The Courier's New Bicycle (11 page)

No work on for Gail, I use the rest of the day to catch up on sleep. Late afternoon I take the bike out for a spin and make my delivery to Lydia, three suburbs away.

Riding back home, I worry. I've had plenty of time to ponder how I might tackle the subject of Roshani with her brother, Braheem, but I'm not confident he'll welcome a stranger's intrusion, even if it's to help find his sister's attackers. I don't much like the idea of meeting him in his home either, because the squats are usually heavily monitored, and it's likely that among the Tea House's unemployed stockbroker residents there are Neighbourly Watch snitches. I haven't yet ruled out Braheem as one of these — pity Roshani if that turns out to be the case.

Tallis's call comes as I'm entering my laneway: Braheem's invited me around tonight. SANE's emergency team coordinator is a fast worker.

I shower hurriedly then catch a tram to the Tea House.

On Temperance, we roll past a guy scratching up a piece of gum from the pavement. I glance back and see him putting it in his mouth. These are tough times; who knows what scion of the community he might have been five years ago?

The entrance to the squat is on Saviour Street. ‘Scapegoat' would probably be more apt, or ‘Persecution'. The front door is overhung by a jutting lintel. It's small protection against the weather, which is already beginning to chill, an eddying wind whipping up the rubbish in the street and sending it swirling a few metres before just as quickly dropping it. Cap low and collar up, I look for Braheem on the door list, and press the buzzer. He responds immediately, as if he'd been waiting, finger on the intercom button.

The door clicks open. ‘Down in two secs,' he says.

I walk in and immediately see the camera positioned on a cornice. Resisting the instinct to hunch, I stroll deliberately to the sign-in desk.

The visitors register is laid open, a warning propped beside it on a stand:
All visitors must sign in and remain in the foyer until met by a resident. No firearms permitted. No hawkers.
Not exactly reassuring.

The way the squats are run as closed communities with their own sets of laws gives outsiders the impression of crossing into another country. All this foyer needs is a couple of border guards and an X-ray machine.

At the far end is an elevator, stairs beside. The highly
polished floor I assume was added by the defunct hotel group. Braheem arrives down the stairwell, two steps at a time. Dressed in jeans and untucked shirt, he looks both casual and professional. He's very obviously Roshani's brother. His frame, like hers, is delicately compact, and he has the same deep-set eyes, with an alert intelligence about him that makes me want to step up my game before play has even begun.

He extends his right hand. The handshake is firm and brief.

‘Braheem Rani.'

‘Sam Brown.'

‘You'll have to supply your particulars, I'm afraid.' He points to the place on the page. I notice there aren't any other entries for the day. Given the atmosphere of the place, I'm not surprised.

I pause, the pseudonym I'm about to write solid but uninspiring. If I tack an ‘e' onto the surname, it'll suggest a dash of creativity. I follow it with the address of the burnt-down Atonement Street Police Station.
Go check
, I dare the invisible eyes.

Braheem takes the pen. ‘I have to vouch for you. If anything goes wrong — you burgle the place or shoot someone — I cop it.'

He attempts a smile, and I realise that he's a bundle of nervous energy beneath that urbane veneer.

‘I promise I'll behave. After all, we're on
Candid Camera
,' I say to break the awkward moment.

He grimaces apologetically. ‘We have a Residents Committee modelled on the Stasi. Although these days it's more of a front because nobody can be bothered policing the incomings and outgoings of the building like they used to. As you can see, it's not exactly Southern Cross Station' — I note the deliberate use of the old name — ‘especially now the other crowd have set up a stock exchange in the Olderfleet building.'

That's news to me. The Olderfleet is a fine example of Gothic Revival architecture, and a well-known lawyers' squat. Their guild must have entered into some sort of arrangement with the stockbrokers and bankers.

