The Fix (12 page)

‘My plan is for us to go to the Gold Coast, if you're okay with that. Or maybe even if you're not, since I had the place booked weeks ago. Mini-golf tour. Feature article. And you can crap on that all you like, but Who totally loves it for the photoshoot, and it's locked in. Max and Frank have okayed it too. They've decided you'll need a break between Monday and the lunch on Friday. Australian Story'll do their taping around the lunch.'

‘They want that lunch, don't they? Frank wants that lunch.' He clunked his seat forward, reached out to his laptop and hit a key. Something on the screen had distracted him. ‘I think it's part of a plan some org psych person came up with. They don't get it. It changes your life in a place like this – one nutter with a gun. It's never the same again. And a panini platter isn't going to change it back, isn't going to finish it.' It felt like we
had struck the bedrock of truth at least a glancing blow. ‘Who you are changes if you get stuck in the middle of something like that. You're far better off being one of the crowd running down the fire escape. You've got a good deal, you know. You'll be free of all this next week. Or soon anyway.'

‘Sure. I'm poor but happy.' It was glib again, glib at the wrong time, and it sounded defensive. ‘It's okay for it not to be over for you. It's okay to even talk about that in the interviews if you want. The media will go with you. They'll be good about it. They're not looking to cut you down. This is not your father's story.'

‘Yeah. They're going to want to talk about him, though. For the two big stories anyway. I know we can't avoid it . . . He doesn't seem dead yet. I know that's strange. Even though I went to the funeral. It's his kind of story. It's too much like a stunt – reported dead in a lagoon on Bora Bora, making the papers and nobody taking a look at his body back here. I never trusted his stories. I have to keep telling myself this one's true. That he's not out there somewhere, working on some new scam. He left nothing, of course. Other than a web of arrangements that adds up to debt. Wife Number Three's back at work as a personal trainer. I think she rents somewhere not far from me.'

He stood up and pulled his phone out of his pocket. He flipped it open and checked something before closing it again. I was trying to find something to say about the loss of his father, wondering what could hit the right mark.

‘You're coming on Monday, aren't you?' he said. ‘To the medal thing? Is that part of what you do? I've got to give names. You can be my plus one.'

‘I'll be there. We'll have it all mapped out by then, and I'll make it work. I think you get more than one. Max and Frank are planning to be there. Are you going to invite your mother?'

Australian Story had called back asking about family and I had half-promised them Ben's mother. I had told myself that meant I would only be half-breaking the promise when she failed to materialise. She would fall through at the last minute, by which time half-a-dozen interviews would be in the can and they would be committed.

‘My mother won't get me through the media,' he said. I wondered if she even knew about the medal. I wondered if he had any other plus-one prospects in his life. ‘I guess I can't stop Max and Frank. They're part of the story. And it's all about the story.' He looked me up and down, and half-smiled. ‘You might need a suit, though. For the Governor. Is that a possibility?'

* * *

‘UM, YEAH, SURE,'
Brett said when I called him later in the afternoon. He was my last and only resort. ‘I've got quite a few suits. I can't say they'll fit, exactly. I've got a bit more width than you. Is it safe to assume you've got a belt?'

Because he was my brother, he was entitled to a shot at me any time the chance arose. ‘A belt? Is that what you rich people do instead of rope? Yeah, I've got a belt. I can cover the shoes too.'

‘You're doing well for yourself then. Maybe I'm paying
you too much.' He laughed at his own joke. ‘Francesca thought we'd have a barbecue on Saturday. You should come. The kids'd love to see you. You can fill me in on how the job's going. You could pick the suit up then.'

‘Sounds good.' Some bits did anyway. ‘I'm up for some Uncle Josh time.'

‘So how is the job going?' Brett couldn't resist.

‘Good, I think. Interviews are locked in. I emailed the itinerary to Frank and he's happy. There's a bit of talent tuning to be done yet, but that's okay.'

‘Talent tuning? Is that Frank? I'm assuming he's on the list for any of the bigger things.'

