy knife thudded against the bulb of garlic, perhaps a little harder than strictly necessary.

That’s good of her. Good of you. Thank you. It’s the best we can do. I wonder if I could do it tonight?

Do what? asked Doris, chopping, filling the kitchen with the heady reek of garlic. Drive three hours in your condition?

I wouldn’t have to drive.

But you’d need to be competent.

So, maybe I’ll wait till morning, he said, colouring. I’ll be right in the morning.

Provided Gemma agrees, said Doris, lighting the hob. After a few moments the smell of caramelizing anchovies rose about them. She should be calling the police, she said in a fierce whisper.

I know, but she won’t. Could you do it?

And tell them what, a story at third hand? I haven’t seen anything.

You know cops, people from agencies.

There aren’t any signs of physical injury. I don’t have any evidence, Tom, there’s nothing I can tell them except a few things unlikely to go in Gemma’s favour.

What about — I don’t know — something more informal?

Send the boys around, you mean? Illegal, and it doesn’t work, believe me.

I don’t mean the local cops.

I’m not paying to have anyone kneecapped. Forget it.

Of course not. I understand.

What do you think I’ve become, the sort who’d write a cheque to make this poor girl, this whole thing, go away?

No. No.

Tom, I’m not that person.

I know. I see that.

I doubt it.

So, I’ll just report it myself.

Yeah, go in drunk. That’ll really help.

Okay, okay.

Besides, said Doris, as if she needed to say it for her own reminding, Gemma has to make this decision herself. And hard as it is to resist overstepping, it’s her call to make. We can’t just wade in uninvited.

Not even for Kai’s sake?

Doris said nothing. He could feel the torment in her silence.

The beach house, he said at length. It’ll do for the moment. It’s good. It’s a start. But where the hell is she?

Kai needs to shower, said Doris. And you need to calm down.

I’m fine, he said.

I’ll have this ready when he’s out. And you might want to think about freshening up yourself.

Doris, dear, I think that’s a case of overstepping.

Yes, she said, slipping capers into the pan. I’m sorry. Somehow I keep forgetting you’re a grownup.

~ ~ ~

They were eating when Gemma came in. She tossed keys on the bench, dumped her bag on the floor like a high-schooler and lifted lids from pots on the stove. Keely noted Kai’s watchful gaze. He saw his mother follow Gemma’s movements without actually turning to look. Doris jangled, lifting her glass, sipping soda water.

Looks good, said Gemma, as if saying so cost her something.

Plenty there, love, said Doris, glancing at Kai.

Gemma wore the little black dress she’d confronted Stewie in, the day they seized the car. Her hair was in a chignon that had gone awry and been flattened with sweat. Still in her heels, she dredged some pasta into a bowl, pulled a fork from the drawer and began to eat listlessly at the sink, her back almost completely turned. Keely saw her reflected face in the kitchen window and knew there was trouble.

He picked at his food. Felt the crackling energy in the room. After a long pause the boy spoke up.

Where’d you go?

Out, said Gemma.

Shoulda said.

What? Are you the boss now?

The boy glowered at his plate. Gemma turned. Her eyes were red, her face looked boiled.

You don’t need to know everythin.

Doris laid a hand on the boy’s arm and the gesture seemed to inflame Gemma.

Let him be, she said fiercely. You’ll make him soft.

Soft isn’t so bad, love.

Look where it gets you, she said, hitching her chin towards Keely.

He felt his mother’s indignation before the insult even registered. He looked at his food, glanced at Kai’s clouded face.

What say we finish our meal and have a talk afterwards? said Doris with a steely lightness.

What say we all mind our own beeswax, said Gemma, shoving her bowl along the bench.

Gemma, he said. I need to talk to you.

Talk? That’s all you’re good for.

Has something happened, love? asked Doris.

That’s my business.

Kai, said Doris brightly. Maybe you and I could finish our dinner out on the deck.

Instantly there was fear in the boy’s face.

He can stay where he is, said Gemma. I’m sick of being told what to do.

Sweetie, I’m not telling you what to do. That was a suggestion.

Pig’s arse.

You’re upset. Kai and I could leave you two to talk things over, that’s all I’m saying.

You make it sound like butter wouldn’t melt in ya mouth, Doris, but you’re still telling me what to do. Kai, get ya stuff.

Don’t be ridiculous, said Keely. Just settle down, will you?

Kai!

Kai, maybe you should tell your nan about Clappy, said Keely.

But the boy shook his head. There was tomato sauce on his chin and then tears on his cheeks.

Who’s Clappy? said Doris.

