As luck would have it, I didn’t have to wait long. My vigil had scarcely begun when a figure appeared, an indistinct shape bobbing between the cars. ‘Hey,’ I yelled, and waved my tentacles.
The shape passed out of sight, then appeared again, partly obscured by a concrete column. He was bending, his head in the boot of a car. Then he stood up. He was hard against the periphery of my vision but there was no mistaking that rear profile, that head like a wing-nut.
‘Hey,’ I bawled. ‘Over here. Noel. Mate.’
At fifteen, Spider was a seasoned drinker, or so he claimed. A man with established tastes. Southern Comfort, he reckoned, was cough syrup. Cat’s piss. A man of his experience knew what he wanted. Bourbon. Jack Daniels. In return, I need never worry about the Fletchers again. The Fletchers kept a respectful distance from Spider. He’d done boxing. ‘You look after me,’ he said. ‘I’ll look after you.’
Southern Comfort would be easier, I argued. Or Bundaberg rum. The pub sold a fair bit of those. But protection never comes cheap. So, in the end, bourbon it was. Jim Beam. A ‘breakage’ off the top shelf, syphoned into a Marchants lemonade bottle while I was polishing the mirrors in the saloon bar and Dad was downstairs tapping a keg. Not Jack Daniels but I hoped Spider wouldn’t notice the difference.
The handover was to be in the Oulton Reserve, the local football oval, after training on Thursday night. Not that either of us was in the team, but going to watch the Under-19s train was a good thing to tell a father. What could be more innocent? It was all pretty innocent, I suppose. Until the Fletchers turned up.
‘Hey, you,’ I bellowed desperately, wrenching the sound up from the bottom of my lungs and waving a blue rubber glove. ‘Over here. Noel.’ At least I thought it was Noel. He’d moved out of sight again.
‘Spider!’ I tried, hoping to trigger a primal reaction. ‘Help! Heeelp!’ The cry was as loud as I could make it. My head spun from the effort. It sounded pretty loud to me, but so did the trucks shifting gears on City Road. Oblivious to my impassioned cries, the figure was moving away. ‘Help,’ I bawled.
It was a waste of breath. The head bobbed down, a door slammed, a moving vehicle flickered momentarily in the shadows behind the screen of steel slats and the carpark was still again.
It remained that way for what seemed a very long time. Nobody else came. Nobody else went. Not in the carpark, at least. Down below in the laneway, a minibus drove briskly by, a cricket team of teenage boys hanging out the windows. I waved my tentacles at the flash of upturned faces, but all I got in return was the collective finger.
Unless somebody saw me soon, I’d be spending the rest of my life on my knees before Wendy with gravel rash on my forehead. No, to do that I’d have to get down first. I didn’t even have a cigarette to console me. And even if I did, I wouldn’t be able to get my tentacle up to my beak to inhale. I decided I had better prospects at floor level, banging on one of the doors.
To descend from my perch, I had to turn around, press my back to the wall, and execute a controlled slide. Controlled being the key word. Halfway down, the foot of one of the stilts caught in a snarl of chicken wire lying beside the work bench. Off balance, I pitched forward. Suddenly, I was standing upright, clear of the wall, with no way of maintaining my balance but by taking the next step. Then the next. Then the next.
I was stilt-walking. Look Mum, no hands. No place to go, either. Arms helicoptering madly through the air, I tottered forward-towards the rim of the empty pool.
Then Willy rose and swallowed me whole. One moment I was looking down at him from a great height. The next I was in his belly, staring up at a gaping hole in his back. There was a sharp but momentary pain in my left ear. Plunging over the edge, I had crashed straight through the whale’s thin fibreglass shell. Luckily, Oscar’s copious contents helped break my fall. I had landed on a pile of stuffed squid. I was winded, upside-down and my legs were twisted together, but otherwise I was intact. Willy, for his part, was now the only whale in captivity with a sunroof.
All but hysterical with relief, I jettisoned my ludicrous padding and crawled out the whale’s backside. I could have been killed. I was lucky to be alive.
I clambered out of the pool and put on my trousers and shoes. My hands were palpitating so wildly I could barely tie the laces. I breathed deeply to calm down and gave myself a quick once-over. No broken bones, but my explosion through Willy’s carapace had done something to my ear. It was bleeding profusely.
I found a crumpled rag and clutched it to my earhole. Then I picked up the iron pipe and began bashing the fire door. I guess I must have lost it there for a while. I was stir crazy. Cabin fever had me in its grip. I may have even been howling. I wanted out and if need be I’d bludgeon my way through three inches of steel plate. I bashed until my arm went numb and bells rang in my brain.
Eventually, worn out, I collapsed against the door. Through the metal, I heard the grind of a bolt being drawn. ‘Yeah, yeah,’ a woman’s voice was saying, irritably. ‘Take it easy.’
The door swung backwards to reveal Salina Fleet.
But not the Sal I’d been fumbling in the forget-me-nots. Nor the freaked-out Salina lit by the ambulance light at the moat. This Salina was very sober and very proper. A woman who had made up her mind about something. Gidget was gone. This Salina wore calf-length culottes, a fawn blouse and black button earrings, not a hair out of place. This Salina was so composed she could have read the Channel 10 news.
She took a step backwards. In my panting, dishevelled state, I must have been quite a sight. And not a welcome one. ‘What are you doing here?’
Snooping through your deceased boyfriend’s personal effects did not, somehow, seem like the appropriate answer. Already it was clear that what had occurred between us last night was ancient history, a dead letter. The fire was well and truly out. Our little nocturnal nature ramble was a temporary lapse to which neither of us would again refer. Nothing had happened. Nothing ever would.
‘The minister wants a report,’ I said, self-importantly. ‘On under-utilised Arts Ministry facilities.’ Hand pressed to ear, I must have looked like a harmonising Bee Gee. ‘I was sent on a tour of inspection. A tenant got hostile and locked me in. You didn’t see him, did you? A guy with an armful of violins.’
Salina shook her head, and cocked it sideways in disbelief. To think, her eyes seemed to say, I nearly took this lunatic to bed.
‘What about you?’ I asked. The pretence begun, I had no option but to continue. ‘What are you doing here?’
She cast her gaze downwards and adopted a sombre tone. ‘Marcus’s studio is upstairs.’
I nodded understandingly and stepped forward, moving us onward from the doorway. ‘He was the one at the exhibition last night, on the table, wasn’t he?’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realise, I mean…’
She maintained her aloof solemnity. ‘No need to apologise. You weren’t to know.’
‘I mean I’m sorry about Marcus,’ I said, gently correcting her. As far as I knew, I didn’t have anything to apologise for.
‘Thank you.’ She spoke formally, bowing her head slightly. Rehearsing, I realised, the role of the grieving widow graciously accepting condolences.
‘It was on the radio. You were mentioned, too.’
‘Ah.’ This information did not entirely displease her. ‘So soon?’
She turned and began back up the stairs, as if trying to put an interruption behind her. She was carrying a folio case, the sort art students and advertising types use. Evidently she had just arrived at the YMCA and my banging had distracted her from her objective. When we reached the ground floor corridor, she stopped at the open door, anticipating my departure. Up in the harsher light, there was a fragility to her. She’d probably got even less sleep than me. The strain was showing. I reached over and touched her arm. ‘You okay?’