The Slap (13 page)

‘Bedtime,’ he whispered.

 

He and Sandi awoke at six and he went straight down to the beach. He tried to get in a swim each morning, even in winter, but if the water proved impossibly cold he would make do with a long walk the length of the cove and back. But the morning sky was clear and the bay still, and though the first lunge into the water was a punch in his stomach and a kick to his balls, within a minute his furious strokes had propelled his body into the deep and he had forgotten the cold. Rocco was still asleep when he got back home and Sandi had put on some hippie-shit music and was performing a series of smooth yoga exercises. He showered, had a hurried breakfast of toast and coffee and went into Rocco’s room. The boy had pushed the sheets to the edge of the bed, his body shiny from the night’s sweat. He smelt good, thought Harry. He smelt innocent and clean.

‘Wake him,’ Sandi was behind him, her arms around his chest. Harry glanced at his watch. It was still only seven o’clock and the boy could have another half-hour of sleep. Harry shook his head. ‘Not yet.’

He kissed his wife and headed down the stairs to the garage. He’d have a clear run at this hour all the way to the Westgate Bridge.

 

Alex had already opened up the shop and was working underneath the bonnet of an early 1990s Mitsubishi Verada. Harry slid his four-wheel drive next to the petrol pumps and beeped the horn. Alex turned around, spotted Harry, nodded, then went back to work. His grimy navy track-pants were sitting precariously on his thick hips. A prickly bush of black coils peeped out from the top of them and dived into the plunging crevice of the man’s arse-crack. Harry screwed up a McDonald’s bag that Rocco had dumped underneath the passenger seat, and as he withdrew from his vehicle, he expertly aimed for Alex’s arse.

‘What?’

Good shot.

‘What?’ mimicked Harry and started laughing. ‘Pull up your dacks, you ox,’ he said in Greek. ‘Who wants to look at your fat, hairy arse?’

‘They don’t fit.’ Alex was incapable of complex sentences. He was still determinately working on the engine.

‘You’re getting fat, mate.’ Alex had gained at least twenty kilos since his divorce. Much of it was the fault of his mother. Alex had moved back to his parents’ house and Mrs Kyriakou was cooking for him three times a day and that didn’t include the greasy take-away lunches that Alex ate at work. Nor did it include the chips and chocolate bars he had on his break. It was not all his mother’s fault. Alex had always lacked ambition and since Eva left him he’d surrendered to the assault of time on his body. He and Harry were the same age—less than a week separated their birthdays—but Alex looked at least ten years older. It was still possible to glimpse in him the attractive youth that Harry had gone to school with, who’d been his best friend for over twenty years and his best man at his wedding, but no girl would bother to look twice at Alex now.

When Harry had first thought of buying the autoshop in Altona he had asked Alex to be a partner. His friend had taken his hand, shook it proudly, with tears in his eyes. But I’m no businessman, mate, he had answered, I’d be bad for you. He was right. Harry would have killed him years before if they had been in partnership together. Alex loved working on cars and trucks, he was an excellent, thorough mechanic, but he hated paperwork and he loathed communicating with clients. He couldn’t stand to be accountable for money, it made him tighten up, made him silent and non-communicative. He had been working for Harry for twenty years now and every year Harry gave him a bonus and steadily and loyally increased his wages. Alex was grateful but Harry was sure that if he had been less than fair to his mate, Alex would not have complained. It was this passive lethargy that had made Eva walk out on her husband. Alex’s parents had put a deposit on a small worker’s cottage in Richmond when Alex had finished his apprenticeship and, steadily over the years, Alex had paid off the house. But even with the arrival of a baby, Alex couldn’t contemplate moving and searching for a bigger home. Harry thought it unlikely that Alex would have even bothered with marriage if his parents had not become obsessed by the possibility of being without grandchildren. He’d married out of duty, as he did everything else. Harry was not surprised by the divorce and did not blame Eva for leaving. Alex would never change. He was happy in his room, drinking with mates who went back three decades, seeing his kids every fortnight and at Orthodox Easter, and working full-time at Harry’s shop. Alex probably thought his life was good. It probably was, thought Harry, there was no stress, but it was also a life that seemed finished. It was as if there was nothing more that the world could offer his friend.

