The Evil Inside (12 page)

I was holding Callum's mittened hand as we walked through the park.

Up ahead I could make out the mime artist in his black-and-white striped tunic, his pancaked face wrapped in the swirling winter mist.

A menacing Marcel Marceau.

He signalled flamboyantly to Callum, who broke my grasp and ran towards him. ‘No, Callum!' I cried. ‘Wait for Daddy!'

But Callum ran and ran and ran while I was strangely flat-footed and unable to get up any speed. The mist thickened and swirled like steam off a witch's cauldron.

When I finally arrived at the place the man had been standing, he had shrunk to the size of a child. He had become Callum.

‘Come on, Son,' I reached for his white-gloved hand.

‘You'll pay for this,' he rasped.

He pulled a long knife out of his sleeve and sliced off my hand. Blood started to spew from my stump.

‘You'll see.'

Behind the white mask, an old lady cackled.

I yawned, groaned, then yawned again.

Saturdays kept rolling round like carousel horses. They seemed to be spinning faster and faster, and lately it was taking all of my depleted energy just to stay in the saddle.

Speaking of energy, I needed to get fit again: my gut was becoming a bagel.

With his many commitments, Anthony and I couldn't seem to lock down a mutually agreeable time to visit the New York Health Club. He often went at 5.30 a.m. But I often had trouble sleeping these nights, so that didn't really work for me.

I shuffled out through the lobby and nodded to Michael, who today had Pepé Le Pew and matching French cologne around his neck. Michael seemed to favour Looney Tunes over Disney, but he did occasionally wear a sparkly Tinker Bell tie that Callum found particularly endearing.

This Saturday was still rubbing its eyes, too. The snow was starting to slip off the sidewalks and trickle down the drains. But there was still a sharp nip in the air, especially when the sun strained to peep over the tops of the buildings.

I ran lightly past the Dakota, dodging the early-bird tourists and the slushy puddles. I hung a left at Strawberry Fields and followed the path through the bare tree arches all the way up past the 79th and the 86th Street Transverses to the reservoir. It was less than a kilometre and a half from the 72nd Street entrance to the reservoir. And a lap of the reservoir itself was just over 2.5 km. So, from the front door of the Olcott and back again was roughly a 6.5 km round trip.

I couldn't possibly run all that way in my current gone-to-seed condition. But if I could just make it round the reservoir itself without having a heart attack, that would be a start.

Michael had told me that it was officially known as the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir. I imagined the Queen of Camelot trotting around it in her jodhpurs in the sixties with
Life
photographers snapping at her heels.

And then I remembered Dustin Hoffman obsessively lapping the reservoir in that great old movie,
Marathon Man
. I also recalled Dustin running bare-chested – with a serious limp and with his mouth gushing blood – along a dark freeway in his stripy pyjama bottoms. If Dustin could run injured in his PJs, then surely I could stagger a few pissy kms in my nice warm Diadora tracksuit.

Jogging always spurred my mind into action. I began to think about our current domestic situation: what to do about me and my forlorn little family?

Mia and I were both really struggling. Holed up in our individual hells.

And Callum was certainly far from the same normal little boy we'd brought over with us from Melbourne.

Big black birds tailed me from high above. The same muttering bag lady I'd encountered that first morning outside the Dakota stopped and stared at me, wheezing and smelling of urine.

A couple of fully Reeboked joggers flashed past me like spectres in the mist. A booby trap of snow dropped from a branch above onto the path, forcing me to swerve at the last second. I staggered to a stone bench on the perimeter of the little lake. I'd made it to the reservoir, but there was no way on God's earth I was able to go any further. I sat, wheezing louder than the bag lady. Another skinny, annoyingly fit-looking runner sped by, making me feel fat, fucked and old.

From somewhere far off, a church bell counted to seven.

I coughed like a consumptive.

Marathon Man
?

I was running just to stand still.

*

At the beginning of that week I told Bill – knowing of his interest in such things – what Lucy had said about Frank Sinatra being responsible for killing Jack Kennedy.

