Day 34

The technical term

Before he goes to meet the newsreader, Frank checks his hair and paunch in the mirror on the wall of the station toilets.  Too much of one not enough of the other.  He knows she’s not after him for that anyway.  Just like all her colleagues, she only wants to see what information she can sucker him into letting go.  He remembers the last time a few years ago.  He’d shat himself for weeks waiting for the details he’d let slip to come up on a news bulletin.  After a while he realised they weren’t going to use the information, but he knows he was lucky.  He doesn’t really know now why he’s agreed to meet her this time, but he has and, in spite of counselling himself otherwise, even while he’s standing here in front of the mirror, sucking in his gut, it looks like he’s still going.

The cafe where she’d said to meet him isn’t one of his usual places.  It’s on a strip where designer shops compete for space with overpriced eateries and the occasional Hollywood nonentity sends the citizens into a frenzy just by splashing a bit of cash on a bracelet or a pair of designer jeans.  Time was when this was the only area of it’s kind in town, now they’re springing up all over the place, shops and cafes crawling with cashed up bogans living the elitist dream.  Even Frank can see the irony of queuing for designer burgers, so he doesn’t come by here much.

Frank scans the tables, surprisingly most of them full on a Wednesday morning, and she’s not there.  He thinks about leaving, but walks over to an empty table and sits down, orders a coffee and waits.  He fiddles with a paper sugar sachet, feel his rapid heart beating in his chest, tries not to drink his coffee too quickly.

When the newsreader arrives, Frank half stands, goes to sit down again and then stands up.  Christ knows what you’re supposed to do when a woman comes into the room these days.  She waves without smiling to let him know she’s seen him and walks over.  A couple of the cafe’s patrons look up as she walks by.

“Hey, Frank, how are you?”

Frank’s sitting down again by the time she reaches the table.

“Yeh, good.  How are you?”

“I’m fine, thanks, Frank.”

Tiffany orders a coffee and, after the waiter’s gone, they sit for a moment saying nothing, each wondering how far to go with the niceties before getting down to business.  Tiffany decides a bit further would be in order.

“So, Frank, you’re looking good.  You look like you’re doing well.”

“Thanks ... ah ... ah ... Tiffany.”  Although she’s used his name three times already, Frank hesitates over saying hers.  “So are you ...”  Frank’s voice tails off.  He’s got no idea what he’s trying to say.  Looking good?  Doing well?  Fuck knows.

And she lets him wallow.  Doesn’t say anything for a while.  Frank’s finished his coffee and she’s well into hers before she speaks again.

“So, you said you might have something for me?”

“Well, yair, I did.  I, um, I don’t know if you’ll really be interested though.”  Frank’s decided he doesn’t want to tell Tiffany what he thought he wanted to say when she called him on Monday.

“Well, try me, and we’ll see, shall we.”

“I dunno.  I’m not sure it’s very interesting really.  I don’t think I can tell you.  Confidential police information and all that.”

“That hasn’t stopped you before, Frank.”  Tiffany smiles for the first time since she’s sat down.

She’s right, it hasn’t stopped Frank before and it’s not the reason why he’s reluctant to speak this time.  Sitting here, opposite the newsreader, Frank just can’t see how he could in any way have the conversation he’d thought he was going to have with this her when the spoke on the phone.  He’s embarrassed even thinking about how he’ll say some of the things he thought he’s d say to her.  And he’s got no real idea why.

“I just don’t think I can, Tiffany.  Not this time.”

“Sounds very interesting, indeed!”  Tiffany’s smile is wider now.  Frank can see her teeth.  Wonders if she’s had them whitened, maybe even capped.  Bets she could afford that easy.

“How about we have another coffee and see whether I can get it out of you?”  Tiffany’s already calling the waiter over while she’s saying the words.  Frank doesn’t really have a choice.

