A very handsome cigar waiter with serious attitude was showing his wares to Claudette as she sat in Mink or some similar vodka bar. Claude was looking at the obscenely large cigars in his wooden case and laughing, ‘They won’t do-they’re not big enough!’ She looked over toward Bella to see if she agreed but Bella had gone. Everyone had gone. It was just her and the waiter. She looked down, realising she was stark naked. She felt herself flushing and when she looked at the open case in front of her it had turned into a mirror. She confronted her own image, her face powdered and rouged like a nineteenth-century tart. The phone beside her on the bar began to ring and she panicked. What would she say? What could they want? Thank God, she thought, it’s a dream.
‘Hello, darling, it’s me.’
‘Mum, why do you always ring me at nine on a Saturday morning?’
I want you to come tile shopping with me, you’ve got such a good eye, darling.’
Claudette rolled her good eyes and tried to clear her head. She knew that if she went, her mum would toy with her suggestions. They’d look at samples, catalogues and magazines. Her mum would get excited for a few moments about something ‘bright’ or ‘modern’. Then she’d decide, ‘Oh, I think it’d be a bit too lairish for your dad,’ and all their excitement would dissipate to an agonised decision be-tween a lighter or darker beige.
I need at least two more hours’ sleep, Mum. Doc and his boys kept me awake last night with a lot of car moving and thumping. God knows what they were up to.’
‘How many has he got in there these days?’
‘Two, but there’s another one coming. A houseboy is moving in tomorrow.’
‘A servant?’
‘Well, a student or something from the country. Apparently he’s quite a gardener, I might try and poach him.’
‘Isn’t that English one a gardener too?’
‘No, he just writes about gardens, never turned a sod in his life-though he got me some nice rose cuttings for the trellis.’
‘He’s quite handsome that one isn’t he? It’s a shame he’s, well. … You know.’
‘They’re all you know, Mum.’
‘I sometimes think if it wasn’t for that . . . monster you might spend a bit more time seeing some regular fellows.’ Her mother’s voice adopted that hardness women use when they are speaking of the heinous things men do. ‘Mum, don’t.’
Claudette knew her mother was desperate for grandchildren and time was running out. There was still an evil man out there some-where who was blamed by Claudette’s mum for every questionable action or varied path she had taken since 1979.
Not that she’d ever forget walking through the back door into her mother’s Beaumaris kitchen that hot February evening with dirt all over her and blood running from her nose. Her one-piece bathing suit had been cut open at the crotch with a swift slash from the same knife that had threatened her throat. He’d threatened both vital regions and she’d never felt such terror.
When he’d finally released her, alive but red raw and dripping with the residues of his savage invasion, she hadn’t known what to do. She’d scanned the area in a stupor. She’d lost her towel and bag somewhere in the bushes but couldn’t find them so she’d simply made her way home, back to her house, two blocks away. She had stood, waiting to cross Beach Road, the gusset of her bathers flapping like a cartoon parody of a mini-skirt. She had thought cars might have stopped at the shocking sight of her, but they hadn’t. She’d walked all the way home, trying to cover herself with a swimming costume that seemed to ride up with every step.
The kitchen had just been done up then. Now, all these years later, her mum was renovating it again. How many kitchens to a lifetime she wondered.
The doorbell chimed its way into the waking reality of the sleeping knot of men as they lay at strange, contorted angles in Doc’s bed. He was the first to heed its cruel, incessant chime. He donned a robe and answered it, with a dawning trepidation of what might be waiting in the outside world. It was Claude.
‘What were you boys up to last night, all that thumping and banging and moving of cars?’
‘Oh, Claude, you’ve no idea what happened to us. Dũng got attacked and we came past in the car while it was happening.’
‘Oh Christ, no.’ Claude’s eyes took on a teary shine. ‘Is he okay?’
Doc filled her in on the public version of events. ‘We didn’t get to bed until three.’
Dix wandered out, scratching his head, looking like fresh Hell.
‘I could still hear you at four when I looked at the clock.’
‘We’d taken Normi’s by then, we were out cold.’
‘That’s weird. I could have sworn I heard someone in the drive thumping on the boot of the car when I woke up.’
Dixon’s blood ran cold. What if he was still alive in there? Doc kept a poker face even as all colour drained from it. ‘It wasn’t us.’
‘Oh boys, I’m sorry. I should leave you to sleep. I was going to get those paint charts from you. Mum wants me to go out interior designing with her, but it doesn’t matter-it seems obscenely puerile in the light of this.’
‘It’s alright; they’re just here by the phone.’ Dix handed her the charts.
‘Give Dũng a kiss for me, I’ll bring him some flowers and stuff later.’
Claudette departed. She never walked all the way around to her gate, she just hopped over the fence where a low topiary hedge offered a handy break. Her driveway took up most of her front yard and her old BMW was a white flag, forever indicating whether she was in or out.
Doc and Dixon nervously barefooted it out onto the cold gravel of the driveway.
‘You’re not going to open the boot, are you?’ asked Dix, hanging back.