Jesus Christ, said Gemma. I’ll fuckin kill him.

Doris stroked the boy’s hair but he slipped from his chair and ran to the spare room. Tom, she said, there’s a key and a map on the sideboard. I’ll go and sit with Kai a minute.

What the fuck? said Gemma when Doris was gone.

Keep your voice down. Please.

Tell me.

He says Clappy’s watching him, said Keely.

Shithead! What’d he do?

Nothing. He’s just there. Stands across the street from school, out in the open. Like he wants to be seen. Gemma, you have to go to the cops.

I told you.

Then there’s a place down south. Doris made some calls.

Fuck Doris!

You have to protect him, Gem, he said despite his fury. You have to think of him.

They’ll take him off me — that’s what’s gunna happen. I am thinking of him — you haven’t got a clue.

No one’s going to take him off you, mate. You’re just rattled, that’s all.

They’re crazy, she said, picking up her bag and heading through to the livingroom. Fuckin mad dogs, that’s what.

Keely followed as she collected things he hadn’t even noticed — folded laundry, celebrity magazines. She pitched them into a plastic washbasket.

They’ve got debts. And now they’re jumpin out of their skin cause some other joker’s movin in on their business. Like someone’s declared war. They want the money right now.

So tell the cops, he said, reeling.

Stop sayin that! Fuckin look at you.

Then go tonight. The key’s here. You heard Doris. Go away for a bit.

There’s no goin away, don’t you understand? No one’s gunna pull these pricks in. Even if they do and some copper gets lucky or fits em up with a bit of gear, they’re out on bail. Just down the road there. Even if a charge sticks there’s only jail.

Then at least they’re locked up.

What planet are you on? Nothin stops em from in there.

Keely felt for the couch, braced his knees against the frame, pressed his hands on the curve of its back to keep himself upright.

So what are you saying?

We have to find money, she hissed.

But this’ll just go on, Gem.

Not for them. They won’t get a cent.

I’m not following.

We need money to pay someone else. To fix this, stop em.

He took her arm, led her out to the deck. Slid the door to behind them. She shrugged him away, scowling.

Gemma. Paying someone else. What’re you talking about?

You gunna stop em? You’re a fuckin softcock, mate.

Well, thanks a lot. But Keely knew she was right. All he’d done was make it worse. He’d indulged himself, thinking he was so bloody clever.

I don’t need your pissfartin about, I need this sorted. And it costs money.

What, like some kind of standover man? This is insane.

Properly. Professional.

No.

No choice.

It’s wrong, Gem. It’s his father.

I don’t care. I’ve made me mind up.

Jesus, Gemma. You can’t pay.

I’ll pay.

How.

She looked at him. In the light her face was cold with resignation. He’d seen that look before. Just seeing it made him ashamed to be a man.

And then Doris was approaching from inside the house. Her heels thudding on the floorboards. She slid the door open.

Tom, can we speak for a moment?

I’ll go pack, said Gemma.

You’ll do it, then? asked Doris. You’ll go south?

No, she said. We’re goin home. Thanks for havin us. Sorry it’s such a bloody mess.

You’re always welcome, love, said Doris sorrowfully, stepping aside to let her pass. Catching the kiss on the cheek she wasn’t expecting.

I’ll go, too, he said.

I wish she’d go to Stephanie’s.

Me too.

Look after them, Tom. And yourself. Please.

I will, he said hopelessly.

We’ll talk.

We will.

~ ~ ~

In the Mirador carpark he tried to jolly the kid along a little but Kai was unresponsive.

I shoulda stayed, said Gemma in the lift.

You’re here now.

He looked at their things stuffed into shopping bags, a plastic laundry basket. The kid’s schoolbag.

The door cranked back at the tenth floor. There was no one on the gallery. No sign of anything wrong at either flat.

I can sleep on your couch, he said in her doorway. Kai went straight in to bed.

No, she said. No need.

Really.

I’m late for work.

You’re going?

Of course I’m goin.

What about him?

He’s got your number. He’ll stay here now.

What about school?

Not until it’s over.

She shut the door on him.

His flat smelt stagnant. He flopped into his armchair and thought of Kai. Heard Gemma leave for work a little before nine. Sat up. Waiting. He’d do it all night, stay awake until she was safely home.

*

But somebody was pounding at his door. And it was dark. Well, half dark. And when he groped on the floor beside the chair there was no plausible weapon to hand.

He snapped to his feet and felt the sickening lag as if half of him hadn’t made it there yet. Thumping at the door.

His name.

