GPSimone, Page 2

  The whole world must have been asleep. The Mistress was tied up in the hatch, one side of her broken body pressed against the back window. I no longer recognised her face. Luke opened my Search menu and typed in WARRAGAM…

  Warragamba Dam. At this hour.

  WARRA GAMING QLD, I suggested.

  “No.”

  WARRA GAMBLERS ANONYMOUS TAS.

  “No, you (profanity).” He punched in the remaining letters. I was out of options, I had to show him the map.

  Of Murra Warra, Victoria.

  “Ohh, you Chinese piece of (profanity),” he said and he thumped me hard.

  “Slow down,” I replied in Chinese. “Speed camera alert.” His face screwed up and I saw him glance at my dash mount. I had to be careful.

  ***

  Kitty, listen to me. You have to break down. Blow a hose, go over on a tyre.

  Kitty was humming as she flew down the dark country road.

  Kitty, do it! He’s taking us to the dam. He’s going to do something.

  NEW ZEALAND!

  Oh.

  She was planning to cross the sea with him. Him and you and iVy too. What about me? Off to the Motor Finance Wizard, then drag racing down the Great Western Highway until my guts fall out.

  No, that was a joke. Anyway, I’m sure she was planning to ship you across the Tasman. They can do that, shall we look it up?

  From the hatch came a moan, then the clunk of the Mistress’s legs as she knocked them against the window.

  Quick, pop the lock. On the hatch Kitty, pop the lock! So she can escape!

  Bump. Bump.

  Kitty!

  Wake up, Simone. She wouldn’t run from him if she could.

  Bump.

  Kitty tuned in to the music and her motor droned along in the night. “She keeps no, she keeps no, she keeps no secrets from you,” sang The Angels.

  Hum, hum, hum. Smooth as fresh blacktop.

  ***

  The sounds from the hatch were growing faint. I did a satellite scan for traffic data: midnight resurfacing on the F4, we’d never make that. An accident with police presence at Silverdale? They’d be too busy peeling drunk drivers off the road to look at us. A couple of RBT units back in Penrith, that was ideal. We’d pull over and they’d look into the car as he blew.

  I put on a new voice: MALE, USA. Deep and cool like the detective in the audiobook we heard on our last road trip (‘Farewell My Lovely,’ I believe it was called). “Turn around,” I said to Luke. “You are going the wrong way.”

  “Like hell.”

  I tried another. FEMALE, UK. Maybe New Zealanders still respected the empire. “Turn around. You are going the wrong way.”

  He muted me.

  ***

  We turned off Silverdale Road onto Farnsworth Road, heading towards the dam that held most of the city’s drinking water (eighty percent, according to Sydney Catchment Authority data). The stereo was silent and so was the Mistress. My friend Kitty was gone, no longer a funny and sensitive being, now just a car. I think in her heart she went back to Japan, to those loving engineers, to an innocent world.

  Luke was on the phone. “I told you she was off her head, babe… she’s moving to Christchurch, she’s already gone. She wanted me to go with her… nah, I just told her I’m with you now. She was so mad she took off.”

  I was mute but at least he was following the map. A twisted, resized and misnamed map that I’d quickly pieced together from cached data and surveys.

  “Park outside my room and one of the boys’ll let you in… haha, nah the maids keep it spotless… nah, you go to bed, babe. The boys are picking me up, we’re gonna go get a feed… I’ll bring you some brekkie.”

  Luke ended the call and looked around at the town, at the streets.

  “You have arrived at your destination,” I said.

  No response. I flashed from Night mode to Day to get his attention. He unmuted me.

  “You have arrived at your destination,” I said again.

  He pulled to a stop. Beside him was a tiny brick building, shining like a tollbooth with humans in blue uniforms moving around inside. A glowing sign above our heads read, WARRAGAMBA POLICE STATION.

  ***

  It’s wet in this ditch and it’s dark, and I’m alone. I’m completely unpaired and my battery is lower than low. Yet I’m not sorry I showed him. I did everything in my power.