“So, c’mon, tell me.  Confession’s good for the soul, Frank.  And, tell you what, I promise not to use it unless you say it’s OK.  Just tell me, I’m really curious now, Frank.  I don’t care about a story, I just want to know, mate.”  She’s trading on Aussie mateship now to see if she can lever something out of the Detective.  She’ll try anything to get what she wants.  Besides, he’s got her really curious, a man like this getting all tongue tied.

“OK,” is all he says at first.

Tiffany doesn’t say anything.  Just looks at him over the rim of her coffee cup as she takes another swig.  She doesn’t want to do anything that might make him withdraw.

“You know about the missing boy?  It’s been on the news.  I think it’s been on Six.”

“Yep, I know the story.  It’s been a few weeks now?”

“That’s right.”  Frank doesn’t specify the time, though if he stopped to think, he’d know it down to the minute.  But that’s his burden to carry.  “Got an interesting turn of events.  Interesting person of interest, you might say.”

Frank smiles, just a bit.  He pauses again.  For a long time.  Tiffany has to work hard to resist the urge to push him for more.

It takes a lot of effort for Frank to form the next words.  He can feel himself blushing, sweat is starting to bead at his hairline.

“This guy we’re looking at.  He’s a transvestite.”  Frank uses what he thinks is the technical term to try to distance himself from the word and all it implies.

“What do you mean, Frank?”

By the time they’ve finished talking, the Detective has given the news reader Chris Baker’s phone number.

Like our neighbour would do for us

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuuuuuuuuck!”

Chris is alone in his home and yelling.  He’s walking up and down the passage between the lounge room and his bedroom.  He doesn’t know what he’s doing, knows only that the vocalising is keeping his mind from imploding.

Chris Baker’s life is over.  Life as he knows it, that it.  He’s been thinking about suicide, but he knows he can’t kill himself.  It’s not that he doesn’t have the guts, there’s something inside him that just keeps wanting to hang on to life, no matter how shitty things get.  Things have never been shittier, but it seems that the life force still wants to keep him here, no matter how wild his thoughts are, no matter how out of control he feels.

The noise of his yelling keeps his mind from sucking him over the edge.

It takes a while before Chris hears the knocking on the door.  When the noise filters through, Chris knows that he’s been hearing it for the last few minutes.  The silence left by the absence of his yelling feels heavy in the still air of the house.  His ears feel blocked by the pressure, like landing in a plane.  He stands still and alert, waiting for the knocking to come again.

When it does, the sound rips through him like a spear, shifting and slicing the organs in his torso.  Chris flinches visibly and is compelled to silent movement, pacing up and down the hallway, as he thinks about what to do, whether to answer the door.

Finally his logic breaks through.  He has to answer the door.  If it’s the cops again, they’ll only break it down anyway, they’ve got a search warrant.  If it’s someone else, he can get rid of them.

Chris opens the door and finds his neighbours, Mr and Mrs Yannis standing side by side, Mr Yannis holding open the flyscreen door that Chris has forgotten to lock since he got home and holding up his fist, poised to knock again.  They look worried.

“Is everything well?”  Mr Yannis asks in heavily accented English.  “We could hear you shouting.”

Chris flushes with embarrassment.

“Yes.  Um.  Yes, I’m fine. Thank you,” Chris says.  He tries a smile.

Mrs Yannis speaks to her husband and he then speaks to Chris.

“You are in troubles?  Edris, she said she saw you with the police, at the station, yesterday.”

“Er, yes.  I saw Mrs Yannis, too.  Is everything OK with you two?”  Chris tries to deflect the attention back onto his neighbours.

“Yes, yes. We are fine,” Mr Yannis says quickly.  “All is well with us.  But you. We are worried about you.  We are your neighbours.  Edris said you told the police who she is.  We thank you very much.  And now we’re worried.  For you.”

Chris remembers telling the custody officer Mrs Yannis’s name and address at the station yesterday.  It wasn’t done out of any particular care, just an answer to a question.  He hadn’t thought about it again since.  Now his neighbours are on his doorstep asking if he’s OK.  The simple act is more than Chris can bear.  He begins to cry, his shoulders heaving, tears running down his face from eyes that are squeezed tight shut in an attempt to stop the display of emotion.

