After we’d both downed a couple of vodkas, Curtis confided that Ruth’s departure had left him and his team in a sticky situation. Incredibly, The Strangler was still at large, almost two years after I’d left the show. Ruth had liked to keep this threat simmering away in the background and would revive it when the audience (and the ratings) needed a jolt. However, two years of drawing out this suspense was an eternity in television and the audience had lost patience and interest. A month ago, The Strangler had murdered Lucy, after stalking her for months, but it scarcely made a flicker in the ratings. ‘We’re under pressure to wrap up this storyline and move on,’ Curtis explained, ‘but the problem is that we don’t have any idea what Ruth had in mind. All she would ever say about the identity of The Strangler was that “we’d be surprised”. I’ve tried contacting her but she won’t take my calls.’
‘Well, I know who The Strangler should be,’ I bragged.
Even though I’d been treated badly, I’d continued to watch the show. I wanted to know who’d killed me. When nothing was revealed, I began idling away hours and hours of my time thinking through all the possible suspects and their motives. Then one day, watching Tara’s parents place a memorial wreath on her grave—I took note that while at the cemetery, they did not even bother to visit my grave!—it occurred to me. I knew who The Strangler was, or at least who it should be. I felt elated by my ingenuity, then I felt curious. Would the writers come to the same conclusion that I had?
Curtis became very animated. He was beside himself with curiosity. ‘Who? Tell me.’
At first, I was just going to blurt out my ideas, when suddenly I thought better of it. ‘Sorry Curtis, but I don’t feel particularly inclined to help the person who killed off not only my character but also my blossoming television career.’
Curtis blanched and began to snivel his excuses. I turned on my heel and made my exit with Damon. To my surprise, Curtis pursued me, insisting that it was all Ruth’s fault that I’d been written out and that he had tried to save me. I didn’t buy it, told him so and eluded his protestations by jumping into a taxi. However, as we pulled away, I couldn’t resist winding down the window and taunting him. ‘I’ll tell you this much Curtis. The Strangler isn’t a man, it’s a woman.’
The expression on his face was priceless.
The next day, when I checked my e-mail, I had a message from Curtis. The subject line read ‘a proposition’.
Dear Stephen,
I’m glad we ran into each other last night as it has given me an idea. There’s no denying it: we did put you out of a job, but perhaps I can set that right by offering you a new one.
I’m trying for a more consultative approach than Ruth and I’m intrigued to know your ideas about the identity of ‘The Strangler’. But it’s not only about that particular storyline. I’ve never forgotten the suggestions you came up with for writing out Tara. They were wicked, outrageous and downright inspired. I know you’re an actor but I think you have a talent for plot and storyline development and to be frank, that’s exactly what we need right now. I wouldn’t want you to write scripts, but rather to attend our script meetings and act as an assistant and ideas man to me. If you’re interested, we could offer you a three month contract initially, with an option to extend that for a further year. The money is attractive, the hours involved aren’t excessive and it wouldn’t hurt you to stay attached to the network in some capacity. It always helps.
Would you be free to discuss this proposal over lunch at Icebergs today, 1pm? If so, please provide your address and I’ll send a car for you.
Best wishes,
Curtis Paterson
As I read Curtis’s e-mail, my initial scepticism turned to unabashed delight. This offer was heaven-sent and truly, I was perfect for this role. I had no doubt that I could deliver: outrageous ideas were one thing I was never short of. But the swiftness of his proposal and the flattering language it was couched in made it clear that Curtis was at his wit’s end. He was behaving like a desperate man, which made me suspect I could push him to offer a little more.
We met for lunch. I didn’t play coy. I told him I was excited by his offer. My only stipulation was that if he used my idea for The Strangler then my initial term of contract would be extended from three months to twelve. He agreed, rang someone to amend the contract and have it couriered over to the restaurant. I was impressed when the new contract arrived just as we were finishing our main courses. I read it carefully, signed and then outlined my idea.
‘There’s nothing a TV audience likes more than when an old character returns to a show after an absence of many years,’ I began, ‘and if they return somewhat the worse for wear, even deranged and nursing a murderous vendetta, then so much the better.’
