Animal People (14 page)

Mia did not reply, but scowled past him to the koala enclosure, where a mother held a toddler up above the fence.
‘
Look, Karma,' the woman was calling. ‘He's saying hello to you!'

The baby sucked its fingers.

‘She should be paying for that,' Mia said, as she watched the woman clutch the baby to herself and scoot inside the unlocked gate. The enclosure was usually staffed by cheerful zoo employees who took photos of the kids next to a comatose koala and sold them to the parents for twenty-five dollars. But now there were no keepers to be seen, and the woman took her child right up to the koala.

Stephen dipped a hand into the envelope, feeling around for the one remaining piece of folded paper inside. Mia leaned back a little, as if afraid Stephen's hand might accidentally touch her own.

Stephen and Mia had bad blood over the catering division Kris Kringle since the previous year. He had drawn her name last year and then forgotten about it until the morning of the division's Kris Kringle Secret Santa Breakfast, when he suddenly remembered. He had no choice but to nip over to the supermarket in the Plaza in the early morning before work. He found a stainless steel insulated mug with a black plastic lid in the kitchenware section and wrapped it in generic birthday paper in the car at the traffic lights.

This was before Marilyn Parris arrived, when the director of catering was Sandy Box (‘don't fuck with her,' Russell used to sing under his breath whenever she approached). Sandy was one of those bosses who liked to think of staff as her ‘family' until she fired them or, by repeatedly cutting their budgets and raising the stakes on their key performance indicators, made their lives so intolerable they left. On the morning of the breakfast Sandy shouted, ‘I'll be Santa!' and sat at the meeting room table, handing out the presents, squealing with fake laughter while the staff gravitated to the edges of the room, leaning with their backs against the windowsills, slowly chewing ham and cheese croissants.

Mia was first to receive her gift. When she unwrapped the cup she held it dangling from the crook of her index finger, as if trying to touch the least surface area possible, and looked around at her colleagues with open disgust. ‘Who got me this?'

Stephen pretended not to hear, and Sandy's flouncing and screeching continued. Later, when it was safe, he glanced Mia's way and said casually, ‘So what did Santa bring you, Mia?'

She turned to him, her face full of contempt. She lifted the cup in the air, let it hang. ‘
This
.'

Stephen said, ‘Huh, wow,' with a small laugh, hoping it sounded sarcastic. He looked around as if to laugh at whoever might have bought it. Mia stared at him. ‘Did
you
get me this?'

‘God no,' Stephen had laughed, trying to emulate her disgust, and then leaned forward, as casually as he could, to reach for another croissant. ‘God no,' he said again through his mouthful, and turned to raise his eyebrows in camaraderie as Jim, a large rumpled man who had something to do with payroll that Stephen never understood, sniggered uncontrollably while Jason from the Crocodile Crepe Cafe unwrapped a large pink dildo.

‘Thanks, you prick,' Jason said quietly to Jim, smiling. Jason was gay. Stephen couldn't tell whether he was pleased or angry at the gift, but Jim kept chortling. Stephen said, ‘How do you know it's from Jim? It's supposed to be Secret Santa.'

They all grinned at him—even Jason grinned—as if he was stupid.

Mia kept a careful watch on the others as they opened their gifts. And to Stephen's growing dismay, one by one as the gifts were unwrapped, the givers broke out into guffaws, and the receivers hooted at the presents—a battery-operated red button that said, ‘Bullshit alert! Bullshit alert!' when you pressed it, or a child's Barbie Princess Jewellery set, or a pencil sharpener in the shape of a dog that vibrated when you put the pencil into its arse end. It was perfectly clear, from the ripple of sniggers and glances and thigh slaps and
you bastard
s, whose gift was bought by whom. He opened his own present—an office voodoo doll with pins to stick into the boss—and Sandy Box roared with laughter, and he nodded and made himself smile, constructed a brief and hopeless joke about how Sandy better watch out now, and the pile of presents dwindled. Stephen looked for the door. But still Mia watched him.

