Comfort Zone (19 page)

As he lifted himself up onto one arm and started to get up, he saw Farhia walking towards him, with the two boys tagging along. His entrance might have been humiliating, but at least he'd spotted her.

‘Er, hi, Farhia. Sorry … tripped over. Leg's a bit wobbly …' he babbled, wheezing and grunting as he stood up. His face reddened from effort and embarrassment.

‘Are you hurt?' Farhia sounded genuinely concerned, which salved his wounded pride a bit.

‘No, I'm fine. Just tripped.' He dusted down the front of his pants with the palms of his hands and straightened up, endeavouring to reclaim some dignity.

‘I've been looking for you at the welfare centre. Need to talk …'

‘Is something wrong? Omar, do not do that!' Omar was examining an interesting piece of rubbish he'd picked up from the ground. Farhia added a few words in Somali for good measure.

‘Yes … er, no. Not really. Just stuff I need to work out. Just worried … getting messy … don't want to mess anything up … ' He was really babbling now.

‘Perhaps we sit down?'

Jack sat on the wooden bench as Farhia shooed Yusuf and Omar towards the playground. She turned back to him and sat down.

‘You are in trouble?'

‘Sort of. It's complicated.'

Jack wriggled on the bench, trying to make himself more comfortable. He flicked some imaginary fluff from his left sleeve and took a couple of quick, shallow breaths.

‘You know that little book I brought back to you?'

‘Yes?' Farhia accentuated the up-tick at the end of the word, almost turning it into two syllables. Together with the arched eyebrows, it was not a good sign. Once again, mention of the book had put her very much on guard.

‘I … um … er, took some photos of it. With my phone. Um … I was worried I might lose it, I'm always losing things, people take stuff from the cab, thought I'd better make a copy just in case … might be important. Don't know what's in it, of course, because it looks like it's in Somali.' Words came cascading from Jack's mouth at an accelerating rate. His face was reddening, and he was almost panting.

‘Why did you do this? It is private.' Her tone was stern, like a teacher reprimanding a small boy.

‘Don't know.' Jack felt like he was eight years old again, and almost added ‘Miss'.

‘Is this still with your phone?'

‘Yeah, that's the problem. You know I told you about the
ASIO
guy? Well, I … um, accidentally told him, and he's been chasing me for it ever since. He thinks it's part of some terrorist plot, and I'm worried if I delete it I'll be committing a crime. Like an accomplice or something.'

‘Have you given it to him?'

‘No.'

‘You can throw the phone away, or give it to me.'

The ultimate sacrifice.

‘I can't afford it. Haven't got enough money to get a new one. Need it for work.' He was deeply embarrassed now. ‘Anyway, I lost it before — for real — so he's not going to fall for that again.'

She looked pensively over his shoulder into the distance.

‘Why's it such a big deal? I know you're not a terrorist — can't we just show them to prove it?'

‘No. These are private things, family things, in Somalia. My cousin would be angry.'

‘The guy who answered the phone when I rang the other day?'

‘Yes.' For the first time, Jack sensed fear underneath her calm, measured demeanour. Maybe he imagined it, but her hands looked like they were shaking.

‘Sorry for asking, but is he hassling you? I might be able to help.'

‘You cannot help. It is Somali things.'

‘So what am I going to do about
ASIO
? I spent most of last night running around Brunswick and Carlton trying to get away from the
ASIO
guy. I can't avoid them for long. They can probably hack into my phone or something, anyway.'

‘I don't know …'

After an uneasy silence, Jack felt the need for some more contrition.

‘Sorry, I really like you a lot, Farhia, I wanted to help, and I've messed things up. Sorry.' It sounded pathetic, but it did give him a chance to express his feelings about her.

‘You were not knowing. You cannot understand. I have not forgotten what you did for Yusuf and Omar.'

‘Do the kids who attacked them have anything to do with this? What about the guy with the knife?'

Farhia looked at him with a hint of warning in her eyes.

‘We cannot talk of this any more. I hope I will see you again. I must take the boys to home. I know you will do something about the phone.'

Farhia stood up, said goodbye, and swirled towards her two boys. Yusuf's broken arm wasn't stopping him from clambering over the monkey bars with Omar, and she had to do some badgering to get them to come down.

Crestfallen, but relieved the fallout wasn't worse, Jack walked slowly back to the cab. One of his burdens had been lifted from him: he wasn't deceiving Farhia any more. He had no idea what he would do next, though. As he approached the cab, it started to rain. The dismal sky suited his mood.

As he settled into the driver's seat, an image of Emily flashed into his mind. She was quite pretty, and certainly interesting. Bound to be in her early forties, he concluded.

He snapped out of this latest flight of fancy, and hit the top of the steering wheel with the heel of his hand with a half-hearted thump. What was he thinking? After years of loneliness, he was now falling for every woman who crossed his path. Maybe he really was having a mid-life crisis.

With that dismal thought lingering, he drove up Nicholson Street. If the traffic was alright, he would be less than half an hour late for changeover, which wasn't too bad.

10

Violence

Jack lay sprawled on his couch, emotionally exhausted. Several waking hours had passed without anything dramatic happening, to his great relief. Hopefully, things would calm down now.

Then his mobile rang. He thought immediately of Robert Jeffrey. How would he explain his behaviour the other night? What could he say? That he and an investment banker he hardly knew were on the run from an enraged drug dealer? Didn't sound very plausible.

He couldn't think of a viable excuse for his failure to be at home when he promised, and he didn't know if Jeffrey had seen him hot-footing it down Albion Street, but he lacked the energy for further subterfuge. Luckily, though, his caller wasn't the
ASIO
man.

‘Hi, Jack, how's it going? Recovered yet?' It was Matt, as cheery as ever. Jack exhaled and relaxed.

