 
The Disrespect of Christopher Caruthers

A Novel

David Bath

Smashwords Edition / Copyright 2014 David Bath

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Table of Contents

Title

Braydon

Liz

Chris

About the author

Contact

Braydon

As a reward for good behaviour, it was Mrs Loverly's idea to grant Toby time to hang with me during last period on Fridays and play any sport of his choosing, which for Toby means basketball. Not a bad deal, for either of us. I don't mind hanging out shooting hoops. When I pitched the idea to Ken, the Vice-Principal - and the fifth Wiggle - I turned it around and pretended it was my idea. Loverly didn't seem too peeved when she found out. She wants to help the boy, unlike the rest of them, who've given up on him. Most blame his behaviour on his father's weird condition, but the younger teachers, especially Mizz Mickels, call him Satan's Son. Toby has a knack for telling teachers to fuck off or get fucked. Appalling language from an eleven-year-old startles many of the staff. It explodes from him so easily, without forethought and with an impersonal malice. I'm not sure why they're surprised. You'd think intermediate school teachers in this area, on the fringes, have seen and heard it all. Except for Loverly and me, they want Toby expelled. Relocate him to another school where he'll become some other fool's problem... the end of a well-worn tiring story, 'Goodbye Toby, farewell Satan's Son'.

I'm not being completely honest; I pitched the idea before Loverly did to gain brownie points. Know the system work the system, that's how it works around here. Back then I cared about being accepted by the staff and being good at my job. It was only a few weeks ago and I've since grown out of it, but it was already pissing me off the way they were treating him. Where is the feel good - everyone is included - warm fuzzy - empathy bullshit that staff bestow on the other students? No one loses, no one wins, and aren't we happy Kiwis? Look at us, lumped together in our satisfying frothy puddle of mediocrity. And Toby? He isn't any worse than the other little rotters and bad seeds in general circulation.

When word got out the administration had promptly accepted the proposal, the idea mutated and became ugly. The bastards saw it for something other than what it was: an honest attempt to help the boy and give him much needed positive reinforcement. Instead, the staff took it as an open declaration of war. The boy's behaviour became our battlefield and his afternoons with me the prize. In no way will they let him have his special time, not without a fight.

This Friday afternoon the authorities granted Toby his recreation time with me in the hall, but only just, from what I've heard. He misses a hoop, a rim shot, and swears loudly. That gets Loverly up off her seat at the other end of the hall. We're on the same team, but I can't resist and lip-sync her word for word, 'Toby, we don't use language like that, do we?' The little bastard sees me and laughs.

'No, we don't, do we Toby?' I say loudly.

He smiles lop-sided, tries another shot and makes it clean. Now she's in his face about an infraction with Mr O'Malley, an old-school ruggerhead who hated me on first sight and passionately hates Toby. My immediate superior, Mr Gent (head of the Physical Education department) also hated me on sight. That's why we're in here and not out on the courts, or out on the grass biffing a frisbee at each other as we should be on a summer's day. Out of sight out of mind, I guess. Plus O'Malley has his class out there. The guy stands off to one side with his arms folded, looking sour and pissed off, while his jumped up brats play rounders. Rounders? It's 2005 not 1955, O'Malley.

You can see their problem, can't you? You just can't trust any fool that waltzes into a teacher's aide position off the Work and Income New Zealand (WINZ) program, especially when he's been one of those 'artists working for the benefit' types. A writer! Ken loved it (of course), my writing thing. Ken considers himself a literary type by proxy because his wife holds an English Lit degree and puts on class plays and the annual school production. Although 'writer' is a loose term for me, if it even applies. I've published a handful of short poems in New Zealand lit journals. A brief writing course at the polytech - so in reality, lots of big talk and hot air. Take my screenplay: a psychic FBI agent tracks a serial killer and during the hunt discovers a fellow psychic investigator. My WINZ case manager, Cory, was less than impressed. 'What will you do with it, will you sell it?' she asked.

Putting it down to experience wasn't the reply she wanted. She bullied me into accepting a part-time job trying to sell people chimney sweeps over the phone. I wasn't much good at it. George, my partner, laughed at my calling lists and the phone on a ten-metre extension cord... so I could be at my leisure in the lounge, taking in the view of the city and the curve of the beach up to the heads. It's hard to sell random chimney sweeps over the phone when (a) the randoms you're calling don't have a chimney, or (b) they have a chimney but don't use the fireplace. Nowadays it's electric or gas. You know those big gas bottles you see stuck to the side of people's houses? Cooking. Heating. Hot water. Wood or coal burning fires pumping smoke into the atmosphere will be a criminal offence soon.

