The Whole Business with Kiffo and the Pitbull (9 page)

I don't know if you have ever been in a similar situation. Unlikely, I guess, unless you are, like me, gifted with a talent for inviting disaster. But it's hell. Yeah, okay. I know what you are thinking. ‘It'll pass. Worse things happen at sea. Bit of teasing never hurt anyone.' Was that what you were thinking? If it was, please go at once and stick your head in a large bucket of pool acid. I know all about treating misfortune with dignity. In theory. But in practice, you wish you were dead. Everywhere I went, there was giggling and immature remarks. Girls would leave the toilets if I went in. I was pathetically grateful that Vanessa still sat next to me in class. She continued to wear boredom like a badge, but there was a subtle change in her attitude. Difficult to be specific. Little things, like the way her body was slightly more closed, as if she was desperate that our legs wouldn't touch under the desk. Maybe it was my imagination, but I thought that even the teachers looked at me slightly differently.

I went straight home from school that day. To be honest, I needed my mum. I wanted to talk things through with her, the way they do on soap operas. You know. All that stuff where the girl says, ‘Mum, I'm pregnant by the local heroin addict, my best friend's topped herself and the police want to interview me in connection with the arson at the high school.' And the mum strokes the girl's hair and says, ‘It's okay, Charlene, you know that I'll always be here for you.' I needed that kind of thing.

Of course, Mum wasn't back from work and the fridge was, as always, strong, silent and dependable, but rather weak in the empathy stakes. So I kicked it a few times, leaving a couple of decent dents, and I felt a bit better. Then I ate the last of the ice-cream. I didn't particularly feel like it, but it was Mum's favourite and she often had a bowl between shifts, so I forced it down. Pathetic, I know, but someone had to pay.

Overdosed on raspberry ripple, I wandered off to Kiffo's place. Funnily enough, I'd never actually been to his house before, but I knew where he lived. It was not the kind of neighbourhood that you tended to go into if you could avoid it. Particularly when it was getting dark. Particularly if you were a woman. Particularly if you were a woman with huge boobs. What the hell. I didn't care. I think in my state of mind I'd have been more than a match for any roving gang of hoons.

I knocked on the door, and after a few moments Kiffo opened it. He looked at me with surprise and then nodded for me to come in. The front room was a disgrace. I've seen some messes in my time – hell, I've created my fair share – but this took the whole packet of biscuits. Crumpled beer cans were scattered around the carpet, if anything so threadbare and filthy could be dignified with such a name. Old pizza cartons, at least three of them, were also arranged artistically on the floor. Two still contained traces of pizza, though they were clearly so old that any positive identification would have taxed the expertise of the most distinguished forensic scientist. I guessed at thin crust mould with extra botulism topping. The place stank of old socks, sweat, tobacco and despair. Kiffo noticed my expression.

‘Yeah, well,' he said. ‘It's the cleaning lady's day off. Come in and sit down.'

I looked around. There was nowhere really that I considered a safe place to sit. The couch would have been rejected by the local dump on the grounds that it would have brought down the ambience of the place. Not that I cared too much about the fact that it was held together with fishing wire, or that it sagged alarmingly in strange places, like a depressed storm cloud. But there were things living in it. I could see them moving. It created a strange effect, like those lava lamps. There was a never-ending rearrangement of the pattern. A microbiologist would have been enchanted, but I wasn't sticking my bum anywhere near it. I found a broken bar stool in the corner. It wasn't clean, but at least it wasn't creating its own visible ecosystem. Kiffo slumped into the couch, which gave off a dense cloud of irritated bugs, some, undoubtedly, unknown to modern science.

‘Wassup, Calma?' he said, fishing into his pocket and producing a rollie with a distinct dogleg to it.

‘You don't want to know, Kiffo,' I said.

‘Okay,' he replied and lit up. There was a silence.

‘Well, when I say you don't want to know, I mean that you probably do want to know. It's kind of a rhetorical question – well, not a question, obviously, more of a rhetorical statement – but it produces a similar effect. You're supposed to press me and then I reveal all. So not at all like a rhetorical statement, when it comes down to it.'

Kiffo narrowed his eyes at me through the cloud of smoke and airborne bacilli.

