The Courier's New Bicycle (16 page)

I ring Max in the small hours, too self-pitying to apologise for waking him.

‘Is it Albee?' he asks.

‘No.'

He waits for the reason I called.

‘I have to take a leave of absence from the APV,' I tell him. ‘And I probably won't be contacting friends for a while.'

‘You alright?' The concern is apparent in his voice.

‘Yeah,' I say, heavy and unconvincing. ‘Just gotta do some stuff.'

‘The sort of stuff that needs a minder for Nitro?'

‘No — but thanks for asking.'

‘We'll keep the porch light on.'

‘I'm counting on it,' I reply, and feel the resurgent flare of an old warmth.

Max is referring to a ritual established in the early days when I first got to know him and Penny. Back then, seventeen years old and unable to find my place in the world, I was drifting between jobs, having left school early
with no graduating credits. Gender-wise, I was swinging between extremes — and hating myself. Nothing worked. Nothing felt right. It was a canker in my spirit, a spreading necrosis eating me up. Then along mooched Ninja, the black tortoiseshell moggie, a scratched and scruffy wanderer who crept through my open window one terrible hot summer and attached himself to me like a familiar. It turned my days around. I finally had someone — if a little worse for wear — to come home to, someone to cuddle.

Max had a practice in St Kilda near where I lived. I met him then Penny because of Ninja's penchant for street fights and regular need for stitches. I even ended up working for a while as Max's part-time assistant to pay for the surgery bills. He said I should think about vet school, but I could never have afforded the bridging course and upfront fees.

Gradually, with Ninja and my job as daily anchors, the swinging pendulum that was my gender identity stilled around the midway point, and I began to make peace with the gender transgressive I was and would always be. Then, in the summer before the pandemic took hold, Ninja was bitten by a brown snake. Max saved my cat that day, but not three weeks later when fate put him and his envenomed reflexes in the path of a concrete truck. We had a ceremony, Max, Penny and I, burying Ninja in their leafy back garden under the plum tree.

My battle-scarred street cat was at rest, but I was a mess again. Max and Penny rescued my sorry arse from a few bad situations on St Kilda pier, reminding me I had an
important place in their lives. That reminder was a precious gift: a no-strings acceptance, and open invitation to doss down in their spare front room anytime — hence the reference to the porch light. These days it may be more a metaphor, but it's as comforting as ever.

‘Stay safe,' Max says, and we ring off.

I go to bed, but I don't sleep. I watch Nitro stretched out above the covers beside me glowing like a fuzzy nightlight.

In four short hours, I will get up and go to work for Mojo Meg. I will become a courier of BioPharm's not-so-ethical products and, to all those I know and those I love, a turncoat, having bitten the hand that's fed me these last seven years.

 

Prestige Couriers Inc is in Banana Alley, a service road running along the north bank of the Yarra at the bottom of the CBD. The building is a set of barrel vaults sitting between the water and the railway viaduct. With a sauna and solarium one end and a gym the other, it's mighty public, but there's plenty of eye candy to distract the curious from the unassuming roller door that was once the rear of a nightclub and is now the workers' entrance to a busy distribution hub. Day and night a bevy of cyclists spin in and out of here like helmet-clad worker bees, the legit business hiding a much more profitable sideline. Meg is a brazen operator.

Her premises take up the middle four vaults, each one extending from Banana Alley to Pilgrim Street and connected to its neighbours by archways excavated through metre-thick walls. The entire block of tunnels used to be
where fruiterers stored their goods before market — hence the name, which has stuck despite the place going through several personality changes since. It's only a matter of time before the zealots on Melbourne City Council's renaming committee get to it.

My Saturday deliveries made, I wheel in, exhausted and cranky. But it's not from the exercise or the close-of-trade traffic. It's no fun being harangued by dissatisfied customers, especially the rich and snooty kind. Not trusted with the more exclusive clients, I've been put on beginner's duty, delivering goody bags of pituitary tonics and do-it-yourself collagen injections, herbal pheromone mixes and libido boosters to the beauty salons along Chapel Street, Melbourne's high-fashion row, and along the way doing more than my fair share of kowtowing to their vanity and niggling grievances. These are the people for whom ‘tightening their belt' means a course of liposuction. Give me the Red Quarter customers any day. BioPharm does a roaring trade south of the Yarra, and Meg, as sole distributor, has the market sewn up.

