Eight Pieces on Prostitution (11 page)

Josef could not have known that he would appear to Laura as a single nomad in the desert, that she would have felt obliged, not just for herself, but for all three of them.

Yet Laura was an enigma, a law unto herself; she always had been. And now she wasn't telling them the truth.

Men killed themselves, perfectly normal, healthy men; they did it every day. They drove their cars to a certain point, rigged up the hose they'd brought and breathed in deadly fumes. Men got drunk and ran their cars off roads. Men's hearts stopped; but this was the tricky part - where and when and under what compromising circumstances? How to judge that extra weight in the balance between an accident that could not be helped and an accident
that ought to have been avoided?

Sue was sure the police would decide on the second alternative, even if they concluded that Josef Kafer's death was accidental. Camilla had said that about mince meat straight away; Camilla had been sure.

The borderline between life and death could be crossed on tip-toe. Laura said that Kafer hadn't made a sound. But how could that be? He must have made a choking sound, or something.

Sue pictured the sun coming up across those paddocks where the camels stood, mute witnesses sooner or later for the cooking pot. She hoped that it might be later rather than sooner; she had liked the camels.

Imagination had a way of building on itself. From yellow grass heads waving to and fro, from a line of watching camels, grew a red Daihatsu with its front caved in. The car became a tangled mess, with blood and shattered glass. A man who, a moment ago, had been running away from his family, seeking relief from the relentless cheerfulness of summer holidays, lay broken, teeth bared in a grin of pain. The accident took only a few seconds. Hours later, the sun came up a splotch of angry red, dumping light on a body already disfigured. Sue told herself it could have happened that way.

Had Josef Kafer been too strong for Laura? Had he wanted to die?

Next morning, the three women contrived to dispel fear. Camilla had a plan.

‘Now this is what we have to do,' she said.

Camilla would ring the police and say she'd seen the car on the other side of town, at Fyshwick, where the majority of Canberra's brothels were. ‘Plenty to choose from. It'll send them off the other way.'

‘But what if they're closed?' Sue asked.

‘I'll ring up first. I'll find out.' Camilla's glance at Sue was hostile. ‘They can't all be closed.'

Sue was thinking of the damning phone number. ‘Where will you ring from?'

Camilla had already thought of that. ‘From a call box in Civic. The one in the Jolimont Centre.'

Laura spoke for the first time. ‘It would be better if you went on your own.'

The others stared at her.

‘Cam might need our help,' Sue said. ‘If they ask her questions.'

Laura sat down on the couch and folded her hands in her lap.

Neither of the others spoke for a moment, then Camilla said, ‘I'll tell them I recognized Josef's car from the TV and that I saw it parked in Lysaght Street.'

‘They'll ask you when.'

‘I'll say I don't remember exactly. Some time before ten.'

‘What if they recognize your voice? If the red-haired copper answers the phone. Or that snooty woman.'

‘I'll disguise it.' Camilla responded to Sue's look with, ‘It's not
that
hard. Jesus Christ.'

‘They'll ask you to come in and make a statement.'

‘I'll hang up. But they'll have to check my story out. It'll be a distraction.'

A man came to the door and asked for Laura. Laura stood in the doorway of the girls' room, breathing deeply, hands outstretched. One two three four, hold for four, one two three four out again. Laura finished one breath and began another.

‘It's okay, Laur. I'll do him,' Camilla said.

The bustle at the travel centre gave the lie to empty Canberra.

Three women bustled in their jeans and tank tops, Laura's red and skimpy, Laura turning heads. It occurred to Sue that, standing in the dock, if it came to that, Laura would turn appreciative heads.

Sue and Camilla wore back-packs to make them look like travellers. Buses were pulling in and taking off. Everyone was going somewhere, or returning after a good break.

There were two public telephones, both in use.

Three women pranced, nervous and exhilarated. The building that had claimed each of them the day before, their place of business, loosened its grip. They were doing something. A young man in dreadlocks was talking in one of the phone booths in a sing-song voice.

‘Let's have a coffee,' Camilla suggested. ‘Let's not stand here like spare pricks.'