‘You're talking like an English teacher,' he said. ‘Don't. It makes me want to throw up. If you've got something to say, then say it.'

Good advice, let's be honest. So I told him all about what I had said to the Pitbull the night of the break-in and how she'd told the school counsellor –

[
Mrs Mills – Gemini.
Your normal sense of discretion will
desert you today. Beware of unfortunate slips of the tongue
caused by either a momentary lapse of concentration or an
innate tendency towards verbal diarrhoea.
]

– who'd obviously said something to Rachael Spit-In-Her-Eye Smith who'd let her mouth off the leash and created havoc. As I was telling him, I could feel the tears welling. But I kept them back. Kiffo's one of those guys who doesn't like crying. It would embarrass him and he wouldn't know what to do. So he'd have to get angry. Still, I tried to tell him how I felt as if my whole life had been ripped up and thrown away in the course of a single afternoon. I wanted him to know that this was important.

And he listened. When I had done with the tale, a little breathless with the effort of keeping emotion out of it, he threw his cigarette onto the carpet and ground it out with his heel. Then he leaned back and looked at me.

‘You, Calma,' he said, ‘are something else.'

‘Yeah, I know.'

‘You did that for me? You told the Pitbull you loved her just to give me more time? I don't know what to say. I really don't. No one has never done nothing like that for me. Never.'

‘Never done
anything
like that,' I corrected.

‘But you
did
, Calma. You did.'

‘Listen. It was just a spur-of-the-moment thing, you know. It doesn't mean we're engaged or anything. Anyway, that's all beside the point. My life has just been flushed down the toilet because of it and I don't know what to do!'

Kiffo fished out another cigarette.

‘Don't do nothing,' he said.

‘What do you mean?'

Kiffo leaned forward and jabbed his cigarette at me like an accusing finger.

‘Christ, Calma. You're supposed to be the big brains of the class, but you're a dumb shit at times. What
can
you do? Go around saying to everyone, “Listen, I'm not a lesbo, swear to God.” You think that'll stop people talking?'

‘No, but . . .'

‘Stuff 'em. I've spent my whole life dealing with people who think I'm a step below a cockroach. Do I let that worry me? Hell, I am what I am. I don't look for people's approval and you shouldn't neither. What you did for me was real good, a real nice thing to do.'

‘Thanks, but . . .'

‘If it's caused other people to think bad of you, well that's their problem, not yours. At least two of us know the truth about you and the Pitbull. The rest can shove it.' This was, by some considerable margin, the longest speech I had ever heard from Kiffo. I wasn't used to being talked over by someone whose preferred mode of communication was an occasional grunt, normally accompanied by offensive body language. I felt touched that my predicament had moved him to that extent. What's more, he was right. There wasn't anything I could do, but just ignoring the situation didn't seem too appealing either. For all that, what he said was important to me, particularly the bit about the two of us knowing the truth.

‘You
don't
fancy her, do you?' he added.

‘Christ, Kiffo!'

‘Sorry. Just checking.'

We sat for a while, lost in our own thoughts. Talking to Kiffo had done me good, just like always. It had taken my mind off my own problems a bit, which was ironic, really, since that was all we had been talking about. Maybe it was something to do with the surroundings, the evidence of Kiffo's bleak existence. I mean, the room
was
disgusting. I'll say that for the Fridge. She might be working every waking hour, but she still has the time and the energy to keep the house pretty tidy. But Kiffo and his dad? It was a different world they lived in, a world where normal standards didn't apply – exactly, I suppose, the kind of world that the Fridge didn't want for me. I mulled that over for a while. I could see what she wanted to achieve. I just couldn't tell whether it was worth the price we were paying to achieve it. Gives you a headache, thinking about stuff like that, so I stopped.

Anyway, my eye had been caught by a framed photograph on the wall. It was of a young man in his late teens, leaning against a wall. He was smiling broadly, as if in response to something said as the shutter was clicking. Whatever that might have been was gone, the words long since evaporated, but the reaction was still there, frozen in that grin. He looked happy, full of life, energy radiating from the posture, the narrowed eyes, the red hair spiked into crazy angles. The glass of the photograph gleamed. There was not a mark on it, or on the frame, which had obviously been polished recently. It was a small oasis of cleanliness against the stained backdrop of the wall.

