Theft: A Love Story

28

Yes sir, no sir. My brother persisted in sticking his PROBOSCIS up the policeman's arse. Yes sir, no sir, be-bop-a-lula, it was a blessed wonder he could breathe at all. No sir, I don't mind you destroyed my art. He was ALL PISS AND WIND as our father said when my brother would not fight ALL MOUTH AND TROUSERS what an ugly picture that made. I departed urgently with my chair to Kellett Street it was no wider than a lane but connected to bigger streets and highways so the shortness was not soothing as you might expect. Also the footpath was narrow my chair IMPEDED THE RIGHT OF WAY, no place to rest.

Nearby was Elizabeth Bay Road an ACCIDENT WAITING TO HAPPEN although I had previously travelled that way to the GREEK MILK BAR and the ALL-IMPORTANT bottle shop, but sitting was locally ILLEGAL and the police were VIGILANT.

Across from Go-Go Sushi was a green brothel popular with UNSAVOURY CUSTOMERS I have watched them come and go but even when I was most particularly upset I was never such a reckless fool as to have my BRAIN IN MY DICK. I turned left in the direction Marlene had taken, past SPORT ITALIA where the COLOURFUL RACING IDENTITY was shot in the neck by a KNOWN ASSOCIATE OF CRIMINALS. Thank God I had no gun myself. A very short distance beyond this BLOOD-SPATTERED CRIME SCENE was Bayswater Road which would make you giddy with bridges and tunnels and cars descending and rising and crossing the abyss not a LIVING SOUL God save us all. What will happen to me? I searched for Marlene, back and forth between Bayswater Road and Elizabeth Bay Road, the narrow footpath causing both dents and bruises which would later bloom pink yellow green the colour of SWEETBREADS. I was making a map. Too late.

This was how I should have learned a bigger territory, like the children singing their times tables.

In the Vauxhall Cresta I was six years old fighting with my warty brother. I did not start the war but neither could I stop and suddenly Blue Bones pulled up the car by the salt pans at Balliang East.

Get out, he said.

It was just on dusk when I obeyed and my father reached back a long wiry arm and slammed the door shut. Then he drove away, the taste of the salt dust, crows cawing, the tail-light red as it proceeded into dark, sixteen miles towards the safety of the Marsh. It was well after the moon had risen before the OLD MAN returned to find his bawling boy. It learned me, as he told me more than once.

As chance would have it I heard Marlene's voice calling from beneath the grapevines of the crime scene and looking into the shady garden I saw she and Jean-Paul at a round green table with the dreadful catalogue laid out before them. They were IN CONFERENCE RE JAPAN. I easily got my chair untangled from the garden gate and I sat between her Jasmine and his Brut de Brut where I was informed that Jean-Paul had agreed If You Have Ever Seen a Man Die would be picked up by Woollahra Art Removals that very day.

I began GRINNING LIKE AN APE as the saying is.

Jean-Paul asked me how was Butcher.

My face was hurting very bad.

I heard Jean-Paul ask me would I like to get a job but he had no understanding of my situation. If I am GAINFULLY EMPLOYED the social services will stop my disability pension and when I finally lose my job I will never get the pension back for having LIED TO THE GOVERNMENT. If Butcher had been here he would have explained it properly but Jean-Paul did not believe me. I said I was no good at jobs and would not stand being shouted at as he might have reason to recall.

I mean, he said, off the books.

Whatever it was OFF THE BOOKS made my stomach sick. I pointed out that the social services were LITTLE HITLERS sometimes they came to inspect our garbage to see if I had a job and was buying Tasmanian pinot noir for instance.

No, he said, they don't do that.

I smiled at Marlene like a dog. She placed her hand on me, it had no more weight than a cabbage moth upon my shoulder. Off the books, she said, means Jean-Paul would not tell anyone you were working but he would give you money.

But Butcher had been in prison and it nearly killed him. I began to explain his continuing difficulty with Detective Amberstreet but Marlene prevented me, resting her hand light as a whisper on my lips.

Would you mind helping out Jackson at the Edgecliff Nursing Home?

I asked her, Do you know Jackson?

No, she said. Jean-Paul tells me you were mates when Butcher was in gaol. You raced his pigeons.

But no-one understood anything.

You were his friend, the night man.

I touched his pigeons, that's all.

Would you like to help him be the night man for a week or two?

For money? Off the books?

I asked her if she thought I should.

She said yes, so I said I supposed that would be OK.

Marlene then stood. She said she had to CATCH UP with Butcher at Go-Go Sushi and that she would see me in a minute and then she walked raising fine white dust from the gravel with her lovely sandalled feet.

I smiled at Jean-Paul but began to gag.

He pushed his chair away from the table and said, You would sit at the door all night and if anyone is sick you pick up the phone for the duty nurse.

I asked him, Was this so my brother did not have to take me to Japan?

He said, Yes that was so, he would not lie.

I asked when this would start but the truth is I could not even hear him anymore. God knows what damage I might cause if left alone.