Day 4

There’s another voice somewhere inside his head

Chris Baker begins his first working day of the year the same way as every other one before it.

Awake before the alarm, he watches the morning news on the TV at the end of his bed.  It’s been this way since 9/11.  He’s compelled to start the day with the news partly through fear, partly out of a need to be informed and partly voyeurism.  This morning, it’s the usual stream of mundane events and events that have become mundane because they’ve been repeated over and over until they barely sink into his rising consciousness.  Another bombing in Pakistan, another thirty dead.  Chris is outraged, but only for a mild microsecond.  Another report of drought, bushfire, the endless search for sustainable water supplies.  Politicians squabbling in Copenhagen over the existence of global warming.  He should be worried, but he lives in the suburbs where taps bring water and bush fires happen somewhere else.  As for drought, it doesn’t seem to have had much effect on the year-round supply of everything in the shops.  Another corrupt politician?  “Well, tell us all something we didn’t know,” Chris murmurs to himself as he has one more look at the clock, delaying the inevitable by a few more minutes.

Chris finally swings his legs over the edge of the bed and gets up.  The world of the TV news takes up no more of his thoughts as he goes through the fetishistic ritual of getting ready for work.  Breakfast, iron shirt, brush teeth, shave, shower, aftershave, watch on, then socks, boxers, shirt, trousers, belt, shoes.  Dressed, Chris moves out of his bedroom to the hall stand, taking his jacket with him, does his tie in front of the mirror and stands to look at himself.  He adjusts the tuck of his shirt to try to disguise as much as he can of the paunch that is beginning to grow at his belt line.  When he’s as satisfied as he can be with how he’s presented, Chris picks up his jacket, mobile, laptop, keys and is out the door to the car.  He presses a button and hears the dull click as the central locking disengages.  Puts his laptop and jacket on the back seat, gets into the driver’s seat and slots the key into the ignition.

Chris Baker is sweating.  It’s always like this during summer, sometimes during winter, too.  He really feels the heat, but the nervous edge of going back to work adds to it, especially after three weeks off.  He mops the drips of sweat off his brow with his left hand, wiping it dry on the cloth of the passenger seat.  With his right hand he turns the key to start the car, left hand moving to turn up the dial of the air conditioner, though it never kicks in properly until a bit after the motor’s going.  He puts the car in reverse and backs down the driveway, swings into his street.  He engages drive just as the air con starts to dry his sweat.

Chris is quite satisfied with the car that comes with his promotion to the lowest rung of the senior management ranks of the public service.  Maybe he wouldn’t have picked it himself, but the silver Ford Focus will do very nicely, especially as he’s not paying for it.

He heads slowly through suburban streets, habitually slows to forty ks through the school zone, though school holidays aren’t quite over just yet.  Makes his way to the intersection that brings him to the highway and slips into the traffic to begin proper his journey to work.

Chris will be forty this year, but he still listens to Triple J on the car radio, the national youth network.

“Things could be a lot worse,” he tells himself, but there’s another voice somewhere inside his head that asks him, without ever forming a word, whether he’s fooling himself.

Later in life, he learned the value of no one ever seeing him

In a blue fibro house, set back from a wide highway, overlooking a tatty brown lawn, cracked concrete path leading to the flyblown screen door shaded under the dark veranda, two men meet to plan for their shared dream.

The first is tall and rangy, cheeks sunken, eyes squinting as he sucks on a rollie.  He looks like he’s searching the horizon, but he’s never been bush in his life.  His knees bend jaggedly in the middle of his long legs, seeming to reach up to his ears as he sits on the brown vinyl couch, the laminate wood arm just wide enough to balance an ash tray, papers, plastic tobacco pouch and lighter.  They’re never far from his hands.

The other man is a nonentity.  You wouldn’t look at him twice, not in a million years, not even if he stopped you in the street and asked you the time.  He used to hate the way people wouldn’t notice him.  As a kid he’d always be whinging at family gatherings: “No one ever talks to me. They just talk about me – ‘Oooh, hasn’t he grown!’  And they don’t listen …” He goes on, but Mum’s stopped listening and is talking to Auntie Joyce again.

Anyway, later in life, he learned the value of no one ever seeing him.  He could go places, do things and no one would ever know it was him.  He never got caught.

The first man is the leader.  He’s the one with all the plans.  The other just drifts along with him.  He hears the words, he knows what they mean, but he knows nothing will happen.  It never does.  When he was a boy, he could always find one kid, at yet another school — usually younger, usually smaller — who would listen to what he had to say.  He’d spend a lot of intimate time with his little mates, talking about what they’d do, but it never came to anything.  Now he’s being led, and he knows that nothing will come of this, either.  But it gives him something to do, a purpose. Everyone needs a purpose.  And it excites him.

He waits for a pause in the planning and asks the first man if he can have a rollie. The first gestures with the hand closest to the makings and goes on talking. The other man walks over from his armchair (it’s his house) and takes the pouch and skins, his hand coming close to the first man’s, but never touching it. They only met two days ago.

Thank God she never fucked the Premier

“The State government and the opposition are at loggerheads over legislation that will toughen jail terms for criminals who assault police.  This comes in the wake of yet another bashing of a policeman, this time leaving a young Constable in hospital fighting for his life.  The Premier claims that the opposition has deliberately delayed the legislation in the upper house, while the leader of the opposition, John Stromolo, says that the government has been too preoccupied with trying to have MPs removed from Parliament in the wake of yet another corruption inquiry.  The Premier is here with us live.”

Tiffany swivels smoothly on her seat so that she is half in profile on camera two, while shifting her focus to the suited man on the monitor in the studio.

“Premier Rourke, good evening.  Are you willing to accept responsibility for this mess?  Here we have yet another assault on a police officer, this time the Constable is in danger of losing his life, and the government is sitting on new laws that will increase jail time for these terrible attacks.”

“Tiffany, good evening.  Look, it’s like this.  We’ve pushed this legislation through the lower house.  We know how important it is, but the Greens and Independents got together with the Liberals in the upper house to send the bill to a committee for further consideration.  Now, my government can’t be held responsible for that …”

As the Premier speaks, Tiffany remembers the first time she’d met him.  It was just over two years ago now, some function at Parliament House.  Tiffany had recently started with Channel Six and was covering the event for the news.  The Premier had sidled over to her once the official niceties were over and introduced himself.  By this time he’d had a few drinks and he was full of largesse.  It was early in his term as leader of the State government and a bit before the petty corruption and stupidity of some politicians of all political persuasions began to make it into the media.  Rourke was known for his friendly, open approach to the media in those days and he’d made a point of welcoming the new girl.  By the time they’d finished chatting, just before he’d moved onto the next group, Rourke had had his hand resting gently on Tiffany’s back, his fingers touching the clasp of her bra just enough so she could feel them.

“Stick with me, I’ll see you OK,” was Rourke’s parting comment.

Tiffany felt flattered.  She was really going to make something of this city gig.

How times have changed.  Thank God she never fucked the Premier.  But she’s had a few others along the way.