The Evil Inside (3 page)

I adored her with all my heart.

‘It's way too early to tell.' She sipped her Galliano white. ‘We've only had a tourist weekend, not a real weekend.'

She was right. Living in a hotel and seeing the sights was far removed from the day-to-day challenges of ‘normal' New York life – whatever that was going to mean. We'd have to wait a few weeks before our new reality set in.

‘But we had fun, didn't we, Bucko?' She kissed her finger and touched my cheek. She seemed happier than she had for a while. But her happiness was like a veil. I knew that she still carried a world of hurt underneath.

‘Now get some sleep. The Big New Job starts tomorrow.' She made for the bedroom.

‘Yikes!' I cried, like Shaggy running scared in
Scooby Doo
.

But I was still way too wired to sleep.

So after Mia went to bed, I sank into one of the spongy old armchairs with a dog-eared
New Yorker
I'd picked from the shelf.

I started to read an article about Jackson Pollock's Herculean artistic and alcoholic adventures out in the Hamptons during the forties and fifties.

It reminded me of the first time I'd met Mia, fifteen years before.

I'd hosted one of my legendary weekend ‘Barbie-Benders'. These explosive bacchanalian festivals usually kicked off mid-Saturday afternoon at the house I shared with a PhD philosophy student and a primary school teacher, and often didn't finish until thirty-six hours later. Grass, hash, speed, coke, microdots, magic mushrooms, MDMA: whatever anyone threw into the ring, we had it. All washed down with gallons of beer, scotch, brandy, white wine and anything else we could pile into our dirty bathtub.

We were a grungy, nihilistic, pleasure-seeking collective of dissolute advertising creatives, talentless musicians, tyro academics, loud left-wing teachers and out-of-work actors. Looking back, the only thing we really had in common was our youth and our obsessive and sometimes dangerous love of partying. Anthony was never part of that crowd and never would have been: he was already over at business school in America by then, making himself even smarter.

Anyway, that Sunday morning saw the bitter end of a particularly indulgent bender. My mate, Smithy the geography teacher, had mailed some peyote back to himself from Mexico, and I'd made the mistake of sipping the rancid tea you make with it. Soon I was solemnly declaring to anyone who was still awake that I wanted to see God at dawn.

Predictably, God never appeared. But as I staggered like a madman across the football ground behind our house, I saw Satan's face laughing with delight in the clouds as angry trees tried to reach down and stab me with their branches.

Mia found me shuddering like a scared little kid at the feet of a terrifying green giant disguised as a bush. My arms were straitjacketed around my knees.

‘Well look at you, Bucko …' She dropped to her haunches with a wry smile as her Labrador's slobbery tongue started to unroll across the grass like a long red carpet. ‘Who's been a silly boy then?'

She lived in our street. We used to wolf-whistle at her from our front balcony as she lifted heavy prints and paintings in and out of the back of a grey minivan that had the name
PICTURE PERFECT
adorning both sides. I later learned she had her own successful niche business working as an art broker to companies and high-end individuals, often storing the works in her hallway before delivering them to prospective clients to hang in their foyers, boardrooms or bedrooms at a later date.

A couple of weeks before the party, the two of us had been vying for the same parking spot. I'd unchivalrously beaten her to it, but then let her have it anyway, and even helped her carry a couple of heavy, gilded frames to her doorstep.

I'd always fancied her smile. And those beautiful eyes.

God knows what she saw in me – except perhaps the challenge of major rehabilitation.

Anyway, Mia took me back to her place, gave me some charcoal to offset the effects of the drugs – she'd been a nurse before deciding she was really much more interested in art – cleaned me up, and put me to bed. And that was it: I never really moved back to my own place after that.

But we didn't really come together until her dog Sky died.

It happened about three months after I'd moved in with her: a P-plate driver; an old dog's wonky eyesight; a foot slamming on the brake pedal just a fraction too late …

Sky had been Mia's faithful companion since she was seven. The old Lab had been by her side through countless boyfriends, a hundred haircuts, a handful of addresses and the thousand ups and downs that attend the flowering of a girl into a young woman. In the short time that I'd known her, I'd never seen her so upset.

