The Slap (58 page)

He started to panic. Four was an even number. He did not like even numbers, did not trust them. He needed one more certainty. He looked around at the crowded pub, grimaced at the smell of beer, cooking oil and stale smoke, tried to block out the incessant
ching chang ching
of the pokie machines. He needed one more item for his list, one more certainty, and he needed to find it before his father came back from the toilet. Mum,
Six Feet Under
, Nick Cercic, Connie. Just one more. He started tapping furiously on the table. His chest felt tight, he was going to need his ventolin. You fucking idiot, he snarled at himself, stay calm. He tried to block out the congealed fatty mess of his half-eaten chicken schnitzel on the table. He couldn’t concentrate. Not with the barrage from the pokies, not with the Delta Goodrem video playing on the plasma screen over the bar. He detested Delta Goodrem. He wished she had died of cancer. Mum,
Six Feet Under
, Nick Cercic, Connie and . . . and . . . His dad was coming back. He had to make a decision now.
Now
. His father was sitting down, looking at him with that bored, sheepish grin that said, I don’t want to be here any more than you do.

His father burped. Richie got a whiff of beer and smoke and tomato sauce.

Five. If he ended up anything like his old man he would off himself. Five. Richie breathed out slowly. He wasn’t having an asthma attack, he didn’t need his ventolin. He slumped back on his chair, crossed his arms. Mum,
Six Feet Under
, Nick Cercic, Connie, and that he’d kill himself if he ended up like Craig Hillis sitting opposite him. They were all the certainties he needed.

‘Aren’t you hungry?’

Richie shook his head. He pretended to yawn. He knew that would piss his father off.

‘Didn’t you like it?’

‘S’alright.’

‘I reckon the grub is fantastic in this place.’

Richie slumped further in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. It was a tacky pokies pub in the middle of nowhere, boganville. Every street looked the same, every house looked the same, everybody looked the same. It was where you came to die. Zombies lived here. He could hear them monotonously tapping away at the machines.

‘But you don’t like it?’

‘I said it was alright.’

His father pointed to the empty glasses on the table. ‘You want another beer?’

Richie nodded.

His father almost fell over in his rush to the bar. They were both glad for any excuse to be away from each other. Richie watched his father smiling and chatting away to the big-breasted young girl who was serving. Her tank-top read I ♥ NY but if you looked closer at the ♥ it was made up of tight, red-scrawled letters that read ‘
Haven’t been to
’. His father had thought it cool and funny when they had gone up to order. It had made Richie want to take a knife and jam it into his own throat. The woman was now pouring the drinks. His father turned around and winked at Richie who pretended not to notice. His dad always wore jeans that looked like they were two sizes too small for him. It was a bad idea. Like his mum said, Craig Hillis had no arse to speak off.

‘Here you go, mate.’ His father, with a forced smile, clinked glasses. Richie downed nearly half the glass with a rapid, throaty glug. Why the fuck not? He had no school left, he was in the middle of Dawn of the Dead land with his zombie father, and he would be legal age in a matter of weeks. Might as well get drunk as fast as he could.

It was at least eight months since he’d last seen his old man. In terms of their history together, that meant that they were now closer than they had ever been. He had been seven years old before he’d met his father. Back then all he had wanted was to love the man, to have someone he could call Dad. His Nana Hillis had set up the meeting; she had never lost contact with Tracey and Richie and she had finally forced her own son to face up to his responsibilities. Richie found this out much later. As a young boy his mother had told him nothing of her battles through the courts to get child support from Craig. All Richie was told was that his father was a truck driver who lived far away. Then at seven he had met him. Craig had taken him to a football game. Even back then, Richie had a dawning sense that the fact that men loved kicking a leather ball to one another boded ill for the sanity of the human race. Nevertheless, he made an effort to become familiar with the codes and rituals of being a supporter of the Collingwood Football Club, forcing his mum to buy him a black-and-white team singlet, standing in line outside the Northland Toys“R”Us one pre-finals Saturday in order to get his singlet signed by Nathan Buckley. But after a few desultory weekends, Craig simply stopped coming around to see him. Then soon after Richie got a call from Craig, saying that he had married and moved up to Cairns with his new wife. He didn’t see him again for six years. In the meantime, he heard through his nan that he had a baby half-brother, and he secretly hoped that one day he would be invited up north to visit Craig’s new family. No invitation came, but he had not been entirely forgotten. Every Christmas he would receive a card and a gift voucher for a CD. It seemed every second year his father would remember to ring him on his birthday. He’s a bloody selfish prick, Nana Hillis would say to him, I’m glad you take after your mum. When Richie turned fourteen, his father returned to Melbourne. Craig’s marriage had ended in divorce and he was back to driving trucks. At fourteen, Richie was not into pretending any love for footy or Formula One racing or the arse-end of the Arnold Schwarzenegger back catalogue. Father and son literally had nothing to say to one another.

