The Best Australian Stories 2010 (7 page)

‘You must be pretty smart, then.' Marly's sister always talked about wanting to do an MBA. Marly was going to heap shit on her now. Get an MBA and you can walk the streets selling door-to-door.

‘So Pran, let's cut the crap. What are you selling?' Marly collapsed back into the soft lounge chair at the other end of the veranda from the man. It had been two years since the accident but she still leaned to her good side when she stood too long, and the aching would start in her hip and shoulder. ‘I told you my husband was coming home soon, right? He's got a mate with him too.'

Sometimes she thought she and Shaun had a psychic bond. Like before, when she was playing with her phone wishing she had credit and he'd called. Now he and Azza turned the corner into the street, the ute so bright and gleaming that its red shine reflected off the fibro walls of the houses either side.

‘See? Here he is.' In a movie she would leap off the veranda and run in slow motion toward the ute, her hair streaming behind, white dress fluttering in the breeze. But these days all she could do was stump around. The rubber foot connected with the ground at an odd angle, and she could feel it jar through her body with every step.

The boys pulled into the yard, eased themselves up out of the low car and stood staring at Pran for a moment. Azza snickered. He turned his head so Shaun and Marly could see his face but Pran couldn't.
Paki.
Azza made the word shape with his mouth and Shaun smiled and looked away.

‘Good evening.' Pran stood and extended his hand, grateful that this would be his last sticky, grimy handshake of the day. The first thing he did when got home each night was to take a long cool shower with antibacterial soap. Too bad if there was a water shortage. He needed to get clean after walking streets like these.

Neither of the men offered a hand in return. The tall one with the shaved head turned to the woman on the veranda.

‘What's he selling?'

She shrugged. ‘Did you bring the beer?'

‘Here, gimme the slab, Azza. I'll put it in the fridge.'

Pran watched the bald man heft the slab into his muscular arms and cradle it like a baby as he leaped onto the veranda and opened the screen door with his foot. It slammed behind him. The other man lifted two large pizza boxes from the cab of the ute and walked up the steps past Pran, the thick smell of the pizza following him and the dog drifting along behind, nose held high as if it was riding the aroma. At the door, the man paused. He balanced the pizza boxes on one bulky arm and brushed his thick black hair back from his forehead with his free hand.

‘Why is it always Pakis knocking on the door? Don't they hire Australians anymore?'

Pran laughed. ‘Please, take my job. I earn seven dollars an hour.' It was a lie. He was a natural salesman. He made a good living from these people. ‘But actually, I am not Pakistani. I am from Delhi, a large city in India.'

‘Right. That makes all the difference.' The man laughed and passed through the door, dog following, leaving the screen door jammed open against a buckled floorboard.

‘Shut the frigging door, Azza! The flies get in.' The woman hauled herself out of the armchair and thumped along the veranda.

‘Sorry,' she said to Pran, stepping into the house and pulling the screen door shut behind her.

He listened to the uneven thud of her walking down the hallway. He would have liked one more glass of water, although when he looked again at the glass it was smeary. Still, he lifted it, tilted it high and waited for the single drop from the bottom to roll the length of the glass and fall onto his parched tongue. He put the glass back on the boards and gazed down the street to where the reserve began. Only a ten-minute walk to his car. The reserve was a patch of bushland that seemed to have been forgotten by the council or whoever created it. Even from here, Pran could see that the wooden barrier at the entrance had been torn out and cars driven in. A mattress was propped against the fence of a house adjoining the reserve and further inside, under the trees, was the glint of broken glass.

‘Thirsty, mate?' The bald man's voice came from behind the darkness of the screen door.

‘Shaun, don't, please.' The woman's voice echoed down the hallway. ‘Leave the guy alone.'

‘Come on, mate, don't be shy. We'll shout you a beer.'

‘You're very kind.' Pran used the veranda post to pull himself up. He was stiff from the long day of walking. ‘I'm not a beer drinker, but another glass of water …'

‘I think we can rustle that up for you.'

Pran gathered his clipboard and bag and walked into the house past the bald man who held the door wide with his arm.

When the Indian stepped into the room and smiled at her, Marly's stomach flipped. He had been so serious before, an unsmiling manikin, but now that he had opened his face she wanted to touch his soft brown lips with her fingertips, run her tongue along his perfect white teeth. She felt the heat in her face and pushed herself up from the table.

‘I'll find some ice,' she said. ‘I think there's a tray in the fridge in the shed.'

By the time she got back with the ice cubes melting in the tray, Shaun and Azza were sitting at one end of the laminex table with the half-empty pizza boxes in front of them, while Pran perched on a chair in the opposite corner of the room near the stove.

‘He doesn't eat meat,' Shaun said through a mouthful of pizza.

‘But I am most grateful for you offering it to me.' Pran was holding his glass at chest height. He raised it in a salute to the men at the other end of the room. Shaun had filled it halfway with whisky. The Indian was so slim Marly thought that much whisky would probably knock him out.

‘Here, let me fix that up for you.' She took his glass and emptied half the whisky into another glass, then filled the Indian's glass to the brim with water and ice before handing it back. ‘This should cool you down a bit.'

‘You are very kind.' He lifted the glass to his lips and sipped at it.

Marly watched closely. The whisky was the cheapest you could buy. She couldn't drink it without drowning it in Coke. But the man's angelic face didn't flinch. He lowered the glass to his lap.

‘I see you have a plasma television.' Pran nodded at a screen visible through the doorway into the lounge. It was a fifty-inch model Shaun had bought when they got the government bonus last year.

‘Brilliant for watching the footy.' Azza spoke to Marly, as if he couldn't bear to speak directly to the Indian. ‘Right, mate?' He said this to Shaun.

