Rush (20 page)

I mutter, ‘You ungrateful bitch.'

I leave behind me a bloodied and empty ward, my red footprints weaving back and forth in a zig-zagging line from room to room, a lone woman moaning in terror and pain.

When I'm walking back to the elevator, it's like business as usual throughout the hospital. There's no panic, and nobody seems to care about the gunshots that have just come from the Oncology Ward. A young nurse passes me in the hall and she smiles and says, ‘Hello.' Outside, there are two ambulance officers eating sandwiches and leaning against their vehicle, and they smile and nod as I pass them. There's a cop on the corner and he says, ‘G'day.'

I flash him a smile and say, ‘How you doin'?'

Outside the hospital the air is clean and I draw great deep breaths. There are no police cars surrounding the
block and flashing their lights. I just keep walking, and the world ignores me, and it doesn't consider me a monster at all.

 

Juliet and I go to see a movie in a crowded cinema. The boy in front of us keeps sneezing, almost in time with the bullets flying on screen, and I secretly kick the back of his seat in an effort to shut him up. Eventually his mother looks over her shoulder at me with a frown and I stick my tongue out.

After the movie Juliet says, ‘I don't know why they have to make those things so violent.'

‘Escapism,' I tell her.

‘And those people, laughing every time something terrible happened.'

‘Comic relief,' I tell her.

‘It's horrible,' she says.

I tell her that it's a way of life these days. The world is a violent place. I even hear that somebody shot up a cancer ward yesterday. She gasps and says, ‘You're kidding?'

‘Why would I kid about something like that?'

She says, ‘Sometimes I'm not sure about your sense of humour. That you could find something like that amusing.'

I put my arm around her and assure her that I'm not a psycho. This isn't a gun in my pocket, I'm just happy to see you.

She says, ‘Sometimes I wonder what goes on up there in that brain of yours.'

I wish that I could tell her.
Nothing up here but this tumour.

Next thing we're sitting on the couch at Juliet's place, watching gameshows in the glow of the television. There's a curving scar on Juliet's wrist. I notice it while her arm is resting in my lap. There's a thin line of white skin, slightly upraised, that snakes from below her thumb and across to her wrist. I run my thumb along the scar and she pulls away from me.

I look into her big eyes as she says, ‘Don't do that. I don't like people doing that.'

She moves out of reach.

I ask her how she got the scar.

‘Somebody threw a vase at me,' she says.

I ask her who.

She tells me: It was an ex-boyfriend with a short temper. They were arguing about she-doesn't-remember-what when he threw the vase at her. She raised her arms in defence. That's where the scar comes from, when the vase shattered against her. She kept the bruises on her throat for a week, the indentations of his fingers as he strangled her. She stayed with him for six months afterward.

Juliet has what we'd call a consistent track record in detrimental relationships.

Take Adam, for example. Her first boyfriend at age sixteen. He was four years older. Auto mechanic. Amazing body, nice smile. Seemingly genuine. They met at a party Spencer had taken her to. Spencer told her months later, when she'd broken down in tears, ‘You're old enough to start learning from your own mistakes. This is your first lesson. Some guys just can't be trusted.' Spencer went out after that and the next day Adam was in the hospital with a broken leg. What Adam did was
cheat on Juliet throughout the entire relationship. Said he couldn't just be with one girl. She understood that, didn't she? He needed to move around. Sure, he loved her. But he had to be with other women, it was just the way he was. Right.

There's Brandon, who had the short temper. The relationship lasted a little over a year, but it was dead in almost every sense a long while before that. They moved in with each other after three months. Madly in love. Juliet was fresh out of university, earning money. She bought all of the furniture, everything, because he was temporarily unemployed. What he did all day she didn't know, but he went out a lot of nights. This was behaviour she didn't really notice until a few months in. At first he'd call her every day, see her every night. They move in together and it's a different story. Comes home drunk a lot of nights. She just wants to be the good girlfriend, but after a while she can't tolerate it anymore. She speaks up and it's a slap in the face. She's never been hit by a man before. She thinks it won't happen again, but she's wrong. She keeps thinking it won't happen again for six months after he tries to strangle her and doesn't finish the job because he passes out drunk. She lay under the weight of his body, his tired hands resting on her neck, and she cried herself to sleep but didn't leave for six months because she loved him, she really did.