Snapping out of my daze, I notice Ken and a shapely woman conversing in the hall entrance. That doesn't often happen, shapely women don't normally show up here. She's acting flustered and agitated though. She gives me an irritated squinty stare, so I stop looking at her. Ken impatiently waves at me. No. At Toby. It must be Toby's Mum. He trots away and Mrs Loverly doggedly follows. Never one to miss an opportunity, Mrs Loverly, I've noticed. Blows hot air around about the boy. Keeps her in a job, I suppose. Special needs teacher. Jesus, she'll never be out of a job, not around here. I try a shot from the free throw line but miss. Not stroking the ball. Toby trots back and grabs his bag.

'Gotta go, Mr Begg. Sorry. Mum's locked out of the house,' he says.

'And what are you supposed to do about that?' I ask.

'Eh? I climb through the toilet window. I'm still small enough,' he says.

'Don't fall in. Until our next session, Toby,' I say.

'Yeah, be seeing you, Mr B,' he says.

He calls none of the other teachers or aides by the first letter of their last name, only me. Mrs Loverly waves and heads off, her day done. Everybody around here makes an art of leaving early, except the younger teachers roughly my age. The earnest types like Jaffers, Miss Richards and big-arsed Mizzzzz Mickels, who are serious about spoon-feeding the syllabus to the inmates, can always be seen filling in their lesson planning notebooks should the dreaded B.O.E. inspector take a peek at the books. Thanks mostly to Ken they've every block of the syllabus, every section, every teaching point buttoned down tight. Jaffers showed me. 'It's mix and match, mate,' he said, laughing. With the topic-folders indexed and the teaching material nicely bullet-pointed and outlined, only a fool couldn't get his or her head around it. The prick drives a sweet Subaru Legacy and arrives in the morning still stoned from last night's session. I'm on $9.10 an hour. Before tax.

All right. You know what pisses me off about this place? The older teachers that waddle in here and dump their classes on me - that's what pisses me off. I hear them mutter, 'No teaching experience, he has no bloody idea,' but they give me total class control. A degree in physical education and a few medals in the two hundred and four hundred at the provincials and nationals, even if it was many moons ago, makes me a track athlete/physical education expert in their eyes. That's what Mizzz Mickels called me the first time she dragged her ingrates in front of me, 'Let's see what the expert, Mr Begg has organised for you kids this morning'. I had nothing organised, I'm a teacher's aide not a bloody teacher. An exceptional sporting background is what it says on my C.V. so I've no one else to blame for setting myself up.

But I was, and am, nothing exceptional, unlike the Super 14 rugby star Gregg Craig, one of the other teacher aides. He's supposed to be Gent's butt boy, but it's the other way round. Gent - a former club player - idolises Craig, the real thing. Craig spends most of his time at school reading the paper and munching biscuits and crackers he filches from the tins in the staffroom. That's when he's not sitting around rubbing his thighs. He might make an All Blacks tryout if he has a good season. Oh, God help me, imagine if he became an All Black?

I shoot a few more hoops. I can go home early like the rest of them, or I can be productive and pump up the new soccer balls Gent has stuffed in one of the hall storage rooms. It's a satisfying process: the thrum of the little compressor; the taut, quick flow of air, the rapid expansion of the ball and a crinkling, creasing noise as the ball material expands. Ken spots me on his way through the hall. Only teachers shortcut through the hall to the office; students get read the riot act. Talk about double standards.

'Braydon? Is that urgent, mate? Did Mr Gent ask you to do that right now?' he asks.

'No, I'm filling in time. Toby...'

'Oh yeah, that's right. Toby went home, didn't he? Hey if I grab a handful of students, could you carry the crash pads into the equipment shed?' he says.

Every day the high jump pads, awkward blue behemoths, need to be put away. Carrying them in from the field is the easy part; stacking them in the shed is the problem. That's always a pain in the arse. Worse, the fool snatches a handful of O'Malleys boys coming back in from rounders. O'Malley doesn't like it. He takes one boy aside and whispers in the kid's ear. Gordan? I think his name is Gordan; a tallish blond-maned mincer with a wonky eye that slips away whenever you try to hold his gaze.

