Three Dollars, Page 30

  Nick and I were off to buy garlic bread. He seemed to have a plan and assured me the plan had a point. We were heading to the food department of one of the major department stores in the Bourke Street Mall. But, in the way he spoke, the plan had greater possibilities than just the purchase of garlic bread. He wanted me to understand this but I didn’t. First, he said, we had to find one of their empty bags which was why we had to scan the area around the Mall.

  ‘It’ll be quicker if we split up. It shouldn’t take long to find one. People always take more bags than they need and it’s easy pickings around here. Just watch out for the trams.’

  ‘Nick, wait a sec, Nick. Why do we need a bag before we go in if we’re going to buy the garlic bread?’

  ‘You ask a lot of questions, don’t you. It would be a lot quicker if you didn’t.’

  ‘Do we want Myer bags or David Jones bags?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. They both sell garlic bread. Just keep your eyes peeled. Start with the rubbish bins. You might find a good one there first off. Raise your hand if you do.’

  He saw the distaste on my face at the prospect of going to the rubbish bins.

  ‘What’s wrong?

  ‘I don’t like the idea of going through rubbish bins.’

  ‘It’s not illegal.’

  ‘No. It’s dirty.’

  ‘Oh come on, most of it’s newspapers and plastic bags, fruit peel and old sandwiches. What are you worried about?’

  ‘What about spit?’

  ‘Who spits into rubbish bins? Can you name one person you know?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Well that makes two of us then. The ground’s for spitting.’

  ‘But, Nick, it’s filthy. I’m not going to do it. I can’t.’

  ‘You’d be surprised what you can do. You want to eat, don’t you?’

  ‘Not that much.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I never said you were going to eat that much. But you’ve got to eat something, for your family’s sake. They’re depending on you. Anyway, there’s nothing to be afraid of in rubbish bins. Most of the real dirt people take home with them.’

  Amid the buskers, the jugglers, the lost children and the even more lost mothers, the bored skateboarders devastated by the realisation that their lives were not on television, neither in a Twisties commercial nor in a Generation X love story with Winona Ryder nor even in the heart-warming Disney story of teenage runaways screening at the special family time of seven-thirty, the spruikers, Japanese tourists, truant school children, truant office workers, tarot card readers, quasi-Gypsy violinists, quasi-South American nylon string guitarists, fire eaters and evangelical critics of the Family Court—amid all of this I kept an eye out for an unwanted plastic bag from one of the two major department stores. My heart was not in it. It wasn’t just that I needed to know the reason for the bag. The reason for anything would have been sufficient.

  I tried to imagine coming home. I would tell Tanya the whole story, about the legislation I’d recommended, the department, the employment consultants and maybe even all about Amanda. Then I would take off my shoes, get into bed next to her and the two of us would stay there until the bank had sold the house. Abby would have to leave school and go out and get a job. I had lost Nick somewhere among the trams and, somehow, hunting and gathering did not have the cachet of nobility with which it had been imbued by anthropologists who had never tried it.

  Nick was right. He had no trouble finding an appropriate plastic bag. He had more trouble finding me but when he did, instead of taking me to the store behind the bag, he led me to a small pizza place in an alley off Bourke Street. I understood nothing.

  ‘Is the garlic bread good here?’ I asked with a childlike need-to-know.

  ‘It’s the worst, usually mouldy,’ and with that he went inside and bought a piece. Then when he was safely outside again he unwrapped the garlic breadstick to examine its insides. Sure enough, there was mould.

  ‘Great!’ he said wrapping it again and placing it in the plastic bag of the department store.

  In the food section of the department store I just watched as he approached a young man behind the hot bread counter.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Nick said with gentle politeness.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I bought this bread here a little while ago. I’m not sure if it was you that actually served me but it seems to be off.’

  ‘Off?’

  ‘Yes. Mouldy,’ and he gave it to the young shop assistant to examine.

  ‘Oh yes, it is mouldy. I’m terribly sorry. Would you have the docket with you?’