‘Another?’ Richie raised his eyebrow. This was Craig’s fifth beer. There was no way he could drive Richie back to Preston tonight. He’d have to ask him for cab money.

‘Yeah, why not?’

His mobile phone started to throb. He quickly yanked it out of the pocket of his shorts. Connie had sent him a text. He read it and giggled.
Shld we cum + save u?
He quickly typed a return text.
Safe 4 the mmnt. Zmbies hvnt gt me yt.

‘Who you texting?’

‘A friend.’

‘I guessed that. Which friend?’

Richie looked across at his old man. He had his legs spread wide apart, showing the faded white material of the groin of his jeans. Richie wished his father would close his bloody legs. He tried to ignore his father’s crotch.

‘Connie.’

‘She’s your girlfriend, right?’

Richie sipped at his beer, not answering. He hoped his disgusted expression was answer enough.

‘How long have you been together?’

Richie almost spilled his beer, he banged his glass on the table so hard. ‘She’s not my fucking girlfriend. She’s got a boyfriend.’

‘Who?’

‘Ali.’

‘An Arab?’

He was stuck in
Dawn of the Dead
land. Eat me, thought Richie despondently, rip out my guts and heart and stomach. Make me the Undead.

‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘Jesus Fucking Christ, Rick.’ His father flinched. In turning round, he had slammed his knee into the table leg. Good, he’d finally shut his legs. ‘I didn’t mean anything by that. I don’t give a fuck if she’s rooting some Arab.’

‘He’s Australian. He was born here.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Yeah.’ Richie pointed around the pub, waving his finger like a wand. ‘I know exactly what you mean. You don’t like Arabs or Asians or black people or fags or anyone except boring white people out here in zombie suburbia.’ Richie rocked back and forth in his chair. ‘I bet you voted for John Howard.’

‘This is a boomtime, mate. There’s plenty of money going round.’ Craig made the words sound like shotgun fire. ‘None of your business who I voted for anyway.’

Richie said nothing. He pulled out his phone and texted to Connie:
The Zmbies R Coming, the Zmbies R Coming.
He looked up.

His father sighed heavily. ‘Look, Rick.’ His father and Nana Hillis were the only ones who called him by that name. His grandfather’s name. ‘I know we don’t have the best relationship. All my fucking fault, I admit it. But you’re old enough to understand things now.’ His father stopped, scratched at his hair, smiled hopefully.

Richie put his phone away.

‘I had just turned nineteen when your mum got pregnant. A year older than you are now. I wasn’t ready. I fucked up and ran away. What do you want me to do?’

His phone was vibrating. He wanted to answer it but, just now, for the first time in years, he didn’t want to provoke his father. He sat still, drank fitfully from his beer.

His father had taken out a packet of Winfield Blues and was playing with them on the table. ‘You want to come out with me while I have a smoke?’

Richie nodded. ‘Can I have one?’

Craig hesitated. ‘Does your mother know you smoke?’

‘I don’t smoke. I like to have an occasional one.’

‘Does she let you?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Does she let you?’

‘I said yeah.’

Craig flicked him over a cigarette. ‘Come on then.’

The carpark was full of smokers. The night was warm, and as soon as they had walked out into the heat Richie felt himself starting to sweat, moisture damp and squishy in his armpits. He watched his father smoke. They held the cigarette in the same way. Two fingers coiled tight around the base. Was it just him and Craig? Or did everybody smoke that way?

‘Did you want to get rid of me?’ He startled himself by asking the question out loud.

His father was frowning.

‘Did your mother tell you that?’

‘No.’ For the first time in his life Richie had been thinking of his father as a young guy, nineteen, with a pregnant girlfriend. What did the girls at school do? Either they had the baby or they had an abortion. What would he want to do in that situation? Lose the foetus pronto—that was all you could do. Craig must have been furious at Trace for keeping him. He must have gone fucking ballistic.

His father was sucking hard on the cigarette. Richie realised that his father must be thirty-seven years old. That was pretty young for a father of a kid his age.

‘It’s okay if you did. I’d want her to have an abortion if I got a girl pregnant.’

Craig laughed. ‘I’m glad your mum didn’t do it.’

They stood next to each other, smoking, nearly touching. It was uncomfortable, like they should hug or something. But neither of them knew how to do that.

