Peter Temple - White Dog

Drew didn’t want to be offering advice to a client in the knowledge that his friend was her lover.

I wasn’t her lover. One night, that would be it. Yes? I didn’t like the chances if she kissed me again. She knew a bit about kissing, knew a bit about things beside kissing too…

Oh, shit.

I dressed formally, my defence on days of uncertainty, made tea, sat at the kitchen table and tried to read my book for an hour, mind wandering like a goat on a hillside. Then I put on a tie, red silk, English, hardly worn, no knot wrinkles, went downstairs and fired up the neglected Stud, listened to the animal-enclosure sound of eight cylinders for a while, aimed the beast towards breakfast.

Sex and Principle, Body and Mind, torn between. And hungry. Nothing less than a repeat of the Cholesterol DynaHit at Enzio’s would be of any use at a time like this.

Just me, an office cleaner called Vern who drank at the Prince, and a couple, women. Carmel, the waif who knew all the midnight things, took the order. ‘I advise you that there is a new first-shift cook,’ she said. ‘As owner, Enzio wants to sleep in. We are encouraging that.’

‘Properly trained, the person?’ I said. ‘Well-briefed?’

‘Smartarse little turd,’ she said.

A message. I’d read the first five pages of the Age before the food came. Eggs hard, bacon burnt, sausages charred and split, tomatoes raw, ditto the mushrooms, toast cut too thin and barely exposed to heat.

I ate what was edible, a picky affair, read the sports pages, the horse stories, thought about how much I missed Les Carlyon. Where was he? Why didn’t he write for the paper anymore? No one wrote better about the people who lived on dreams, didn’t whinge unduly about the hip-and-shoulders of disappointment, went to bed and got up with trouble and debt, carried on anyway, prisoners of love and habit and not knowing what else to do.

Nearing the end of the food, I found the eyes of Bruno the Silent, a Lygon Street legend Enzio had plucked from vegetating in outer Reservoir and rechained to the coffee wheel. Bruno was sitting on a cushioned high stool with a back, giving him some ease from the leg pains caused by forty years of standing.

I nodded, he nodded. Bruno had first exchanged nods with me deep into my second year at law school, after I’d been ordering the same thing three or four times a week for more than eighteen months. One morning, as I came through the door, he looked at me, not an inquiring look, just a look one might give a known dog entering your premises.

I’d nodded. Bruno nodded. I sat down, opened the newspaper. Soon a short black arrived.

Now Carmel picked up my half-eaten remains. ‘I have nothing to say,’ she said, eyes down. ‘I merely wait upon table.’

‘It’s not easy to get the timing right,’ I said. ‘He may get better at it and become a Brunswick Street breakfast legend.’

‘Possibly,’ she said and gave me a look that brooked no misinterpretation. I watched her go, always a pleasure. A minute later she came back with the small glass of tar-black liquid. Looking out of the window at the life in the street, I sipped the dark bullet, felt the small surge of optimism kick in.

Time to go. A man in a good suit, judgment impaired by sex and red wine. I went to the counter, nodded to Bruno the Silent, paid Carmel, caught a glimpse of the cook, his hair, peaked and golden-tipped, his plump mouth. Outside, in the awakening street, standing beside the Stud, I switched on the small telephone. It rang immediately.

‘Jack?’

Sarah. I felt a little tightness in the throat. ‘Yes.’

‘Sarah. I tried you at home, left a message. I’ve had a call from someone, a man.’

‘Television jackal?’

She laughed. ‘No. He says he can help us. Help me. He’s coming at 9.30. He wants you here. Can you make it?’

‘You’re at work already?’

‘Couldn’t sleep when I got home. I should have stayed. It was all too brief.’

‘Passed in a flash. Telling this person about your place of work, I don’t know about the wisdom of that.’

‘He knew. Will you come?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I’ll be there. Did he give a name?’

‘No. He said it was dangerous for him to talk to us but he would.’

‘I’ll see you in half an hour.’

‘Good,’ she said. A few seconds. ‘Jack.’

‘Yes?’

‘Regrets?’

‘No,’ I said, no trouble lying. ‘You?’

‘Not a single one.’

I said goodbye, got into the Lark, sat and thought about why I was in the beginning-of-the-affair state, thought about Linda in London, watched a woman in overalls washing a window. A small brown dog sat behind her, head up, inspecting her work. Then I drove to Kensington.

Sarah’s old yellow ute was alone in the parking area, right-angled to the patchwork building. I considered waiting for the visitor to arrive. No, it might spook him. I got out. The wind was keen here, coming off the bay not far away, carrying the sounds of the railyards and docklands, clanking, roaring, groaning. Underfoot, the damp gravel made a squealing noise.

I slid open the door. The big space was gloomy, as before, the human-like metal forms somehow even more menacing at second meeting. I walked past the witches, paused to look again at what I’d at first thought to be two boxers, touched the stainless steel. It was icy, like having local anaesthetic on the fingertips. I went across to the pack of humanoid dogs attacking something, mounting each other in their fever, walked around it. These creations were all saying something about humans, about the world they made. I needed to know their titles.

I would ask the creator. I walked down the shed, around the scrapmetal pile, the car bodies, car doors, the assorted steel junk.

Sarah was where she had been the first time, in the open space. She was on one knee, wearing a full black mask, welding something onto the metal figure. A stream of sparks was erupting from the seam she was creating.

I stopped and watched her, her deftness. She must have felt my presence, she could see nothing but the glow of the weld through the helmet window. She stood up, raised the torch, turned her back on me, doing something, I saw the flame diminish, die. She put the torch on the stand, turned.

Sarah pushed up the helmet and looked at me, took off a glove, ran fingers through her hair, smiled the half-furtive smile.

She was lovely. My throat felt dry.

The world behind her went white, then bright orange.

The floor between us erupted.

In the air, backwards. A knife of pain. Darkness, I couldn’t see, pain in my side, something inside me.

I could see flames, hear a terrible roaring sound. Get to the door. I crawled. More explosions. A blow to my back.

The door, open, blown off, I felt a wind on my face.

Get there, just get there.

Black.

Nothing.

They let me out on a Friday in early May, round 6 of the football, damp, a wind shaking the bare trees. Drew carried my bag to his car. It wasn’t necessary, but I didn’t want to argue about it.

We drove in silence. He was going the wrong way.

‘What route is this?’ I said. ‘Have they reconfigured the city while I wasn’t looking?’

‘My place,’ said Drew.

‘Mine, I think,’ I said. ‘I have a need for home.’

‘You can’t come out of hospital after umpteen weeks and go back to an empty house,’ he said.

‘Bullshit. Anyway, what do you mean empty? Furniture gone? Haven’t you noticed it’s been empty for fucking years? No one there except me. Take me home.’

I heard the harsh tone of my voice.

We stopped at lights. Drew turned his long face. ‘Jack,’ he said, ‘don’t spoil my plans. Tonight, we have a beer or two. Then we eat these steaks from the main man. With them, a red I’ve been saving for fifteen years. Then we sit in front of the fire with a drop of Rutherglen nectar and watch the footy.’