Underdogs Page 4

  The girl.

  "Rebecca," her mother had told me. When Dad was doing the grand tour I was alone with her.

  What was I meant to do?

  Talk?

  Wait?

  Sit down?

  All up, all we did was stand there a while and then sit on these deck chair sort of things. I looked away and looked at her and looked away again What an animal.

  I sure had a way with the ladies, didn't I?

  Finally, when it was almost too late and the old fellas were coming back, I said to her in this crazed quiet voice, "I like workin' here," and after the silence, we both laughed a bit and I thought, What a weird thing to say. I like working here. I like working here. I Like. Working here. I. Like working here.

  As I repeated it over in my head I wondered if she knew what it really meant.

  I think she did.

  Rebecca.

  It was a nice name, and while I liked the calmness in her face, I liked her voice better. I remembered it and let it chant across me. Just that "Hi." Pathetic, I know, but when your experience with women is as minimal as mine, you take whatever you can get.

  All afternoon, it lasted. There was even very little pain in the work I did because I had Rebecca now. I had her voice and the realness of it to numb everything. It numbed the blisters forming at the base of my fingers and blunted the blade seeking my spine.

  "Hi," she'd said. "Hi," and she'd laughed with me when I said something stupid. I'd been laughed at before by girls, but it was rare for me to laugh with one. It was rare to feel okay with a city over my shoulder and a girl's face so close to mine. She had breath and sight and she was real. That was the best thing. She was realer than the dental nurse because she wasn't behind a counter being paid to be friendly. And she was definitely realer than the women in that catalog thing because there was no way I would ever tear this girl up. There was no way I would dare to hurt her or curse her or hide her under my bed.

  Eyes. Alive eyes. Light hair falling down her back. A pimple at the side of her face, near her hairline. Nice neck, shoulders. Not a beauty queen. Not one of those. You know the ones.

  She was real.

  She played music later on and it wasn't anything much that I liked, but that made her realer still. The whole situation even made me smile at Dad when he told me off for digging something in the wrong place.

  "I'm sorry, Dad," I said.

  "Dig over there."

  I wonder if he knew. I doubt it. He didn't seem to catch on when I asked if we'd be back here next week.

  "Yeah, we'll be back," he'd answered bluntly.

  "Good," but I said it only to me.

  A bit later, I asked, "What's these people's last name?"

  "Conlon."

  The thing that hit me most was that I suddenly started praying. I started saying these prayers for Rebecca Conlon and her family. I couldn't stop myself.

  "Please bless Rebecca Conlon," I kept saying to God. "Just let her be okay, okay? Let her and her family be okay tonight. That's all I ask. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit," and I crossed myself like the Catholics do and I'm not even a Catholic. I don't know what I am.

  During the next week, I kept praying, and I kept making sure to remember her face, and her voice.

  "I'd be good to her," I kept telling God. "I would."

  I was actually torn between the love I had for her face and her body and the love I had for her voice. Her face had character all right. Strength. I loved it. I definitely loved her neck and her throat and her shoulders and her arms and legs. All of it -- and then there was the voice.

  The voice came from somewhere in her. It came from somewhere that didn't show itself, I hoped, to just anyone.

  The question was, Which part of her was I interested in most? Was it the look of her, or the inner realness I could sense slipping out?

  I started taking walks, just to think of her -- just to imagine what she was doing and if by any chance she was thinking of me.

  It became torture.

  "God, is she thinking of me?" I asked God.

  God didn't answer so I just didn't know. All I knew was that I walked parallel to urban traffic that laughed as it went past me. Crowds of people dropped out of buses and trains and ignored me as they went past. I didn't care. I had Rebecca Conlon. Nothing else meant a whole lot. Even back home when I bickered with Rube I didn't worry. I just kept not worrying, because she was somewhere near it all in my thoughts.

  Joy.

  Is that what I felt?

  Sometimes.

