Cairo (18 page)

‘There's not much to say. I don't have much of a past.'

‘Everyone has a past. Without it they're nothing: they have no real character.'

I sketched a few details about my sisters, my parents, the town of Dunley.

‘Do you miss them?'

It was a good question. There was an undeniable thrill in setting out into the world alone, and it accorded with the existential-loner persona I wished to project to the world at large. Even after all these months of living in a new city, I still woke sometimes in the middle of the night wondering where I was. The truth was that I didn't miss any of my family, but it was callous to admit such a thing. I shrugged in lieu of committing to anything.

‘It's hard to find a place in the world,' she said, picking a shred of tobacco from her tongue. ‘When I first got to Melbourne I was living by myself in a dingy apartment in Richmond. A tiny, noisy place near Bridge Road. I was working as a waitress, not making much money. This was before I moved in here and met Max. One day — don't ask me how — my father found out where I was living. He came to Melbourne and started banging on the door, calling out my name. I hid behind the couch with my hands over my ears, pretending no one was home.'

‘What were you frightened of?'

‘I don't know, to be honest. By then I was nineteen — old enough to live wherever I wanted, do whatever I wanted. There was nothing he could do to me.'

‘And what happened?'

‘He went away after a while. I didn't leave the house for two days in case he was waiting for me.' She ground her cigarette out in the ashtray. To judge by the expression on her face, it was a
painful memory. ‘But a week or so later my little brother wrote to tell me my father had come around because my old dog, Hector, was dying. They thought I should have the chance to say goodbye to him. By the time I found out, it was too late. Poor Hector was dead. And that's the last I heard from my father.'

‘Do you wish you'd opened the door that day?'

Sally stared at me. Her eyes were red, her expression wretched. I have never learned the art (for it
is
an art) of comforting a sorrowful woman but then, aged eighteen, I had even less idea. I sat rooted to my armchair, skin prickling, more or less praying for a hole to open and swallow me.

‘There is a lot to be said,' she said, ‘for knowing where you stand with people. Don't you think?'

‘Yes.'

I felt myself blushing under Sally's gaze. In an effort to dispel my discomfort (pleasurable as it was), I stood to go into the kitchen and make us a fresh pot of tea.

Sally had put on another record when there was a loud knock at my front door. Another barrage of knocks, this time followed by Max's voice.

‘Open up, will you. I can hear your dreadful music.'

Before I could say a word, Sally gathered up her Mary Janes and her rolling tobacco. ‘Don't tell him I'm here. I'll wait in your bedroom.'

Seeing no alternative, I opened the door. Max entered, shouldering me to one side of the narrow entrance hall. ‘Goodness. Take your time, why don't you? It's freezing out there today. Our phone's out of action or I would have rung. You haven't seen my Sally, have you?'

‘No.'

‘Damn. I think she went to the movies with Gertrude. I can't find a clean shirt
anywhere
. Oh well. I'll have to borrow one of yours,
if that's alright.'

And before I could stall him, he waltzed into my bedroom. I swore under my breath. How on earth would it look, Sally cowering in there? I prepared for the worst.

But instead of the anticipated fracas, Max wandered back out a few seconds later, holding up a white shirt taken from my wardrobe, still on its hanger. ‘Can I borrow this?'

‘Um. Sure.'

‘I'm going to the opera tonight with Frank Thring. Got to dress up or else he won't take me to supper afterwards. What
is
that bloody awful music you're playing? Sounds like the kind of music Sally might have been into before I set her straight.'

Although I couldn't remember the name of the band, I hazarded a guess, figuring that Max wouldn't know if I were wrong. ‘Um. The Smiths.'

He shook his head in mute incomprehension. Then he thanked me and left, slamming the door as was his habit. His visit was a brief tornado.

Sally came out of the bedroom with her tobacco, shoes and fur hat in her hands.

I was angry to have been put in such a potentially difficult situation, but my misgivings dissolved at the sight of her sheepish expression. I couldn't help but laugh. ‘What the hell was all that about? I was sure he'd find you in there.'

She smiled and made a face. ‘Lucky there's room under your bed.'

