Am I Right or Am I Right? (4 page)

Appearance:
Short, stumpy, and follicularly challenged.

Toxicity:
Close contact is not fatal, though debilitating symptoms might persevere for years. Best avoided unless wearing full body armor.

Status:
Unfortunately, not extinct.

We eyed each other for what seemed an age. He was trying to smile, but it was more like a smirk. I don’t know what my expression looked like, but I suspect
glacial
might approximate. The frozen food section was generating more heat than me.

“Hello, Calma,” he said finally.

“What can I do for you, sir?” I said.

His eyes flickered away and he gave a little wave with his hands, a pathetic gesture of helplessness. He tried the smile again.

“Is that all you can say to me?”

“I’m working, sir. If you need help to find products, then I am employed to assist. If not, I must ask that you allow me to return to my task.”

He ran a hand through his thin hair, unconsciously smoothing a few errant strands over his bald patch.

“Aw, come on, Calma. Give me a break. I just need a few words. That’s all. Is that too much to ask? A few words with my own daughter?” He put his hand on my arm and my flesh shrank from his touch.

“Please remove your hand, sir, or I will be forced to call security.”

He let me go and even took a step backward. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Candy standing at the end of the aisle, watching.

“Perhaps we could talk when you’ve finished your shift?” he said. “Please, Calma.”

“I don’t finish work until five in the morning,” I lied. “And then I have to get straight back to my family. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

I don’t expect you to believe me, but what happened next was a complete accident. I grabbed the rear rail of the cart and swung it around. My intention was to glide effortlessly back into the bowels of the warehouse section. But the front wheel had other ideas. Instead of executing a perfect arc, the cart juddered and slammed into my father’s groin. The sharp metal edge of the front rail landed, with sickening accuracy, on the family jewels. A fleeting, disbelieving look passed over my father’s face and then he doubled up, emitting a high-pitched scream. I have no idea, obviously, what it is like to have your testicles propelled into your throat, but I can’t imagine it’s very pleasant. Certainly the writhing, groaning form in front of me didn’t appear to be having the time of its life. All color flooded from his face and he groped, in a kind of shutting-the-stable-door-after-the-horse-has-bolted fashion, at his nether regions.

For a moment I felt sorry for him. It quickly passed.

“If you have damaged this cart, sir, you may have to pay compensation,” I said.

He didn’t say anything—the act of getting air into his lungs was proving difficult enough. Anyway, Candy had suddenly appeared next to us, a look of alarm on her face. She had stopped chewing and I worried that the shock of seeing one of her customers felled like an ox might cause the gum to get stuck in her windpipe. I’m not sure if I could have coped with two people writhing on the ground.

My father eventually stopped behaving like a gaffed fish and brushed aside Candy’s expressions of concern. He assured her it was entirely his fault and I was in no way responsible. Finally he limped out of the store, maybe to take up a new career as a soprano. I didn’t know, and frankly I didn’t care.

Candy was reluctant to accept my explanation of the incident—a deranged customer, with premeditation and malice, hurled his testicles against my cart. But there wasn’t much she could do. After all, the customer had accepted responsibility.

I tell you, between the condom-buying granny and the do-it-yourself attempt at circumcision, I was having the time of my life. And things got a whole lot better when I took my break.

I don’t know why I went outside. Maybe it was because the Crazi-Cheep staff room was another example of cost-cutting measures. I’ve seen better-appointed fridges at the local dump. Anyway, a breath of fresh air never goes amiss.

Jason was standing at the corner of the building having a cigarette. Twenty minutes later we’d arranged a date.

Impressed? So you bloody should be. Want to know the secret of my success? Okay. For those of you out there who can’t get a guy to eat out of your hand, take the following as an instruction manual.

Jason: Hi! How you doin’?

Calma: Good. How are you? (
Gorgeous, mouth-watering sex-on-a-stick, that’s how you are.
)

Jason: Great. I’m Jason, by the way.

Calma: (
I know. Trust me, I know.
) Pleased to meet you, Jason. I’m Calma. (
Don’t make any jokes. Please. Don’t be the worst of all possible worlds—a sex-on-a-stick dickhead.
)

Jason: This your first evening at work?

Calma: Yes. (
Do you have a girlfriend? If you’ve got a girlfriend, I’m enrolling in the nearest nunnery first thing in the morning.
) Do I detect an English accent, Jason? (
Or am I losing control of all my faculties in your presence?
)

Jason: Yeah. Guilty as charged.