‘Wouldn't surprise me,' Bill replied, slurping his latte. ‘First of all, Sinatra organizes all the entertainment for the big '61 inauguration gala – as well as the high-class DC hookers for the after-party at the Statler-Hilton, mind you. Then, two years later, he's bumped off the Kennedy Christmas card list by brother Bobby for pimping the president a Mafia moll called Judy Exner who's a dead ringer for Liz Taylor – except you didn't need to marry her to get laid. I mean, where's the gratitude?

‘Plus ya know Ol' Blue Eyes was pretty fucked up from when he was a kid. His mother was the Hoboken rabbit catcher. She used to perform abortions for all the knocked-up girls in the neighbourhood. Her nickname was ‘Hatpin Dolly'.'

Hatpin
. That was a word I hadn't heard in decades.

‘Plus little Sinatra wasn't breathing when he was born, so his grandmother had to hold him underwater to get his little lungs pumping.'

While that little titbit reminded me of something else that I really didn't want to revisit either, and which I had spent most of my life trying to forget.

‘Really?'

‘Yep, and that's why he could hold his breath so long as a singer: it was the secret to his success, apparently. Anyway, Dolly was a tough little Democratic ward boss with a mouth on her like a longshoreman. She had a lotta enemies, did Dolly. So when little Frank pops out with no lungs, a perforated eardrum and a big scar on his cheek from the forceps, her enemies laugh behind her back that it's one of her abortions gone wrong!'

‘Nasty.'

‘Uh huh. Ya know “Sinatra” is Italian for “sinister”, right?'

Bill wiped foam from his lip. ‘Forget JFK, it's a wonder Sinatra didn't end up as a serial killer.'

‘ “The Stranger in the Night”?' I suggested.

‘I knew you'd say “Somethin' Stupid”.'

‘You guys sure haven't had much luck since you got to the Big Bad Apple.' Lucy drew back on her Stuyvesant and rubbed my shoulders.

‘I used to think you made your own luck. Now I'm not so sure.'

Her tiny, art deco apartment was down in the West Village. So were yo.com and a couple of our other Silicon Alley clients. The perfect alibi for our afternoon ‘briefing sessions'.

‘How's your wife?' She cracked a Diet Coke.

‘Don't ask me about her.'

‘Don't be guilty,' she ruffled my hair. ‘We're not hurting anyone. Just having a little fun.'

‘I think it's called infidelity, actually. I'm married, remember.'

She stubbed out her smoke. ‘I try not to put a label on stuff. Helps me sleep at night.'

‘Good for you.'

‘Oh come on – don't I at least bring you some pleasure?'

She did actually. And it was the only pleasure I was getting in my life at the moment. But it was a horrible, guilty pleasure that, since it had begun a few weeks before, made me feel dirty and disgusted with myself afterwards.

‘Well, can I ask about your little boy then?'

‘What about him?'

‘Well you said that while you were away that he was acting strange and doing weird things?'

Had I? I must have been very drunk at the time. It worried me that I couldn't remember telling Lucy about my experiences out at North Fuck. I usually kept my crazy Callum thoughts to myself. If Lucy thought I was going loopy, she might stop fucking me.

‘Hmm. I think he's just like Mia and me: a bit overwhelmed by the city and all the stuff that's happened. He's only three, remember. Well, three and a half now.'

She shook her Jennifer Aniston coif in disagreement. ‘That's not what you said, Guy. When we were at Chumley's that night, you said that when you were staying out at Anthony's house on the island that Callum did some kind of nasty drawing and showed you some weird creature on the TV or something that really freaked you out? And that you had some terrifying experience when you went sleepwalking or something?'

Chumley's. I remembered now: it wasn't too long after we'd come back from Arcadia. Another occasion when Bill had gone home early, leaving Lucy and me to our own, dangerous devices. I had been very drunk that night. And no wonder: I had the ghosts of Hemingway, Steinbeck, Faulkner, Mailer, Fitzgerald – all the Big Fish – glaring down at me from the walls, asking me why I was wasting my life writing poxy little banner ads instead of a proper book.