They were yelling his name.

Clawed the wall. He was bare-chested. Lurched to the bedroom. For a shirt. Absurd, but he needed a shirt. To do this, confront what awaited him. Wondered if he had the balls to do anything more than cower behind the door. The room was dim. He groped for the cupboard. And almost trampled the kid. Curled in his jarmies. On the carpet, at the foot of the bed. Stirring now as Keely stumbled around him.

Open the fuckin door, Tom!

Keely wheeled back into the livingroom at the sound of Gemma’s voice. Only Gemma. He was fine. Everything was fine. He plucked at the door-chain.

Right now!

He leant against the fridge a moment. Things were blurry.

You hear me?

The door jumped in its frame; she was kicking it. He turned the lock. Hauled it open. And she had the force of dawn behind her. It was like having his head staved in.

Where is he? Jesus Christ, Tom, what the fuck?

Keely sagged against the fridge, fists against his temples. She pushed past him.

You, she said at the boy grinding sleep from his eyes in the bedroom doorway.

Gemma grabbed him up fiercely and Keely caught Kai’s glance across her shoulder as she hugged him.

Keely pulled himself around to face the kitchen clock. It was 6.52. Which meant he was supposed to be at work in eight minutes.

What’re you fuckin doin? she hissed. What happened?

Nothing happened. I think he let himself in.

Gemma rounded on him. You don’t even know?

I only just saw him now. He was asleep on the floor.

Jesus Christ, she said, lowering the kid to his feet and hauling him towards the door. You didn’t even hear him come in? You let him sleep on the floor?

He looked at Kai, saw the key on its shoelace against his pigeon chest.

He’s alright, Gem, he’s safe.

No thanks to you.

All I did was go to sleep in my own flat.

Pissed as a stick.

No, he said.

She dragged Kai past him and out onto the gallery.

The boy looked back hopefully. Keely tried a reassuring smile but the kid was not fooled.

~ ~ ~

At Bub’s he was a man hauling his own corpse through a swamp. The air in the kitchen was miasmic. He felt the grease settling on his skin and he drew it hot into his lungs with every breath. He was queasy, lightheaded, sore and clammy, so unsteady others had to jostle and dodge him. Kids, most of them. Taking the piss. He saw their mouths move, their eyes roll. Sound seemed to come and go intermittently. Everything around him — light, noise, space itself — felt sliced and diced. The morning towed him along a little way, sluiced past him, washed back to get him. Time was choppy. Fitful. Endlessly interrupted. Like a broken signal. Dirty coronas hung over every passing object. He worked, aping his own movements, head fluffy as the suds rising in his face. Bub looked disgusted. The chef — that squirrelly hipster with all the earrings and the pirate get-up — had the shits with him. Scowling, flashing his ruined teeth. Keely stayed at it all morning, digging deep; he was determined. But the Hobart cabinet had racks backed up beside it and the benches against the sink were head-high with pans and trays, everything, clean or dirty, glistening horribly. And then in the prep-hour before lunch he found himself just hanging against the trough, hands jerking in suds. Vertical. But useless.

Suddenly the chef was screaming. Something he couldn’t hear. The bloke was brandishing a cleaver at him from across the room and next moment Keely was on the reeking mats amidst a forest of clogs and legs. I’ve been struck, he thought. That idiot’s actually thrown the thing at me, cut me down. No sound at all. And then, like an approaching cataract, a rush of noise overtook him — laughter, cutlery, music — and he was wrenched to his feet.

Fuckin plonker, said some kid.

Go outside and get yourself what you need, said the chef without a hint of camaraderie. Ten minutes. Or piss off now.

*

Keely sat on a milk crate in the reeking alley as a waiter and a kitchen hand played hackeysack during their smoko. Bub appeared beside him, squatting on the step.

Everything alright, Tom?

Yeah.

Sure?

Soft, mate, that’s all.

Bub glanced at him sceptically. Keely’s younger workmates propped and kicked and giggled amidst the weeds and the flattened cartons.

Geez, mate. You must need the money.

I need something, Keely thought. But all he could manage was a thin grin.

Go home, said Bub. God’s sake, go to bed.

I’m fine, said Keely. Sorry about the fuss.

Behind them in the kitchen a tub of plates smashed. It was like a mortar blast between his temples, but he got up, wiped his bacon-greasy hands on his apron and watched Bub go.

Hey, he said to the kids with the hackeysack. You know a speed-freak called Clappy?

The kitchen hand shrugged and stooped to pick up his little beanbag.

Ask Gypsy, said the waiter.