I glanced over at Kiffo. He was looking at me, his expression neutral.

‘Kiffo, look—'

‘Time to go home, Calma,' he interrupted. ‘We wouldn't want you to catch anything life-threatening here, now would we? I'll walk you back.'

It doesn't do to argue with Kiffo. I got up from the stool and checked myself for alien life-forms while Kiffo rolled another cigarette and opened the door for me. We walked for a while in silence. The street lights around his place were all out, probably smashed by those in his area who preferred darkness as a business environment. In other circumstances, I would have found it frightening, but Kiffo's presence was reassuring. I looked up at the sky. The stars were hammered into its blackness like small, bright nails. I wanted to talk about the photograph, but didn't know how to start. I guess I didn't have the courage.

‘Kiffo?' I said.

‘What?'

‘If I ask you something, will you answer me honestly?'

‘Depends.'

‘Why do you try so hard to give the impression that you're dumb?'

‘I am dumb.'

‘No.' I stopped. This was important and I wanted an answer. ‘You're not. And you know it. All that stuff you were telling me back at your place, about looking for people's approval. That's not the kind of thing a dumb person would be saying. So why pretend?'

He shrugged, like the topic of conversation was boring him.

‘I'm not pretending to be anything, Calma. I'm me, that's all. Like I was saying earlier. Other people think it's dumb, what I am. Who cares?'

‘Does it matter what I think about you?'

Kiffo took a deep draw on his cigarette and thought for a moment.

‘Yeah,' he said. ‘It does. But then, you don't think I'm dumb, do you? So no worries.'

‘But it
is
important what other people think about you, Kiffo. It
is
important if they think you are stupid when you're not!'

‘Why?'

‘It just is.' I was floundering and I knew it.

‘I'll tell you what's important, Calma.'

‘What?'

‘What we do about the Pitbull. That's important. Where do we go from here?'

‘Are you crazy?' I said. ‘We do nothing about the Pitbull. I've already had enough trouble with that woman. I'm going to keep my head down, do the assignments she sets and hope that she'll either leave soon or get run over by a very large road train. Preferably the latter.'

‘Yeah. You're right,' he said, scratching behind his ear. ‘It's too dangerous. Keep your head down. That's the way to go. You're right.'

That stopped me. God, he can be a real bastard at times.

‘Now, hang on a moment, Kiffo,' I said. I think I even put my hands on my hips. ‘Just because I'm right, doesn't mean I'm right, you know.'

‘Hey, you got me with that one, Calma. Just too smart for me, I guess.'

‘Cut it out, Kiffo. Don't think, not even for one minute, that you are going to do anything about the Pitbull without me. Okay?'

‘But you just said . . .'

‘Never mind what I just said. We are in this together.'

I meant it too. It hit me, right then, with all the force of a genuine revelation, that I only took chances verbally. Quick at shooting from the lip, but a bit of a sook when it came to anything else. Maybe old Kiffo, all action and adrenaline, would make a good partner, a Clyde to my Bonnie, a Butch Cassidy to my Sundance. I decided not to share this with Kiffo. I don't think he would have liked it if I'd called him ‘Butch'. But what the hell? I'd come this far and like old Macbeth said: ‘I am stepped in blood so far that to go back is as tedious as to go o'er.' Or something like that. And anyway, I was going to find out about the connection between the Pitbull and Kiffo, regardless of what he might think.

We got back to my place and I invited him in for a cup of coffee.

‘Thanks, but I'd better get back,' he said. ‘Dad'll be home soon, full of grog and wanting dinner. If it's not ready for him, there'll be trouble.'

I watched as he walked off into the dark, a slight, bandy-legged figure, hunched and curiously vulnerable. I had little first-hand knowledge of the kind of life he led, but I knew that it was loveless and full of casual cruelty. I felt even closer to him then than normal. Not the sort of closeness you feel for the underprivileged, when your own comfortable existence is held up to theirs. Not the sort that is tinged with guilt. I just felt – and I know this sounds really obvious and almost childish – that we were both here and human. That for all our differences, we were still, like the rest of humanity, ninety-nine per cent indistinguishable from each other.