‘The latest craze,' Braheem tells me as we walk towards the stairs, ‘is to speculate on climate change. Not the commodities but the events, like rain and temperature. Investments in Rain are down, but it's a bear market for Solar Flares. Even though the exchange is just a local venture, with walk-ins off the street doing most of the buying and selling, it still does a brisk trade. My friends track the weather patterns like they did the old indexes. They say the stress makes them feel alive again.'

Old habits are hard to break.

‘And you?' I ask. ‘You're not keen to get back into it?'

‘I've got plenty of other stresses making me feel alive.'

As we walk up four flights of stairs — the lift not operational — we maintain a polite silence, neither willing to speak in the reverberant stairwell, as if it might funnel our words through the rest of the building.

Inside his apartment it's a different story.

The door closed, he turns to me, clearly upset. ‘Tell me how she is.'

I'm taken aback. ‘I haven't seen her since she got out of hospital, but I hear she's doing really well and will make a full recovery.'

I just tacked on that last bit — a kind of white lie. But I
hope
she will, and Tallis never said she
wouldn't
, which adds up to almost the same thing.

Instantly he looks less agonised. ‘I'm sorry. It's been terrible, the waiting. I haven't been told yet when I'll be able to see her.'

‘I'm sure it'll be very soon,' I reassure. Another little white lie. Really, I have no idea.

He leads me into a cluttered living room, two sash windows looking north up Saviour.

‘Make yourself comfortable,' he says. ‘Would you like tea?'

‘Please,' I say, and he disappears into the kitchen off the lounge area.

I sit one end of a battered couch with brown and orange flower patterns reminiscent of the body-painting sixties: love, peace and STDs. Opposite is a bookshelf loaded to groaning, an unframed print tacked to the wall above. It's a pastoral scene, and a personal favourite of mine: the ploughman and his horse oblivious to the winged man plunging headfirst into the bay beyond.

Braheem pops his head around the corner. ‘Sorry I couldn't see you earlier. I run a stall at the Queen Vic
Markets, and with so many shops closing down we've extended our hours to cope with the demand. I'm there every day, but I always knock off before sunset. It's one of my rules. The rest of them think I'm crazy losing the evening trade.'

I'm wondering whether it's something religious, or just wanting his dinner early, when he comes out again with a tray holding two teacups and a teapot and answers my question.

‘The truth is, I don't feel safe any more being out at night. I prefer to be home by dark.'

So it's not just Roshani with reason to be scared. Or is it
because of
Roshani?

‘If you don't mind me asking, what do you sell?' None of my business, but I'm curious.

‘I have a small jewellery stall. I used to trade stocks and shares. Now I sell fake Asian trinkets.' He gives a wry smile. ‘My mongoose-tooth fertility charms are winners.'

I'm beginning to like him so I hope he doesn't mean real mongoose teeth.

He catches my look. ‘They're sheep's teeth. This will probably sound macabre to you, but every couple of weeks I take a train out of the city and poke around in the sheep paddocks looking for carcasses. The farmers don't care. They call me “the mad Paki” even though I'm Indian, but they all know the meaning of subsistence living. I pick up whole jawbones, or partials with the teeth still in them, and bring them back here to extract. I have a little lapidary wheel and
polish them up. Then I glue a metal cap on them and attach some leather thong. Sometimes I paint them.'

He begins to pour our tea. I note with approval that it's real, the leaves caught in a strainer.

‘Does anybody ever mention that they look like sheep's teeth?'

‘No. We're living in an age where the willing suspension of disbelief is everything.'

My mind flicks to the mass baptisms of the past several years, and the rise of the prayer groups.

He motions me to help myself to milk and sugar, then goes over to the window and looks down. I see sadness welling in him.

‘I don't condone what my sister does for a living,' he says softly, ‘but these are hard times and we all have to find a way to earn a crust. As for those prayer-vigil predators …' His voice gets an edge. ‘
They
are the monsters, not her.'

