THE POLITICS OF PLEASURE (12 page)

He'd first met Rachel at a Fancy Vamp and Sleazy Tramp party in West Hollywood. He was twenty-six; she twenty-four and dressed in little more than black lace underwear and high heels. They kept on saying the right things to each other, and fuelled by alcohol and the excitement of the well-attended party, had ended up in bed together. They kept seeing each other socially and the chemistry between them grew stronger. Many friends saw them as soul mates who'd had the good fortune to meet early on in life. The couple eventually married in an ornate stucco chapel in San Diego, while a ten-day honeymoon in the Bahamas proved a perfect celebration of their planned life together.

Goldman worked as an assistant researcher at a UCLA medical research department, whereas Rachel, a newly accredited journalist, wrote a Life and Style column for the
San Gabriel Valley Tribune
. Established as such, they put down a deposit on a Mediterranean-style house in Santa Monica, complete with a kidney-shaped swimming pool and a paved outdoor living area highlighted by lattices of purple bougainvillea. All in all they were happy newlyweds who worked hard at their chosen professions, while making the most of whatever time they had together.

However, after celebrating his third Christmas in the Santa Monica house, Goldman became frustrated with his lot. He'd lost interest in his synthesizing research and Rachel hadn't conceived due to IUD-scarred fallopian tubes. Also, he no longer cared for the weekend partying of his upwardly mobile friends about town and in the outer canyons. Goldman had always been a light drinker and had only dabbled with recreational drugs like marijuana and cocaine. However Rachel seemed more prone to letting her hair down at weekend parties. Nevertheless she was aware of the lurking dangers in continuous use of addictive substances and sometimes said no; whereas many of her friends seemed only too willing to partake in whatever drug came their way in the course of lavish parties celebrating the
elan
of a smart new generation.

Much like her husband, Rachel tended toward a more moderate life and had her heart set on raising a family. So she hadn't been too put out when her restless husband toyed with the idea of moving east, especially as Rachel's mother lived in Boston.

In need of a change, and tempted by the extravagant salary package offered, Goldman applied for the position of assistant researcher at Silverwood Chemical Centre. He got the job. No one was more delighted than Goldman's father. Joseph Goldman had been involved in military research for much of his working life and accordingly had used his influence in the US industry to help his son procure the position.

However soon after Scott moved east tragedy befell him. He was barely settled in his new job when his father was gunned down at a 7-Eleven in Camden, New Jersey. Joseph Goldman and a Korean-American teenager were fatally shot for no apparent reason when a crazed-gunman emptied the store of its late-night takings, according to several startled witnesses to the crime. The senseless killing had devastated Goldman, and more so his mother.

Nora Conelly met Joseph Goldman at the Mt Sinai hospital in Jerusalem in 1946. She was an Australian Red Cross relief worker and he a bronchial survivor of a Nazi prison camp in Poland. After his discharge from hospital they saw each other socially. Their growing attraction culminated in marriage, and soon after they sailed to Nora's home country to partake in the unprecedented economic growth of post-war Australia.

Nora went on to bear and rear their only child, while Joseph Goldman (with an impressive pre-war indenture to Austrian electrical engineer Alfred Biefeld), worked at the Woomera Test Facility in the sparse north-west region of South Australia. Employed by the Australian Department of Defence and based at the Instrumentation Building on Range E, Joseph Goldman helped develop the guidance systems of Liquid Oxygen and Petrol Guided Anti-Aircraft Projectiles.

However his specialized work slowly consumed him. He worked long hours and increasingly brought his work home with him. Precious weekends crammed with technical books and white board scribblings. As a result he grew more distant from his wife and child until spending so little time with them he was deprived of the warm resonance that only a devoted father can receive from his family.

Like many of her generation, Nora had resigned herself to the default setting of her marriage. But her husband's ongoing aloofness, paired with his desolate place of employment, had induced bitter disappointment. A price of her wived commitment was she began to drink, until not a day passed that her breath wasn't soured by alcohol.