Calma: Don’t worry. We’ll let you off, provided you commit no further offenses in the next twelve months. (
Too early to risk a joke?
) Are you in Australia permanently, Jason, or on holiday? (
Because if you want to stay, we could drive into town, get married, and start a family immediately.
)

Jason: My parents moved to Australia twelve months ago, just after I finished my A levels in England. I’m having a year off before I go to university here. I guess that means we’re staying.

Calma: Great! (
Why did I say that? Does it smack of over-enthusiasm?
) Do you miss England? (
Do you have a girlfriend you spend all your time writing to?
)

Jason: Football, mainly. What you call soccer.

Calma: Really? I love soccer. (
Never seen it—is that the one with the round ball?
) What team do you support? (
Like I care. Just keep him talking.
)

Jason: Liverpool.

Calma: They’re great. Fantastic team. (
Who?
)

Jason: You reckon they’ve got their tactics sorted?

Calma: Absolutely. (
“Sorted”! Whaaat?
) Really talented. Classy players, every one. (
You could be getting in deep crap here, Calma.
)

Jason: Well, not all of them. Obviously, when the team’s on song, you won’t find a sharper forward line or a more solid midfield anywhere in the Premiership. It’s consistency, though. Too many players drifting in and out of games, not backtracking enough when opponents hit us on the break. And that’s another thing. We get exposed by pace on the wings. It’s all very well having a solid central defense, but if they’re drawn by the overlap, you’re always going to be stretched out of shape, particularly with a sweeper system, rather than the conventional four-two-four. As for zonal marking—well, it’s a load of bollocks. We need to get back to man-to-man.

Calma: I couldn’t agree more! (
I couldn’t understand less.
)

Jason: We seem to have forgotten Bill Shankly’s immortal words: “Football isn’t a matter of life and death—it’s more important than that.”

Calma: Perhaps we could discuss this further on a date? (
Who could forget old Bill…oh, shit!
)

Jason: A date?

Calma: Er…yeah. Why not? How about Friday? (
Where’s a bolt of lightning when you need it? Or a large hole in the ground?
)

Jason: Friday? Yeah…okay.

That’s the point at which you exchange phone numbers. Got it? It works every time. I swear.

From:
Miss Moss

To:
Calma Harrison

Subject:
Iambic tetrameter

Calma,

Let’s start with basic rhythm and rhyme. Use iambic tetrameter (four beats to the line, remember) and a straightforward
abba
rhyme scheme. The key is to use enjambment (run-on lines) to avoid rhythmical monotony. For this first exercise, I’ll let you choose the subject matter.

Have fun!
Miss Moss

Song for Vanessa

I used to walk in crowds alone

And though I spoke and slept and ate

To mimic life, to ease the weight

Of grief, it failed. I was a phone

That can’t connect, a hollow shell.

The world flowed by me while I stood

And watched how others saw the good

That living brings. I stumbled, fell—

But then you caught me, touched my pain

By being there with friendship’s kiss.

The truth, I know, is simply this:

You
taught me how to live again.

Chapter 6

Vanessa gets excited

I couldn’t wait to tell Vanessa. I was tempted to call her when I finished work, but it was two in the morning and I couldn’t be sure of a warm response. It would have to wait.

I slept like the dead. I tell you, there’s nothing like stacking the old baked beans to guarantee uninterrupted Z’s. I woke at midday and luxuriated for a while in the memory of my conversation with Jason. My little slip of the tongue had been a godsend. For all I know, I could have continued gibbering about soccer, getting absolutely nowhere. Clearly, Jason liked the direct approach. Good job I had blundered into it.

That set me thinking. Maybe he had called already. I leaped out of bed and threw on a blue T-shirt with a cartoon crocodile in a deck chair on the back (fashion icon, me) and raced into the kitchen. The Fridge was sitting at the table, drinking coffee. She obviously wasn’t expecting me to appear at such a pace, because she spilled a fair amount down her front.

“My God, Calma,” she said. “Is your bed on fire?”

“Has anyone called for me?”

“What?”

“Phone? You know, the lumpy device with buttons, over there on the wall?”

“How was your first shift at work?”

“Masterly. I’m on my way to becoming CEO of the entire organization. Has anyone called?”

“Like who?”

“Like anyone. Like someone saying, ‘Hello, can I speak to Calma Harrison, please?’ That sort of someone.”

“No. Who were you expecting to call?”

“Me? No one. No one at all. Why would I be expecting someone to call? Nothing on the answering machine, then?”

The Fridge looked at me over the rim of her coffee cup. “What’s going on, Calma?”

“I saw the poisoned dwarf at work last night.”

“The poisoned dwarf?”

“You remember. Little runt, head like a cue ball, face like a baboon’s bum. You used to be married to him. Goodness, how soon we forget!”

