The King and Other Stories: Collected Fiction Read online

  That's when Voda leans in, just like on Wednesday night. His eyes are wide and jittery and rimmed with red. "How much are you making out of this?"

  I shrug. "It's an auction. Maybe nothing."

  "Bullshit," he says. "And we're the ones that did the work. You never got up there with a fucking roller."

  "I could give you guys whatever I make. It's not a big thing."

  "Hell no," says Seb, "we're not a charity," and that's when Fiver slaps his hands down on the table so hard everything rattles. The noise echoes off the walls. Coffee spills over the edge of one cup and runs in a thin line to the edge of the table.

  "It is not our money," he says, very slowly. "It is his money. We invited him along and he took our photos. We can't now take it back."

  He ducks his head a moment. "I did not think you would do this. We had so many talks that I thought you understood."

  "I do understand-"

  He cuts me off with a wave of the hand. "No, you do not. It was good, what you did. You let people know about us. Maybe they will join our fight, too. But you still think of money, in the end."

  "I just said-"

  He looks away, and suddenly I feel ashamed. "We were enough together as four. You should go now."

  Seb is staring at her hands. She doesn't look angry or even sad. Just frustrated. There's something trying to get out but she's keeping her lips shut. I try to work out the words. "I didn't want the money. I just wanted to show people how you fight. Maybe I don't understand it, but I think you're doing something right. Well. Maybe. At least you're doing something." I can't meet their eyes. "If... if I said no, then could I keep coming out with you?"

  Fiver shakes his head. "I think you have taken some good photos. That is enough for now."

  I nod again. "Then that's all." I lay down a twenty on the table. "I'll send you all an invite to the exhibition. Whenever that is."

  They don't say anything until they think I'm out of earshot. Then it's Voda who speaks, his voice nasal and whiny across the coffee house. "We should be the ones with the damn exhibition."

  "Shut up, Voda," says Seb. I can't help but grin at that.

  * * *

  Back at home it's cold and quiet. I sit a while and rest my head in my hands and think of things I could have said, should have said. The email from the owner of the Tumnus Gallery is still open on the screen and I start to type a reply: Thank you for your offer, and I'd love to take part...

  My fingers feel leaden. They fumble on the keys. I take out my phone and flip to Seb's number. If I asked real nice, she could put in a word to Fiver...

  No. Begging is something Voda would pull.

  I finish the email and stare at it for a while. It doesn't sound like me. All fawning appreciation. Last night I was running from the police, and now I'm scraping my head on the floor as I bow.

  I swallow my pride and send the email.

  There's a message from Seb waiting. Hey, you okay? That was a really shitty thing that Fiver did. Come meet me for coffee. I delete it without replying.

  * * *

  The Tumnus gallery is squeezed between an Irish pub and a news agency. It's small and scrubby, paint peeling from the lintel and the sign hanging crooked, but the front window is lovingly polished, and inside enormous paintings hang in heavy gilded frames. A woman in a cardigan and thick glasses sweeps the floor. She looks up, smiles, and motions me inside.

  "I'm Marianne." She shakes my hand. "I'm glad you said yes. We're one short for this exhibition, and I couldn't bear having an empty wall." Her teeth are tiny, like baby teeth. "Do you take sugar in your tea?"

  She takes me upstairs. This is her home, she explains; a one-bedroom apartment above the gallery. Unfinished paintings lie about on the carpet, thick with oil. "I used to paint," she says. "But time is short these days. Do you paint?"

  I shake my head. "Ah," she says. "Your photography is your art." She nods at the camera bag slung over my shoulder. "Your photos. I don't enjoy graffiti, but... there's something very sad about your photos. Like David and Goliath. But I think your Davids know that their Goliath is too big."

  "Or maybe they're only realising it now?"

  "Perhaps." She pours the tea into chipped mugs. "They all seem very sad. But they are sad together. So you will exhibit?" I nod. "Good," she says. "There will be four others. Two are painters. They do landscapes. Not very exciting, but they will bring friends. And you will bring friends?"

  "Of course." I think she senses the truth, but she doesn't pry. "It's a lovely gallery."