I drag the first one in with Danny, one of the better boys, but the others take turns jumping and wrestling on top of them, before rolling off them in howling fits of laughter. We get them inside and even get them stacked, but it's just my luck, isn't it? Gregg Craig, the thigh rubbing shithead, walks past and pretends not to take a gander. Gordan, wrestling with the others on the top pad, pushes Danny off, who lands right on his arse. Thump. I reach up and grab Gordan by the arm. I'm thinking, I don't know; stern words or pull him down? And what does the cretin do? He shouts, 'He's grabbing my penis!' I'm nowhere near his bloody penis, nor would I be. It's one of boys scrambling over Gordan to get out of there. Danny's crying. He's acting as if he's broken his arse if that's possible. The tailbone? Can you break your tailbone? The coccyx? The sacrum? The bell rings and the boys disappear. Danny shuffles away, his hand pressed to his back, disconsolate as a lost puppy. Craig is nowhere to be seen.

The only real perk with this job is that it's next to the beach and a short drive from the flat. By flat, I mean one of George's parents' property investments. They let us live there for a pittance in rent on the proviso we get someone, or a couple, to shift into the separate bedsit and overcharge them. We never have found anyone. There was talk for a time that George's younger sister Claire would shift in with her latest, but nothing ever came of it.

It's Claire's fault George is steamed up over the whole Barcelona thing. George, my partner, has planned and mapped out a two-week holiday in Barcelona, and was relying on her parents to help finance the trip. Claire screwed it up. I was proud of Claire, to be honest. She footed more than a decent chunk of the expenses for her recent Colorado rafting trip: savings from her café jobs and cash from selling a bunch of her old shit. It changed the rules of the entitlement game, so now we have to come up with enough money to fund George's Spanish vacation dream. Two weeks in Barcelona is a hard thing to do when your partner's on nine dollars an hour and you're a Tourism PhD student on a scholarship.

Guess who's loitering in the office lobby with Gent when I finally make it out of the shed and get it locked up... Gregg Craig. I give them my best professional smile. Gent stops staring at me and turns to Craig.

'So he's a paedophile as well,' Gent says, matter of fact.

I nearly stop in my tracks, but the momentum of routine rolls me round the corner and into the corridor. I lurch into the toilets, grab the sink, and look into the mirror, playing a pale and shaking American actor in a cheesy drama. No, that's not it; I'm a rubber band stretched tight ready to snap and ping someone in the eye.

Then the real insult hits me.

As well? What the fuck? As well as what?

Out in the corridor, Gent and Craig walk past.

'Where's he gone?' Gent says, laughing.

'Maybe he's seeing Andy,' Craig says, without even a hint of apprehension or fear in his voice. The principal's office is the first door on the left when you enter the corridor.

'He hasn't got the balls for that,' Gent says.

'Most definitely not,' Craig parrots as if he isn't a crap teacher's aide, and has any game skills beyond charging into the opposition, instead of trying to step around them. They'll be heading to the staffroom to raid the biscuit tins. I slip out and storm back up the corridor and out through the main doors.

George's Camry is in the driveway. Home in the middle of the arvo means she cracked, and to shake off the tedium of her day's Tourism PhD studies, she has come home and gone for a run. She calls it pulling a sickie even though she is a student and running gives her immune system a healthy boost. I secretly believe crunching data from her surveys depresses her and leeches life from her soul. It would do that to anyone; the relentless pressure to achieve significant results in a timely fashion has to be the ultimate soul-suck. I can't believe how many surveys I've filled out for her. I've even left them in the staffroom at school. How much money do the good people of the fair old city spend on travel and travel-related costs, anyway? Someone wants or needs to find out.

I know why she's really home. A Barcelona summit has been brewing this week. She is inside crunching numbers, but not from her surveys. My latest savings account totals have barely changed from the last time she checked, and I've since renewed my pool pass. Unless someone else wants to pay my end of the bills, I'll wear George's wrath.

I'm an economic failure... as well.

The anger hits me again. That word - the P-word \- makes me nauseous. As if branded the P-word isn't shocking enough, I'm something else... as well. But what?

George is in the kitchen and munches a sandwich as she hears me out. The kitchen is a mess; breakfast and lunch dishes clutter the sink. The lunch dishes are mine, anyway. Yes, I come home for lunch. I'm not sitting around in the staffroom for an hour every day, and I'm buggered if I'm going out on lunchtime duty. They don't pay me enough, and they'd only hold it against me. I tell her I want to quit. I tell her I'm not going back next week.

