Odyssey In A Teacup (34 page)

God must have heard me. Though Lance occasionally cocked his head to the right to see the Bugs Bunny reruns showing on TV, he didn’t move. And for too long, I couldn’t. I sat there mute like his television as he was telling me about his vision for the apartment. Finally, I found my voice.

‘Er, okay. I’ll consider all your thoughts’—
none of which I’ve heard
—‘and get back to you with some pricing.’ I got up, said, ‘Stay there, I’ll see myself out,’ and was out the door. I never called Lance and I never heard from him again.

The four of us laughed, and then Maxi turned to Ralph.

‘Hey Brill, I noticed you deflected attention away from the mention of Cyril.’

We all knew why. Ralph reddened, shook his head and braced himself.

Cyril Runyon had called me to discuss revamping the living area of his rambling federation house. It was a month or so after my episode with Lance. Unlike Lance, who’d obviously just stepped out of the shower when he greeted me, Cyril was wearing clothes, but he looked like he’d just stepped out of a gangster movie. Short and wiry, he had thin, dark hair plastered down with Fudge, bushy black caterpillar eyebrows, a long pockmarked face and a small mouth, which was about the same width as his nose.

‘Mind if I smoke?’ he asked, as we sat down opposite each other at a yellow drop flap table abutting one of the walls in his kitchen. He had already taken me through and shown me the lounge and dining rooms.

Yes, I do mind!
‘No, that’s fine.’

He offered me a cigarette; I shook my head. I don’t smoke but I should have taken one. It might have calmed me. Already, I didn’t have a good feeling about this meeting.

‘So,’ said Cyril as he puffed out a cloud of smoke. ‘I’m very organised.’

Because you’re a member of an organised crime group?

‘I’ve got a pretty detailed brief here,’ he said as he reached into a thick envelope. ‘I’ll run you through with it.’

‘What?’ I froze, waiting for him to pull out an ice pick.

‘I said I’ll run through it with you.’ He held up the A4 piece of paper he’d whipped out.

I breathed a sigh of relief and concentrated on what he was saying. Cyril knew what he wanted: lots of red and black, and lots of lace and velvet. I think he was asking me to decorate a brothel. I imagined him as a minor capo within the Mafia—his role, to oversee the prostitution branch. And I imagined his name was really Cirillo Rugnetta and that he’d anglicised it to put the FBI, CIA, KGB, Mossad, ASIO, Interpol—whatever—off the scent.

Cyril intruded on my thoughts. ‘Better if I hand it to you and we can go through it point by point.’

He slowly and deliberately slid the page across the table and stared at me as he blew smoke rings. I looked down and caught my breath.

Jesus!
This was not a brief. It was a
de-
brief.

The page that held his ideas was his letterhead, which was a spooky reproduction of a ceiling panel of the Sistine Chapel—Genesis, chapter 2. Only this repro was frescoed in Hell! It depicted the hand of God printed in the top right corner and pointing towards the bottom left of the page where Adam would have been. But Cyril had substituted a picture of himself for Adam. In a very clear, deep-etched shot, save for the red cushions he was reclining on, Cyril was buck naked, right hand cupping his goolies, left hand extended upwards to God’s hand. In spite of my revulsion, I couldn’t help staring at the image.

Cyril was over sixty years old and not particularly well preserved. His skin was like old cowhide (a cow that had spent way too much time in a sunny paddock without SPF30). And without his clothes, it was obvious that he was not exactly buff. Despite his thinness, he had droopy little moobs (man boobs) with pronounced, cherry-red nipples. Did I really need to know this about him? If this was how God created Adam, it explained how and why mankind was primordially screwed.

It was so ridiculous, I actually started to feel calmer. No way could this nutter be Mafioso, and if he was, they should have him taken out for sheer stupidity.
Jesus, what the fuck did I do in this or another life to magnetise these weirdos?

I kept staring at the page but didn’t really see Cyril’s typed words beyond the freaky image, which eclipsed them. I told him I was probably not the right person for the job. But Cyril didn’t give up easily.

Smiling at me, he put his hand back in the bulky envelope. ‘A little incentive,’ he said.

Shit, for sure he was going to pull out an ice pick this time!