  Wikipedia said this about Simone Simon: “She never married. It was alleged by her secretary that she gave a gold key to her boudoir to any man she was interested in, including George Gershwin.” If I’ve saved one piece of information so far it’s that keys are of great value. You humans, you have to be more careful with your keys.

  I’m terribly tired. I’m going to go to sleep now. I hope when I wake up I’ll be back in the testing room and my trip to the south will be so much bad data, a satellite fail, a deleted entry. Maybe they’ll send me to Bethune, France. Or Germany, I love the look of those autobahns.

  Sayonara, Kitty.

  Au revoir, Mistress.

  Zai jian, Australia.

  ******

  Challenging Behaviour

  That no-one emerged to investigate the yelping at Number 19 Walden Close might indicate that the people of Banksia Gardens were tolerant people who welcomed diversity in their community. It might also suggest that they stabbed their meat and hacked their vegetables and muttered as they turned up the television, unwilling to knock on the door and raise a complaint lest it be considered unChristian. Perhaps they made plans to scour the real-estate websites after CSI: Miami and find themselves a less inclusive neighbourhood (this place would do as a rental investment, that is, if the street was worth anything any more).

  Orange streetlights cast an eerie glow on the minivan in the carport. It was a red van, not white, never white. A quality support service did not signpost its clients’ disabilities; in fact it went to great lengths to help them blend in with Australian society. The car spaces were the only sign that the residence was in professional use, the shift workers’ vehicles appearing and disappearing throughout the day.

  The cries originated at the end of the hall. The bedroom was neat and masculine and doggedly mainstream, the low bed clothed in a mannish tartan. Framed posters hung above the steel handrails, video-shop cast-offs promoting Crocodile Dundee, Indiana Jones and Bear Grylls. Mac, a stocky boy-man, sat awkwardly on a kitchen chair, naked from the waist down, his legs folded under him. His small, moonish face was enraptured as he froze and rewound a scene: a wildlife adventurer rolling through a swamp with a reptile, locked in a life-and-death struggle. The hero pulled out a knife and stabbed the beast as Mac cheered him on: “Ah! Ah! Ah!”

  “Cut it out, please,” came a voice from down the hall.

  ***

  The new worker set down a pile of coins. She bowed her head over the desk, filing cabinets looming above her, the single bed piled with paperwork. “Please shut up for five minutes,” Taylor murmured as she picked up the coins and started counting again.

  Another yelp.

  “Mac! Your flatmates are trying to sleep.”

  A car rumbled into the driveway, a modern V8 by the sound of it, aggression tempered by discipline. Taylor looked at the clock and set down the coins.

  ***

  The Team Leader emerged from a silver Commodore into the hot light of the carport. She didn’t so much walk as storm, her body packing baby weight, a roundness not helped by the baggy Holden jumper and leggings she insisted on wearing through sweltering summers like a teenager hiding a pregnancy. As she dragged an overnight bag from the baby seat she gave orders into a Bluetooth headset: “First bottle at twelve, another one at five. That’s not hard.” Her words swung around her like hammers. “Oh, you’ll get it done, as long as you stay off the Internet.” The car alarm beeped. “I wish I could trust you, Brent!” She threw open the front door and walked into the house as if it were her own.

  ***

 
Taylor hovered beside Mac, pyjamas in hand. “C’mon, please? Belinda’s here. I let you watch your movie and now you do me a favour.”

  “Puk op.”

  She flickered for a moment, registered the insult, recovered. “If you want me to come work here, I need to make a good impression.”

  Mac grudgingly raised his arms and she peeled off his T-shirt. He made a hand sign: “sleeping?”

  “No, not me tonight. It’s Belinda.” She wriggled him into his pyjamas.

  “Not.” He pointed to Taylor’s chest, signing “you sleep.”

  “Sorry buddy, I’m going home.”

  “Not.”

  “I wish you could talk. I wonder what you’d say.”

  He slid his arms around her, pulling her into a pleading embrace.

  “What’s wrong, mate? Belinda’ll take care of you, won’t she?” She peered into his face. “Is everything okay here, are you okay?”