I buried Sky for her in the park where we'd first met – near the now strangely benign green bush. Before I covered the grave, Mia threw in a new bone and an old
Sesame Street
doll that he'd liked to chew, and then motioned me out of earshot so she could say a few final private words to her beloved friend.

Such was her grief, she could barely walk home.

So I picked her up in my arms and carried her back down the drowsy, dappled street to her bed.

As the blood-red sun sank below the horizon, I lowered Mia's head to the pillow and kissed her hair. Then her furrowed brow. Then, through her tears, I kissed her eyelids. Then I kissed her cheeks and her cute little nose and her lips. She couldn't stop crying. I couldn't stop kissing her.

I wanted to kiss her better.

It took her a week to get out of bed after her dog died.

A true Italian, I discovered that Mia could be highly emotional and took some things very hard.

But when she wasn't crumbling herself, Mia was a rock.

I'd lost my way after my mother died and Mia became my compass.

But in recent months, my darling wife had run a little off-course herself.

And I was still trying to work out how to bring her safely back home.

*

The Big New Job was at 1160 Avenue of the Americas: Suite 1999.

Brave Face Public Relations was a company that had been established in the UK in 1988, before rapidly expanding its operations into Europe, Scandinavia, Asia and, more recently, North America.

The office was located halfway between 46th and 47th Streets, in the middle of Midtown. A stone's throw from Times Square.

My subway commute on the B line from W72nd to Rockefeller Center was only ten minutes. That didn't really give me much time to reconsider how I was going to make this whole crazy thing work. I had spent many hours back in Melbourne dreaming and scheming about how my little one-man agency was going to grow, under Brave Face's auspices, into a global communications conglomerate of Saatchi & Saatchi proportions. But now, as I was riding up the elevator for Day 1, I wondered if I hadn't made some catastrophic mistake.

Back in Melbourne, I had at least been somebody: writer and creative director on a number of high-profile automotive accounts; a Cannes Gold Lion for a skin cancer public service TV ad; author of the well-loved tagline ‘Go to zzzleep' for an international bed manufacturer.

But now, here in New York, I was suddenly the newest kid on the world's biggest block.

Anthony Johnson was the man I held largely responsible for my temporary insanity.

‘Hello, mate!' I extended my hand.

My old friend bear-hugged me. ‘Maaaate – you made it! Without getting mugged? Over your jet lag yet? What have you seen? How's Mia?' Running a manicured hand through his impressive thatch of blonde-white hair, he was the epitome of the successful PR man.

Anthony had been one of my best mates at uni. He'd been in my Modern English Literature tutorial in second year, but I didn't really get to know him until I fell into the notorious ‘Booze Brothers' drinking club, which met irregularly at a variety of ignominious venues both on and off-campus.

Anthony had then graduated with a law degree combined with a masters in marketing and economics and moved to the States to further hone his nascent business skills. After that, he spent some time in London learning the PR ropes at Burson-Marsteller. But he'd returned to Melbourne quite a few times over the years and we'd always caught up, had a few beers – although he'd curbed his prodigious university intake considerably by then – and discussed our respective careers.

Anthony Johnson had a rapid-fire laugh, but his mind was even quicker.

He gave me the grand tour. Brave Face occupied half the tenth floor, had nineteen efficient-looking employees, eleven offices and an L-shaped boardroom that boasted a heart-stopping view of the Chrysler Building. The other half of the floor was let to a dotcom company called v-deliver: an online service that delivered videos directly to your home – like pizza – saving you a trip to the store.

‘Good idea, but probably five years ahead of its time,' Anthony said.

Unlike the gauche fit-outs of many communications agencies, Brave Face's decor was stylish yet understated. Cool green and soft off-white walls were enlivened by big, classy contemporary prints and a long row of framed PR awards. The effect was pleasing: Anthony had always exuded impeccable taste as well as enviable chutzpah – qualities immediately evident from his
GQ
wardrobe of handmade Savile Row and Milanese suits.

