Steve Toltz - A Fraction of the Whole

“Don’t worry. I have a plan for throwing you out. We, you and me, are going to build you a hut to live in. Somewhere on the property.”

A hut? “How the hell are we going to build a hut? What do we know about building? Or huts?”

“The Internet,” he said.

I groaned. The Internet! Ever since the Internet, complete idiots have been building huts and bombs and car engines and performing complicated surgical procedures in their bathtubs.

We settled on a clearing in the maze next to a circle of sinewy gum trees and only a few meters from a freshwater creek, and the following morning, under an orange-copper sky, we started chopping trees as if we were mythic Germanic creatures in an early Leni Riefenstahl film.

I couldn’t stifle the thought that my life had taken a disappointing turn- I had only just left school and I was already doing hard manual labor. Every time the blade of the ax hit timber I felt my spine move a couple of millimeters to the left, and that first day for me was all about raising complaining to a high art. The second day was even worse- I dislocated my shoulder. The third day I said I needed to look for work and so I went into the city and saw three movies in a row, all of them bad, and when I returned I was shocked to see that an enormous amount of work had been done on the hut.

Dad was leaning on his ax, wiping sweat from his brow onto his pants. “I worked like a bastard today,” he said. I looked steadily into his eyes and knew at once that he had called in outside help.

“How’s the job hunt?” he asked.

“I’m closing in.”

“Attaboy.” Then he said, “Why don’t you have a crack at construction tomorrow? I’m going to spend the day in the library.”

And so I dug into the savings he kept in a hollowed-out copy of Rousseau’s Confessions and called a builder of my own.

“Just do as much as you can,” I said.

And in this manner the place was built. We’d alternate. One day I’d pretend to build the hut single-handed, then the next day he’d pretend to build the hut single-handed, and I don’t know what any of this meant, only that it proved we both had damaged, underhand characters. The upshot was, the shack was taking shape. The ground was cleared. The frame erected. The floor laid. The roof beams raised. The door fastened on with hinges. Windows where windows should be. Glass in them. The days growing longer and warmer.

During this time I went for a job with an advertising agency, even though there was something condescending about the way the ad wanted a “junior.” I entered a sterile cement shanty, shuffled along dark, joyless corridors where a large clone army slid by me, smiling with urgency. In the interview, a guy named Smithy told me I’d get four weeks off a year for cosmetic surgery. The job was data entry clerk. I started the next day. The ad didn’t lie- I entered data. My coworkers were a man who smoked cigarettes that were mysteriously lipstick-stained in the pack and an alcoholic woman who tried very hard to convince me that waking up in the revolving door of the Hyatt Hotel was something to be proud of. I loathed that job. The good days passed like decades, the so-so days like half centuries, but mostly it felt as if I were frozen in the eye of an everlasting time-storm.

The night the hut was finished, Dad and I, two lying fakers, sat on the front porch and toasted the achievement that was not our own. We saw a star fall and tear a long thin strip of white in the black sky.

“Did you see that?” Dad asked.

“Shooting star.”

“I made a wish,” he said. “Should I tell you what it was?”

“Better not.”

“You’re probably right. Did you make a wish?”

“I’ll make one later.”

“Don’t wait too long.”

“As long as I don’t blink, the power of the star is still good.”

My fingers held my eyelids wide open while I contemplated my wishing options. It was an easy choice. I wanted a woman. I wanted love. I wanted sex. Specifically, I wanted the Towering Inferno. I worked all this into one wish.

Dad must have read my mind, or made a similar wish, because he said, “You’re probably wondering why I’ve been single most all my life.”

“It’s kind of self-explanatory,” I said.

“Do you remember I told you one day about a girl I once loved?”

“Caroline Potts.”

“I still think about her.”

“Where is she now?”

“ Europe probably,” he said. “She was the love of my life.”

“And Terry was the love of hers.”

We finished our beers and listened to the gurgling of the creek.

“Make sure you fall in love, Jasper. It’s one of the greatest pleasures there is.”

“A pleasure? You mean like a hot bath in winter?”

“That’s right.”

“Anything else?”

“It makes you feel alive, really alive.”

“That sounds good. What else?”

“It confuses you so you don’t know your arse from your elbow.”

I thought about that. “Dad,” I said, “so far you’ve described love as a pleasure, a stimulant, and a distraction. Is there nothing else?”

“What more do you want?”

“I don’t know. Something higher or deeper?”

“Higher or deeper?”

“Something more meaningful?”

“Like what?”

“I’m not sure.”

We had reached an impasse, and turned our eyes back to the heavens. The night sky just disappoints after a falling star has fallen from sight. Show’s over, the sky says. Go home.

That night I wrote a nice little blackmail note to the Towering Inferno:

I’m considering changing my story and telling the principal it was you who orchestrated the hat incident on the train. If you would like to talk me out of it, come to my house anytime. Come alone.

You don’t think you can blackmail a woman into loving you? Well, maybe you can’t, but it was my last card and I had to play it. I perused the note. It was just the way a blackmail letter should read: concise and demanding. But…my pen wriggled in my hand. It wanted to add something. OK, I conceded, but I remembered that brevity is the soul of extortion. I wrote: P.S. If you don’t show up, then don’t think I’ll be waiting like a fool. But if you do come, I’ll be there. And then I wrote on a little; I wrote about the nature of expectation and disappointment, about lust and memories; and about people who treat use-by dates as though they were holy commandments. It was a fine note. The blackmail element was short, only three lines. The P.S. was twenty-eight pages long.

On my way to work I popped it in the mailbox outside the post office and five minutes later almost broke my hand trying to get it out. Honestly, they knew what they were doing designing those mailboxes- you really can’t get into them. I tell you, those little red fortresses, they’re impenetrable!

Two days later I was in a deep sleep, trapped in an unpleasant dream where I was at a swimming carnival and when it came my turn to swim they drained the pool. I was on the swimmer’s block and the crowd booed me because I wasn’t wearing anything and they didn’t like what they saw. Then all of a sudden I was in a bed. My bed. In my hut. Dad’s voice had dragged me into consciousness, away from the disapproving eyes. “Jasper! You have a visitor!”

I pulled the covers over me. I didn’t want to see anyone. Dad started up again. “Jasper! You in there, son?” I sat up. His voice sounded funny. I couldn’t work out what it was at first, but then I realized. He sounded polite. Something must be up. I put a towel around me and stepped outside.

I squinted in the sun. Was I still dreaming? A vision soaked my eyes with cool delight. She was here: the Towering Inferno, in my home, next to my father. I froze. I couldn’t reconcile the two figures standing side by side. It was all so out of context.