‘Why are you so afraid of him?'

‘Don't be ridiculous. I'm not afraid.'

‘Then why all the creeping around?'

She shrugged. ‘It's nice to have some time apart, that's all. As you can imagine, living with Max can be intense. This is a man who can't even wash a shirt. There's a joke, you know: a boy says to his
mother that he wants to be a musician when he grows up and the mother says, “Well, I'm very sorry, Billy, but you can't do both.”'

We laughed.

‘I'm sorry I put you in a tight spot,' she went on. ‘I don't know why I did that. You're a love.' She stepped over and kissed me on the cheek, before setting about plucking burrs of dust that had accumulated on her sweater and skirt.

‘He thinks you're at the movies,' I said when I had recovered sufficiently to speak.

With one hand on my shoulder for balance, Sally slipped on her shoes. ‘I'd better go. Thanks for the tea. Perhaps tell Max you borrowed
Bitches Brew
? I'll leave it here for now. Oh, by the way — what's the last film you saw?'

‘It was called
Le Samouraï
. French. Why?'

‘Can you tell me the plot? If Max asks, I'll tell him that's what I went to see with Gertrude. He'll never know the difference.'

TWO OR THREE DAYS LATER, JAMES RANG AND DEMANDED TO
know what I was doing. He was in a flap. I had no plans, had scarcely seen a soul since Sally's last visit.

‘You should come and see a movie with me,' he said.

‘What, now?'

‘This afternoon. Why not?'

Being unemployed, James often saw movies during the day. In addition to sporadic handouts from his parents, he was on an unspecified government pension for those unfit to work. This was, he intimated, only until he got back on his feet. The nature of his disability was unclear, as was what ‘back on his feet' could entail for a man like James; it was impossible to imagine him doing anything more worldly than drinking cask wine in the afternoon or lolling on his mattress, reading
I, Claudius
. I, on the other hand — possibly owing to some vestigial Protestant suspicion of leisure — had always felt uneasy about going to the cinema during the day, and made excuses about having chores to do before my shift at the restaurant that night.

But James would have none of it. ‘Meet me at the Valhalla at two o'clock, will you.'

The choice of venue sealed it. The Valhalla was an independent
cinema in Richmond that played cult horror movies and various other films with what might be termed ‘niche appeal'. Although I hadn't yet been introduced to its charms, I had heard that one could purchase Quaaludes from the box office on Sunday nights when a Chinese girl named Muriel was working, and Edward had talked rapturously of seeing
Koyaanisqatsi
there after gobbling a handful of magic mushrooms. Every student house in Melbourne's inner city had its poster of upcoming attractions taped up somewhere, usually on the back of the toilet door. At more than one party I had scanned the lurid advertisements for all-night Alain Delon marathons, weekend Sexploitation festivals, and the Friday-night screenings of
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
(
Free entry for those dressed as Frank N. Furter
).

By the time I arrived at the Valhalla, James had already purchased our tickets. It was raining and the foyer smelled like wet dogs. Scarily cool people stood about smoking. We saw
Blue Velvet
, a film about a young man who gets involved with a gang of nasty psychopaths. In it, Dennis Hopper plays a character called Frank Booth, who — under the influence of a drug he inhales through a mask — beats up a nightclub singer played by the beautiful, doomed Isabella Rossellini; the violence interspersed with garish suburban landscapes. It was unlike anything I had ever seen, and I adored its blend of the horrific and the surreal.

Afterwards James and I wandered up Victoria Street, known as Little Saigon on account of the Vietnamese migrants who had settled in the area during the 1970s. The streets were crowded with people and with stalls selling exotic fruit and vegetables. The air was fragrant with the smells of wet produce. James propelled me through an innocuous doorway and up some red-carpeted stairs to a crowded Vietnamese restaurant called Thy Thy. The place was noisy with chatter and Asian pop music. We sat at a rickety laminate table and drank jasmine tea from small cups.
Nearby on the tiled floor was a colourful shrine festooned with tiny, flickering lights.

While we ate spring rolls I told James about the afternoon with Sally, how she had hidden in my room at Max's arrival.