Nora and her son lived a sketchy life at Woomera Village, a restricted-entry town connected to Woomera Test Facility, which nonetheless had the basic amenities of a school, hospital, police station, shopping centre and airstrip. Nora befriended other wives in the village and began to drink and play cards with them. She found her place amongst a tight-knit group of heavy drinkers and graduated from beer to spirits.

Over time she began experiencing blackouts. She wasn't a violent alcoholic, but nevertheless her daily drinking impinged upon the upbringing of her only child.

From an early age Goldman learned his mother kept him at arm's length, hoping he would find ways to entertain himself and leave her to the ebb and flow of her drink-dominated world. A world in which he seemed to have no rightful place other than those times when she would scold him or force him to do menial chores. Even so, Goldman did well at school and made friends with several boys in the village. Of course there were rivalries and sometimes physical fights to contend with, but nothing out of the ordinary for a boy growing up in rural Australia. Many of the Woomera Village youths entertained dreams of striking it rich at the nearby Coober Pedy opal fields. After graduating from high school, Goldman did in fact make several thousand dollars from fossicking at the world-famous opal fields.

He used the money to set himself up as a student at Sydney University. Possessing his father's scientific bent, he devoted himself to chemistry studies. He did well. Indeed his brain seemed particularly wired for the symbols, equations and meticulously performed sequences that went towards making his research degree. But unlike many of his age in bustling mid-sixties Sydney, Goldman rarely drank, and if he did, never to the point of outright drunkenness. Of course he knew this restraint was linked to childhood memories of his mother's drinking.

Joseph Goldman's innovative work on the guidance systems of multi-stage satellite launching rockets at Woomera came to the attention of the American government in the late sixties. DARPA wanted him. After he was granted a Priority Worker Permanent Immigration visa, Joseph Goldman migrated to the United States. Nora was over the moon. However Joseph laid down the law that since they were in a new land, the east coast of America of all places, Nora had to cut back on her drinking. Amazing herself, Nora did just that (though not without a rocky start). She studied nursing part-time, and only indulged herself in a glass or two of wine at mealtime. For several years she kept on this even keel and became a certified nurse at the Camden County Health Services Center.

But after her husband's murder, Nora hit the bottle hard. She would sometimes stay at Scott and Rachel's Baltimore row-house for days on end. After a walloping argument one night Goldman told her to leave. She'd become loud and unruly over his suggestion she seek help for her spiralling drinking problem. Goldman told her it wasn't the proper way to grieve for the loss of a loved one. In any case, her drunkenness was interfering with his own grieving process.

With little adieu, Nora left the following morning for her New Jersey home. A week later she flew to Oregon and stayed with her recently divorced friend, Jess Arnold, an old workmate  who'd moved to the west coast.

Over ensuing weeks, Nora rang from Jess Arnold's place and generally found Rachel's sympathetic ear. She wooed her daughter-in-law with colourful anecdotes about her winning battle against the bottle now she was regularly attending AA meetings in Portland, Oregon. During one particularly long call she and Rachel bonded from the celebratory note between them: Nora hadn't touched a drop for two months and Rachel had finally conceived after a third attempt at In Vitro fertilization.

From the upbeat call Rachel decided to visit her mother-in-law. Incredibly she'd already made plans to fly to Oregon to research an upcoming newspaper article. An elementary school for African-Americans had recently opened in Portland, the first of its kind in the nation, and Rachel's editor thought it warranted in-depth reporting.

Rachel flew to Oregon, hired a car, did what was needed for her article, then visited her mother-in-law. Two days after she left, Goldman received a devastating phone call. Oregon police informed him that his wife had been killed in a car accident. Beside himself with anguish and grief, Goldman took the first available flight to Portland. A stony-faced state trooper from the traffic division of the Portland Police Bureau told him Rachel's hired Chrysler had overrun a sharp and sleeted corner only to smash side-on into a towering Douglas fir pine. Distraught, bandaged and bruised, Nora had sobbed quietly while the state trooper got her son to fill out legal paperwork.

The late-afternoon accident had occurred while Nora and Rachel were on a sightseeing drive in Wasco County. One of Nora's favourite areas of wilderness. She'd said over the phone once the region's unpopulated stillness had an epiphanous quality that never failed to lift her spirits; well such was her reason for sometimes visiting the picturesque woods.