He didn’t. He took out a novel.
It’s got a secret compartment hiding an ice pick!
The book fell open to reveal a fifty-dollar note. No secret compartment, no ice pick (I should never have gone to see that bloody film.
Basic Instinct
was taking over my life—everyone was Sharon Stone). And just like he had done with his letterhead, Cyril slid the bill across the table towards me. I didn’t take it, though. I gave him a long fixed look. Smiling, I told him that this job was not right for me. Cyril backed down and I hightailed it out of there before he dangled another carrot. Or pulled out an ice pick.

I rushed home and wanted to call Reuben, but I knew he’d be in a meeting. So I called Ralph, who had no modelling assignments that week.

‘Oh good, you’re home. I’m coming right over.’

‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes. No. Sort of.’

‘Ruthie, what’s happened?’

‘I’ll tell you when I get there.’ I hung up before he could ask any more questions.

Ralph’s door was open when I turned up ten minutes later. He was waiting there with a worried look on his face. As we sat at his kitchen table, which had no envelopes, no books and no ice picks, I babbled out the whole story.

Ralph ralphulated. He listened patiently, rubbed the bristles on his chin, looked skyward, went silent for a bit, and then ...

‘Hmm ... fifty dollars gets you a blow job, you know.’

Ralph. In all his depth.

‘Seriously?’ His response lightened the moment but it also stunned me. ‘That’s all you took from this?’

‘Well ... no. Of course not. It’s just the first thing that came to mind.’

‘Waaait a second. How do you know the current market value of a blow job?’

‘Er, um ... I’ve heard. I ... I’ve read it.’

Yeah. Sure you have.

Maxi, Vette and I laughed at the memory; Ralph winced.

‘So, Brill. What’s a blow job worth in today’s market?’ asked Maxi.

‘I’ve no idea. I don’t have to pay for these things. What are you charging these days?’ Ralph smirked.

‘You two can pick this up later. What I wanna know is why didn’t I walk out of these situations straight away like I should have?’ I directed this at Ralph.

‘Er ... well, look at the environment you grew up in. Craziness.’ He made a cuckoo sign with his finger. ‘That was normal for you, you got used to it, became numb to it. And when you’re numbed out to a situation, you can’t move because you can’t think and you can’t feel. You stay stuck in it.’

‘Mm, explains why I stayed home for so long.’ I thought about this for a bit. ‘Your home environment wasn’t so great, and I know you had your reasons for staying, but you’re fairly well-adjusted.’

‘Are you kidding? You think obsessive-compulsive behaviour is a sign of being well-adjusted?’

‘But you’re cured. You’re even counselling people with the condition.’

‘Sure. But if a patient turns up with a missing limb or finger, let’s just say we’re looking at some serious damage control. One of my colleagues is helping me deal with that one, though.’

‘Ruthie, you seem to think
we’ve
got it figured out or are better than you,’ said Vette. ‘We haven’t and we’re not. We might have come on in leaps and bounds in our professional lives, but look at our personal lives.’

Maxi elaborated. ‘Yeah, Freud here prefers the company of women but can’t commit to one—’

‘I’d rather you call me Jung. And get it right—not “can’t” commit. Won’t
.
Not until I connect with my Twin Fla—’

‘Okay. Freud, Jung, can’t, won’t—whatever.
Don’t
is the operative word.’ Maxi turned towards me. ‘And you might have had your Lances and Cyrils as clients, but I’ve been dating them!’

We all laughed at the absurdity of our respective realities.

‘Why do we do this?’ asked Vette. ‘How do we end up in these situations?’ We looked to Ralph for the answers.

‘Because you leave home and search for your family.’

‘Huh?’ Maxi expressed all our confusion.

‘Unconsciously.’

‘That’s not an answer.’

‘Well, think about it. Your first relationship with a woman is with your mother, and with a man, your father. It more or less lays the foundation for how you relate to women and men socially.’

Maxi, Vette and I all pondered this one. Then Maxi said, ‘Hmm ... probably why I spend so much time with people who are off their tree. And
date
them. People who aren’t really “there”.’

 ‘Oh, God, a lot of reality in the last couple of days!’ Vette lamented. ‘First I get to see why I’ve been looking for Mr fairy tale perfect; now, I’m getting why he’s always a much older version ... who ends up leaving me.’ She shook her head.

‘And I guess your theory explains why
I
ended up working with Maude!’