'We need that job, Bray. How long will it take to get another one? You can't go back to WINZ, can you?' George says.

'Why can't we go to Aussie?' I ask.

'We're not going to Aussie, we're going to Spain. Do you know how unreal Europe is?' she asks.

'Have you ever been to the Daintree rainforest? It's probably unreal too,' I say.

'I've been to a rainforest, remember? I want to go to Gaudi's cathedral. You don't want to go, do you? Is that what this is about?' George says.

Sandwich consumed, her blood sugar levels are rising to the attack. The fact of the matter is I've been nowhere. For a guy who has been nowhere, the difference between Spain and Aussie may as well be a coin flip, except one destination requires mortgaging your grandmother's granny flat and the other stings but is doable. I prefer doable to impossible. And I prefer quitting the job and the people I work with that I hate, and hate me, over sticking it out for a two-week trip to a European city I'm sure is unreal if it weren't so unrealistic.

'Gent called me something nasty today, bloody nasty,' I say. I'm mumbling and she hates that.

'Like what?' George says.

'You know...'

'You're always complaining about the people at that school? Are they that awful?' she says.

'There it goes, the I'm making it up clause,' I say, my voice rising on that bubble that expands from deep within the intestines, rushes to the periphery and increases the heart rate. We get into it. The usual stuff: I'm too sensitive, too personal. I hear things. I make things up that people don't even say...

'Braydon? Please Bray, we're doing it again...'

'Thanks for understanding, George, thanks for...'

'Oh please, grow up.'

'Being there, you know, being there when Mum died, and not bloody, fuck, bullying me...'

'Bullying you? Bullying? I've never...'

'Into taking the first lame job that came along.'

'You didn't want to take any job! Shit Bray, you don't even want to work,' George says.

'Because you've got travel plans, and yeah, thanks for respecting my decision to write full-time...'

'Well why don't you sell your psychic FBI screenplay then?' George says, mottle faced.

'Yeah, there it goes, thank you, George, thank you for showing your true colours,' I say.

'Go on, quit your job. Can't have people calling you names now, can we?' she shouts.

She storms out of the kitchen. The bedroom door slams so hard the framed Klimt print - the gold one with the lovers (the kiss?) - falls off and the glass frame smashes over the floor.

'Don't worry, George, I'll walk your bloody dog for you, like I do every day,' I shout, sweeping the glass up against the wall with the sole of my shoe.

'That's such shit!' George screeches from the bedroom.

Shit or not, I grab the lead off the hook and leg it to the lounge. Every arvo I arrive home and find the poor bugger curled up on the couch.

Jacques, the standard poodle.

He unfurls - whining, yawning, and gumming - and clambers off and stretches each hind leg out behind him as if he's warming up for brisk 200 metre sprint repeats on a windy Saturday morning at the track. Then he's all energy, nudging my hand with his dry nose and giving my crotch a cursory once over to see if I've been anywhere interesting. Sorry Jacques, I haven't.

If he's anybody's dog he's Rennie's, George's Mum's, or at least he will be when George's post-PhD plans manifest and she heads overseas. Rennie gave Jacques to George a year before she met me. A cure for loneliness, although George insists she wasn't lonely.

I walk him every workday afternoon. I'm not full of shit. To be fair, George takes him for a short stroll later, after tea, and for big walks in the weekend. He's bigger than your average standard poodle, with a big, regal chest on him. But the dainty stepping - the way he trots along, as if he's in that 'Best In Show' competition, the one on telly - it's comic even though he's big and powerful enough to tear your nuts off if he decided to, but at least he's not one of those puffball types, a pom-pom poodle. I wouldn't walk him. We clipper him ourselves, which means he allows us to go at his matted coat with a set of old barber clippers, but only for as long as he can handle. And he's black, shot through with grey streaks. It would be worse if he was white or apricot; I can't say why. White. Black. Brown. He's still a poofter's dream come true. Dad and Jamie, my older brother, pissed themselves when I first told them about Jacques. 'He keeps biting my arse when I turn around,' I said. 'He thinks he's the alpha male you bloody idiot,' Jamie said. 'You're gonna have to take that dog to task if you want to stay with the girl,' Dad rumbled from his Lazy Boy. Mum was laughing. She loved Jacques. The last time Mum visited, she kidnapped him and drove off into a downpour. I had no idea where they went until they arrived back at the flat, soaked but smiling from a courageous walk along the beach. Jacques hates walking in the rain. Things were better between us all when Mum was alive. The family glue. I haven't talked to Dad or Jamie for ages, but they don't talk to each other either, as far as I'm aware. What would they do if Gent and Craig called them the P-word? They wouldn't have hid in the toilet.