Chris hears Mrs Yannis speaking to her husband and then hears Mr Yannis’s English again.

“Please.  We are come in?  We would like to help you, our neighbour.”

Without giving Chris a choice, Mr and Mrs Yannis step inside his house, just like his last visitors, the Detectives, had but so very differently.  Chris leads them to the lounge room and invites his guests to take a seat.

For a moment, they sit and nothing is said.  Then, Mrs Yannis begins to speak, a torrent of language that Chris can’t understand.

Chris has settled, his breath is coming more evenly, but he’s still crying.  When Mrs Yannis stops speaking, her husband addresses Chris.

“You are troubled.  Edris will make tea and we will talk.”

Edris gets up to go to the kitchen and Chris makes to follow.  She turns to him and speaks, a word Chris can’t decipher but understands perfectly.  He sits down again and waits in silence with Mr Yannis while they listen to the sounds of cupboards opening and closing and crockery clanking in the kitchen.

Edris comes back with tea for each of the three of them.  She says something to her husband and he translates for Chris.

“No biscuits?”

Chris laughs.  He’s been wondering what his neighbour would bring back from the kitchen, partly because there’s not much in there and partly because he’s got no idea what people drink at home in Afghanistan.

In his cup there’s white tea.

“No, no biscuits,” Chris replies, with a smile still on his face.  “Haven’t done any shopping lately.”  Chris’s smile turns sheepish.

Mr and Mrs Yannis smile back.

“Edris, she had trouble at the shops.”

Khan goes on to tell Chris about the assault on his wife at the Queensgate City Shopping Centre.  As Chris listens, he is taken away from thoughts of his own problems for a while.  Mrs Yannis listens quietly, interjecting from time to time to remind her husband of a detail here and there.  As he listens, it occurs to Chris that she can understand English, even if she can’t speak it.

As he listens, it also dawns on Chris that his neighbour, Mrs Yannis, while a shy woman, has a steel that he’s never noticed before during the occasional intersection of their lives.  She’s composed, self-possessed as she listens to her husband relate to Chris what must have been a horrid experience.  She listens intently, nods in places and frowns as she listens, interrupting when her husband gets part of the story askew.  She speaks quietly and he listens to her intently.  They are obviously well attuned as a couple.

The Afghanis moved in next door to Chris about six months ago now.  He’s exchanged pleasantries with them, but he doesn’t really know anything else about the couple.  This is the first time they’ve been in his house and he’s never been next door to visit them.

Extraordinary times.

Chris is brought back from his reverie by Khan’s voice.

“Mr Baker, we want to thank you.  You saved my wife in the police station.  She couldn’t tell them who she was.  The robbers took her purse, her identification and she couldn’t tell them who she is.  She was too, too scared of being sent away.  But you saved her.  Thank you.

Mr Yannis is smiling an open-mouthed grin of absolute joy.  Chris can’t help but smile back.

“I, I, I didn’t do anything.  Really, I didn’t.  All I did was tell the police your name and where you live.”

Chris is looking at Edris as he says this.  She speaks to her husband and he relays to Chris.

“My wife is, ah, she is very thankful, Mr Baker. She would like to know, what is it we can do for you in return?”

Chris has nothing to say for a while, then he gives the obvious response, “No, no, it’s fine, you don’t need to do anything.  I didn’t do anything.  It’s good things have worked out OK for you.”

In his mind, Chris is wishing he could say, “Yes, please, do something for me.  I helped you with the police, now I need you to get me off the hook and make everything normal again.  But he knows he can’t ask anything of his neighbours.  There’s nothing they can do for him.”

Mrs Yannis speaks to her husband again and he looks up at Chris, his eyes searching Chris’s face, almost like he doesn’t want to say what it is his wife has asked him to say.  When Mr Yannis speaks, he is choosing his words carefully, even more carefully than he usually needs to do while translating from his own language into English.