  ‘The docket?’ enquired Nick innocently.

  ‘The receipt.’

  ‘I don’t keep receipts, not for such small purchases. But look … it’s still warm, it’s in one of your bags and it’s very, very, mouldy.’

  The shop assistant looked gravely at the unwrapped garlic bread and, having had enough time for his own immediate future to flash before his eyes, he clearly decided to keep the customer satisfied.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry, sir. Would you like a replacement or your money back?’

  ‘Well, actually I don’t really feel like garlic bread anymore. It’s put me off it a bit,’ Nick continued with polite conciliatoriness.

  ‘Certainly. Can I get you something else, sir?’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind two barbecued chickens.’

  ‘Two barbecued chickens?’ the shop assistant asked with surprise.

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  The young man looked doubtful but he left us at the bread counter and returned shortly with two barbecued chickens. A slight crowd had formed in front of the bread counter by the time he had returned.

  ‘Thank you, sir. Less the garlic bread, that will be thirteen dollars fifty, thank you.’

  ‘Oh no, I didn’t expect to pay any more for this. The bread was mouldy.’

  The word ‘mouldy’ sent a ripple through the small crowd of potential hot-bread consumers. The young man, who seemed to be regretting his birth, cleared his throat to explain that he was not able to complete the exchange on those terms. With genteel upper-middle-class insistence, Nick insisted firmly and, when the shop assistant tried to explain with a dry-mouthed reasonableness that it would be an unequal exchange, Nick suggested the intervention of the manager.

  ‘The manager, sir?’

  ‘Yes. I think that is best.’ Then he turned around and said to no one in particular of the gathering customers, ‘It’s the mould. You don’t expect mould, not in your hot bread, not from here of all places.’ They had come for bread and had gotten a performance thrown in.

  The manager was even shorter than Nick. His shortness was accentuated by the passing of the years and the modesty of his success in retailing. If his sharp angularity and eyelash-strength moustache did not intimidate Nick at first sight, then it was apparent, even before he opened his goldfish mouth, that he was likely to be the loser of any conflict between them. He looked as though he had been at this level of management for some time, having read trees and trees of memoranda, always noting them, but never writing them. He was tired. His tie was tired and his maroon cardigan had surrendered. There was nothing about him to suggest that he had recently warranted promotion. On the contrary, it looked as if it had been some time since he had known the wild exhilaration of moving up in the corporate structure, since the demands of fresh produce, multi-grains, French pastries and imported delicacies he could not pronounce had seemed the edge of greatness. The weekend casuals laughed at him. Now as he took Nick to one side I tried to maintain my perspective.

  ‘I’ve only just heard,’ he offered gravely.

  ‘About the garlic bread?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It was riddled with mould,’ said Nick indignantly.

  ‘Yes. I can assure you, sir, we will look into it,’ the manager promised in hushed tones.

  ‘I looked into it. It was riddled with mould.’

  ‘In addition to o
ur apologies, you may have either a replacement stick of garlic bread or a cash refund in full. It’s entirely up to you.’

  ‘Thank you. I’d like two barbecued chickens.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, we can’t do that.’

  ‘Yes you can.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry, we can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because the value of two barbecued chickens greatly exceeds the value of a garlic bread stick.’

  ‘You mean the cost?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Nick nodded appreciatively. ‘Look, I understand what you’re saying …’

  The manager looked relieved at last.

  ‘… but it’s the principle. A man comes here to buy garlic bread—’

  ‘Sir, I quite understand,’ the manager interrupted.

  ‘I think I’d better have two barbecued chickens.’

  ‘I’m sorry sir,’ the manager continued in exasperation, ‘the value—’

  ‘The cost you mean. The value changes depending on who’s talking.’

  ‘The cost of two barbecued chickens—’

  ‘But you can’t think of such a small cost in today’s terms. That would be wrong. What about goodwill? I’m a customer and—’

  ‘We do value your custom and we do thank you for informing us.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Why do you thank me for informing you?’