His vehemence surprises me. I realise I'd carried in a few unhelpful preconceptions about Roshani's ex-stockbroker brother, one being that he wouldn't be so emotionally open.

I have to broach the subject of her visits. ‘Who knows she comes here every week?'

‘Lots of people. I sign her in. We wave at the camera. They all know she's my sister.'

The question is forming on my lips when he turns to face me.

‘Four months ago, Geeta told me she'd been accepted as a surrogate.'

I file Roshani's real name away for future reference.

‘It seems stupid now,' he goes on, ‘but we didn't think her employers would approve her Sunday visits here, so we decided the best thing was to keep them quiet. She was going to stop soon anyway because her pregnancy was about to show.'

He turns back to the window.

‘You're wondering how she stayed a fertile. She was in India with our parents during the vaccination drives. I was fourteen, and not interested in a trip to see the rellies, none of whom I remembered. I just wanted to be here with my school mates, and so I was billeted with family friends — which meant I got the flu shot along with everyone else. My sister and my parents contracted the virus while they were still over there. I thought they were going to die. They were away for several months, unable to come home until the country quarantines had been lifted.'

‘That must have been very tough on you.'

He doesn't answer immediately. After a bit, he says, ‘I want to thank you for what you did for Geeta that night. Without you there to stop them, who knows how far they would have gone.'

So this is what has earned his confidence in me. Tallis must have told him.

I say the next thing as gently as possible. ‘Have you confided in anyone — another family member, a friend or workmate, anyone at all — about the real circumstances of her pregnancy?'

‘No one. I know how to keep the family's secrets.'

He's adamant, and I feel improper picking so callously at a recent wound.

Downing the dregs of his tea, he comes over to pour some more. ‘It's a cruel irony, isn't it, that here people are crying out for the children they can no longer have, while over there is a burgeoning population still getting rid of girls as they would vermin.'

He's surprising me again with his emotion. I sit back on his flower-power couch and let him talk.

‘In India they had no government initiatives for mass vaccination. How could they? The virus ran its course and you lived or you died. Many died; others developed immunity. That immunity, they're saying now, is being passed across the placental barrier, the antibodies in the mother present in their newborns.' His eyes darken. ‘It's the girl-child killings and widow suttees that are our pandemic. Many people are standing up against such practices, campaigning for education, new laws and punishments, but these things you can't change overnight, or even across generations.'

I can't help thinking of the increased public bullying of transgressives here. Communally held prejudices are like monsters waiting to be given air: all they need is the imprimatur of authority — or its blind eye.

Braheem sighs. ‘Our parents came here to get away from all that and give Geeta and me the chance for a different life: school, university, work, raising our own kids — girls too — in a society that values them. But right now …'

I want to assure him things will change,
must
change. The problem is, I don't feel the reassurance of those sentiments for myself.

Perhaps he sees something of my own despair, and shifts the topic.

‘When can I see her?' he asks.

‘I'll find out,' I promise. ‘What's the best way to contact you?'

‘You could always drop by the markets.'

He sketches the position of his stall in one of the market hangars on a scrap of paper and passes it to me. Then, hand on the doorknob, he struggles to say something else. I wait patiently, the door open a crack.

‘I'd have her stay with me …' He opens his other hand in a gesture of helplessness. ‘But the Residents Committee has strict rules about long-stay visitors, and even here I can't guarantee her safety.'

‘I understand,' I say. ‘Don't beat yourself up over it. She has a good support team right where she is.'

As I leave the apartment, a door on the other side of the landing closes softly and my internal radar pings. Is it coincidence? A neighbour with nothing better to do? Or someone keeping an eye on Braheem Rani and his visitors?

Sometimes I push the gender envelope so Inez and I can smooch in public, and tonight — back from Braheem's and needing the company of my girlfriend — I'm ready to hit the town.

