Tigerland (35 page)

I almost knocked the mobile off the night stand as I picked it up. “Hello?”

“Hey, Simon.”

“Coby, it’s a Sunday morning. The building better be on fire, or else I’m hanging up.”

“The building isn’t on fire, but you better not hang up!”

Despite being annoyed, I was more awake now and prepared to be amiable in order to maintain friendly boss and employee relations. “What’s up?”

Then I remembered, rather guiltily, that I hadn’t seen his film last night. “So, uh, congratulations on the screening.”

“Results aren’t until next weekend, which you would have known if you had stuck around.”

“Yeah, about that—”

“It’s okay, Simon. I saw the papers this morning.”

My belly instantly growled with agony. “Oh. Then you know why I wasn’t there. If it makes you feel any better, I’m not feeling the best this morning.”

And I guess I now had it confirmed there was a new media blitz.

“It’s okay, but that’s not what I’m calling about. Uh, I don’t know how to put this, but do you have any idea what Declan is doing right now?”

This was a strange question, even from Coby, but I was still nonplussed. “He’s here, with me.”

“Um, are you sure?”

Now that he had made me aware of it, I couldn’t hear the shower running. There was no sound of movement from the kitchen or the lounge. And Maggie was in here with me. If Dec was up and about, she’d be pestering him for food or currently stuffing her face on what he had given her.

“Coby,” I said, trying not to let worry seep into my tone, “stop being vague. What’s going on?”

“It’s just, my friend Sunita, who’s a line producer for
Before Breakfast,
says that he just turned up there.”

A new hot flush of panic was already engulfing me. “What?”

“Dec knows the producer—”

“Yeah, Catriona Cate. I’ve met her heaps of times.”

“Well, apparently he showed up there wanting to go on for an interview.”

“When?” I was now jumping out of bed as I spoke, pulling on my trakkies and a T-shirt before running through the lounge and searching for my shoes.

“He wants on now.”

“That’s ridiculous!” I wheezed as I crammed my feet into my shoes and headed for the door. “They won’t do that.”

“If they want a scoop, they will. And if what Sunita says is true, and they’re freeing up part of the schedule to put him on, that must have been what he promised them.”

I was shrugging into my jacket and grabbing my keys off the hook, but I stopped short. “A scoop?”

“An exclusive response to the Heyward controversy.”

I was expecting that, but I sagged against the door. “Oh, fuck.”

“I know.”

“Fuck fuck fuck!” I slammed the door behind me and ran down the hall towards the lift.

I was in luck. The bell pinged; somebody was getting off on my floor right this minute.

“Simon—”

“Fuck fuck fuck
fuck
!” I yelled as the doors opened and our neighbour Mrs. Gupti stepped out.

“Good morning, Simon,” Mrs. Gupti said, her lips pursed together with disapproval at my language. But, really, she knew me by now and shouldn’t have expected any better. Besides, if what Dec said was true she thought I was a backstabber who called the cops on her.

“Morning, Mrs. Gupti!” I yelled, giving her a huge smile as I leapt past her into the lift and pressed the button to close the doors.

“How is Declan?” she called after me, but she was cut off by the doors sliding together over her question.

“Mrs. Gupti?” Coby asked in my ear.

“Yes.”

“You should have said hi to her for me.”

“I didn’t even know you knew her.”

“I’ve seen her a few times around your building. She likes me.”

She was probably sizing him up as a potential mate for Dec if I were out of the picture. At least until Heyward outed himself and she became part of the 67 percent of people polled by some News Limited hack paper that thought Dec and Heyward should get back together again.

“You were very polite to her,” Coby said, amazed. “I didn’t know you could be that polite.”

“Shut up, Coby. Did Sunita tell you when they were putting Dec on?”

“As a matter of fact—”

“Will I get there in time?”

“They’re shafting the regular pet spot with Dr. Chris, which from what Sunita told me will make him unbearable to work with, as he has an ego bigger than—”

“What time, Coby?”

A bit miffed, he sighed. “At 8:42.”

“That’s very precise.” My stomach was dropping, and it wasn’t just from the gravity of travelling downwards in a very fast lift.

“That’s live television for you. Everything’s planned to the second.”

“Except for today,” I said. “I bet you they weren’t expecting this.”

I know I certainly wasn’t.