‘I knew my instincts about you were right,’ Curtis grinned. ‘Who are we talking about?’
‘Phyliss Tate.’
When I’d signed up to the show, I’d been obliged to become familiar with the major events that had occurred in the previous five years of episodes, in particular those events that had impacted on Tara and the Perkins family. So I knew that in the first year of the show, the loving marriage of Roger and Tina Perkins, Tara’s parents, had almost ended. Roger had embarked on an affair with Phyliss Tate, a Gold Coast divorcée with a drinking problem and morals that were looser than the roof tiles she was always asking Roger over to fix. Ultimately, Phyliss had been humiliated and run out of Sunnyside Street by Tina, but why shouldn’t Phyliss return, seven years later, having turned murderously vengeful in the interim?
Curtis declared the idea of Phyliss returning ‘ingenious’. In fact he was so excited he stopped eating and rang one of his underlings to track down Carole, the actor who’d played Phyliss. ‘But what drove Phyliss over the edge?’ Curtis asked.
I had it all worked out. After Phyliss fled Sunnyside Street, she had discovered she was pregnant to Roger. She had the baby, kept it secret, and bided her time, waiting for the right moment to confront Roger with his offspring. But the moment never came. Her little girl died at the tender age of three years old from meningitis and Phyliss went into a downward spiral. Her depression turned blacker, became bitter and vindictive. She blamed Tina for separating her and Roger. She wanted Tina to know the pain of losing a child and so Phyllis strangled Tara with the cord from her daughter’s fluffy pink dressing gown. Over the past two years, she’d continued to terrorise the Perkins family but her ultimate prey had always been Tina.
‘So Phyliss begins to stalk her, until finally they come face to face. A struggle ensues, but Tina is saved at the last minute and Phyliss apprehended,’ suggested Curtis.
‘Oh no Curtis,’ I protested aghast. ‘That’s far too banal. No, no, Phyliss captures Tina and holds her hostage in a secret location, though everyone on Sunnyside Street assumes she is dead. Then Phyliss installs herself as Roger’s live-in housekeeper and taunts Tina with evidence that Roger is turning to her in his grief. Of course, Phyliss has no intention of staying put in the spare room. She has designs on the master bedroom. She dresses provocatively. She leaves her sexy lingerie lying around the house. She lures Roger home from the office mid-afternoon on some pretext so that he can discover her sunbathing naked by the swimming pool. One morning, after her shower, her towel “falls off” as she brushes past Roger in the hallway. Finally she seduces him by crushing a Viagra tablet into his dinner. Then she buys an engagement ring and tells Tina that Roger gave it to her. Whenever Phyliss brings Tina food, she always has a wedding magazine to flick through or a book on sexually satisfying your new man.’
Curtis was stunned. ‘This is revolutionary,’ he exclaimed. ‘We have to get Carole back.’
The call came through when we were finishing up our coffee. The actor had been located. She’d been reduced to selling programs at the Opera House and so was utterly thrilled to be invited back to ‘Sunnyside Street’ in a guest capacity.
‘Some of your ideas might be a little racy for our time slot,’ mused Cur
tis, ‘but the show is in the doldrums. It needs spicing up.’
From there, things moved very quickly. I attended my first script meeting that same week and outlined my ideas to the team. A script that had been finalised was pulled and rewritten, with a scene inserted to herald the return of Phyliss. Then we mapped out the episode in which Phyliss began to stalk Tina. It was immensely satisfying, when a month or so later, I began to see my ideas played out on national television. Then the ratings figures came out and showed that the freefall had been arrested. Slowly, audiences for the show began to climb. Once Tina was tied up and Phyliss installed as housekeeper, the figures for the show soared, far surpassing anything that had been accomplished when Tara was resident on Sunnyside Street. Carole as Phyliss became the show’s unlikely new star while I was its ‘golden boy’. I was presented with a laptop and a sizeable bonus.
