The Boy Under the Table (19 page)

The thin man’s voice had been kind but the gun under the counter was there for all to see. When she’d looked around properly Tina had lost the nerve to sell the locket. The shop was filled with reminders of better times. A signed guitar hung on the wall and even though she couldn’t make out the signature it had obviously meant a lot to someone. There were rings under the glass counter that told the stories of broken hearts and broken lives and some slim laptops that told of broken dreams. People didn’t start out wanting to stand on street corners and obliterate their mind any way they could. At some stage everyone had dreams.

Tina hated the idea that her locket would join the debris of so many other lives. She would keep the memory for herself. She would wait until the hunger was too much and then she would think again.

‘Save it for a rainy day,’ said the thin man with a thin-lipped smile.

Hello
, thought Tina looking at the locket.
Hello, hello, it’s fucking pouring down here
.

So what now?

She could keep the pictures. Did the oval locket engraved with flowers really matter? She held the locket in her hand. Even in the freezing air of one in the morning the gold felt warm. It was her last connection to home. Her last piece of the boring, predictable life she would never get back.

What was it worth to get Lockie home?

You’re just a kid, Christina. You couldn’t have done anything.

‘Come on, Lockie, we’ve got one more stop to make.’

If only saving Tim could have been so simple.

She walked on through the streets. Lockie stumbled after her. He was almost asleep on his feet but of course he didn’t protest. Finally she got tired of pulling him along so she hung the backpack on her front. She lifted him onto her back and felt his head drop onto her shoulder. He stayed awake for a while, reading street signs and talking to her.

She was pleased to feel that he was a little heavier than he had been when she found him. At least she had done that right.

On William Street there was a twenty-four-hour pawnbroker. Tina had walked the streets enough to know that the shop really was always open. There were times when money was needed right then and there, and just like there would always be dealers willing to get you high there would always be people willing to provide the money. It was all just business. The exchange of drugs and money and bodily fluids—all just business.

‘I’m doing my bit to keep the economy going,’ Ruby had laughed, but she hadn’t been able to keep herself going.

Tina never had the full story from Ruby, but one night, just before she knew what she had, Ruby talked about a dinner with her parents and grandparents.

‘It was a proper banquet,’ she said. ‘Mum cooked for days and all my aunties came as well. It was to celebrate the New Year. The food was so good, Tina, you wouldn’t believe it. Not like the restaurant crap—it was the real thing. We ate and ate and ate but after a while I looked around and I couldn’t recognise anyone. They didn’t know what I knew about the men in my family. They didn’t know fuck-all. It was like I was sitting at the table with a whole lot of strangers, know what I mean?’

Tina nodded. She knew exactly what her friend meant.

‘Poor Ruby.’

‘Who’s Ruby?’

Lockie had been so silent Tina had thought he was asleep.

‘What? Oh, no one. Well, not no one. She was a friend, a good friend of mine.’

‘Maybe she could help us get some money.’

‘No, Lockie, she can’t.’

‘Why can’t she? My friend Tyler once gave me some money on tuckshop day. Mum forgot and Tyler had extra so he gave me some. I paid him back ’cos Mum said that’s what friends do. We could pay Ruby back if she gave us some money.’

Tina laughed. ‘Yeah, I suppose we could, but Ruby’s gone away.’

‘Where’s she gone?’

‘Remember what I said about asking too many questions?’

‘My dad says questions are good. He says if you don’t ask you’ll never know.’

‘I bet you ask your mum and dad lots of questions.’

‘Yeah, I like to know stuff. Sometimes Mum looks up the answers on the internet.’

‘She does?’

‘Yeah. Mum likes the internet. It helped her learn to ice her cakes.’

‘What’s the best birthday cake your mum ever made you?’

Lockie was getting heavier with each block.

‘When I turned eight she made a treasure chest. It had gold coins coming out of it but the coins were chocolate and we got to eat them. Tyler and me got to eat the pirate sign. It was made of black icing. It looked like it would be yuck but it was good.’

Tina listened to Lockie talk. His voice was a little boy’s voice again. Light and high and she knew he was using the memories to push the other thoughts away. Lockie’s memories were good for that. Tina had used thoughts to push the memories away. Now she listened to Lockie. She walked in the cold, listening to Lockie and she didn’t think about anything else.

Tina set Lockie down in front of the shop. He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. In the yellow light he was ghostlike and frail.

She pressed the buzzer and after a few minutes the door was opened by a huge man with a gun at his side. They had obviously looked her over with a camera and decided she wasn’t too great a threat. Lockie came up to her chest when he stood next to her. Tim had been big for eight but Tina had always been small.

‘Yeah?’ said the man. He was wearing a white shirt covered with grease stains and he smelled like fried chicken. He looked like he came from one of the islands and Tina could see where Ruby might have got the idea of Billy from.

‘I want to sell this,’ said Tina, holding up the memory.

The man picked his teeth with his little finger. ‘Okay, come in. But your kid better not touch anything.’

‘He won’t.’

There was another man behind the counter. He had a long black beard and dark eyes. The remains of the fried chicken lay on a plate on the counter. It could have been dinner time instead of one in the morning. Tina wondered if someone else took over during the day or if the man was permanently awake, catching sleep when he could.

‘Yeah?’ he said.

‘Not too big on conversation, you blokes,’ said Tina.

Lockie sat down in an overstuffed chair.

No one smiled. The two men looked at her with statue faces.

Tina was not a big one for conversation either but she felt the need to connect to the men in the shop. She was going to give them the last piece of the old Tina she had left. She would have loved them to chat with her, to ask her questions and find out just how important the locket was, but it was easier to connect to the characters on television than it was for people to connect to each other.