  At other times I was shouldered by thoughts of doubt and a kind of truth that told me she hadn't thought of me at all. It was possible, because things never work out how they should. It was most likely that a sweet girl like that could do a whole lot better than me. She could do better than a fella who plotted ridiculous robberies with his brother, got thrown out of newsagencies, and humiliated his mother.

  Sometimes I thought about her naked, but never for long. I didn't want her only like that. Honestly.

  I wanted to find the place where her voice came from. That was what I wanted. I wanted to be nice to her. I wanted to please her, and I begged for it to happen. Begging gets you nowhere, though. I knew that was true, but I did it inside me anyway as I counted the hours till I was going back to her.

  Things happened during the that will follow in the next chapters, but now I should tell you at the end of this one here what happened when Dad and I showed up at the Conlons' the next Saturday.

  This is what happened.

  My heart beat big.

  One of them's back.

  Can you believe it?

  The nerve of her.

  Do you know who I mean? It's one of the women from that swimwear catalog, and she comes to me in our kitchen.

  Seductively.

  It's musty and half-dark. Sweaty. "Hello, Cameron." She keeps coming, and she pulls a chair over to sit right opposite me. Our knees touch -- that's how close she comes to me. Her smile is one of definite something. Danger? Lust? Eroticism?

  How can I dream this now?

  Tonight?

  After what's been happening lately?

  I've gotta be kidding me.

  Is this a test?

  Well, whatever it is, she leans closer and licks her lips. Her swimsuit is a bikini and it's yellow and it shows a whole lot of her. Can you believe this? She lets one of her fingers touch my neck and she strokes her way down with it, and her fingernail is just light enough not to scratch. It's smooth, and something tells me to make the most of it, to never let her stop. Then something else screams silently somewhere in my feet that I must tell her to stop. It rises.

  She's on me.

  Breathing.

  I smell her perfume and feel the soft thrill of her hair.

  Her hands undress me and her mouth takes me.

  I feel it.

  Gathering.

  Pushing.

  Against me.

  She falls, letting her teeth touch the skin of my throat. She kisses, long, with her tongue touching --

  I jump.

  "What?"

  I'm standing.

  "What?" she asks. Ohh ...

  "I can't." I hold her hand to tell her the truth. "I can't. I just can

  "Why not?"

  Her eyes are fire-blue and I almost allow her to go on as she begins stroking my stomach and searching for the rest of me. I stop her, just in time, and I wonder how I do it.

  I turn away and answer her.

  "I've got someone real. Someone who isn't just --"

  "Just what?"

  Truth: "Something I only lust for." "Is that all I am? A thing?"

  "Yes," and I see her change. She is ghost-like, and when I reach out to touch her, my hand goes through. "See," I explain, "look at me. A guy like me can't really touch someone like you. It's just the way it is."

  When she disappears completely, I understand that my reality isn't the catalog girl or school beauty
queen or anyone like that. My reality is the real girl on her left.

  On the table, the swimsuit model has left her purse. I go to pick it up, but I don't open it for fear of it blowing up in my face.

  The beauty queen, I long for.

  The real girl, I long to please.

  Dream complete.

  CHAPTER 6

  Remember when I said how I liked watching Sarah and Bruce come up the street that Sunday night?

  Well, during the week that all seemed to change.

  There was also another change, because Steve, who normally didn't get home from his office job until about eight at night, was home too. The reason for this was that the previous day at football, he'd turned on his ankle. It was nothing serious, he'd said, but on the Monday morning, his ankle was the size of a shot-put ball. The doctor had ruled him out for six weeks because of ligament damage.

  "But I'll be back in a month, you watch."

  He sat on the floor with his foot raised on some pillows and his crutches next to him. He would be stranded at home for a fortnight, after his boss gave him half of his holiday early. This drove Steve mad, not only because he would miss some of his holiday in summer, but because he hated just sitting around.

  His somber mood sure didn't help things in the lounge room between Sarah and Bruce.

  On the couch on Tuesday, rather than going at it like they normally did, they both seemed to be glued down by tension.

  "Smell this pillow," Rube instructed me at one point as I watched them while trying not to. "Why?" "t stinks."

