Inbetween Days (5 page)

Trudy's gaze flickered. ‘Not that stupid game. I wouldn't know where to start.'

‘Start at the beginning.'

‘It's a long story and not much happens.' She moved her hand as if to brush me away. ‘And Jack? Next time, leave me a note.'

‘I can take care of myself,' I said, flopping onto my other side.

‘That's exactly what I said.' She closed the door.

CHAPTER FOUR

The new supermarket in Burt, a twenty-minute drive away, was bigger, cleaner, and they discounted dented cans and threw out soft fruit. In the roadhouse, Alby left everything on the shelf until it either sold or rotted away; he relied on customers who only ever bought enough goods to fill a handbasket, or locals who didn't drive, or pensioners who had never shopped anywhere else. The population of Mobius was about six hundred and falling, so that amounted to an average of nineteen customers per day, which meant I had to serve approximately one person every thirty-six minutes. And that was only if Astrid called in sick, which she did that Tuesday and Wednesday.

It gave me plenty of time to think about things I didn't want to think about.

Alby popped in and out. The rattling of the metal staircase always told me he was coming well before I saw his tired gnome-face. Upstairs, Mr Broadbent would occasionally shriek and Alby's soothing tone would follow. Through the pipes and cracks in the ceiling, their sounds were as clear as if I had my ear pressed to the door.

Nothing much happened until just after two, then three things happened.

I had just finished polishing the floor with the dry mop. The bells above the shop door jangled, signalling, in the same second, the arrival of a customer and my discovery of the four hundred and seventeenth black diamond. I leaned the mop against the shelving and took a measured breath.

‘
Ahem
.'

‘Be right there.'

I must have miscounted, or counted out of sync. But no, the aisles were five black diamonds across, and the middle and outside diamonds counted as odds, the two inside rows as evens…

‘Excuse me?'

‘Just a
minute
!'

Alby might have moved something. The diamonds I couldn't see I didn't count. And if I'd counted out of sync I would have noticed sooner, plus there would be an even number at the end instead of one stray…

‘Can I have…?'

I whacked the mop handle with the flat of my hand. It fell to the floor, twanging. I walked up the aisle to the checkout. Bradley Creech: local, nice-looking, a little intense. We had done it, twice, in the back seat of his car. I hadn't seen him around in a while, not since soon after I'd left school.

‘Hey, Brad,' I said. ‘What can I do for you?'

He cocked his head and gave an apologetic shrug, like he was still trying to place my face.

Maybe it was the juggling act my brain was trying to perform—either a new black tile had materialised or I had been counting wrong for
seven years—
but I had the sudden urge to make him remember.

The bells jangled again.

‘About a year ago. You and me.'

‘Sorry.' He shifted uncomfortably. ‘I just want to know if you have any masking tape.'

‘We have sticky tape. Here.' I reached behind me and slapped a roll onto the counter. ‘It was right after you broke it off with Tegan. We were drinking and you had to leave your car at the…'

‘I'll just go to the hardware.' He left.

My vision narrowed to a pinprick of light. I started at the beginning, counting slowly, stepping into each diamond as I worked my way down aisle one. If I could just get to four hundred and sixteen, I would go back to the counter, serve my eleventh customer with a smile on my face and everything would go back to the way it was.

‘Have you lost something?' said a deep voice.

Yeah. I'd lost count. ‘No, I've found it, but I need to make sure.'

‘Can I help?'

The third thing: Jeremiah Jolley counted diamonds with me in Bent Bowl Spoon.

‘Where would you like me to begin?'

I asked him to start at the end, to only count the whole ones. We passed each other at the halfway point in aisle two; he didn't look up, but I stopped counting and watched him right to the end. He gave every diamond grave attention, like he might be graded on his final answer.

It would have been a couple of years since I'd last seen him—I guessed he would be eighteen now. Jeremiah wore loose jeans and a sloppy black T-shirt that looked two sizes too big. His hair was the same: dark, shaggy, down to his shoulders. His voice was familiar but much deeper, his words still precise, as if he'd written them down earlier and knew them by heart. He walked the same way, as if he was being shoved along from behind by an invisible pair of hands, and he kept his head down the way I remembered, although that was probably because he was counting. But there was a startling difference: he'd grown so tall and broad it was a wonder he hadn't split through his skin. Jeremiah was never present enough in my life for me to notice exactly when he left. He was always odd and kind of cold. I'd hoped life would work out for him, in the same way I hoped an unwanted puppy would be adopted from a shelter—I cared but he wasn't the one I'd pick.