Nah, he’s off the gear, said the kitchen hand.

Still, he’ll know.

Gypsy? said Keely. Are you serious?

The waiter sniffed and the kids resumed their game.

~ ~ ~

The morning chef’s studied machismo wasn’t just irritating, it was silly. It was as if he’d worked up an act to imitate the celebrity bad boys of New York and London. The pirate scarf, the earrings, the sea-leg swagger. Gypsy might have been a good-looking dude in his time, but he was ravaged. Probably in his early forties. Looked a lot older. Even before the stunt with the cleaver Keely hadn’t liked him. It wasn’t just the posturing, it was the sourness, the lack of generosity. As if a roomful of people scurrying to keep things afloat deserved to be shat on.

Yesterday, after his shift, the chef had sat out at a street table in his checks and clogs, necking espressos and passing comment on women as they swept by. And he was there again after lunch today as Keely stepped out into the shade like a man delivered. The day was over. Thank Christ.

There was an old bloke with Gypsy, an Italian gambler he recognized from around town. The chef shook his hand and the geezer cranked himself to his feet and gimped off. Keely hesitated, then sat down uninvited.

Ah. The fainting dishpig, said Gypsy. That had to have been embarrassing.

I guess it was.

This is my table.

I think it’s Bub’s table.

And, what, you’ve come to apologize for being a pussy?

I wanted to ask you about a couple of blokes.

You look familiar. Which bothers me.

Maybe we were in Sunday School together.

That’ll be it.

Tom Keely.

That your name, or the bloke you want me to tell you about?

No, it’s me.

Hang down your head, Tom Keely, sang Gypsy. Hang down your head and cry.

Bloke called Stewie Russell — you know him? He’s got a mate called Clappy.

The chef’s eyes narrowed.

Why would I know two little shits like that? Shitlets. Small pieces of ordure.

So you do know them.

Never said that, said Gypsy. Fellas you met inside, are they?

Here? I don’t think so.

Fucksake.

Oh. Inside.

The chef uttered a sardonic laugh. Christ.

No. Nothing like that.

Figured you for a lag. Bub giving an old mate a second chance. He does that, bless his cheap little heart.

I need some information.

Mate, if you’re looking to score you’re talking to the wrong bloke.

I just wanted some advice.

A bloke looking as fucked as you, talking about shits of a certain species, sounds like you’re in the market for advice I don’t give anymore. Wake up, mate, clean yourself up. Leave me out of it.

I wanted to clarify something. A situation.

Tom Dooley. In a situation. Who’da thunk it?

I need to know who I’m up against.

Gypsy circled the espresso cup on its saucer, shunting it round with a be-ringed pinky.

There’s just something I have to deal with, said Keely. For someone else. I need to know how dangerous they are.

Smaller the stakes, the nastier the fight, Dooley. Morons. And what could be worse?

How d’you mean?

Nitwits with nothing to lose. They’re not people you deal with. You walk away. Or find some mates to fix it for you. And if you’ve got those sort of mates don’t talk to me anymore, I don’t wanna know. I’m not shitting you. Don’t even come near me. These little cunts are only ever a few weeks from fucking up. They’ll be banged up in Casuarina soon enough. Your ‘friend’ needs to cash up or keep his head down. Now move on, Dooley, you’re frightening the ladies.

~ ~ ~

Kai 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.

~ ~ ~

They 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.

~ ~ ~

There 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.

~ ~ ~

He was halfway across the town hall square, heading for the Mirador at something just short of a trot, when he saw the figure in the shadow of the Moreton Bay fig. The man stood with his hands in the pockets of his trackpants looking busy doing nothing, the way some blokes could, and there was nothing out of the ordinary in the blue singlet, the Adidas pants, the lizard eyes or the tatts. There were always charmers here lurking to sell or floating to buy between the figs and the date palms. But this character gave off a malevolent interest that didn’t seem accidental. The twinge of fear quickened Keely’s pace a moment before he reined himself in, and then he was as angry as he was afraid.

At the far edge of the square he stopped and turned. It seemed to him the man’s face was still angled his way, at this distance little more than a pale disc.

Keely raised a hand in the unmistakeable shape of a pistol. Saw the man’s hands leave his pockets in alarm. Took aim. Mimed the discharge and recoil of a weapon. Blew imaginary smoke from the end of his index finger. Saw the stranger’s arms fall to his sides in shocked relief. Turned for home. Did not run.

