“Please, son,” said Frank. “It won’t be the same if I do it myself.”
The kid cleared his throat and spat out the window. For what seemed a long time he just leaned against the sill and gazed out over the street.
“You know the saying, son: An eye for an eye.”
Jimmy turned and the two men stood staring at one another.
Finally, Jimmy extended a trembling hand to Frank. He slowly took the gun and held it in both palms.
Frank raised his arms, as if in surrender.
Jimmy lifted the revolver and aimed it straight at Frank’s head. “What the fuck?” he said. He let out a crazed laugh. “You’re not my real father anyway.”
Good Boy, Bad Girl
by John Dale
Newtown
Jazz came out onto the porch in bare feet to watch the dogfight. Day or night, there was always something going on in this park. That’s why her nan kept a special chair outside with a leather cushion; most mornings she sat out here pulling faces at people who passed. Jazz leaned on the spear-tipped fence and watched a man and a woman struggling to separate their dogs. Finally the man pulled his boxer off by the collar, yelling, “Good boy, bad girl!” The tiny white shih tzu stood her ground, baring her teeth, and her owner, an old woman with see-through hair, patted her dog’s flank and said in a voice loud enough for Jazz to hear, “Clever girl.”
Backpackers were lying around on the grass smoking dope and drinking goon. In an hour or two they’d make their way down to the clubs, pubs, and cheap eateries on King Street. Jazz had lived in her nan’s house all her life and she couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. Memorial Park and St. Stephen’s Church with its graffitied sandstone walls was her front yard, though recently at night the park attracted ice addicts and undercover cops.
Newtown was the place to be, but it wasn’t always so. When Jazz was a kid, it was a different world. Her nan would call from the kitchen, “Jazz, go get your father for dinner,” and she’d run barefoot up Church Street to the Shakespeare, push on the heavy wooden door with both hands, and through the fug of cigarette smoke find her way to the back bar where the TAB was; she’d weave a path between the big bellies and tug her dad’s sleeve, looking around at the faces of the council workers and the coppers from the Police Youth Club. When he was done drinking, her dad would squeeze her hand and she would lead him home down Crooks Lane. Most nights ended peacefully with her dad snoring in his armchair, but there were other nights when he broke a glass or chipped a tooth and his mood would turn on a sixpence, and she and Nan would retreat to their bedroom and watch TV together on the portable set, fiddling with the rabbit ears, while her father vented his rage on doors and crockery, cursing her mother for dying on them.
It still surprised Jazz how many people knew her dad, for he never became a household name, but he always gave it a go, and at his memorial service in St. Stephen’s there were over three hundred people in attendance: stand-over men, boxing trainers, Bluebags supporters, battlers from the housing commission flats, and that little rooster fella from 2GB who told everyone that “Spearsy had the heart of a champion, was a champion bloke.”
Afterward there were egg sandwiches that Jazz had cut the crusts off herself, and she heard one wag say that, “Spearsy wouldna come to his own funeral if he’d a-known there was no grog.” She’d wheeled her nan home and at five o’clock she began her shift at Liquorland.
The steam had cleared in the bathroom and Jazz dried her hair and applied mascara and her favorite dark lipstick. Her childhood was rough and ready but it wasn’t as disadvantaged as her welfare officer said. She had free range of the park and the churchyard and when she was little she’d played hide-and-seek behind the headstones. Everyone’s got misfortune in their family is what Jazz figured, and if people thought they could avoid tragedy by having truckloads of money and a four-bedroom mansion right on the harbor, they were mistaken. Her mum and dad were party people and they took her everywhere. Once they left her at the Courthouse Hotel and came back after closing time to find her eating sausage rolls and drinking lemonade with the publican’s Down syndrome grandson. You learned more about life sitting in a Newtown beer garden than you did watching Sesame Street, that’s for sure.
Those old Newtowners were a different species, the way they spoke out the sides of their mouths, the way they expressed emotion with both hands.
Jazz wasn’t abused or nothing like some of them Catholic kids and she had her nan. When he passed out dead drunk on Gardeners Road, Jazz’s grandfather was run over by a steamroller. Her dad loved telling that story, how he had to identify his father’s disfigured remains in the Glebe morgue.
Jazz zipped up her giraffe-print dress, the one Lockie liked, and slipped her feet into flats. She went down the hall to find her nan sunk in her wheelchair watching Animal Kingdom, a glass of water and a box of Arnott’s crackers on her tray. Nan liked to suck on the barbecue shapes without her teeth in. Jazz changed her nan’s bag and cleaned her face with a washer. Her phone buzzed and she read the single-word message: Parking.
“You remember Lockie, don’t you, Nan?” Her nan stared blankly at the TV. Some days she appeared to understand what was going on, but mostly she occupied a different time zone. Jazz wasn’t one of those ungrateful young women who dumped her last remaining relative in an aged-care unit; she knew how to care for old people. Before her mum died, she’d promised to buy Jazz a dog but she never did. Anyway, where would she fit a dog in a single-story, two-bedroom terrace? That’s why the park was so important. She strapped her nan’s legs securely in the wheelchair so she couldn’t fall out and squashed two ants climbing up the edge of her tray.
“Won’t be long, Nan,” she said. Lockie had something important to tell her tonight and she suspected he wanted to ask her to marry him or else move in together now that he’d finished his law degree. She’d thought it over long and hard. Her nan would have to come with them or else Lockie could move in here, help out with the showering and toileting; it hurt her back lifting Nan in and out of the tub.
Her girlfriends said she had snared the man of her dreams, tall, athletic, handsome, with rich parents. Mr. Perfect. Of course Lockie had his little kinks, but he certainly wasn’t her worst BF; she’d had her fair share of disasters in the past, and it was a pleasant change to go out with someone from the North Shore. Hunters Hill was as far removed from Newtown as you could get.
The doorbell rang while Jazz was fixing her hair. She walked down the hall and opened the door.
“You look nice,” Lockie said. He was wearing a bright pink Tommy Hilfiger polo with bone-colored chinos as if he’d dropped by for a round of golf. He leaned in close: “You smell good, what is that?”
“It’s me.”
“Nice,” he said. She stepped outside and pulled the door shut and he put an arm around her waist as they walked. Up close he smelled of cologne — too much cologne.
The iron gates to the churchyard were open and the rector was chaperoning a party of Japanese guests through the grounds. The private cemetery was popular for weddings although it struck Jazz as a strange place to get married.
Lockie had everything planned for the night. A few drinks and a seafood meal followed by sex in the backseat of his father’s car.
“We need to talk,” she said.
“Later,” he said. “Let’s enjoy ourselves first.”
She took that to mean, Don’t spoil my night, but Lockie was the one who did most of the talking. She mainly listened and tuned in and out when necessary. She was happy for him to pick the pub, book the table, and order the wine. He liked to be in control, play the grown-up. From experience, she figured it was best if she just went along with things. They walked up King Street past the Tear Down Capitalism posters, the pie and burger joints starting to fill with customers, cars and buses running bumper to bumper. When did it become fashionable to eat your dinner with a lungful of diesel fumes?