The Courier's New Bicycle (15 page)

Inside Tallis's light-filled office tiredness weights me to the chair, the strain of events beginning to show. My host observes me with a keen eye and waves away my apologies about not getting back here sooner.

‘Braheem seemed genuinely upset by what happened,' I tell her. ‘I believe him when he says he's spoken to no one about his sister being a surrogate.'

The memory of the door closing across the landing niggles, but not enough to mention. Instead I say, ‘He'd really like to see her.'

Tallis hands me a glass of water from a filter jug. ‘That won't be a problem. The crusaders for the moral good keep a sharp eye on maternity ward admissions and discharges — it's why we have a birthing centre in the Red Quarter and don't use the hospital system unless absolutely necessary. Having lost the baby, Roshani's no longer a target.' She pours herself a glass. ‘She could spend some time with
Braheem at the markets this morning. We'll supply an escort, just in case.'

She means someone from a Red Quarter protection team. I think of the CCTV at the Tea House. Better for Roshani to visit her brother out in the public eye than at that place with its invisible observers and creepy politics.

Tallis looks enquiringly at me. ‘Would you like to go too?'

‘Sure.'

I'm not due at the hospital until twelve thirty, and the market's on my way. A darker thought worms in, unwanted:
it might be me who needs the protection
.

Tallis, not privy to my morbid thoughts, looks pleased. ‘It'll do Roshani a lot of good.'

Roshani, Geeta. Two names for two places. At Braheem's I'd realised the letters of their family name, Rani, were contained inside her alias.

‘What happens for her from here?' I ask.

‘She'll have ongoing counselling and access to all the medicos she needs. When she's ready, she'll be helped to relocate outside the Red Quarter and find other work. Given what she's been through, her surrogacy days are likely over.'

This is my moment to bail out gracefully, but it seems so unsatisfactory to leave it there.
Someone
sicked the prayer group onto the poor woman.

‘Do you still think the leak might have come from inside the organisation?'

‘I don't know.'

She lowers her voice as if the walls have begun to listen
in. ‘Those privy to her surrogacy agreement — the Red Quarter madam who negotiated it, and her medical and social supports — are all people I trust implicitly. Roshani is writing us a list of everyone she's had dealings with since entering the program, and we'll go through it name by name. The other surrogates have been told of the attack and questioned about her, no animosity there that we can detect.' She sighs. ‘As far as their own safety goes, we don't require them to stay exclusively in the Red Quarter before they're showing. After that, any trips outside need our approval. But we're not here to be the police; ultimately, all we can do is caution them to be extra vigilant when outside the precinct.'

I put down my drink and the light through the window catches in the glass, striking me as quite beautiful. It's best not to look at what's been sieved out by the filter. In the last few years, serious cracks have begun to show in the city's infrastructure, prayer meetings no solution to aging utilities.

I get to the piece of news I've not wanted to say, telling Tallis I'll be uncontactable for a while. She gives me a candidly appraising look, but doesn't push for an explanation.

‘Well then …' She levers herself up out of her easychair. ‘Shall we go ask Roshani if she'd like to visit her brother?'

Before we leave the room, she turns to me. ‘On behalf of the folk here, I want to say thanks again for everything you've done. If there are any changes to the situation, we'll let Gail know.'

‘I'd appreciate that,' I say, and exit her calm, sunny office with regret. Tallis Dankner is someone I'd be glad to have for a friend and confidante — especially now, as I prepare to walk alone into the tiger's lair.

 

Roshani leads the way through the market hangars past the lusty spruikers of the fruit and veg section then along the haberdashery and clothing rows, seemingly oblivious to the Red Quarter chaperone discreetly following. It gives me the chance to marvel at the improvement in her, a transformation from the stricken person I saw lying in a hospital bed.

Braheem's Lucky Charm jewellery collection is tucked between a stand of scarves and a stand of leather goods. The reunion is gratifying to witness. As brother and sister hug delightedly, I find myself thinking it might be the last heart-warming thing I'll be seeing for a while.

‘Sam!' Braheem clasps my hand.

It takes me a moment to connect to the name I'd used in his visitors book.

‘Salisbury, actually. I just didn't want to tell the Tea House.'

