The Big Ask (19 page)

I dallied in the vestibule, pretending to use the cigarette machine, then collared Lyndal when she emerged. ‘It's Nick, isn't it?' I said. ‘Your boyfriend, whatever you call it. Your designated spouse equivalent.'

‘What about him?'

‘He's the one having the affair?'

‘How do you know?'

‘You just told me.'

‘Yes, I suppose I did,' she admitted. ‘All these trips to the country. Turns out he's been shagging his way across rural Victoria.'

‘You don't seem very upset.'

‘I don't give two hoots. Nick and I decided to separate a while ago. It's just a matter of getting the timing right.'

‘Right for what?' I said. ‘Are you involved with somebody else, too?'

‘You'll find out soon enough,' she said.

I wondered who'd beaten me to the punch this time. ‘Is it anyone I know?'

‘What makes you think there's anybody?'

‘I'd just like to know, before I make a complete fool of myself,' I said.

‘It's a bit late to worry about that, Murray,' she said, smiling.

‘If you were more upset, I could comfort you,' I said. ‘Or if you were angry, I could offer you the opportunity for revenge. If you'd had more to drink, I could take shameless advantage of you.'

‘Talk,' she said. ‘That's all I ever hear from you.'

‘Well, try this for talk.' I backed her into the phone alcove, wrapped an arm around the small of her back and drew her hard against my torso. I met no resistance, French or otherwise. I put my mouth on her throat and nuzzled my way upwards until I found her lips. They were pretty much where I expected them to be, just south of her nose, tasting slightly of gin. After I'd tasted them for a moment, they moved.

‘Not here,' they breathed. ‘Not in a phone booth.'

‘I'll get a room,' I said. ‘Don't go away.'

I detached myself and bolted for the front desk, dizzy with near-success.

‘Do you have a reservation, sir?' asked the clerk. Gus, according to his name tag.

A reservation? Until five minutes ago, I didn't even have a hope. ‘Not as such,' I said.

In that case, Gus would see if there was anything available. Lowering his eyes, he began to peck at a keyboard, invisible below the raised edge of the desk. Tap-tappety-tap-tap, he tapped. Tap and peer, tap and peer. Tap, tap, tap. What was he typing down there, I wondered. Madame fucking Bovary?

I looked back the way I'd come. Lyndal had emerged from the vestibule and was loitering beside the fountain in the centre of the lobby. She contemplated its marble nymph. Her expression was worryingly pensive. Tap, tap, went Gus. Lyndal began towards me, then hesitated. Gus reached chapter 47, wherein Emma anxiously awaits the arrival of her lover Rodolphe. Hark, the clatter of hooves on the cobblestones. Tap, tappety, tap.

Lyndal was chewing her bottom lip now, definitely besieged by second thoughts. You've overplayed your hand, I thought, beginning towards her, words of passionate reassurance forming themselves in my mind. At that moment, a bell in the elevator bay pinged and Angelo Agnelli emerged, his duties upstairs with the bus proprietors concluded.

Oblivious to my presence behind him, he hailed Lyndal and began to speak with her, drawing her along as he moved towards the main doors. She must have said something unexpected, because he pulled up with a start of surprise. She cast me a quick glance across his shoulder. Sorry, it said. Can't be helped.

Then they were walking again, deep in conversation. Right across the lobby and out the door. Gus finished his manuscript. ‘I'm afraid I can't help you, sir.'

‘That's okay,' I sighed. ‘I know a little place in Fitzroy. A sort of boutique operation. There's always a bed for me there.'

An empty one, unfortunately.

I went out the front and let a man dressed like an admiral whistle me up a cab. Had it drop me at the Khyber Pass, the Indian takeaway nearest the house, then walked home with a chicken mukhani, two vegetable samosas and a tub of saffron rice. Desire, according to the Buddha, is the fountainhead of all unhappiness.

I found Red toiling over a hot television. ‘Hard day, Dad?' he said, clocking my comportment, bless his hundred-dollar Nikes.

‘It was only hard for a while,' I said. ‘But not any more.'

We ate our curry in front of ‘Sale of the Century', then tackled Red's homework, ancient Egypt. ‘You haven't forgotten?' he inquired as we whittled pieces of cardboard into a simulacrum of the Great Pyramid of Cheops. ‘Term holidays start tomorrow.'

