The Tax Inspector

41

Maria waited for Gia in the Brasserie garden near the dripping ferns, sipping mint tea. There was an office love affair being conducted in the bar, and the waiters were eating at the long table by the kitchen, but apart from this the Brasserie was empty.

Maria had planned to tell Gia about Jack Catchprice but Gia was late, and by the time she had arrived, found a dry place to put her briefcase, and begun to deal with the Brasserie’s celebrated cocktail menu, it was after six-thirty.

‘What I am really looking for,’ Gia said, ‘is something very silly and alcoholic.’

‘The Hula-Hula,’ said Peter, taking his order pad out of his grey apron.

‘Does it have an umbrella?’ said Gia skittishly.

‘Trust me. It’s very kitsch. It’s exactly what you’re looking for.’

‘But it tastes nice?’

‘You want silly or you want nice?’

Gia considered.

‘What’s a Mai Tai again? I never had a Mai Tai.’

If you did not know her and saw her do this – run her newly painted fingernails down the cocktail list, fiddle with her gold choker chain – you would think she was vain and indulged, a political conservative from the Eastern suburbs. In fact she was a liberal who worried (excessively) about the waiters and their work and, in Peter’s case, his music as well. In a town where 10 per cent was meant to be the norm, Gia tipped an arithmetically difficult 12.5 per cent.

‘Have a glass of champagne,’ Peter said. ‘You love champagne.’

‘Maybe I should. Should I, Maria? It would have a certain symmetry.’

‘It would be bad luck,’ Maria said. ‘Have the Hula-Hula. Have anything. She has news to tell me,’ she told Peter. ‘She is withholding. She is driving me crazy.’

‘She’s the one who hoards her news,’ Gia said. ‘I’m normally the one who blurts it out. This is her own treatment. She has to wait for everything to be perfect.’

‘If you want perfect, have the Hula-Hula,’ said Peter. ‘If you don’t like it, I’ll drink it for you.’

‘I’ll have the Hula-Hula then.’

‘I’ll have a fresh squeezed orange juice,’ Maria said.

‘It doesn’t have coconut milk does it?’

‘No,’ said Peter. ‘It’s definitely Lo-Chol.’

‘Good,’ said Gia.

‘Tell me,’ said Maria. It was twenty minutes to seven.

Gia hunched down over the table. ‘Well …’ she said.

‘Yes, yes.’

‘Your fellow rang me first …’

‘Jack …’

‘Jack Catchprice. What he hoped was he could just get it stopped.’

‘He couldn’t?’

‘I’m sure he could have but the cop he had in mind just had a major heart attack, but he was really amazing. He was very sweet to me. He got someone else, I don’t know who it was, to talk to Fischer. This took like three hours. They were going back and forth until two-thirty.’

‘Back and forth about what?’

‘About calling it off. Anyway, at two-thirty this very prissy-sounding woman phoned me. I don’t know who she was. Like a real bitch of a private secretary. She gives me two phone numbers. One of them was for his car phone. That’s where I got him.’

‘It makes my flesh creep.’

‘It just rang, you know, like anyone’s phone and then this man answered and then I asked was that Mr Fischer and he said who wants to know and then I said my name, and he said, yes, it was him, and I said, I believe you know who I am.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He said yes,’ Gia shivered. ‘It was so creepy and frightening. I can’t tell you how frightening it was. It sounds like nothing …’

‘No, no. I can imagine.’

‘Maria, you can’t imagine.’

Peter brought the drinks. Gia’s cocktail was full of fruit and had curling blue and green glass straws sticking out of it. It looked like something in an art gallery whose level of irony you might puzzle over. Gia put her lips to the blue glass straw and sucked.

‘So I said I just wanted to apologize for my behaviour at the Brasserie.’

‘But I thought that’s what you didn’t have to do. I thought that’s what he was fixing for you.’

‘Maria, I’ll kill you. The cop had a fucking heart attack. What else did you want him to do? He was sweet.’

‘I know he’s sweet …’

‘Christ, I don’t think you can imagine this. I was so frightened, I would have said anything. I’m sure you would have been dignified, but I wasn’t. I would have said anything. It just poured out of me.’

Maria squeezed her hand. ‘Poor Gia.’

‘Then he interrupted my grovelling. That was really humiliating. He just cut across me and said, give me your number – I’ll have to ring you back. By then I was back in at the office and I didn’t want him to know I worked for the Taxation Office but I didn’t have any choice. And then I just sat by the phone for an entire hour. I won’t tell you all the things I thought, but it was like torture. Ken tried to ring me up to have a chat, and I really fancy him, and I had to say, Ken I can’t talk to you, and he got really offended. Then Fischer finally rang back and said yes he would accept my apology. He made me promise I wouldn’t ever say anything like that again, and I did. It was so pathetic.’

‘God, it’s so creepy. It’s as though you had to talk to something with scales. It’s like some slimy thing you think is mythical. You think it doesn’t really exist and then there it is and you’re touching it. You talked to him about your execution while he was just sitting in his car. It makes me hate this city.’

‘Don’t hate Sydney, Maria. It makes me really anxious when you hate Sydney.’

‘It’s Sydney I hate, not you.’

‘All cities are like this. Where could you go that would be different?’

‘This city is really special.’

‘When you say that I think you’re going to go away. But where could you go that would be any different?’

‘This is the only big city in the world that was established by convicts on the one side and bent soldiers on the other. I’m sorry. I’ll shut up. You must be feeling terrible.’

Gia’s straw made a loud sucking noise at the bottom of her glass.

‘Only when you talk like that.’

‘I’ve stopped. I didn’t know it made you anxious.’

Gia picked the maraschino cherry from her drink and ate it. ‘Maria, I feel great. I’m alive and no one wants to kill me. I’m going to take a week off and just go to the theatre and the art galleries and have lunch with my friends.’ She picked up the orange-slice umbrella and ate the flesh from it. She looked around for a waiter but they were all – Peter too – eating. ‘You saved my life,’ she said.

Maria shook her head: ‘No.’

‘But you did.’

‘They weren’t really going to kill you,’ Maria said.

Gia narrowed her eyes.

‘Oh Gia, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.’

‘I know that’s what you think.’ Gia drained her glass for the second time and waved her hand.

‘I think it’s horrible. I think it’s really frightening.’ Maria said. She held her friend’s forearm and stroked its pale soft underside. ‘Who can ever know if they would have or not?’

‘I’m sure you would have behaved quite differently.’

‘No. I think you were amazing. I wouldn’t have known what to do. You were very brave.’

‘What’s your fellow’s name?’

Maria Takis bit her lip and raised her eyebrow and coloured. She dabbed her wide mouth with a paper napkin. ‘Which fellow?’

‘Maria!’

‘What?’

‘Stop blushing.’

‘Jack Catchprice? He’s actually a classic investigation target.’

‘Is he nice looking?’

Maria smiled, a tight pleased smile that made her cheekbones look even more remarkable.

‘Is he married?’

Maria looked up and saw Jack Catchprice walk into the Brasserie. He was ten minutes early. Jack was talking to Peter. Peter was pointing out towards the garden. Maria shook her head at Gia.

‘Is this what I think it is? Maria what have you been doing?’

‘Shush. Don’t look. I’ve been trying to tell you. Don’t look, but he’s here.’

It was not a good idea to say ‘Don’t look’ to Gia. She turned immediately, and looked straight back, grinning.

‘Maria,’ she said in that same whisper that had started the trouble with Wally Fischer, ‘he’s a doll.’