“Mr Baker.  Ahhhh, um, Mr Baker.  We did hear you just now.  My wife, she saw you at the police station.  There is something wrong?  We don’t want to, ahh, we don’t want to, ahh, interrupt?  In your life.  We just want to help.  Like you did help us.  Like we would do for any neighbour.  Like our neighbour would do for us.”

Chris, sits on the edge of his seat.  Mr Yannis is sitting across from him, Mrs Yannis is sitting at the other end of the couch, where Detective Lambert last sat.  He leans towards his guests, begins in his mind to say something, hesitates, begins again and then stops.  With a shake of his head, he knows that there’s nothing he could say that would explain properly the sort of trouble he’s in.  Not to anyone.

“Ah, no.  It’s OK.  Um, everything’s fine.  Thank you,” Chris’s voice trails off into uncomfortable silence.  Everyone in the room knows that he’s not telling the truth, but there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

Chris is the only person in the room who knows that his life is currently built on not telling the truth.

When Chris’s neighbours leave he finds himself strangely composed.  What else is there to do now but keep on going and see what happens next?

Like she was a magician, or something

Christine sits in front the evening news.  She’s still musing on the neighbours’ visit earlier that afternoon.  The cup of milky white tea.  Asking if there were any biscuits.  So ordinary!  She’d expected something exotic, like the woman in the burqa, Mrs Yannis, would rustle up something new and exciting from the mundane, half-missing ingredients in his kitchen.  Like she was a magician, or something.  What a fucking idiot!

She’s only got half an eye on the news.  The new newsreader’s not a patch on the other one.  She can’t think what it is, but the woman just can’t hold Christine’s attention.  It’s not that she’s not attractive, because she is.  She’s definitely industry standard.  She’s just missing something.  Balls is the closest Christine can come to it, but that’s not quite right and she’d never wish that on any woman.

Christine’s eyes keep drifting to the magazine on the couch next to her left thigh.  It’s the insert from the weekend paper, open to a page, smallish photo at the top of the columns of text:  an attractive young brunette sitting in a chair wearing a simple white shoestring-strap top, her legs out of shot, an Asian man standing next to her.  The article is about sex-change surgery in Thailand.  It’s fairly sympathetic, a bit of titillation to maintain the interest of the common folk, but after having read the article a couple of times, it’s the photos that keep grabbing Christine’s attention.  The girls are just that, girls.  They’re young and entirely female.  Christine can’t help herself, she’s jealous.  She looks at herself and is shattered, knows that no matter how much she clads herself in women’s clothing, just like she has this evening, she’ll never achieve what these girls have.  For her, the time has passed.  She’ll always have balls.

Christine wonders if they have sex changes in Afghanistan.

With her computer returned, Christine finds herself that later that night looking for new videos on YouTube.  She’s logged on under her username, ‘sissychrissie’, no point trying to hide her online identity now that the cops know all about it.  They haven’t been able to pin anything on her, but they’ve made certain she knows they’re watching.  Christine feels that she can’t get into any more trouble and it’s been a while since she was able to check out the net.  She hasn’t realised until now what a part of her life the Internet has become.

Christine searches through the videos looking for new content, typing in search terms that have become familiar through extensive use over a number of years.  Looking through a list of videos, checking out one or two that look like they might be interesting, she comes across one titled, TV3.  The description makes it clear what the video purports to contain and Christine clicks on the link even though she knows that it’s unlikely to live up to her expectations.  The Internet’s like one big cock tease, really, all promise and no action.

Still, as she waits for the video to load into the viewing screen on the monitor, Christine rubs her cock in anticipation, feeling the familiar rise of his flesh under her skirt.  She’s got the video paused so that the jerky stop-start that is a feature of streaming video over what passes for broadband in Australia doesn’t happen.  The National Broadband Network’s still just an advertising campaign.  She only clicks on the play arrow when the line below the viewing screen is filled with green.