“What did he want?”

“To talk.”

“And did you?”

“No. I rammed him in the gonads with a substantial warehouse cart and that seemed to stop the conversation dead in its tracks.”

“Unfortunate.”

“Yes. Where’s a one-ton truck when you need it?”

I cut the banter and called Vanessa. I got her out of bed. Can you believe it?
She
hadn’t been working until the small hours. She’d probably hit the sack at nine-thirty and I was still up before her! Her mum got her to the phone. Vanessa’s voice was thick and heavy with sleep. Mind you, even at her most awake she does a remarkable impersonation of someone just roused from six months’ intensive hibernation.

I arranged to go over to her house.

Brushing off further questions from the Fridge, I showered and slung on my new denim skirt and red
EMILY THE STRANGE
T-shirt. Yellow glasses and I was ready. Vanessa lived a few minutes’ walk from my place, so I was in her front room before I could even build up a decent film of sweat.

Vanessa’s mum was a person in a permanent state of frenzy. She looked as if she was expecting a homicidal maniac to appear out of the woodwork at any moment. Her eyes darted everywhere and her feet twitched in a fight-or-flight agony of indecision. Maybe that’s why Vanessa turned out the way she did, as a reaction against parental influence. I have to say this about Vanessa: there’s not much that gets under her skin. The world can be falling apart around her, and she still keeps calm. It’s one of the things I like most about her.

“Hi, Mrs. Aldrick,” I said cheerily.

She reacted like an SAS squadron had rappelled down the walls and crashed through the window. It was like cornering a wild jungle beast.

“Hello, Calma,” she said finally. “Vanessa’s in her bedroom.”

And she scuttled off, possibly to cower in the corner of the garden or maybe do a little ironing. Mrs. Aldrick kept a tidy place. Even the cockroaches wiped their feet before they came into her house.

Vanessa was sitting up in bed, in the lotus position, her wrists balanced delicately on her knees, fingers making an O. Her eyes were closed in an annoying I’m-so-relaxed-even-the-corners-of-my-eyes-don’t-crinkle-when-they’re-shut fashion. I’d been in this situation before. Vanessa was so deep in her transcendental trance that nothing would rouse her until she was ready. Loud coughs, a low-flying jet plane, an earthquake measuring six on the Richter scale—none of these would have any effect. So I sat on the edge of the bed and waited.

Eventually Vanessa opened her eyes and let her breath out in one long, slow exhalation. I didn’t say anything. I knew there was a routine we had to go through first. Vanessa continued to take deep, deliberate breaths, her diaphragm swelling like that guy’s in the first
Alien
movie just before something nasty erupted from his rib cage. A low hum issued from her nose. This was some kind of mantra. It might have been “om,” but I don’t have Vanessa’s fluency in meditation-speak, so I can’t swear to it. I continued to wait.

Finally, her eyes lost their hypnotic glaze, she shook her head slightly, and Vanessa was back on the plane of existence where she could communicate with the unenlightened. She brushed her long, fair hair back from her face, pale freckles framed by two straight, shining curtains.

“Hello, Calma,” she intoned.

I say “intoned” not because I want to be artsy-fartsy, but because Vanessa’s voice never expresses much in the way of emotion. It was like one of those computer-generated simulations of human speech that invests as much excitement into “Today is Sunday” as “Woohoo! I’ve won twenty-four million dollars in the lottery!” Vanessa’s voice always gave the impression that communication was something she found tiring. You wouldn’t be surprised if she had to take a nap after the exertion of a complete sentence.

“I’ve got a boyfriend,” I blurted out.

Okay, this wasn’t quite the way I had practiced breaking the news. I’d intended leading up to it gently, throwing it in casually when the opportunity arose.

(
“It’s funny you should bring up refugee internment, Vanessa, because I was just saying to Jason yesterday…Jason? Haven’t I mentioned Jason to you? Good heavens, mind like a sieve. He’s just a guy who finds me irresistibly attractive. I’ve agreed to go out with him this week. It was easier to agree than listen to his blubbering and pleading. Anyway, he was gazing up at me adoringly—you know, drinking in every word—and I said, ‘Jason, the thing about this government’s policy on refugee status…’”
)

I hadn’t meant to give the impression that a date with a guy was something totally unexpected, like the reappearance of the Tasmanian tiger. Blew that big-time. It was all I could do to stop myself bouncing up and down on her bed, clutching my hair in both hands, shrieking incoherently.

Vanessa raised one eyebrow two microns and I knew she was shocked to the core of her being.

