Early Warning

By Garry Disher

I didn’t go to my normal GP but to the twenty-four-hour clinic opposite the Housing Commission flats, and when the doctor there informed me the results were clear I said lightly: ‘So I’m HIV-negative.’ It was the lightness of nervous relief, but still, he didn’t like it. He wore one of those Tissot rock-watches and shot a white cuff over it and straightened the papers in my file and closed it as if to say he had me pegged as someone who’d now go out and get HIV-positive.

In fact, the whole business had been demoralising and there was some unattractive posturing I wanted to atone for. I left the clinic and walked back along Brunswick Street. In the traffic bunched behind a tram was a badly-tuned Falcon with a holed muffler, and at once my eyes and throat began to burn. I jotted time, date, location, vehicle registration and the nature of the hazard in my notebook. When I say unattractive posturing I mean I’d had trouble getting my mind around Anna’s stipulation that we have tests before we embarked on this thing. Bit extreme. What are you implying? So much for romantic love. I went into Quill’s to get her something on Tuscany or goddess worship.

Rick was changing the window display. His teeth gleamed briefly at me. I checked his ponytail. I liked its neatness. I liked its bravado. My own was still a stub. Meg was applying barcodes to a carton of new Picadors, Her teeth gleamed at me. In Quill’s it’s Radio National, customers in armchairs around a hearth, Mapplethorpe nudes on the wall like unhinging images in a dream. There’s an upstairs room for readings and launches, and someone puts a little magazine together in the back room. New releases are chalked on the board outside. Rick and Meg stock everything from Rolling Stone to Irigaray and brew a pot of Earl Grey whenever reviewers for the Sunday papers come into the shop.

I liked A Tuscan Table as soon as I saw it. I picked it up. I rubbed my fingers experimentally over the coarse-grained dust jacket, then opened the book, listening for that satisfying creak and not being disappointed. The pages were thick, uncut, the colour of unbleached straw. They’d used a crisp typeface and sepia-coloured ink. The illustrations—imagined tables in imagined villages—were luminous watercolours. A Tuscan Table was also no bigger than a paperback and four times the price.

I reshelved it. I idled along the walls, thinking how I would do this. In Crime I found paperback titles on my permanent list, but their size was wrong for my needs, they were small pulp American imports, so I kept looking. On the bottom shelf were oversized paperbacks. It was a toss up between Barbara Vine and the latest Andrew Vachss. In the end I picked out a big Bodley Head edition of the latest Vachss and took it to the cash register.

Rick climbed out of the window, dusting his hands on his stone-washed jeans.

I said, ‘Plastic okay?’

‘Sure.’

I handed him Visa and watched him process it. He checked the date and the price and ticked where it said Visa. I indicated the Vachss. ‘This selling okay?’

He held his hand flat and waggled it. ‘Reasonable.’

‘You read it?’

He looked at me. ‘The first one was enough. I mean, God. A psycho hero with a super-dog and a secret loft and sicko friends? Give me a break. He writes fairy tales.’

He waited. I said, ‘Never read him.’

‘Yeah, well. Want a bag?’

I said yes and he gave me the Visa and the receipt and I was relieved when he slid the Vachss into a large plain paper bag. I walked out of the shop. He returned to the display window.

He’d sealed the flap with a strip of Scotch tape which I prised away, and a few seconds later I was stepping hurriedly back into the shop, frowning a little, rolling my eyes, saying I had a mind like a sieve.

I was poised there. I was ready to retreat if I had to.

But nothing happened. No-one looked up. Rick’s ponytail swung offhandedly, a tram rumbled by outside, that’s all, while across the room Meg applied her barcodes, walled in by Picadors, and a solitary customer browsed at the Lifestyle shelves.

I crossed the room. I slipped A Tuscan Table into the bag with the Vachss. I went out again. ‘Thanks!’ I said. ‘Changed my mind!’

* * * *

At home I wrapped the book in sleek grey paper patterned with miniature yellow ducks and tied it with straw siring I’d saved from a Market Imports parcel. For background I played Tom Waits: I had a Sony system two days old and I was still reassuring myself I had an improved sound.