What begins to play on the monitor is instantly familiar, but it takes Christine a while to realise what she’s watching.  There’s a woman on a bed, her head between the legs of another woman, face obscured by her hair, being fucked from behind by a man.  It takes a while before Christine realises that the woman is her.

Christine’s cock is still hard under her skirt as she realises that she’s watching her salvation.

She gets up from her desk, her erect penis making a ridiculous tent in the front of her black mini skirt.  It takes her a while to find the Detective Constable’s card in the drawer of the table under the mirror in the hallway.  Detective Lambert has never given her his contact details, but the Constable, Christine can’t remember her name, gave her the card when she and Lambert searched Christine’s house and took away her computer.

By the time she’s fished out the card, Christine’s erection has deflated.  She reads the name, Claire Martin, and the mobile number and thinks about whether to call.  It’s 10.00 p.m.  Should she call now, or should she wait until the morning?  Christine doesn’t know what to do, but she finally decides to make the call, reasoning that if she doesn’t want to be contacted the Detective will have her phone off or will let the call go through to voice mail.

Christine dials the number and the phone is quickly connected.  So quickly that she doesn’t know what to say.

“Hello? Hello? Who is this?”

“Oh, oh, sorry. Um, Detective Martin.”

“Yes, Constable Martin.  Who is this?”

“Um, it’s Chris Baker,” Christine reverts to her male name.  “Um, um,” Christine doesn’t know what to say to make the woman on the other end of the line recognise who she is.  “Um, you searched my home.  I just got my computer and, and, other things back?”

“Yes, Mr Baker, of course.  I’m not on duty at the moment.  Is this important?”

Christine begins to explain what she’s found on YouTube.

“You just can’t leave that stuff alone, can you?” Constable Martin says.

Christine begins to apologise, but Constable Martin interrupts again with an apology of her own.  “I’m sorry, Mr Baker, that was a bit uncalled for.  Go on, please.”

Christine can hear the remnants of the smile in the policewoman’s voice, but she decides to go on.  When she’s finished, Constable Martin tells Chris that what he’s told her sounds interesting.  She asks for the URL for the video and tells Chris she’ll discuss it with Detective Lambert in the morning and then give him a call back.  Christine confirms that she’s not back at work yet and, yes, she can get him on her home number.

Christine goes back to the study and watches the video again.  And again.  Finally, before she logs off and closes down her computer, she reaches for a tissue from the box on the desk and wipes semen from her skirt.

She goes to bed again and lies awake.  Sleep’s never coming again.

Normal is the only word for it

Tiffany’s sitting in her enormous leather armchair, legs curled underneath her, laptop resting on her right thigh, body twisted around so her hands can reach the keyboard.  It should be uncomfortable, but it works somehow.  She’s hooked up to the Internet via her wireless connection.  Sometimes she wonders how it all works and what the streams of invisible ones and zeroes must be doing to her insides as they channel data onto the screen in front of her.

She’s still doing research.  That’s what Tiffany’s telling herself, anyway.  Truth be told, she hasn’t had much luck setting up meetings with too many people.  She suspects Bob Mullen’s had something to do with that.  Maybe she’s partly to blame as well.  It’s a bit hard to know when a good bit of how you’re acting is chemically induced.  Anyway.  Whatever.  But, the upshot is, today’s coffee with Detective Senior Sergeant Frank Lambert’s been her only meeting so far.  The rest of her contacts have made vague noises about meeting some time — things are a bit busy right now — or, more often, just haven't returned her calls.  Not yet, anyway.

So, she’s at home tonight, doing research on the internet.  Finding out about transvestites.  Finding out a bit about the Internet, too.  Type the word ‘transvestite’ into Google and you’ll get over four million hits.  Instantly.  Just like that.  The first entry’s the obligatory Wikipedia entry.  Got the market cornered with convenient knowledge that can change at the whim of any user’s keystrokes, anywhere in the world.  Very postmodern!  It seems to work OK, though, but a quick look at the page doesn’t tell Tiffany much more that she already knows.

