New Australian Stories 2 (32 page)

She must have been adorable with braces. After she washes her hands she gives me a sleepy hug, her mouth humming against my neck, which I take to be a manifestation of her love, love that is not humming against the neck of her old school flame.

‘Did you enjoy seeing your pal?'

‘What a dreary man,' she says, yawning again, as content as I've seen her.

Blue Watches

BROOKE DUNNELL

Michael is standing in front of the aquarium in the lobby of the Diamant Grand Hotel in Basel. The fish are magnificent. Gliding slowly, soft fins wafting, cool as anything: when a large one drifts by, blinking, he can almost hear the whoosh-pop of the eyelid. Head cloudy with jet lag, he feels as if he is submerged too.

‘Come here, Michael.' His mother is sitting on a bumpy leather couch, and her face has a twist in it. An eel floats by, shuddering.

‘Michael!'

He joins his mother on the studded seat and she softens, smiling and placing a starfish hand on top of his head. ‘Daddy will be down soon.'

Michael's father makes expensive watches. Michael can't pronounce the brand name, but he knows they are all blue: smooth blue tiles for the strap and a shiny blue panel for the face. They all look the same, except the ladies' ones are narrower. Michael thinks that's boring, but his father says it's about brand recognition, which means people knowing a watch is Michael's father's without having to be told. Also, if he ever wants to, he can bring out a red-tile-and-face watch in a limited edition and blow everyone away. ‘The ace up my sleeve,' his father calls it.

They are in Switzerland so that Michael's father can attend a watch conference with all the other watchmakers in the world. His father says this is a big deal, a very big deal, because here he can get new distributors, new outlets. Michael isn't sure what was wrong with the old ones. His father says his brand recognition will be through the roof by the end of the conference. He says everyone will want an unpronounceable watch, and then what he'll do, he'll restrict the supply, make fewer so people want them more. (Michael thinks that's kind of mean, taking the watches away from the people who want them.) And then, when demand is strongest, his father says, he will release the red watch and the marketplace will go ballistic.

Michael has no reason to doubt this, only he's never seen anyone outside of his own family wear a blue watch. His mother and father wear theirs every day, and Michael will get one of his own when he turns thirteen, his father has promised. ‘The best watch the company ever made,' he says, though Michael isn't sure how this is possible, since all of his father's watches are exactly the same. Maybe he'll get a red one. Red is okay.

The hotel hums imperceptibly. There are so many brown couches it's like a shop. Michael wonders how a place with such awesome fish can have such ugly furniture.

He and his mother haven't been at the first few days of the watch conference because Michael didn't want to miss the school swimming carnival. Michael is one of the best swimmers in his year. He swam in every category, emerging from the lanes red-faced and gasping. In the end, he came second overall and got a shiny medallion, which in a lot of ways is actually better than the trophy for first, since he can wear it around his neck all the time.

He lies back and yawns. The plane ride was boring. He'd been on planes, but never for such a long time. Beforehand, while his father was packing for his own flight, he talked about the plane Michael would fly on, which was the biggest in the world. He said he went on a big plane like that, when he was younger, and they let him into the cockpit to hold the controls. Michael liked the sound of that but, when they boarded, the flight attendant said no. ‘It's a security issue,' she told his mother. Flying is full of security issues, Michael knows. The machine beeped every time he went through it because he forgot the swimming medal still nestled under his T-shirt. He held up the whole line. His mother was so embarrassed she tried to give the man a tip, but she wasn't allowed. They said it was a security issue.

The whole trip his mother had the twisty-face look, and every few minutes she would rub antibacterial on her hands. Even though the smell made Michael feel sick and he couldn't sleep, she wouldn't let him sit up and play with the TV in the back of the seat instead. ‘You need to be well rested for Daddy,' she said. ‘Just close your eyes.' She didn't sleep at all, as far as Michael could tell.

The hotel lobby has the same nothing feeling as the plane. It's like being suspended from a coat-hook, or diving deep in the pool and stopping there to watch your limbs lift lifelessly in front of you. Everyone walking past them glides like the fish.

His mother strokes his hair. ‘Tired?'

An elevator pings and there is his father, smiling. Michael's father has thick grey hair and wears only suits. Walking out of the lift, he smooths down his tie and then opens his arms. ‘There's the intercontinental traveller!'

Last year his father took him to Melbourne for his birthday. They saw the
Lion King
musical (which his mother had taken him to ages ago but his father had forgot) and went to the cricket and the zoo. It was pretty good. On the last day they visited the markets, which had mostly koalas for the ends of pencils, and bad leather jackets, but around one corner there were DVDs and bags and watches. Michael began looking for a blue watch in the hope that his father would buy it for him — even if he hadn't turned thirteen.

He looked everywhere for one of his father's watches. He thought he saw one, but when he reached out for it the stallholder shrieked, ‘Rolex! Best ever made!' and scared the heck out of him. Michael's father looked over from the purses. ‘What's up, Mikey?'

Hand still extended guiltily, Michael said, ‘I wanted one of your watches.'

Smiling, Michael's father walked over and told the man that his son wanted an unpronounceable watch. ‘But we'd want an original, of course,' his father said merrily, the way he did when he was joking, only Michael didn't get it.

The watch-seller frowned. ‘No.'

His father beamed. ‘That's refreshingly honest.'

‘No, we no have that watch. All original. No watch.'

Michael's father's smile began to sag. ‘Sold out?'

‘No one want that one. Rolex! Best ever made!'

Michael could see the shock crest his dad's face like a wave. They left the markets after that.

But if no one wants the watches, Michael thinks, seeing the blue on his father's wrist as he rushes wide-armed from the hotel lift, why are they in Europe?