‘How could I possibly forget?' I said, asking myself the same question. ‘I'll have a bit of free time, changes at work and whatnot. We can go to the museum together, stuff like that.'

Red looked underwhelmed. ‘It's just that Geordie's invited me to go to Mount Buffalo. He's asked Tarquin, too. Can I, please?'

Geordie, if I remembered right, was one of the new peers, a freckly kid, very polite. Considering that Red's move south had cost him two weeks in sub-tropical Noosa, I could hardly stand in the way of a tobogganing expedition. ‘What's it going to cost me?' I said.

‘Nothing. It's free. His parents have got a lodge.'

So Red rang Geordie and set up a teleconference. Geordie's mother remembered me from the school information night, and I pretended likewise. Then we trooped across to the Curnows to filch a sleeping-bag. Faye was working late and Leo was helping Tarquin with the death mask of Tutankhamen.

‘That job prospect,' I told him. ‘It's running for Agnelli's seat in parliament.'

Leo was a mathematician. He knew how to put seven and nine together. ‘I'll open a bottle,' he said. ‘Hold this scarab while the glue dries.'

When we got back home, there was a brisk message on the machine from Angelo. ‘Call me,' it said. I didn't. I was tired of being Angelo's yo-yo. As far as I was concerned, tomorrow couldn't come fast enough. When it did, I dispatched Red to school with a cut lunch and the Nile Valley in his backpack, zipped my jacket against the breeze and walked up the hill to Carlton, to the Cafe Caruso, a small espresso bar just off the main strip.

The old place had been tarted up since I was last there, the zinc counter replaced by a slab of polished granite, mirror tiles installed in place of the dusty bottles of almond cordial. The card-playing
paesani
had been banished and the ancient aluminium coffee machine superseded by a flash new apparatus of vaguely fascistic design, all bronze eagles and curvaceous chrome. The ancient laminex tables had been transposed into Memphis-style structures with surgical appliances for chairs.

‘Looking prosperous these days,' I told Claudio, the diminutive proprietor.

‘Whatta can you do, Murray?' he shrugged. ‘You gotta keep up.'

Apart from a couple of truants playing Space Invaders down the back, I was the only customer. I stood at the bar and ordered a short black, then slid my nomination form across the burnished granite. ‘I need your signature, Claudio. It's just a formality.'

Claudio read the form solemnly, twice. ‘Angelo, he know about this?'

‘Angelo is comfortable.' I tapped the side of my nose, then jerked my chin towards the telephone. ‘Any questions, ring him.'

That was good enough for Claudio. He shrugged, signed with a flourish. I finished my coffee, thanked him for his assistance, then went down the street to Bernini's bistro and repeated the procedure.

By the time I reached the end of Lygon Street, I had the requisite number of signatures on my nomination form, all Labor Party members in good standing, registered residents of Melbourne Upper. I also had so much caffeine coursing through my system that my heart was fluttering like a distressed damsel's eyelashes. At party head office, a big Victorian terrace in Drummond Street, I lodged the form with the receptionist, watched while she thumped it with a stamp that said ‘Received'.

‘Any others for Melbourne Upper?' I asked.

Her nibs was an old warhorse, a stickler for protocol. ‘Seventy seats, you can hardly expect me to know the candidates in all of them.' She indicated the clock. It was eleven, one hour until close of nominations. ‘You'll find out soon enough.'

I walked back to Fitzroy and did a load of laundry. According to the machine—phone, not washing—Angelo had called again. The washing machine didn't say much at all. Probably because it was too busy trying not to gag on the smell of Red's socks.

At midday, the beginning of the rest of my life, I was standing in the backyard, my mouth full of clothes pegs, staring up at the gathering strato-cumulus and wondering if I hadn't made a very big mistake. Wondering if I had blown it with Lyndal. Wondering what Noel Webb and his task force associates were doing, if they were any closer to a result. Wondering if Red had enough warm clothes for five days in the snow.

Agnelli rang half an hour later. ‘I won't tell you to clear your desk,' he growled down the line. ‘There's been nothing on it but dust since last week. But, as of now, you're officially fired.'

‘After seven years together, Angelo, this is a profoundly emotional moment,' I said. ‘Before I get all choked up, how did the field close?'

