44

In the morning I keep it simple and I tell her I was running back from the shoe repairer and I collided with a wheelchair, and that explains my limp (which for the purposes of the story is really quite bad).

And I even had to get stitches in my knee, but the x-rays were okay so that’s a relief. The doctor said I should have a couple of days off to rest it, but I knew I was needed here.

Stitches? she says. You got stitches? Show them to me.

What?

It seems everyone’s interactions with me now start with the assumption that I have no dignity at all.

I won’t believe you unless you show them to me.

Fortunately I can roll the leg of my trousers above my knee, so I give her the proof she demands and she makes a face and says, That’s a very unattractive wound Rick.

So I seem to be forgiven.

I go back to Broadway at lunchtime, completely without meaning to. I just set off walking and it’s where I am, soon enough.

And just when I wonder if I might see Rachel Vilikovski there, I see the security guard instead.

Hey doc, he shouts, as though we go way back. How’s that girl?

I think she’ll be fine. Dehydration. I made sure she got some fluids in her.

He looks improbably thoughtful. Oh, you know doc, I’ve seen ’em drop like that before, and you know what I reckon it might be? A pituitary tumour.

A pituitary tumour.

Yeah. When I had my back op there were a couple of fellas in the ward who’d dropped just like that, and they had pituitary tumours.

Yes, I thought about that as a possibility, but when I examined her in my rooms a few specific tests were negative.

Like the old red-tipped pin, eh doc? And he laughs knowingly.

The red-tipped pin. Yes, she failed on the red-tipped pin.

It’s a good test that one. Bugger me if the blokes in the neurosurgical ward didn’t have markedly constricted visual fields when they were tested with the red-tipped pin.

The ones with the pituitary tumour?

Yeah.

Yeah, she wasn’t like that at all.

But you did the CAT scan I suppose. I mean, the pin’s good, but these days you don’t rely on the pin.

No.

So what did the CAT scan show?

Haven’t got it back yet.

He nods, and then says, Oh, right, ethics, gotcha. Say no more. And he smiles. Hey, you don’t think it’d be worth my while carrying a red-tipped pin around with me on the job, do you? Just as a quick screening test, you know?

Sure.

You couldn’t write a note to centre management could you? It’d have a lot more clout coming from a bloke like yourself. Rather than me just hitting ’em for a red-tipped pin I mean.

Sure. No problem. I can do it on letterhead paper and send it across.

Beauty, good on you doc. And he sticks both arms out to the side and wobbles his index fingers. Hey, which finger’s wiggling? Just kidding doc. Remember that one? You’d do that one all the time, wouldn’t you? The old wiggly finger?

Sure.

People are looking at us as though the security guard has caught me in the performance of an uncommon sexual practice. Or perhaps is trying to encourage me to engage in one with him.

I tell him I’m late for afternoon surgery, and he gives me a last playful demonstration of the old wiggly finger as I back away, adding Broadway to the growing list of places in my home town to which I can never return.

Mindful of Jeff’s dietary advice and my increasingly uncomfortable commitment to constipation, I buy a bean enchilada for lunch, and I ask for double beans. And when you’re used to a diet of Tim Tams and barbecue chips, a bean enchilada is a real let down. Still, I must move beyond this focus on immediate gratification, and think of the great comfort it shall bring me soon enough.

I’m annoyed I didn’t get her number. There are no Vilikovskis in the phone book, and I don’t know where she works. I thought about writing to her or leaving a note in her mailbox, but nobody does that now. She’d think I was stalking her. There must be some acceptable way.

Whether there is or there isn’t, I’m now annoyed that I could begin to obsess about a woman who probably has only a patchy recollection of me as the man who decked her. I expect she wants me terribly. I expect she can’t live without me. That she’s been up all night wanting me, bugging her housemates in the middle of intercourse and saying, See this lump? See this lump? I want that guy. He knocked me out with a woman’s shoe and that makes me so horny.

What a dickhead. What a dickhead. I’m loading the rest of this therapeutic double bean enchilada into me and thinking, what a dickhead. And why do people eat beans now? How could people possibly eat beans when there are Tim Tams in this world?

I expect that in a few days I’ll just get a bill for an exorbitant amount of money, and I’ll pay for her glasses. I’ll send her the cheque with some faintly foolish note that she will ignore, and that will be that.

I want to call Anna and tell her how well I’m doing. I want to tell her about the opportunities she has opened up for me. In just the last couple of weeks I’ve turned down a sixteen year old, fucked my boss and knocked out a babe. Had fantasies about all three and more. This is not how I had envisaged my late twenties, but maybe that’s just me.

At work there are several messages on my desk. Two from Sydney, one from Jeff. One in Deb’s writing that just says, ‘Rachel (???) called. Said she’d call back later’.

My outburst of glee is silent and private, and tempered quickly by the realisation that she’s probably just bought the glasses and she’s telling me how much I’m up for. Stay calm, I tell myself, stay calm.

Twenty minutes later she calls back.

Hi, she says. I just wanted to thank you for looking after me yesterday.

Well, it seemed only reasonable.

No, it was more than reasonable. You gave up your afternoon to get things sorted out.

Hey, I knocked you unconscious.

Yeah, I guess. But thanks anyway. I think you did more than a lot of people would.

So how’s the head today? I wanted to call you. To find out how you were. But I don’t have your number.

Have you got a pen?

And she gives me her work and home numbers, just like that. She impresses me immensely.

I thought I’d come into town tomorrow, she says. To get the glasses. I thought, since you were sponsoring them, I should give you the chance to come along and be involved in the choice. I wouldn’t want you to buy glasses you hated.

That’s very generous of you.

I’m a very considerate person.

Yesterday you wanted me to go to prison.

Yesterday I wasn’t myself. I was just some victim of a flying shoe. Far from my best. How about meeting at the place you decked me? You should remember where that is.

Broadway’s not so good for me at the moment.

Okay. Eyewear Now, Albert Street, say one-thirty?

Sure. Sure, I’ll be there.

Okay. See you then Richard Derrington.

Yeah.

And she goes. Leaves me with my whole name and goes.