“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.
“That’s sick,” Dad said.
“From this body I give life,” she said back.
“Why did you scratch my car?”
“Piss off,” she spat; then, turning to me, “Do you want a drink?”
“Not if it’s out of that jug.”
“No, from the fridge.”
“What have you got?”
“Water or orange juice.”
“ Orange juice, please.”
“Don’t give your dad any. I’m hoping he’ll die of thirst.”
“I know what you mean.”
Dad’s hand slapped the back of my head. Hey! Why shouldn’t I say stupid things? I was tired and embarrassed and bored. Why wasn’t Dad tired and embarrassed and bored? It was a weird thing we were doing, hanging out on a stranger’s porch waiting for a confession.
The front door opened again. “Remember what we talked about, now,” she said, handing me a glass of orange juice.
“I won’t give him a drop,” I promised.
She smiled warmly. In her other hand was a black sports bag. She knelt down beside Dad and opened the bag. Inside were envelopes and letters. “If you’re going to stalk me, might as well make yourself useful. Put these in envelopes.”
Dad took the envelopes without a word. He made himself comfortable and started licking envelopes as if it were the most natural thing in the world to lick envelopes on a stranger’s porch, his tongue working like it was the tongue’s reason for being, the reason we came all the way over here at six in the morning.
“What about you, kid, you want to help us out?”
“My name’s Jasper.”
“You want to lick some envelopes, Jasper?”
“Not really, but OK.”
The three of us sat on the porch stuffing envelopes with deftness and precision. It was impossible to articulate what exactly was happening here; it was as if we were all actors improvising in a student play, and every so often we’d all look at each other with barely concealed amusement.
“How much do you get paid for doing this?” Dad asked.
“Five bucks for every one hundred envelopes.”
“That’s not so good.”
“No, it’s not.”
As she said this, I noticed how her serious, severe face had become serene and gentle.
I asked, “Why do you hate rich people so much?”
She narrowed her green eyes and said, “Because they get all the breaks. Because poor people are struggling while the rich complain about the temperature of their pools. Because when ordinary people get into trouble, the law fucks them over, and when the rich get into trouble, they get an easy ride.”
“Maybe I’m not rich,” Dad said. “Maybe I have a red sports car but it’s the only thing of value I own.”
“Who cares about you?”
“My son does.”
“Is that true?” she asked me.
“I suppose.”
There was something about this conversation that wasn’t working. It was as if language were failing us when we needed it most.
“We need a housekeeper,” Dad said suddenly. Green Eyes’s tongue froze mid-lick.
“Is that so?”
“Yeah. It’s so.”
Green Eyes put down the envelopes and her face hardened again. “I don’t know if I want to work for some rich bastard.”
“Why not?”
“Because I hate you.”
“So?”
“So it’ll be hypocrisy.”
“No, it won’t.”
“It won’t?”
“No, it’ll be irony.”
Green Eyes thought about that awhile, and her lips started moving soundlessly, to let us know that she was thinking it over. “I have a boyfriend, you know.”
“Does that prevent you from cleaning?”
“Plus you’re much too old and much too ugly for me. I’m not going to sleep with you.”
“Listen. I’m just looking for someone to clean our apartment and cook for Jasper and me occasionally. Jasper’s mother is dead. I work all the time. I don’t have time to cook. Also, for the record, I’m not interested in you sexually. Your shaved head makes you look sort of mannish. Plus your face is oval. I only like round faces. Oval turns me off. Ask anyone.”
“Maybe I will.”
“So you want the job?”
“All right.”
“Why did you scratch my car?”
“I didn’t scratch your car.”
“You’re a liar.”
“You’re a weirdo.”
“You’re hired.”
“Fine.”
I looked at Dad who had a strange look on his face, as if we had trekked all night to arrive at a secret waterfall and this was it. We kept on with the envelopes as the dawn became morning.