‘No other takers,' he said. ‘Unless you count Lyndal Luscombe.'

‘She's nominated?'

‘She told me last night. Sprung it on me as I was leaving the Southern Cross.'

It all made sense now, sort of. Her vacillation at the birdbath fountain, what I took for second thoughts, could just as easily have been misgivings about the timing. She'd said something about timing, getting it right. Then Angelo's sudden appearance had tipped the balance, probably her last chance for a face-to-face before nominations closed. Even her siren call to the opening of the cultural centre fitted the scenario. Her concern about Angelo's state of mind was an oblique way of asking if he'd tumbled to her intentions.

My love life, my political machinations, were all turning into scenes from a French farce.

‘I should have guessed,' I said.

‘You didn't say anything last night, did you?' demanded Angelo anxiously. ‘You didn't give the game away?'

‘My lips were sealed,' I said. Most of the time. ‘I thought she was about to come across with something, then she suddenly left.'

‘She claims it's a matter of principle. If the factional bosses won't select women candidates, it's up to women to stand anyway, try to force the issue. It's cost her her job, of course, and she realises she can't win. But it's her business if she wants to make a martyr of herself. My problem is that it's hardly a vote of confidence, two of my closest aides turning traitor. Confirms the wisdom of my decision to have you run.'

Forget Aristotle, Angelo's logic was in a category of its own. A thesis which he immediately confirmed. ‘We can't be seen together from now on,' he said. ‘There's this motel in Carlton, the Gardenview Mews. Whenever I want to meet, I'll book a room in your name, give you a call, let you know the time. Okay?'

‘Bit cloak and dagger, isn't it?'

‘Don't talk to me about daggers. I've just been stabbed in the back. Twice.'

For a year's salary, lump sum, Angelo could be as absurd as he liked. ‘You're the boss,' I said. Force of habit. I'd just hung up when the phone rang again. It was Lyndal.

‘About last night,' she started.

‘I think I've got last night figured out,' I said. ‘I can't help but wonder if you were going to tell me.'

‘About nominating? Of course I was,' she said. ‘I just felt I owed it to Ange to tell him first. How about you? When were you planning on coming clean?

‘Upstairs in the honeymoon suite,' I said. ‘If Nick's still out of town, I could come around to your place tonight. Since things are out in the open, there's nothing to stop us taking up where we left off.'

‘Except the fact that we're running against each other.'

‘That's just politics,' I said. ‘I'm talking lust.'

‘Goes to credibility.'

‘Mine or yours?'

‘You don't have enough credibility to worry about,' she said. ‘It's pretty obvious that you've cut some kind of deal with Angelo. What's he offered by way of inducement? A permanent public service job?'

‘What do you take me for?' I tried to sound offended. ‘A hooker?'

She laughed at that, a nice teasing sound, rich with possibilities. ‘See you on the hustings, Murray.'

My next call was from Mike McGrath, deputy secretary and chief weasel of the United Haulage Workers. I didn't ask how he got my home number. ‘I've just heard the news, mate,' he said. ‘Thought I'd call to offer my felicitations. Not that you need them. Agnelli must be making this little charade worth your while.'

‘Do I detect a note of cynicism?' I said. ‘Did it never occur to you that I might merely be exercising my rights as a member of our great, democratic party?'

‘If that's the case,' he said, ‘I take it you'll be willing to accept our support?'

‘You're offering me the opportunity to crawl into your pocket, Mike? Gee, that's generous of you. Thanks, but no thanks.'

‘I wonder if Ms Luscombe will take such a high moral tone?' He put a mocking spin on the Ms.

‘The enemy of my enemy, is it?' I said. ‘Anything to keep Agnelli on the back foot. I think you'll find that Lyndal has more sense than to let you poison her wells.'

‘Maybe,' he said. ‘Or maybe she won't know until it's too late.'

‘What's that supposed to mean?'

‘If you change your mind, give me a call.'

‘You lot should change your name,' I said. ‘From Haulers to Spoilers.'

The phone began to ring constantly as word spread through the grapevine. I stuck to the script, reciting the prearranged formula. That I had no personal grievance with Angelo. That I believed the voters of Melbourne Upper should be given a choice. I repeated it so often that I almost convinced myself.