Shane Maloney - The Brush-Off

Straight across the hall was the bathroom. The chunky vanity basin was littered with toning lotions and night creams. Princess Marcella Borghese Face Mud. A cupboard held thick towels, folded and stacked. A cane laundry basket contained damp towels and a white t-shirt with two interlocked Cs in gold on the front.

The kitchen was expensively spartan: Alessi kettle, Moulinex, crystal wineglasses, stainless steel Poggenpohl appliances. Japanese crackers on an empty bench-top.

By now I was hyperventilating. ‘Right,’ I said, out loud. Time to go. If Fiona Lambert was up to no good, the evidence of it wasn’t here.

One last getaway glance out the window. Fiona Lambert was crossing a sunlit patch of lawn between two pines, headed for home. She was, perhaps, two minutes away. At the far side of the courtyard were rubbish bins, a rear exit to the flats. I opened the door a notch to reconnoitre my getaway and heard footfalls coming briskly up the stairs towards me, a heavy male tread.

Whoever he was, he’d be on the landing in a matter of seconds. His destination must be the flat opposite. Fiona was still ninety seconds away. It would be close, but an undetected departure was still possible. Closing the door and pressing my back to it, I listened for the man to go into the other flat.

The footsteps came closer. My hearing, all my senses, felt preternaturally heightened. A radio somewhere was broadcasting talkback. Out on Domain Road, a tram clattered by. Somebody’s muffler was due for replacement. The footsteps reached the landing. I waited for the jingle of keys or a rapping on the knocker opposite. All I heard was breathing, the wheezing of an unfit man who had just climbed a flight of stairs on a summer day and was pausing to catch his breath. I strained to hear movement, my heart drumming in my ears.

Distantly, the rhythmic click of a woman’s heels rapidly ascended the concrete stairs.

The tattoo beat of my pulse became a surf-roar of panic.

The door was about to fly open. My idiotic spur-of-the-moment impulse was about to backfire horribly, to result in my discovery and disgrace. What possible pretext could I find for being in a woman’s flat in this way? What would it look like? I’d be taken for a panty sniffer or a petty thief. A pervert, a psycho. How had I got myself into this position? To what idiot impulse had I surrendered my common sense? What outlandish excuse could I invent? I had to think of something and think of it fast.

I did. I hid.

I hid in the first place I found, a louvre-fronted closet beside the entrance to the living room. I took it for a coat closet but found it held brooms and mops and a vacuum cleaner. Shouldering my way between the broom handles, I swung the slatted door shut behind me just as a key snicked into the front-door lock.

A feather duster tickled the back of my neck. The handle of a broom toppled to rest against my cheek. The metal nozzle of the vacuum cleaner was jammed up my posterior crotch. Standing to rigid attention in claustrophobic darkness, I held my breath and awaited the humiliation of discovery.

‘Did you bring it?’ Fiona Lambert opened her front door and stepped through.

Two silhouettes passed before the downward sloping slats of the louvred panel. Just as they did so, I realised that the closet door had not swung completely shut behind me. A chink perhaps a centimetre wide remained open. From where I was standing, it looked as vast as the Grand Canyon.

‘You have the delivery docket?’ said a male voice, a deep rumble.

My senses were so acute that I could feel the hair standing up on the nape of my neck, taste the dust molecules in the air, smell the residues of floor wax clinging to the broom bristles. A spider in the dark behind me exuded the glutinous thread of its web. Heat radiated from my body. Sweat gushed from every pore, cascading down my skin and dripping into my eyes. My heart belted against my ribs like the bass riff from a Maxine Nightingale disco hit. The saliva had dried in my mouth and, when I tried to swallow it, crackled like a sheet of cellophane being rolled into a ball. I felt as if I was about to burst into flames.

Two shapes went past, into the living room. Through the gap, I could see the shoulder of a white business shirt. The man wearing it had something tucked up under his armpit, blocked by his torso. He half-turned and I could see the back of his near-bald skull. He was examining a sheet of light green paper. Satisfied with what he read, the man folded the page and put it in his pants pocket.

‘Show it to me,’ said Fiona impatiently, just beyond my vision.

A sliver of dining table was within my narrow line of sight. The man took the thing from under his arm and put it on the table. It was a shoebox in the distinctive hot pink and silver colours of the Karlcraft chain. He took the lid off and removed banded wads of banknotes. He built them into two piles, each about fifteen centimetres high. The money was pale, the colour of hundred dollar bills. Even from inside a broom cupboard on the other side of the room, it looked like a great deal of money.

‘One hundred thousand dollars,’ said the jowly voice of Max Karlin. ‘Cash.’

‘ One hundred thousand?’ Lambert was outraged. ‘That wasn’t the deal. Where’s the rest of my money?’

Holding my breath, I leaned forward until my eye was almost pressed to the crack in the door. My field of vision widened to include a good part of the living room. Fiona Lambert stood staring down at the money on the table, her expression caught between elation and petulance.

Karlin ignored her outburst. ‘Aren’t you going to offer me a drink?’

‘You think you can short-change me, is that it?’ snarled Lambert. ‘Our deal was for twice this amount.’

Karlin put his hands in his pocket and moved out of view. ‘It’s all I can afford.’ His attitude was take-it-or-leave-it. ‘If I really wanted to cheat you, Fiona dear, I wouldn’t be here at all. Be reasonable. It’s still a great deal of money.’

‘Our agreement was for one third of the purchase price of Our Home ,’ complained Lambert bitterly, her eyes never leaving the money. ‘By my arithmetic, that’s two hundred thousand dollars.’ Karlin had gone in the direction of the couch. Lambert turned to face him. ‘You think it was easy convincing Eastlake to pay more than double the market value?’

Karlin chuckled indulgently. ‘Oh, I don’t doubt you were very persuasive, my dear.’

His crossed ankles came into view. I could picture him on the couch, leaning back, his legs extended in front of him. ‘It’s just that circumstances have changed since we made our little agreement. A year ago, cash was easier to lay my hands on. I was slinging fifty thousand a month in backhanders to the building contractors alone. But things have changed. The money has dried up. My bankers are counting every penny. The other investors are watching me like a hawk.’

Fiona Lambert swung around to face him, bare arms akimbo. ‘Sell another one of your pictures.’ She was spitting chips. ‘Sell two, sell anything. Pay me what you owe me.’

‘Even if I thought I owed you anything, I’ve nothing left to sell.’ Karlin indulged her, but he was unsympathetic. ‘ Our Home was the last really valuable picture I still owned outright. The rest were sold long ago. I’ve been leasing them back, keeping up appearances.’ Compared to him, he was saying, she had nothing to complain about.

‘Liar!’ She actually stamped her foot.

Karlin snorted with amusement. ‘Take the money, Fiona.’ His tone was fatherly, unprovokable. He’d seen all this before. ‘Be happy you got anything at all. I’m walking away with nothing. Time was, I was a shoe salesman who liked to collect pictures. Then I decided to be a big-shot property developer. I sold my shops, hocked my pictures, bet everything on one big project. Now, after fifty years of hard work, all I’ve got are banks and investors and unions and construction contractors gnawing at my flesh. Jesus, I’ve even got an art gallery director blackmailing me.’ He emitted a dry humourless guffaw, as if this was the ultimate indignity.