“Good luck, Simon.”

“Coby, before you go—”

“What?” I could tell he was expecting me to ask for some favour, something that went above and beyond the parameters of his job description.

“Thank you.”

He sounded surprised. And pleased. “You’re welcome. But, boss, are you really sure you want to stop him?”

If somebody had asked me that question as little as two days ago, I wouldn’t have wanted to. But I had reached a sense of stability since my last couple of heart to hearts with Dec—which only seem to have unravelled him in hindsight. And I didn’t want him to do whatever it was he was planning to do on my behalf, so, yes, I had to try and stop him. Heyward didn’t bother me anymore. Who the fuck was Heyward? Or the people who would be sniggering over the paper as they ate their morning Weet-Bix or Vegemite toast.

I already had all the people I actually gave a fuck about, and they were all I cared about.

So I didn’t answer his question. “Thanks, Coby. Speak to you soon.”

I disconnected the call, and as soon as the doors opened on our lobby, I was off running. Well, my form of running, anyway. I was moving as fast as I could, at least, and I knew I was drawing attention to myself as I zigzagged between the people heading out for their leisurely Sunday brunches or making their way to Etihad Stadium for the footy, as I wasn’t exactly dressed like someone out for a jog. I passed over Webb Bridge to the Docklands studios, the blood pulsing in my temples a soundtrack to my ears. I hoped it wasn’t the sign of an approaching aneurysm.

I had to stop to catch my breath, and called Coby again.

“Jesus, Simon, you sound like you’re about to die.”

“Maybe,” I panted. “But I need a favour.”

“Ask away.”

“Well, it’s actually more a favour from Sunita. Security isn’t going to let me in, no matter how good my reason is. Can you please call her and tell her to meet me at reception?”

“I’ll try my best.”

“Thank you,” I said before erupting into a coughing fit that made Coby hang up on me this time in order to save his own eardrums.

There was a
lot
of security at the studio. Far more than I would have thought necessary, especially for a Sunday morning, but maybe Sunday morning breakfast show hosts are prone to semi-celebrity stalkers as much as their real celebrity counterparts.

I pressed the intercom, and the screen lit up with the face of a security guard who looked better suited to be the bouncer outside a nightclub with a clientele of wannabe Melbourne gangsters. “Yes?”

“I’m here… because I have an appointment,” I puffed. Not exactly true, but if Sunita was meeting me it was close enough.

“With who?”

“Sunita.”

“Sunita who?”

“Uh….” Good question. “I’ve forgotten her surname. She’s one of the assistants on
Before Breakfast.
”

“Name?”

“Sunita!”

“No,” he said, as if I was a little bit slow. “
Your
name.”

“Simon. Simon Murray.”

A pause as he looked over his laptop. “Not listed.”

This was one of those moments where if I was more of a celebrity I could have yelled
Don’t you know who I am?
But you can’t really use that when your only claim to fame is that you go out with a famous ex-footy player. Even if he did work for the station I was standing outside.

“Can’t you just call her for me? I’m here with Declan Tyler. He’s appearing on the show this morning.”

As usual, the mention of Dec’s name brought a more compliant response. “Hang on a minute. I’ll call her.”

He muted me so I couldn’t hear him, and after he finished his call he came back to me. “Come in.” A buzzer sounded, and the door yielded under my hands, which I only now realised were desperately pressed up against the glass. I must have looked demented from his point of view.

As I entered the lobby, another bell went off, and a tall woman with immaculately coiffured dark hair emerged from a lift.

“Simon?” she asked, looking over me with her lip slightly curled in distaste at my dishevelled appearance.

“Sunita?”

“Follow me.”

Was I always this officious at work? No, and I guess that was because I worked at a piddly little community television station. Even in her lowly role as an assistant, Sunita probably thought she was levels ahead of me in power.

As the lift doors closed, Sunita sighed. “I hope I don’t get fired for this.”

I thought she was being a little melodramatic. “I’m Dec’s partner. I’m sure guests bring their partners or an entourage all the time.”

“Yes, but he’s not exactly doing things the normal way, is he? He’s got everyone in an uproar.”

That was how it seemed when the doors opened again on a claustrophobic hallway where a red studio light was flashing.

