Green (45 page)

‘Mate,' he says to me while Status Quo's still playing, ‘we've got a stack of “world” songs coming up. Not so many about chickens, but a stack of “world” songs. We've got some gun researchers on our show.'

Cars are driving past honking horns, people are waving, Status Quo is blaring from the speakers on top of the White Lightning. Richie the Rat and his crew stuff burgers into their faces.

‘Back on air in ten,' he says as the chorus repeats. ‘And we might just go with the chicken and the little lady, I think. No offence, Ron, it's just a question of the market. These kids look very Double B to me.' The chorus repeat tapers off, and he signals us to be ready. ‘So,' he says dramatically, ‘the Rat Man's out and about and back live at World of Chickens, Moggill Road, Taringa, home of the famous hotplate chicken burger, where they're giving it all away White-Lightning Freebie-Friday style for about another forty minutes. Come on down if you're in the neighbourhood. No, cross town for these burgers. Trust me, you won't regret it. And now, live here with me, I've got the big chook himself. And what's your name, mate?'

He trusts the microphone up into the beak. It's silver with a green foam end with two Bs on it. What's my name? What's my bloody bloody name? Do chickens even have them? Phil the chicken. Phil the chicken. Fill the chicken with what? And how would Sophie feel if I grabbed all the glory? What's my name? I've lost it again. What's my name in the real world even, not the chicken world? Starts with a P, sounds like an F. I want to go to the Mater now. My mouth is moving. There's no sound.

‘I'm Vanessa, Richie,' a voice says next to me, and the mike vanishes. ‘I'm Vanessa . . .' louder all of a sudden, booming from the top of the White Lightning . . . ‘and I'm nearly seventeen, I'm a Gemini and I'm in charge of the signs and that around here. And I've got to tell you there's No one else does famous hotplate chicken like these guys, and there's No one else does classic rock like the Bs.'

‘Little lady, you're playing my song. Why don't you tell us some more about you.'

‘Well, it's early days yet, Richie, but I've got plans. I would have liked to have done hydraulics—like, a platform, with the chicken going up and down—but I can't really do hydraulics yet. But at night-time we've got a strobe. That's cool. I got it from my brother, the oldest. Hi, AJ.'

‘And how do you think it's going here?'

‘Mate, it's ripping along. Take a look.'

‘And where to for you after this Vanessa?'

‘Like, right now?'

‘No, your future. Tell us more about those plans. Is there a guy on the scene, maybe? Where does a bright young thing like you see herself going from here?'

‘Well, Richie, I'd be happy doing any of this kind of stuff, maybe even lopping trees. I'm a pretty fair climber and I've been working on the upper-body strength. I want something outside, anyway. I like it outside.'

‘That's great, Vanessa. Don't you go away now.'

‘No way. Hey, could you play some Alice Cooper for me? “You and Me” by Alice Cooper? That's a pretty special song. And could I say a cheerio to the guys at Green Loppers, 'cause they always listen to Double B and they dropped me off here on their way to a job this morning.'

‘No problem. We've got a few more world songs coming up first, but I'm sure we can find some Alice Cooper for you, Vanessa. But right now, an oldie but a goldie, Engelbert Humperdinck and “Winter World of Love”.'

The song begins, the overblown strings rising from the car and drifting across Taringa. I'm still stuck wondering if the chicken has its own name, wondering why the hell we hadn't sorted that out earlier, when Richie the Rat says they'll be on their way shortly, and how would the little lady feel about a bit of a tour of the back of the White Lightning?

‘We've got to get her on her way to work, unfortunately.' Suddenly, I come across a voice when it's really needed. ‘But I'm sure she'd love a couple of stickers.'

When they're gone, Vanessa—laden with stickers, a Double B jeans patch and cap and a Rat Man T-shirt—says, ‘I can't believe you did that for me. Just stood aside and let me do the talking.'

‘No problem. I didn't actually know you'd be so good at it.'

‘Sometimes,' she says philosophically, ‘you only get one shot at things, hey? Mate, this has been great. Bloody excellent. Like, I'm a shithouse florist.'