He nods, unsurprised, then calls across to his scarf-selling neighbour. ‘Rashid! Can you watch the goods for half an hour?'

Rashid, a portly man with a keffiyeh flung about his shoulders, good-naturedly assures Braheem that he'll direct all potential customers to his own stall instead.

I glance back along the aisle and see our chaperone inspecting a candle stand.

We go to a café on the street opposite the market entrance. Friday trading in full swing, it's crowded, but convivial. Braheem commandeers a table by the window then goes to place our orders at the counter. The mood is so happy and relaxed, I hate to spoil it, but I can't help one question while his sister and I are face to face.

‘Geeta — is it okay to call you that now?' I wait for her assent before continuing. ‘I'd like to ask you something I asked Braheem.'

She stares a moment at her nails, then nods.

‘I'm trying to work out how someone might have got wind of your “condition”. Was there anyone outside — at the Tea House, for instance — who took a particular interest?'

Her shoulders droop a little, but she recovers quickly. ‘Since the — since Sunday I've been over and over it. But I never confided in anyone except Braheem.'

I see the raw hurt and am sorry to have raised it. ‘I'm not questioning your integrity or Braheem's in any way,' I say gently.

She replies a little defensively. ‘We're good at keeping secrets.'

Braheem had said much the same thing at the Tea House. I wonder where this is going.

She looks across the table at me, a challenge in her eyes. ‘Has he told you why our family emigrated to Australia?'

I shake my head.

‘Our parents came from the same district in Uttar Pradesh. Both families were scheduled caste, or
Dalit
. In India that means “untouchable”. For the kids of those families, life is hard and school is not a given. My father was one of the few to break the bonds of caste and get an education.'

Braheem arrives with our coffees. I look up quickly. How will he feel about her telling me this?

She smiles thanks at him and keeps talking.

‘When the affirmative action laws forced public universities to give some slots to so-called “backward class” applicants, he went to Delhi University to study medicine. There were massive protests at the time, and he had to claw his way past the kind of discrimination that would have been glad to see him fail. His eventual success meant our childhood in Delhi was privileged, because of his position at the Gene Research Institute. But we were still, and always would be, Dalit.'

Braheem is silent, eyes on his sister.

‘My parents were afraid Braheem and I would always struggle because of the attitude to caste, so when Australia was looking for the kinds of skills our father had, we packed up and came here. Our parents wanted us to grow up in a place where Dalit had no meaning, but you soon come to realise that every culture has its own version of untouchable.'

She looks away, suddenly embarrassed, and belatedly I realise she's referring to people like me. Braheem shifts uncomfortably in his seat.

I think back to my teens and early adulthood, and all the confusion I felt over who I was. Those who present as androgynously as I do are a walking, talking question mark for the community to feel perturbed about. Some even seem to think we've been designed deliberately to mock them.

Briefly I flash to Inez. I'm untouchable to her too now. I let the pain trickle through me as I sip my coffee.

‘Your parents had no regrets about settling here?' I ask.

Braheem shakes his head. ‘They still missed home, which is why they took a trip back there with Geeta when we were in our teens. Our father died a few years ago of cancer, and our mother returned to India permanently last year.'

Both parents gone, at least they still have each other. I can't help a moment of envy over their close sibling relationship. Then the resemblance strikes me.

‘You two look remarkably alike …'

‘We're twins, by IVF,' Geeta replies. ‘Braheem is my older brother, but it's only by a couple of minutes.'

‘Ah,' I say, one more piece of the Rani family puzzle slotting into place.

The coffee break over, I scribble my mobile number on a serviette. ‘In case you think of anything, or just want an ear to bend,' I tell Geeta as she gets up.

On an afterthought, I turn to Braheem. ‘Who lives in the apartment directly opposite you?'

He looks surprised. ‘Marcus and Laura Nancarrow. Why?'

‘Just curious. Are the Nancarrows on the Residents Committee?'

‘Marcus is.'

‘And who deals with the CCTV footage?'

‘The committee shares the responsibility. The footage is downloaded to an old computer in the basement.'

‘Who looks at it?'

He frowns. ‘I don't honestly know. I don't think anybody cares that much any more.'

I don't want to alarm him, but maybe, just maybe, the Nancarrows do.