  "I bought it many years ago," she says. "And it's nice to live so close. I can read, and think of painting again while I watch television." She points to her TV, a big black flat-screen wedge mounted on an old oak cabinet. "Isn't it nice? I bought it new. It's very clear." She sighs. "I wish they showed more things on the news about painting, or gardens. There's very little about gardens."

  The TV is huge, and I'm reminded of Kubrick's sentinel looming over the apes. Marianne holds her mug in both hands, and she looks so terribly sad as she speaks of her gardening shows. Sad and small.

  I've been unzipping the camera bag without thinking, unscrewing the lens, flicking the switch. I raise the camera. There in the viewfinder; Marianne, on the downward slope of middle age, dreaming of gardening. Behind her, the television she bought to watch shows that don't exist. But she's proud of it, truly proud, even though it doesn't show anything she wants. She's proud of it because it's clear.

  I take the photo.

  * * *

  Back on the street I wander with the Hasselblad slung around my midsection like a rifle. It's high noon. Cafés are full of students and heavy beats leak out from boutique stores, vibrating through the pavement. Men in dark suits tunnel through the crowds, holding briefcases as shields against oncoming human traffic. Spruikers shout at me from storefronts. I can't hear my own footsteps. It's all sweat and hubbub and jostling elbows.

  On the corner of Lonsdale and Swanston is a billboard mounted on the side of a cinema. There's an action hero up there, some ex-wrestler with a crew-cut covered in gun-oil and the clotted blood of his enemies. His eyes are dark and maddened. His movie opens nationwide tomorrow.

  A woman dressed in a torn cardigan is shuffling along the sidewalk. She's wearing old black tights and plastic thongs. Her hair is matted and filthy. A passing teen brushes a little too close, and she clenches her fists, shrieks, calls him a dog, a fucking bastard. The boy, lost in his music, walks on.

  Anyone who says great photos just happen is a liar. You have to see them coming. I crouch down, adjust the focus, and wait.

  One step. One more. She's right in front of the sign. She stops, scratches behind her ear. She looks up and takes it in. The man, his vendetta. She looks confused, as if peering into a foreign land.

  She jumps a little at the click but doesn't look around.

  I watch the milling crowds. Mums in tracksuit pants weighed down with shopping and kids in tow crying for treats and toys. Students staring at rows of laptops and iPods behind plate glass slippery with handprints.

  I don't need the bag lady. They're everywhere. A hundred opportunities. Everyone begging for something to buy.

  I let my trigger finger run wild.

  I email Marianna my photo line-up.

  Are you sure this is your final selection?

  Absolutely, reply. I think they provide a nice variety.

  Even the photo of me? I don't know if that's really proper.

  I think it's perfect.

  I lie in bed, eyes closed, hands curling around a telephoto lens that isn't there. The air in my apartment is suffocating. I want to be out on the streets.

  Again, Seb emails me. Hey. We hit up some pretty big boards in town. You should come see.

  I reply with the date and time for opening night. She can come if she wants. I try to convince myself I don't care much either way, but it's a lie.

  * * *

  People are milling around the gallery entrance when I arrive. Dour-faced men in suits and ties and women in heels, lips painted unnatural colours. They laugh at dog-whistle pitch, and I start to wish for the quiet of the alleys, the rattle of the paint roller. Those deliberate pauses when everyone would duck down, waiting for a car to pass.

  I miss the Four.

  I circle the gallery anonymously, eavesdropping. They all speak in art wank, but there are a few who linger, who see the beggar woman before the theatre and nod. They look at Seb vanishing into the crowd and hunch their shoulders, like they too are hiding. I wish the four were here to see it.

  I turn. There are two figures in the doorway, heads down. I recognise them immediately from how they shuffle through the crowd. Phelps has a cap pulled low over his eyes, and Seb has her hoodie up, casting her whole face into shadow. I try to keep my voice calm, to hide my excitement. "You came incognito."

  Phelps looks around nervously, hands in his pockets. "Good crowd you got."

  "They're not all for me." I point him to the wine. "Grab a drink and come up the back."