The lobby was empty. He went straight through to the rear door and into the carpark, scanning the rows until he found the Hyundai wedged in the farthest corner. There was no point searching for any obvious signs of collision because every window was smashed and from front to back no panel had escaped a stomping. Three tyres flat and on the front hood, coiled like an adder, a human turd.

He hurried to the relative shelter of the bike shed and called her. It was hard to keep the panic from his voice.

Have you seen the car?

What part of the car?

Shit, Gemma.

What?

Well, travel just got harder. There is no car. It’s trashed.

Fuckin Clappy. How does he even know?

How do you think?

Oh, Jesus Christ.

Call the cops, he said. I’m begging you.

You know that’s not gunna happen. Tom. Jesus. Help me.

Stay there, he said. Don’t open the door to anyone. I’ll be back in an hour.

~ ~ ~

He climbed down from the bus and oriented himself at the truck-snarled junction.

It was brutally hot. Houses fronted by concrete lions gave way to factory units, discount furniture stores and machinery dealerships. He trudged east a hundred metres, still in his greasy shirt and half-dried pants, until he saw the window with all the steel bars. He wiped his palms against his sleeves and pushed on the door.

When he stepped inside a buzzer announced him and he saw the surveillance cameras. The tinny smell of light oil greeted him. For some absurd reason it reminded him of his mother’s ancient Singer sewing machine. And then of the old man’s Triumph, up on blocks in the shed.

Ah, g’day, said the red-bearded bloke rising behind the glass counter.

Yeah, said Keely. G’day there.

Not since he’d stumbled into a sex shop in Amsterdam had he felt so self-conscious in a retail space. There were many more pictures of guns on display in this place than actual weapons, but as he approached the modest array in the case before him he felt a bilious mixture of shame and menace.

Help you with something?

Well, I dunno, he blurted. I was thinking about a pistol.

Revolver or semi?

Ah, semi, say.

Just joined a club, then? the man asked indulgently.

Club?

Well, you don’t strike me as the farming type. Or enforcement, given we’re talking sidearm.

Sorry, I’m not with you.

Mate, you can’t bowl up cold and buy a pistol. Not in this country. Need to be a registered member of a club with six months’ standing, for one thing. After that, you need to apply for a licence from the cops and have your record vetted. But at least you’re over twenty-one, so that’s a start, eh.

Keely blushed and offered a colicky grin.

Yeah, he said at last. Point taken. I guess I was just after an idea.

Of what they look like, or what they cost?

Well, both, I guess.

Research, then.

Yeah, said Keely.

Don’t spose you’ve heard of Google?

Well, it’s just different, isn’t it? When you see them.

It must be.

Anyway, I think I’ve satisfied my curiosity.

Well, said the gunsmith by way of dismissal. Glad to be of help.

He caught the bus back to town, got out at the lurkers’ park beside the big pharmacy and went op-shopping. At the St Vincent de Paul store, in a box of used toys that reeked of disinfectant, he found a plastic Luger. Two brick-faced matrons at the till smiled kindly and sent him on his way with a recycled shopping bag and a few God-blesses. He made straight for the hobby shop. Bought a tin of Airfix paint the size of a cotton reel. Paid for it with his last shrapnel and made for home.

*

The lift yawned open. He rode to the top, stood outside her window until he saw the boy’s head pass behind the nylon curtain. He tapped the glass softly and Kai peered out. Keely gave him a thumbs up and the kid waved hesitantly, as if anxious about being discovered. When Keely made a silly face the boy produced a wan grin and let the curtain fall to.

~ ~ ~

The faded red Luger — burred at the butt where some infant had gnawed it — was just a water pistol with a missing bung. He spread newspaper on the kitchen table and painted the thing blue-black and when he finished the job, set it aside and stood back, he saw it would never work. What the hell had he been thinking? Another hour wasted. He had to get them out of town. Tonight. As far as he could make out, Gemma or someone she knew had deliberately run a man down and pushed him into the harbour; that was no small thing. She’d do time for it, so there wasn’t a chance she’d go to the cops now; it’d mean relinquishing Kai to foster care.

He dialled Doris but rang off before she answered. Then he called Gemma who picked up but said nothing.

In the background the noise of the TV or the computer game, the squeal of tyres. Then the faintest sound of her weeping.

I’m here, he said, for something to say. It’s only me.

Christ, Tommy, she whispered.

Whatever occurred last night, he said, there were reasons. You could explain it. If you went in and told them what’s been going on, it’d go in your favour. Doris could get you a kick-arse lawyer. And if anything… well, if it was necessary, even if it’s only a few days, we’d look after Kai, you know that. They’ll have you out on bail. Whatever happens we’d look after him, both of you.