 

I'm en route to the hospital when I get a call from Gail.

‘Bad news,' she says. ‘Early this morning I took Savannah's polyshells to Ethical Hormones to get the contents tested. The one she handed me several days ago is the usual execrable hormone-farm mix, but the one she delivered last night is a different story. The ampoules all contain the same combination that poisoned Albee: growth hormone laced with an OP, along with a raft of incidentals like floor scrapings and insect parts.' She lets that sink in, then says bitterly, ‘Even without insect killer this stuff is toxic waste — not fit to be buried, let alone put in a body.'

I feel ill. This means the EHg logo isn't just being used to sell bogus kit, but bogus kit spiked with an organophosphate. Gail's situation has just spiralled from a business-ruining scam to a life-endangering vendetta.

Inez and I are arguing across a candlelit table at the edge of the Glory Hole's dance floor. I've told her I'm going to work for Meg. She hasn't taken it well.

Elsewhere in the room it's still Happy Hour, the bar area already five deep, and the tables and alcoves filled with people arrived from work and ready to play. Miserably I press an index finger to a glob of leaked wax as some nameless house mix begins to drum out an insistent beat. This afternoon's conversation with Gail ended with the news that the surveillance at Ferguson's had netted nothing, the space unvisited by all but a family of brazen, scampering rats.

Now I lean towards Inez, desperate for her to understand. ‘I know how it looks, but I'm asking you to believe me when I say it's out of necessity, and I just can't explain yet.'

She replies, just as intense, ‘What's to explain? You've accepted Meg's money offer. But the person
I
know
wouldn't work for that piranha under
any
circumstances. So who exactly are you?'

I feel the squeezing pain of having to withhold from the one I most want to confide in — and watch as a new thought dawns on her.

‘Gail put you up to it, didn't she.'

My perspicacious girlfriend.
Now
she's angry.

‘This is some double-play she's cooked up, dangling you like bait to the wolf pack. She's exploiting your loyalty! Have you ever thought you might be just a little
too
loyal?'

I don't bother to say how I haven't.

‘Sal, your hero is not all sweetness and light. Sure, she champions ethically made hormones and pays for the APV's outings, but don't forget it
suits
her for us to rustle the competition's horses and put them out of business. She may have cleaner politics and better people skills, but underneath she's as ruthless as Meg. You don't have to go along with it. Say no to both of them before it's too late.'

I'm reminded weirdly of the anonymous warnings. I never knew Inez thought any of these things.

It's true Gail has my unswerving allegiance, but I owe her a debt I can never repay. She gave me a life, and I'm living it. Inez, though, feels locked out — injured that, after everything we've shared in our time together as co-vigilantes and lovers, I don't trust her enough to say what's really going on. But while this flushed and angry woman confronting me is smarter than I'll ever be and can hold
her own in all kinds of situations, she'd have no hope against Meg's sly tactics and the heavy hands of Crusher and Snarl. I shudder inwardly.
I
have no hope against Crusher and Snarl.

‘I suppose you're going to disappear, no explanation, from the APV too?' My girlfriend fixes me with a withering eye.

I nod. I won't risk Meg getting her hooks in there.

Inez pushes back in her chair. ‘I realise you've got a lot on your mind, especially now with Albee, but I gave you more credit than that. I thought you lived by a set of principles and weren't just a gun for hire.'

I feel her every accusation go in like a blade, and can't say a word in my defence. She gives me one last searching look in the hope I might tell her something to make it all better.

I don't.

I watch as she gathers up her things, leaving for the APV meeting we should both be at. My last chance to plead for trust and forbearance has just slipped away, and I know in my already aching heart she won't be seeking me out again. Gutted, I stare at my untouched drink. The exhilaration of new love, just two short weeks young, has been crushed under a heavy boot. Meg's boot.

I glance across the dance floor to the row of cushioned alcoves. The curtains to Meg's private space are drawn back. She's been watching us argue from a distance all the while. I feel my jaw clench.

Before Inez's arrival, I'd stood at Meg's ‘office' table and announced I was available for work. She'd looked at me through slightly narrowed eyes and asked, ‘What brings the change of heart?' ‘Bills to pay,' I'd muttered. Snarl had smirked — a contortion of her features I'd not thought possible. Meg's hard gaze had stayed on me, but she'd nodded slowly.