  ‘Well—it prevents it from happening again.’

  ‘No it doesn’t.’

  ‘Oh I can assure you, sir …’

  ‘Now if I call the Health Department—’

  ‘Oh now there’s no need for anything like—’

  ‘And that Mike what’s-his-name from the TV—’

  ‘Really, sir …’

  ‘What’s two chickens then? It’s a bargain at two, wouldn’t you say?’

  The chickens were heavy, wrapped in foil, they steamed in plastic bags as we made our way back through the miscellany of life that ebbed and flowed in the Bourke Street Mall. Nick put both of them in the one plastic bag and threw the other away. ‘Why waste a bag?’ he said throwing it in the rubbish bin. ‘May as well give someone else a hand up.’

  I asked Nick what would have happened had the garlic bread from the pizza shop not been mouldy.

  ‘They’re pretty reliable there.’

  ‘But they can’t all have mould?’

  ‘No, they don’t.’

  ‘Well, what then?’

  ‘I guess we’d have eaten it, or you would’ve. I hate garlic bread. The whole thing is speculative, isn’t it? But it’s the only way these days. If you want to go home they might still be warm when you get there. Or your family can eat them cold. Lasts for a couple of days in the fridge. Otherwise we can eat them at the bus stop opposite Customs. Don’t have to share them there. Not at this time anyway. Up to you, Eddie. They’re yours.’

  I was ready for an excuse not to go home, without realising that this was what I was looking for. Since Tanya felt nothing already she would feel no less on hearing about my day. What kind of day did I have, dear? Weaving was an art. And I could not even leave the house to register with an employment consultant without incurring a debt. There was another art, the art of the ridiculous man’s autobiography: from children’s parties where we all fall down to adolescent parties where only the lucky ones fall down. Most of the rest of us prop up the walls and tell ourselves that it’s alright, that despite our palpably absent finesse, our leaking loneliness and incompatibility with the story so far, we will be fine in the long run. That all makes sense, more or less, between the last war and the next depression. But if you are already in the latter, why not fall down ab initio and be the life of the party? Bring out the violins as soon as you smell a fire.

  And what do you do if you have put your faith in a person whose pain is beyond understanding? Ultimately you will be left the loneliest person in town. She was not unwell enough yet to see how much I had let us down. They should never have given me a marriage licence. Unable to steer, I could only go in reverse. But was my love for my wife anything more than a feudal right to interfere with her mood? Was it outdated, past its use-by date? In the absence of fraud, was it worth less than two chickens?

  CHAPTER 34

  In the hostel a man was unsuccessfully trying to open a locked door to the dormitory. Other men walked past him.

  ‘Left my medication in there,’ he said as people passed. Nobody looked up. Eventually Nick told him to wait until there was someone at the front office. They would let him in. The dormitory had been closed since eight in the morning and the medication was very likely to still be there.

  ‘But there’s no one at the front office.’

  ‘There will be soon,’ Nick promised him. ‘Won’t be long at this time. Why don’t you take the weight off your feet and watch TV for a while.’

  The man made his way uncertainly to one of the vinyl chairs in front of the television and sat on the one with the least foam coming out of it. Within a couple of minutes he was back at the locked door.

  ‘Left my medication in there,’ he explained again.

  I was still wearing Tiny’s coat and holding the bag of barbecued chickens. Looking at Nick I realised that I did not know what had happened to him between the night we cried together separated only by two dogs and a curry, and that day, the day Amanda sent me to the Bourke Street Mall in search of a plastic bag. Did he sleep in the clothes he wore for rustling chickens? When did this become normal for him? How long does it take? He had not mentioned his children. How long does that take?

  ‘Do you want to stay for a while?’ he asked me as we watched a man spit expertly from within the hostel to the street. ‘You could stay for dinner at least. Why don’t you, Eddie?’

  He marched to the opposite wall to read the noticeboard and called to me, ‘It’s beef stew. And … cream cake.’