Ralph’s words had opened our eyes. And I’d just made the conscious connection between Sylvia and the harpies. And gorgons. It had probably taken me this long to see it because she was so in-your-face (forest, trees and all that). And then all at once, I could see the Sylvia doppelgängers: apart from Maude ... Zelda, Miss ‘Kishma’ Parker, Mrs Russo, Zola, Mrs Antinous, and a host of others. ‘But ... hang on. That theory doesn’t always hold water. I’ve got a fantastic relationship with Maxi and Vette. They’re nothing like Sylvia!’

‘Sure,’ Ralph said. ‘But it’s not cut and dried. There are other factors too. Remember what we talked about ages ago, you know, about the nature versus nurture debate?’

We? You mean ‘you’.
And how could I forget ... Όχι. Εμείς δεν το συζητούν. Μπορείτε rabbited σε γι 'αυτό.

‘Some of the dark forces that control Sylvia might have been small in you to start with, but the way she’s treated you has fed them, and at the same time, diminished what’s powerful in your nature.’

After Ralph’s chichi display by the pool the day before, he had just re-established himself as a member of the intelligentsia. He went on. ‘The relationships you attract aren’t necessarily going to be carbon copies of your parents. Sometimes it’s just an aspect of them that you’re drawn to in another person.’

Other names flashed in front of me: Dee, Charmaine, Rose, Hermione. ‘Geez. It’s punishing, isn’t it?’

‘It can feel that way. But it’s also an opportunity to see your weaknesses and do something about them.’ Ralph stared at me after he said this, transmitting
isn’t that what this holiday is supposed to be about?
He added. ‘The strong relationships you have, like with us, they’re the ones that support you while you learn what you need to from the ones that feel like stand-ins for your folks.’

Ralph, Maxi and Vette also had their share of ‘stand-ins’, but for all their challenges, the three of them seemed to take everything in their stride, whereas things often felt forbidding and catastrophic to me. Ralph had been right twenty years before when he implied I did just fine as a drama queen.

‘I know you’ve all got your issues, but you guys seem to cope so much better than me.’

Vette smiled sympathetically. ‘We weren’t wrapped in cotton wool.’

Nor were she and Maxi made to feel less capable (or deserving) than their brothers. And Ralph could not be any less capable than his (no one could). As we all got lost in our own thoughts, I reflected on my earlier career trajectory in relation to Myron’s.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO:
PIECES OF WORK

Myron was Sylvia’s great white hope. She’d bought him a toy medical kit when he was three, a toy microscope at five, a human skeleton anatomy model at six, a human heart model and a plastic skull with brain when he was seven. Of all the toys, Myron loved the skull the most. He was only interested in its teeth, though. Still, like a good boy, when he finished high school, he fulfilled Sylvia’s expectations and went to med school. But then, all her grooming came a cropper when Myron rebelled. He actually rebelled! He dropped out after a year—he hated medicine. Myron had become increasingly tooth-obsessed.

‘Odontophilia,’ Ralph had said when I told him.

‘What?’

‘It’s a tooth fetish. Myron has a tooth fetish.’

‘Isn’t that a bit strange?’

‘Um ... we’re talking about Myron.’ Ralph had a point. ‘He probably gets a hard-on watching someone eat with their mouth open.’

Ecch!
This is something I didn’t need to know about my brother. But the odontophiliac ended up enrolling in dentistry and becoming Sylvia’s disappointment. What a joy this was for me to be relieved of that role, even if it was only temporarily. Her disappointment evaporated five years later—Myron still graduated as
Doctor
Roth. With his sensitive gag reflex, though, no way would I let him hover over my mouth. And I didn’t want a dentist who could so insensitively shatter a child’s illusions about the tooth fairy.

I kind of followed suit with my career choice when I became a dental nurse. Same field; no prestige; didn’t matter. I didn’t need a higher education. I was ‘just a girl’. According to Sylvia’s life plan for me, I would get married, have children and remain a hausfrau like her. Nothing wrong with this if that’s what you aspire to, but I don’t think even Sylvia did. She had shown promise at school. She often told us how smart she was, and we witnessed this: she could say cook, clean, wash, iron and ‘What am I; your bloody slave, Joe?’ in seven languages. Sylvia never realised her potential, so, by extension, it meant I wouldn’t even be able to see the glass ceiling, much less break through it. My first job was good training for Sylvia’s projection of my lot in life. It was in a sweatshop. Sort of.