I only had one regret about my new career. Yes, I was employed in a well-paid, creative capacity, but I did mourn the fact that I was now on the other side of the camera, the side that the audience didn’t know about. Who ever bothered to read through the credits at the end of a TV show? I missed being in the spotlight. Damon brushed my complaints aside. ‘This is the ideal job for you,’ he told me firmly. ‘You definitely have the imagination to be a writer, you just don’t have the discipline or the technique. But this gives you the opportunity to channel all of that creativity in a productive way, instead of getting yourself into all sorts of trouble.’
I could see his point. I had noticed that with this new focus, I’d lost all interest in my impersonations. But perhaps it also had something to do with the way my life had turned around over the past few months. I had my new job; I was back in my own home; Blake was gone from next door; and I had more friends around me. My friendship with Damon was becoming increasingly important to me and Strauss was back in Sydney, surprisingly with this boy Ahmed in tow. Life was better than it had been in some time.
Strauss had been unimpressed on his return that I had failed to snare any more ‘treasures’ from the Altair rubbish room for him. He upbraided me when I went around to welcome him home. I pointed out that I had left him several of my own possessions, as he needed them so desperately. ‘I don’t know how you could live there without a fan or a toaster.’
‘Oh,’ said Strauss in an odd tone. ‘Those things were yours?’
‘And if you don’t want them, I’ll take them back.’
There was a long silence. Finally, Strauss confessed that he had thrown them out. I couldn’t believe it. Strauss hastened to defend himself. ‘Darling, you have to understand, this is The Altair and though I truly appreciate your thoughtfulness, I am accustomed to a certain class of cast-offs. If it’s not designer, then it just won’t do.’
Offended, I stalked out and ignored Strauss’s frantic apologies by text. As I exited the building, the concierge gave me an oily smirk and remarked that he’d had several enquiries for me since I’d moved out. Of course, the fellow had a fair idea of my exploits while in residence. His insinuation made me do a 180 degree turn and go back upstairs to accept Strauss’s apologies. I needed to make nice with him in case he should encounter any strange men pressing his intercom at all hours.
We made up and in a buzz of intimacy, Strauss admitted that he was a little disillusioned with having a boyfriend. ‘Well, you’ve gone straight into living together, so of course there are bound to be tensions. And then your boyfriend is also a little intense,’ I said diplomatically.
That was putting it very nicely. Damon and I had privately declared him to be unbearably conservative, possessive, and surly. However, as he was reputed to be 100% top with a killer cock we could understand why Strauss could dismiss these personality flaws so airily.
There was one other significant event that occurred over that autumn period—I encountered Patrick again. I’d gone to Coles to do some shopping and was just leaving, lugging my bags, when I spotted him, the last person I wanted to encounter. He was standing out there in the main hall of the mall, just as he had been the first time I met him. I felt such a stab of pity for him. The poor guy was back to accosting strangers again which had to be one of the worst jobs ever.
Of course, I didn’t want him seeing me. He’d been so angry with me, though admittedly it was wholly justified. I didn’t want to risk another scene and this time in a public place. It wasn’t difficult to pass by unnoticed. He didn’t seem to be very focused on his job. He was making no effort whatsoever to engage with anyone, let alone waylay them. Instead, he was staring off into Coles, perhaps wondering if stacking shelves might be a better employment option. I was inclined to think that it might be.
But as I hurried out onto Cleveland Street, I couldn’t stop thinking about Patrick. I just felt so bad that he was back doing that thankless job and looking so unfocused, when once he’d been so bright and enthusiastic. I couldn’t help feeling that I was to blame, that the deception I had wrought upon him had really crushed him. I stopped walking.
I turned around, marched back into the mall and straight up to him. He didn’t see me coming. He was still standing there in what seemed like a dazed state. I tapped him on the shoulder and started talking immediately, before he could stop me.
‘I know I’m the last person you want to see, but I saw you standing there, and I just felt compelled to come and apologise. What I did was appalling. There’s no excuse, but I was in a bad state emotionally. I’d been dumped for the first time ever and I just didn’t cope. I kind of unraveled and for six months I was basically out of control. I was very promiscuous but I also started taking on these different personas …’
Patrick started shaking his head, backing away and trying to fend me off but that only made me more determined to confess and atone for the terribly damage I’d done to him. ‘I just want to say that most gay men aren’t like me. I was probably the worst experience you’ll ever have. I hope you meet someone who deserves you. Who knows, maybe you’ll even meet someone here, now you’re back working in the mall. There must be so many cute guys passing by every day …’
‘I’m not working here,’ Patrick protested.