Goldman was dismayed to learn his mother had been behind the wheel at the time of the accident. Sober or otherwise, he would never know. Incredibly Nora hadn't been breathalysed at the scene; but nevertheless barely passed a breathalyser test later on at Salem police station. From this Goldman would hold a lifelong suspicion concerning his mother's claim to sobriety at the time of the accident.

He made arrangements for Rachel's body to be flown back east and returned to his empty Baltimore house, telling his mother to keep her distance from him. After Rachel's sedate Loudon Park funeral, Goldman told his mother to return to Oregon. Anywhere as long as it was away from him. He was angry, filled with all kind of blame and ill emotion, much of it stretching back to childhood. He could tell from Nora's breath and manner that she was drinking again, and didn't want her in his house. It was only too reminiscent of when his father died. Only this time he didn't have Rachel to comfort him. Now he was alone. Now he was primed to fly off the handle. And he didn't want to fight with his mother the day Rachel had been put in the ground. He wanted peace and solitude to assimilate his loss. Furthermore, he wanted to spend appropriate time with Rachel's grieving parents, and knew Nora's inebriate presence would only tarnish the milestone affair of Rachel's passing. Sensing it wasn't a time to make waves, Nora went back to Oregon.

Goldman couldn't forget Rachel had called him the night before she died. She'd said without reservation his mother was still a closet drinker. Nora had even tried to talk Rachel into having a bottle of wine with her at a restaurant. And she'd obviously talked Rachel into letting her drive that fateful afternoon. Goldman believed his mother had used the pretense of sunny sobriety to worm her way back into her son's life, causing in turn the death of Goldman's wife and unborn child.

The chemist had anaesthetized his grief by throwing himself into work. He refused paid leave and rigorously attended Wing Chun Do classes at Billy Georgia's dojo. He trained hard, his punches and kicks fired by harsh emotion and a refusal to fall down from the undying pain of losing his family.

During this time he thought about returning to Australia. Nostalgic memories were like the salve of a soothing narcotic: university and its student culture; the on-tap energy of ambitious friends; late-night inner-city parties; impromptu north shore beach parties; Spectrum and Tamam Shud concerts in town halls and surf clubs. Memories stacked on each other like golden emblems of better days. They were great times. He felt more of the same awaited him should he return home. However it would have been legally difficult to break his employment contract and so he'd stayed on in America.

Now, nearly two years after his loss, time had healed much of his hurt, to the extent he was on speaking terms with his mother. She was sober, a working nurse, and a well-regarded sponsor in Portland's AA community. Even so Goldman would never forget his mother's part in the inexplicably macabre period that came into play when a berserk gunman had robbed the late-night register of a 7-Eleven in Camden, New Jersey.

The chemist rubbed his eyes and looked about the computer room. The featureless walls and blank screens were as he expected: indifferent to the emotional pain that had risen inside him. He took a deep breath and looked at his father's employment file on the screen. A red asterisk was beside the date of his father's death. He suspected the asterisk was there because he'd logged onto the system using General Turner's VERTEX RED password.

He swallowed hard and scrolled to the bottom of his father's file. A red footnote cross-referenced his father's work file to another file in a VERTEX RED directory. Goldman read the name and address of the file the footnote referred to. He fingered his stainless steel watchband. There was no going back; not now. He looked to the door, his ears primed for the slightest sound. But he only heard the racy beat of his heart as his fingers danced across the keyboard.

 THIRTEEN

Troy Reid looked through the plate glass doors of the administration building. He rested against the Formica-top table he'd placed near the doors the day before. Little was happening outside. High streaks of cloud hung lazily in the sky while a light breeze drove a smattering of dead leaves across the car park. All the while red-breasted robins frollicked about the building's landscaped entrance. Reid's shoulders were tight with tension and faintly throbbing temples spoke of a headache in the making. Great, just what he
didn't
need. What he
did
need was a visit to the men’s room. His bladder was close on bursting. He cursed, therefore, when a long black Lincoln with tinted windows and a boomerang antenna on its trunk pulled up outside.