  He waits for me there, sitting in an antique armchair, sipping his wine like a thirsty bird. "You've got some good pictures here. The ones of the people. Like that woman and her TV. Where'd you get the idea for those?"

  "Well." I try to sound nonchalant. "You guys, really."

  "Huh." He stops, unsure. I don't know what he wants to say. His scarred lip twists and quivers. Then, finally: "You sure nobody knows who we are?"

  "No one."

  Phelps sags into the chair. "Thank God. I've been up all night. Told the wife I had the trots. Goddamn." He wipes his forehead with the back of his sleeve. "She thinks I'm cheating, you know that? Because I'm out late. How stupid is that?"

  "Pretty stupid," I admit. "You think it
's worth it?"

  "No. Well. It's worth doing. It's not worth losing my wife." He sighs. "Did I tell you I have two daughters?"

  "I knew you had kids."

  "Two girls," he says. "Amelia and Petra. Petra turned eight last week. You know what she asked for?"

  "Barbies? A laptop?"

  "Scales. She weighs herself every morning. What's an eight year old doing worrying about that?"

  "Phelps, that's normal. When I was eight I kept doing up my hair like Travolta."

  "It's not the same!" He crushes his cap in his hands. "She wants to be thin. I don't think she even has a reason for it. I thought about taking her magazines away but what would that do? Really?"

  Glasses clink in the next room. Someone laughs, low and booming, and I want to run out into the gallery and shout, throw them out the door and turn the locks. Phelps looks up at me, and his eyes are hard. The scar on his lip doesn't look half as nasty anymore. It reminds me of Renommierschmiss, the duelling scars German officers wore as marks of pride.

  "It's in her head," he says. "Taking her stuff away won't change that. She'll just get the message somewhere else. Isn't that sad? She remembers the ads better than her geography."

  "I know what you mean, but the problem isn't the ads. I mean, ads are what I do. I understand them. Billboards aren't about selling. They're about making people sell to other people. The kids are the ads now. Little parroty billboards. It's a virus."

  "And?"

  "You can't take on a virus. You have to supplant it." He looks at me blankly. "Give them something new to talk about."

  "So that's what you're doing? God." Phelps drains the last of his wine and stares at the empty glass. "Maybe this is something better left to the young. But I don't want Petra being something she's not because the TV told her so."

  "Then keep going out nights."

  He smiles tiredly. "Thanks. I like what you're doing. I really do. Someone will buy those photos and look at them for the rest of their lives. They'll stick. Not like our posters. None of those posters ever last."

  "Maybe. But people see them." I extend a hand and pull him to his feet. "That's how you win."

  "Guess we'll see, right?"

  We thread back through the crowd. Seb is waiting by the door, inspecting a painting of a nude reclining by a riverbank. Lilies wash past in autumnal drifts. "What took so long?"

  "Just talking."

  "Well." She looks me up and down. "I'm done. Let's go."

  She and Phelps slip out into the still winter night. Phelps huffs on his hands to keep warm. I watch them from inside, through a throng of simpering critics.

  Seb sees me. She stands under a streetlight and waves, all the little zippers on her jacket winking as they catch the light. She mimes lifting a mug to her lips, and then taps her watch and holds up two fingers.

  I give her the thumbs up. Sounds great to me.

  * * *

  Two hours later I'm in Starbucks, glad to be breathing air that isn't all perfume and musk. Seb is reading a travel magazine.

  "Anywhere you were thinking of going?"

  "Yeah," she says. "Tahiti. After I graduate." She puts it down. "It was a good exhibit. You were the best there."

  "Thanks."

  "Fiver shouldn't have kicked you out."

  I nod. The hurt is still there, but distant.

  "He'll miss you soon, I bet," she says. "He's not bad. Just blinkered. Love of money is the root of all evil, that sort of thing. Bring down the aristocracy. He wants to be someone like Che Guevara."

  "Or Tyler Durden."

  "Exactly. Like he saw the movie and didn't get the joke. He's making it up as he goes."

  "You sure you're in highschool?"

  Seb shrugs. "I steal other people's lines."

