“Just a couple of quick questions, okay?”
“You’re not a cop, are you?”
“No, I’m not a cop.”
“Shit, I didn’t think they’d got that desperate.”
They all laughed again. Bernard was out of his depth. He moved even closer.
“I want to talk to you about crack.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t want to talk to you about anything at all, so why don’t you get the fuck out of here before I knock your teeth down your throat.”
“Where can you buy crack around here?” Bernard asked, still in a quiet voice.
“Don’t you understand English, you fuckwit?” he said, pushing Bernard in the chest.
“Look, I don’t want any trouble.”
“Well, you’re gonna get a whole lot of trouble any second now,” he said, pushing him again.
“Look, I’m trying to be polite to you boys. I just want to know where a person could buy some crack around here.”
At this, the kid grabbed Bernard by the scruff of his neck and, between clenched teeth, snarled, “I don’t want to talk to a piece of shit like you about crack or anything, ever, understand?”
“See, I’ll go if you’ll just tell me.”
At this the boy released him, pulled out a knife and put it to his throat. I called out Bernard’s name but he was the only one of all of them not to look at me. He stared straight at his tormentors. If I had not seen what happened next I would never have believed it.
In a fluid instant Bernard raised the metal pipe in his hand and, moving back one step, knocked the knife out of the kid’s hand. Then he leaned forward and pressed the pipe against the kid’s neck, pushing him against the wall, and said in the same quiet voice, “Listen, you little neo-Nazi piece of shit, if you tell me where I can buy crack around here I’ll remove this from your neck and let you breathe again. If you don’t tell me immediately, I’m going to kill you. Now, it might occur to you that I’m bluffing, but then it should also occur to you that not all crazy sons of bitches look like you, so I might not be bluffing and it is absolutely not in your interest to find out. Your friends won’t help you because if I’m crazy enough to kill you just for some lousy information, then I’m crazy enough to go after them. Of course, I won’t get them all. I won’t even get most of them. But I’ll probably get at least one of them and that’s what they’re thinking right now and that’s why they’re not doing anything except waiting to see what I’m going to do to you if you don’t tell me where they sell crack around here. So now that you’re fully apprised of the situation insofar as it concerns your continuing to breathe, I’ll ask you again: Where can I buy crack around here?”
“Take it easy, will you! Y’ can get it at Ziggy’s.”
“Ziggy’s on the junction, the karaoke place?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that wasn’t too hard, really, was it? If you had only been cooperative to start with, you wouldn’t feel so bad right now.” With that, Bernard stepped back and forced the air out of the kid’s chest with one end of the metal pipe. The kid immediately doubled over while the others looked on in horror. Bernard turned around, kicked the knife off the platform onto the tracks and started walking back towards the car, swinging the pipe wildly in front of him. The others parted for him like the Red Sea. He grabbed my hand and opened the car door for me. He had already started the engine before I had a chance to say anything.
“Bernard!”
“Thank God the car started.”
“Bernard!”
“What? I think that was useful.”
“What made you think they’re neo-Nazis?”
“They’re not neo-Nazis. They’re dangerous but they’re not neo-Nazis,” he said dismissively. “Why d’you ask that?”
“You called him a neo-Nazi piece of shit.”
“Oh yeah. I always find it helps me in sticky situations to depict an antagonist as a Nazi. I lose my inhibitions that way. I don’t have anything against Arabs.”
“You just became someone else.”
“No I didn’t. I’m still the guy you called to find your brother. Have you ever tried karaoke?”
I had seen Ziggy’s from the outside many times but never really registered what it was. By day it was a broken-down watering hole for dribbling old men in need of a shower, a shave, new clothes, some food and a past that did not send them back to Ziggy’s every day. By night it was much sadder than this. Not all of its flashing lights flashed every time. Some of them stayed off. Even its mirror ball was sad. Suspended from the ceiling, it looked atrophied and told the story of the club’s owner at the time of refurbishment opting for the cheapest and smallest of everything. This included the television screens suspended in front of the stage for the karaoke singers. Good eyesight was more of a prerequisite for aspiring singers here than a good voice.
The carpet was thin and sticky, so that when we walked in my feet stuck to the floor and every step was a distinct effort as though small weights had been attached to my shoes. The air was thick with cigarette smoke and beer. We sat down at a table in the middle of a rendition of “Let It Be” by a fifty-something Japanese man in a suit. He had loosened his tie and in my hour of darkness he was standing right in front of me. Our table was next to the one he had come from. I inferred this from the fact that there were four other fifty-something Japanese men in suits sitting there. Three of them had young blond women in tight short skirts sitting on their laps.
“How does this work?” I whispered to Bernard, gesticulating towards the young women on the laps of the Japanese men.
“For a little extra you can pay them to sit on your lap.”
“Are they prostitutes?” I asked.
“Sort of. Not really . . . little bit.”
“You don’t know, do you?”