‘Yeah. He'll be fine, though. He's already Mister Quotable Quote on the subject. I've got to get Max to focus and Ben to cough up the story. But that'll happen. Don't worry.' I was better at sounding confident over the phone.

Ben walked past my office just as I was finishing the call. He signalled through the glass that he wanted to speak to me, and I nodded and waved for him to come in.

‘You were wanting to talk to Max, weren't you?' he said when he got to the door.

‘Yeah. I think he's gone, though.' I shut my phone and put it in my pocket. ‘It's not urgent. It can wait till tomorrow.'

‘I've got some documents to get to him.' He held up his briefcase, though I had seen it through the glass already. ‘They've got to be sorted out and on their way to Mister Park's legal people in Korea while they're all still at work. Before they drop their pants, chalk their pool cues and head out for the night. So let's go.'

‘Go?'

‘Yeah. To Max. Selina's called us a cab.'

‘What's the urgency all of a sudden?' My mind was already on home, fortune cookies, channel surfing.

‘A more relevant question would be what else were you planning to do right now? Answer: nothing. It'll put you closer to home anyway. And you can bill us for every minute, I'm sure. Think of the quality appliances you'll be buying when this is done. Miele, my friend, Miele. Maybe even Gaggenau.'

It felt, for a moment, like the best of old times, not that we'd talked about appliances then. I had missed a part of him, I realised.

Max lived somewhere near me in West End. I could picture his house. It would be a nineteenth-century place with wide verandahs and a renovation that hadn't demolished its character. As we pushed through the CBD traffic, I assumed that was where we were going. Ben sorted through some sheets of paper, and fixed them together with a clip.

‘I like the coast idea,' he said. ‘Even if I have to have my photo taken playing mini-golf. I can't believe you talked someone into a feature on a Gold Coast mini-golf tour.' He put the documents away. ‘And yet I can. Nice work. You'll never be envying the Gutter Vac guy.' He looked out the window, to the figs hanging over the railings of the Botanic Gardens and the litter of seeds and debris they had cast onto the pavement. ‘I've got Cairns again tomorrow. A Japanese business deal to unravel, but this trip'll be the end of it, hopefully.'

He said it to the figs or to himself, as much as to me. It sounded like conversation, but it wasn't. Maybe
he was still thinking of the Gutter Vac guy, working the suburbs, leading a different life. Or me, openly scheming towards indolence, as he saw it, and without a career to speak of. Or perhaps he was off somewhere else entirely.

The cab changed lanes. We rose on a loop of freeway and swung down into the westbound lanes of cars, with West End over to our left across the river.

‘Where is he?' We weren't going to Max's house. ‘Where's Max?'

‘Don't worry about that,' Ben said, like a magician with a trick starting to come together.

‘Is this some mystery tour?' I realised I hadn't heard him tell the driver our destination. I'd been walking around the cab to the other door at the time.

‘If I tell you where we're going you're at risk of exiting the vehicle while it's still in motion. You'll thank me. Eventually. Or if you don't, it won't be my fault.' He had decided to be cryptic.

‘So this is the Mister Park thing you're taking to Max?'

He waited for more, for me to crack and push him about our destination. I wasn't going to.

‘Yeah. He's on his way back to Korea. We want this to be at his office before he arrives.' He stopped there, but still I didn't push him. ‘Are you really interested in Mister Park?'

‘No.'

As we passed through Toowong, the cabbie half-turned and said, ‘Which bit of the campus did you want?'

Ben leaned forward and said, ‘Forgan Smith Building.' He tried to hide it, but he looked pleased with himself.

Forgan Smith Building, University of Queensland. Max Visser was lecturing in law. He was giving his weekly guest lecture. And we both knew who else would be there.

‘Come on,' Ben said, as if he was challenging me. ‘You've only ever thought of her as a law student. That's how I heard it. So this should be fine. And I want to see it. Her worlds colliding, you wrestling with one of your awkward silences.'

‘Fuck you. I don't have awkward silences.'