I continued, though I'd lost count. We met back at the front counter.

‘How is your mum?' It seemed like the right question, though I had a dozen others I would rather have asked.
You look different; do you feel different? Are you still the same scared, weird little kid on the inside? Did the bullying stop when you went away, or are people cruel wherever you go?

‘Certifiable. I came to sign the papers,' he said.

Rumour had it he knew all the answers and then some, but Jeremiah's gaze was a steady, dark-edged grey that revealed nothing.

‘Oh. Sorry.' I looked away, embarrassed.

‘I'm joking. They're trying to get her medication right.'

‘Well, I hope she's better soon. She's really proud of you. She talks about you all the time when she comes in.'

He seemed alarmed at that.

Roland Bone slammed his way through the door.

‘How long does it take you to get my smokes, J?'

Jeremiah shrugged. ‘Roly's driving me around until I can fix Mum's car.'

‘It's great you guys are still friends,' I said. Roly pointed and I reached for the packet of cigarettes. ‘I hardly see anyone from school.'

‘We're not friends. We're co-survivors,' Roly said, and looked up at Jeremiah. ‘He got big, didn't he? I'll tell you, though, he could have bloomed earlier and saved us a whole lot of walking the long way home.' He peered down at his own scrawny frame and flexed a bicep. ‘I tried protein shakes but nothing happened. Those guys on the label are probably on the juice—knowing my luck I'd just grow another head.'

‘Well, if you're going to have two heads, Mobius is the right place for you.' I passed him the packet. ‘Anyway, you look all right to me, Roly.'

He checked his watch. ‘I'll be a man in sixty-five days, three hours and nine minutes. Will you wait for me, Jack?'

‘Not in your best sweaty dream, Roland Bone.'

Jeremiah handed me a twenty-dollar note.

Roly laughed. ‘Erin Morgan had six toes on each foot, remember? Geez, is there even a name for that?'

‘Polydactyly,' said Jeremiah.

‘Ever met a chick with a third nipple?' Roly unwrapped the packet, tapped out a cigarette and wedged it behind his ear.

Jeremiah didn't blink. ‘It's more common than you might think.'

Roly gave me a look loaded with apology. ‘He still thinks he's smarter than the rest of us. I thought that might change once he discovered vaginas and marijuana. See ya, Jack.'

Jeremiah followed. When he reached the door he turned and mumbled, ‘It was before he broke it off with Tegan. And I counted four hundred and seventeen.'

That afternoon Ma strolled past the roadhouse again, dragging her shopping trolley behind her. It sagged, nothing inside it. She wore her town clothes, a white blouse and navy pants—she never left the house in a dress—and her hair was pulled into a tight bun that pulled the wrinkles from her face and squeezed them into her chin. She held her spine too straight; she walked like royalty in cheap shoes.

‘Mum' was too soft for somebody like Ma. She was all acute angles and short sentences and sharp slaps, if we asked for it, and we often did. Trudy had worn the edges off Ma's temper by the time she left, and I got off lightly. I wondered if Dad was copping it now. Still, I felt a surge of affection for her swollen ankles and sensible shoes.

I'd ignored the diamonds successfully for a couple of hours. Instead I focused on unpacking Alby's botched order of forty cartons of toilet paper. I began building a display, hoping to shift as many rolls as I could before they ended up in our spare room. I stacked two solid piers on either side of aisle two and tried to join them with an arch in the middle, but the arch collapsed. I settled for using a bridge of cardboard and the thing ended up looking like a doorway.

Upstairs, the old man moaned and shrieked. I thought of Gypsy, going quietly. Mr Broadbent, not so.

Alby called me. ‘Latch the shop door, Jack. It will only take a few minutes, if you don't mind.'

I went up. Alby, still wearing pyjamas, was trying to open his father's mouth.

I picked up two yellow pills. ‘Won't he take them?'

