***
Nine: A Loud Mouthed Communist
Ollo and Sunshine were gone, I now had a team. I poured myself a little drinkie poo to celebrate and just as I was enjoying the first mouthful my door burst open and in walked Kashmere. She was wearing a long, linen dress, a sort of off white, slightly gathered at the waist, with a high neck line and a bit of embroidery around the neck, it had short puffy sleeves with a bit more embroidery and she wore short ankle boots. She looked the real Russian peasant girl but on her face was a smile that said: I know you find me attractive and I am going to milk it for everything it's worth. I took another sip of whiskey.
'Uh hmm,' she said clearing her throat.
I looked at some paperwork on my desk.
'Uh hmm,' she said clearing her throat again.
'Hello,' I said and half smiled.
'Hi there,' she said and she walked over to my desk. Her right hand reached out and touched my arm, her cheeks blossomed red with colour and her face burst into a rainbow of a smile, no man could resist it, I had to hand it to her, she knew all the right moves.
'For what do I owe the pleasure of your company?' I said.
Her hand slid down to mine, she played with my fingers and looked away, she was irresistible, I resisted.
'You seem to have landed on your feet,' she said.
'Yes, I'm a self employed man now.'
'When I first met you I thought you were a loud mouthed communist.'
'Anarchist.'
'What?'
'A loud mouthed anarchist.'
'I don't see the difference.'
'No, you wouldn't. So what can I do for you?'
'Nice office, bit sparse, perhaps I could brighten it up for you, a print of a Chagall.'
'The Russian painter who has everybody's head on upside down as they float into space playing the violin.'
'Do you know about him?'
'My Mum's an artist, she's the world's biggest fan of Chagall and besides that I like his use of blue but you didn't come here to talk about Chagall's use of blue.'
'No,' she said and sat down on one of my wonky chairs. 'May I sit down?'
'Be my guest,' I said making the appropriate gesture, 'sitting down is free, everything else costs.'
'So you're a capitalist now.'
'We live in a capitalist world.'
'Have you got any water?'
'Only tap water.'
'No thanks.'
'Cheap whiskey I have in abundance.'
'No thanks.'
'So,' I said as she tried but failed to take hold of my hand once again, 'let's talk.'
'Okay.'
'I'm pretty busy, places to go, people to see, things to do, exactly what is it you require of me?'
'You looked so funny at Lincoln's garden party but you've brushed up quite well, although where did you get that suit, it doesn't hang very well?'
'It's not meant to hang well, I got it at a cheap outfitters, I'm supposed to look incognito.'
'It looks cheap and nasty.'
'Did you come here to talk about my suit?'
'No.'
'It's not that I don't love having you here, you certainly brighten the place up a bit, not that I'm into bright places, but time is money.'
'A back handed compliment if ever I heard one.'
'Not really, look you haven't come here to talk about my el cheapo, badly cut ensemble, you haven't come here to have a pleasant conversation with me, you obviously want something and I'm a professional, here to provide a service.'
She looked into my eyes and blushed and fluttered her eyelids in a butter wouldn't melt in her mouth kind of way but I didn't trust the melting butter test and I didn't trust Kashmere.
'I do enjoy your company, in spite of everything, and you being a communist or a capitalist or whatever, I like that, you don't mess around, you get to the point and I like that and you are not, not good looking.'
'I think there's a compliment in there somewhere,' I said. She stood up and went and looked out of the window.
'Nice view,' she said. I decided not to press her about the business she had in mind, obviously she would get to it in her own good time. 'It would be claustrophobic without the view.' She wrung her hands together.
'I took this office because of the view,' I said. I picked up the phone and ordered two coffees, in takeaway cups, to be sent up. 'Would you like a coffee?'
'Yes please,' she said and we sat there looking at each other awkwardly, waiting.
'Nice day,' I said pointing at the window.
'Yes,' she said looking at the outside world, then we both went quiet again. There was a knock at the door and coffee and doughnuts arrived. I had an understanding with the deli on the ground floor, if I ordered coffee it always came with a side serve of doughnuts.
She looked at me and smiled. The doughnuts broke the ice.
'My brothers…'
'You've got brothers?'
'Yes, three of them and they're a real worry.'
'How?'
'Grandpa,' she said and then she went quiet again. I didn't break in, I just waited, I wasn't sure if she was pausing for dramatic effect. 'Grandpa.'
'What's your Grandpa's name?'
'Stan, short for Stanley, we call him Stan the Man, but that's just his anglicised name, he's actually Romanian, well he grew up in Romania, with Italian parents. Anyway, Grandpa came here to Australia after World War Two, to escape the Russians, he got on the last train out, all he had, all his possessions, were in one small carpet bag that he held tightly to his chest and just before the train left the station a Russian officer jumped aboard and took Grandpa's case, there was nothing he could do. Grandpa worked like a dog when he got here, market gardens in the Riverland, growing tomatoes and cucumbers, then he purchased land in Adelaide and grew celery, he married a Russian refugee from communism, my Grandma, they had a daughter and funnily enough she married a boy with Russian parents, they also had run away from the communists. Well the boy my mother married, well the marriage wasn't official, so I'm still a Fellini like Grandpa.'
