Quota (13 page)

The girls bumped off across the crowd on some other orbit, leaving Charlie castigating himself for being such a bore.

So he found himself, later, walking alone in the dark, up the street and away from the coast, away from his borrowed home. He was following a cluster of other drinkers, who meandered from the fence line out onto the nature strips, laughing and cursing loudly enough to echo off the fronts of the houses. They swerved into a driveway, between a column of parked cars, all wagons, and up to a brightly lit front door. Charlie followed close enough to hope that he could slip in after them, far enough away that he didn't have to introduce himself.

Up the concrete steps and in the door, painfully collecting the sharp edge of the springloaded flywire screen across his achilles. Tight, cramped hallway. People moving in and out of the doors along the hall that must have led to bedrooms; a bigger crowd down the end where the fluoro lighting suggested a kitchen. Faces he recognised from the pub. The girl who'd made him a coffee. Two or three of the footballers. They were all loudly engaged in their own worlds and their own conversations. He took a left at the bathroom, found the bath full of ice and added the beers he'd brought in a plastic shopping bag.

Taking one in hand, he was headed out towards the party when a couple came in with a loud clatter. They were laughing at something, a joke they'd brought into the room with them. It took them some seconds to register Charlie's presence, by which stage the girl had closed the door.

‘Hey!' said the boyfriend. ‘Prosecutor guy!'

Charlie was sure he hadn't met these people, but they seemed harmless enough.

‘Got a business card?'

Charlie obligingly reached for his wallet, found a thin block of cards inside it. He plucked one out and handed it to the girl.

Charles J. Jardim, Barrister at Law
. She read it with mock seriousness.

The two of them set to work on the bathroom vanity, licking and laying out papers, then tipping a generous handful of greenery from a sandwich bag onto the papers. The card was ripped in half lengthwise and coiled into a tight cylinder at one end.

‘Is that appropriate?' protested Charlie.

‘Mate,' laughed the roller, ‘you didn't think I needed a…' he read the remaining half of the card, ‘…a
rister
, did you? What's a rister anyway?'

‘
Bar
rister Dale, ya mong,' giggled the girl. ‘He's a barrister. Ya hafta be a barrister to be the prosecutor guy. Der!' She pointed at her temple and stuck her tongue out.

Dale had finished rolling, and he made a great fuss of handing the thick joint and the lighter to Charlie.

‘Please sir,' he intoned, all mock-pompous. ‘Seeing as you donated the roach…'

Charlie took the joint, dismissing a faint instinct that this mightn't be an intelligent move, and lit up. It was beautifully rolled and it drew well. He took three deep pulls, holding the smoke until it emerged to form a thick cloud around his head. With a sheepish grin he handed it over to Dale.

Then it kicked in.

He grabbed at the vanity for support as his hands and feet became impossibly heavy. His head was drifting, his tongue a giant foreign object in his mouth. The sound of the other two laughing became an indistinct fuzz, yet he could clearly pick up individual words being spoken in the kitchen on the other side of the closed door. There was nausea, but it felt like someone else's.

The girl was talking from far away.

‘Oooh,' she was saying, rubbing the small of his back and peering at him. ‘Shoulda said. It's hydro. You right?'

He tried taking deep breaths, not wanting to be conspicuous about it. But the surges of new oxygen just fuelled the headlong rush. He braced himself on the vanity, both hands, studying a person looking back in the mirror who wasn't him. Toothbrush, toothbrush, soap. Cosmetics talking to a can of deodorant. Grimy sink. There was a distant roar, a wave breaking in his mind, the calm grin on the face in the mirror indicating an experience he wasn't sharing. His new friends were opening the door, heading out into the crowded kitchen, and he realised with a cold jolt of panic that he was surrounded by complete strangers, stoned out of his mind.

With some trepidation, he removed his clenched hands from the edge of the vanity and directed them to turn the cold tap on. He splashed his face, missed, threw a large handful of water past his left ear. The second handful hit the target. He squinted helplessly and groped around for a towel. Once he'd dried his face, he shuffled slowly out of the bathroom and into the crowd in the kitchen.