There are others, like Cal, who didn't know the meaning of the word
ex
-girlfriend. Kept going back to the previous girlfriends. Not just one, not two, but three of them. Casual thing, he said. Couldn't quite get over them. ‘Not that I don't love you, Jules. It's just some things are hard to let go. You've got to give me points
for honesty, right?' That relationship didn't last very long.

Juliet tells me, ‘I have a knack for choosing all the wrong ones.'

I want to say something witty, like, ‘Two wrongs don't make Mr Right.' But all I do is sit there, because my throat is dry and I can't find any words. I take her hand in mine again and run my thumb over the scar, once, twice, three times, four.

 

Cut to a close-up of my face, we'll see my tired and bored eyes, and we'll slowly draw back as I exhale smoke and we'll find that I'm in a meeting for the United Workers' Front. I'm sitting at the back of the room in my own cloud of smoke. This is in a house in Stanmore. The carpet is worn away in most parts of the floor, and giant anarchy symbols have been spraypainted on the walls. There is a half-burned American flag mounted over a print of
Marigolds
.

There are maybe two dozen people in the room. All of them are seated on the hard floor. There is no furniture, and the only light comes from candles. The electricity to the house has been cut off.

Jack tells me that this is only one cell, one of several divisions. He says it isn't safe for everybody to gather at one time. This is only one of several safe houses around the city. He tells me that during the week, meetings such as this one will be taking place with different members in different houses.

They call themselves a United Workers' Front, but it's just a front, just a name. This meeting is like a strange
collective of the Democratic Socialist Party, the Campaigners Against Multinationalism, and a Sex Pistols Fan Club. The people here are well spoken and unwashed.

A bearded man wearing a shirt with the face of Che Guevara printed on it stands before the others, speaking. He says, ‘On Tuesday, Smiley and Griffin charged into the 24-hour McDonald's on the corner of Pitt and Park with a bucket full of red paint. I'd like to congratulate the boys for their redecoration skills, and the ability to evade security. Nice one, boys.'

Whoever Smiley and Griffin are, they don't stand up and take a bow. Everybody claps.

Jack leans toward me and whispers, ‘The bearded dude, his name's Dharma. He marched against Vietnam in the Sixties. He's a real campaigner. He's been doing this shit for thirty years, man. But the thing is, he's so full of himself, with his head so far up his arse, he doesn't really even know what he stands for anymore.'

Dharma continues speaking. ‘On Monday we're planning a blockade of the Australian Stock Exchange in Bridge Street. We'll keep it as non-violent as possible. For those of you who are employed, we'd be grateful if you can call in sick on the day for the protest. We'll need banners painted and speeches written. As you know, the Stock Exchange is a major target. We've been planning this one for several months. For the new people in the room, allow me to explain.

‘The Stock Exchange is like the centrepoint for all major corporations. One point two billion dollars are traded on the Australian Stock Exchange every day. That much money, daily, can cancel such things as world debt, reduce world hunger, fund our public education. Most
people are ignorant of these facts. And so our goal is to be noticed, so that others might support our campaign. Bring your friends, your family, as many people as you can. The louder we shout, the more likely we are to be noticed.' Dharma speaks from the heart, and sitting at the back of the room I've never been so bored in all of my life. Jack and I are the only people in the room who don't applaud. Jack says to me, ‘He speaks down to us like we're stupid.'

He looks me in the eye and says, ‘I'm not stupid.'

When the meeting is over, Jack says to me, ‘These people are pacifists, and pacifism is no way to get your cause noticed. It doesn't work that way.'

In the newspapers this week the police are still talking about the Jack Of All Trades Killer.

Jack says, ‘If pacifism worked, the world would have been changed in the Sixties. But instead we wind up with this Baby-Boomer crap, you know?'