  "So why do you run with Fiver if he's so..."

  "Messed up? Look, I'm not knocking him." She hesitates. "It's just that he's angry at everything, but nothing at the same time. Wants to hurt all these big businesses but I asked him why once, what they ever did to him personally... he doesn't know." She spreads her hands wide to indicate the café. "Like this. He hates Starbucks. Maybe because they're everywhere, and the coffee is kind of shit, right? But they use fair-trade beans, and that's a start, yeah?"

  I sip my coffee. It's finally cool enough to drink without burning my tongue. Is it a bad blend, a burnt roast? I can't tell. Too much free wine. "But would they do the fair trade thing if people didn't raise a stink?"

  "Probably not. Anyway, Fiver isn't too bad. We need Fivers. He just shouldn't be in charge. Phelps would be better."

  "He's good?"

  "He's realistic. He thinks. Sometimes Fiver doesn't."

  Outside, the stream of cars has died away. A single pair of headlights crest the hill, catch us on high beam, and for a second I'm blinded. "What about Voda?"

  "Ha!" Her mocking smile is back. "He's such a dick! Blah blah Virgin Mobile made me impotent blah. No, we need Phelps. He isn't just... lashing out."

  I want to say that it isn't Phelps who should be leading, that only one of the Four Horsemen really understands how things should be done. But I know that she already knows it, and so it stays unsaid.

  "You sticking with them?" I ask.

  "Yeah. Probably."

  "Good. Although. Don't take offense." I lean in close. "You guys really a new name."

  She nods, solemn. "We need to grow up." She reaches out to touch me on the back of the hand. Her fingers are rough and warm. "Come out with us again, sometime?"

  "If Fiver wants me." I pull my hand free. "I think I'd prefer to work with people that use their real names. No offense."

  She cocks her head. "Seb is my real name, you know."

  "Bullshit."

  "Sebastien. My folks are weird that way."

  "And the fourteen?"

  "That's when I started tagging. What about you? When'd you start?"

  "Seventeen, I think."

  "Why'd you quit?"

  There are memories there that sting. "It's been a while. It's hazy, you know."

  "Just tell me."

  I swallow. "We were out doing some throwups on a rooftop. Someone called the police, so we ran. I was the fastest. I got away. None of my friends did. One of them, Carlos, he got pretty messed up. One of the cops kept punching him in the head. He was in the hospital for a week.

  "Anyway. They all got fined. Tom even got two years probation. They hit him up for every tag he ever did. But I got away clean. I didn't turn up to Tom's court appearance. I never even saw Carlos in the hospital. So that's why I quit."

  I haven't spoken of Carlos in a long time. I've almost forgotten his face. Saying his name leaves me empty, cleaned out inside. Seb looks at me for a while, not saying anything. Then, mercifully, she stands up and stretches. "Time to get going. Wars need to be fought."

  "True." I reach out to shake her hand. "I think you're doing it right, you know. You just need to do it honestly. You can fight this without being Brad Pitt."

  "Damn straight. I'll tell that to Fiver."

  "Like he'll listen."

  "You never know," she says. "You never know."

  Out on the street, the air is lined with ice. Seb pulls her hood up and exhales in a long plume. "Thanks for talking," she says. "The others don't talk. Well, Voda does, but only ever about his dick."

  "My pleasure." The street is nearly empty at this hour but for the buskers and the last drunken tourists staggering to the taxi ranks. It feels scoured, censored. "Hey, you never told me. What's the deal with the sirens?"

  She stiffens. "Just bad days, that's all."

  "How bad?"

  "Next time." She blinks a few times, and the darkness falls from her expression. She smiles at me in the streetlights. "Ask again next time."

  Then she's gone, and I'm alone on a bare stretch of macadam.

  * * *

  My phone rings two weeks later. A number I don't recognise.

  "Hello there. Are you well?" It's Fiver.

  "Yeah," I say. "Doing just fine."

  "Are you rich yet? Does everyone know your name?"

  "I sold about half the shots. Made a grand before tax. Nobody gets rich doing this. What do you want?"