‘I'll show you to your office. It's not huge but it should at least accommodate your colossal ego,' he said.

‘Thanks, mate. It's half the size of yours then, eh?'

He was right. The office itself was nothing to write home about: a shiny new ruby iMac, a desk, a bookcase, a coat stand. But the view was a New York postcard. Like the boardroom, my window also looked directly out towards the Chrysler Building. I whistled softly.

‘Thought that might inspire you. Come on – let's go meet the team. They're all very excited to meet the new creative director.'

The rest of the day was a brain-blitzing blur of faces, names and titles. Almost everybody seemed to be a vice-president of something or other, even if they were still in their early twenties. And as I was being introduced around, my obvious ignorance of American business jargon was cause for some good-natured ribbing from Anthony and my other new colleagues: ‘heads up', ‘gap analysis', ‘bandwidth' and ‘knock-on effect' were all a foreign language to me.

‘How was it?' Mia called out when I walked in the door at seven. I kicked the last vestiges of snow off my new Kenneth Cole brogues and shook some more out of my new Barneys scarf. ‘It was
awesome
,' I replied in mock-Americanese. ‘Actually it was good. Anthony looked after me and everyone was super-friendly in that super-friendly Yank way.'

She was searching for something in the cupboard-sized kitchen.

I hung up my new Zegna pea coat. ‘What are we eating? Should we get takeaway or what?'

‘It's called “take-out” here, Michael, that funny desk clerk told me. No, I'll cook with one foot out in the hallway because I got us a couple of prime New York sirloins in honour of your first day in the Manhattan work force. I finally managed to pick up some decent cutlery today, too.'

Without turning around, she held up a brand-new, black-handled, two-pronged carving fork.

Just then the phone rang on the hall wall behind me. ‘I'll get it,' Mia brushed past me with the fork still in her hand. ‘That'll be Michael with exciting news on getting some extra sheets and pillows up here as well.'

As she scooped the handset from the cradle, a subterranean memory from long ago rose up in me.

I'd been reading a
Mad
magazine when the phone rang.

‘May I speak to your mother, please?' the important-sounding lady at the end of the line had asked.

‘Who should I say is calling, please?' I almost added ‘ma'am' as she sounded so officious.

‘Er, can you please just put your mother on, young man? I'll explain it all to her.'

I dropped my magazine and covered the mouthpiece.

‘Mu-um! Phone. Sounds important.'

I could hear my mother spluttering and cursing in the bathroom – she hated having her bath interrupted.

She padded out in a ratty, threadbare towel, leaving watery footprints behind her, and snatched the phone from me.

‘What are you looking at, boy? Give that here. Hello … ?'

And as I watched the expression on my mother's face dissolve from anger to agony, I knew that something had just been broken that could never be fixed again.

I shivered as Mia hung up the phone and playfully poked the fork towards my abdomen. ‘Hmm put that thing down, will ya? You look dangerous,' I said.

I followed her back into the kitchen as she dropped the new fork back in the drawer. I tried to cuddle her from behind, but she suddenly froze. It was a distressing new habit she'd developed over the past month or two. ‘Where's our little space ranger?' I asked, trying to restore the initially jovial atmosphere.

‘Bouncing on the beds like Austin Powers.'

I held up the cute white shirt with the tomahawk emblem. ‘Anthony gave me a little Braves top for him.'

*

‘… And so the big old giant never bothered the people of that town ever again.
The end
.'

‘Hmm.'

‘Did you like that story?'

‘Yeah. But it was a little bit scary.'

‘But they got rid of the giant in the end. Then all the people were happy.'

Callum considered this and then had a thought. ‘Daddy, would I be like a giant to Bubby?'

‘Yes, you would have. But Bubby's gone away now, remember?' I kissed his head. ‘OK, darling, ni ni.'

‘Daddy?'

‘Yes?'

‘Where did Bubby go?'

I hesitated. ‘I don't know. Maybe she didn't want to come to America so she hid somewhere back home.' I had had no idea how to answer that question, and was so unprepared for it that I said the first inane thing that came into my head.