'So you're one third Russian, one third Rumanian and one third Italian, quite a mongrel.'
'Thanks for that but watch your step, Grandpa was born in Sicily, so I have firey Sicilian blood as well.'
'I meant you're a mongrel in the nicest possible way.'
'My Mother was a looker, she remarried three times, so I have three brothers all to different fathers. They're nothing like me, and they don't live with me and Gramps, they all have big expensive apartments. I love them, they're family, but in no way do we get on. And when I say Mum got married, really what I'm saying is lived with.'
'Your mother was before her time.'
'Grandpa kept the family together, he's the patriarch you might say.'
'The Godfather.'
'No not quite that,' she said throwing in another pause for dramatic effect. 'You see I love my Grandpa, he's over ninety, one day he decided he didn't like the house he lived in anymore and he and another fella, a German named Hinze, who was over seventy, knocked the house down and put up a new one. Would you believe it?'
'Quite a character but what has this got to do with me?'
'Well I don't want to do anything to hurt him,' she said standing up and going back to the window.
'So what's the problem?'
'Hugo, Theodore and Young Stan.'
'And they, presumably, are your brothers?'
'Yes.'
'Right.'
'Will you go out to dinner with me?' she said
'You have got to be joking.'
'No, maybe I'm just a glutton for punishment.'
'Quite frankly, to be straight up and down with you, as I've said before, I don't much like you.'
'Don't worry the feeling's mutual.'
'Good.'
'But you will come out to dinner with me, won't you?'
'No.'
'I need your help.'
'Why? You obviously don't have a
scathing report to write, you wouldn't need any help with that.'
'Do you want me to apologise for that again?'
'No it would be pointless. Anyway you did what you went to the island to do, you got your man.'
'Did I?'
'Didn't you?'
'I'm not so sure.'
'Why?'
'I think, I can't be sure, I think I've seen him, I reported my sighting to my old commanding officer but nobody wants to know, I'm sort of in the reserves now, while I get my university degree, so there's not a lot I can do. I'm sure I saw a man who looked exactly like Spode talking to my brothers.'
'That's strange, I thought I saw him too but then, there are lots of men who look like that.'
'Will you go out to dinner with me?' she said as she looked out of the window.
'No.'
'Look, I've got to go.'
'Ah, Faustus, now hast thou but one bare hour to live and then thou must be dammed perpetually.' I'm not sure why I said that.
'Christopher Marlowe.' she said.
'Did you know Christopher Marlowe was a friend of Shakespeare's? He was a famous playwright and a spy, he was stabbed to death in a brawl, some say it was a political assassination, some say he didn't die at all and actually wrote all of Shakespeare's plays.'
'Later would be a better time for talking literature,' she said, 'over dinner perhaps.'
'Don't start that again.'
'Here come my brothers now,' she said moving towards the door.
I looked out of the window and down below, wearing flashy shoes, with flashy suits and flashy haircuts, covered in gold rings, gold bracelets and with golden medallions around their necks, were three hefty looking tanned men in their mid-twenties. They were the spitting image of the popular idea of a Chicago bootleg gangster.
'Something wicked this way comes,' I said.
'Macbeth,' said Kashmere. 'Do you like Macbeth? I'm writing an essay on it, did you know that I was at the university?'
'You told me a dozen times.'
'Did I?'
'Ah ha. What makes you think they're coming here?'
'I'm not willing to take the chance. Let's have dinner and we can have a real chin wag about my problem.'
'I prefer a neutral location, like this office.'
'I'll need to contact you again but you'll have to use an alias, I don't want Grandpa knowing anything about what's going on.'
'What is going on?'
'I haven't got time now.'
'Well if you need my help I have to know.'
'Then ask me out to dinner?'
'I don't think it would be appropriate. Considering the way we don't feel about each other we would probably try to drown each other in the soup, stab each other with the steak knives or brain each other with a meat tenderiser.'
'We can talk over dinner.'
'No.'
'Look, I know you don't like me and I've been pretty horrid to you, but can't we just try to keep everything on a professional footing.'
'Okay, you win.'
'So it can be a business dinner?'
'Yes but I'm really not sure it's a good idea,' I said
'So what will you use as your alias? I don't want Gramps knowing.'
'Whenever you need to contact me, call me Shakespeare.'
'That's good.'
'And whenever I contact you, I'll call myself Shakespeare.'
'Excellent, look I've got to go, I don't want my brothers to see me here,' she said turning around. She was nearly out the door when she stopped and turned back towards me. 'Dinner when?'
'Saturday?'
'Okay, Saturday night, seven thirty, you can pick me up at Gramps place.'
'Alright, but if you wake up drowned in the soup don't blame me.'
'It's our first date,' she said.
'No, it's a business arrangement.'