The second hit’s for the website of an individual from Melbourne who calls herself Samantha.  Here, Tiffany learns about “sexual activities between adults who are not in a relationship.”

“Don’t have to be a transvestite to know about that,” Tiffany thinks, a bit of a smile pursing her lips.

The third hit is for an online ‘boutique’ that specialises in clothes and accessories for transvestites and transgender people, mostly male to female.  After that, the websites are a series of picture galleries, contact sites, ‘medical’ information and various news stories and miscellany that are more or less linked to Tiffany’s original search term.  Usually less.  Oh, and of course, the obligatory references to the Rocky Horror Picture Show, the archetypal sweet transvestite.

After about half an hour of fossicking, Tiffany’s overall feeling is boredom.  Most of the sites want your money.  Most are selling something completely unattainable.  Most are badly designed and presented.  They’re full of typos, broken links, or just plain nonsense.  And a lot of them, a huge amount, channel you off to hard core pornography.  Usually sooner rather than later as well.  Now, that’s OK, Tiffany’s got no objection to pornography.  She’s engaged in a bit of sexual variety herself, even found herself on a video or two.  But, bloody hell!  Does there have to be so much of it?

Obviously, the Internet’s not going to cut it if Tiffany wants to find out more about this.  Sorting through that dross is way beyond her attention span at the moment.  She’s twitchy and jumpy and just can’t concentrate like she used to.  It’s been for ever since she was interested enough in anything to get engrossed in it.  Sometimes she wonders if she’ll ever feel a real connection with anything or anyone again.  Tiffany feels separated from the world.  In it, but not really part of it.

She’s tempted to do a line, just to settle herself, but decides to hold off.  She sits still in the chair, computer screen idle and blank, hands covering her face, arms braced against her chest and stomach, doing her best to use the tension the contact creates to keep herself still.  After a while, Tiffany lets go the pose, dropping her hands and exhaling loudly.  She picks up the laptop and rests it on the arm of the chair, gets up and walks the three steps to the glass-topped coffee table in front of the settee.  She’s remembered the article from the magazine in last weekend’s paper.  She picks it up and returns to the armchair.

Tiffany sits and reads.  These are people she doesn’t know, but the stories are familiar — transgender people aren’t so uncommon and exotic as they once used to be.  The early discovery of difference, discomfort, both physical and emotional, sometimes ostracism by peers, sexual and identity confusion.  But these are stories of the lucky few.  The women featured in this article have been able to find their way through the maze of medical and psychiatric assessments and, the whole point of the story, have taken themselves to Thailand, where they’ve had surgery to fulfil their need to become women.

Tiffany studies the pictures.  Perhaps the photographer’s been artful in composing the shots.  Maybe the makeup artist on the shoot is fucking excellent at their job.  Possibly the photos have been Photoshopped beyond all recognition.  Maybe.  Who knows?  What Tiffany does know is that the people looking out at her from the photos are women.  There’s no hint of maleness about them.

So, the article’s got her thinking.  This bloke Lambert told her about earlier today, what’s his story?  Is he more like the girls in the magazine or the Internet?  Lambert thinks this bloke’s got something to do with the boy’s disappearance.  Thinking about what she’s seen on the Internet tonight, Tiffany can see why you’d make that connection.  But the stories she’s read in the magazine, those girls couldn’t be further away from being pedophiles.  They just look and sound so, well, normal is the only word for it.

Tiffany sits, the magazine next to her right thigh, the computer dead and forgotten.  She leans forward and picks up her bag from the spot where she dropped it on the floor when she got home earlier this evening and pulls out her note book.  She looks at the pages, turns to the last entry she’s made and reads the name, Chris Baker, and the phone number that she’s written in the cafe with Detective Senior Sergeant Frank Lambert.

She thinks about calling.  Now.  It’s not too late.  As she moves to get up and retrieve her phone, Tiffany put’s a hand on the arm of the chair and feels the cold aluminium shell of her laptop.  The air conditioning’s chilled the metal to frigid.  Tiffany withdraws her hand and decides to stay put.