‘You’ve got to lose weight, mate. Those extra kilos you’ve stacked up aren’t good for your health.’

‘You’re right.’

‘You should go back to playing soccer on the weekends.’

‘Sure, mate.’

‘And no more fucking junk food. Salad sandwiches for lunch from now on.’

This made Alex raise his head from underneath the bonnet and look at his friend. ‘Fuck that. What’s the point of living to be an old man if I have to eat like a fucking rabbit to get there? I like my pies and burgers.’

‘What’s up with the engine?’

‘The car’s over-heating. Can’t find a leak in the radiator so I’m just checking out the fan.’

‘Whose is it?’

Alex shrugged. ‘Dunno. Con booked it in.’ It suddenly dawned on him that it was unusual for his boss to be at the shop so early on a Monday morning. Harry and Sandi had recently opened a third garage in Moorabbin and for the last few months most of Harry’s time was taken up with the new business.

Harry grinned to himself as if he could see the thoughts slowly taking shape in his friend’s head.

Alex wiped his hands, put down his work towel and offered a cigarette. ‘So what are you doing here so early?’

Harry took the cigarette and Alex lit it for him. ‘I’ve come to look at the paperwork.’

Alex raised an eyebrow. ‘Is there a problem?’

Harry looked down the road. Traffic had started the long crawl into the city. The suburb stretched out flat and monotonous around him, all grey and muted, functional and drab. Even though the beach lay a few blocks south, that too seemed grim and unappealing when compared to the sparkling emerald stretch of sea that lay just outside his front yard. God, he thought, I can’t stand the fucking western suburbs.

‘Yes,’ he answered finally. ‘I think there’s a problem.’

Alex picked up his towel, butted out his cigarette and turned back to the engine. Harry knew that this meant the conversation was finished. Whatever opinion Alex might have—if he did, in fact, have an opinion—the man would keep it to himself.

Harry finished his cigarette in silence, then walked over to the small makeshift office, a lean-to he’d built himself when he had first bought the shop. He searched the filing cabinet, found the account books, turned on the radio and sat down to work.

Sometimes, when the cumulation of life’s responsibilities made him anxious and stressed, Harry wished he could go back to the simplicity of being a tradesman. Unlike Alex, he had never been obsessed with cars, but he’d always had a fierce curiosity to understand mechanical failure. His mother—God bless her departed soul—had been constantly afraid that her beloved only child would be electrocuted as he went about tinkering with faulty toasters, dead batteries and malfunctioning electric toys. Do something, she would scream at her husband, stop him, he’s going to kill himself. Shut up, his father would roar back, leave the kid alone. You want to turn him into a fucking
pousti
. Leave him alone. Instead, his father—God bless the poor fucker’s soul as well—would assist him in exploring the intricate world of circuits and electrical cords and eventually he allowed Harry to work on the family car. When they were bent over the engine together, father and son had an impenetrable bond which Harry’s mother could not touch. It was only in the kitchen and in the intimate interiors of the house where Harry had felt unsafe. His mother and father could go for weeks without exchanging more than perfunctory communications. Harry learned early on to love these periods of silence. What he could not bear were the occasions when this silence was rent apart by the hatred that husband and wife had for one another. His mother would always start the fights. You’re an animal, she would suddenly announce over a meal. You’re a rapist, a degenerate. Her husband would continue to eat his food silently. You don’t know what your father is like, she would insist to her son. You don’t know his whores, his sins against God and nature. And Harry would wait for the moment that his father would rise and hit her. He’d pray then that one punch or one slap would be enough. Sometimes he’d see his father unbuckling his belt and he’d call out to his father to stop, try to intervene. But Tassios Apostolous was a strong man, and he’d push his son out of the way. One day you’ll understand, he would often say to his child, women are the form the Devil takes here on earth. Harry would go into his room, lose himself in fixing his toys, the radio, the old black and white television his father had given him to work on. When he emerged back into the main part of the house, his father would be sitting in front of the television, his mother would be ironing or sewing in the kitchen. There might be a rip in his mother’s blouse, blood in the corner of her mouth, but the shouting, the tearing into each other had stopped. Harry would be thankful that the silence was back.