The only thing to be gained from this sorry episode is that Meg already knows what Inez thinks of her, and seeing us at loggerheads will shore up her belief I've deserted Gail.

Crusher saunters up, her black tee-shirt stretched to its limits by barrel ribs and worked biceps. She claps me on the shoulder. This, I'm guessing, is a demonstration of her nicer, friendlier side. I feel the eyes of the room watching.

‘Girly trouble?'

‘Something like that.'

‘Never mind — plenty of others around with all their curves in the right places and their plump bits begging for a poke and a jiggle.'

I can't believe I'm hearing such misogynist crap.

Crusher leans close. A terrible habit made even more excruciating by smoker's breath. ‘Meg's ready to give you your first job,' she says. ‘Welcome to the club.'

I watch her shovel her bulk back between the couches, people looking up then away. She has nowhere to go but her boss's alcove. Working for Meg has effectively separated her from any community she might have found here. Right
now she doesn't seem to care, but I wonder about later. Fate is good at flipping the tables.

I look down. Placed on mine is an envelope. Inside it are my pick-up and delivery instructions for the next day, along with the money that Crusher had failed to give me the first time round. I skol my drink and pocket the envelope, my only desire now to escape the claustrophobic air of the speakeasy.

 

It's pretty sad. I'm drinking alone in a dingy sports bar in St Kilda, downing vodka slammers and wishing I could turn back the last several days and do them all again. I squint at my watch. Paul will be taking over from Ellie at Albee's bedside now.

There's no use dwelling on my shattered love life, or the dismal lack of result at Ferguson's — except, being in my cups, I do: I give regret full rein. If I'd just said a flat no to Meg the first time, the question of working for her might never have come up; I'd still have a girlfriend, and every day would be the shiny and exciting thing it was before. I'd been a long time in the relationship wilderness before Inez's warm presence wrought its magic on my life. Now she believes me made of flimsy moral fibre, and I'm afraid that even when she finds out the truth, it will be too late to restore the trust between us.

Crusher and Snarl leap unpleasantly to mind. How long before I turn into a cliché too? Couriering for BioPharm, with its reputation for being not quite cruelty free, will shoot to hell any credibility I have within the APV; just as
the news of my association with Mojo Meg is going to oust me from my social circle as fast as if I were strapped in an ejector seat. I remind myself the change of boss is temporary, but secretly I'm afraid that once Meg has her constrictor grip on me, she won't let go.

I place my hand over the refilled shot glass, bang it on the counter and take a fiery swig. The other punters — all three of them — are hunched over their drinks, not interested in their neighbours or the giant TV screen above us blaring an overwrought commentary on some blood sport with a ball. What a merry lot we make for the bartender, who's busily sending phone texts and smirking at the replies. A love interest, I'm guessing. Lucky him. I raise my glass again for the last of it to dribble down my throat and cauterise my tonsils.

I'm an easy drunk. Normally, I'd be afraid of losing the faculty to choose between flight and fight; but tonight I want it this way. Let the alcohol leak its slow fog through me, acting on the plugs and passages of my heart, numbing them against the disappointment of forfeited love.

I lay some notes on the counter and steer myself through the door. Somehow I manage to cross the street without being run over before stumbling along the darkened walkway that leads to the sea. What was a sunny day has turned black and blustery and cold. Above me the clouds are being shredded like confetti in night's stratosphere. Once, they might eventually have made rain, but these days they just mysteriously dissolve into the empty reservoir of the sky.

Ahead, the fun park's smiley entrance menaces. I shudder, and move on to where St Kilda pier pokes a ghostly finger from the shore. Walking its weathered boards, I have to put one hand on the railing to steady myself. Past the bleak stretch of grey shoal beach to my right, I can just make out the beacons of the Tasmanian ferry terminal. There hasn't been a ship for a fortnight — the ferry company's licence revoked for shoddy maintenance and leaks in hulls. People will be rowing themselves there soon.

