The Evil Inside (6 page)

I wondered what things they'd ‘expected' young Lucy to do exactly.

Her low-cut boho blouse and thigh-high snakeskin boots had already given me a few ideas of my own – and not ones appropriate for a married man.

One of Lucy's shapely knees brushed mine as she leaned in closer. ‘Guy, I hope you don't mind me saying, but Anthony told me about what happened with you guys last year back in Australia.'

I couldn't bring myself to look her in the face. I sipped my Jack Daniels instead. I'd lost count of how many I'd had.

She put her cool, bangled hand on mine. ‘That must have been just awful?'

‘Yeah, it was no fun park,' I conceded, enjoying the soft warmth of her hand. The
Dante's Inferno
ghost ride flashed through my mind. ‘For any of us.'

Lucy's gaze was level and direct. She really did have the most enchanting eyes.

‘Well if you ever want to talk to someone, I'm just across the hall.'

Then Bill was back. Leaning across Lucy's lap and batting his eyebrows like Groucho Marx, he fanned out the Monte Cristos like he'd just won an Oscar or something.

‘Do you know what Freud said about cigars?' he hiccoughed.

‘Yes.' I unwrapped one and handed it to him. ‘Freud said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”'

Lucy lit mine as I was still swimming in her eyes.

After falling in the snow twice on 72nd Street, I rolled into the Olcott sometime after midnight with half a Gray's Papaya hot dog hanging out of my jacket pocket.

The same Hispanic porter who had carried our suitcases up that first night now had to almost carry me through the mysterious wind tunnel that had suddenly sprung up in the lobby. He propelled me into the service elevator and pressed 9. At first, I tried to fight him off. But he finally managed to convince me that he wasn't trying to steal my precious hot dog.

I squinted at myself in the narrow strip of mirror in the corner of the elevator: a Mr Hyde with wild hair, yellow eyes and a mouthful of knives grinned back at me. The doors slid open at my floor and I bounced off walls down the deserted corridor. By some miracle, my key opened the door. I zigzagged down the hall before carefully placing my hot dog on top of the bookcase.

Callum was snoring in the bedroom, lying on his back in a nappy like Cupid in the lamplight. The Olcott was heated to a constant tropical temperature so we never wore much inside. Mia was on her left side in blue panties, whistling through her nose.

Lucy had lit a fire in me: I slid in behind Mia, horny as a rhino's face. I cupped her buttocks and swallowed her ear. She stirred, groaned and then spoke with the brutal honesty of the half-asleep. ‘No. Not now. Not again.'

Then she stumbled across to the other bed and crawled in next to Callum.

The rejection stung. I turned and exited the bedroom, flopped down on the couch and burped painfully. But I supposed I couldn't blame Mia really. The last time we'd had sex all those months ago back in Australia had possibly contributed to the thing with the baby.

We'd been out celebrating a new insurance account win at a bar near the agency. Then there'd been Pinocchio's Pizza and red wine and then more drinking at another bar. And then somehow I was home.

Stupid with lust and bourbon, I pulled her panties down to mid-thigh. I stuck two fingers deep inside her.

Her vagina was already slightly moist. I tasted my fingers – I'd always loved the salty/sweet taste of her. I slid my cock into her. She was awake now but still half-dreaming. She moaned irritably, annoyed that her own sexual instincts were disturbing her sleep.

I moved my right hand around to her breast and let it fill my hand as I sunk deeper into her. She lifted her right leg a little to increase the opening. She knew that if I was drunk, it would take me longer to come – so the more she helped, the sooner she'd be able to go back to sleep. I also stuck my little finger into her arsehole. She sometimes liked that.

‘Fuck me!' she whispered urgently. ‘Fuck me, fuck me!'

I pushed faster but really wanted to prolong the enjoyment. Because Mia's pregnancy had been making her feel queasy, it was the first sex we'd had in a few weeks.

‘Fuck me!' she said more loudly. I thrust as hard as I could.

‘Fuck … Ow!' she suddenly groaned.

‘What's wrong?' I whispered loudly. But I kept right on fucking her. It was like I had a wild animal inside me or something.

She pushed me out of her and away. ‘That really hurt!' She rolled away.

‘Have you forgotten I'm pregnant, Guy? It felt like you were stabbing the baby.'

‘Sorry.' But my still-pulsing cock wasn't sorry. ‘I suppose a blowjob's out of the question?'

