His Illegal Self

23

You saw the cat, Dial said to Adam. You fucking petted it, man. You had it on your fucking lap. You can’t take my money and then say cats are against the rules. So give me my money back, if that’s how it is. Deal is over.

Adam was all hunched up and twisted like a pipe cleaner on the windowsill. I’m into cats, he said, peering sideways at his lawyer, begging him to come and save his life.

The lawyer’s name was Phil Warriner. He was tall with surfer’s shoulders. He had a big dumb paisley tie, long peaked collar, bushy sideburns, a droopy black mustache.

I’m into cats as well, Phil Warriner said.

Then give the money back, Dial said, almost high on relief. She didn’t want to live there anyway. Your client knew about the cat from the beginning, she said.

Then she waited for the lawyer, watching him stroke his mustache like a fool. She could not imagine how this man had ended up in this crappy little office with felt tiles on the floor. All those years in law school and then spend your life in fucking Nambour, staring through the window at the Woolworth’s loading dock.

The problem isn’t cats, he said. It’s birds.

Dial turned to Adam, who was hugging himself and rocking. When we got in your car, Dial insisted, when you picked us up. You had a rooster, Adam. We had a cat.

The lawyer took a yellow legal pad and drew a line down the middle.

The question is, babe, Phil Warriner said, do you plan to honor your commitment to the Crystal Community.

She let the babe go by. She said, No, no, don’t start that. I don’t have an obligation to anyone. Adam is the one with the obligation. He didn’t tell the truth.

As she spoke the boy, who had been standing hard behind her all this while, lifted Buck from his cardigan pocket and pushed his face into his fur. So now he was kissing his cat. Great. Last night he was kicking it.

The lawyer rolled a thin straight cigarette. We’re going to transfer Adam’s shares to your name, he said to Dial. That’s what we are gathered here to do.

But you can’t do it, see, said Dial. She was smiling at him now.

Oh? He tucked the ends in with a red match and lit up, holding in the smoke too long.

There’s a rule against the cat.

There is no rule, said the lawyer. They’re hippies, jeez.

I’ve been in communes before, Mr. Warriner. They’re full of fucking rules, believe me.

Phil, said the lawyer.

We’re Australian hippies, Adam pleaded. It’s different here.

Dial groaned. The boy was pushing the cat’s face into her neck. The kitten licked. Stop it! she cried.

You buy shares, Dial. You get your own land, your own house. It’s yours. Tell her, Phil. She can do what she likes, man. Anyway, she paid.

Phil smiled down at his desktop. Dial thought, Are you patronizing me? She watched the lawyer as he brushed the crumbs of tobacco from his desk to his lap, from his lap onto the floor.

You’ll discover, he said, still looking down, that there are not many rules on Remus Creek Road and what rules exist have all been broken many times before. And then he smiled at her, his eyes crinkled. She thought, He’s hitting on me.

You’re meant to be the lawyer.

I’m an organic lawyer. He grinned, his cigarette jammed in the corner of his mouth.

I can’t buy this land, she said.

Look. Phil Warriner arranged his hands in his crotch. You already paid Jimmy Seeds the purchase price.

Jimmy Seeds?

Adam. Same thing.

Same thing? Really. Well once this person here had my money he told me I could not have the cat. That’s a deal breaker, said Dial.

There are all sorts of families, Adam said. We know that, man. We’re against the patriarchy, man.

You are what!

The cat is part of your family. The cat has to live there too.

What Jimmy means, said the lawyer, is that you’re not meant to have a cat, but no one’s going to stop you. They’ll just say, That’s Dial, she’s into cats. She’s cool.

So what did you mean, saying I was going to have to do something about that cat?

I was stoned, man, jeez.

So we can have a cat.

Yes, said Adam. Y-e-s.

The mother turned to the boy and sighed.

The boy imagined he was being asked to decide. It would be years before he saw this made no sense. He always remembered the way her brows came down, all black and witchy. He had to answer did he love the cat. Would he live in the outback with no toilet or light switches, where no one would see him ever? It was not fair. He looked out to the lane. A sheet of newspaper was fluttering back and forth, blown by the hot wind. Then a truck arrived and he looked back into the room, avoiding people, staring at a photograph on the wall. It was the color of dead families, long ago.

You know Bo Diddley? the lawyer asked suddenly, unhooking the frame and handing it to the boy. We hung out together in Sydney.

The mother took the picture from the boy and returned it to the lawyer’s desk.

Well? she asked the boy.

She was blaming him, but what had he done? He was sorry he kicked the cat. He loved the cat. Not more than he loved his daddy though. It was not fair with everybody looking at him. He was just a little boy.

In any case, Phil Warriner said, picking up a folder, you seem to have made a verbal contract. He upended the folder and watched its contents spill across the desk.

Pull up your chair, he said to the mother.

As she read the document, the boy could hear the paper on the loading dock flapping like something wrecked and broken in a trap.

The mother asked, Who is James Adamek?

That’s me, said Adam.

The lawyer pushed a drugstore Bic toward the mother.

The boy watched as she studied the clear plastic pen and then the filing cabinet and the picture of Bo Diddley and the spill of documents now lying in the dusty sunshine. She asked, Where did you go to school?

Phil Warriner laughed.

This is all legal? You’re telling me?

Warriner picked up the document and read it quickly once again. He flicked Dial’s passport open, read it, checked her face, closed it shut.

Just sign it, Anna, he said. You know what I mean?