When I called Anna at work, she knew the reason why, and it made us both tentative, like a couple of kids. We hedged for a while, and I was wondering how to kick-start the issue when she beat me to it. ‘You don’t sound,’ she said, ‘like someone with a death sentence hanging over him.’

‘Clean as a whistle,’ I said.

We pulled back again from the edge and talked about the things we’d been doing. I told her about the new Sony. ‘Thirty per cent off,’ I said.

‘What about your old system?’

‘The ad’s in. No replies as yet.’

Her tone changed. ‘I hate this. It’s like making an appointment to screw. Why don’t you get us a nice red and I’ll see you at my place after work.’

She broke the connection. I stared at the wall, then unfolded my handkerchief and stretched it over the mouthpiece of the telephone. When Lisa answered in Communication Studies I told her I’d just come from the doctor’s. ‘It’s only a twenty-four-hour thing but he said I shouldn’t teach tonight.’

‘You sound terrible. Want me to ring everyone?’

‘Tell them go on with the next story.’

‘The next story.’

‘They’ll know what you mean. Also, they should watch the Barbara Vine mystery this week.’

‘I’ll put a note on the board as well.’

‘Thanks,’ I said.

She told me to take care of myself. I slotted a Roy Orbison tape into the Sony and fetched last week’s stories and settled in the recliner with a pencil and began to correct them. When the phone rang it wasn’t about my old sound system.

‘I don’t know what you mean by genre story.’

‘Hang on a tick, John,’ I said.

I turned down the volume and went back to the recliner. ‘Genre story.’

‘I don’t know what you mean by it.’

‘It means a category,’ I said. ‘Crime, romance, horror, science fiction . . . ‘

When he didn’t respond, I said, ‘The sort of thing people read on holidays. You know, airport fiction.’

‘If I read on a plane I feel nauseated. Never fails.’

I switched the receiver to the other ear. ‘You know the kind of thing I mean, though.’

His voice took on a side-of-the-mouth quality, as though he’d just lit a cigarette. ‘I thought this was suppose to be a riding course.’

‘It is.’

‘Well how come we have to learn bad riding?’

‘You’re not. After your genre story and your postmodern story, you’re free to write what you like.’

I waited. ‘Tell me again about genre,’ he said.

‘Have you read any of the examples I gave?’

‘Mate, some of us have to work.’

I’d taped the Roy Orbison from an old pressing. The sound lacked definition. ‘Just one of each to get an idea,’ I said. ‘Say a Cliff Hardy and a Women’s Weekly and a Stephen King. Just so you get a feel for the rules governing them.’

‘You said there weren’t any.’

‘Weren’t any what?’

‘Rules. You said if it works, do it.’

I placed the pencil on the top manuscript and watched it roll down into my lap. I did it again. ‘It’s a bit different with popular fiction,’ I said. ‘There you’ve got conventions. Take the private eye—he’s a loner. Take Mills and Boon—girl meets boy, girl seems to lose boy, girl gets boy in the end.’

He said nothing. He was breathing and possibly making notes.

‘When you say girl and boy you mean teenagers, not little kids.’

‘I tell you what, John, try a crime story. Got a pen?’

‘Hang on.’

He may have bashed his receiver with a brick and then he came on the line again and said, ‘Okay.’

‘These are the elements of the detective story, for example: a criminal, a crime, a milieu—that’s sort of like the world of the story—a victim, suspects and a detective. Okay?’

‘Wait. Okay.’

‘Under “suspects” put motive, means and opportunity.’

‘Hang on—you told us this Monday.’

I rubbed my face hard with my free hand and said, ‘Well, see how you go. But plan it first. This sort of fiction has to be plotted closely.’

‘I was away when you did plot.’

There was a clack as the Sony went into reverse mode. I waited for the recording-level lights to flicker again. I wasn’t convinced that I’d balanced the left channel with the right. It seemed to stray too often into the red. I said:

‘Would an extension help? I could give you till the end of the month.’

‘How serious is the three thousand words?’

‘It’s flexible.’

‘The end of the month.’

‘Read a few examples first, John,’ I said.