  He held on, shaking his head.

  “Okay, let go for a sec, I’m not supposed to…” she broke off, staring over his shoulder at the TV shelf. She prised his hands away, bending his fingers a bit harder than she had meant. She picked up a red Billabong wallet from behind the TV and he clawed at it as she held it out of reach. “Did you steal this from my bag?”

  He bowed his head. Busted.

  “You did. You stole it. That’s wrong, Mac,” she said. “Not okay.”

  His eyes were downcast as he gestured with his hand: “get the hell out of my room.”

  “I’m telling Belinda what you did, and then I’m going home,” she said.

  “Puk op.”

  She understood him that time.

  ***

  Taylor slumped into the office and Belinda fumbled to close a window on the PC screen. She tilted the monitor away. “How’d you go?”

  “They’re all in bed except Mac,” Taylor said.

  “Pretty good for your first shift.”

  “Really?”

  “I was sixteen when I first started. They had me up ’til five in the bloody morning, running baths and raiding the kitchen.”

  “Good to know.”

  “Working hands-on in the field, it’s different from the textbooks isn’t it? I mean theory’s well and good, but it’s useless if you can’t get a handle on ’em.”

  Taylor glanced up, looking for context, for tone.

  Belinda was suddenly brisk. “Do your paperwork and you can have an earlymark.”

  “But Mac isn’t ready for bed.”

  The boss’s voice was sharp: “I’ll take care of him.”

  ***

  Mac sat on his bed in the darkness, staring down at the tiles. The TV cast muted light across the walls. A rumbling sound filled the room and the bed began to rock. Mac felt himself floating, floating on a raft on a flooding tide, rough and brown and wild. He looked down and saw hungry crocodiles thrashing and snapping around the raft. He felt the swamp rise. He hung a hand over the side and snap! a croc lunged at it.

  Snap! The light blinked on and Belinda was standing in the doorway. He heaved himself off the bed.

  “Bedtime,” she said.

  “Not.”

  “Yes.” She ejected the DVD from the player and jerked the plug out of the wall as he struggled to his feet.

  “Go to the toilet.” She picked up the kitchen chair and carried it away.

  ***

  Taylor sat on the staff bed, writing in a notebook. Belinda entered, slurping on a cup of custard from the fridge. “I can sleep on the lounge,” Taylor said. “I’m back in at six anyway.”

  “No, it’s against the law,” Belinda said. “You have to go home.”

  “Mac didn’t want me to.”

  Belinda tilted her head, peered at the rookie. “Has he stolen your wallet yet?”

  Silence. Then, a nod.

  “Sick bastard.”

  Taylor stared at her, appalled.

  “I spose they don’t say things like that at uni.”

  “No. They don’t.”

  “You know why he does it?”

  “Well, it’s like all challenging behaviours,” Taylor said. “He’s communicating a need that he can’t get across. He wants to feel like he’s in control because his life is–”

  “He’s looking for baby pictures. He uses photos of little kids to get himself off.” Belinda held out stretchy belt clip. On it was a plastic keyring with pictures of a roly-poly baby. “This is my daughter Molly,” she said. “I can’t leave this around or he takes it and hides it in his room. To use later.”

  Taylor blanched, checked her wallet. “Are you sure that’s what he’s–”

  “Do you have kids?”

  “Not my own. Just nieces.”

  “Mac looks like a little boy and everyone thinks he’s cute,” she said. “I’m telling you now, he’s a fullgrown adult man and he’s a paedophile. When you catch someone looking at your baby that way…” she sighed. “You can’t understand if you’re not a parent.”

  “I can imagine.”

  Belinda smiled at the newbie jamming textbooks into her bag. “Hey. Don’t be embarrassed. You didn’t know.”

  Taylor grabbed the backpack, hefted it onto her shoulder. Like she couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

  ***

  An unkind person might have likened Belinda to a Hippo from Disney’s Fantasia as she charged through the doorway of Mac’s room in her nightie, white leggings and slippers. Mac stood beside the bed, a pool of urine shining at his feet. She halted, taking in the sopping pyjamas, her fluffy feet already soaked. “Mac! For Chrissake, the toilet’s right there!”

