The Fix (21 page)

‘Yeah. I never did like kidney.'

That was true, and I was sure he was right about the pie, since he had been so specific. I couldn't place it, though. The more I thought about it, the less memory I had of it. But his recollection was precise and detailed, and it sounded like me, and like such a better, more uncomplicated time that I wanted it to be something we agreed on.

‘I'm glad I kidnapped you and took you to Max's lecture,' he said. ‘I really hoped that you'd do something with it, with that chance. I saw that she liked you in the club, you know. She came over to you twice. It was to you, not to us.'

‘Yeah?' I didn't want to owe him Hayley. I didn't want to hear that he had noticed who she had been looking at, that he had been paying her any attention at all. ‘Well, she called me when you didn't think she would. And she's coming.'

The conversation was about Eloise again, or turning that way. I would make it about mistrust if I said one more thing.

Ben looked straight ahead down the highway. The radio news went on in the background. There was a fizz of static as we passed under a bridge.

‘How much longer, do you reckon?' he said. ‘I may have to start eating my arm.'

* * *

BEN BOUGHT A BAG
of apples from a convenience store while I was checking us in to our apartment at Focus. He ate two on the balcony, staring out to sea while the wind whipped his hair around. It was dark enough now that the ships had their lights on.

The apartment was bigger than I had expected, and curved since the building was circular. It had green sofas patterned with starfish and conch shells, and there were pastel Greek-island-style prints on its cream-coloured walls. There were probably a thousand places decked out just like it within walking distance. It would have seemed huge, stupidly huge, if I had been there alone. Alone and driving around the neighbourhood to tap balls across Astroturf in the name of work, and retiring to my laptop to massage it all into some kind of fun.

I drove us to Chang Mai Thai, where I had made a booking for dinner. Even on a Monday out of season, the outside tables were full. There were groups of ten and twelve, and milestones being toasted. Fairy lights beaded the roofline and twisted around the potted palms.

The manager ran her pen down the list of bookings, found my name and led us past the paintings of buffaloes and temples and the indoor greenery to a small square table tucked against the belly of a teak elephant that was close to life-size.

‘You order,' Ben said, after a cursory look at the menu. ‘I'm too tired. Let's go straight to mains. Those apples are only just holding me.' A platter of satay sticks
passed us at high speed. ‘Or maybe some of those would be good. They look good.'

‘So is this you ordering now?'

‘No, you're ordering. But include satays.'

‘What kind?' The menu offered chicken, beef or lamb.

‘Whatever you want. Not chicken. Beef. Make it beef. Unless you don't want beef. Whatever you want.'

‘If this was a date, I'd be seriously thinking about dropping you.'

‘Can't be a lot of second dates for you then, with those standards.'

For the first time, I wondered how we would go when the week was done, if there would be a reason to stay in contact. We could be adept at looking like friends.

I put our order in, and asked for the two serves of satay to come at the same time as the curry. That seemed to meet Ben's needs.

We ran out of conversation, or the conversation tapered off at least. We talked through the decor and I told him about my Cooking with Asterix blog, which was soon to surface.

He asked me how I was finding the rising mortgage interest rates, then told me he had to check something and got out his iPhone. He kept himself busy scrolling through emails until the food arrived.

It came on a brass tray, with the curry and rice in ornate brass bowls and the satay sticks in a row, in a slick of peanut sauce. Ben put his iPhone back into his pocket and started scooping rice onto his plate. He handed the spoon to me and took two satay sticks.

‘Governors should serve this,' he said, as he set about unthreading the meat from a skewer with his fork.

‘What? A Thai banquet? You think you should get a Thai banquet as well as a medal? I think I might have seen some satay sticks there this morning.' He had been doing interviews at the time. ‘There's one thing I've been wondering about. And don't take this the wrong way. It's just a question.'

‘Yes?' he said, putting on a suspicious tone as he mixed sauce into his rice and picked some up with his fork.