“A boyfriend?” she said. “Why?”

“What do you mean, why?” I said. “What kind of a question is that? How about ‘Who?’ or ‘Dish me the dirt, girlfriend’?”

“Hmmm,” said Vanessa, uncurling her legs with the speed and elegance of a spreading flower. “Let’s have a cup of dandelion tea and you can tell me about it.”

It was a long sentence for Vanessa and it obviously took a lot out of her, because five minutes elapsed before we made it into the kitchen.

Mrs. Aldrick prepared tea and put out a tray of cheese, rice crackers and seedless grapes. I offered to help, but she twitched manically as if I’d suggested initiating a nuclear strike on North Korea, and scuttled off with little whimpers of anxiety. Vanessa and I sat at the kitchen table and picked at the food.

I ran through the events of the previous day, with considerable emphasis on the conversation with Jason. To be honest, I indulged in a certain amount of editing. I mean, would you admit to that embarrassing soccer stuff? So I cleaned up the story and recast it to some extent, so that I was a touch more charming and witty, ever so slightly more in control.

Okay. I told a pack of lies.

Vanessa listened. At least, I think she listened. She could have fallen asleep, but I don’t think so. She was nibbling on a cracker, slowly. It took ages to disappear. It was like watching the erosion of a sandstone cliff. Vanessa doesn’t eat much, but then again she doesn’t have to. That one cracker would balance out the calories she expends in an average day and still leave room for fat storage.

I finally finished my little tale, giving prominence to Jason’s physical attractiveness, and waited for Vanessa’s response. I didn’t know what to expect. Vanessa had never shown any interest in boys and I didn’t know if this was to conserve energy or because she genuinely didn’t like them. The most reaction I had ever seen was when she curled a lip fractionally at the football-kicking drongos in the schoolyard. But where she stood on the issue of boy-girl romantic entanglements was a closed book. So I was curious.

“He’ll want sex,” she said finally.

“What?”

“Sex. He’ll want it.”

“Oh, my God,” I yelled. “You can’t be serious. Sex! Who’d have thought it? Boy meets girl, and the next thing you know sexual attraction is involved. What am I going to do? Get the Mace out! Call the vice squad now! Sex!”

Mrs. Aldrick poked her head around the door. It was probably the first time she had heard the word
sex
yelled in her kitchen and she wasn’t responding well. But she disappeared quickly.

Vanessa continued to stare at me. She treated sarcasm the same way she treated a snarling dog. If you ignored it, it generally lost interest and wandered away to urinate on a telephone pole.

“They’re only interested in one thing,” she said, unembarrassed by her lack of originality.

“Jason isn’t,” I replied. “He’s interested in soccer as well.”

Vanessa sniffed.

“Oh, come on, Nessa,” I said. “You’re behaving like a grandmother.” I was tempted to tell her about the condom-buying geriatric but didn’t think it would go down well. “I mean, what about your whole sixties thing? I thought you were into that era. Well, they invented free love. You couldn’t sit next to someone on a bus in the sixties and not have sex with them. No one got any work done because they were at it continually. Rabbits were feeling sexually inadequate in comparison. Come on!”

“Just be careful. That’s all I’m saying.”

To be honest, Vanessa had taken the gloss off my news. I’d wanted a little enthusiasm and now I felt like I had gone to confession and needed to recite two hundred Hail Marys. Even a “That’s nice” would have done. I felt cheated and resentful.

I made my excuses and left. I hadn’t intended staying long anyway, on the grounds that it was unlikely I’d hear my phone ringing from a distance of half a mile. I plodded home in the blazing sun, but it felt like I had a small black cloud attached. Nothing gets under Vanessa’s skin. She always keeps calm. It’s one of the things that annoys me the most about her.

The Fridge had gone and hadn’t left a note to say anyone had called. I checked the answering machine. Nothing. I tried the caller ID function on the phone as well and drew a blank.

It was 2:33 p.m. precisely. No problem. I’d do some reading. There was no point just hanging around waiting for the phone to ring, like a complete loser. I wasn’t one of those sad people who mope, dependent upon others for their state of well-being. No, I was a busy person with demands on my time. Things to see, people to do.

But what if Jason had lost my phone number and was even now desperately trying to track me down? Maybe he had been mugged on the way home from work and his wallet, with my number in it, had been snatched. Perhaps he was somewhere saying, “I don’t care about the credit cards and the two hundred bucks, but Calma’s phone number is an irreparable loss.” Maybe he was frantic with anxiety.

Eventually, at 2:35 p.m., I called him.

We arranged to go to the movies on Friday.

I forgot to stay mad at Vanessa.