Laura giggled. They drank their coffee sitting at a table near the phone booth. The young man's conversation was animated. He paused to look Laura up and down.

Laura made a face and said, ‘This coffee tastes like washing-up water.'

Camilla stood up. ‘He's finished. Come on.'

Camilla dialled with steady fingers. When the duty officer picked up the receiver at the other end, she said her piece calmly, without stopping. She gave her name as Mrs Morrison of 121 Birch Grove Narrabundah. A red Daihatsu hatchback, no, she was sure that she was not mistaken.

‘You done good,' Sue told Camilla. She felt the anti-climax as a thump below the diaphragm.

Camilla smiled crookedly. ‘At least we've spread the pressure.'

They took Laura's hands and sashayed out of the travel centre, three attractive young women shouldering a lighter load.

But Sue was aware of a fourth person accompanying them, phantasmagorical and dark. She had never believed in ghosts or spirits, yet would have sworn that Josef Kafer was just behind them as they left the travel centre. Kafer was a brown shadow with a youthful, athletic walk. Sue felt bound to him as by a cord of silk, by the silk sash of a gown, soft as a filament of air.

They sat in the girls' room and Camilla read the newspapers.

‘Don't you think it's odd' - Camilla looked at Sue over her shoulder - ‘that there's still no mention of his family?'

Sue shrugged. She had already told Camilla what she thought.

There was nothing new on TV or the radio, though the police must, by now, be certain of the cause of death.

Laura made iced tea. They drank it out of long glasses, with slices of lemon floating at the top, with lots of sugar stirred in so that the liquid went a delicious milky brown.

Outside, the heat began to climb the walls.

Laura said, ‘Maybe he broke up with his wife.'

Camilla looked doubtful. ‘Would he still wear a ring?'

‘Maybe. If he was still in love with her he might.'

‘Maybe she went back to Lebanon, or wherever,' Camilla said.

Sue drank her tea and watched the shadow on the wall. She wanted to ask the others if they saw it, and yet did not want to, was afraid of what they'd say. She tried to trick the shadow into disappearing, and for whole seconds it did.

‘Maybe it was the reason he and his wife broke up,' Laura said. ‘I mean, when they broke up. If they did.'

‘The tie business?'

Laura nodded, looking down at her clasped hands.

‘Did you try and stop him Laur?'

‘I think I did. I remember calling out.'

‘Before that,' Camilla said, with a warning glance in Sue's direction.

Sue resumed her study of the wall.

‘I remember thinking that he was too strong for me,' said Laura. ‘It all happened so fast.'

Sue turned to face Laura. ‘What else do you remember?'

‘He never said anything. I remember thinking he might be, like, a deaf-mute, you know?'

Camilla nodded as though she understood. Sue stared straight at Laura.

‘Why did you hide the tie? Why did you take it off and hide it?'

‘I don't know.'

‘What were you going to do with the money?'

‘Share it with you guys,' Laura said.

‘Susie,' Camilla said firmly.

The freedom to ask each other questions danced and shimmied in the air. Each was aware of it in her different way. Camilla's mouth settled into a determined line. Laura's dreamy, inward smile returned, while Sue stared out the window, at the wedge of yellow paddock with the sun full on it, between the empty buildings. She tried not to be afraid of the warm shadow on the wall.

A man came to the door. He was sunburnt and smelt of the sea.

Inviting him in, Sue could almost see the sticky fingermarks left by children's hands. The client was wearing a faded blue T-shirt, khaki shorts.

Sue felt grateful, once again, for the distraction.

Back in the girls' room, she watched Laura make more tea. She sucked the racy smell of mint up into her throat and nasal passages, holding it there for as long as she could.

When Laura said, ‘I can do the next one,' Camilla replied, ‘Better not,'

An exchange of glances revealed nothing more than that Laura believed she was able to carry on, that all three of them were able to do that. But Laura still hadn't told them exactly what had happened. Sue had thought this didn't matter to Camilla as much as it did to her, but perhaps she was wrong.