Of course he would deny it. I gave him an indulgent smile. ‘It’s alright Patrick. There are far worse jobs. I wouldn’t apply for Coles. You can do much better than stacking shelves …’
‘My God, you are crazier than ever,’ Patrick exclaimed. ‘Are you on medication and sometimes you don’t take it?’
That was insulting in the extreme, but I held my sharp tongue, and persisted with my apology. ‘I’m sorry,’ I repeated. ‘All I wanted to do was apologise sincerely. I didn’t mean to stir things up again. You just looked so forlorn, standing there, back doing what you were when we met …’
‘I’m not working here,’ Patrick snapped. ‘I shop here. I live nearby, in Moore Park. This is the closest supermarket. I’m just waiting for my boyfriend. We forgot tissues and he went back in to buy them.’
‘Boyfriend?’
‘Yes, I went back to my boyfriend and in a way I have you to thank for that. You were so full of yourself and so full of shit, it made me realise that perhaps the problems I had with Ed weren’t really all that significant. Yes, he cheated on me, but he was honest. He owned up to it and was sorry. I came to respect that and after my experience with you, I realised how important honesty is. So I forgave him.’
‘Hang on, hang on,’ I spluttered. ‘But you told me you were straight or bi, and that you’d broken up with your girlfriend …’
Patrick grinned. ‘Yeah I did, didn’t I? And you loved that, didn’t you Jayson? It turned you on.’
I was stunned. Patrick had been putting on an act of his own! But before I had time to protest, Ed turned up and I was stunned all over again. This guy was a knockout. He was tall, strapping, über masculine. He looked like a league player, an image he was encouraging by wearing a tight Sydney Roosters shirt. Of course Patrick had gone back to this in a heartbeat. ‘You right?’ Ed asked Patrick, his eyes
raking over me suspiciously.
Patrick nodded, but then he darted forward, seized my hand and squeezed it. ‘You know if you take your medication all the time, you won’t have these highs and lows, and all these delusions. Maybe your boyfriend might even take you back if you could be more stable.’
He nodded at me, eyes wide, encouragingly, then turned and walked off with Ed, hand in hand. ‘Who was that?’ I heard Ed ask.
‘Some nutter,’ Patrick replied dismissively.
I was astounded and insulted, but as I walked home, I began to see the funny side of our encounter. It made me chuckle to myself. Though unfortunately Ed and Patrick drove down Cleveland Street at that exact moment in their sports car and tooted. Patrick looked out his window at me, shaking his head sorrowfully at finding me cackling away inanely to myself, my mentally unbalanced state now completely confirmed.
I tried to ring him to invite them both to my party and dispel this false impression he’d formed of me, but of course he didn’t take the call. Instead, Ed sent a text a few minutes later warning me never to contact Patrick again or he’d have me committed.
I didn’t invite a lot of people to my party: my mother and Uncle Vic, Ant and his ex Carson, Strauss and Ahmed, Damon, Alejandro and Joshua, Curtis and his date, and finally my neighbours Eleanor, Arthur, and Harriet. One neighbour who certainly wasn’t invited was Rick. We didn’t speak. If we happened to encounter one another, we nodded, and quickly moved on. Though one day, a week or so after the invitations had gone out, when I was in a happy, expansive mood, I invited Blake to the party. It was a whim and I regretted it almost instantly, but thankfully he didn’t RSVP. If he’d come, it would have completely preoccupied me and if he’d brought a date, it would probably have ruined my night.
I’d invited Alejandro, mostly because I was curious to meet Joshua, his alleged boyfriend, and see what the guy looked like. It also occurred to me that it might make for an interesting evening if Blake did show up, and he and Joshua were to come face to face. However, Alejandro turned up without Joshua, but with his gym buddy Jorge.