I lock my bike in the rack between a fixed-wheeler and an all-terrain hybrid and join the queue of couriers dropping off their panniers along with any undeliverables. In the next-door vault, I open one in a bank of lockers and remove my street clothes — slouch jeans, hoody and lightweight hikers — then shower in a draughty cubicle, the brick curve above me coldly lit by light-saver neons. Seems Meg has decided the only heating her workers need is the internally
generated kind. Leaving, I pass several others rummaging in their lockers or silently checking their bikes, everyone intent on getting away from the place as quickly as possible.

At the beginning of my shift I'd been informed by Snarl that 5 pm is drinks at the pub in Scots Alley, just up the street. I would have begged off, but it's been organised to welcome me into the fold — Crusher slapping me playfully around the chops and adding, ‘Don't make us come find you.' (I heard afterwards from another courier that her real name is Sandy, while Snarl's is Merlyn. I couldn't hide my incredulity at the latter. ‘Don't say her name like that,' he'd replied, looking around nervously. ‘She's sensitive.')

My bike left in the rack, I set off, crossing beneath the broad arches of the viaduct to Scots Alley, a history-imbued passage linking Pilgrim Street to Pilgrim Lane. Once, its row of warehouses sat harbourside, and it was a busy trading area for goods carried by the steamers, including hessian sacking, French champagne and gold. I look for the entrance to the Rob Roy pub. An unmarked door in a scummy recess, it takes careful notice not to miss.

Inside, the pub is the adamantly unrenovated kind: years of drinkers spilling their food and drink on the carpet and wearing deep concavities in the ancient upholstery, and
proud
of it. The bartender looks as worn as the décor, gravity doing its heavy work on him.

I find Crusher and Snarl — Sandy and Merlyn — tipping back beers in a wood-panelled booth. I look for the others I thought would be here too. No joy.

They welcome me in their individual ways: Sandy with a robust backslap, and Merlyn with a thin smile dragged from the gloomy depths.

I slide in, the smell of the booth making my nostrils twitch. I'm afraid that if I sneeze, it'll raise the dust of some old soak who carked it in my seat. Sandy goes off to get the next round while Merlyn and I stare at each other across the way. I want to ask about the other workers, but don't dare.

Sandy is back mercifully fast, setting down two schooners of dark ale and the lemonade I requested. Not that I'd tell them, but I'm still recovering from the poor-me session in St Kilda.

‘To the newbie.' Sandy raises her glass.

‘Aw, shucks,' I say as they swig. Could be that Meg's minders are just desperate for other company. It must get lonely — boring, even — the two of them against the world.

Another round is called for far too soon. My turn, I go to the bar and try to meet the eye of the bartender. He moves away to serve someone else. I lean in, wondering what will help my chances, and see that below the counter he's wearing a kilt. I'm no tartan expert, but this one I happen to know because of my father's father. A die-hard Scot from Dundee, he'd weathered the parochial Aussie suspicion of blokes in skirts to don his tartan every day. This one — his regimental — he'd worn on special occasions, including at his funeral.

‘Did you serve with the Black Watch?' I ask in my best nice voice, and the barman turns to me, surprised.

‘That's right,' he replies in an unmissable Scots brogue, which makes me nostalgic for my grandad. ‘Forty years wi' the regiment: Ireland, Iraq, Afghanistan … More flippin' theatres than the West End.'

‘Here's a long way from there,' I say.

‘Married an Australian, didn't I. We ran a youth hostel in Warburton till the fires took it. She hied off wi' an English backpacker half her age and I ended up in this place.' He wipes the bar with an ancient tea towel then cocks his head at our booth. ‘Same again?'

‘Thanks.' I feel like a boy scout who's just earned his first merit badge.

‘Salisbury Forth,' I say, reaching across a hand.

He takes it in his big, surprisingly soft one. ‘Cam MacLeod.'

 

Another round on, Sandy and Merlyn have loosened up and so I get bold.