Alby shook his head. He wiped his hands on his pyjama bottoms. ‘He wants his whisky and I'm not giving it to him. '

‘What do you want me to do?'

‘Ask him,' he whispered. ‘He might do it for you. Otherwise we'll have to hold him down.'

Mr Broadbent tapped his foot and whistled through his false teeth.

Me, half the size of them both, trying to hold a grown man down while Alby forced pills down his throat? Not likely.

‘Please, will you…?' I leaned across suddenly and pinched Mr Broadbent's nostrils. His mouth opened and in went the pills, far enough down his throat that he either had to swallow or choke. I pulled my fingers back before he bit. He swallowed. And shrieked.

‘Now why didn't I think of that?' Alby sighed. ‘Can you watch him while I take a quick shower? Shop'll be all right.'

‘Of course.'

I sat on the windowsill next to his recliner, reading aloud from the newspaper, one eye on the street in case a customer came by. I'd done the same thing dozens of times before. Alby always took ages. I would, too, if I had to put up with all that shrieking. As long as he was done by half past four, I didn't mind. Alby had hidden the clocks, but somehow Mr Broadbent knew—in the same way Gypsy knew we were going for a walk before I picked up her lead. I could handle most things, but not his four-thirty routine.

I fed him small pieces of a corned-beef sandwich and half-filled a glass from the whisky bottle hidden up high on the kitchen cupboard.

I found a box of Jenga blocks under the coffee table and started building a tower. Mr Broadbent's foot stopped tapping. He watched. His eyes shifted from my face to my hands, back again. He let me put the last block in place, waited until I turned back to the window, stretched out a shaky finger and knocked the tower down.

‘Alby, look,' I said when he came out, dressed and shaven. ‘Watch this.'

I built the tower again and Mr Broadbent did the same thing.

Alby only flinched at the clatter. ‘Gettin' him to stack it would be real progress. But you're…'

‘…a good girl. Yeah. I know,' I grumbled.

I don't know what made me think I could bring him back. He would respond to certain things, like food, open doors, loud noises, but he reminded me of a wind-up toy:
bam
, then nothing. Maybe it was only one way from wherever he was—one foot in another world and no crossing back.

I packed the blocks away. Mr Broadbent fell asleep with his mouth open. I hoped Alby wouldn't smell the whisky on his breath.

I walked my bike to Astrid's after I finished work. The fuel tank was almost empty—the fumes would just about get me home. Astrid lived in a saggy two-bedroom house at the edge of an empty paddock, half-hidden by thigh-high weeds and an abandoned tractor. She adored company. I'd sit at her kitchen table while she smoked and paced and made plates of finger-food out of whatever she could find in her cupboards.

It took three knocks before she answered. Her eyes were streaming and she had a twisted piece of tissue sticking out of one nostril. Behind her, the TV blared. Adam was sitting cross-legged on the floor, still wearing pyjamas, hypnotised by a cartoon. His dark hair was a static mess and the carpet was littered with lolly wrappers.

‘Oh, you're really sick.'

‘It's worse than it looks.' She sniffed and removed the tissue. ‘And what do you mean,
really
? You mean
very
sick, or
actually
sick?'

‘Actually.'

‘Nice.'

‘Can I come in?'

‘Did we get paid?' Astrid asked.

‘No. Not yet.'

‘Mother
fuck
. Sorry, hon,' she called to Adam.

‘Alby said tomorrow. He has to liquidate some assets.'

‘Which is code for?'

‘I wouldn't count on it.'

‘
Mother
fuck.'

‘So, can I come in?'

‘Look at me,' she wailed. ‘I'm Typhoid Tess.'

‘I won't breathe in.'

‘It's not a good time,' she said. ‘You should go home.'

‘I think I might be going mad.'

‘Are you kidding me? You're the most together person I know.'

‘I spent the afternoon looking after Mr Broadbent. Come on, let me in. What's wrong with you?'

‘Go home, Jack,' Astrid repeated with a sigh. ‘I'm going back to bed.' She closed the door.

I wasn't used to being left standing on her verandah. I wondered what I'd done wrong. I can't read subtext—I never could. It seemed to me that if people would just say what they meant, we'd all get back half our lives in wasted time.