Photos on a fridge door—the ones he'd expect to see, pissed people waving beer cans, girls posing up their air-kisses and hugs. Someone's dog, a formal lineup of blokes under the wing of a light aircraft. But then there were the ones among them that he couldn't fathom: cliffs, sheets of layered limestone, waves without surfers, a seabird photographed from below so that the sun penetrated the image as a series of refractive circles. He was disoriented by the idea that the owner of this fridge, the tenants of this house, set as much value on these images of the outside world as they did on their friends.

Charlie stood and pondered, tangled up in a complex scatter of thoughts about whether the appreciation of inanimate things belonged to higher intellects. He couldn't decide, though he felt well-disposed towards these people and there was a warm feeling in his leg muscles.

He surveyed the benches—empty stubbies and wine bottles forested the available surfaces. Pizza boxes in greasy stacks. Faces appeared and retreated from his vision—he smiled where he felt the eye contact was long enough to warrant it. Otherwise he pretended to be looking at a point in the near distance, as though his progress through the kitchen was taking him somewhere in particular. This strategy, of course, had its limits. He'd soon pushed through the kitchen and into a small sunroom at the back of the house, and had to turn around and go back.

As he turned—and somehow he felt this was inevitable—he came face to face with Patrick Lanegan, sitting on the kitchen bench. There was a girl beside him. He had an arm around her waist and she didn't seem to have noticed Charlie. She was short and her features were dark, fine black hair swept glossy over her ears into a loose ponytail. She was dressed in every way as though she came from this place; the jeans, the boots, the heavy jacket; but her face seemed to come from somewhere else, the wild progeny of Scottish crofters or a black Irish uprising. Her skin was flawless. Charlie could feel himself staring, but wasn't able to stop.

Patrick took his incredibly heavy hand and gave it a shake, laughing as he did so. ‘Charlie, Charlie…are you okay in there?'

‘Yeah, yeah, I just got a flogging from some bastard last night.'

Charlie raised a reassuring hand.

‘I know you did, ya clown. You told me that this arvo.'

‘Oh yeah. Hello, Patrick.'

‘You're all right then?' Into his eyes.

‘I'm fine, thank you,' insisted Charlie.

‘Charlie, this is Kate. Kate, Charlie.' And she turned her caramel eyes fully towards him, taking him in with a noncommittal air. After a short appraisal, she looked away, sighing.

‘This is our first night out in a little bit,' said Patrick. ‘Isn't it?' He squeezed at her waist affectionately, but she wriggled out of his grip and jumped off the bench, disappearing down the hall. Patrick's voice was raised slightly to compete with the conversation in the room, the dull thump of music under it. ‘Sorry. She's not real happy about things. We hardly ever get out, you know.'

‘Why not?'
You're swaying
, he told himself.
Stop swaying
.

‘All the others, mate. You met the crew—I got a little sister and two little brothers. The twins mate, if ya don't watch 'em all the time, they'd rip the house down.'

‘Can't you get someone in to help?'

‘Can't afford it. Milly looks after the little men now and then. She's fifteen. But I try not to get her doin it too much, you know. She's got to…' he made a sweeping gesture with his hand. ‘She's gotta get out, see people. So it's just me doin the home stuff most of the time. I get the old lady from across the road sometimes, but the young lads, they run fucken rings around her. Anyway, not much fun for Katie—“Come on over and we'll watch a video while the kids run amok.” Never mind. Hey, you want some fish?'

He shuffled to one side, revealing a huge sheet of tinfoil on the bench. On it were the remains of a whole fish, pop-eyed and open-mouthed. Its flank had been opened up, pieces of the roasted flesh spilling onto the foil under a colourful scattering of lemon and herbs.

‘What is it?' asked Charlie.

‘Blue eye. Deep sea fish. Very nice.' Patrick reached into the ice-filled sink. He tore two tinnies off a six-pack and handed one to Charlie, who was still examining the fish.

‘Brilliant. What do I—is there a fork?'

‘Fucksake,' muttered Patrick. He shovelled a hand into the flank of the fish and scooped out a chunk of flesh, proffering it to Charlie.

‘It comes from the trawlers. They go right down the west side of Tassie. See the big guy over there?' Charlie followed his pointing finger across the kitchen to where a heavy man of about fifty stood talking to two young whippets who could only have been surfers. He was grim, built for weather, or by weather. He laughed at something the whippets said, and he seemed to do it reluctantly.