  "I don't feel like smellin' it."

  "Go on." His hairy, threatening face came closer and I knew he wouldn't take no for an answer.

  He threw the pillow over and I was expected to pick it up and stuff it in my face and tell him if it stank. Rube was always making me do things like that -- things that seemed ridiculous and meaningless.

  "Go on!"

  "All right!"

  "Go sniff it," he said, "and tell me it doesn't smell like Steve's pajamas." "Steve's pajamas?" "Yeah."

  "My pajamas don't stink." Steve glared.

  "Mine do," I said. It was a joke. No one laughed. So I turned back to Rube.

  "How do you know what Steve's pajamas smell like? You go round sniffin' people's pajamas? Are you a bloody pajama-sniffer or something'?"

  Rube eyed me, unimpressed. "Y' can smell 'em when he walks past. Now sniff!"

  I did it and conceded that the pillow didn't smell like roses.

  "I told ya."

  "Great."

  I returned it to him and he threw it back where it was. That was Rube. The pillow stank and he knew it stank and was concerned about it. He wanted to talk about it, but one thing was certain -- there was no way he would wash it. Back in the corner of the couch, the pillow sat, stinking. I could still smell it now, but only because Rube had brought it up. It was probably my imagination. Thanks, Rube.

  What made things even more uncomfortable was the fact that normally, if Bruce and Sarah weren't all over each other, they would at least throw something into the conversation, no matter how stupid we were talking. On that day, however, Bruce said nothing, and Sarah said nothing. They only sat there and watched the movie they'd rented. Not one word.

  While all this was going on, I'd better point out that I was praying for Rebecca Conlon and her family. It led me to even start praying for my own family. I prayed that I wouldn't let Mum down anymore and that Dad wouldn't work so hard that he'd kill himself before he hit forty-five. I prayed for Steve's ankle to get better. I prayed that Rube would make something of himself sometime. I prayed that Sarah was okay right there and then and that she and Bruce would be okay. Just be okay. Be okay. I said that a lot. I said it as I started praying for the whole stupid human race and for anyone who was hurting or hungry or dying or being raped at that exact moment in time.

  Just let 'em be okay, I asked God. All those people with AIDS and all that stuff as well. Just let 'em be okay right n, and those homeless blokes with beards and rags and cut-up shoes and rotten teeth. Let 'em be okay.... But mainly, let Rebecca Conlon be okay.

  It was starting to drive me crazy.

  Really.

  When Sarah and Bruce weren't aware I was watching them, I stared at them hard and wondered how just days and weeks ago they were all over each other.

  I wondered how this could happen.

  It scared me.

  God, please bless Rebecca Conlon. Let her be okay....

  How could things be so different all of a sudden?

  Later on, when I was back in Rube's and my room, I could hear the drone of Sarah and Bruce talking behind the wall, in her room. The city was dark except for the building lights that seemed to appear like sores -- like Band-Aids had been ripped off to expose the city's skin.

  The only thing that seemed never to change was the city at this transition time between afternoon and evening. It always became murky and aloof and ignorant of what was going on. There were thousands of households throughout that city and there was something happening in all of them. There was some kind of story in each, but self-contained. No one else knew. No one else cared. No one else knew about Sarah Wolfe and Bruce Patterson, or cared about Steven Wolfe's ankle. No one else out there prayed for them or prayed repeatedly for Rebecca Conlon. No one.

  So I saw that there was only me. There was only me who could worry about what was happening here, inside these walls of my life. Other people had their own worlds to worry about, and in the end, they had to fend for themselves, just like us.

  By the time I went to bed, I was going in circles.

  Praying.

  Worrying about Sarah.

  Praying like an incoherent fool.

  I could feel the city at the window, but mostly, I remained in my head, hearing every thought -- quiet but loud, and true.

  The future:

  Time to relax.

  We're at the edge of the city, right next to it, as if we can reach across and touch the buildings -- reach in and turn off the lights that try shining in our eyes to blind us.

