‘Cheers, cunt.’
Elderly church-goer: ‘I beg your pardon.’
Morgen: ‘I said, Jesus can’t … without your help.’
The best part was preying on the guilt of the unwilling donors — those that felt they just couldn’t pass without giving something, so hid their donation behind their fingers to sneak it into the collection box. Alas, I had perfected the knack of twisting the box to make them miss the slot, and the five or ten cent piece would lie shamefully exposed.
‘God bless you,’ I would say to the victim scrabbling at the coin with guilty non-dexterity. And they never made that mistake again. Always afterwards they would approach me ostentatiously, making sure I could see the gold coins or folding dollars before stuffing them piously into the box. And I honoured the spirit of their giving by ensuring that every cent was spent either on drugs or in pursuit of my most evil perversions in seedy brothels.
Anyway, trade was brisk that morning, and I settled further into my role as charitable medium — trying to make ‘fuck you’ sound like ‘thank you’ — but I hadn’t encountered anyone of interest, apart from one young bloke in a purple singlet who was obviously contemplating snatching the collection box. There was also some interest in the local rag. Everyone seemed to have a copy, and there were a couple of hoardings with huge posters saying:
MURDERER SPEAKS
More Bodies Found in Gorge
Then I saw her.
Like most things that fascinate, she was unspectacular in the conventional sense, but she had that special quirk of vulnerable power I always find irresistible — big grey eyes, apologetic air, and a trim figure swathed in vaguely hippyish clothes which I guessed she had been wearing long before they had come back into fashion.
I felt like I already knew her. You can tell a lot about someone by their clothes, haircut and demeanour, and not just the things they want you to know. People ‘type’ themselves for those who know what to look for, and this girl was what I call a Searcher — quite my favourite subject.
The Purple Singlet was definitely standing closer now, but keeping his back to me — he’d done this before. The Searcher in the hippy dress had joined the queue at the ticket window and was standing in that vacant muse which typifies the human condition — waiting in line, staring at infinity — and I felt my heart go out to her. In one glance I had taken in her ennui, her ordinary pain, her need to turn further and further from reality to find some respite from despair, and I decided to take an interest — to improve her fortunes in the same way that I had anonymously lowered those of Gavin Millet.
The Purple Singlet was only two metres away now — in the zone. His shoulders had tensed, but it’s the feet you have to watch. I decided I had better put a stop to this, much as I enjoyed the game — the last thing I needed was a scene. In two strides, I was at his side and had clamped my hand over his shoulder, squeezing the collar bone and feeling the bolt of fear go through him like the life tugs at the end of a fishing line.
‘Jesus loves you!’ I told him in my semi-public voice. ‘But I don’t, you thieving cunt,’ I added sotto voce, dragging him towards me like a bishop with a boner. The poor kid couldn’t believe his ears, but he was limp in my clutches — his street savvy short-circuited by his deepest conditioning. With my humble public smile fixed in place, I said to him softly, ‘Give us your fuckin’ money or I’ll get the cops round to search your house.’
His eyes widened with amazement and his muscles were suddenly rigid at the prospect of protecting his own. But he still couldn’t struggle — you don’t struggle with Salvos, even Salvos who say fuck.
‘I said … give us your fuckin’ money, cunt.’
Maybe he wasn’t so experienced after all, because his hand dipped into the pocket of his jeans and came out with a handful of silver.
‘That’s … that’s all I’ve got,’ he said, quivering like a car-struck dog.
‘God bless you!’ I cried in full public announcement mode, holding out the collection box as several queuers and passers by looked up in mild interest.
He stared up at me, his hand out like greedy Oliver wanting more, his eyes filling with rage and vengeance as he poured the silver into the box.
‘Now fuck off!’ I told him, barely moving my lips, and he took off like he was going straight to his mates to arrange a reprisal. The girl was nearly at the head of the queue, so it was time to stroll within earshot.
‘Um … return to Town Hall,’ she said, in a small voice that was filled with all the limp sadness I had first intuited, and I quickly made for the men’s room to change out of my uniform. The next train up the North Shore would be along in four minutes.
‘Thank God for the Salvos!’ exclaimed an endearing old boot, standing in my way and fumbling in her purse. This one would want value for money and I didn’t have time for a conversation.
‘Erm … Hallelujah … Arbeit macht frei,’ I muttered, snatched the twenty from her fingers and bolted for the shithouse.
•
In recent years, I’ve always made it a point to travel on public transport without a ticket. At first, I enjoyed the risk of running into the ticket inspectors, and had had a number of thrilling escapes, but after they caught up with me a couple of times it became apparent that I was some kind of blind spot for them. I’d fumble in my pockets — a well-dressed and obviously affluent man — vainly looking for my ticket while they stood there politely and without suspicion. Lastly, I would open my wallet and poke among the fifties and twenties in a last desperate search, and say in my most affected tones, with the wallet hanging open, ‘Look, I … seem to have lost it.’
No one with such obvious wealth and so patently upper class would travel intentionally without a ticket, so they always wrote me out a replacement on the spot.
‘No charge, sir,’ they mostly would say, smiling the opposite of the fascist grin they use on the young and the poor. As I said, at first it was a thrill, but now I simply don’t need to buy a ticket.
With the Salvo togs back in the travelling bag, I left the men’s room trying not to laugh. The Purple Singlet was in front of the barrier with a couple of bored-looking policemen looking vainly for the evil Salvo. Once again my timing had been perfect.
The train was slowing alongside Platform One as I jumped down the stairs and trotted past several cars to where I’d seen the Searcher climb aboard. It was past nine, so the train was three-quarters empty. I managed to get the seat directly behind her and buried my head in the Sydney Morning Herald, while she stared out the window at the embankment graffiti and the half-built high density and the grey/green oblivion.
Pulling in to Pymble, a vague chittering woke her out of her reverie and she reached into her embroidered hessian satchel to produce an upmarket mobile phone.
‘Hello?’
It’s incredible the way these down-at-heel types need to maintain the trappings of affluence. I’m a senior manager in a law office for chrissakes, and I’ve never needed one of the things — always refused one, in fact. If people know your number, they know where you are, and there are times I don’t want to be contactable.
‘No … I’m takin’ a sickie …’
And for some reason, the more impecunious people tend to be, the more they seem to run up crippling phone bills with their pointless chatter and texting. The Searcher, for all her attractive neatness, exuded poverty so, as she stared angrily out the window, I reached over her seat and slipped all my non-coin Salvo takings into her bag — well over a hundred dollars.
‘I just had to have a day off. Why … what’d he say?’
My good deed accomplished, I leaned back in my seat, basking in the warm sunshine and the opening of