Tigerland (20 page)

“He’s a fucking bastard, do you know that?”

“The thought had crossed my mind.” A light rain began to fall, and it made the lights of the city glow even brighter through the windshield. It was a thing of beauty I couldn’t even appreciate at the moment. Heyward ruined everything, it seemed, even petrichor and the reflection of light through water.

“And I’m a fucking idiot.”

“That, I don’t agree with.”

“You don’t?” Dec asked.

“We’re not going through this again, Dec.” I pulled the car over into an empty parking spot—at this time of night there was hardly any traffic on the roads. I switched off the ignition and reached for his hand. “It was, to quote that dicky song, a bad romance. We all have them. Unfortunately, Heyward is exploiting it publicly when the rest of us who have them just end up suffering in private. But that doesn’t make you an idiot.”

“It’s just I thought you said we were going to be in control if your show did this interview?”

“I know I did. I thought it was the best way to deal with it, but Heyward made sure he yanked that right out of our hands. For fuck’s sake, Dec, he must have been planning this from the very beginning.”

“I still feel like an idiot.”

“Well, stop it.”

“You have an instant cure?”

I kissed him. His breath was foul with drink, but I didn’t care. His hands travelled under my jacket and curved at my back, pulling me in deeper to the kiss.

“Its effects may only be temporary,” I said, still leaning my forehead against his.

“It’s a good start,” Dec said, giving a smile that was the first I’d seen since meeting him at the lift.

“Coffee is the next round of treatment,” I told him, “and plenty of it. We need to sober you up.”

“It only affects me so much because I feel like I’m dragging you into my shit again,” Dec said. “I just want you to know that.”

“I knew what I was getting into when I signed up to love Declan Tyler,” I laughed, starting the car again. “Besides, I got the better deal. You had to end up with my family.”

It was an old joke, and one I didn’t even believe any more, but it helped lighten the mood as we made our way to our apartment, where the others would be waiting.

D
ECLAN
returned to a state of semi-sobriety with a regular intake of coffee and some Chinese takeaway. Abe and Lisa had returned to their own apartment, leaving us with Roger and Fran. As the night had grown longer they had become quieter, and now that Dec and I had quickly tired of talking about our own melodramas, it became more obvious that there was something unspoken in the air between our friends. Roger was better at covering it up than Fran, making small talk and trying to be funny while she got lost in her own thoughts and stared out at the darkness of the night beyond the balcony.

“I don’t think I could drink any more coffee,” Dec groaned as I tried to foist another cup on him.

I relented. Even I, in a rare fit of pique, was sick of looking at the stuff. “Fran, do you want more?”

She didn’t hear me.

“Fran?” Roger nudged her gently.

“Huh?” Her eyes briefly became alert again. “What?”

I remembered how I had been surprised when they first came into my office, dressed strangely formally for the occasion. Something had happened before they met up with me. “Come on. I know something’s up with you guys.”

“No, Simon,” Fran said, her voice a little wobbly. “You’ve both been through a hell of a night.”

Dec sat up fully and moved closer to her. “Tell us, please.”

She could never say no to Dec, but she seemed close to it tonight.

It was going to take more than Dec’s usually effective uber-sensitivity to get them to unload. I had to be a little harsher. “If you guys don’t tell us what’s going on, we’re just going to have something else to stress about.” I didn’t want to sound unfeeling, but I thought it was better that we knew everything now rather than having a Sword of Damocles hanging over our head for another day or two.

Roger was the one who spoke up. “The bank turned down our loan this evening.”

Fran shot him a look, but he didn’t return it.

“Oh, fuck.” I slumped upon the couch. “Guys, I’m so sorry.”

Fran subtly wiped at the corner of her eye, as if she was rubbing a bit of sleep out, but I saw the tear glistening on her fingernail. “I thought we were in a good enough situation—okay, maybe not the best, but enough to draw against the equity. But they said no.”

Roger stared stony-faced at the table, and I could see that he was also struggling to maintain his composure. But he was seething with rage, whereas Fran was grieving for the family she was being denied. Roger just seemed helpless, and because of that, he also felt angry because he couldn’t do anything to change it.

“You okay, Rog?” I asked.

“What do you reckon?” he bit back, and then immediately threw up his hands. “I’m sorry. It’s just that they didn’t even seem to take time thinking about it. They might as well have laughed in our faces.”

“You don’t have to apologise,” I said. “But what’s next?”

“Mum and Dad have offered to give us a couple of thousand—”

Roger cut Fran off. “They can’t afford it, so we’re not taking it. And it’s not enough anyway.”

“Well, what are we going to do then, Roger?”

“There’s always—” I started, but Roger glared at me.

“We’ve been through this.”

“There is no problem with us lending, or even giving you the money—” Declan said, but he was shut down just as quickly as I was.

“No,” Roger repeated, his voice hardened. “We’re not borrowing off anybody.”

I looked at Declan, and I could tell he was unhappy. Money was always a touchy subject between friends, but it burned Dec to have the kind of money that he could help them out but that they wouldn’t take.

“Do you know how long it will take us to save that kind of money?” Fran asked Roger. “By then, our chances to conceive could be even worse.”

But Roger was silent.

“I need some air,” Fran said. She stood up, a little unsteady, and made her way out onto the balcony.

