Steve Toltz - A Fraction of the Whole

“I feel sick.”

“What’s the matter?”

“What are you going to do when you find him?”

Dad indicated with his eyebrows that he found my question ignorant. The patrons started leaving one by one. Finally the girl with the shaved head leaned on the cloakroom counter.

“That’s mine,” she said, pointing. “The red one.”

This was our man- or I should say woman. The culprit. The vandal. The clerk handed her the parka. Now what?

“Hello,” Dad said.

She turned her face to him. We got a good look at her. She had bright green eyes set in the boniest face I’d ever seen. I thought she should thank God for those eyes; they were the only beautiful things about her. Her lips were thin, almost nonexistent. Her face was gaunt and pale. She’d be nothing more than white skin stretched over a long skull if it weren’t for those eyes. They were translucent. Dad said hello again. She ignored him, opened the door with her foot, and went into the street.

Outside, a light rain was falling from a metal-yellow sky. I couldn’t see it but I knew the sun was around there somewhere- its yawn had lit the air. I took a deep breath. There’s no doubt about it, the dawn smells different from the rest of the day; there’s a certain freshness about it, like when you take a bite out of a head of lettuce and put it back in the fridge bite side down so no one will notice.

The girl was standing under the awning, doing up her famous red parka.

“Hello there.” Dad’s voice had no impact on her. I thought clearing my throat might help. It did. Her bright green eyes shone a spotlight on Dad and me.

“What do you want?”

“You scratched my car,” Dad said.

“What car?”

“My car.”

“When?”

“Earlier tonight, around a quarter to nine.”

“Says who?”

“Says me,” Dad said, then moved a step closer to the red parka with the green headlights. “I know it was you.”

“Get the fuck away from me before I call the police.”

“Ho-ho, you want to call the police, do you?”

“Yeah, maybe I do, moneybags.”

“What did you call me?”

“I called you moneybags, moneybags.”

“Every time you open your mouth, you’re incriminating yourself. Why do you think I’m a moneybags unless you’ve seen my car?”

Good one, Dad, I thought. She’s on the run now.

“Your suit looks like something a fat rich bastard would wear.”

Good one, Green Eyes. She got you there, Dad.

“For your information, I’m not a moneybags,” Dad said.

“I don’t care what you are.”

This ludicrous evening seemed to be reaching a dead end. Dad had crossed his arms and was trying to stare down Green Eyes, but she had crossed her arms and was glaring right back at him with eyes so wide they were positively lidless. Was that it? Could we go home now?

“How old are you?”

“Fuck off.”

“I only want two things from you.”

“Well, you aren’t getting them.”

“I want a confession and an explanation. That’s all.”

This is exactly the kind of thing a single man can do at five-thirty in the morning, I thought- this is exactly why people have wives and husbands and girlfriends and boyfriends, so they don’t allow themselves to get too creepy. But leave a man alone for long enough and there is nothing odd he won’t do. A life lived alone weakens the mind’s immune system, and your brain becomes susceptible to an attack of strange ideas. “I want a confession and an explanation,” Dad repeated, and placed his hand on her shoulder as if he were a security guard surprising a shoplifter. She started screaming, “Help! Police! Rape!”

Then Dad had yet another dubious idea: he started shouting for the police too. He nudged me. He wanted me to join in. I shouted along with the other two, calling out rape, calling for the cops. But I didn’t stop there. I called for a SWAT team too. I called for helicopters. I called for Satan. I called for the ground to swallow the sky. That quieted her down. She stepped off the pavement into the rain. Dad and I walked into the street beside her without talking. Every now and then Green Eyes took a peek at me.

“What are you doing with this fuckwit?” she asked me.

“I don’t know.”

“Is he your father?”

“He says he is.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“Hey, vandal. Don’t you talk to him. You have some confessing to do.”

“You can’t prove anything, moneybags.”

“Can’t I? Can’t I? Well, vandal, you have in your pocket a key of some description, don’t you? Wouldn’t take more than a couple of seconds for a forensic scientist to match the specks of paint on your key to the missing paint from the side of my car.”

Green Eyes pulled a key from her pocket and dropped it in a puddle of water.

“Oops, clumsy me,” she said, kneeling down beside the puddle, scrubbing the key, then wiping it on the sleeve of her parka. She put the key back in her pocket. “Sorry, moneybags,” she sang.

We crossed Hyde Park as it went through a transformation of light and color. Dawn was melting into the shadows of the trees. As Green Eyes strode briskly, Dad took my hand and urged me to keep up the pace. At the time I couldn’t comprehend what was going on. Now, looking back at his determination to follow this strange woman, it seems as if he somehow understood the mess she was going to make of our future, and he was not going to let her wriggle out of it.

When we reached the top of the park, guess who we saw hanging over Taylor ’s Square? The huge deep orange blazing sun, that’s who. Green Eyes lit a cigarette. The three of us watched the sunrise in silence, and I thought: One day the earth is going to get sucked into that lurid sun, and all the Chinese restaurants and all the peroxide blond women and all the seedy bars and all the single men and all the vandals and all the sports cars will be obliterated in a brilliant white flash and that will be that. Suffice it to say, it was a hell of a sunrise. I felt like a naked eyeball standing there, an eyeball the size of a boy, an eyeball with ears and a nose and a tongue and a thousand nerves sticking out like uncut hairs touching everything. I was all the senses at once, and it felt good.

Suddenly I was glad there was no one at home waiting up for us. Normal fathers and sons can’t stay out all night to watch the sun rise if there’s a wife and mother fretting by an open window, her long bony finger hovering over the button that speed-dials the police. I turned to Dad and said, “It’s good that you’re alone.”

Without looking at me he said, “I’m not alone. You’re here.”

I felt Green Eyes staring at me, before she fixed her stare on Dad. Then she walked on. We followed her up Oxford Street and into Riley. We followed her to a terrace house in Surry Hills. “Thanks for walking me home, moneybags. Now you know where I live. Now you know where my boyfriend lives too. He’ll be home soon and he’ll make a meal out of you. So fuck off!” she screamed. Dad sat on the front porch and lit a cigarette.

“Can we please go home now?” I begged.

“Not yet.”

About twenty minutes later, Green Eyes came back out in tracksuit pants and a yellow undershirt. She was holding a jug of water with something floating in it. On closer look, it was a tampon. A used tampon floating in the jug. A thin trail of blood wove through the water, dissolving into layers of misty red.

“What are you going to do with that?” Dad asked, horrified.

“Calm down, moneybags. I’m just watering my plants.”

She stirred the tampon in the jug and then poured the red water over what looked like marijuana plants sitting on the railing.