‘Meg thinks there's someone working for Gail who wants to take her down,' I say, trying to keep it casual.

‘A greasy pole-climber,' Sandy replies.

‘Any suggestions who?'

‘Well, it can't be
you
, that's for sure.' Sandy laughs loudly at her own joke.

Merlyn surprises me by coming out of her mollusc-like shell. ‘I'd be taking a good hard squiz at her 2IC,' she says darkly.

Fancy Merlyn using military lingo. Gail's second-in-command is Anwar. I stare at my lemonade. There's no way on Pan's sweet earth it's him.

‘Got proof of that?' I ask.

Sandy taps her nose. ‘Not for us to say, is it.'

These two know nothing. How could I have thought they would? I feel a sinking despondency as I glance along the patrons lining the bar. This subsection of the city's underworld is different to that of the Glory Hole. Here the atmosphere is brooding, angrier. Some would likely belong with the speakeasy crowd if they weren't too repressed to know it. Unfortunately, it's these all transgressives have learnt to watch for, being the most likely to lash out at a suspected ‘perv'. It makes me a teeny bit glad I'm with Sandy and Merlyn, who are matching each other schooner for schooner and show no need for a toilet break. They must both have industrial-strength bladders.

My stomach gassy and acidic from lack of food, I give up on lemonade and go to the bar to check the blackboard menu. All the meals are dead animals with breadcrumbs or brown sauce, so I opt for peanuts and crisps. As I'm heading back to the booth, Meg arrives through the door. No one but me seems surprised. I realise the other two knew she was coming.

Cam calls me back to get the generously poured whisky sitting on the bar. ‘For the boss,' he says.

His
boss too? Makes sense she owns the place.

‘Sandy and Merlyn helping you settle in?' she asks as I pass across her drink and lay the nut and crisp packets on the table.

‘Yes, thanks.'

I don't feel talkative. I've been pushed one too many
times off my balance beam today. At least I don't have to wait long for her to get down to business.

‘EHg won't survive this smear campaign, run as it is from the inside,' she says in a flat, uncompromising tone.

My heart thuds unpleasantly.
The worm in the apple …
She's saying someone close to Gail is capable of that?

‘It'll collapse, and there'll be a smack-down brawl for Gail's territory. You'll be glad to be out of it.'

I say nothing.

She takes a delicate sip from her glass. ‘Anyone made C&C a buy-out offer yet?' she asks casually.

It's impossible to tell whether she knows already and wants confirmation or is on a fishing trip. The joke's on me joining her ‘gang' to glean information, because I'm sitting opposite a master.

‘Not my business,' I reply gruffly.

‘Don't seem to know much about anything, do you?' Meg sips again. ‘I like that about you, Salisbury. You're charmingly incurious.'

Before I have time to react, she floors me with another announcement.

‘Tomorrow I'm starting you on some knock & drops.'

The Sabbath has no meaning to Meg any more than Gail — but trusting me with her prize clients so soon? While I'm digesting that news, she lays down her trump card.

‘Prestige Couriers is in the happy position of being able to take on C&C's distribution area and service its client
list,' she says. ‘And so my question to you is, would you rather Gail's reputation be destroyed and her territory fought over by the pack, or a genuine competitor step in early in a friendly, bloodless takeover?'

Bloodless … heartless …
Beyond the protective umbrella of C&C, hormone distribution is a murky business open to bullying tactics and blackmail. Welcome to Meg's world.

‘You're her star performer,' she presses. ‘You've worked for her for several years — am I right? Even if you've spent all that time with your ears politely closed, you'd have a mental list of her buyers, past and present. I'd wager you could mark on a map every address you've delivered to.'

Her predator's eye is on me. I'm too afraid to look up, lest she see the truth of a kinaesthetically wired brain written on my face.

She presses harder. ‘Under the auspices of BioPharm and Prestige Couriers you could continue on as you have — for top dollar
and
with top protection.'

She tilts her head at Sandy and Merlyn. Sandy blinks owlishly and I almost laugh.

So this is my true value to Meg. I'm to hand over the company secrets — Gail's buyers list — to give her the advantage in the grab for territory; and in return her minders buy me drinks instead of breaking my arms.