Las Vegas for Vegans (15 page)

He flushes, and lets this strange idea gurgle away as well.

She might be in the lounge room. Maybe she had some bad dreams (which would be a first, but still theoretically possible), and she went out and turned on the television thinking,
best not to disturb X
, since she knows he hasn't been sleeping well.

He washes his hands and face in the bathroom basin. Tells the reflection in the mirror that it needs to shave. Get a haircut. Trim nasal hairs, ear hair. The reflection responds with a tired exhalation, as though one of them were responsible for the long lack of sleep, but it's not obvious who.

Again he pauses at a door. Beyond it, in the lounge, will be his wife, with a ready explanation. It will be an incidental thing he'll never think about again. A call in the middle of the night from her sister, who is breaking up with her husband and needs his wife to talk to about it all. Maybe her sister will want to come and stay with them for a few weeks, and she'll have to bring her yelling, running, throwing boys. He is almost angry as he steps into the empty, lifeless lounge.

She's not in the kitchen either. The fluorescent light she insists always stay on, because it takes more power to turn it on than it does to run it for eight hours (which he doesn't believe, but who knows—maybe) is turned off.

The only other room is being used as a storeroom for all the books he can't fit in the shop, and there is no way she'd be in there. Yet she has to be. He shuffles there feeling like he has a head full of bees. What can he be expecting now? It can't still be reasonable, can it? But she isn't there. Just the same old bookshelves on every wall, filled with books. The same towers of books in the middle of the room, surrounded by the same boxes of books. And nowhere can he find his wife.

He goes back to the kitchen and finds no evidence of the risotto they made last night. Usually there would be the largest frying pan, encrusted with rice, mushroom and parmesan remnants, soaking in water. There would be plates and cutlery. Instead, he finds McDonald's wrappers and pizza boxes and the curry-stained clear plastic containers they give him at the Indian restaurant. None of her soy milk containers in the fridge. In the lounge, no pictures of her in the usual frames. There aren't many pictures of anyone. Just old family photographs covered in dust. And the photo of his wife he keeps in his wallet—that isn't there either.

He walks to the bedroom and switches on the light. He hesitates in front of the wardrobe containing her many dresses, clothes for so many different occasions. Her work shirts for the Department of Defence, her pants and skirts on hangers, and at the bottom, the many, many shoes. Racks of shoes. Like she's a human centipede. Inside the wardrobe now are boxes of books. Books and more books. And nothing of his wife. Nothing at all.

No wedding ring on his finger. Not even a mark.

He could fall to the floor—to begin writhing. He could close his eyes and start screaming. Because that's what mad people do. But he walks out of the bedroom and to his kitchen to make breakfast, wondering along the way when he lost his mind. Has he been insane before, and the wife is part of that, and now somehow he's come out of it? Or is he insane now? He doesn't feel it. He doesn't hear her talking to him. He just has memories of a woman who was here until just last night, when they made risotto, ate, watched a 1962 Orson Welles film called
The Trial
, and stumbled to bed, having already conked out on the couch two-thirds of the way through.

On his way out, he pauses in the stairwell of his apartment block and knocks on Miranda's door. She knows X and his wife well enough to call them both by name. But she isn't home. X walks up to another door of neighbours he doesn't know by name. They'll be able to tell him at least if they've seen him living with someone in his apartment.

One of the two girls who lives at number nine answers the door in her bathrobe. Still more asleep than awake. She has breasts so large that no matter how innocent the conversation, there is always a hint of pornography in the air. She doesn't say anything. She watches him—waiting.'

‘Hello there. Good morning,' he says, bobbing his head. He wishes he could point out the gaping part in her bathrobe without appearing lewd. ‘Sorry to disturb.'

She doesn't move. Blinks a long sleepy blink.

‘I was just wondering ….' He puts his pinkie in his ear and wiggles it around—a nervous habit that drives his wife crazy. He closes his eyes to avoid distraction.

‘Have you seen a woman come and go at any point over the last few months you've been living here? I mean, entering and leaving my apartment?'