  I got out of the chair to join him as he stood there reading because I had no wish to refuse or even equivocate across the room. The noticeboard contained the house rules. Dorm closes at 8 a.m., 9 a.m. weekends. Breakfast is 8.30 a.m. Bowling Thursday $1.00. Please note, it is an offence to sleep in the streets of Melbourne. What was it Voltaire said, or was it Anatole France, something about the majestic equality of the law which forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges?

  The rest of the board was taken up with folded slips of paper with men’s names written on the exposed sides. People would sidle up to the board, scan it, hands in pockets and leave with their eyes back on the floor. Nick took a while to give up, longer than others. Then he turned back to me as if nothing had happened or as if something had long ago.

  ‘So what do you want to do, Eddie?’

  ‘I probably should go, Nick.’

  For the first time that day he looked sad and I remembered his eyes from the night we met. They pleaded with me to stay.

  ‘I’ve got a wife and a child,’ I answered.

  ‘So do I,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Where’s Tiny? I should give him his coat back.’

  ‘He’ll be around somewhere, probably hiding Helen. Takes good care of her.’

  ‘What made you call her Helen?’

  ‘That’s my wife’s name. I’ll walk you to the station. You can wear the coat till we get there and then I’ll see Tiny gets it.’

  We passed the groups of men around their fires and the loners who had not yet discovered fire or else had already left it for dead and we made our way back to the corner of Wills and LaTrobe streets. But at the corner something made me turn around and look back at the place for a village, at the near silent activity.

  ‘Hey, it’s not a dead end is it?’

  ‘What, Wills Street?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘No. It’s narrow at the other end but you can cut through.’

  ‘Where does it get you?’

  ‘You know, I’ve never been that way. Isn’t that funny! I think it’
s the Vic Market. I must go there. Maybe tomorrow.’

  As we approached LaTrobe and William streets I saw the woman with the dog again.

  ‘There’s Helen’s friend,’ Nick smiled.

  ‘Does your wife know that woman?’

  ‘No, my dog.’

  ‘Your dog knows that woman?’

  ‘No, my dog knows her dog. I know the woman. Well—I’ve met her. I sold her Helen’s friend. She lives around here. They’re still inseparable, Helen and that dog,’ he smiled.

  The woman walked past us and smiled politely at Nick, her progress impeded by Helen’s friend’s attempt to stop.

  ‘What’s your wife’s name?’ he asked.

  ‘Tanya.’

  ‘Tanya,’ he repeated.

  ‘Tanya.’

  ‘Pretty name.’

  ‘Yes, it is.’ I pictured her in happier times.

  ‘Do you think you’ll tell her what’s happened?’

  ‘I suppose I’ll have to.’

  ‘You might as well try to,’ he said and then, as if trying to imagine her, ‘Tanya. Very pretty name. Maybe Helen and I could visit you one day? Bring a couple of chickens?’

  ‘That would be nice.’

  We continued down William Street, me in Tiny’s armour and Nick in a jean jacket with the collar turned up over a slightly torn checked shirt of red and black flannel. There had to have been a first time for the wearing of the shirt. How could he have known then? A man buying a shirt never thinks he will one day be wearing it while hunting in the street for empty plastic bags. He never imagines wearing it to bed and freezing nonetheless in a room full of other frozen men who cough and wheeze away the weeping hours meant for dreaming. Now, hanging onto himself with eyes squeezed shut and a clenched fist in his mouth to muffle the sound of the child in him, still disbelieving it all with every breath, he knows no words for all the pain, the real hunger and the side-order of shame, the isolation, the small cuts and the large wounds, the degradations unimagined by the captains of industry or even the corporals of nothing much at all. Does he lie awake and wonder whether there could ever be a poet with skill enough to move whatever powers might be to change something so that he might be reunited with his dreams, just once without all the pain? Or has he slept here so long that he has missed the tiptoeing exit of his old persona and now feels, with every fibre of his flannel shirt, that this has always been all he was worth?