“Be quiet,” Sunita warned me, and I felt like telling her I did know how to act in a studio, seeing I oversaw four television shows of my own as an executive producer. But once again I displayed a saint-like demeanour and bit my tongue.

Although I did worry about how they would react if I managed to convince Dec to leave with me now, and throw their schedule into further disarray. Would they bar all the windows and doors to try and prevent our escape?

It didn’t matter anyway.

I was too late. As we entered the studio and my eyes adjusted to the darkness punctuated by the bright studio lights hanging above the set, I could see Dec was already seated across from one of the
Before Breakfast
hosts—the annoyingly over-friendly Matt Rice, who I was sure must have been on some form of happy pills in order to pull off that kind of hyperactivity for three hours straight. Or maybe he was just fuelled by cocaine.

“Shit,” Sunita hissed. “Sorry.”

We moved a little closer, to where we could hear them. Dec seemed a bit pallid under the lights, although I couldn’t figure out whether it was due to nervousness or maybe not giving them enough time to put him through makeup.

“You’ve been avoiding the media spotlight ever since Greg Heyward revealed he was gay,” Matt was saying. “And even more so when he revealed that the two of you had a relationship in the past. Was there a particular reason for that?”

Dec cleared his throat, a sure sign of nervousness. My heart was in my belly, and I think it had slowed to a sluggish rate just barely above “dead.”

“The truth was, I just thought the past was in the past.”

“And yet here you are.”

“Kind of against my will,” Dec said with a small laugh, trying to lighten the mood.

“It’s not like we’re holding a gun to your head.”

“No, I chose to be here.”

“And I have to ask again, why is that?”

Wow, did Matt Rice think he was aiming for a Pulitzer or something?

“I thought it was time to give my own side of the story,” Dec said. “But not for me. For my partner, Simon.”

Matt Rice laughed. “He’s made a bit of a splash this morning across the headlines, hasn’t he?”

A number of the crew members laughed around me at the obvious joke. One of them caught my eye, and his own widened at the realisation I was there, and he turned back quickly to watch the show unfolding before him again.

Horrified, I saw a picture of a wet and bedraggled Jasper and myself crawling out of the Yarra appear on the large screen behind Declan and Matt. As usual, I was grimacing and looking like I was ready to start ripping the head off anyone who approached me. Jasper looked like the poor little victim. Which I guess he was, in a way, but hey, so was I!

Dec shook his head at the image. I could tell it wasn’t an admonishment of my behaviour, but the network’s for showing it.

“There are two sides to every story,” Dec said. “There is to that one. Jasper Brunswick—”

“Who happens to be the co-author of Greg Heyward’s book, correct?” Matt interrupted.

“Yes, he is. But Jasper bumped into a waiter, and they both started to fall over the railing of the bridge. Simon was trying to grab them, and he was pulled over as well.”

“Witnesses say both men were arguing before this happened.”

“They were… talking, yes.”

“Heatedly?”

“I couldn’t tell you. I wasn’t there at that point of time.”

“Would Jasper back up your version of events, I wonder?” Matt asked.

“I don’t know,” Dec said, and he was starting to get a little heated. “Why don’t you have him on tomorrow’s show and ask him? He doesn’t mind the attention.”

Matt put up his hands as if to surrender, and everybody laughed again.

Dec, calm down
,
I pleaded.
He’s trying to bait you. Don’t do it.

“We’ll move past that,” Matt said magnanimously. “But you say you’re here for Simon. Why isn’t he here to speak for himself?”

I shrank back into the shadows, as if he could see me and try to pull me on stage—or, more likely, I would be exposed by the loyal employees of the show and taken up like a sacrifice to angry gods.

“Because this whole thing started due to Greg and me. Simon shouldn’t have to be involved.”

“But he is,” Matt pointed out.

Dec nodded. “He’s had to put up with a lot being with me. Sometimes he gets a lot of crap thrown at him, even from people close to him, saying they don’t know how he ended up with me, as if he was lucky that he got me. But it’s the other way round.” He paused, and for once Matt didn’t interrupt him or try to prod him along further. “I was lucky getting him. If I hadn’t met him, I don’t know where I would be today. It sounds stupid to say someone brought you to life, but he opened up the world for me. I was in a pretty bad place when I met him, and he was prepared to stay in it with me, and to love me in it regardless.”