‘Right,’ Maria said. ‘And you always give me the best scandal here.’
‘I’m less interesting elsewhere?’
‘There are artists and celebrities here. The atmosphere is good,’ Maria said. ‘It promotes gossip. It’s the only corner of my life where gossip is acceptable. It stops me being a total prig.’ She seemed to have abandoned her thoughts about breaking into her client’s tax file. ‘Also, I have a history here. Alistair and I used to sit there, it was our table.’
‘Don’t do this to yourself.’
‘He’s a part of me,’ Maria said. ‘Don’t make me pretend he isn’t.’
‘Maria, he’s a creep – he dumped you.’
‘He didn’t dump me. I dumped me. What did he do?’
‘Even now, you can’t see who he is.’
‘I know who he is,’ Maria said quietly. ‘Please. Gia, allow me to know him a little better than you.’
‘O.K.,’ said Gia, grinning like a cat. ‘So allow me to tell you where Paulo wants to kiss me.’
She was gifted with perfect recall. She recited a whole phone conversation with her ‘love interest’. He wanted to kiss her armpit. He had said to her, ‘Guess where I want to kiss you?’ She had guessed everywhere but arm pit. She had shocked him with her guesses. This sort of talk was making Maria look alive and happy again. The headscarf showed off her beautiful face, her dark olive skin and white, perfect teeth. She could have any man she liked, even now, this pregnant.
Gia spoke very quietly, so quietly no one could have heard them, but they laughed so much they could hardly see. Through her tear-streamed vision Maria saw Wally Fischer speaking to Tom, one of the owners of the Brasserie.
Tom was a small, solemn man of thirty who had made himself look forty with a belly and a pair of round, wire-framed glasses. He leaned across the table and put a hand on the back of their chairs.
‘Gia, Maria, I’m sorry … would you mind, you know, a little cleaner.’
‘All we’re doing is laughing,’ Gia said. ‘It’s not as if we’re murdering anyone.’
The words fell into the silence like stones into an aquarium. Maria could see Gia’s eyes widening as she heard what she had said. She looked at Maria and made a grimace, and up to Tom and shrugged, and across to Wally Fischer who had heard this very clearly – his thick neck was beginning to puff up and turn a deep plum colour.
Gia was pale. She sat with her palms flat on the table. She looked helplessly in Wally Fischer’s direction and smiled.
‘Hey,’ she said. Her voice was so loud and scratchy, Maria knew she was very frightened. ‘I’m sorry, really.’
Wally Fischer moved his chair back and stood up. You could feel his physical strength. He had bright, shining, freshly shaven cheeks and you could smell his talcum.
‘One,’ he said to Maria, ‘I don’t like my daughter having to listen to smut.’ He turned to Gia: ‘Number two: I like even less for her to hear people say untrue and insulting things about her father.’
‘All I …’ Gia began.
‘Sssh,’ said Wally Fischer. He was no longer plum-coloured. He was quite pale except for the red in his thick lips. ‘You’ve done enough hurt for one night.’ He blinked his heavy-lidded eyes once, and turned to take his daugher by the arm.
‘Sheet,’ said Gia as they walked out of the door. She leaned across to the abandoned table and retrieved the Bollinger from the bucket.
‘Gia, don’t.’ Maria looked down, ashamed.
Gia was pale and nervous, but she was already holding her trophy high and pouring Wally Fischer’s Bollinger into her empty water glass. ‘Have some. Don’t be such a goody-goody.’ Maria looked up to see Wally Fischer looking in the window from the street. He made a pistol with his finger and pointed it at Gia. Gia did not see him but she looked pale and sick anyway, and there seemed no point in making her more distressed. ‘Have some,’ she said to Maria.
Maria took the champagne, not to drink, as an act of solidarity. It frothed up and spilled on to the wooden table. Gia drank without waiting for the froth to settle. Her hand shook.
‘You all right?’ Maria asked.
‘Yeah, I’m O.K. But I don’t want to come here any more.’
Maria took her hand. Gia shut it into a fist, self-conscious about her bitten nails.
‘We don’t have to come here,’ said Maria.
‘It stinks,’ Gia said. ‘I can smell the dirty money at the door.’ Gia pushed away the champagne. ‘I don’t even like the taste of this.’
‘It isn’t the restaurant that’s the problem. It’s us.’
‘For instance?’
‘We keep doing things we don’t believe in. I didn’t join the department to be an anal authoritarian. I’m not going to bankrupt these poor people out at Franklin.’ Maria soaked up the spilled champagne with a paper napkin. ‘I’m going to pull their file,’ she said.
‘Maria, what’s happened to you?’
‘Nothing’s happened.’
‘You’ve had a character transplant.’ Gia took back the champagne and drank it.
Maria smiled. ‘Sorry to disappoint you.’
‘A complete character transplant.’
‘Goody two-shoes?’ Maria asked, her eyebrows arched.
‘That was a long time ago I said that …’
‘Fourteen years …’
‘I was angry with you. You made me feel bad about cheating on my car mileage. But there are people in the department who would drop dead if they thought you were going to pull a file.’
‘And you?’
‘I think it’s very therapeutic, Maria. I think it’s exactly what you should do.’ Gia reached over and emptied the last of Wally Fischer’s champagne into her glass. ‘You know the computer codes? That’s the important thing. You’ll need old Maxy’s access code.’
Maria smiled.
‘And you need a corrupt ASO 7 to open doors for you at night?’
‘Just lend me the keys.’
‘You’re kidding,’ said Gia, draining the champagne and standing a little unsteadily. ‘You think I’d miss this?’
‘It’s an offence under the Crimes Act.’
‘Come on,’ Gia said, making scribbling Amex signs at Tom. ‘Don’t be so melodramatic. All we’re going to do is work late at the office.’
16
Sarkis Alaverdian was depressed and unemployed, and when he came to sit on his back step, he saw Mrs Catchprice standing at the bottom of the back yard, below the culvert under the Sydney Road. He saw a still, pink figure, like a ghost. It just stood there, looking back at him.
Sarkis stood directly under the light of the back porch. He was not tall, but he was broad. He had a weight-lifter’s build, although when he walked he did not walk like a gym-ape, but lightly, more like a tennis-player. He had not had a pay cheque in ten weeks but he wore, even at home, at night, a black rayon shirt with featured mother-of-pearl buttons on the collar points. He wore grey cotton trousers shot with a slight iridescence, and soft grey slip-ons from the Gucci shop. He had curly black hair, not tight, not short, but tidy just the same. He had a broad strong nose, and a small tuft of hair, a little squiff on his lower lip.
He was twenty years old and he had been forced to come and stand out here while his mother made love with the Ariel Taxi driver. He was ashamed, not ashamed of his mother, but ashamed on her behalf, not that she would make love, not exactly, although a little bit. He had known something like this would happen when they moved from Chatswood. When she wanted to be away from Armenians, he had both sympathized with her and suspected her. He had readied himself for it and prepared himself so he would behave correctly, but he could not have imagined this taxi-driver. It was the taxi-driver who made him feel ashamed.