We get changed in my bedroom, horsing around with each other's underwear, then each other. It's too much for Nitro, who makes himself scarce. We collapse, laughing, on the bed, and I marvel how at ease we are together, and how quickly unafraid I've become of her seeing me with all my defences down. She leans over me suggestively and opens one hand to reveal the jet cufflinks I've been chasing.

Despite my almost complete lack of class in the clothes department, occasionally I quite like wearing a suit. It's the feeling of containment it imparts: a kind of camouflage. My ever-practical girlfriend, on the other hand, has decided to go high femme for the evening. I smile as she shimmies up
and bumps her hip against me, that suggestive curve sheathed in something shiny.

I place my hand on her other hip and slide the material up to reach the slim band of her knickers. Then, backing her up against me, I slip my fingers down inside the flare of one hipbone. I get to the plump edge of her mound and she twists towards me, capturing my hand between our bodies. We deep-kiss, pressed together.

For an evening, we'll ‘pass'; but that doesn't mean our antennae won't be up the whole time, gauging the reactions of the other participants in the glam parade and the varying safety of our surroundings. Maleness and femaleness are both performances that contain anxiety for me — but in different ways. Tonight, I pack my jocks and bind what little in the way of breasts I have to hide. It helps to have a strong jawline, and a stippled-in five o'clock shadow is less obvious at night, but it's my voice that's the giveaway — the timbre too light — so Inez will do most of the talking.

 

The gusty winds from earlier have died down, leaving a sharp clarity to the air, the temporary reprieve bringing people onto the streets in droves.

Call me a Luddite, but the city's way more atmospheric now we have traffic restrictions and power outages. Trams slip quietly along the main thoroughfares, horse-drawn buggies clip-clopping beside, the drivers doing a booming business. Zipping past them and the sedate three-wheeler taxis is a near-silent miscellanea of bikes and scooters.
It's hard to imagine wanting the city back as it once was: noisy and impatient, the smog of exhaust inescapable.

Arm in arm, we approach a group shawling up at the top of Little Beatitude Street. They take no notice of me, but Inez,
une femme idéale
, attracts both jealous and admiring glances. Another time, another costume, there'd be baleful stares and mutterings of
perverts
.

Further down Little Beatitude, we step beneath the ornamental gateway that heralds Chinatown. Here every street and alley is lit by rows of lanterns, and the spruikers call us in to eating houses as we pass, each trying to outdo the other with promises, invitations.

I love this place for its mosaic colour and rambunctious market style, everybody busy behind windows packed full of food. Buyers and sellers mingle, the runners with their carts of produce ferrying between restaurants and shops, while those in come-hither finery beckon from the warmly lit doorways of underground bars and gaming houses. In the once-bright city, these details were subsumed by an over-intensity of light. Now they are brought out, individual and distinct, like jewels.

As we make our way among the other walkers, I wonder which of my subtleties might be a tell to the observant eye. What I
hope
they see is a suited man whose particulars have been eclipsed by the gorgeous woman at his side.

We steer left into a laneway. At the end, a single red-lit lantern on a metal chain is suspended from a hook embedded high up in the brick. Madam Lush herself
shepherds us beneath her establishment's carved oak lintel, down the wooden steps to fine Szechuan food and the best in bootleg wine.

Two more hours and we're strolling the city, our bellies full and guards lowered. The dark cloaks us protectively, a besotted couple taking a romantic turn. We enter a narrow walkway into a square. Too late I realise we're in Lord Place.

The Neighbourly Arms is busy, patrons spilling out into the square, the groups around the kegs raucous. We walk with tension now, gripping hands. Just past the tavern is a service alley lit by a bare bulb. Beneath it, a woman in a spangly dress is head thrown back in an ecstatic clinch. The reason is leaning against the wall, his face in shadow, his hand up her skirt.

I do a double-take.

‘I think I just saw Marlene,' I whisper to Inez, and can tell by her expression that she saw her too.

Nobody we know goes by choice to the Neighbourly Arms. I drag back on her arm for another look.