Harry crossed himself. He prayed for the souls of both his parents. They had sheltered him, paid for his training, left him enough to get a start in the world. No one could ask for more than that.

Now he had little time for tinkering. He checked his mobile and already there were messages piling up. He rarely worked on cars these days, except for long-standing clients. Alex and Con worked at the shop in Altona and he had three guys working for him in Hawthorn and another three at the new garage. Moorabbin also had a twenty-four-hour convenience store attached to the motor-shop and he employed a roster of young people to staff it. His time was spent managing wages, superannuation, deliveries and ordering. Sandi had always helped out but he had been insistent after Rocco’s birth that she should feel free to give up work altogether. She had for a year but then asked to come back to work part-time. He had agreed and secretly been proud. He loved his new house, loved living by the beach—it had been a dream since childhood—but he had little time or respect for the rich skip bitches who were his neighbours, useless fake-tanned women with plastic smiles and silicon tits who spent their husbands’ money on afternoon teas, endless shopping and personal trainers. He leaned across from his chair and touched wood. Thank you,
Panagia
, he silently prayed. Thank you for everything.

 

Sandi’s hunch was right. There was something odd about the books. Alex claimed that business hadn’t declined, that if anything it had increased over the past year. But this was not reflected in the profits. Sure, the shitfight in the Middle East had played havoc with the price of petrol, and they had laid out a fair amount of money refitting the garage over the last two years, but all of that had been factored into the accounts. He heard Con’s car entering the yard. He lit a cigarette and looked up at the clock. The face was smeared with a thick cocoon of spider webbing and three dead blowflies were trapped behind it.

He heard Con greet Alex. The young man stopped, surprised, when he saw Harry sitting in the office.

‘Yo, Boss.’

The silly fuck had his hair cut in the fashion of the yuppie English soccer players, cut short at the sides and up in a thick bouffant that rose to a point in the middle of his head. There were blond tips in front.

‘The clock needs cleaning.’ Harry glanced around the office. ‘In fact, the whole office needs a clean.’

‘Sure, I’ll do it today. How’s Sandi? How’s the kid?’

‘Sandi’s fine, so’s the kid.’

‘What brings you here?’

Harry’s mobile whirred and beeped.

‘Take the call.’

‘Forget it. I’m looking at the books.’

Con threw a cigarette to his lips and smiled. He was a cocky bastard. ‘Any problems?’

‘Yeah. I got problems. You’re my problem.’

Con’s smile faded and he fumbled with his cigarette. There was an edge to his voice. ‘Man, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Harry said nothing. He watched his employee.

‘Jesus, Harry. Are you going to fire me?’ The young man’s voice cracked and collapsed and he started sobbing. Harry saw Alex at the pump. A young woman had stepped out of a scarlet Toyota Corolla and was looking around. She was Asian, young and up herself, clutching a handbag with pink and yellow roses imprinted on the cloth, her chin raised in haughty expectation. Wait all you like, darling, Alex won’t notice shit. Harry did not turn back to Con till the man had stopped his blubbering.

‘Sit down.’

Con immediately sat on the chair opposite, wiped his eyes and looked anxiously at his boss.

‘There’s no fucking way I’m going to figure out exactly how much you’ve ripped me off,
pousti
. You care to name me a figure?’

‘Man, I’ve done something stupid. I know it, man. I’ll pay you back everything, Harry.’

‘You care to name me a figure?’

Con looked wary, afraid. ‘I’ve no idea, man.’

‘Ballpark.’

‘Twenty thousand?’

Harry let out a long low whistle. It was a good answer. Anything lower and he would have taken a club to the silly cunt. ‘Double that, I reckon. You owe me forty grand.’

Con nodded slowly. He stretched out his hands. ‘Mate, I don’t have it.’

‘Where’s it gone?’

Harry knew exactly where it had gone. On the ridiculous mortgage that Con was paying for that piece of shit apartment in the city, on the new Peugeot, on coke and pills and dinner for that stupid skip prick-tease that Con was trying to impress. How long did he think she’d stick around now?