Praise (10 page)

I was ready for this. I said, ‘But they still have to be paid. That's not even counting the rent and just general survival. The money has to come from somewhere.'

‘Well ... it's not up to me. I'll pass your application on and we'll get back to you. I'll give you an appointment for tomorrow.'

‘Today's okay. I can wait.'

‘But it could take hours.'

‘That's fine. I really need the money today. All those bills are overdue.'

She resigned herself. ‘Fair enough. Look, in the meantime, here's your standard fortnightly application. Fill it out and bring it in before eleven tomorrow. We'll mail you the next one with your first payment, and then every second Tuesday after that you'll have to bring it in, in person. Okay?'

‘Okay.'

I went and sat down again.

This wasn't so bad. All you needed was patience. I waited another hour, then I was called up again. I drew a man this time. He looked about my age. He was well dressed. He looked cool, together. He had all my forms. The pile was getting bigger.

‘Okay,' he said, ‘we've decided you're entitled to Emergency Benefits to the sum of eighty-seven dollars and sixty-three cents.'

‘Thank you. That'll help.'

‘Don't thank me ...'

He stamped another form. I signed it. Then it happened. He wrote out the cheque. Eighty-seven dollars and sixty-three
cents
.

He handed it over. I put it in my wallet. There was still a couple of hundred dollars in there. He saw the bills, fifties and twenties. Money. I put the wallet away. Made for the door. I was in, the monster had welcomed me home. I was being taken care of.

I walked to the nearest bank and cashed the cheque, then headed for home. A bit further on I passed a TAB. I thought about it. Eighty-seven dollars, twenty to one, an each way bet, no, to
win
. It all seemed too simple. You couldn't take this sort of money seriously. It was the right thing to do, the spirited thing to do.

I went inside. I looked at the cards. Looked at the punters lining the walls, watching the TV screens. It was Social Security all over again.

I walked out.

I was never going to make it anyway.

Cynthia was waiting in the flat.

‘How'd you go?' I asked.

‘Not too bad. Dad was still pissed off. I talked to Mum mostly. I told her more about you and me, she seemed to understand ... how about you?'

‘I got cash. Special Benefits. Eighty-seven dollars and sixty-three cents.'

‘Is that all? They ripped you off. The first time I went for Special Benefits I got over a hundred and I didn't even have any documentation. I just told them I had nowhere to stay. Eighty bucks is nothing. You just have to stand there and scream till they give you more.'

‘No. I have a conscience. Social Security are my friends. They're good to me. Anyway, what're you going to do for money?'

‘I think I'll get another job.'

‘Not the dole?'

‘No ... I've done that enough. I'm sick of the poverty. Besides, if we both go on the dole Social Security will work out that we're living together. We'd get even less then. If I get a job I can give a false address, my old address, and it won't be a problem. You can't give false addresses to Social Security.'

‘What'll it be? Bar work?'

‘I guess so. It's all I can do.'

She unpacked. She didn't have much, just two suitcases and a few books and a pile of records and tapes. There was plenty of space. The flat had come furnished with two big wardrobes, and they were empty. I kept my clothes in laundry baskets.

The flat itself consisted of two big rooms. One had been partitioned into two segments, the bedroom and the kitchen. The other held a couple of couches, a desk, the TV and a table. The floor was linoleum.

‘If you want to change anything around,' I said, ‘feel free. You're paying half the rent.'

‘No, it's okay. It just needs cleaning. And some new curtains. And the walls need washing.'

‘The walls?' I'd never heard of anyone washing walls. I let that one pass.

We sat on one of the couches and watched TV. We had a couple of glasses of cask wine. Cynthia started rearranging my legs and arms. ‘You sit all wrong,' she said. ‘You could look so good if you wanted to.'

‘I don't want to.'

‘It doesn't matter what you want. I'm the one who has to look at you.'

It made a certain amount of sense. She made me lie back, unbutton my shirt, undo the top button of my jeans. She took my penis out and kissed it and looked at it, talked to it, then put it away. I'd never seen anything like her. Then she started studying my face and neck.