I stop at the end of the walkway beside the permanently closed café building, and consider scaling the chain-link to get to the observation tower further along the breakwater. From there I could throw myself into the sea. It's an inviting thought in a cold, miserable kind of way. The ocean-dwelling predators, at least, would find nothing to distinguish transgressive from normal flesh, loyal friend from traitor. For them I'd simply be a meal. Guess that's why all the fairy penguins have gone.

The alcohol works its acids up my gullet. I grip the rail and hang my head, then give in to the inevitable and heave onto the rocks below. Wiping my mouth with my hand, I sag onto the ground, as full of self-loathing as I've ever felt. And think of my family.

The last time I saw my mother was eight years ago, shortly after she and my father got dunked in the municipal swimming pool, baptised in the spirit of Jesus.

She told me she always knew I would be going to hell.

They say blood is thicker than water, but the question that followed me through childhood —
girl or boy?
— thinned my own family's loyalty and washed away their love. People stopped asking the question in my adolescence; instead, it became a silent accusation in their eyes and their awkwardness. My parents realised that calling me a girl and giving me girly things wouldn't make me
be
a girl. And so they sat back and watched me careen towards uncertain adulthood, knowing I would never miraculously turn into a ‘normal' daughter — at least not without institutionalisation and electrodes.

At sixteen I left school and home and found my way to a squat in St Kilda. I visited my family every once in a while. They tolerated me, but I could see they wished me gone. Five years later, with their panicked conversion to evangelism through Saviour Nation, they made it clear they no longer wanted anything to do with me. It pained them, they said, but it was better this way. Better for us all. The fact that I'd never even
tried
to behave as a girl had increasingly strained their sense of rightness and credibility with others, and now it strained their standing in the church community. All this had taken its toll on them. Why else would my father have ulcers and my mother hypertension?

I didn't fight it; but to be excommunicated like that, at twenty-one, is to be made skinless to the world.

I think of Helen. It must have been hard on her to have a failed role model as an older sibling, and more times than I care to remember, the accusations would come at me like
javelins:
Why do you have to be so different? Why can't you act normal?
All that hurt and anger had been laid like a blanket over our history, suffocating the good and leaving only the bitter taste of blame. But a shared childhood grows deep bonds, and in some indissoluble way, she's the one who knows me best.

I finger my phone. Being late on a Friday evening, Michael might answer. He's like a Doberman protecting her from the likes of me. How ironic I'm the one who could help them achieve their long-sought miracle by fixing them up with the right kit from Gail. In their eyes, though, that would make me not only a gender transgressor and social outcast, but a drug peddler for Beelzebub too.

I tap in the number for Helen's mobile. It clicks into a recorded answer, then her voice cuts in.

‘Hello? Sal?'

My number must still be in her phone.

Suddenly Michael is there. I hang on, stoppered by a paralysing anxiety.

‘
You
don't call my wife.
Ever
.'

The line goes dead.

I slump, desolate. How will the rift between us ever heal? Last time I visited, Helen said if I came to her home again, she'd get the local chapter of Neighbourly Watch to see me off. Something in me broke then — something I'd clung to, deep down, despite all experience to the contrary. It was the belief my family would ultimately cleave to its own and accept me: that they would love me, regardless.

Inez once told me her folks wouldn't care who I was or how I fitted into her life, as long as we made each other happy. On the strength of that, I began secretly to hope I might become part of
her
family — a late add-on to the Moran mob — because in my reality, it's not blood that's thicker than water, but the potentising qualities of acceptance and respect.

 

‘Take me home,' I mumble.

The taxi driver turns and looks at me through his bulletproof bubble. ‘And where would that be, mate?' He's a grizzled fiftyish and has seen too many of the world's woes.

I slur out the address.

He takes one last regretful look at what he's let in his nice clean SEC cab, then swings the vehicle into the traffic lane, saying, ‘Don't puke on the upholstery.'

I'm too spent to reassure him. Closing my eyes, I lean back into the smell of leather and disinfectant.

Home is where the cat is: Nitro, who loves me regardless of my shortcomings, and who welcomes me plaintively at the door, pressing for my attention, even if it's just because he knows who fills up the bunny bowl.

I'm ashamed to say it, but out on the pier it wasn't the pricking of my conscience over Gail and the EHg crisis or even Albee's dire situation that had drawn me back from the brink. It was the thought of Nitro waiting for his dinner.