‘How is it that Frank, two days after the siege, already knew exactly what to say to get you a Star of Courage?'

He lowered his fork and glared at me. He didn't speak.

‘It's like he went home and looked it up. With a head injury. After having a gun in his face. It's like he googled it. Is that crazy?'

He ate the rice on his fork, and a chunk of meat, and he took his time over it.

‘You should try this stuff,' he said. ‘Instead of just looking at it. It's good.' He lifted two satay sticks onto my plate and spooned sauce onto them. ‘This is the holiday part, isn't it?'

‘Sure, but . . .'

‘Or are you going to get that autopsy report out again and start reading about all the blood and brains and shit that got splattered on the wall? I think everyone here would like that. I think they'd find it really interesting.'

‘It was just a question. And maybe it's complete
coincidence. Maybe he went home and had a stiff Scotch and wrote it then, and that's just how it turned out.'

‘Maybe. And maybe I don't know.' He measured it out slowly, one word at a time. He wanted me to get the message.

‘I'm sorry. This is the holiday.'

His mouth was full again, more beef satay and rice. This time he didn't wait to finish it before speaking. ‘Bring on the mini-golf. Bring on the doves.'

* * *

THE MULTISTOREY
apartment buildings were lined up along the beachfront for miles in either direction, all of them shaped to face out to sea, towers of lights and patches of dark with the city falling away immediately behind them.

Below us, the night life of Surfers Paradise went on. Several lanes of traffic crawled along and pedestrians ambled, mostly in groups, perhaps destined for the clubs a few blocks away that would stay open most of the night. From the height of our floor, the only sound was the wind skidding around the building and the distant beating of the sea on the sand.

Ben had decided we should finish our wine outside. We kept the balcony lights off and sat in semi-darkness on the weatherproof, and therefore mainly plastic, holiday furniture. He had been quiet since the restaurant, and he sat with his glass in his hand staring into the wind and out at the ocean. There was nothing to see out there but a few stars among the patches of
cloud, and the slow lights of freighters working their way along the horizon.

I wondered what Hayley was doing, who she was with.

‘I'm sorry,' I told him. ‘For how I handled the situation with Eloise.'

‘No, I . . .' He looked caught out. It had been one ambush after another from me, one pounding for ancient deceit or another for any recent minor inconsistency.

‘No, let me,' I said. ‘I was more attached than she wanted me to be. I know that can happen with me.' I waited, but he didn't speak. ‘Thank you for not commenting on that. She chose to sleep with you. The
two
of you made that happen, not just you by yourself. I know she'd been drinking, but, still . . . I probably made it hard for her to talk, to bring up any problems. And that was the outlet she found. Or something like that.'

He stood up, still holding his wineglass. He turned and leaned against the railing, gripping it with his other hand. The light from inside fell across his white shirt, but not his face. I could see that he was looking at me, though, as if he was about to speak. But he said nothing.

‘Or maybe you were more than an outlet.' I wondered if I had got it wrong, if I would have to rewrite my history yet again and come out of it a bigger fool. ‘Maybe there was more to it.'

‘No, no,' he said. ‘No. That was it. An outlet.'

‘So, I've been a shit to you the past few days, and I'm sorry. I've been picking at details because I couldn't stop myself. You went through a really horrendous experience . . .'

He breathed out, shook his head, came away from
the railing. ‘Stop.' He held up his hand. ‘Stop. I can't lie to you now. Any more.'

I waited, waited for the revelation to hit, for some key piece of our long-ago past to be exposed, to hit me like a hammer, if it had to.

‘The story's not right,' he said. ‘About the siege.'

‘About the siege?' I was still back trying to be an adult about Eloise. ‘What do you mean?'