‘Go to sleep. You're drunk,' she sounded really annoyed now.

‘But
—'

‘Go fuck yourself instead.'

There were some small spots of blood on the sheets the next morning.

‘What's this?' I was still trying to open my other eye. It felt like someone had stitched the lids together overnight.

‘It's just spotting,' Mia said without emotion. ‘It's happened before.'

‘I'm sorry. I
—
' I tried to touch her.

‘Forget it,' she moved away to strip the bed. ‘I'll call Dr Hill. It'll be OK.'

‘Here, let me do that.'

But she yanked the spattered sheet away from me like a matador feinting for the kill. ‘Why don't you clean up the bathroom instead,' she growled. ‘You completely missed the toilet. There are even flies buzzing around in there.'

That unsavoury recollection brought the bile back to my throat: I took the half a hot dog off the bookcase and tossed it in the kitchen bin. I sat back on the sofa, turned on the TV, and flicked on the soothing soft porn of Channel 35.

*

Early the following afternoon, Rosemary, the Brave Face receptionist, called through to the boardroom phone. My hangover was still hurting and the bleat of the phone was like a drill to my skull. Bill passed me the handset.

‘Sorry, Guy, but your nanny's on the line and she sounds quite upset.'

‘Esmeralda?'

‘Oh, Guy!' She
was
upset. ‘Sorry to bodder you at work but Mia has goned to the hospital. Mount Sinai actually.' She gave a little cry.

‘Jesus Christ! Why? Has she had an accident? Is she OK?'

Bill bit his lip.

‘Yeah – she's OK and it wasn't an accident hexactly.' She sniffed, trying to keep herself together. ‘Um … I dropped by to pick up my money for the week – usually Mia give it to me on Mondays, but Estella and me was going to Delaware this weekend to visit a friend and I needed some extra money so I dropped in today instead – and you know how I have my own key, Guy?'

‘Yeah?' I didn't really – Mia handled all that stuff.

‘Well I didn't know whether Mia was even home today so I went inside and—'

‘Go on,' I said to her. ‘It's OK.'

‘Well I goed inside and there was a rolled-up wet towel near the door and I could smell gas. A lot of gas, Guy.'

I could almost smell it myself. I was starting to feel a little woozy.

‘Was the oven leaking?'

Long pause. ‘No, it wasn't leaking.' She went quiet for a minute.

‘Well what was it?'

‘Um, well I could see that there was an empty bottle of wine on the table … ' She paused again. ‘And then I slided open the door to the kitchen and there was another wet towel on the ground to stop all the gas getting out.'

‘And where was Mia?'

Long pause.

‘She was lying there on the ground in the kitchen. She had passed out.'

Jesus. ‘And where was Callum?'

She gave a loud, sad snort. ‘Oh don't worry – he's OK. Mia took him to Susanna's house this morning. He's still there.'

‘How did you know that?'

‘Oh, well cos I threw some water on Mia's face and I slapped her to make sure she was still breathing. And I turned the gas off, of course, and I dragged her out to the hallway and into the lounge room and opened the window. And then I called Michael downstairs and he called the ambulance but by the time the men come to get her, Mia had already waked up. She was sitting up and crying so I make her some tea. But then she was sick.'

‘Oh.'

‘She said she was very sorry for me to find her that way and that Callum was with Susanna and that I should call you at work. So after they take her away on the … little bed on the wheels?'

‘The stretcher.'

‘Yeah, the stretcher, I ask Michael and he give me your number.'

‘Oh.' I should have been rushing off to Mount Sinai, but instead kept spouting banalities. Maybe I was in shock. ‘Did Mia give you your money?'

Bill could tell by my tone that no one had actually died. He gave me a hopeful little wave and closed the door on his way out.

‘Oh yes,' Esmeralda almost sounded normal again.

‘She leaved it under the vase on the table for me.'

I just kept sitting there in the boardroom. I knew I should leap into action and rush over to the hospital but I'd fallen into a kind of turbid, morbid trance.

It wasn't the first time. Mia had actually made a half-hearted suicide attempt in her youth: there'd been a broken romance on top of her father's death. A packet full of pills seemed like the only logical salve to her teenage angst.

She'd told me she ‘felt like dying' after her dog Sky had died, too.

But this time, Mia had experienced what I supposed the doctors were going to tell us was a ‘severe, delayed post-natal reaction' to Bubby's death.