‘Leave it,' says Inez. ‘The company she chooses isn't our concern.'

There's a heat behind her words that I don't understand, but she's right. Why should I be surprised if this is Marlene's way of getting over Gail?

Past midnight we arrive at the speakeasy and waggle fingers at the peephole, then sail in past a stolid Rosie to whom nothing is a surprise any more. Gabe, Marlene's twice-weekly replacement, takes our coats. He's polite to
the point of disinterest, and I find myself missing Marlene's acerbic remarks.

Downstairs, the press of people at the bar fans out to the couches where reclining bodies sprawl amid the smoke and hubbub, while on the dance floor the fit and fearless are gyrating at the poles. On the far side of the room, every alcove has been taken. We find two stools one end of the bar. Trin, who spotted us coming in, takes our order.

Inez leans against me. I can smell the vanilla scent in her hair and the honeys of her skin. It's like swimming into softness. My finger ends tingle with the anticipation of later, laying her back and peeling off the shiny dress moulded so deliciously to her form, then parting her legs in search of other honey, diving into heat and darkness for the pearl between her lips.

The sharp, interrupting smells of cigarettes and aftershave invade. I draw back from Inez to find Crusher standing bullishly between us.

‘Meg says to tell you you're running out of time,' she mutters in my ear.

Silently I curse Meg for sending her minion to muscle in on Inez's and my private space.

I try to straighten on my stool. ‘Tell her I'm still thinking,' I say, and am horrified to hear my words slur.

As Crusher hefts, tanklike, back to Meg's alcove to deliver my reply, anxiety begins to circulate its warning chemicals through me. I'd promised myself I'd deal with the situation calmly, a day at a time, but tonight I'm with Inez and less
than sober. Unhappy thoughts filter like bitter grounds through my foggy brain. I'm playing to keep Meg's offer on the table, but what will stalling buy me, apart from trouble?

Inez jogs my elbow. ‘What was that all about?' She gives me a comical, dishevelled look.

‘Meg's made me an offer I'm not supposed to refuse.'

That sobers her up instantly. ‘What kind of offer?'

‘To work for her. She thinks Gail's going under.'

‘That's outrageous! The gall of the woman — you'd never do that. And Gail is
not
going under just because she's been targeted by a crank.'

Inwardly I squirm. Not so outrageous. News of the bogus kit — and EHg's adamant disassociation from it — has been the topic of the week in the speakeasy, but although Gail has plenty of supporters here, she's in more trouble than Inez or anybody knows. Anybody except Mojo Meg and me.

Suddenly I feel tired and a bit ill. The bubble of euphoria I've been floating in all evening has burst and I just want to leave. I ask Inez home with me, but she makes an excuse. The magic has been snuffed out for her too.

I'm placing out money on the bar for Trin when Crusher returns and slaps an envelope into my hand.

‘Down payment,' she says. ‘Meg thought you could use a little encouragement.'

She leaves, no chance for argument. I stare at the envelope.

This is wrong, so wrong.
Meg, the consummate tactician,
has just corralled me into looking like I'm already a willing player, while I let it happen, too shocked to respond.

Inez interrupts my stupor, her voice tight. ‘You're not going to take it, are you?'

‘No!' I exclaim. It comes out louder than I intended, and Trin looks over to see if we're okay.

‘What are you doing, Sal? Making money deals with Meg is like playing poker with the Devil.'

The worry is apparent in Inez's voice; the uncertainty in her eyes hurts to see.

We gather up our things. I motion
It's fine
to Trin, who's watching without seeming to. On our way out, I drop the envelope, unopened, on the table in Meg's private alcove. Meg makes no move to retrieve it, her eyes like chips of resin fixed on mine.

Inez pulls on my arm. ‘Let's go,' she says, low and angry.

My gal leads me determinedly away, up the speakeasy stairs to collect our coats then out the peepholed door. But the damage has been done, the seeds of doubt sown. Meg knows it. We all know it.