‘You did get me this, didn't you.'

He could only stammer, ‘It wasn't supposed to be
offensive,
' before Mia shook her head in disbelief, and gathered up the wrapping paper around her cup as if, it seemed to Stephen, to get it ready for tossing into the garbage. One present had remained on the table then. Vegan Georgia, a film student with a buzz cut and a Celtic tattoo on her muscular upper arm who worked casual shifts in the kiosk (she wouldn't handle the burgers), unwrapped the gift in her lap in humourless silence. She sighed as she picked up a tiny red shiny shred of fabric with black nylon lace.

Stephen said, ‘What is it?' and Georgia said without expression, ‘A G-string'. At the same moment Mia began to laugh and laugh in her little high cackle. Georgia got up, wearily, shoved the G-string into the back pocket of her cargo pants, and walked out of the room.

That was last year.

Now the weight of Stephen's rummaging made the envelope dip in Mia's grasp. ‘Hurry up,' she said. Then, running a disdainful glance up and down his grimy, sweat-soaked clothes, she added: ‘What are those pants?'

He looked down. ‘I told you, I had to clean—'

She smirked. ‘They're
chef's
pants.'

Oh, he was tired of this. ‘They're just pants,' he said weakly, as loyal Russell said, ‘Well, he is a chef. Sort of.'

Mia snorted.

‘They're not chef's pants!' said Stephen. ‘They're just pants, with checks. I got them at Aldi.'

Even Russell began to smile.

‘They're comfy,' Stephen muttered.

‘They're chef's pants,' the others said in unison.

He held the little folded piece of paper in his fingers.

‘And you were late,' said Mia. Russell looked at Stephen sympathetically and shook his head. ‘Marilyn is pissed off,' Mia added cheerfully.

Stephen hated her quite completely now. ‘
Sorry,'
he said, trying to drip with sarcasm, ‘but I had a car accident.' He found his voice faltering.

Both Mia and Russell looked at him with suspicion. ‘You look all right to me,' said Mia.

‘I hit someone,' Stephen said faintly. ‘A pedestrian.'

Mia still looked dubious, but Russell said ‘Shit, really? Are they all right?'

‘I don't know.' Stephen felt lightheaded again. It was a relief to unburden himself. He heard his voice go high and husky. ‘I wanted to take her to hospital but she said just drop me here so I went into the methadone clinic with her and tried to get the staff to make her see a doctor. But she wouldn't.'

‘Shit,' said Russell.

‘
Methadone
clinic?' Mia sneered. ‘A junkie!'

Stephen nodded. ‘And the nurse didn't even—'

Mia said, ‘She's a
junkie,
you moron! She probably didn't even feel it. She was probably out of it.'

‘She hit her
head
on the road,' Stephen said, and there it was again before him, the plummet, the flimsy birdlike body, the smack on bitumen. He thought, with horror, that he might start to cry. He turned to Russell for support, but Russell was tilting his head from side to side, as if struggling to decide something. ‘Was it her fault?'

‘I think so. I think she ran into the road, but I don't really—'

‘Don't worry about it then, mate. She get your number plate?'

‘What do you mean?' Stephen was confused. ‘I left them my phone number.'

‘What!'
Both Mia and Russell stared, incredulous.

‘You idiot!' said Mia. ‘She'll have you in court and take you for everything you've got!'

Even Russell raised an eyebrow. ‘Interesting.'

‘But—you
have
to give them your phone number. She might be really hurt.'

‘Not hurt enough to go to hospital,' Mia said. ‘Probably not hurt enough not to steal stuff.'

‘Have you checked your wallet?'

‘Jesus,' he said, shaking his head at them. But had to stop his hand going to his back pocket as he mentally checked.

‘My sister had a junkie boyfriend once,' Mia said. ‘They're all scum, and they all lie. If she dies she deserves it. Probably would've OD'd anyway.' She swung the empty envelope between a finger and thumb, and added, ‘The teambuilding thing is about to start. Marilyn is going to be late because she's got a meeting about beverages for the press conference.'