Eventually I buzzed Anthony and briefly explained what had happened and that I had to get over to Mount Sinai immediately. I ducked into our office to grab my keys and briefcase.

Bill was inserting a Joy Division CD. ‘Everything OK?'

‘Not really,' I said. ‘Mia's in hospital. She's … not feeling well.'

‘Oh.' He could tell that I didn't want to give any more away. ‘Anything I can do?' He followed me back down the hall towards reception, holding a sheet of paper in his hand.

‘No. But thanks for asking.'

I paused outside the boardroom and indicated the layouts on the table we'd been working on. ‘Let's go through those when I get back. I'm not sure when that will be.'

‘OK, Bro.'

Out of habit, I flicked up the edge of the paper he was holding to see what he'd been working on. On it he'd scrawled an evolving positioning statement for our new client:

The last line had been circled for consideration.

‘Waddya think?' Bill twirled his marker through his fingers like a drum majorette.

I sighed.
You'll see
. The phrase was indeed perfect for our new client, both literally and metaphorically. And yet there was something about it that tied another nasty knot in my gut.

‘You are
not
working this week.' Anthony handed me my second Bud. ‘We'll call it “Compassionate Leave” or some such shit so you won't lose any of your vacation time. Fair enough, Girly?'

They'd let Mia out of the hospital Saturday evening. It was now 11.30 Tuesday morning. We were in some dank, dark dive on 8th Avenue whose only virtue was that it was open at that hour. It was hardly Anthony's typical milieu, but he had a meeting nearby at 12 in the Garment District. There were tawdry peep show joints either side of the bar, which were also already open – or maybe they never closed.

I heard a cough and looked up at the owner: fat, blotchy-faced and wheezing on his cigarette as he spit-polished glasses with a dirty towel. He looked just like I felt.

‘What about coolcams?' I asked. Though work, advertising and coolcams were in reality the furthest things from my mind.

‘Fuck fucking coolcams,' Anthony growled. ‘Bill knows every fucking creative in New York. We can get someone to fill in for you for the rest of this week. And next week too – if you need it. Or however long you and Mia need.'

‘Thanks, mate.' The beer tasted like sludge. I slugged it back anyway.

Anthony handed me a set of keys.

‘What's this?'

‘North Fuck. The shack. Go up there for a week. It'll do ya good.'

‘I don't know what to say, mate. You've been too good—'

‘Enough,' Anthony held up his palm. ‘The keys to the Passport are on there as well. Just take care of yourself and your family and we'll worry about work later.'

He handed me a piece of layout paper, folded over. ‘Oh, and this is from Bill.'

On it, my art director had drawn a cartoon version of me lying on a sun lounger in bathing trunks, sipping a cocktail under a red-and-white striped Bacardi beach umbrella. On the other side of the page, he'd drawn himself sweating buckets at his desk under a speech bubble that said
Hang loose, Bro – I'll take care of everything here
.

Tears stung my eyes.

‘Oh, and this,' Anthony reached into his suit jacket, ‘is from Lucy.' He gave me a slightly searching look. It was a beautiful and obviously very expensive condolence card. She'd signed it
Love Lucille
.

Anthony burped uncomfortably – he really wasn't much of a drinker these days. ‘Well, I better get myself a packet of mints and get going. Give Susanna a call and she'll give you the gen on the holiday shack. Call me if you need anything else or if you just want to talk.'

For the first time in years, I bought a pack of Stuyvesants.

Mia wasn't talking much. Not to me anyhow.

But once she returned to the Olcott, she had long, tearful phone conversations with her mother. And with Jane. And a series of longer conversations with Susanna. Both her mother and Jane offered to fly out to be with her. But Mia's mum was really too old to fly and Jane had two teenage kids of her own. So they were more gestures than serious offers. In any case, I hoped that they – and the anti-depressants – were able to help Mia in some way. Because I sure as hell couldn't at the moment.

As if he shared Mia's crushing despair, Callum had also grown disconcertingly quiet. Although the night that Mia came home from the hospital, he'd looked up from his
Balto
video with the saddest little face I'd ever seen and declared apropos of nothing, ‘Maybe Balto could have saved Bubby?'

But Balto was a one-off: when I thought about it, Callum hadn't really been very interested in his movies or stories for the past couple of weeks. And he didn't want to go to the park. He'd just sit quietly on his bed or on the sofa holding his Buzz. Or play quiet, emotionless games of Uno with Esmeralda.