Mid-summer twilight picked out colours and augmented them. A bubble burst, that had held them in its silky skin. Sue knew that it would make no difference, having gone to the travel centre, having waltzed out as though they were coming home from holidays.

Again, they decided to leave early. Sue was unlocking her car when a voice behind her made her turn around. It was Bernie Shapcott, who owned the lawnmower sales and repair shop.

Sue nodded. Bernie said, ‘Come and have a drink with me.'

Surprised, Sue stopped with the car key in her hand. It felt suddenly too heavy to hold.

Bernie smiled. ‘It's early. Plenty of time for a drink.'

Sitting at a table for two in a nearby bar, Bernie looked at Sue and said, ‘If it'd been anybody else I would've gone straight to the cops.'

Sue shivered underneath the air-conditioning.

Bernie smiled again, pleased with his discretion. He squared his shoulders under a blue denim shirt that looked too loose, too big for a man of his size. All Bernie's clothes, Sue realized, were bought a size too big, as though he saw himself as larger than he was.

‘You're crazy,' she told him. ‘You've been having a bad dream.'

Bernie went on smiling, alert to each of Sue's reactions, shrewd decisions moving in and out behind his eyes. His expression said that he was prepared to humour her, that he had all night.

‘Honestly, you dreamt it. I'm leaving now,' Sue said. ‘I don't want my beer.'

Sue called Camilla, who said they ought to wait for Bernie to make his next move.

‘He must've seen us going down the fire stairs. He must've been in there with the lights out.'

‘Devious little prick,' Camilla said.

Sue did another load of washing. After the machine had finished its cycle, she lifted her face to a thankful night breeze while she hung white sheets on the line. Neither silence nor domestic noises made her freeze inside, or closed her throat up the way it did when she remembered Bernie's face.

A person pulling on a tie soon discovered the limits of its elasticity. Sue imagined fitting a tie around Josef Kafer's handsome neck, and pulling tight. There was a kind of justice in it. A small moment of indecision, one of the hiatuses common to foreplay between strangers, gave way to resolution before Sue, in her imagination, climbed on top of Josef, and, using the strong muscles of her thighs and abdomen, her knees to balance, began to tighten further.

This was the game that she had never played in fact, and believed she would have refused to play, had she been asked, because it was too dangerous. But she knew the moves, as though she'd made them many times, and understood exactly when to stop.

The urgency was in her fingers now, which shook convulsively; Sue could not stop them shaking. She pictured Josef, in his urgency, pushing Laura roughly to one side. Josef had not climaxed. He, or Laura, or both of them together, had got the timing wrong.

Again, Sue felt her own strong fingers on the tie. The colours of it! She saw herself watching and controlling, willing to oblige. She felt so confused that for a moment she really did believe that it had been her in there with Josef, not Laura at all.

Sue waited for Bernie to make his next move, and pondered whether waiting was the right thing to do, or whether they ought to seize the initiative; but she could not think what this initiative might be.

In the days when she still smoked, she liked to sit with a fag in the park opposite her block of flats, and watch the high school kids who met to smoke as well, and flirt and conduct whatever business high school kids conducted, in the hollow on the far side of the pine trees.

She knew why that spot was a favourite. It was the one she would have picked, hidden from nosy grown-ups by the lie of the land and a screen of conifers. Now the teenagers were somewhere else, on holiday with their parents most likely. It was the pressures of school and the release at three o'clock that brought them to the hollow.

All the afternoons Sue had sat and watched the kids rolled into one long afternoon, and she felt the pleasure of watching without being watched, keeping a silent vigil, which brought her back to Bernie. She thought she might as well have a cigarette; she could buy some at the shops.

Rain pounding on thirsty asphalt sent its thick perfume up through the open window of the girls' room. Sue drank it in as though she couldn't get enough of what was ordinary, suburban, pertaining to her suburb, with its hectares of light industry, its few and scattered trees. She wasn't hungry; nicotine made up for that. Not feeling hungry was a novel sensation and she savoured it.

When the phone rang, she answered it without thinking.