James waited until a Vietnamese boy, who couldn't have been much older than eight, had cleared away our soy-smeared plates.

‘You know, a friend of mine has a room available in a great share house in Carlton. Benny. I think you were with me when I ran into him a few weeks ago in Lygon Street? Great room, very cool people.'

I shook out a toothpick from the plastic canister. ‘I have somewhere to live.'

‘I know, I know. I thought you might want to meet some other people in town, that's all. Get out a bit more?'

‘But I love living at Cairo.'

‘You know who else lives at Benny's place?' he asked in the tone of an adult promising an ice-cream to a child. ‘Dancing Susan.'

I had, of course, heard of Dancing Susan, who was regarded as one of the most eligible women in the inner city. Dancing Susan — whose ubiquitous first name made the appellation necessary — studied psychology at Melbourne University and was renowned for her intellect, her red hair and her writhing dance moves. Women were scornful of her, but rumours of her attendance at a party were guaranteed to induce vast numbers of men (single or otherwise) to show up.

‘It's for your own good, Tom. You need a girlfriend. A handsome boy like you.'

‘You're being dramatic, James.'

‘And definitely not Sally Cheever.'

I blushed and muttered something intended to sound suitably dismissive.

James leaned forwards. His eyes were earnest. ‘I noticed the way
you trembled after dancing with her that day, Tom. I know how tragic it can be to fall in love with the wrong person. The pain that person can inflict on you. You imagine what it would be like to be with them, the ways you could complement each other. The future you might have together.'

Although I would never admit such a thing to James, I knew he was right. Ever since the day when we had danced, Sally had — there was no other word for it — haunted me. It was as if, from some minor but alluring ingredients (the undulations of her waist under my palm, the smell of her neck, her womanly thigh pressed to mine), I hoped to fashion a lover more tangible than that of mere fantasy.

‘Why are you going on about this?' I said, having pondered for a few seconds the best tone with which to repel this accusation.

‘You heard about the duel, didn't you?' he asked.

I nodded, laughing. I had indeed heard about Max challenging some man to a duel over a perceived flirtation with Sally but I always assumed it was a tall story to be filed alongside Max's claim of having had a camel as a pet when he was a boy.

‘It's not funny, Tom. Max was wild over it. If the guy had shown up, Max would have shot him. Assuming he wasn't killed himself, I suppose.'

‘He actually had a gun?'

‘Well, you can't have a game of Paper, Scissors, Rock over a woman. God knows where he got the pistol from, though. Only a small gun, but still. We waited for an hour at dawn in some park by the river over in Fairfield.'

‘You were there?'

James dismissed my incredulous query with a curt wave of his hand. ‘It's a long story. I don't want to talk about it. The whole thing was insane.'

‘Was this the guy who got Sally pregnant?'

James looked mortified. ‘Who told you that?'

‘You did. Late one night at your place.'

‘Christ. I did? Well, don't tell a soul about it or we'll all be in deep trouble, Sally especially.'

Our bowls of noodle soup arrived and we ate without talking. When he had finished, James rested his chin on his steepled fingers to scrutinise me. ‘Speaking of insane things. They told you, didn't they?'

I wiped my mouth. ‘Told me what?'

‘Don't lie. The' — he dropped his voice to a whisper — ‘the
Dora thing
.'

I was relieved the conversation had moved on from Sally Cheever, albeit to the subject of my potential participation in the heist of a painting by the twentieth century's most famous artist.

‘He told me you were involved,' I pointed out.

‘Only by default, because I introduced them to Tamsin and her brother. Those Bolshevik twins. But you shouldn't get roped into it. Look, the whole thing is crazy. Max is wonderful but, you know, very unpredictable. He has these ideas. He thinks he can pull off these grand schemes. The less you know about, um … Dora, the better.'

I shrugged, endeavouring to make light of James's plea. ‘Max said he'd kill me if I breathed a word of the plan to anyone.' I said this in the most jocular tone I could muster, hoping to summon a corroborating dismissal of the threat. But my comment elicited nothing more than an almost imperceptible arching of James's eyebrows, as if I had advised him that Max had purchased an extravagant pair of shoes.