* * * *

I continued to mark last week’s stories and I was sharpening the pencil for the second time, bawling out ‘In Dreams’, when Hoke smacked through the cat-flap, his fur on end, his tail lashing, his eyes alight. ‘You stay here where it’s safe, Hoke,’ I said.

He saw that his bowl was empty. He turned bitterly away, jumped onto the stack of unmarked stories, cleaned his paws and went to sleep. ‘Thanks,’ I said. Someone pounded on the front door.

I went down the hall and opened it. Magda was standing there, so I said, ‘Sorry about the noise.’

‘That cat,’ she said, looking fierce.

She was bare-skinned under her painting overalls, speckled and striped with acrylic paint. ‘What’s he done now?’ I said.

‘Same as yesterday. Same as last week. Same as last year.’

‘He gets plenty to eat,’ I said, frowning and shaking my head.

‘Just now he go like this—scratch!—at Mr Wig.’

‘I’ll get you a water pistol,’ I said. ‘He hates getting wet.’

Maggda opened her eyes wide. ‘No. Poor Hoke.’

So I said, ‘How’s your work going?’

She came closer and lowered her voice. ‘I have been using him, you know. I call him Tiger. Tiger burning bright.’ She waved a paint-flecked hand at the terraces of Frome Street, the townhouse complex, the old chimney stack. ‘A yellow tiger creeping like a yellow mist in the night.’

I looked doubtfully at Hoke. ‘Him?’ I said. ‘What about Mr Wig?’

‘Mr Wig. Mr Wig is a gentleman. So, it’s okay? You don’t copyright your tiger?’

‘Invite me to the exhibition,’ I said.

‘Okay.’

‘Be firm with Hoke. Don’t let him in.’

Magda fixed her face and limbs in a demonic rictus. ‘Yah! Like that.’

‘It worked just now,’ I said.

She turned to go. I said, ‘I thought you’d come about the noise.’

She stopped and put her head on one side. ‘First when I hear it I think it’s coming from over there, like always,’ she said, meaning the Flamingo Gate town-houses.

‘Sorry. I’ll keep it down.’

‘Like you were angry,’ she said.

‘Well, you know,’ I said, and I lifted my hand and stepped back inside.

Magda crossed the road to her house. They’d been tossing UDL cans into her front garden again. I saw her pick up a can and throw it hard. It cleared the wall around the townhouses and clattered onto a sundeck.

* * * *

I went back to work and at five o’clock I drew the curtains and locked the windows and the back door. The settings on the timer were okay. I plugged it into the wall socket and connected the reading light and the radio. After a few minutes, I touched the timer. It seemed to be warmer than normal. I unplugged it and switched on the reading light and the radio and left them on. Then I scattered the Green Guide on the recliner and placed a coffee mug on the floor nearby and rumpled the cushions. I went outside and sized up the house from the back garden and the side windows. I connected the timer again before I left the house but this time I moved the bottom edge of the curtain away from it, and thirty minutes later I was in King and Godfree choosing a red with the chianti cockerel on the neck.

By six o’clock I was caught in a peak-hour jam outside the MCG. A top of thirty tomorrow. More war news on ‘PM’. What bothered me was the van in the adjacent lane, rocking on its springs, releasing short snarls of unignited exhaust. I wrote down the details and was launching Scuds at it when the guy behind me leaned on his horn and I became aware of the widening gap ahead. I shifted into first and closed it.

We edged like that onto Hoddle Street and under the railway bridge and eventually onto the south-eastern freeway. By the time I exited at Glen Iris I had details of three more pollution infringements.

Anna lives in a white-trimmed Federation house on a tree-choked street. She had just got home, and answered my knock wearing her tapered jacket, white silk top, short binding skirt and stilettos. I kissed her and stepped back and looked her up and down. ‘Sort of day shaped,’ I said.

She touched the padded shoulders. ‘We call this power steering.’

I followed her through to the kitchen. When she turned around I said, ‘A little something for you.’

She examined both sides of the parcel, one eyebrow hooked, then shook it next to her ear. ‘Nice and solid, no moving parts, classy wrapping.’