Jack is saying, ‘These people, they have the right idea. They just have too many morals, too many convictions. You can't have a revolution without a violent uprising.'

I tell him, ‘You can't have a violent uprising if you're only one man.'

He sneers at me. ‘I'm one man, but there are others. I come to this place to meet like-minded people, looking for hope. There's no place in this world for self-righteousness. That guy, Dharma? He's kidding himself. They've got the idea and they don't know what to do with it. I'm talking about revolution here, man. Everybody must be made an example of.'

I ask him how he plans to make an example. My face is shrouded in shadow and I'm breathing smoke. When I
show him the clip from the newspaper he looks at it and laughs. He says, ‘You think this is me?'

I ask him if it is.

Jack says, ‘You think I'm an idiot, don't you?'

I tell him, ‘I think you set your goals too high.'

He tells me, ‘I'm not the only one setting high goals.'

I say, ‘You still owe me a game, you know. I'm waiting to cash that raincheck.'

He disappears into the night and says, ‘Yeah, maybe some other time. I've got bigger fish to fry.' Before he's gone, I hear him call back to me: ‘And stop following me, freak.'

 

I get the idea when I see an old woman hurrying to cross a busy city street, limping with her walking frame as horns blare at her. There's a look of fear mixed with determination on her wrinkled old face. She's truly afraid that these people will run her down in the street if she doesn't get to the other side in the next five seconds. Toward the end she almost slips and falls, but regains her balance and finally frees up the traffic.

There is a tinge of pity in my heart for the old woman, but I decide she isn't worth my pity because she'll be dead soon, anyway. She's probably somebody's mother, somebody's sister, somebody's grandmother. But all I see is a frail old body, withered with age, cells crumbling under the weight of free radicals and the burden of existence.

In the phone book I find listings for hundreds of retirement homes and villages. I choose the one with the classiest advertisement; it sounds upscale and quiet and is located in Manly. I take a taxi out there and tell the
driver, ‘I'm visiting my grandfather. I'm in the country to see him because the doctors say he's slipping away and I wanted to see him just one last time, I felt I owed him that much.'

The driver says, ‘Well that's nice of you. I hear that Alzheimer's is a terrible thing.'

The retirement village has a long winding driveway and I tell the driver he can drop me at the top, I don't mind the walk. He wishes me the best with my grandfather and I walk through the gates and follow the road.

I smoke a cigarette and whistle a happy tune as I walk.

The retirement village is basically a large hospital-like building surrounded by several small units and apartments occupied by those old folks who are still reasonably capable of looking after themselves. I walk right up to the lobby and I'm hit by a blast of air conditioning as the automatic doors slide open. There is a middle-aged woman behind the service desk and the air smells just the way you expect an old folks' home to stink.

I flash the smile that I've been practising and speak in the most pleasant of tones to a woman at the desk. ‘Hi, I'm here to see my grandfather. I've arranged to meet him in the rec room, but I don't actually know where that is. Could you direct me?'

She returns my smile, only hers has warmth. She says, ‘Sure. You just follow the hall here and you'll find it on the left. Hard to miss.'

I thank her and follow the hall, absently toying with the gun in my jacket as I proceed. The problem with a six-chamber weapon is that you're constantly reloading. My pockets are jingling like a piggybank with free bullets, just because I like the sound.

The rec room sports a large television and wide windows that look out over a green lawn. There are rows of chairs like a classroom and some of these are occupied by old people in dressing gowns or flannel pyjamas. Two men occupy a small table at the far side, white hair emerging from their ears, playing chess. Nobody seems to notice me standing there.

This room is all low murmurs and classical music leaking from speakers in the ceiling. The television isn't even turned on, but there are three women sitting there staring at it. There's one old man in the row of seats, sitting alone, staring at his hands in his lap. He's wearing glasses halfway down his nose and his pale hair is combed over his nearly bald scalp. It sounds as if he's talking to himself. I mosey on over and sit beside him, and he looks up at me with milky eyes and says, ‘Are you the new nurse?'