Cairo (19 page)

‘Look, they're all mad,' he said. ‘Tamsin's brother, George, is totally unstable. And Tamsin's great hero is Valerie Solanas, for God's sake. Heroine, I should say, or she'd probably try to shoot
me
. Speaking of which, Edward and Gertrude are both junkies, and
they have to do an exact copy of this famous painting. You can't trust junkies to do anything. Except be junkies.'

This revelation was presumably intended to scare me away from Edward and Gertrude but only piqued my interest further. ‘They're heroin addicts?'

‘The constant shortage of money, the mysterious phone calls, their unique ability to fall asleep
standing up
? Why do you think they both look so sick all the time?'

‘Gertrude told me she had a serious illness. She said she's been having tests at the Alfred Hospital …'

‘Ah, yes. The Countess of Groan.'

‘In fact, I was going to drive her there last week.'

‘And did you?'

‘Well, no.'

‘Why not?'

I struggled to find an answer to James's question. I had agreed to pick Gertrude up that morning, but when I arrived to drive her to hospital, she had no recollection of our arrangement. When I reminded her she suddenly recalled that the specialist had moved the appointment forwards. She had been there the previous day, she explained, and was now waiting on the test results. At the time I'd found it odd but hardly sinister. Now I was more perplexed.

‘Have they asked you for money yet?' James said.

‘No.'

‘They will. But don't lend them a cent — you'll never get it back. It's not your fault. Plenty have been fooled, doctors included. Gertrude has been on the brink of death for
at least
the past ten years. Maybe longer. We even held a benefit concert for her a few years ago to help with her treatment. All these dreadful punk bands they love like the Wreckery and I Spit on Your Gravy played. But she lives on. She'll outlive us all. Her disease is that one where you think you're sick, but don't have anything wrong with you.
Old Sigmund Freud would have a field day at their place, write a book about the pair of them. Her only real problem is heroin, and far too much of it. I'm no saint, but still …'

I recalled that a week or so earlier I had seen Edward sitting on a bench in Murchison Square, a small park a few streets away from Cairo. He'd failed to notice me even though he was looking around anxiously. When I was still a hundred metres away, he leaped up and strode across to a comically beaten-up Holden that had squawked to a halt nearby. Edward got into the car but, instead of it setting off, he and the driver conferred for no longer than a minute before he emerged from the car and stalked off, with his characteristic tilt, in the opposite direction to me. Normally I would have called out, but there was something in his hurried, nervy manner (which I have since come to think of as Edwardian) that made me keep my mouth closed. The car chugged away, trailing blue exhaust smoke, and it was only now, sitting in a Vietnamese restaurant with James, that I realised I had witnessed an actual drug deal.

James called for the bill by squiggling in the air with an imaginary pen. ‘It's not too late, Tom.'

I paused, marooned between the present and my memory of what I'd seen at the park, both of which were faintly unreal. ‘What?'

‘To get out of it. Get away from them. From all of us. You know what the poet Shelley said about Cairo, don't you?'

‘No. What?'

He held my gaze, as if desperate to imprint on my memory what he was about to say. ‘
If there be a place of more beautiful and ruinous charms, then I am yet to hear of it. I shall be fortunate to survive it
.'

I DUCKED BENEATH LOW-HANGING BRANCHES INTO CAIRO'S
front garden a week or so later, only to be startled by Mr Orlovsky, who lumbered from the soggy undergrowth with a grunt of recognition. Although he affected the manner of one pleasantly surprised by our encounter, it was clear he had been waiting for someone to accost in this manner.

‘Ah,' he roared. ‘Tom. How-how-how are you?'

‘Very well, thanks. And you?'

‘Oh, fine, fine. Cleaning out the old magazine collection. Blahblah-blah blasted day, eh?'

Like a meteorite sailing perilously close to Earth, a morsel of Mr Orlovsky's lunch flew past my face. I stepped back, almost tripped. I had just returned from Sunday lunch with Uncle Mike and Jane, and I was not in the mood for one of Mr Orlovsky's lengthy dissertations on the likelihood of rain.