‘You've got blackheads!'

‘So?'

She pulled my head down into her lap. ‘You can't just leave them there. They're dangerous.' She began pinching the back of my neck.

‘Cynthia, stop this ...'

‘But some of them are huge!'

‘There's nothing there.'

‘Be quiet. I'm concentrating.'

I let her go. It was nice to be mothered, nice to be bossed. Maybe that was my problem, unresolved complexes. I needed someone to be in control. The difficulty was people kept offering me the opposite. They let me do whatever I wanted, as if I knew what I was doing, as if I had credibility. It'd ruined the few relationships I'd had. Sooner or later the woman had started asking meaningful questions and I gave meaningless answers, and somehow they'd got taken seriously. It occurred to me sometimes that women listened too much, they considered too much, they paid attention to the wrong things. They didn't just
look
. If a man was there with them, he was there with them. That was the most important thing.

Cynthia seemed to understand. She could see I was there with her. I was safely under control. What I
said
hardly mattered. That was just conversation. Underneath it all, she knew I had no worthwhile opinions. Even on blackhead removal.

So I suffered it for twenty minutes. She showed me the results. She'd picked out tiny bits of skin and blood. They were stuck under her fingernails.

I said, ‘I haven't had a pimple on my neck for years. There was nothing there, you just wanted to make me bleed.'

‘Bullshit. You don't look after yourself.'

The afternoon passed.

We started thinking about dinner.

There was no food in the fridge. Cynthia felt like steak. She was a big meat eater. Steak and chicken. I preferred sausages, or pasta, or Chinese. Things you didn't have to chew. We decided to go shopping.

We drove to a mall at Annerley, across the river. We parked and walked around, looking at all the food. Cynthia held my hand. I was her man now. We found a butcher and studied the selection.

I said, ‘I think I'll have rissoles.'

‘Rissoles?'

‘I feel like rissoles.'

They had them ready made. Garlic, pepper and beef rissoles. Big and round. I bought three of them, Cynthia went for rump steak. Then we found some potatoes, broccoli, and beans. And some Gravox. You had to have gravy.

We drove home. We picked up a sixpack of Toohey's Old on the way. Cynthia said she'd cook. I drank beer and watched TV and wandered into the kitchen from time to time.

‘Burn the fuck out of those rissoles,' I said.

Everything smelt good. I grabbed Cynthia from behind while she stirred the gravy. I ran my hands up under her skirt. I felt like fucking her there and then, over the stove. I was turning into a husband. After one day.

‘Not now,' she said. This is important.' Maybe she was turning into a wife. She leaned back against me and we watched the gravy bubble.

‘How long?'

‘Not long.'

We served it on the dining table and turned the TV around. There was nothing much on, so we broke out the Scrabble set and started playing while we ate. Our plates were overflowing. Mashed potato, meat, beans, gravy — no class, but it was what we needed.

When it was finished we cleared the plates away and concentrated on the Scrabble. Cynthia was a good Scrabble player. Not many people I knew were. I played a lot of Scrabble. You had to believe in Scrabble to be any good at it. You had to be prepared to play strategically, to agonise. Most people couldn't be bothered, they put down the first word they saw just to end the pain. And they lost.

Scrabble, if I cared to think about it, was like a lot of things I could see about life. If you really worked at something, the chances were you'd pull it off. The problem was that the success never seemed that good in the end. The struggle robbed it of joy. There was no real gain, no satisfaction. I didn't want to work at things. What I really wanted was to win without trying, to throw down brilliant words without even having to think, to be a natural.

I wasn't a natural. I had a working class brain. It took me time. And then sometimes you just didn't get the letters, there was nothing you could do. And sometimes they fell into place like a dream. Luck was the real decider. Luck was what it all came down to. Scrabble was
exactly
like life. And when luck was on your side, when it was running your way, then it was a wilder and richer thing than all the hard work in the world could ever be.