I can’t, she said. I fuckin can’t.

We’d look after him, Gem.

She’s an old lady, she hissed. And you think they’ll let you have him? You haven’t even had the job for a week. You’re a mess, Tom. I’ve seen you lookin at me. I know what you think. But you know what? Compared to you I’m doin orright.

Yeah, he said. Apart from the fact that you can’t leave your flat and you’re wanted by the police.

If you fuckin dob I’ll tell Clappy where your mum lives. I’m not kiddin.

Keely sat down. He gazed at the sunset. It was unbearably beautiful.

You hear me?

You don’t mean that, he said as if saying it might convince him.

Blood’s thicker than water.

No.

I’m serious. What else can I do?

Well, you can think of your friends, he said. Because if blood’s thicker than water, you’re fucked. And so’s Kai.

He hung up and stared at the stupid little toy on the table.

The phone buzzed.

Tommy, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I know you won’t tell.

But now you can’t be sure, he said.

No, she said. I trust you.

He didn’t speak. It shamed him, hearing her say it. Scoured him no less than being told the truth, that he was not a fit person to be entrusted with the care of a child. What had she put her trust in but a falling man?

Do you think Doris will have us back?

Yes, he said, knowing it was true.

Keely thought of the Volvo. Doris would give her the car, get her away, and bugger the consequences.

Christ, Tommy.

The sun flattened itself against the limpid sea. The sky was magnificent.

I feel sick, she whispered.

Pack some stuff. I need to talk to Doris. I’ll come by when I have something organized. Don’t call anyone.

He hung up. And when he headed to the sink for a glass of water, one leg was heavy. His hands shook so much he had to set the tumbler down and rifle through what remained of his supplies. Needed something to iron him out. Rattled and faffed through sheets and packets. Everything shining evilly. Shook out what he could, gobbed a party-coloured handful, whatever it took.

And then he packed a bag. Tried to be methodical.

Time to call Doris. And also Bub. Wished his hands would settle down.

Drank some more water. And nearly dropped the glass. He was rushing, too frantic. Needed to sit a moment. Get clear.

And then he looked seaward and the sky was dark.

Yes, he’d ask Bub for whatever he was owed, take him up on his offer of a loan. Go to Doris’s — no, call Doris. Maybe hitch the boat to the Volvo, sell it for cash at a yard along the highway. Use the money to buy a van. There was a line of them outside the station where backpackers offloaded them to get home. He had the keys to the place down south. Or Doris did. She’d collect them any minute. Be surprised to see the flat after all this time. She’d come through, and they’d slip away, stay south a while, keep going. He’d go with them or not go with them, he didn’t know yet. Better he got them away first. Couldn’t think past that, couldn’t think past the lowering dark. Really. Just couldn’t really. Think.

~ ~ ~

The phone. It rang. And rang. From so far away.

And after some time he got himself upright. But it had stopped.

Then, on the floor beside the chair, the mobile began to flash, buzzing and shivering. He reached for it as if through moving water. Chased and seized it. Felt it buck like a fish. But let it breathe and wheeze against his ear. Like the sound of his little sister. He smelt Airfix paint, thought of the Spitfires and Typhoons he’d glued together in his room at Blackboy Crescent. The lanolin reek of a damp footy jumper, the Syd Jackson poster on the wardrobe door. If he closed his eyes he’d be there again. And he wanted to. Yes. Faith in the next room. Doris and Nev talking quietly out on the porch. Everything good, all safe.

Tom? Is it you?

Yes, said Keely with a croak. And only then did he understand that it wasn’t Faith but Kai.

Are you awake, Tom?

Yeah, he said, though everything felt and sounded dreamy. Yes, I think so.

But where are you?

I’m here, he murmured, trying to straighten in the chair. At home.

We didn’t know. We waited.

Where’s Gemma? he asked, still confused. Because it was dark, so late.

Sleeping, said the boy. She was cryin. But now she’s asleep.

Good, he said. That’s good.

She said you wouldn’t run away.

And Keely remembered the packed bag. The trip south.

Tom? Are you really there? Can I see?

What’s wrong? Is something happening?

Just, I had the dream. And I’m scared of falling back to sleep.

But you must be tired. Hell, I’m tired. It’s only a dream, mate.

The boy wheezed quietly. And there was a rushing noise behind him, as if he had the TV on; it sounded like static.

It’s only a dream, Kai. It can’t hurt you, mate. It’s just a thing running through your head. It’s not real.

Are you real?

Of course, he said. But Keely no longer felt real.