Walking is good for anger. At least, it works for me. I've wound through the dead afternoon streets and onto the beach track before I'm aware of the distance I've covered. Jacques pants more than usual though. A perfect hot summer's day: unless you're wearing a thick black wool coat. Christ, he must be thirsty. His water bottle! It has an ingenious plastic spout that folds out and provides a lapping trough. Ingenious, except today I've forgotten it. I let him off lead. He pelts away along the track and cuts across the top of the dunes. An expert stuntman, he takes a steep drop-off and surges to the beach in a rich shower of sand. Once he recovers at the bottom, he trots into the water but backs off when surf breaks and rushes him. He's supposed to be a water dog. I'm thankful for his caution. Rips are powerful along here and trying to save gangly-legged, floundering Jacques and myself, might be beyond me.

I call him back from the top of the dunes and when he doesn't return I start our little ritual. I duck into the tussock grass, and out of sight, wait for him to sprint up and try to find me. Dune repeats, I proudly said to George after I stumbled on the technique. Eleven is our record. I don't think we'll break it today. He's getting wiser. He stops halfway up, but his slobbery hard breathing reaches me and I pop up waving my arms and shouting. Jacques isn't surprised. He turns and trots off on another sniffing circuit of the beach.

There was no need for that tradesman to call me a homo, was there? I think he lives at the bottom of the hill. A plumber. For whatever reason he always sees me walking Jacques, and he always gives me one of those smug, contemptuous, fucking mug expressions that comes with being a tradesman; a bloke (a real man) who works with his hands and wouldn't be seen dead walking a poncy poodle. At least I don't have to deal with other people's shit every day. Why didn't I say that to him when he pulled up at the give way? Instead, I hit him with my best stone-cold Steve Austin. He didn't bat an eyelid. A big guy wouldn't, I suppose. Gingerish and stubbly, he wound down his window and in a gravelly voice from too many smokes and pies at lunchtime, said, 'Nice dog, homo.' Even though the street was clear both ways, he waited for me to say or do something.

Ahhhhh, Gent and Craig's jibe clicks: 'as well'. I'm the P-word as well ... as a homo.

Nice dog, homo.

That's it. Gent and Craig think I'm a homo. Thanks world.

But what could I do about the plumber? Call the guy out of his van and scrap him on the pavement? What would I do with Jacques? How would I tell George I got beat up by a passing plumber? In a fucked up way it might make her happy, even proud of me. No. Nothing I do will make her happy, except saving enough money over the next few months.

I'm a P and an H.

Ph.

Acid.

I'm a fucking litmus test for every dumb-arsed nasty thing anyone - Gent, Craig, O'Malley, Mickels, Richards and Sanderson - could think up to try on, or say to another person. I overheard Sanderson, an old bat with a big caboose like Mickels,' complain to Gent and O'Malley that I was perving at one of her students. What's her name? Miranda? Amanda? Sanderson contended I was perving at Amanda's boobs during physed. That's not strictly true. For starters, for a young girl, Miranda/Amanda's boobs are ginormous. I turned my head at the exact moment Miranda/Amanda, wearing a skin-tight physed teeshirt and looking straight at me, was jumping on the spot a metre away. Miranda/Amanda's boobs were like bloody bouncing soccer balls. I immediately glanced away to see Sanderson, with scandal and disgrace written on her face, boosting out of the hall and heading towards the office, which means Andy's office. I didn't see her for the rest of the period. I guess she was too busy complaining to teach her class. They want me gone, to quit and go. It's only Toby's crap situation and George's will that's keeping me there.

I'm a rubber band.

I'm the p-word, a homo, AND a pervert.

I work my way along the top of the dunes following the track. Jacques touches base before racing off again. His distance from me decreases as we continue along past the soccer/rugby fields and the clubrooms.