‘Yes,' I agreed. ‘Very cold.'

I endeavoured to manoeuvre around him, but the old-timer was alert to my tricks. Under the guise of flailing with his cane towards a flower or plant in the undergrowth that had snared his geriatric interest, he barred my only avenue of escape.

These attempts of mine to truncate our encounters and his sly
methods of entrapping me had, over the months, become part of our routine. While he was thus occupied, however, the male half of the New Zealand couple flitted by like a ghost without uttering a word to either of us, and Mr Orlovsky, having missed his chance, gazed after him with dismay before turning his attention back to me.

‘Terror-terror-terror terrible about those heroin people, isn't it? To be caught in that way.'

I thought of Edward and Gertrude. ‘What?'

‘That-that-that that's why you don't want to fight them. Ruthless bunch.'

‘I'm sorry, Mr Orlovsky. What do you mean?'

‘Your Orientals!'

He was making even less sense than usual. From the far side of the garden I heard the snick of the New Zealander's door closing. I had never seen him talk to anyone. No one in the block — not even little stickybeak Eve — knew his name or that of his wife. To remain invisible to those who would torment you is an enviable talent.

‘Go-go-go going to hang them tomorrow, you know.'

‘
What?
Hang who?'

‘Bar-bar-bar Barlow and whatshisname … Chambers.'

Then I understood. Two Australian men caught in Malaysia for drug trafficking had been on death row for some time, and evidently they were to be executed, despite appeals from the Australian government. The case — with its potent themes of drug running and innocents abroad, combined with a high-minded suspicion of our barbarous neighbours — had gripped the imagination of the nation over recent months.

After several more minutes of baffling conversation I managed to escape Mr Orlovsky's clutches. Upstairs, I was delighted to find Sally waiting outside my apartment. I had been busy the past few
days at work and hadn't seen her for over a week. She was cheerful and excited. She smelled clean and scrubbed, as if she had recently stepped from a late-afternoon bath.

‘I'm so pleased you're back,' she said, pecking me on the cheek. ‘I was about to go home again. Max is staying with a relative of Edward's in the country for the weekend to finish off some part of his score.'

As I opened the door to let us inside, I told her about my lunch with Mike and Jane. But Sally barely registered anything I said, even muttering, ‘That sounds nice,' when I told her about the dreadful half-cooked snapper I'd been obliged to eat.

‘Tom,' she said, once we had divested ourselves of coats and scarves and hung them in the hallway. ‘I'm sorry, but I have an ulterior motive for dropping by this afternoon.'

‘Oh?'

‘Do you mind if I turn the TV on?'

Max and Sally's television had been broken the whole time I had known them. My own was tiny and so ancient that it required dextrous manipulation of the antenna to receive a decent picture.

I crouched to switch it on. ‘What channel?'

‘ABC.'

I fiddled with the dials. Before I could ask what she was so interested in watching, I recognised the opening drum riff of
Countdown
, a pop-music program that had been screening on Sunday evenings for so many years that its introductory theme was encoded into the aural DNA of any Australian under the age of forty.

It was six o'clock: tens of thousands of teenagers across the country would be sitting down for their weekly dose of top-ten video hits and garbled interviews with unlikely role models. Max had been asked to perform on
Countdown
during his months of fame, but he disapproved heartily of the show and its inept but
loveable host, Ian ‘Molly' Meldrum, whom he referred to as The Cretin.

To the accompaniment of the screaming teenage girls that made up
Countdown
's studio audience, I went to the kitchen to make tea. While waiting for the kettle to boil, I observed Sally from the doorway.

As so often, she had arranged herself on my green sofa with her legs tucked up beneath her, chin resting in one cupped palm. She brushed hair from her forehead and reached down to scratch her calf, before turning to me with a smile so delightful I could barely stand it.

‘I remember you,' she said.

‘Pardon?' I said, startled to have been caught out so flagrantly admiring her.

‘During summer, right before we first met. I saw you in Rhumbarella's that morning. You were watching me, like now. This handsome boy I'd never seen before. I was flattered. Look at you, you're
blushing
.'