And like Mia, he was now sleeping a lot.

If we weren't so fucked-up ourselves, I'm sure we would both have been a lot more worried about him.

Anthony kept the Honda Passport in a parking garage down near Union Square. By the time I got back early afternoon, Mia had miraculously managed to become her practical old self for half an hour and had packed all our clothes for the trip. She and Callum were sitting quietly at the end of our bed like two frozen models from the Gap winter catalogue.

And then it was time to go. Suitcase in hand, she looked across at Susanna's beautiful bouquet of pale-pink tulips on the table.

But neither of us could bring ourselves to throw them out.

We left them wrinkling in the vase.

*

I read the opening blurb of the visitors' book on the cold kitchen bench top.

The Johnsons' holiday home was only two hours' drive – although once we got there, it could have been a million miles away.

Halfway between Kingsville and Cutchogue on the northern tine of the Long Island fork, the area was known locally as Arcadia, after the name of the high-end building firm that had created the exclusive ten-title development in the late eighties. The properties were separated by lines of adolescent white oaks half a kilometre apart, while majestic frontages unfurled right down to the water's edge of the Great Peconic Bay.

‘Shack' didn't really do it justice. Two storeys, six bedrooms, three bathrooms, an office, and a balcony that looked straight out onto the choppy grey waves and deep-blue sky. In fact, its only concession to ‘shackiness' were the magnificent American oak beams – salvaged from old local barns – that had been used in its construction. Although the house was only about ten years old, the redwood had already weathered beautifully, giving the exterior a distressed frontier cabin look – classic Americana.

Inside, the high ceilings and exposed beams and rafters created a cosy ski-lodge ambience. Susanna had decorated the walls with hand-made Navajo blankets and wall hangings, Mexican carnival masks (according to Esmeralda), and Civil War muskets, muzzle-loaders and cannon balls in wrought-iron brackets. Central to the expansive kitchen/living area was a huge old pot-bellied stove that Susanna had had shipped from her grandmother's house in Tennessee.

We'd brought Esmeralda with us. Looking back, it perhaps seems strange that we invited a relative stranger to come with us so soon after what had happened. But neither Mia nor I were thinking straight. So, from a purely practical point of view, Esmeralda's presence made sense.

Besides, Callum liked her. Perhaps she could cajole him out of his very un-Callum-like inertia.

After we'd unpacked, Esmeralda checked out the well-stocked pantry and Mia went for a lie down upstairs while Callum and I did a quick, cold lap of the grounds before scurrying back to the crackling warmth of the stove.

I challenged Callum to a race around the outside of the house, but he claimed he needed a ‘cowwidoor' like we had at the Olcott.

Esmeralda made us all some Mexican eggs for dinner while I chugged down one of the Budweisers Anthony had kindly left in the gleaming Miele fridge. I silently toasted my ever-thoughtful friend and boss as I reached for my second.

*

A strange new physical thing happened to me at Arcadia almost as soon as we arrived: I found that I couldn't bear to look at the little white electrical sockets along the walls or in the bathrooms, or behind the toaster or the coffee maker in the long galley kitchen.

Back in Australia, sockets featured three narrow slits to house their plugs. But here in America, the three socket holes were round, which made them look like two eyes and a mouth.

So now I tried to avoid looking at them at every turn: because to me, every little white socket looked like a little white face screaming.

I spoke to Esmeralda from behind the broad marble benchtop. ‘Mmm, that smells good.'

Esmeralda had also cut her hair into a short round bob: she looked like Mia's little sister. It was late on our second day at Arcadia and she was stirring up some magic in a big beige Le Creuset pot. The chopping boards were a delicious patchwork of white onions, bright-red chillies, taxi-yellow corncobs, limes, and blood-red pork skin.

‘Is called
pozole rojo
,' Esmeralda replied. ‘My grandmuddah, Ana Claudia, used to make this when we was children. So my seesters and me call it “Ana-Claudia's medicine”. Is very good for the cold wedder.'

‘Well, we certainly have that here,' I said, nodding at the sheet of snow billowing towards us from across the bay. ‘You must really hate the cold, eh, coming from Mexico?'

‘Well, when next summer comes, Guy, you will soon see that New York City can get as hot as San Juan del Rio – where I come from. But the New York winters … ' she gestured at the white world outside with her ladle ‘… brrrr – it's crazy cold for me, man.' She kept stirring. ‘This soup will be a leedle hot for Callum with the chillies and so I haf maked him another bowl without chillies for hisself.'