‘There's all these rules about their catch limit and the bycatch and all that,' continued Patrick. ‘They have to chuck the extra back unless it's buggered. ‘Not viable,' they say. So they bring those ones back here,' he shrugged. ‘Everyone wins, eh?'

Charlie peeled back the gun-grey skin from the shoulder of the fish and broke off a larger lump of meat. He was suddenly hungrier than he could stand. He stuffed it into his mouth while his other hand opened the beer can. He took a slurp at it while he tried to focus on Patrick's conversation.

‘How's your face?' continued Patrick.

‘Mmm. Fine.' Nothing was hurting at the moment. Charlie accidentally spat a fleck of fish. ‘Gave me a fright though. Doesn't happen all the time in my work.'

Patrick laughed. ‘No, I don't s'pose it would. Milly told me it was her new fella. Fucken idiot. I don't expect you to understand this, but it's kind of…it's loyalty that made him do that. He was tryin to help in his own stupid way.'

Charlie couldn't think of a response to this, so he just smiled. His eyes felt heavy.

‘You gonna hang around until you get what you came here for?' asked Patrick. His tone had changed very slightly.

‘Don't have much else to do at present,' he replied. ‘The bloke I work for, he thinks I need to change my approach. Says I'm up myself. So I'll just blend into the scenery till you don't know I'm here.'

‘That may take a while.' Patrick slid off the bench and clapped Charlie on the shoulder. ‘I'm gonna go find Katie, get meself in some more trouble. I'll see you later eh?'

He eased his way through the room and disappeared up the hallway. Charlie leaned back against the bench, wondering from where any further conversation might materialise.
Everyone in this room is staring at that mouse over your eye,
he told himself.
Everyone's talking about you. Fucking blend in will you?
He took another swig at the can. As he lowered it, felt the fisherman's eyes on him. It was a neutral look, neither friendly nor aggressive.

‘You had a good go at that fish?' he called across the kitchen, just above the ambient noise. Charlie nodded amiably in return, raising his can in an idiotic salute.

‘Right. Then fuck off.'

THE RAIN HAD started drumming on the tin roof before dawn, easing Charlie out of a heavy sleep. He yawned and surveyed the mildew on the ceiling battens above him. His eye had opened up a little further overnight. Two mosquitoes lifted off the wall above the bed, bumping their way towards the ceiling. His knuckles itched madly and he drew his hands above the bedclothes to find the white-topped mesas of their bites.

From his faraway childhood came a feeling, lying in bed on summer nights after a day on the beach, his brother on the top bunk above him, his body faintly registering the waves of the day, still rocking him in the glow of sunburn and the cool of the sheets.

Now he felt the previous night washing over him and the sensation was nothing like nostalgia. Bloody Weir and his management by decree. The beer, the party, the ill-advised joint. Patrick Lanegan, his very lovely girlfriend, his idiotic resistance. What was he trying to prove?

Charlie rose and stumped his way to the bathroom, feet cold on the vinyl floor. The mirror was blotchy and dull. He traced the pink and yellow arcs around his eye where the colours were leaching slowly out of the bruise. The cut on the bridge of his nose had settled into a dark scab, and the swelling had come down, alleviating the mad-clown effect of yesterday. On the floor beside the handbasin the bloodied clothes he was wearing when he hit the roo lay in a pile. He'd need to wash them at some stage. Not right now, with the remnants of last night sloshing around in his head and his gut.

Twenty minutes later he was out walking the streets, following a photocopied map he'd picked up from the bakery counter. Between puddles, he traced the series of downhill lefts and rights that led to the commercial wharf. The road ended at a carpark with a bank of shopfronts to his left, provedores and stevedores, coolstores, fuel stores. On his right was the cyclone-wire fencing that indicated the water's edge. He walked towards it, took out his phone and dialled her number.

Raindrops pocked the heavy grey surface of the water as he leaned against the wire, taking in the coloured hulls of the fishing fleet, the antennas and lightpoles against the sad steely sky, the timbers of the wharf, the heavy cylindrical uprights that held it inches above the high tide. The phone rang a fourth time and cut abruptly to voicemail. Her voice was calm and slow.