The hug is tight, kind of choking. Michael hasn't seen his father in three days, but still. When he is released he looks back at his mother, who is smiling plastically, as if her photo is being taken. This is the way she usually smiles. Before she got married Michael's mother did modelling, so there are a lot of pictures around the house of her standing with her hip out and offering that smile. Michael prefers the smile she gives without planning it ahead of time, the one where she shows her teeth.

‘How's it been?' she asks his father politely.

‘Good. Really good.'

‘Blowing them away?'

His father is still looking at Michael. ‘How do you like this, eh? Our room is even better. Almost as big, too.'

‘I like the fish.'

‘Michael,' his mother says.

They have dinner in the hotel restaurant, where the aquarium is less interesting, since it only has crabs. When the waiter comes over, his father orders seven courses and then looks around the table eagerly. His mother gets several dishes with tiny, elegant piles of food in the centre and squirts of lime or crimson sauce patterned around the edges. Every time she goes to dismantle them with her cutlery she pauses, as if afraid to cause damage, and asks Michael's father a question instead. ‘Has there been much interest?'

‘Things are chugging along.'

His mother's knife and fork quiver in the air.

Michael tugs on his medallion and says, ‘Are you increasing demand, Dad?'

His father looks at him, and his face breaks into a smile that widens and widens, like a ripple across a lake. ‘I'm stockpiling, Mikey,' he says. ‘I'm stockpiling.'

Later, despite his tiredness, Michael wakes at four a.m., his body crying out for the lunch he should be having in Sydney. He lies in bed, stomach squirling. His father was right; the room is enormous. Michael doesn't like it. He asked to stay in the same suite as his parents, but they told him what a privilege it was for him to have his own. ‘You're a lucky boy,' his mother said. ‘Your father is spoiling us.'

The giant empty room is starting to scare him. There are things in it that shouldn't be there. It stretches out so far, and there are heavy curtains and odd corners. Finally, his stomach hurting, he gets out of bed and slips outside, carefully pocketing the swipe card for the door on the way. The hallway is bright, and he realises that he could have just turned on a light, except he didn't think of it at the time and the lift has come to his floor anyway. Michael steps in and presses the
L
like a grown-up. As the floor drops, he looks at himself in the mirror and smooths down the front of his pyjama top over the reassuring lump of the medallion.

The lobby is slick and softly lit as before. Michael marches importantly over to the reception desk, where there is a pretty lady, her blonde hair tied with a scarf and curled on her shoulder like a seahorse tail. Her voice has a light accent. ‘Can I help you?'

‘I'd like room service, please.'

‘Of course.' She smiles gently. ‘Although most guests prefer to order that from their rooms.'

At this, Michael's shoulders droop, but the receptionist continues. ‘How about some French fries? You can eat them down here, if you like. We shall call it lobby service.'

Michael beams. ‘Can I watch the fish while I wait? Please.'

‘Certainly.' The lady gets up from the desk and leads him over to the aquarium, which is still awake and alive. She taps on the glass as a fat grey fish chugs by, pouting. ‘This one is Henry. He is the oldest of all the fish.'

‘That's my dad's name,' Michael tells her. ‘His hair is the same colour.'

‘Well.' She smiles again, like a breeze. ‘I'm sure you can learn a lot from both of them.'

The chips come quickly, hot and delicious, and Michael eats them in handfuls while staring at the fish. Henry moves stately through the water while the other fish ignore him. There is a bit of moss growing on his belly, as if he spilled his dinner and didn't notice. He reminds Michael of the story of the emperor's new clothes: pompous and ridiculous. Michael loves him.

The endless light of the hotel lobby, the constant negotiation of fish around fish make time disappear. Michael could be anywhere, at any hour. His stomach is warm and full, his eyes bright and searching. Sometimes the lift pings and whooshes, but it's just punctuation. His fingertips brush the glass. He is drifting, like Henry.

A hand sweeps his shoulder: the nice receptionist. ‘He is delightful, no?'

‘I just want to pick him up and hug him,' Michael says, then blushes, thinking how girly that sounds.

‘Ah, but you would kill him with kindness.'

‘I know.' Michael's fingers linger on the glass. ‘They breathe water.'

‘Not exactly. They do breathe oxygen, like us, but their gills, they have been made perfectly to find it in the water. That is their natural environment. They cannot function in the air; in a way, they drown.'

‘Drown?'

Henry the fish stares at them through the glass. His hanging lip is like Michael's father's when the watch-seller yelled,
No one want that one!
They got home to Sydney and his dad started talking about the conference. Distributors. Outlets. Brand recognition. Everyone with a chunky blue watch barnacled to their wrist by Christmas.

The receptionist folds her hands at her waist. ‘I think perhaps it is time for bed?'

At the suggestion Michael's eyelids feel heavy. He thanks her for the food and exits the lobby, whisked skyward by the silent elevators. Back on the top floor, he swipes open his room door and gets into bed, but he can't quite sleep: the combination of warm snack and enormous down quilt make him feel too hot, like being suffocated in a desperate hug. He tries throwing off the sheets, but then all the radiant heat is confined to his back, where the electric blanket has been cranked up for the northern spring. Groaning, he slides out of the bed and onto his knees to fumble below the mattress for the controls.

His hand has barely disappeared beneath the bed before it hits something. A few somethings, in fact. Half asleep, Michael lifts one, and the slight weight in the base of it immediately reminds him of when his bird died and they buried it in a little perfume box of his mother's. Frightened, he drops the something and scoots back across the carpet to flick on a light.

It is a box, white and rectangular and made of thick card, with the unpronounceable name in slanted gold in the corner. He needn't open it to find what he knows is there, but he does anyway. There is the velvet pouch, a blue watch nestled in the centre. It is set on midnight and doesn't tick.