After a few seconds—it never took long to break him—Roger sighed. “Don’t give me that look.”

“I’m not giving you a look,” I said.

“Yes you are. And so is Dec.”

Dec bowed out of the argument. “No look from me. I’m still too drunk to maintain eye contact.”

But he was sober enough to be able to put together a sentence that coherent.

I made a jerking motion with my head, to indicate he should go and join Fran on the balcony. Unsteady on his feet, he crossed from the lounge to the balcony and went to console Fran while I dealt with her husband.

“Subtle,” Roger mused.

I got up and sat beside him. “Look, I’m not going to sugarcoat it, because that’s not what you need right now. You know the offer Dec made you, and you know he means it. It’s always going to be there.” Roger shifted uncomfortably, but I slapped my hand upon his knee to keep him still. “This is going to sound harsh, but Fran is right. The longer you wait, the more complications there could be. You said this wasn’t a pride thing about your masculinity, right?”

He nodded.

“So don’t let it come down to pride about money, then. Especially when everybody wants to help you where they can.”

“You finished?” Roger asked, but his tone was softer than it had been previously.

“Yep. For now.” I stood and moved to follow Fran out onto the balcony. I paused for a moment, my hand resting against the glass as I watched her and Dec speak, their heads bowed together and united by a common bond of circumstances working against them. I wanted them to have their moment. I could see Roger’s reflection behind me, and I wished we could have that freedom right now that Fran and Dec were experiencing with each other. But Roger’s shields were up, and he was preparing for attack, an attack that would end up being friendly fire against himself in the long run.

But I couldn’t move. Roger was my best and oldest friend. And even though he was, understandably, being difficult at the moment, I couldn’t let that stop us from trying to leap over the injustices of life and try to come up with a battle plan.

“Cup of tea?” I asked.

He gave me an odd look but didn’t refuse.

It was a start.

For Fran and Roger, at least. I had no idea what the morning could bring for Dec and me.

A
ND
so it all began again, a never ending wave of déjà vu that we had to ride out to avoid getting dumped in the shallows.

I switched my mobile back on the next morning to find forty-three voice messages left for me. As soon as I heard a strange voice, I instantly deleted it. There were also calls from my mum, Tim (crowing about having guessed it—he was as quickly deleted as the journalists were), and Declan’s family, as they were unable to get him on his mobile.

Surely they knew we had gone to ground by now.

Dec was already up, seated at the kitchen counter and on his laptop.

“Do I even want to know?” I groaned, hugging him from behind and kissing the nape of his neck.

He quickly snapped his laptop shut. “You don’t want to know.”

“But you do?”

“I might as well be prepared.” He stood up and kissed me good morning. “The phone’s still unplugged. I don’t even want to begin going through the voice mail.”

“I had forty-three on my mobile,” I said. “You probably have triple that.”

“Maybe I’ll just chuck it out the window and into the water.”

“That sounds like a healthy way to deal with it.” I pulled the butter and vegemite out of the fridge. “Toast?”

Dec made a face. “My stomach’s a bit iffy.”

“Toast and vegemite is the best hangover cure there is.”

He shook his head. “Hot chips and a Coke.”

“Gross. But you’d have to leave the house to get that, and I’m willing to bet there’s a cadre of journalists out there wanting to bare your soul by ripping you open with their teeth.”

“That’s a great image to start the day with. Maybe we’ll be lucky and they’ll all be camped out at Heyward’s house.”

“Are you kidding? They’ll have doubled up the crews and split them for both locations. They did that for us, remember?”

He exhaled heavily. “I tried to forget.”

“Are you going to go to work today?” I asked.

He looked surprised. “Why, aren’t you?”

“I’m not running scared. But I’m not their primary target.”

“They’ll want quotes from you. You know that.”

“Dec, we’ve done nothing wrong. I’m not going to sit at home and hide, as much as I’d love to. I’m not going to give Heyward the satisfaction.”

“You’re calling him ‘Heyward’ again.”

“I never really stopped. Besides, you’re going to go to work, yeah?”

“Of course I am.” He paused and smiled for my benefit. “I’m not going to give Heyward the satisfaction, am I?”

“That’s the Declan Tyler I know and love,” I said, through a mouthful of toast. “Now, eat your breakfast.”

“
R
EADY
?”

We sat in Dec’s monstrous SUV, a car that I hated driving, although I was actually behind the wheel as I spoke. We thought it would be safer if I drove, as they would be concentrating on Dec for comment, and he couldn’t risk being distracted and running them over.

Dec pulled his sunnies down, even though we knew it was overcast outside. “Might as well.”

“Now, is it fifty points for each journalist I take out, or seventy-five?”

“Depends on the injury.” Dec didn’t often resort to gallows humour, so it clearly broadcast the mood he was in.

“Two thousand if we take out Anna Crowley!” I grinned, thinking back to how much she had pissed me off when she was stalking us at the time of Dec’s outing.

“Double team it with Peter van Niuewen, and it’s seven thousand,” Dec said, referring to his own personal journalist nemesis.

“You’re on,” I said, and I pressed the tagger that would open our building’s garage door.

They were smart. There were some undoubtedly camped outside our building’s foyer in case we left via there, but there were some waiting by the garage as well to check out any hapless tenant who could be Declan Tyler.