‘That's why I bought it.' Shaun reached for the pizza box and passed the second-last piece to Marly before taking the last piece, rolling it into a tube and stuffing it whole into his mouth.

Marly took a bite and chewed on the salty, meaty, oily slice. She loved pizza. Sometimes eating was almost as good as sex, like now, with the capricciosa sitting warm in her belly and a mouthful of fizzy sweet beer to wash it down. That Indian guy didn't know what he was missing.

‘They say that next year all the football will be on pay television.' Pran took another delicate sip of the whisky and water. This time Marly thought she saw his jaw clench as he swallowed.

‘Got it.' Shaun reached behind and pulled a roll of paper towelling from the bench. He tore off four sheets and passed the roll to Azza before wiping his mouth and hands and tossing the used towelling at the bin in the corner. ‘You're here to sell us Foxtel, right?'

‘No, sir.'

‘That other one, then. Optus, or Star, or whatever it is.'

‘Sir, I am not here to sell you a single thing.'

‘Fuck, he's really starting to piss me off now.' Azza spoke to the ceiling.

‘Your name is Azza, I believe you said? Where are you from, sir?' Pran seemed unperturbed. He swivelled a little on his seat to face Azza.

‘I'm from Thomastown, mate.' Azza had gone quite still.

‘And your family? They are from Thomastown too?'

‘They're from Lebanon. Not that it's any of your fucking business.'

Pran nodded and took another sip of the whisky.

‘So come on, give us your spiel.' Shaun rocked back on his chair and rested his thonged feet on the edge of the kitchen table like he was getting ready to hear a story.

‘I have no spiel. All I have for you is a free offer. No obligations, no payments, no commitments.'

‘Go on.' Shaun was enjoying himself. Marly remembered the time he got the Mormons in and toyed with them for an hour and a half. She'd been drinking that night and so had he, and the evening was blurry – but the Mormons had never pressed charges, even though she'd found a piece of tooth in the glass on the floor the next morning, and it wasn't Shaun's and it wasn't hers.

‘Do Hindus believe in God?' Marly interrupted. If she could break the chain, tonight might end differently.

‘We have many gods, which are manifestations of a single reality. We believe in reincarnation, and in karma. What you choose to do in your life determines your destiny in this life and the next.'

‘Sounds like that chick in the crystal shop.' Azza tipped back on his chair like Shaun and took a swig of his beer.

‘Take your feet off the table, boys. It's not nice.' Marly tapped her nails on the tabletop. The Indian's clean white shirt and his polished shoes were flickering like soft candles in the corner of the room.

Shaun and Azza were so surprised that they lifted their feet and dropped their chairs back to the floor.

‘Jesus, Marl, where'd the manners suddenly come from?' Shaun reached across the table. He picked up a tube of toothpicks from the bench. He offered them around the table, but Azza and Marly shook their heads. The room was quiet as he rooted around the back of his mouth and brought out the toothpick to examine it.

The tip was bright with blood, like a thin match.

‘So.' Shaun rubbed the toothpick between his thumb and forefinger, twirling it up and down the length of his thumb pad. ‘So, Pran, mate.'

‘Yes, Shaun?'

Marly couldn't believe how relaxed the little dark man was. Either he was stupid or he had some secret weapon.

‘Pran, I don't think we'll be taking your offer of a free set of steak knives.'

‘I am not trying to offer you steak knives, Shaun.' Pran lifted his canvas bag and brought out a pamphlet. ‘I am giving you free of charge six months of—'

‘I said we don't want it, mate. The thing is—'

‘Mr Pran, what did you mean by manifestations of a single reality?' Marly knew Shaun and Azza would be cursing her for interrupting their entertainment, but she wanted to know. Maybe this calm little man had the secret. The secret of being happy, or of not always wanting to be someone else, somewhere else.

‘You see, the Baghavad Gita says that there is a single essence that underlies all existence. You might call it the soul. “The soul dwells in every living being, and in every part of every living being; it dwells in the hand and the foot, the skull and the mouth, the eye and the ear.”' Pran watched Marly move her lips as he spoke, as if she was trying to make his words fit into ones she might understand. ‘But for us in this world, it is only necessary to do one's duty.'

‘You're giving me a headache, Pran.' Shaun finished his beer and lowered the bottle to the table. ‘I think we're done here.'

‘But I want to hear more. This is interesting.' Marly nodded at Pran and he saw the tension in her tight forehead. ‘Come on, Shauny. Let him tell us a bit more.'

‘Yeah, Shauny,' Azza whined in a mock falsetto, ‘let's hear what the Paki has to say.' His voice dropped to its normal register. ‘But you've gotta ask, if they've got it all worked out where he comes from, what's he doing here?'

‘Come on.' Shaun leaped up from the table, his big body causing the room to tremble. ‘We'll walk you to your car, mate.'

‘I'm fine, thank you. It is very near.' Pran thought about the reserve and its bits of glass and discarded car parts. Outside it was getting dark. The bush in the reserve would be dry and still and shadowy. He wasn't sure whether a path led straight through to the street where his car was sitting. Perhaps it would be wiser to take the long way around.

‘Nope, I insist. Where is it?'

‘Really, I don't want you to bother.' Perhaps these men thought they could attack him, take money from him. As if he would be stupid enough to carry money around a suburb like this. Pran eased his clipboard into his canvas bag and shook it until the clipboard had dropped completely inside. ‘Unless you feel like a walk. Company is always pleasant.'

‘That's us, pleasant company. Right, Azza?'

‘Right.' Azza stood and hitched up his jeans. ‘Let's do it.'

Before he headed for the door, Pran turned and dipped his head to Marly. She was looking at him as if she felt sorry for him.

‘What you are suffering in this world' – he waved his hand at Marly's prosthetic foot, but his eyes were trained on her face – ‘will serve you in the next life.'