‘Sure you don't. That was years ago. It'll be no problem at all as long as you're able to get those perky non-surgically-enhanced breasts out of your –'

‘It's not about the breasts,' I said too loudly. ‘You are making something out of nothing.'

‘Sure I am. That's why you're so . . . tetchy.'

I was going to go with him, despite my protests, and despite my interest in talking to Max Visser temporarily falling close to zero.

‘I'm only coming so that I can talk to Max,' I said.

‘Yep. Keep telling yourself that.'

It was close to six pm as we drove onto the campus. Through the cab window, the students were just darkening shapes in the twilight. I felt like a kid at a school dance, hoping to see the girl he had bumped into once on the bus but not even knowing whether she would be there.

Ben signed the cabcharge printout and led the way up the granite steps into the building. The terrazzo floors and turned wooden stair railings were the same as ever, the same as the last time I had been in there, years before. And the smell was still the sweet musty old-book
smell that the building had had when we had studied there, even though I had been given the impression they had moved way beyond books by now.

‘Takes you back,' Ben said, just as it was taking me back.

He turned right down the bright central corridor and we walked past noticeboards and lecturers' offices. We had almost reached the double doors to the lecture theatre when they swung open and started disgorging students. The noise from inside sounded like an evacuation, an impossible number of feet making an impossible noise as they rushed to the exit. Ben stood us against the wall directly opposite, so that we couldn't be missed.

Jett came out quite early, behind a clump of students but by herself, a folder held to her chest, her hair much shorter than the night before. She was turning away when she saw us. She stopped, and the student behind her tried to swerve but caught her shoulder on the way past. Jett stepped clear of them, and towards us. She was trying to look less surprised. She had no make-up on at all. I wanted to tell her she didn't need it. It had been part of the job, like the toy pistol, the spurs.

‘So what are you guys doing here?' she said. She was smiling, as if the night before had given the three of us a secret to share.

Ben gave me half a chance to answer her. I didn't take it.

‘Work,' he said. ‘I've got to get Max to sign off on something.' He looked at me. It was the second half of my chance to speak.

Inside the lecture theatre, students clustered around Max, asking him questions. My head was overcrowded with things I wanted to say.

‘So I should push in,' Ben said. ‘It's got to be in Korea pretty much right away. Josh? Did you want to see him or . . .'

‘Could you tell him I'll catch him in the morning?'

‘Sure. No problem.' He lifted his hand, and I thought he was about to pat me on the shoulder. He turned it into a wave to Jett and started to move towards the door, where the student traffic was now thinning out.

‘So what are you?' she said. ‘The minder?'

‘That's closer than you might think. I've got a media role with the firm for a few weeks.' I was unstuck. She had unstuck me, partially at least. ‘The rest of the time I blog for a newspaper and I write magazine articles. Freelance. About whatever bizarre things I come across.'

‘You should hear about some of the stuff that goes on at work.'

‘Actually, could I?' It was an opening, a chance for the conversation not to end.

‘Probably not. Maybe some things. But I'd have to give it to you W Mark Felt-style.' She misread the look I must have had on my face. ‘Sorry, that's a bit obscure.'

‘No.' It was the most important movie of my life. I had fallen in love with people based on less. I wanted to impress her with a quote, something from Woodward to Deep Throat, but the only one I could think of mentioned chicken shit. ‘So do I call you Deep, or would you prefer Ms Throat?' I felt myself crumpling inside like an empty piñata.

‘Ha. Not so obscure then,' she said. She rearranged her folder, tucking it under one arm. ‘I was just going to get a coffee before putting in some library time.'

Ms Throat . . . Ms Throat . . . The worst line of the millennium was playing over and over in my head.

‘Let me buy you the coffee,' I said, in case I still had any chance. ‘You can tell me a thing or two about work. It's fine if you give it to me . . .' I couldn't say Deep Throat-style. ‘Anonymously.'

‘That's it,' she said. ‘Where was that word when I needed it?'

She led me out the other side of the building and along the sandstone colonnade at the edge of the Great Court to the nearest source of real coffee.