‘I don't remember.'

Sally reached for her tobacco and set about rolling herself a cigarette. ‘You're not like most of the people around here. Not trying to be someone else. You should be proud of that. Try to stay that way.'

How little she knew of me. She turned her attention to her cigarette, and in that instant I understood love as a symptom for which the only cure was love itself, a riddle from which there was no escape.

The
Countdown
voiceover guy had by this time announced the line-up for the next hour: Madonna, Wa Wa Nee and Pseudo Echo, among others. The hormonally charged audience screamed and whistled. The kettle boiled, and when I re-emerged with a pot of fresh tea, the opening act was underway.

Sally clapped with delight and pointed at the television. ‘Oh. Look.'

On the screen, a female singer danced jerkily amid plumes of dry ice and flickering lights; a synthesiser player with a sculptural hairdo pressed his keys and pouted. The camera zoomed and weaved. My television screen was so small that the band members resembled a family of robots fighting their way out of a burning box.

‘It's the Smiling Assassins,' Sally said. ‘I was their singer once. In fact, I worked on an early version of this song.
Silent Dreams
.'

I recalled Max recounting how he had saved Sally from this fate. Although I was not au fait with current trends in pop music, the Smiling Assassins didn't seem to have much to distinguish them from any other pop group doing the rounds — theatrical gestures, androgyny, lightweight choruses sung with joyless insouciance. (The band, incidentally, was misnamed: there were few smiles or ruthless tendencies in evidence.)

Sally was excited to see her former band on national television, and when the song had finished she asked for my opinion of them. Caught on the hop, I told her the Smiling Assassins were great.

‘Oh, you're so sweet. They're not that good, but thanks for saying so.'

‘They're no worse than, well, any of the other stuff on
Countdown
.'

‘I do have a soft spot for Madonna, but don't ever tell Max I said that. I'd be excommunicated. Max loathes the Smiling Assassins. I can't believe they got a record out after all these years. And they're doing a national tour! Nick would be so rapt. I had a lot of fun with those guys.' She sipped her tea, put the cup back on the saucer with a grimace. ‘You don't have champagne, by any chance?'

‘No, but I might have some wine.'

She waved away my offer and stood. ‘We need champagne. We
should toast the Smiling Assassins. I owe it to them: they were good to me. We've got some at our place. I'll go and get it.'

Before I could say anything she dashed out, and returned with a bottle wedged under her arm. It had begun to rain. Her hair was damp and her cheeks glowed as if burnished by the cold night air. It was hard not to be swept up in her excitement as she wrenched off the cork and filled two glasses.

‘To the Smiling Assassins,' she said, tapping her glass against mine.

I laughed. ‘Long may they reign.'

We raised our glasses and drank. Bubbles tickled my nose. With her palm hot at the back of my neck, Sally drew me towards her and kissed me, this time on my mouth.

Spending a night with the woman you have for some time desired is a frightening experience. Although not a virgin (a fierce and rather large girl called Marlene had seen to that one night behind the clubhouse at Dunley Oval), I was woefully unschooled when it came to the opposite sex.

Sally was patient with me, kind, unguarded. She made love with wordless ferocity. She had a thumb-sized birthmark on her hip in the shape of a fish. At times she sighed with what sounded like surprise.

Many hours later, she rose in the dawn light as birds chirruped outside my window. There is a sharp, joyful sadness in watching a woman with whom one has spent such intimate hours get dressed; her shrugging into sweaters, running a hand through tousled hair, the way she swivels her skirt around her hips. It is when the fire is reduced to handfuls of private ash, perhaps more than any other time, that a lover is most blatantly revealed.

She told me we could never do this again, that no one must ever know. We had done a most unwise and dangerous thing. She forbade me from coming around for at least a week and said
she wouldn't return to my apartment. I agreed, of course. Yes, anything. ‘Nobody can know,' she said again. ‘Max will kill us, I'm serious.' I listened to her tender footfall, the squeak of the loose floorboard in my hall, the click of my front door closing.