Almanac Fiction: Swifty Taylor and the Errant Husband (Episode 5)

 

Episode 5 – Cocktails and Confessions

 

For a moment, I paused, considered my situation, and took stock. A woman had employed me to travel to North Queensland to gather photographic evidence of her husband being unfaithful. And now here I was, standing next to that very man at a makeshift bar in a ramshackle, corrugated-iron shed. I recalled the warning that my mother always expatiated when she was urging me to be careful: “Look both ways before you cross the road!” Those words always brought to mind ‘Frogger’ – the arcade game in which I was rarely successful at negotiating the electronic frog safely across the busy road and fast-flowing river.

 

The man standing next to me at the bar slowly placed his phone into his pocket. He glanced at me and shrugged, then shook his head ruefully. Thankfully, he was beginning to regain some of the composure he had lost while on the phone. I offered him a brief but courteous nod of the head. “Trouble in paradise?” I asked him. He responded in a voice which was now three or four octaves lower. “You could say that. Things have really gone south today. I could well be half a million dollars in the hole. Not the greatest of days.” My head whirred to the unsympathetic sound of the world’s tiniest violins.

 

 

While mindful of mum’s mantra, ever so tentatively I decided to step off the kerb and into the traffic. “Can I buy you a drink? You look like you need it.” He did not say ‘no’, and soon we were clinking glasses and toasting good health and prosperity. If only he knew that, inadvertently, he had just bought himself the beer he was now chugging. And that quite a chunk of his future prosperity was dependent on the success or otherwise of my task. Before we could exchange further pleasantries my own phone buzzed. Max and I both looked at the name on the screen simultaneously. “Emma” it said, and at that moment I thank a god I didn’t even believe in for making me too lazy to enter her surname into the address book. “Ha, that’s a coincidence,’ he spat, “That’s my wife’s name.” The frostiness of his demeanour almost had me shivering. “Look, I have to get back to my friend, but maybe I will talk to you later.” He thanked me for the beer, reached again for his phone, and then turned away quickly. It seems I had served a purpose, and now was being dismissed. All that was missing was the royal wave.

 

I was feeling a little sheepish as I approached the girl from Cafe Diva, and handed her a cocktail. Other than the tiny umbrella protruding from the top, I had no knowledge of what else the long, tall glass might contain. And that wasn’t the only thing I didn’t know. “I just realized that you never told me your name,” I said, as I introduced myself and she thanked me for the drink. On a small stage only a metre or two away from us, a DJ wearing oversized headphones had taken command of the venue’s sound system. “My name’s Jess,” she said. I looked at her anew, and could not help but admire the softness of her features and prettiness of her eyes. Over the course of the following hour I was to learn that she was from Sydney, had finally ditched her boyfriend following a turbulent relationship, and had wound her way up the coast doing odd jobs. The doof-doof beat was a constant presence now, upsetting my equilibrium and messing with my brain’s ability to maintain focus. When it came to divulging matters of a personal nature, I had a tendency toward reluctance. But Jess got straight to the point and asked me a number of intimate questions, and I was both alarmed and taken aback by the disarming manner in which she could elicit from me such honest answers. Maybe I was seeking to unburden myself. And maybe I wanted to be putty in her hands.

 

 

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of Max McDonald exiting the Mad Mouse through a side gate. He was drunk, but his demeanour suggested that insobriety was something at which he was hard and practiced. More interestingly, he was arm in arm with the woman with whom he had canoodled during the conference, earlier in the day. They had the look of a couple who were about to turn in for the night. “Friends of yours?” Jess asked me. “I am sure I saw you talking to him earlier on.” Note to self: she is observant, too. “It’s a long story, Jess, but he’s a friend of a friend. But, very soon, they are going to be ex-friends. It’s difficult for me to explain right now.”

 

 

I was suddenly exhausted, in the way that introverts can be when they have been playing against type and expressing themselves way too freely. “It’s been great, but I really need to hit the hay. Maybe I’ll see you for a coffee in the morning?” She tossed her hair back. “Sure,” she answered. This time, I discerned a hint of disappointment in her eyes. I was caught in the middle of the busiest of roads. “Are you certain that you can’t stay? The cane toad races are about to start!” Again I was reminded of ‘Frogger’, and I tried desperately to recall if I had looked both ways before crossing the road.

 

 

 

You can read more from Smokie (and also Swifty Taylor) HERE

To return to The Footy Almanac home page click HERE

Our writers are independent contributors. The opinions expressed in their articles are their own. They are not the views, nor do they reflect the views, of Malarkey Publications.

Do you enjoy the Almanac concept?
And want to ensure it continues in its current form, and better? To help keep things ticking over please consider making your own contribution.

Become an Almanac (annual) member – CLICK HERE