‘Er, yeah, mate. Bit stiff and sore. Not used to running. What about you? Terminator hasn't caught you yet?'

Matt chuckled. ‘No, still in the land of the living.'

‘What about Karl and all that shit?'

‘No sign of them.'

‘Maybe Rowan got them called off.'

‘Rowan?'

‘My mate who was fixing it, you know.'

‘Oh yeah.'

‘Anyway, glad to hear you're still with us. Ears okay?'

Matt went quiet for a moment, then asked: ‘What's wrong with my ears?' He sounded embarrassed and defensive, as if he'd been teased about sticking-out ears most of his life.

‘Haven't been sliced off?'

‘Oh, no, still there.'

‘Good stuff.'

‘Got to go. Might catch you in a few days.' Matt hung up before Jack could respond.

He sounded very distracted. Jack couldn't work out why Matt had called. He hadn't even asked about Jeffrey.

Jack stood up and walked over to the kitchen bench. It was time for a cup of tea and a good think. He had some decisions to make. Pressure was building, and he wasn't handling it very well. He now felt agitated all of the time, his body buzzing, his mind racing, and he was starting to jump at shadows.

He tried to arrange all the pieces of his messy situation into some kind of order. He made only modest progress, but he did succeed in isolating a couple of critical questions. In particular, he needed to get
ASIO
off his back. Should he betray Farhia?

He also needed to work out the truth beneath Matt's strange behaviour. Was this just about a drug deal gone wrong, or was there something else going on?

And what was Rowan up to? Somehow he'd landed himself with some kind of obligation to an unknown drug dealer in return for breathing space for Matt that hadn't materialised. Had Rowan's deal collapsed? Did it even exist?

Tomorrow was Friday, so Jack knew he'd be able to find Rowan at the Dan at some point in the evening. Maybe with Laura and Vanessa, which would complicate things, but he would be there.

He jiggled his Lipton's teabag in a cracked, stained mug that had once been pale blue, and settled back down on the couch.

He lifted his right leg, and with some difficulty placed his ankle on his left knee, adopting a relaxed, confident pose in an attempt to influence his state of mind. Just for the moment, he felt like a solution might be in sight. Native cunning honed by years of driving cabs would get him out of this mess.

Jack spent most of Friday tossing these things around in his mind as he mechanically collected and despatched passengers. Shortly before four o'clock, Ajit collected the cab from him at the top end of Lygon Street, which made a pleasant change. He lived in Reservoir, which made the changeover process difficult. Ajit usually did his best to help Jack get home, but his first priority was paying customers. On this occasion, he'd been held up at his call-centre job, so he didn't have time to go home before his taxi shift started. Jack often marvelled at how hard Ajit worked.

After some general unwinding, sorting out his collection of letters and junk-mail, and some half-hearted cleaning up, Jack cooked himself an early dinner. He defaulted to his mainstay menu — three super-cheap Coles sausages, a pile of mashed potatoes, and an enormous mound of frozen peas. It ticked all his boxes: cheap, simple to prepare, and filling.

He knew he could do better than this, but he didn't have the motivation. He reflected on his lack of cooking skills as he sat down on the couch to watch the news. Perhaps one day he would buy a simple cookbook. Surely it couldn't be that hard.

There was always a satisfying dimension to the crunch of lightly charcoaled sausages and the sheer volume of fluffy mashed potatoes. The peas added some flavour variety. However satisfying his meal was, though, it still reminded him of his own inadequacy. What would Farhia think if she could see how he looked after himself? How could someone so hopeless be trusted to look after anyone else?

A few mouthfuls of home-brand vanilla ice-cream later, and Jack's evening meal was finished. He tossed up whether to finish with a VB or a cup of tea, and opted for the tea. There would be plenty of time for drinking later.

He thought about having a shower before he went out, and then decided against it. He was hardly likely to bump into Farhia at the Dan: he would be surrounded by other sweaty, smelly men recovering from a hard day's work, so what did it matter?

There was a whiff of spring in the air as he got on the Lygon Street tram. There wasn't much traffic to slow it down, so he arrived at Princes Street in good time. It was past seven o'clock, but there was still a smudge of daylight retreating over the Gothic gloom of the Melbourne General Cemetery. A pleasant, unfamiliar fragrance was faintly discernible in the air — the smell of flowers, plants, and birds. There was a Friday kind of smell, too, a sense of collective relaxation descending at the close of the working week. Perhaps things smelled differently when everyone was less stressed.

It made Jack feel good, but also reminded him that serious hayfever season was starting. His Teludene supplies were low, so he needed to stock up.

As he walked down the Princes Street hill towards the Dan, he reflected on life's ironies. Here he was, embroiled in a complicated web of drug-dealing machinations, and his only interest in drug deals was securing cut-price supplies of Teludene.
Stupid, really, when you thought about it
.

With his heavy, rolling gait and sloping shoulders, Jack was an easily recognisable figure as he approached the Dan. He wasn't fully aware of it, but he was quite well-known in these parts. He was one of those people that most people in Carlton knew a little bit. The real Carlton people, anyway. The yuppies in their renovated terraces with lofts of glass and pine wouldn't have recognised him — they looked right through people like cabbies and cleaners — but the old Carlton types all knew Jack. The small-time crims, the chancers, the deadbeats, the ageing hippies, the alcoholic journos, the washed-out academics — they all knew him.

Jack pushed wearily against the rough wooden door that led to the lounge bar. He had no idea what to expect. It was even possible that Rowan wouldn't be there tonight.

He had to sort this mess out. He didn't want to become a drug courier, he didn't want to be a target for dealers, and he didn't really care if Matt was strung up by his testicles for failing to pay his debts. He was tiring of Rowan, too. His mate was turning out to be more trouble than he was worth.