  We're fishing, Rube and I.

  We've never fished before, but we are today, through this whole evening.

  Our lines dangle in what is a huge, darkening blue lake with stars dropping up through the water.

  The water is still, but alive. We can feel it moving beneath the old beat-up boat we have hired from some con man on the shore. Onc a while it shifts beneath us. We are unafraid, at first, because although nothing has been totally stable, we know where we are, and things aren't moving along too rapidly.

  We catch. Nothing.

  Absolutely. Nothing.

  "Bloody hopeless." Rube initiates conversation.

  "I told y' we shouldn't have gone fishing. Who knows what's in this lake?"

  "Dead souls from the city." Rube smiles with a kind of sarcastic joy. "What'll we do if we get one on the end of our line?"

  "Jump ship, mate."

  "Too bloody right."

  The water moves again, and slowly, waves start rolling in from somewhere we can't see. They rise up and jump into the boat, and they get higher.

  There's a smell.

  "A smell?"

  "Yeah, can't you smell it?" I ask Rube. I say it like an accusation.

  "I can, yeah, now that you mention it."

  The water is excessively high now, lifting the boat and us and throwing us back down. A wave hits my face and I get a mouthful. The taste, it's grotesque, burning, and I can tell by the look on Rube's face that he's swallowed some too.

  "It's petrol," he tells me.

  "Oh God."

  The waves die a little now, and I turn to a boat that sits closer to the city, right near the shore. There's a guy in it, and a girl. The guy steps out onto the shore with something in his hand.

  It -- glows.

  "No!" I stand and throw my arms out. He does it. Cigarette.

  He does it as I see another person doing laps across the bay, intense
. Who is it? I wonder, and in another boat still, a man and a woman are also rowing, middle-aged.

  The guy throws his cigarette into the lake.

  Red and yellow rolls into my eyes.

  Oblivion.

  CHAPTER 7

  On the Thursday of that week, Rube also conned me into making a new exodus -- a journey a way from our normal robbery expeditions.

  signs.

  That was the new plan.

  It was still afternoon when he thought about it and told me which sign he wanted to get.

  "The give-way," he said. "Down Marshall Street." He smiled. "We sneak out, right, say elevenish, with one of Dad's spanners -- the one you can adjust by rubbing that thing on the top ..."

  "The wrench?"

  "Yeah, that's it.... We put our hoods on, walk down there casual as M. E. Waugh in bat, I climb up on your shoulders, and we take the sign."

  "What for?"

  "What, exactly, do you mean, what for?" "I mean, what's the point?"

  "Point?" He was, what's the word? Exasperated. Frustrated. "We don't need a point, son. We're juvenile, we're dirty, we don't have girls, we have noses full of snot, throats sore as hell, we've got scabs on us, we suffer bouts of acne, we've got no girls -- did I already say that? -- little money, we eat mushrooms mashed next to meat almost every night for dinner and drown 'em in tomato sauce so we can't taste 'em. What more reasons do we need?" My brother threw his head back on his bed and stared desperately at the ceiling. "We don't ask for much, dear God! You know that!"

  So that was it.

  The next mission.

  I swear it, that night, we were like savages, just as Rube had described in his outburst. It shocked me at first that he knew us like that. Like I did. Only, Rube was proud of it.

  Maybe we didn't know who we were, but we knew what we were, and to Rube it made acts of vandalism such as stealing street signs seem like a logical thing to do. He sure didn't feel like considering that we could end up in a police cell without the proper safety-standard bars.

  Of course, we knew we couldn't succeed.

  The only problem was, we did.

  We snuck out the back door of home at about quarter to twelve with our hoods hunching over our heads and footsteps raking us forward. We walked calmly, even toughly, down our street with smoky breath, hands in pockets, and whispers of greatness stuffed down our socks. Our sniffs and breathing scratched us through the air, pulling it apart, and I felt like that Julius Caesar guy going to conquer another empire -- and all we were doing was stealing a lousy gray-and-pink triangle that should have been white and red.