He didn’t respond and instead was looking around him. The place was crowded. We were lucky to get a table. There were people there of all ages. Our table had a drinks menu on it with the usual array of overpriced sticky drinks named after parts of the human genitalia or else after variations of the sexual act. But the titles didn’t seem to promote their purchase, since most of the men appeared to be drinking beer and the women white wine or else champagne. Only the Japanese men and the young women on their laps appeared to be drinking anything sticky with milk in it. This was presumably due to the strength of the yen.
Bernard looked at the drinks menu and offered to buy me one.
“Just a mineral water, thanks.”
“Really, that’s all?”
“Yes, but you have whatever you like.”
“No, I’m working, remember . . . and driving.”
I thought that Bernard probably couldn’t hold his drink, but then, he was full of surprises. I watched him get up and make his way through the crowd to the bar, such a strange mix of almost childlike politeness, a certain naïveté, zen acceptance of his lot and unexpected flashes of streetwise cunning and determination. Was this going to get me to my brother? The Japanese man had almost finished. There will be an answer. Let it be. He missed the top note but his compatriots didn’t seem to mind. They, along with the blond women in their laps, cheered enthusiastically on his return to their table. How was any of this going to lead us to Pavel?
Bernard returned with two mineral waters and some sort of cocktail. He placed them on the table with the cocktail between the two glasses of mineral water. The DJ was shouting for more volunteers.
“What’s this?” I asked Bernard.
“I thought we could share it. I’m past the contagious stage.”
“What is it?”
He had forgotten and had to consult the menu.
“It’s called a . . . Purple Vulva.”
“Bernard, what are we going to do?”
“We are going to drink our drinks and then show Pavel’s photo to the bar staff, see if any of them recognize him.”
We finished our drinks to the accompaniment of two underage girls singing “Fernando.”
br /> “The one on the left was quite good, I thought,” Bernard said as they got off the stage to drunken applause and catcalls and we made our way to the bar. We had to wait to get the attention of the bar staff. Bernard had the photo of Pavel I had sent him in his hand. It was dark, crowded and noisy at the bar, and it took more than five minutes to have the two men and one woman serving shake their heads and volunteer that they had never seen my brother in all of their sun-filled lives.
There was one member of staff we had not approached. She had served at the bar earlier but was now going from table to table collecting empty glasses. There was something about her that made me think she was the least experienced of the bar staff. Bernard pointed her out and told me she had been the one who had served him. Three men got up to sing “American Pie,” much as the DJ begged them to reconsider and choose something else.
“I love this song,” Bernard said as we made our way to the last member of the bar staff.
“Excuse me, have you ever seen this man?” said Bernard, showing her the photograph.
She looked up without stopping, as the men sang, A long, long time ago . . . Bernard followed her to the next table with the photograph still displayed before she said no and moved on to the table after that.
“She’s lying,” I said to Bernard.
“What?” he asked as the men sang, Oh I knew if I’d had my chance . . .
“She’s lying. I can see it. Give me the photo.”
He gave me the photograph and I followed the woman to the side of the bar where she stacked the empty glasses she’d collected on a wire grille tray and put them in a dishwasher to be washed. As soon as she had programmed the dishwasher I tapped her on the shoulder.
“Excuse me, have you seen this young man?”
“No,” she said without looking at the photograph.
“Please have a look. It’s important.”
“Are you from the police? I don’t know that guy. I’ve got work to do.”
“Please, miss. I’m not from the police. I think you know him.”
“What if I do?”
“I’m trying to find him. He’s my brother.”
She looked at me for the first time and told me to wait there. She went to the dishwasher and removed the clean glasses. I gestured to Bernard across the room. The woman came back to me and told me to follow her. She led me behind the bar, out through the kitchen into an alley and asked to see the photograph again.
“Are you really Paul’s sister?”
“Pavel. My name is Rose.”
“Everyone here knows him as Paul. I’m Yvonne.”
She stuck her hand out for me to shake before lighting a cigarette, which she kept behind her back.
“So you know him? Is he all right? Do you know where he is?”
“When did you last see him?” Yvonne asked.
“About ten or so days ago. Is he all right?”
Yvonne let out a long stream of smoke through her nostrils. “He’s a really sweet guy, your brother.”
“I know. Is he all right?”
“No,” she said, “he’s not. He’s in trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“It’s not uncommon around here . . . at least . . . part of it.”
“What is it?”
“He’s been using.”
“What? Crack?”
“Yeah, they get it here. Paul was using pretty heavily.”
“Is he addicted?”
“I’d say he was. . . . I know he is. But it’s worse than that now.”
“Why?”
“He didn’t have much money to begin with, but his habit got so bad the dealer offered to let him start selling for him. Paul was going to sell this guy’s stuff to pay for his own use. Problem was, when he took his first supply, three thousand dollars’ worth, he got jumped just taking it home. Now he’s three thousand in debt to a dealer who’d promised to get him if Paul cheated him.”
“But he didn’t cheat him,” I argued.
“No. Of course not. Paul wouldn’t cheat anyone. I don’t think he’d know how. He’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. But as far as the dealer is concerned, Paul owes him three thousand and now he’s gone missing on him.”
“Missing?”
“Yeah. Paul is scared. He’s gone into hiding ’cause this guy promised him trouble if Paul went out on his own or used it all himself.”