She moves back a centimetre. ‘No—I don't mean that! As if I would. You have to go to hotels, don't you? Or the other kind of place … I'm getting sidetracked here. I mean, you might have thought she's my wife. Which is indeed, who she is. I'm just wondering have you seen her around.'

She's not blinking now. She's not looking all that sleepy anymore either. ‘You know I'm married, don't you?' he says. ‘Have you seen my wife?'

She closes the door.

Insane people aren't supposed to know they're insane, but that can't be true. Most of them would have moments of clarity, where they would look at their lives and Know It. X could look at his life and recollect every detail about his wife—from her date of birth to her maiden name, to her mother's and father's names, her mother's maiden name for God's sake, her brothers' and sisters' names, and the names of their spouses, the problems with those spouses, the issues with their children, and more … and more still. Details you couldn't imagine. Because imagination only gets you so far. It wouldn't fill in the trivial details of day-to-day life, would it? Delusions don't cook mushroom risottos.

X opens his bookstore at the usual time, because it's either that or go and get himself locked up. He sits down behind his desk, trying to think. Not successfully. Thought keeps getting shortcircuited by panic.

Just as he's about to pick up the phone and call his wife's sister, it rings.

His wife usually calls three or four times a day. Some people might think that's excessive. There are couples that never call each other outside of emergencies, he assumes. But his wife has a compulsion. A need to make sure he is eating what he is supposed to be eating. That he'll be picking up what he's meant to be picking up on his way home. And petrol. Don't forget petrol, since it's Tuesday, and Tuesdays are cheaper than any other day of the week. If he was mad, would he remember that?

He picks up the phone and hears his wife ask, ‘Hello. I was just wondering if you had a book by Jerzy Kosinski. It's called
Being There.
Or,
The Painted Bird.
Or even
The Devil Tree.
All of them are by Jerzy Kosinski.'

No, it isn't his wife. He hasn't heard her voice. This voice begins spelling the name. ‘J for James,
E
for Edward …'

‘No, I don't have it. Nothing by that author. I'm sorry.'

‘Are you sure? Do you want to check?'

‘No, I know.'

‘I can wait.'

‘Excuse me?'

‘Check your computer or whatever. It's not a problem.'

X doesn't have a computer. He's barely ever seen anything by Kosinski. ‘I know I don't have that author.'

‘By Kosinski? Do you want me to spell it?'

‘Yes. No. I'm sorry, I can't help you.' X hangs up. There's a pile of books he just bought in from a deceased estate. Some great military and history books in four boxes. A few good biographies. You can never have enough on Winston Churchill. Obscure novels in there as well—like
Nog
and
Flats
and
Quake
by Rudolph Wurlitzer, like
The Blind Owl
by Sadegh Hedayat—that will sit on his shelves for years without selling. But you never know, and usually the deal with deceased estates is that you take everything, even the things you don't really want.

He opens his bottle of eucalyptus oil and begins cleaning the books. When he's done a few he sits down to start covering them in plastic. The routine might settle him down.

The phone rings again. He looks at it, his heart beginning to beat faster. What if it is her and there is some explanation? Is there a laugh to be had here?

‘Hello there. Could you please tell me if you have a book called
Wide Sargasso Sea?'
A woman's voice, but not even similar to his wife's. His wife's voice has a lot of the musicality of her youth, even if she is now into her forties. Or had been. How is he to phrase that? Married twenty years. What is twenty years of nothing?

‘Remind me of the author,' he tells the voice.

‘Jean Rhys. She called herself a doormat in a world of boots,' the voice says hopefully.

‘No, I'm sorry. I haven't seen that one in a while.'

‘You don't want to check?'

‘No. I know I don't have it. If you want to leave your number, I'll give you a call when it comes in.' He takes down her details. He has similar information in the same customerrequests book going back ten years.

X continues to clean his books with eucalyptus, covering each one afterwards. A few browsers wander in and out, no-one buying anything. Eventually a woman comes in and buys a book about raising autistic children. She flusters him with her beauty and bewilders him with her heady perfume. He can't make up his mind what to charge her, so he asks her to decide. She asks him if he's alright, and his head wobbles in response.