The press conference was about one of the zoo's Bengal tigers, Annabelle. It had injured itself, got an infection in the wound and died. There was to be a memorial service next week; the sponsors were invited and all the zoo staff would be allowed an hour off to attend. There was also to be an independent inquiry, and counselling was available. The word ‘closure' had been used more than once.

‘It's so
awful.
Poor Annabelle.' Mia's eyes moistened, large and mournful. She turned on her high heels and strode off.

The birdcall that had been reaching a crescendo suddenly stopped, and in its absence a moment of full, beautiful silence fell down upon the kiosk. The Komodo dragon, its lumpen handlike feet stretched out, lay unmoved beside its wall.

Stephen unwrapped the tiny folded piece of paper in his palm. In neat schoolgirl's writing with a love heart over the
i,
it said
Mia.

Attendance at the Hospitality and Catering Division Facilitated Team Event was compulsory. In the past four years they had done Graffiti Skool (
creativity in a can!
), Licence to Spy, in which they pretended to be secret service agents, and Hollywood Team Building. In that they had to break into small groups and make a short film showcasing their future vision for hospitality and catering.

Stephen's approach to the clammy embarrassment of these afternoons was a furious, blind obedience—he would wear the hats, chant the catchcries, beat the drums, he would do whatever was required to get through the prolonged hours while drawing the least attention to himself. But Russell embraced these events as an opportunity for subversion. When their film was shown—a seven-minute close-up of the kiosk brick wall made while Russell had a cigarette, with a soundtrack of an elephant moaning and a forklift's reverse-gear beep—he told the audience of kitchen hands, checkout operators and cleaners from the food hall that his project was in the Dadaist tradition.

As much as Stephen admired Russell's chutzpah he grew anxious if the attention it drew lapped over onto him. While Russell strutted and the catering workers chortled, Stephen's gaze was drawn always to the back of the auditorium, where Marilyn Parris stood leaning stiffly against the wall, arms folded, unamused. Stephen and Russell had twice been called in for a counselling appointment with human resources.

Now Stephen shuffled through the open doors of the conference room. A couple of whiteboards had big cactuses drawn on them in green texta, and
COYOTE CANYON
printed below in red.

A perky young woman wearing a cheap red felt cowboy hat and a red chequered shirt tied in a knot at her waist greeted him. As he followed her in her tight blue jeans and cowboy boots, Stephen pictured the girl getting dressed for work this morning: painting the oversized freckles across her cheeks and nose with eyebrow pencil, twisting her blonde hair into plaits that somehow turned up at the ends. Did they have wire in them? He supposed she liked her job.

She led him across the room to where Russell sat glumly on his stackable plastic chair beside Patricia Alvarez from catering concepts, Denis Leung from functions, and Mia. They all wore red neckerchiefs at their throats except for Mia, who had tied hers around her wrist to give herself a commando-hippie air, and sat examining her fingernails.

‘Howdy Pardners,' a stocky young man cried from the stage. His offsiders—the woman who led Stephen in and another one who looked the same except with brown hair—hollered back in encouraging reply.

‘I'm Nestor, your pardner in crime for the next two hours, and we're the gang from Adrenaline Learning!' bellowed the man. He too wore a neckerchief and jeans, like the others, but also a real cowboy hat and a distinctive fringed leather waistcoat, as well as cowboy boots with quite high heels. Maybe he had created the game because he already had the cowboy gear.

Nestor began shouting out the rules of Coyote Canyon, which Stephen found intricate and difficult to understand. The game involved opponents of bandits and sheriffs and Indians, and a system of trading for vittles.

‘That's the river,' said Denis Leung, pointing at a strip of butcher's paper laid over the carpet. ‘If you cross anywhere but the bridge'—another paper strip—‘the sheriffs are allowed to shoot you.'