“Do you know where he is?”
She did not want to tell me. She thought she was protecting him. He had been ignored by the world until all of a sudden he had woken up in the eye of a hurricane. What Yvonne knew was no rumor. She knew where he was. She cared where he was. She cared too much to tell me.
“It’s not you,” she said apologetically.
“No, it is me. I’m his sister. I’m not going to hurt him. I want to help him.”
“It’s just that he’s scared to death that they’re going to find him and he hasn’t got the money. He’s scared of what they’ll do to him and he’s right to be.”
“Yvonne, I’m his sister. Do you think I’m going to tell people where he is? Who’s going to help him if not me?”
She looked up at me. “I’m trying to help him.”
“Is he with you? Is he staying with you?”
She thought for a moment and then nodded. She did care for him. I looked at her anew. No one had ever cared for him in the way that she did. I could see it in her eyes. Slightly older than he, she had been around the block a few times, stopping off to pick up empty glasses at a karaoke bar here and there, but she had a soft spot for my brother. She was putting herself at risk for him and she knew it. She scribbled her address for me on the back of his photograph.
Bernard seemed a little reluctant to leave the bar, and under the circumstances I didn’t feel comfortable telling him what had happened until we were alone.
“You know they don’t use the actual video clips.”
“Really?” I said, trying to get him to hurry.
“No, and I think the words on the screen shouldn’t be relied on, either. Take ‘American Pie.’ You know ‘American Pie’?”
“Not really,” I said, dragging him towards the door.
“Everyone knows ‘American Pie.’”
“I’m Russian.”
“Well, I think they got the refrain wrong. It read on the screen: Well I know that you’re in love with him ’cause I saw you dancing in the gym. I don’t think that’s how it goes.”
“Bernard,” I said as he closed the car door, “I’ve found him.”
If someone phones to tell you that your child is in a certain hospital, you will drop everything and get to the hospital as quickly as you can. And to survive in the meantime you pull a blankness over your mind’s eye to try to block out the blitzkrieg of images that lie in ambush. You want to put off knowing, to hang on to hope, and yet, you want to know as soon as possible. I was in a hurry, not merely to know all the grim details but to know whether there was still time for me to help him. It was a miracle that we had tracked him to Yvonne’s home, and it was all Bernard’s doing. It should not have annoyed me when he wanted to stop off at the 7-Eleven before going there. I tried not to show it.
“This won’t take a second. Really it won’t. It’s just around the corner from the address she gave us. I just want to buy something to drink. I’ll be quick. Do you want something?” Bernard asked.
“You just had a drink.”
“I know, but I forgot to take the antibiotic and I try to take it at exactly the prescribed intervals so that if the infection doesn’t clear up, at least I’ll know I’ve done everything I can.”
“Okay, okay. We’ll go.” It wouldn’t take long.
He swung the car into the empty car park of the 7-Eleven and parked. He asked me again if I wanted anything as we approached the automatic sliding doors. There was no one else around. Bernard went to the refrigerated section at the back and the world stopped. The world that I knew stopped. Fr
ozen-yogurt cups, glossy magazines, potato chips, tinned spaghetti and doughnuts under glass, all bathed in a yellow light. I had seen them all before under that light but never had I seen him that way, my brother and not my brother, about to change everything irrevocably.
Skinny, in a loud orange-and-black-checked flannel shirt with his back to me, he moved in slow motion. Though his voice was thin and reedy and his behavior bereft of all reason, I could see it was him. I could see it in the way he stood, slightly bowlegged, another thing we were always going to look into as soon as we could, as soon as we got to the end of the tightrope, as soon as the fire was put out, as soon as we were each somebody else. By the time I got close enough to touch this skinny, distorted man that was my brother, but before I could say anything, I saw him pull a kitchen knife on the 7-Eleven clerk and insist in a nervous Russian English that the clerk empty the till. I put my hand on his shoulder and called out.
“Pavel, no!”
He turned to me. The clerk moved back towards the wall behind the counter and picked up a golf club. Pavel’s eyes were glassy. There was stubble on his face and he seemed to have regressed physically. He was smaller. He was stoned. The clerk took a swing from behind the counter. He missed Pavel only by chance when Pavel moved away from my outstretched hand.
“No, no, no,” Bernard called out, running from the back of the shop. “This is all wrong. This is the wrong place. This guy thinks you’re serious. It’s not the right store.”
I had Pavel’s hand in mine and the kitchen knife lay on the ground by his side as Bernard took center stage and we watched him.
“You thought this was a real holdup, didn’t you?” he said, addressing the clerk.
“It looked pretty real to me.”
“Well, in a way I’m glad you say that, but I’m afraid we owe you a very big apology. My name is Bernard Leibowitz. I’m a play-wright and theatre director and these two are actors in the cast of my new play Hold Up. Well, that’s the working title. It’s a little, I don’t know, stereotypically urban but . . . We have permission to rehearse in a 7-Eleven store in East St. Kilda and these two have turned up in the wrong store. You see, the whole thing takes place in a 7-Eleven store. I really am so sorry. Did you really think it was the real thing?”