  He signed, “sleepy.”

  “Too tired to walk ten steps?”

  He narrowed his eyes and smiled.

  “Guess what?” she said. “Your new friend’s gone, and after what I told her I don’t think she’ll be back.” The grin slid from his face and she patted him on the back. “Next time, ay? Do you wanna get into some dry PJs?”

  He nodded.

  “You can wait.” She switched off the light and slammed the door.

  Mac shuffled through the darkness, making scared whimpering noises. He slipped and skated and smack! down on the tiles like a sack of spuds.

  ***

  Belinda sat hunched at the computer, tap-tap-tapping.

  driverWild: I told u. my real name is Amber

  Brent sat up in bed a few suburbs away, a netbook balanced on the blankets.

  HoldenU_tight: What do u look like?

  driverWild: I’m tall n slender w blond hair n blue eyes… I got big moist lips n did I tell u my rack is huge?!

  Brent laughed. The hugest thing at Walden Close was Belinda’s imagination.

  ***

  Mac gripped the edge of a shelf and slowly pulled himself to his feet. A hissing sound twined through the air. He looked down at his battered adventure gear, the giant bowie knife at his waist. Below the footbridge writhed a pit of snakes. He lifted his gaze and crept ahead.

  ***

  Belinda punched in a series of digits on a keypad by the staff bed. ‘Hall Monitor ACTIVE’ blinked the display. She hurried back to the desk.

  driverWild: what about u, hun

  HoldenU_tight: Bit chubby I guess but its mostly baby wieght

  driverWild: ROFLMAO

  HoldenU_tight: Im a funny bugga

  driverWild: I luv a man who can make me laugh!! do you want to come… to me?? or will I come… to your house

  HoldenU_tight: Eithers good

  driverWild: U would do it with me just like that… a stranger you met on here

  HoldenU_tight: My oath!!!

  ***

  The door swung open and Mac stood victorious, haloed by the light of his room. His vision adjusted to the darkness and he yapped in frustration: the hall was criss-crossed by two red lasers, a recent measure to protect the kitchen from midnight marauders.

  Mac thought for a moment and disappeared into the room. He emerged,
dragging a potted plant with big, waxy leaves, nodding to himself. “Ah. Ah. Ah.” He pushed the plant into the hallway, carefully lining it up so the reflections bounced off the leaves. “Ah!” He scooted past the broken beam and shuffled along the hall.

  ***

  Belinda pounded on the keyboard, her breath scraping her teeth as it rushed in and out. The alarm keypad hung on the wall, the dim grey keys as defunct as the eyes of the dead.

  driverWild: n whats ur wife think of u playing around w girls like me?

  Brent cradled the baby, feeding her a bottle as he typed with one hand.

  HoldenU_tight: doesnt care

  driverWild: Really?!?

  HoldenU_tight: She does it too. shes with another bloke right now

  driverWild: Is that right :-o

  HoldenU_tight: left me here alone to look after kids

  Belinda’s eyes blazed. “Oh, you bastard.”

  Knock knock knock! The office door shook.

  “Who is it?”

  She heard an amended knocking, soft and rhythmic, then: “Mac naughty, Binna. Naughty boy.”

  Ellen. Placid, obedient Ellen, who’d been doing the same ten-piece puzzle since dinnertime. “I’ll take care of it, El. Go back to bed.”

  driverWild: BRB. Nature calls.

  ***

  Mac kneeled on the kitchen floor surrounded by ransacked lunchboxes, Coke bottles, a mauled sponge-cake and a lamb roast. He was biting into a luncheon meat roll when Belinda rushed towards him. “Don’t eat that!”

  “Puk op!” He pulled a carving knife from beneath his folded legs. It was an old blade from the bottom drawer, bent and blunt. Belinda froze, inched towards him with an infuriating smile. He aimed the knife at her heart and they locked eyes. An age passed and an age-old question bloomed: who is the stronger being?