 

*

 

Even Ron tells me it was good work, letting Vanessa have a turn, and he calls it ‘a knack for spotting talent'.

We're in his car on the way to the Mater, and I'll be no more than a few minutes late for Antenatal Clinic. This morning was only a start but it was a good start, so we can perhaps relax a little. The sun's coming through the jacaranda trees on Coronation Drive and the day is warming up. Ron plays Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass and says, ‘Do you mind?' before taking the scarf my mother gave me out of its bag and wrapping it round his neck. He pushes a couple of buttons and the windows and sun roof slide open. Cold air swirls around in the car and Ron—I can tell—pretends we're cruising the wide open road.

The scarf flaps around, Ron nods his head in time with the raucous horn section on one of the livelier tracks.

 

The wind slips through the open Merc, cool morning wind on your face. You could have done with some of that before the interviews. Next time, you decide, you'll be firm with them. There'll be no media commitments so early in the day. Or, at the very least, there'll be a couple of assistants plying you with strong coffee and croissants. No, bagels. What kind of life do they think you lead? What kind of time do they think you keep? You've never been a morning person, unless it was the morning after a long, unended night. Your parents are the only morning people you know, and they hardly understand you at all.

 

Yep, cutting chicken burgers, Ron and the Mater out of the story of this morning does improve it quite a lot. I'm sure it makes me sound at least a little like a movie guy who's hitting the breakfast media. While his head's still coming out of last night's party, of course.

‘That was good,' Ron says. ‘Wasn't it? Back there . . .'

‘Yeah. It could really give us a kick along. It'll be interesting to see what Sophie's planning next.'

‘So,' he says in a reflective way, ‘there's a bit of hope for the World, the dental business is done . . .'

‘Yep.'

‘Okay, next issue . . . next issue. You don't mind do you?'

Do I mind? ‘No.' Does that question have any other answer?

‘I can tell you this,' he says, gripping the wheel firmly with both hands and turning instantly less reflective, ‘because you're medical and you're a mate.' I think I could be about to mind. ‘Actually, it's more of a query than an issue. And it mightn't be much . . .'

‘Mmmm.' Minimal encourager. Damn. I should be ducking for cover, not mmmming.

‘It's about this . . . situation, I suppose you'd call it. Just a question about this situation, and you can probably set me straight. It's not a big issue. Just wondering, you know. I've, um, how should I . . . it looks like I've, um, I've lost my edge.'

‘Lost your edge? I don't think so. You backed everyone's plans this morning and ended up with a winner on your hands. I don't think you have to come up with every good idea yourself.'

‘Yeah, not that edge. This'd be the other edge.'

‘The other edge?'

‘Mate, I'm talking about my edge as a man.'

‘What?'

‘The old fella, mate. He's behaving, well, like an old fella. Like the kind of fella who'd rather take it easy early on than come to the party. If you get me.'

‘The party . . .' He's impotent. This is Ron Todd code for impotent, and it's me who's getting told about it. ‘Oh. You mean . . .'

‘Yeah. For a while, now. Quite a while. And it's not for want of trying.'

‘Well, you know . . .'

‘No, mate,
really
trying. I've picked up a few magazines and a video or two. Some mornings I work on it in the shower, just to see if I can get anywhere. But nothing.'

The reticence—the wheel-gripping and staring into the distance—that's all gone now. Replaced by a picture of a wet, nude Ron Todd, silently on the job alone in a Carindale ensuite. And I want to say, ‘Ron, you and the shower, it's not my business,' but it's looking like I'm wrong.

‘It happened round about the time we bumped up the loan to make a move on Max's Snax,' he says. ‘I've never had a loan like this before. It was round about then, anyway. And I thought that, if I threw myself into the work, that'd take my mind off it and it'd settle itself.'

‘And Zel? How's she responded, because . . .'