‘It’s alright, he’s dead-I know I killed him. That pop is not something anyone survives.’ Doc rounded the back of the car. ‘Oh fuck, oh fuck, fuck, fuck.’
Dix rushed to his side and his jaw dropped. ‘What will we do? What the fuck will we do?’
They stared down at the boot. There were scratches in the paint-work. It looked as if someone had tried to pry it open. They stood speechless for a minute. Suddenly Dũng was at the door, complaining of a headache. He surveyed the scene and his hand shot up to his mouth. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Go back inside,’ ordered Doc with startling alacrity. Dũng went, more out of helplessness than obedience. Doc tried to open the boot, but the lock had been damaged.
‘At least they didn’t get in,’ he said as he jiggered around with the key and the button.
‘How do you know they didn’t? Maybe it’s empty-maybe he’s gone,’ said Dix in a deathly whisper.
‘Shut up,’ cursed Doc through clenched teeth. Suddenly some-thing gave, and the boot creaked open. Doc nearly jumped clear with fright. Despite his medical certainty that the boy was dead, he still had a fear, nourished by horror movies, of the body springing out at him-a crazed zombie baying for blood.
He allowed the boot to open a little and Dixon edged closer. Nervously, they both peered at the crumpled grey figure that lay within. A faecal whiff hit their nostrils and they both fell on the boot to slam it shut. But now it wouldn’t close. The catch was buggered.
They looked at each other in horror.
‘What now?’ No sooner had Dix posed the question than Claulette’s mum pulled up, right in front of them, all smiles and cheerful greetings.
‘Look at you two in your dressing gowns-aren’t you freezing?’
They both forced ridiculous smiles and leant on the boot.
‘We are a bit,’ said Doc. ‘We’re just looking at the car. Someone tried to break into the boot and they’ve wrecked the paintwork.’
‘What the dickens would they want in the boot for heaven’s sake?’
Doc was momentarily lost for words. Dix flew to the rescue.
‘The CD player is in there. I mean, honestly, you try to hide these things and the drug addicts just seem to sniff them out.’ He sniffed theatrically himself, aware that a faint, unpleasant odour still lingered.
‘Well, that’s what I say to Claudette, you know. She’s always lording it over me about property values here but no matter what you say, it’s still virtually St Kilda and I’ve never thought it a particularly safe area, especially for a single girl. Even down our way a woman was held up at knife-point right in front of Coles. She only had five dollars in her purse so they took her shopping as well-six cans of dog food, can you believe? It was in the local paper. I think when the police catch up with hooligans like that, they should be sat down and made to eat all six cans.’
They nodded idiotically at her with their last reserves of teenage-parent respect.
‘Well,’ Claude’s mum smiled busily. ‘If you can’t fix that lock, give my Vic a call, he’s always good with that sort of thing. Now, I must go and see if my daughter has dragged herself out of bed yet. You should put something on your feet …’
‘I know, we’ll catch our deaths,’ said Dix with his most radiant farewell smile as she vanished next door. Dũng peered from the front window, biting his lip. They quickly turned their attention back to the boot while Doc fiddled frantically with the key as they pushed, and pushed again, to get it closed. Finally, as if by divine or Satanic intervention, it stuck. They sighed with relief.
‘What if it just springs open again of its own free will?’ asked Dix with his usual pessimism.
‘I’ll stay here and hold it down while you grab that sack of pot-ting mix from the backyard. And get some rakes and shit. Then we can put the potting mix against it and leave the other stuff leaning against the car as if we’re gardening. C’mon, quick, before Claude and her mum come back out.’
At three in the afternoon it began to pour with rain. It had been a spectacularly miserable day and by five, it was almost dark.
‘Why don’t we just go at six?’ suggested Dũng, desperate to have the whole thing over and done with.
‘We can’t,’ snapped Doc. “There’ll be football traffic, everyone will still be awake. We’ll go when we said. Midnight.’
Claudette had turned up an hour earlier with flowers, chocolates and Homer Hudson ice-cream. She hadn’t pressed them for any more information than they’d offered. She respected the trauma something like this could cause. They’d finished all her gifts. The ice-cream container sat on the floor with a spoon sticking out of it. Some had dribbled onto the polished wood, but a heavy all-pervading ennui prevented anyone from cleaning it up.
‘I feel sick,’ said Dũng.
‘You’re probably a little concussed from his kicks-you’re staying in bed tomorrow,’ commanded Doc over the rim of his too-manyth cup of coffee. Dix had filled an ashtray to overflowing and the room seemed far less civilised than usual.
‘Your slave’s arriving tomorrow too,’ Dũng reminded Doc.
‘Well, that’s why we want to do this right tonight.’
‘What if someone’s spying on us?’
‘Obviously they are. We’ll just have to watch out and hope they don’t follow us on this evening’s errand.’
‘I just hope she doesn’t hear anything,’ Dũng pointed towards Claude’s house.
‘Well, she said she was going to some interior-design-awards-dinner with Bella. With any luck they’ll hit the piss, end up at Mink or the Gin Palace, and won’t be home until three or four.’
The twilight dragged on as they waited for the appointed hour.