It struck me that both Esmeralda and Callum enjoyed experimenting with tenses, pronouns and verb agreements.

‘How's Daddy's boy?'

I plonked myself down next to him on a soft wide couch in the cavernous living area adjacent to the kitchen. Callum didn't respond. He was watching TV for the first time in days. Mia was upstairs, still sleeping or reading.

Or crying perhaps.

‘What are you watching?' I tried again.

‘I don't know,' Callum said in a small voice.

I looked at the screen myself. Up until a second ago, I could have sworn that he had been watching
Toy Story
for the thousandth time. But now the screen was all fuzzy and dark with rough, broken white lines strobing rhythmically through it.

‘Is
Toy Story
finished?'

He didn't answer. He was staring dead ahead as if concentrating very hard on something. There was no sound coming from the TV now either. Just little
chop chop chops
from Esmeralda behind us.

Something was now happening on the screen. The white lines slowly became more cohesive, forming themselves into one continuous, moving line.

Like the silhouette of something alive.

I gasped. It was a shape I'd seen a number of times last year. It looked half human, half frog; an amphibian caught in amber. The abnormally large, bulbous head tilted up and down at rapid speed while the little limbs looked as though they were frantically scratching or clawing at something. It was as if the TV was an aquarium and the thing really was just there behind the glass – a little prehistoric monster from the deep.

It was the outline of a baby in utero.

Floating from profile to front-on, the little creature was now staring straight at us with its wide, black fish eyes. Its round, rubbery mouth gaped horribly, as if venting a long, silent scream.

I'd never noticed before how much the face of an unformed baby resembles that of a very old person – with their taut, skeletal features sputtered and blotched with detritus. For one long, monstrous moment, the little fishy face transmuted into the visage of an old woman.

Then, with its webbed hands pressed against the inside of the screen, it angrily began beating its tiny fists: little
rap rap raps
syncopating with Esmeralda's expert knife work behind us.

Callum stuttered. ‘Bu … Bu …' He couldn't complete the word for some reason.

Bubby?

I snapped my head around. ‘Esmeralda – look!'

She stopped cutting and looked up. ‘Look at what, Guy?'

I turned back to the TV. There was no foetus there now – just that silly Space Ranger, Buzz Lightyear, showing off to Mr Potato Head by executing an elaborate loop-the-loop.

Callum's eyes were a little glazed, as if he'd just woken up. ‘What did you say before, Son?' I asked. I suddenly realized I was sweating and wiped my brow.

‘Bu-zzzz! See, Daddy – I told you!'

He pointed at the screen and then gave me a twisted little grin as if I was the one who was acting strangely. Buzz was back, and he, Callum, was now fine and dandy.

He yawned and sat his own Buzz doll back on his lap as he settled in for the rest of the movie.

Esmeralda shook her head slightly and resumed her chopping: Mr Russell had apparently gone a little gaga.

Maybe what I thought I'd seen had just been a kink in the tape – or a temporary fault in the TV?

I shook my head in an attempt to clear it.

A dead baby, a stressful new job in a brand-new country, a suicidal wife. It was no wonder I was seeing things.

Maybe I just needed some fresh air?

I mussed Callum's hair and disappeared out into the squall with my cigarettes.

*

The next morning, I decided that I needed someone to reconnect me with good old-fashioned reality. So I rang Bill.

‘Hey, Crayon Brain – haven't they fired you yet?'

‘Is that any way to speak to your respected co-worker and undeniable superior in virtually every department?'

‘Wassup?'

‘Wassup with you, slacking off up there in the boss's tax dodge?' His humour sounded forced. Given the unfortunate circumstances that had taken me out of the office, it was difficult for Bill to be his normal shit-shooting self. But I wished he would.

‘Well, we've tried to get by in your regrettable absence, Kangaroo Boy,' – Bill frequently goaded me with this nickname, along with references to
The Crocodile Hunter
, as he knew how I felt about clichéd Australian stereotypes – ‘and I admit it's been difficult. I've got a writing friend in here – Jay Spiller, ex-DDB – but unlike you, he's actually quite good at his job so we finish all our work by noon.'

‘Really?'

‘Really. Oh and he doesn't insist on repeat-playing maudlin pukey Aussie yodellers over and oooover again, so the quality of in-office music has improved one hundredfold.'