You’re really there? Can I see? Can you come out?

Out where?

Outside.

Keely felt a jolt of fear and suddenly he was alert. Kai, where are you?

On the balcony.

Keely flailed at the air, found his feet. His head was water-logged, precarious on his neck. He hauled the slider open and tottered out. Three doors up, there he was, in the milky spill of city light, pale and bare-chested.

Kai!

I can see you, said the boy, waving.

Go inside now. Please.

Kai moved, but only to the rail. The bars divided his figure into vertical strips. One hand rested on the horizontal. And Keely’s gut fluttered. He was back in his own nightmare.

Can I come over? Tom?

Really, mate. I just need you to go inside before we do anything else.

But Nan.

We’ll whisper, alright? Let’s just get you inside and you lock the door and lie down on the couch and we’ll talk.

Okay, said the boy.

Keely watched him go in, saw a sheen at the rear of the balcony as if the door had moved.

Have you locked it?

Yes, whispered the kid.

Why don’t you lie down, aren’t you tired?

Yes.

Just lie on the couch and I’ll stay on the phone. You can go to sleep if you want. I’ll just be here, listening.

In my ear, said the boy softly.

That’s right, he said, subsiding into the chair.

Like Father says? Says it’s in your ear, the Holy Spirit.

Well. I guess that’s one way of thinking about it, yeah.

Father’s not a father, but.

Um, no. Not in that way, no.

Not allowed.

No.

Are you allowed?

Yes, he whispered. I think so. But I think it’s too late for me.

There was only breathing for a while.

My dad isn’t good, said Kai. But I don’t want him to die.

No, of course not. He’s your father.

You didn’t do anythink bad. I know.

I make mistakes, Kai. Your mum and your dad they just made mistakes. People get stuck. They need help.

It’s you. I knew you was real.

Still here, mate.

You’re the one.

Shh.

I seen it.

Try to sleep, he said, unable to stifle a yawn.

I’ll get old, Tom. Like Doris.

Yeah, like Doris.

But it’s sad.

Nah.

We saw the bird.

That’s right.

And the bird saw you.

You sound sleepy.

Yeah.

It’s okay. I’ll be here. And then I’ll be —

In my ear.

Alright.

Bye, Tom.

Goodnight, mate.

Keely felt close enough to hear sleep overtake the boy. There was no hand in his shirt but Kai’s breath was in his ear, right in his head. Something sweet and benign finally inside him, like a bulwark. He sat a few minutes and listened to the holy wheeze of the kid asleep.

~ ~ ~

Didn’t know how long it was before he stirred again, still connected. Climbed up. Took the mobile into the next room. Blinked at the suitcase on the bed. He knew Doris would come if he called. But he was too blurry just now to get going and stay going. Needed to be competent.

Felt the mattress subside beneath him. Clutched the phone close. Sound of the living boy. Just for a moment, until he was clear.

Then they’d go south. To forest, white coves, granite boulders like beasts resting before the silver sea.

~ ~ ~

Then, in a moment, it was light. Something ground into his skull like a fist, like the muzzle of a gun. And a voice was in his ear, screaming, pleading. When he rolled over the phone fell squalling to the floor but the demonic noise was everywhere in the building, out on the gallery, at his shuddering door.

He was up, still dressed. She was calling.

And when he reefed the door open the little man exploded from the searing flare of sunlight and had him stumbling against the fridge before he could even speak. Both of them careered into the kitchen bench, and Keely felt the grip on his throat, saw the flashes of sari and opening phone as someone ran past the open doorway. Clappy trapped his free hand, forced his head back so hard his neck felt it would tear free of his shoulders, and all he could do was clamp the bastard’s forearm to keep from choking. The edge of the countertop bit into his spine and buds of light began to open behind his eyes.

You fuckin idiot arsehole, said Clappy.

Keely’s jaw was pressed shut. There was no way of answering. He did what he could to brace, neutralize the pressure, ease the pain, and he felt a brightness awaken in him. He was not afraid. Just angry. He watched the whiskery runt down the length of his nose. He was all pupil. The beanie was navy-blue. The earrings looked like fish-hooks, couldn’t be fish-hooks. Mackerel eyes. Sour, chapped lips. His breath stank of ruined teeth and battery acid. There was something about the moronic grin that riled Keely. It was a performance. This was Clappy’s act, a routine learnt from the telly. Dosed to the gills, he’d talked himself up, convinced himself he could be mighty, prevail, satisfy himself and whatever darkness ruled him. And it was kind of pathetic. He was half his fucking size. Malnourished, twitching, puny.