By the end of the night his father had become too drunk to drive him home. Craig, sounding shocked as the words slipped out, asked his son if he wanted to crash at his place for the night. Richie, to his own amazement, accepted. Connie had sent him another text; she and Ali were in the city. He looked at the throbbing steel-blue illuminated screen and quickly punched a message back.
C U 2mro.
Leaving the van in the pub’s expansive carpark, they decided to walk the kilometre or so back to Craig’s house.

They hardly spoke to each other on the walk. Richie wondered if his father was feeling the same anxiety that he himself was experiencing, a faintly nauseating discomfort at their sudden closeness. Richie had never visited anywhere his father had lived in. Now he was about to stay a night in this near stranger’s house.

Flat. It wasn’t a house, it was a small red-brick shitbox flat on the first floor. Craig switched on the light and almost shoved Richie through the door. The tiny space stank of the mildew and smoke. Richie took a quick glance around the living area. The walls were bare except for a poster of Tony’s gang from
The Sopranos
Blu-Tacked above a sunken snot-green sofa. One of the cushions had fallen onto the rough, chocolate-coloured carpet; the upholstery was faded, stained, Richie could see the exposed coils beneath. Craig pushed the cushion back in place and pointed to the armchair opposite. Richie sat down on the chair and Craig plonked himself on the sagging sofa: his arse nearly hit the floor which made Richie want to laugh. A bong and a half-full ashtray were the only items on the table. Craig struggled forward, perched on the edge of the sofa and grabbed the bong.

‘You smoke?’

‘Sure.’

After three rounds of the bong, Craig had fallen asleep on the sofa. Richie got up, turned off the Led Zeppelin II CD on the stereo and walked into Craig’s bedroom. He switched on the light.

There was a mattress on the floor. The sheets had been cast off, and the pillow was doubled over. Richie slid open the window and looked over the tiled red roof of the brick-veneer house next door. There was a distant hum from traffic on the Maroondah Highway. But otherwise the silence was disconcerting.
The Night of the Living Dead
, thought Richie, this is the land of the zombies. He turned around to examine the room. His father’s clothes were all stuffed in a hanging canvas frame. Underwear, T-shirts, socks, singlets, everything was jumbled in together. There was a stack of magazines next to the mattress. Richie squatted and looked through them. An AFL form guide, a few issues of
Drive
,
Ralph
, a
Penthouse
and heaps of porn. He glanced nervously behind him. He could hear his father’s slow, even snores. Richie shut the door, stripped to his underwear and pulled the sheets over himself. He grabbed one of the porn mags and began to flick through it. An anatomically ludicrous woman was writhing on a kitchen floor, her shaven cunt shoved to the camera, disinfectants and cleaning agents scattered around her. Richie suppressed a giggle. He dropped the magazine and picked up another. A hairy, olive-skinned man, a Celtic tattoo on his forearm, was fondling a blonde woman’s breast. The guy looked like a Muzza, or an Italian or Greek, he looked a bit like a thuggish, more chunky Hector. That seemed off, a betrayal of Connie. Hector was a prick, a fuckwit, a pervert. He put the magazine back on the pile.

Richie’s cock was hard. He looked down at his body. So fucking white, so many freckles, pimples still on his shoulders. His bush looked ridiculously hairy in the harsh light of the naked bulb above him. His cock looked too big, grotesque, on his too-thin body. He jumped up and turned off the light. He got back into bed, breathed heavily, adjusting to the dark. He could just make out Craig’s snores. Richie knew he would have to wank before he could fall asleep but he was too stoned to concentrate on an image, on a fantasy. He tried to think of Nick. He was at the pool with Nick, they were showering. A burst of heavy snoring came from the next room. Richie closed his eyes tight and started to vigorously pump his cock. He wouldn’t think, he’d just let his mind go, let it take him where it took him. Hector was in a car, his legs outstretched, Richie was sitting beside him. Hector was pulling down his zip, he was forcing Richie down over his cock. Richie was almost punishing himself as he brutally rubbed his dry fist up and down the shaft of his dick. Semen burst over his hand, it oozed, warm, sticky, through his clenched fingers, disgusting him. Fuck, he cursed himself, I’m one perverted fuck. Hector was evil. He had hurt Connie, violated her. He was sick sick sick. Had she enjoyed any of it? She must have kissed him, touched his skin. She must have enjoyed some of it. Richie’s cock twitched.
Sick sick sick.
His semen, now cold, clammy, was sliding down his thigh. He groaned and threw the sheets off himself. It would be too wrong and too weird to get any of his cum on Craig’s bedding. He pulled off his undies and cleaned himself off. In minutes he was asleep.