“We can’t lose,” Dillon said, but because the next thing he did was trip up a gutter it wasn’t convincing. Not that Mace was any better off. He thought the streetlights may have been dancing. He sat on the kerb with Dillon and posted his Wentworth security tag down a drain. It took him three goes to poke it through the metal slots, because they kept moving.
It occurred to him that’s what that Anderson Priest dude had done, washed them down the drain and that wasn’t fair. He wondered if Jay the bread baker knew about it. Maybe the Priest hadn’t told him. Maybe Mace could tell Jaybird he made really good bread and he was sorry he’d been such an arse and he liked eating bread so Jay should give them all his money.
That was a plan.
Then he could kiss Lucinda again in her swimming bath, because that was really nice and if she let him cuddle her he might forget about missing Buster, just for one night.
He woke up on Dillon’s couch to the sound of Dillon chucking in the bathroom. It was sometime in the middle of the day because the sun was up and his eyes only functioned on peep. His tongue was a football wedged in his throat and the skin on his head was pulled too tight like cling film on his brain. He remembered dancing streetlights and tea-flavoured duck, and standing on a desk and making everyone cheer. His face worked well enough to smile at the memory of Nolan’s expression; purple and scrunched, like a cranky passionfruit, and his yowls of outrage.
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Buster was dead and she’d be so disappointed he’d drunk himself sick.
The last time he’d been hungover he’d cut his foot, he had the scar to show for it. But he hadn’t been this drunk for years. He rubbed his arms where the welts from Buster’s whipping had once been. He didn’t have a job anymore, but he had a plan, not that he could recall what was in it right now, but they’d written it on a linen napkin they stole from the restaurant.
He needed to sell Buster’s house and she’d be okay with that. He needed to talk to Jay, just for a minute, a minute of his time for the next few years of his and Dillon’s.
He remembered her name was Jacinta not Lucinda, and he was Antonio, and he wasn’t waiting any longer for her to call him, because as soon as he could get the cling film off his head, borrow some money and buy a new phone, he was going to call her and ask if he could come over and swim with her in the bath.
20: Security
The first thing Malcolm did was call out to Alison. “Get security up here.” He didn’t otherwise blink. If Jacinta had harboured any illusion he’d engage in a mature and professional discussion, aimed at uncovering their mutual benefit, she’d have been knocked on her butt.
She still rocked on her Valentinos. “You’re going to throw me out?” She didn’t see that coming.
“I’m going to have you escorted off the premises.”
“Christ, Dad,” she spat the word, a vain attempt to splatter him with vitriol, “you didn’t even do that to Bryan or that guy in finance who was issuing fake credit cards.”
Malcolm exhaled with great pomp. “You resigned. Or did I not hear you say the words, ‘I quit,’ while you stamped your little feet like a spoilt child because you didn’t get your own way.”
She’d said the words. “Good morning, Malcolm. I quit.” Not a whole lot to misinterpret there. But maybe amputating her arm would’ve been less shocking.
Standing in his office, saying it, made the decision real. She’d expected it to feel empowering and a bunch of other management-speak and clichés Bryan would’ve laughed at, starting with a weight lifted from her shoulders and cascading on down to up yours. But it felt like she’d taken a run at a brick wall as a joke and forgotten to pull up short; like she’d fatally wounded her identity in a head-on collision with an immoveable object she’d secretly thought would step aside or flex with the blow.
There was no flexibility in Malcolm. What she saw in him was as close to glee as he’d ever been. When he’d had Bryan removed, he’d been furious. He’d made the walls tremble with his shouting. His footsteps had been aggressive for months afterwards. It was another shock to realise how little he cared about her that he couldn’t be bothered to fake anger about losing his COO.
“What did you expect? A cheer squad to encourage you on your way out? You’ve resigned. It’s effective immediately. You are no longer an employee. You can no longer be on the premises.” Malcolm raised his voice. “Alison.”
“Security is on their way, Malcolm. There’s an incident in Tower B,” she informed from outside.
Jacinta put her palms on Malcolm’s desk, closed her eyes and laughed. It rose up from deep in her belly and burst forth in great gulps of sound, gushes of air. Malcolm was a loathsome person, a true corporate psychopath, with no empathy, no basic decency and she’d finally gown up enough to accept there was no way to be him and retain her own humanity, and it was fine, good, outstanding to be free of him.
Her laugher spilled all over Malcolm and he didn’t like it, too raw, too real, too human. He curled his lip in distaste and pushed back in his chair and stood. “Have you taken leave of your senses?”
She looked up, biting her lip to stop the flow of rude and joyous noise coming out of her. “I’ve only just found them.”
“You have disappointed me greatly, Jacinta. I brought you up to be different to your mother. Stronger, more rational, less highly strung.”
In spite of thinking there was nothing Malcolm could say that’d hurt anymore, she flinched. “Do not bring my mother into this. Do not.”
“I thought you were more like me. But with all this lamenting about morals and civic responsibility, I see I was wrong. You have her artistic temperament after all. It will do you no good. It cannot provide a useful living, or a contribution of any value in the real world. If you must have aesthetic stimulation, read a good biography,” he shook his head, and threw up a hand; that anyone should need alternative outlets was incomprehensible to him, “or go for a walk outside with the trees.”
She took a slow breath and tried to still the thrum of anger that beat at her temples. “I’ve often wondered how you sleep at night.”
“I never have difficulty sleeping because I have no use for ambiguity and even less for the kind of nanny state namby-pamby you were advocating over this bomber person.”
If she lost her temper, she’d prove Malcolm’s point, and she was done proving anything to him. “His name was Roger Kincaid. He killed himself yesterday. He was a customer several times over, and we did to him what you did to my mother.”