Cynthia knew it.

I knew it.

For the moment, we had it on our side. We were riding it, right there over the Scrabble board.

The game was close. We sweated over it for about an hour and a half, but Cynthia got there in the end. It was my first defeat in months.

We set up the tiles and started another game. This time I won. Cynthia was genuinely angry. She hadn't lost much lately either. She took the pen and drew two columns on the inside of the lid of the Scrabble box. One column she marked with a C, the other with an G, then she put one stroke in each.

‘This is going to be serious,' she said.

She settled down on the couch. I washed up.

‘When do you write?' she said, when I came back in.

‘Whenever. Mostly at night, I suppose. It's not very regular with the poetry.'

‘Am I going to be in your way?'

‘God, no. I'm not writing anything at the moment. Nothing has happened to me lately.'

‘What about me?'

‘That might come later.'

‘Can I
read
some of your poems?'

‘One of these days, I suppose. They're pretty negative. Especially about sex. I think you'd find them ridiculous.'

‘I wouldn't make any judgements. I just want to see how you write.'

‘Judgements aren't the problem. It's letting you know how I think that worries me.'

‘Why?'

‘It'd kill us before our time, that's why.'

Next day I filed my first official dole form. The day after that, Cynthia went job hunting. She took off in the Kingswood late Wednesday morning. I had a shower, ate breakfast.

In the hall I finally met the new neighbours, Raymond and Cathy. Raymond was thin and dark. Fine-featured. He did look Spanish, but there was no accent. Cathy was slim and blond. She had a long sharp face. A fresh cut ran from just below her left eye to the bottom of her chin. It was deep. It had stitches. She wouldn't meet my eyes.

Cynthia came back after about an hour.

‘Two offers,' she said.

‘Already? Which pubs?'

‘The Queen's Arms and the Brunswick. They were the first two I tried.'

‘Which one will you take?'

‘The Queen's Arms, I think. The manager seemed nice enough. He knows you.'

‘He knows me?'

‘He said you used to work for him. At the Boundary Hotel.'

‘A really old guy? Brian?'

‘Brian.'

‘That was years ago.'

‘He remembers you.'

‘We did get on well.'

‘He said he could even find a place for you, if you wanted.'

‘What'd you say to that?'

‘I said I didn't think you were really looking.'

‘And what'd
he
say to that?'

‘He said he wasn't really suprised.'

‘Well, he's good to work for. He'd like you. You've got the soul of a barmaid and he's got the soul of an alcoholic. He couldn't help but like you.'

‘The soul of a barmaid?'

‘That's
good
. As long as the beer and the scotch are running, Brian will keep off your back. He respects the profession.'

‘Alcoholics do run the best pubs.'

‘Indeed they do.'

‘I'll take the Queen's Arms, then. The Brunswick is closer, I suppose, but to hell with it.'

‘Why did the Brunswick like you?'

‘They said I was the first well dressed applicant they'd had in months. They wanted me to start straight away.'

‘Well dressed?' I looked at her. She was wearing the standard long black skirt and white blouse.

‘Better than most,' she said.

We did nothing all week. We slept long and late, watched TV, drank occasionally. We spent the afternoon planning the evening meals. It wasn't much, but neither of us was an outdoor person. And it was hot. Brisbane that week was going through something of a heatwave.

We fucked every night and every morning. Cynthia could've done it forever. She already
had
been doing it forever. I was struggling to keep up. Even after a few nights I was running out of stamina and ideas.

‘You have to use your imagination,' she said. ‘You can't just get on top and thrust away all the time, it gets boring.'

‘I don't have an imagination.'

‘Pretend you have. Tie me up. Get mean. You're too nice.'

‘Tie you up?'

‘You've heard of it, haven't you?'

And I was coming too fast. Or not coming at all. Always at the wrong times. Cynthia didn't mind so much. My body wasn't going anywhere. She knew she could get whatever she wanted from it in time. But it bothered me. It was even harder to get imaginative with a prick that you couldn't rely on.