‘I don't know exactly . . . Rob Mueller was pacing around, trying to get up the guts to shoot Frank, I think. Frank was still out then. Still unconscious. And I was nothing to him, Rob Mueller. He made me drag Frank around the room. And then to the bathroom. That's all pretty much like I told you. I think he wanted to shoot Frank's head off in a toilet, or something. Something degrading.' He was frowning, picturing it, looking away from me. ‘He lost it when we were in there. He started bawling. Frank woke up. And that's when Rob Mueller . . .' He turned my way again. He had stepped forward and his face was now in the light. ‘That's when Rob Mueller shot himself. Backed himself up against the wall and shot himself. I was in the corner, the far corner. It was deafening and there was plaster and stuff everywhere. I moved towards him and I slipped on the mess on the floor – the blood and the urine, I guess – and I fell on him. So there I was, wrestling with this guy who had just blown his own head off. As brain came out the back of his skull and into my hands.' His grip on his wineglass shifted, and I wondered if he might drop it. ‘Then we were on our way out. I couldn't believe how bright the daylight was when we got outside, I remember that. And I was the hero. Frank made me the
hero, then and there, with his head still split open and bleeding. I couldn't speak. I couldn't hear properly and I had this shit all over me and people were shouting. Frank made me a hero, and that day I think I believed him. I had blanks and he filled in the details.'

‘It was suicide.'

‘Yeah. I was nowhere near him. And I wasn't brave. It's just how the story got told.'

I had picked at the story and picked at it, but it hadn't come undone and now, with my job days away from finished, it had fallen apart.

‘You've got an interview on Wednesday with Who Weekly,' I said to him. ‘I've been out there pitching this hero story pretty vigorously. You talked to sixteen media outlets today. You've got TV on Friday. How are you going to handle it?'

‘I'm just going to handle it. I've
been
handling it. It's all over at the end of the week. That's what you said.'

So he was going to go through with it, and I had become part of the lie. There was no recanting now, not with it all over the radio that afternoon, the TV news that night and the papers in the morning. Two more stories and the lie could be put to bed.

‘I could have fixed this if you'd told me yesterday. Or I could at least have done something.' I would have called him in sick. I would have worked the phones shutting interviews down. It would have been a start. ‘Why didn't you tell me?'

‘Because it's over at the end of the week. I've had a year and a half of this, and it's nearly done.' He was the runner stumbling in the home straight of the marathon, his eyes never on the medal but always on the end.

I had been fooled, but we had all been fooled. I'd had doubts, but not enough to back them up. These stories – siege stories, stories of disaster – called out for a hero, and worked best once a hero could be found. But this hero had been manufactured, not found, and by the one man who knew his story to be false.

‘So, why did Frank do it?' I said. ‘Why did he nominate you for a bravery award, and make damn sure you got one, if you weren't brave at all?'

‘I don't know.' His voice was unsteady now. ‘I don't know about that. I don't get it. He had a head injury. Maybe it was really how he saw it.'

‘And you didn't think to set him straight?'

‘It happened before I could stop it.'

‘And why should I believe that, when you've just told me you've been lying to me for a week?'

There was no answer to that. He just shrugged.

‘Two more interviews,' he said. ‘Then you can forget about this.'

We were back to bare expediency, and the fragile thing between us that looked like a kind of trust was gone. I was back to doing my oven job, Ben to putting a long loud lie to bed. He had a fresh pair of letters after his name now, and a star in a box, and for them he had hidden in a corner and fallen on a dead man.

‘I feel better, now that I've told you,' he said. He went to drink from his wineglass, but it was already empty.

I had to walk away then. I didn't want him feeling better, and I had run out of things to say.

* * *

MY WINE WAS STILL
THERE
in the morning, in its glass on the balcony table, warm in the sun.

It was the TV that woke me, a loud ad during a breakfast show. When I walked out of my room, Ben was sitting with his feet on the coffee table, eating a bowl of cereal. He was getting on as normal.

I turned my phone on and a text message came through from Hayley, sent late the night before. ‘Doves booked in for 2pm. See you mid-morning.'

‘I think I know who that might be . . .' Ben said.

But it was the opening line of a conversation from a different era and I couldn't do it. I couldn't let the two of us act like two uni students talking about a girl.