Peter Carey - The Tax Inspector

Howie said: ‘Just help us keep Benny out of Spare Parts, Mort. Benny loses us more in a day than you could in a week.’

Mort walked into the Spare Parts Department to ask Cathy would she hold his calls for half an hour so he could help out on the fuel pumps. She should be standing in the showroom, but she never would. She had a handwritten sign there, saying please come over to Spare Parts and now she was on the phone making a parts order, doing Benny’s job in fact, probably fucking up as well.

Howie was on the phone too. He was meant to look like Elvis’s original drummer, D. J. Fontana. This was bullshit. He looked like what he would have been if Granny Catchprice had never hired him – a country butcher. He had a tattoo on his forearm and a ducktail haircut, always four weeks too long. He had his pointy shoes up on the desk, and the phone wedged underneath his chin. He had smoke curling round his hair, and clinging to his face. He stank of it.

‘Listen, Barry, no: I went in there personally and asked them for it. They haven’t got the record in stock. It’s not even on their damn computer.’ He paused. ‘I know.’ He paused again and nodded to Mort to sit down. He lived his life surrounded by radiator hoses and shock absorbers but he acted like he was in show business. It was pathetic. He wore suits , probably the only spare parts manager in Australia to do it. The suits all came mail order – with extra long jackets and padded shoulders.

‘We were number eight. That was two days ago. If you can’t keep the record in the shops, we’re dead meat.’

He took his feet off the desk but only to flick ash off his trousers.

‘I’m sympathetic, of course I am.’ He was a slime. He was dark-haired and pale-skinned and he closed his heavy-lidded eyes when he spoke to you. That made you think he was shy, but he was a slime. Before he came into their lives, Cathy never fought with anyone.

When Howie put the phone down, Mort said: ‘They tell me the Tax Department is upstairs with Mum.’ He was pleased with how he said it – calm, not shaky.

‘It’s an audit,’ Howie said. He had the desk covered with papers. Mort saw the record company logo – nothing to do with Catchprice Motors.

‘So what’s that mean?’ Mort asked. ‘An audit?’

Howie opened his drawer and pulled out a pink and black pamphlet. He stood up and brought it over to the counter. Mort took it from him. It was titled Desk Audits & You . ‘They tell me Benny’s gone blond.’

‘What’s it mean?’ Mort tapped the brochure on the counter.

‘It means ooh-la-la,’ Howie said.

‘What’s it mean?’ Mort could feel himself blushing. ‘Are we in the shit or aren’t we?’

‘Mort, you’re blushing,’ Howie said.

He could not walk out. He had to stay there, enduring whatever it was that Howie knew, or thought he knew, about his son.

9

You did not need to like a car to sell it. A car was a pipe, a pump for sucking money from the ‘Prospect’ before you maximized it. You did not need to feel nothing, but Benny loved that fucking Audi. It looked so polite. It had its suit on, its hair cut, but it could take you to hell with your dick hard, and it would be no big deal to sell it. It could sell itself to anyone who liked to drive.

Of course seventy-five grand was a lot of money. So what? There were plenty of different ways to skin the cat, cut that cake, parcel it, package it, make it affordable for the ‘Prospect’ and profitable to the business, and he – dumb Benny – knew these ways.

He had, right now, the missing spare key in his pocket and the first ‘prospect’ who came his way, he was going to demo it, licence or no licence. This would surprise the Catchprice family, who were so worried about scratching it they would not even let him wash it. What would they do when he handed them the paper work – the sale made, the finance pre-approved by ESANDA? What would they say? No please, don’t sell the Audi, Benny? No please, you’re only sixteen and we’d rather pay four hundred bucks a week? They had dropped their bundle. Lost it. They had a jet black Audi Quattro sitting in the star position in the yard and instead of thanking God for giving them such a beautiful opportunity, they blamed each other for having it and worried that the floor plan payments were going to send them broke.

He could see Bozzer Mazoni across the road checking for change in the public phone box which held up the boot-maker’s collapsed veranda. Bozzer had orange, red and yellow hair, a huge star ear-ring, maroon boots with black straps and a fence chain wrapped around his ankle. He looked across and saw Benny standing there. Benny raised his hand in a formal wave. Bozzer squinted and ducked his brilliant head. You could see him thinking fucking yuppy . He did not have a clue who Benny was.

Then the woman from the 7-Eleven came out of the drive-way with her Commodore. She knew Benny, too, from the time she tried to get him and Squeaker Davis done for shop-lifting in fourth year. As she came along the service road, she slowed down, and Benny waved at her. She frowned, and waved back, but you could see it – he was transformed – she had no more idea who he was than Bozzer had.

He waited for Vish, but Vish would not come down from Gran’s flat. He was hiding, praying like a spider in a web. He was scared of that fucking car yard, but if he would only look out of the window, he would see – Benny had the power , Vish could have it too. They could stop being nerds. They could be millionaires, together.

Benny could feel this power, physically, in his body, in his finger tips. He was so full of light, of Voodoo. He could feel it itching on the inside of his veins. If he opened his mouth it would just pour out of him. He straightened his hard penis so it lay flat against his stomach. He felt so incredible, waxed all over, free of body hair, full of clean-skinned possibility, that he did not even know what to think about what he thought.

But nothing would stay constant. The power ebbed and flowed as it had all morning while the rain had kept him locked in the front office. You looked at the feeling, it went. You thought about the plan, you got scared. When he heard his father’s feet on the gravel the hair on the nape of his neck bristled and he wanted to put his hand across his navel and hold it. It was so hard to keep his hand behind his back. His body was already doing all the things it did when it was scared. It was sweating at the hands, and the arsehole. The heart was squittering in its cage. He made himself turn and look his father in the eye.

‘Get your arse out of here,’ his father said. He had what the boys used to call ‘the look’ – bright blue peas, crazy lasers. If you were a dog you would back away.

Benny lost it.

‘Get out of here,’ Mort said, ‘before I throw you out.’

Benny walked back to the front office, and shut the door. When his father walked back down the lane-way to the workshop, Benny sat behind the grey metal desk and shut his eyes, trying to get his power back. He did the exercises he had learned from ‘Visualizing, Actualizing’. He exhaled very slowly and he laid his pretty, long-fingered hands flat on the desk.

He could see his own reflection in the glass in front of him and once again he was astonished by himself. I look incredible . He had moved so far beyond the point where Spare Parts could be an issue in his life.

He wondered how he looked to someone who had never seen him before, someone walking past the petrol pumps on the way to A.S.P. Building Supplies. He imagined himself seen framed by the arched windows and barley-sugar columns. He thought he would look religious or scientific. He was pleased to think he was a most unusual-looking person to be in the office of a car dealership.