Business was business.

Tina stopped wasting the man’s time.

‘I need to sell this.’

The man behind the counter got out his magnifying glass. He looked the locket over and then he burped.

‘I can give you twenty dollars.’

Tina gasped. ‘The man at the shop two streets from here offered me a hundred and that was two years ago.’

‘Go there then.’

‘I can’t go there, I need the money now. It’s an antique and its eighteen-carat gold.’

The man sighed and took a sip of some green-coloured tea. ‘This is not a charity, you know.’

‘Yeah I do fucking know. I’m not asking for charity. I’m just asking for what’s fair.’

‘Watch your language, girlie. I don’t need to deal with your shit.’ It was true. The man didn’t have to deal with anything he didn’t want to deal with. He had the money and the bodyguard. The power was all his.

Tina wondered what it would be like to feel that you were the one in control. She was in control of fuck-all but no one could make her sell the locket. Tina looked at her feet. They could wait one more day. The thought of giving away the locket for so little was too much to handle. It was just a thing and she knew that but she couldn’t just throw it away. She would go to the other shop in the morning. The prospect of taking care of Lockie for another day, of keeping him fed and getting him to the toilet, of keeping him safe and stopping him from falling apart was exhausting, but they could wait one more day. She picked up the locket and turned to go.

‘Forty dollars,’ said the man.

‘That’s not even half what it’s worth.’

‘Take it or leave it. I don’t care.’

Lockie was fast asleep in the chair. He should have been home in his own bed sleeping on cowboy sheets or whatever it was little boys slept on these days.
Why is it my problem?

Just because. Just because. Just because.

‘I’ll take it.’

The man smiled and took the locket back. He opened it and grabbed a small screwdriver to pry the pictures out.

‘I don’t want them,’ said Tina.

The man lifted his dark eyebrows at her. ‘Sure? I’m just going to throw them away.’

‘Sure,’ said Tina. She wasn’t any better than her mother really. It was hard work holding on to your grief.

Tim wasn’t three anymore and she wasn’t ten. She could barely remember being ten. She could barely remember being a child. Why hang on to the pictures? The memories only hurt.

Tina put the money in her backpack and lifted Lockie up into her arms. He was heavy to carry that way. She stepped back a little as she adjusted to his weight. His head lolled on her small shoulder but he refused to wake up.

Good for you, kid
, thought Tina.

She staggered to the shop door. Lockie was a dead weight but she couldn’t put him down. In more ways than one.

Fifty-seven dollars.

They needed sixty-five.

She would have to ask Mark for the rest.

The man in the white shirt opened the door for her and she walked out into the cold. The wind blew in circles around her head and she felt the exhaustion begin to take over. She had only walked a few steps when she heard a shout.

‘Hey, lady!’

Tina stopped and then tensed. The shout was probably not directed at her but it was best not to find out. She started to run but Lockie got heavier with each step and she didn’t get very far before she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned around, prepared to fight.

The big man in the white shirt was standing in front of her. He was panting.

‘Fuck . . . what . . . did . . . you . . . run for?’

‘Sorry,’ said Tina.

‘Here,’ said the man. He handed her a small plastic bag with the two photographs inside. ‘You should keep them. That shit is important. You should keep them.’

Tina shifted Lockie to one side and took the plastic bag.

‘Thanks,’ she said.

The man nodded and turned around to walk back to the shop. Tina felt a surge of warmth in her body. The man was right. She should keep the pictures. She was grateful he had run after her. It wasn’t something she would have expected.

She had to put Lockie down then. She couldn’t carry him one more step. She shook him a little and he stumbled on, holding her hand.

Back at the squat she put Lockie on the mattress and covered him with a sleeping bag. She would wait up for Mark. Maybe he could lend her the money—and by the time he needed it back again she would be on a train to Cootamundra.

She felt bad for thinking that way; Mark was her friend. But Lockie was her responsibility. There was a huge difference.

Mark came in at four in the morning. Tina was dozing when she heard the door slam.

‘Hey,’ she said when Mark looked into the room. She had one candle dying on a saucer on the floor.

‘Hey, you still got that kid?’

‘Yeah. I found out about the train.’

‘Yeah?’

‘It leaves at seven forty-two in the morning from Central. I have to wake the kid up soon so I can get there and get tickets.’

The numbers repeated themselves in her head. Seven, four, two; seven, four, two. They were her anchor. They held her fast to her choice. Seven, four, two was all she needed to concentrate on.

‘Okay.’

‘The thing is . . .’

‘Yeah?’

‘I need another eight dollars.’

‘That’s a lot.’

‘I know, but the tickets are sixty-five dollars. I need to get him home. Do you think you can help?’

‘That’s a lot of money, Tina. There’s no one on the street. I need to keep some for myself.’

‘I know, and I know it’s a lot to ask, but I’m desperate. Maybe you could ask the other guys. If everyone gave a little . . .’

‘You should have let us watch him. You could have worked.’

‘He’s my responsibility, Mark. I have to take care of him. I’ll pay you back, but I have to get him home first.’

Mark ran his hands through his tight curls. ‘You won’t be coming back.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘I just know. You won’t. You don’t really belong here.’

‘No one belongs here.’

‘Yeah, but especially not you. You should be at uni or . . . or somewhere else. I don’t know.’

Tina couldn’t see Mark properly in the dim light but she could hear something in his voice. He didn’t really want her to come back. He wanted her to move out and move on. Tina could do it for him, too. She knew Mark was certain he would never escape the Cross. Maybe it helped to see a mate get out.