Miki in a slow country drawl.
‘Hi,’ she replied, realizing with embarrassment what she might have disturbed.
‘Howz things? It’s been a while,’ said the man.
She indicated his wife’s condition and smiled. ‘Things haven’t stood still, though.’
‘Don’t she look great?’ he said, putting an affectionate arm around his wife.
Miki watched him scoop his boy up and bounce him high in the air. The child threw his head back and giggled each time his father tossed and caught him, his toddler arms and legs flying out parachute style with each high throw. He squealed, wanting more, turning to the visitor mid-air with a look that said this beats your panda hands down.
She couldn’t argue with that. 'Fill it up, Gus, thanks. Water and oil's all good.'
'She goin' okay?'
'So far.'
She left the Jeep and walked across to the dilapidated phone box with its busted windows and precariously hanging door. A battered white-pages phone book, its edges torn and curled, its leaves turned in as markers by previous users sat on the dusty bench. She had no need of it. Their phone box was the only number she needed. She unhooked the receiver, but before dialling she took time to stare through the booth's dusty glass to the perfectly framed tableau over by the pump.
The petrol cap was off. The woman held the hose while her husband stood behind her, fondling her breasts and her swollen belly. Turning her head around, the woman smiled suggestively up at her man, her free hand cradling his erection. Unambiguously, he placed his big hand over hers on the nozzle and helped her guide it into the hole. The woman threw back her head, letting him nibble her earlobe while, together they filled the tank.
Love in the outback. She hoped the Jeep’s tank wouldn’t overflow before the couple’s passions cooled.
Old Blue was back at her feet, licking the salt from her legs, looking for seconds. 'Sorry, sport. Outta luck.'
The mutt slunk off to where the toddler was riding his dinky backwards and forwards over the panda.
Overtaken by an urge to be back on the road, she returned the handset to its cradle and stepped outside. She was dog-tired and her body felt dirty, the grit everywhere; in her eyes, between her teeth and running in red rivulets down her arms and the backs of her legs.
She would make the call from further down the highway.
–3–
Fortitude Valley, 1971
'Motherfuckers,' said Rex as he stood, arms folded, at the front door of the Resistance, looking across the road to the black Holden parked on the curb. They had him under surveillance. Him, the shop and his customers. But mostly him, Rex Lapari, ex United States Marine, late of a Thousand Oaks, CA, washed up on Australia’s shores for want of anything better to do.
Despite the darkened windows, he knew it would be Ramsey slouched in the back seat of the cop car. Big Man, sitting there smug behind his dark glasses, the Resistance firmly in his sights. Probably slurping on a double strawberry malt; the one he didn’t need, the one he’d had his side-kick collect from Bert’s Corner Store at the bottom of the terrace. He fought down the urge to cross the road and up end it all over the prick’s brown trousers. He loathed brown trousers. Loathed belligerent old cops like Ramsey and the menacing way they kept cruising past the Resistance and parking themselves across the road under the big macadamia tree.
He rubbed the scar at his temple. The Springboks. A reminder of how necessary it was to resist the Ramseys of this world.
He and a student, one of Miki’s legion of fans, had been flat out since sun-up this morning hanging her pictures and generally getting the place tarted up for the opening on Saturday night.
Images From the Front he was calling it––same as her last book––and nothing was going to stop him getting her exhibition looking fantastic. She should be here to bathe in the glory. If he wasn’t such a pathetic cripple he’d be the one up north dropping those guys off and she’d be down here taking her bow. But Miki wasn't the cocktails and applause type. More a woman who dug doing it, not talking about it. He knew she'd climbed mountains in Nepal, trudged through South America with guerrillas; all for the sake of her art.
He often wondered where she learned to use a camera the way she did.
He gave a salute to the Holden and went back inside. If the phone rang he'd hear it. If not, someone passing would give him the word. Everyone except the pricks across the road knew they took their calls on the public phone. Their complicity, what he loved about this neighbourhood, he thought as he stood behind his counter to undo a parcel of new arrivals while his offsider climbed a ladder over by the far wall.
~~~
Another hour passed before Rex and his student helper wrapped up the work, all frames hung and catalogues disbursed around tables. He moved back and looked around the bookshop, the part of it that was their art gallery.
‘Looks good, right? The Guest of Honour won’t be here but the rest of the known world will be.' Especially the guys out there, he chuckled to himself, checking out the Holden still parked across the way. ‘The fuck-fuckers.'
'The Morons.'
Poor bastard, figured Rex, looking his off-sider up and down, seeing the long untidy hair, the pimples, the badges covering his chest and the fire in his eyes. He’s too young to remember the other Australia, the kinder one, the one where brother got on with brother, fathers didn’t kick their sons out of home for the sake of a hair cut and a mother didn’t sit on a bed in her son's empty room, wondering if her boy was dead or alive. They had been talking about the war, he and the kid. What else was there to fucking talk about?
‘Rex?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Why’d you come here instead of going back home … to the States?’
He could tell that the kid thought he was some kind of loser, choosing Australia over the great US of A. Kids like this were brought up on a steady diet of Hollywood crap. They believed every college guy in the States spent his days sitting around drug stores swilling Cokes with the likes of Sandra Dee and rocking to a jukebox. They all wanted to be two hundred and thirty pound quarterbacks getting laid by prom queens every night, poor saps.
‘Just kind of washed up here, buddy. Busted. Pissed off with my own mob.’
He bashed his prosthetic leg. ‘As good a place as any for a cripple, hey, pal?
That’ll shut him up, he thought as he checked his watch, anxious for Miki’s call. He needed to warn her the pricks had set up camp across the road. No way could she make an appearance at the Resistance on Saturday. Not even sneak in to the shop in her usual way. It would be off-limits for the duration. He always knew once they publicized Images it would spark their interest in the author.
Like the TDT stunt back in March hadn’t done it already, he reasoned, recalling the hullabaloo. It was hard not to call her reckless but she deserved a two-thumbs-up for her spunk. Those sons-of-bitches down in Canberra would have been head-fucked the night her bit went to air. He couldn’t imagine Miki behind bars. But he had her back. He’d break her out if they fucking tried anything on, he reasoned as he emerged from his flat out the back carrying a couple of cold long-necks.
He slipped off the bandana holding his hair back from his eyes and used it to wipe the heavy beads of sweat off his forehead
‘Here! Take a break, buddy,’ he told his off-sider, flinging a beer to the kid. ‘Has to be XXXX, sorry. Clean outta Budweiser.’
~~~
The phone box door was still ajar, the foot