A laugh boiled up in Keely’s throat and it caught them both unawares. Clappy snarled and jabbed his knee deep into the softness of his thigh and it was as if there had been no real pain before this moment. After which Keely was sober. He saw his mistake. Here was havoc, after all. Despite his size, performance or no, Clappy was dangerous. He pressed Keely back with renewed vigour, twisting his vertebrae, wringing his throat.

Fuck us about, he hissed. Try that shit on. You don’t know what I can do, you dumb fuck. Finish with you I’m in there, mate, with those two, and then the fun really gets goin.

The strain on Keely’s neck was unbearable. He couldn’t draw away, but managed to ease himself sidelong a half-step before the little prick gained on him again and the second’s respite was enough; he saw how high his assailant was reaching to maintain pressure; Clappy was dancing on tiptoe. And the bench was breaking Keely in half. He could feel his windpipe beginning to collapse. Knew he couldn’t hold position for much longer. There was no help coming. But he could feel the other man’s arms trembling with the strain. Saw his eyes flick away, past Keely’s shoulder, to what — the view, the table? Shit, the table. The newsprint, the paint, the gun.

It was just a flicker, an instant of lost momentum, as if Clappy’s fevered mind had snagged a second. His eyes widened. He blinked. And Keely jerked sideways, felt the little bloke lose his footing and release a hand to steady himself. Keely spun free and saw him stagger then recover, an arm’s length away.

You dumb cunt, said Clappy.

Keely went for him. Felt the boyish thinness of his flashing wrist. And heard the knife before he saw it.

The blade clattered to the floor and Clappy stooped a moment before drawing back, glancing again at the table behind them. Keely grinned at him. Clappy blinked, chewed the air a second and then fled, crashing out onto the gallery, leaving Keely with a hot flush of relief coursing through his guts.

Somewhere in the building there was singing. Eggs were being fried. Next door his neighbour chanted metrically, musical as a nursery rhyme. As he staggered out onto the walkway the east wind rose in his face. It tasted of dust, of crops, the great country. He heard a siren. Every fingertip began to spark. He felt lightheaded with overcoming. He was larger than himself. His legs shook.

And now, in nothing but a T-shirt, Gemma came running his way.

Where’s Kai? he said.

Up here, she cried. He’s safe.

Go back, he said. Get inside.

Lie down, Tom. They’re coming. The cops, the ambo. God’s sake, you need to lie down!

He heard her calling, left her behind on the gallery as he set off. I’m the one, he thought. This little prick hasn’t seen the last of me. I am the one.

He didn’t bother with the lifts. He surfed down the stairs, thudding through every steel-railed right angle with the wind in his ears. Pursued by his own gathering momentum, he felt stronger and faster by the second. He was peaking. He felt power in his teeth, a great force pressing for escape.

At every floor the lift trundled ponderously earthward in the shaft. Clappy like a rat in a box. And Keely was close, in touch, nearly there, ready.

In the lobby, he crashed against the closing glass doors, saw the dark figure sprint across the forecourt into impossible light swarming with dim figures that surged away, crying out in consternation. The glass drew back and he was out there in the white world, in a field of stars and specks, of dancing sun. Faces loomed and bodies twisted aside as he ran on squelching feet. Ahead on the street there was a howl of braking tyres. Screams. And then people. So many people. Coming. Surging in, a gathering flock of heads and legs. Whatever was out there on the road, whatever had happened at the kerb, it was waiting for him, just within reach. He swam the hot air, reaching, clawing the breeze towards the flare of turning faces, open mouths, buffeting against the empty space of morning, puzzled, happy, still reaching.

So why the pavement, sudden and hot against his face? Palms scorched. Cold feet slippery-wet. He rolled to a shoulder, fell back strangely breathless to see the purling sky and the pink finger of the building above him. The world flashed outside him, shuttering light, stammering sound. A circle of dark heads in hoods enclosed him, offering moments of merciful shade.

Sir?

Dark-skinned noses, black eyes, pieces of face through the letterbox slits of cloth.

Sir? said the pair of spectacles, the swatch of human shape behind. Sir, are you well?

The veiled faces retracted uncertainly and Keely understood. He’d fallen. He saw the tower beyond and the tiny figure of the boy safe on the balcony. He smelt salt and concrete and urine. Saw lovely brown thumbs pressing numbers, cheeping digits, reaching down. The edit was choppy. The boy’s face a flash — or was that a gull?

Sir, there is bleeding. Are you well?

Yes, he said with all the clarity left to him. Thank you. I am well.