(I had actually tried to write a novel a few years before. I used the Subaru Australia ad pitch as a plot skeleton and called it
Car Toon
. I sent the first three chapters of my comic masterpiece to an agent but he felt that satirising advertising didn't really work – given my often immoral profession was such a joke already. Then Callum arrived and, apart from a few desultory short stories, my literary career was aborted before it even began.)

‘Did I?' I finally answered. ‘I was quite pissed that night. I can't really remember what I said.'

But my switched-on southern belle wasn't going to let me off that easily. ‘You seemed
very
scared,' she insisted. ‘Terrified, actually. For the both of you. And you said he had recently started behaving weirdly again. You said that he also made some freaky little sculpture? Guy, you said you thought he might be
possessed
or something.'

She probably did think I was mad. I hoped she hadn't said anything to Bill or Anthony about my crazy suspicions.

I put my shirt on first, then my briefs – today we really did have a new business meeting at five. ‘Hmm … I was probably just trying to be dramatic or something to impress you … interest you … I don't know. Callum's fine … Where are my socks? … I make things up. For a living, remember.'

Lucy looked at me with sceptical eyes. ‘I think you're a little fucked-up, Guy. I think maybe you should go talk to someone.'

She hooked up her purple Wonderbra, then poked her finger forcefully into the back of my head. ‘There's some strange shit going on up here.'

*

‘Guy, we're going home.'

I'd just tucked Callum into bed.

‘Home where? Who's going home?'

‘Callum and I. We're going back to Melbourne.'

Although I'd been half-expecting this announcement for weeks, the bulletin still rendered me speechless.

An old movie was playing on the TV – gleaming San Francisco cable cars rattled across the screen in glorious Technicolor. Mia was sitting on the couch. The same one Esmeralda used to stand on to wrestle the curtain cord. She took a long, sad sip of wine. ‘I wouldn't imagine you'd want to come back. I thought you were so happy here. What with your new job. And your new work
mates.'
She wiped her lips with the back of her hand. ‘Susanna's helping me make the arrangements.'

Callum's
Three Blind Mice
book was on the floor at my feet. I kicked it away.

‘Fucking Susanna!' I stood up. ‘Does Anthony know anything about this?'

The phone rang. Mia raised her glass to the timing. It was the great man himself.

‘Mate, I'm so sorry to hear about you and Mia. Is there anything I can do?'

‘I-I don't know,' I sat down again. ‘I only just found out “the news” myself.'

Mia walked past me into the bedroom and closed the door.

‘Do you need any more time off? We can always get Jay back in.'

And fuck fucking Jay. I was sure that slick Ed Norton-lookalike arsehole was after my job.

‘No, I don't think so. I can work it out. We can work it out.'

There was a long, un-Anthony-like pause. ‘I hope we can. It's a prick me being your boss as well as your mate.' He went agonizingly quiet again. ‘But I have to support my business as well as my friendships.' The consummate diplomat: it was by far the worst thing he had ever said to me.

‘Give me a week, Anthony. Please.'

‘OK. But, Guy…' He hadn't called me Girly in ages.

‘Yes, mate?'

His voice had an edge to it I'd never heard before. ‘Maybe I'll start coming along to those downtown meetings as well.'

I went up to the roof to have a smoke.

I could just make out the treetops in Central Park over the fractured foreground of washing lines, satellite dishes, TV antennae, air-conditioning units, and water towers that ran along the rear of West 72nd. A phalanx of pigeons or doves flew as one big slow ‘V' above them.

I drew back, drowning in the nicotine. The moon was pale and sickly-looking, a timid reflection of itself. I flicked my butt over the edge and went back down.

It was only 9.15. Mia was already slumbering, or at least pretending to be. Callum was talking in his sleep with his arm flung over his face next to her. I put my ear to his mouth and thought I heard ‘mice' and ‘knife', but I couldn't be sure.

‘Mia?' I put my hand on her shoulder.

She didn't answer for the longest time. Without turning around, she covered my hand with hers. ‘If
you
want to stay, maybe you should. Maybe the break would do us good. You could come home and visit us after a month or two.'

‘I don't want you to leave.'

‘I just don't want to be here any more.'