‘Oh, no, I haven't talked about it with Zel. I can't tell her something like that. She means the world to me. I wouldn't want to upset her. I haven't even told her the business stuff, and it's driving me crazy. But why do both of us need to be crazy? That's why I wanted to fix it. I wanted to fix it before my masculinity was seriously on the line. If that's possible. But you can tell me—is it the kind of thing that, once it's gone, it's gone? Is that what I'm looking at here?'

‘No, no that shouldn't be it at all.'

So here we are, in the Coronation Drive peak-hour traffic, and soon enough I'm taking a history of Ron's impotence. There's no choice. We go into the timing, into the details of his inability to achieve and maintain erections, into possible features of predisposing conditions. And I have the feeling that, if I didn't take an interest—a clinical kind of interest—Ron might not have talked about this again with anyone, and the problem would never come close to being fixed.

I get to discover, in Ron's own words, just how great a toll the stress of business and the recurrent dental abscesses have been taking on him. More than enough, I suspect, to be causing a whole range of problems. I tell him that sometimes that's all it takes and, whether it is that or not, his stress problems need dealing with, anyway. And not just by playing his tapes more, or buying a new self-help book. He should get this looked at, all of it, properly looked at, and in the meantime he should assume that something will be able to be done.

‘It doesn't look any different, I don't think,' he says when we're stopped at a red light.

He starts undoing his belt buckle and shuffling around with his pants.

‘Not my area,' I tell him as quickly as I can, but not before the driver of the big yellow brewery truck next to us has started taking an interest. ‘A good GP'd be the first person to talk to about this.'

So he keeps his pants on, and we manage to merely blur the boundary a little more than usual, rather than completely obliterating it.

Meanwhile, Ron doesn't know it but, as we're sorting out World of Chickens, his private life might be slipping away. The problems might be bigger and more urgent than he realises. I'm angry with Frank, and I'm angry with Zel. Frank and his dumb speculation about a war injury and his general recklessness, Zel for not doing her part to sort this out. And I'm in the middle. Only me. It's up to me.

The lights change, and the road follows the curve of the river around to the right. On the freeway, the cold air comes in fiercely but Ron keeps the windows open.

Should I talk to Frank? Go back to Frank again and tell him what it is that might be going on? Impress upon him that Ron and Zel have a problem that should be fixable. Frank, whose fingertips wrinkle regularly from jacuzzi water, who has worn two new ties this week. Who can't, I realise, be trusted to do the right thing since, the way I look at it, he's been doing the wrong thing for weeks and hasn't seen the problem. Or do I have to go over his head? Do I have to go in boots and all and do I have to do it now?

We change lanes and move onto the Stanley Street off ramp. We'll be there in minutes. I'll put my white coat on, I'll call in a patient, this'll all keep for another time. Another shot at Frank, another attempt to make him see sense.

If I say nothing now, that's my only option.

‘My mother . . . she does some acting.'

‘Yeah? I think I'd heard that.'

‘She's about to be in
Pirates of Penzance
at the Arts Theatre. They're rehearsing it now. And I think she's at a point with it where she could really use some style advice, particularly hair—those things can be tricky when you're doing G&S, particularly bringing it up to date a bit—and I was wondering . . .'

‘Zel, Zel's your girl.'

‘That's what I thought. So what'd be the best way to get in touch with her? Her pager maybe? We've probably got to get her involved pretty quickly.'

We pull into the patient-drop-off zone outside the Mater Mothers' and he says, ‘Yeah, that's probably the best way. She's hard to track down during the day otherwise. Here, I'll give you the number.' He writes it on the back of a business card. ‘The first one's the number you call, then you ask for the other number. That's the actual pager.'

‘Great. Thanks.'

‘No problem. Thank you. About the other thing. You really think it can be sorted out?'

‘Yes, I do. I think we should assume it can be sorted out, one way or another, and you should do whatever you can to make that happen. So you should make that call to your GP and go in and mention everything you've told me today. And we can't know for sure how it'll go, but you've got to do that.'

‘Yeah. Yeah, right,' he says. ‘I knew you were the one to talk to.'

‘That's okay. Well, good luck.'

It sounds dumb when I say it, but I don't know what else to say. What do GPs say when they refer people to specialists? I should learn that some time.