Walking the length of the Nullarbor Plain did not offer a more dispiriting prospect to Richard Cody than staying one more moment at Katie Moretti’s lunch party. And yet, he stayed in order to impress Jerry Mendes that he was a remarkable man who deserved better, so that he would not be thought to be doing what he now desperately wished to do—leaving in a rage. To distract himself he went back to flirting with the graphic designer.
The talk had swung to the mandatory detention of refugees. At first Richard Cody felt compelled—albeit in a qualified manner—to agree that the government’s position was less than praiseworthy, but the graphic designer didn’t seem to be that interested. Then Richard Cody began putting the other side of the argument, at first tentatively, quoting several sources high up in Foreign Affairs.
And when the graphic designer seemed no more interested than before, Richard Cody began inflating several stories he had heard of “dangerous Islamic types” who had been allowed into the country, playing up a few well-known names with whom he had, if he’d been honest, only the vaguest connection.
And though the graphic designer still appeared no more interested than before, slowly the table began to come round to Richard Cody’s views, which seemed like so much common sense from a man who, as a prominent journalist, really had seen something of the world.
“I mean,” Richard Cody said, “it’s not as if we are Nazi Germany.”
“That’s what I keep saying, Ray,” said the Labor Party senator, who had aioli from the crayfish smeared on his jowl and Richard Cody mixed up with Ray Martin. “We’re Australia.”
Others murmured their agreement with the senator. There could be no doubt about it; they were Australia and, looking around Katie Moretti’s grand dining room and its new furniture and its splendid view, it was readily apparent to them all what Australia was, and all of Australia was as splendid as it was obvious—it was them! It was their success and their prosperity; their mansions and apartments! Their Porsches and Bentleys and Beemers! Their getaways in the tropics! Their yachts and motorcruisers! Their influence, their privileges, their certainties! Who could doubt it? Who would question it? Who would wish to change any of it?
The graphic designer finally seemed engaged; she looked Richard Cody’s way, smiled briefly, and leant forward. Richard Cody was relieved. He smiled back.
“Say what you like about the Nazis,” the graphic designer said, and Richard Cody noticed that she had an attractive dark mole on her left breast, “but they understood design.”
She leant further forward as she spoke, and a heavily ornamented crucifix she wore teetered out from the cleavage that Richard Cody found so appealing, then tumbled out of the pocket between the black lace and her breasts.
“Look at that SS uniform,” said the graphic designer. “Now, that’s sex in black jodhpurs.”
For a moment no one spoke. The crucifix swayed like a talisman in front of them all, beating slow time in that empty space, and the more the crucifix swung, the more Richard Cody looked, and the more he looked the more he imagined her breasts underneath and what her nipples would be like erect, and the more he felt compelled to agree. The swastika was great branding, he said, quickly adding that it wasn’t a brand he liked, but that wasn’t the point.
Richard Cody was draining another glass of the ’97 Moorilla Pinot Noir when the graphic designer got up to leave, and though everyone protested, none more so than Richard Cody, she was going, and going with her was her black lace and her swaying, taunting crucifix and her black-moled breast and her now unknowable nipples. Richard Cody realised that all through that impossibly long lunch she had been bored with them all, not least him.
Richard Cody refilled his glass, determined to make the most of the day, but once the graphic designer was gone so too was whatever small spark had sputtered through the afternoon.
The table talk slowed, then moved on to how terrorism—when it happened in other countries—had such a positive effect on Australian real estate prices. Richard Cody found himself staring out at the harbour.
“Since nine eleven the Americans love Sydney, because we’re beautiful and safe,” he heard Katie Moretti say. “But whatever will they think of us now with those awful bombs?”