The phone rings again. ‘When are you coming over?' a woman's voice asks. The voice sounds familiar but he's not sure who it is.

‘Is that the title of a book?' he asks.

‘Yes. It's by an American Indian author. His name is Arse Kicking. I know the author personally. I'll be glad to introduce you.' There's amusement in her voice.

‘I'm sorry.' He's wracking his brain. ‘That's funny. I want to laugh. But I'm having a difficult day. It's busy here. And I'm not sure who this is.'

There's a young man wearing a beret, leafing through the poetry books, clearly with no intention of buying anything, even the ones that would cost him five dollars. He reads poetry every day for free like that. His head lifts when he hears X say it's busy, a grin on his face. X wants to throw a Winston Churchill at him.

‘You know it's Jenny. You can play funny buggers if you like, but you'd better get your arse over here in the next half-hour.'

‘Jenny from the …' He doesn't know what to call her store. Never has. ‘From a few stores down.'

‘Yes, Wiseacres. From a few stores down. You've got twenty-nine and counting.'

‘Did I say I was coming?'

She laughs—a strange giggle in it—and hangs up. He looks at the poetry reader, and the reader looks at him, before ducking his head back into the book.

‘Let me ask you a question,' X says to the poetry reader. ‘You've been here a hundred times, and heard me speaking on the phone. Have you heard me talking to my wife?'

‘How would I know if she was your wife just by hearing your side of a phone conversation?' the poetry reader asks, his finger keeping his page.

‘Well, you would have heard me responding to various kinds of scolding. Things about food. Or what to buy on the way home.'

The phone is ringing again, and before X picks it up, he says to the poetry reader, ‘Think about it.'

‘Howdy!' A male voice. Big. Expectant. A rooster in a world of chickens. This kind of greeting always makes X feel like hanging up.

He takes a breath and asks, ‘How can I help you?'

‘Have you got
Shantaram?'

‘No, I haven't,' X tells him.

A pause. Getting angry, ‘How can you not have
Shantaram?'

‘It's one of those books that stays bought. I don't see it come in all that often,' X informs him.

‘What kind of a store is that?' The big voice won't tolerate it.

‘I'm a second-hand bookstore,' X says.

‘Sounds like you're a pretty crappy second-hand bookstore.' He doesn't hang up—apparently he wants a response to his observation.

‘Maybe you'd be interested in Winston Churchill,' X suggests, readying his dagger, ‘instead of New Age pseudo-hippie crap!' X hangs up but feels guilty. Not because he's got a copy of the book at home—a first edition (and not the pitiful paperback editions that came with a change of publisher)— but because he actually likes the book. The poetry reader in the beret has silently slipped out.

X locks the bookstore and walks down to Jenny's shop.

The reason he doesn't know what to call it is that it has everything and nothing in it. You could find light globes if you wanted ones with a pink tint, or wrapping paper in various shades of rose, or a florid little jacket for your chihuahua to wear during Melbourne's cold winters. On some of Jenny's walls are elaborate gilded mirrors, with the wood carved into ruffles and painted what she calls ‘blush'. There are ruby- and garnet-encrusted jewellery boxes. Vermillion slippers and scarlet dressing gowns with fuchsia-coloured feathers. Boxes of chocolates, heart-shaped, with removable violet arrows through them. And behind the counter she has sex toys, with pink things he doesn't want to think about.

It is a theme store, he supposes. He calls it ‘the pink shop'. The woman's place. He doesn't really know what to call it. And it doesn't matter. On a good day his bookstore brings in two or three hundred dollars. Jenny's store uses that kind of money for weekly advertisements.

Hovering just inside the door, waiting for Jenny to finish a sale, he feels like he's already been swallowed. He doesn't know what to do, since there's nothing he can look at without feeling ridiculous.

The two old ducks at the counter are arguing about who's going to pay for the pink swimming caps they're buying. One of them has paid for the bus fare, and the other for lunch, and now they aren't sure who has paid for what, and who should pay now, and who'll pay for dinner later on.