‘Actually it’s my licence from the clinic,’ I said.

‘Very funny.’

I watched her undo the straw bow, my heart turning over at the configuration of her long fingers drawing on the knotty cord. ‘Ducks!’ she said, peering at the paper. ‘You remembered.’ Then I watched her face, and when she squeezed the breath from my lungs, my own smile was wide as a house.

‘It’s sort of a combination cookbook and cultural history,’ I said.

‘It’s wonderful. Pour yourself a drink and I’ll be back in a minute.’

She was in the doorway by then, but she didn’t go through. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be teaching tonight?’

‘I called in sick.’

She didn’t say anything. ‘Only this once,’ I said. ‘I had to see you. I’ll make it up to them.’

We were at that stage where you learn the major things by putting a foot wrong. Eventually she shrugged, said, ‘I suppose I should feel flattered,’ and went through to her room.

After a while I called the EPA using the wall phone mounted next to her fridge. I waited for the beep, then stated clearly each vehicle number, location, time and environmental offence. Thirty seconds isn’t long; I had to call twice to get everything down.

Anna came back fifteen minutes later wearing shorts and an Ethnic top. I ran Something more comfortable? through my head, rejecting it. ‘Cheers,’ I said, handing her a glass of the chianti.

‘Come through.’

Our place was the sofa in her sitting room, and she leaned against me there, rotating the crown of her head under my jaw. I looked out over the seat back. Lemons were rotting under the lemon tree ‘You haven’t changed your mind about dropping out?’ I said.

Her head moved more sharply. ‘No.’

‘Choir before literature, huh?’

‘We’ve been through this. I didn’t change the times.’

‘You could go into my Thursday class.’

‘I’m already doing too much. I want some evenings free.’

‘But you’ll keep writing.’

‘Oh, I’ll keep writing.’

Then her scalp knocked my bottom jaw against the top and she heaved around to face me. ‘Listen. Define women’s story.’

‘Women’s story?’

‘It’s what you wrote on Clare’s assignment. Plus “I’ve read this a million times before,” stuff like that.’

‘Well it’s true.’

‘But what do you mean by it?’

‘Oh,’ I said, keeping it light, ‘the female characters are all unhappily married, their husbands are shits, the house is a mess, they can’t cope with the kids, and either they lake an overdose or some woman friend comes along and it turns into a sisterhood story. I get it all the time’

‘My first story was like that.’

‘But yours was well written.’

‘So was Clare’s. I liked her story. She said she doesn’t know what your comments mean and she doesn’t think she’ll be returning to class again.’

‘I’ll talk to her.’

‘I don’t like your chances,’ Anna said.

* * * *

Hoke knows the Honda, and he appeared in the moonlight, stepping high and fast through the jasmine growing along the top rail of Magda’s fence. I locked the driver’s door, watching as he quivered on the corner post, stretched down it, and leapt to the ground. ‘Bad boy,’ I said, reaching for him.

They were partying under the spotlights on the sundeck again but I heard the phone. I dropped Hoke and ran inside and kept my voice flat and low as I said: ‘Peace offering.’

There was only line hiss like signals centuries old. Then a woman said, ‘You the one selling the Akai?’

I said, ‘Sorry about that. Thought it was a friend.’

‘Oh well, maybe next time. The Akai?’

‘Good sound,’ I said. ‘Everything works okay.’

‘How come you’re selling it?’

‘I’ve upgraded the whole system.’

‘Oh. Right. I could come now.’

‘Now?’

‘To see it. I could come now,’ she said.

It was a deep, good-humoured young voice, driven to high notes by dismay and laughter, when it would break in a way that made me think of plump arms and lazy eyelids. ‘My boyfriend’s having his twenty-first,’ she said. ‘I have to get him something. But if this is too late, if everyone’s going to bed?’

It was ten o’clock. I said now is fine, there’s only me, and gave her the address.

There were four of them, and my first notion was to ask where the girl was. My guess now is that she was in the van Magda saw when she went out to yell at the sundeck. The only useful thing I had to report was: there were four of them, and they came in hard and fast and cleaned me out. ‘Pros,’ the cops said.