Farther along, he stops ramrod straight in the middle of the track. There's an enormous Polynesian man looking out to sea from the top of a dune. The man stands so still he looks carved out of brown marble; a sculpture left warming in the sun. He doesn't so much as budge when Jacques, overcoming his apprehension, busily sniffs his feet. I get closer. He doesn't look or acknowledge me. How sad the man looks, a genuine sorrow. If I stopped and looked out to sea, I'd experience nothing, or everything. I wouldn't trust myself to do it for too long. As I pass by, he makes me think I have no home and no understanding of the idea. That's why I never stop and look out to sea. I mean, I've no claim to even being here other than the obvious; my ruddy-faced blue-eyed ancestors that came over by the boatload, and took it for themselves, their new world.

What did Curnow write about islanders and their relationship with the sea? They become deaf to the breaking surf? I'm not an islander; I'm not so accustomed. This isn't home. There's nothing in my bones: not the crash and rush of surf, not a seagull's cries, not the sting of sand on my wet skin, or the sharp cuts of tussock grass on my shins. I wonder if young Toby feels like this. Darting this way and that at school, always scruffy, weedy and bereft, but not as bad off as his younger brother, they say, who hides under a large brown cardboard box he carries around everywhere. Kids at school say the wee guy believes the box teleports him to other worlds. I wonder if that business started before or after their father got his weird thing. I wonder if Toby's ever tried to use it.

I bet he's tried to flatten it.

Mum might have used that box near the end and teleported herself into an alternative reality, where her youngest son was a teacher as she was and wanted me to be. That was the plan. Physed school, then teacher's college, and then on to a rosy, comfortable and comprehensible future. This was before - what exactly? A literary awakening involving mostly Indian authors: Roy, Rushdie, Seth - and the Sri Lankan, Michael Ondaatje. I read Ondaatje for the first time on a train trip home from Varsity. It felt as if I were reading for the first time and couldn't believe it when I heard the city station announcement; I hadn't looked up once. Now, I don't know. 'That's a gay looking book,' Jamie said when he saw me reading on one of my summer holidays. My father and Jamie looked perturbed when they saw me reading Rushdie's, Satanic Verses. Poor old Mum, she just wanted to show them. The brutes, she sometimes called them. Now, I'm not sure how becoming a teacher would've been showing them anything. Borderline academic dropouts, at least that's what the younger ones fresh out of teacher's college appear to be. Why would my father, a self-employed auto-mechanic for most of his working life, and Jamie, with his very own auto-body painting business, give a shit if I became a teacher? And she might have called him a brute, but she was proud of Jamie making his own way in the world.

I work my way out of the dunes and out onto the cul-de-sac that ends by the soccer club. I try to give Jacques water from a tap by the clubhouse doors, but he won't drink from my palm. He tries a few licks, and skips away when I try again. He won't drink straight from the tap, so it must be the water. 'Time for the lead now, boy,' I say, 'time to head home.' He skips away. He doesn't want to face George either. Once I get Jacques back on lead, he is noticeably more subdued. This stretch of exposed road heading along the flat bakes in the intense sun.

There's nothing else to do along this road but think, and there's no way to combat the slow heat that draws the poison out and frames my dark thoughts with uncomfortable sweatiness. My rational mind reiterates - again - that last week's bus incident wasn't my fault. I had nowhere else to go and in no way instigated, encouraged or willingly participated in it.

Bloody swimming lessons are everyone's headache, including the kids, but only a small group of determined students wriggle out of it with forgotten togs, the sudden onset of inexplicable rashes, or a spate of fictitious injuries. It's not that the actual swimming lesson is a problem for students, or the teaching staff. It's getting everyone on board and not leaving anyone or any gear behind - and keeping the whole operation within time - that's the real problem.

We were rushing to get back before the lunch bell, but I waited to get on the bus as students get priority seating. A teacher has to be on board to supervise, which in this case was Mr Richards, an older, bald and insanely energetic guy with constant chronic body odour, who reckons he dabbled in fiction writing awhile back, but gave it up due to disillusionment (my conclusion, he didn't provide one). Uncharacteristic and entirely unhelpful, he nabbed a seat against the window, maybe two, three seats back from the front. The seats were full when I shuffled on board and stood in the middle of the aisle. Students that should have waited for the second bus kept piling on and squeezing past me to fill the aisle. I was doing everything I could to move out of the way, without putting my crotch into the face of whoever sat below me. Awkward? Yes, and there's nothing wrong with that so far, until... Dominique? That's right, Dominique; a cheeky, bright-eyed girl, with maturity beyond her years, tries to get past and squashes right up against me. A bottleneck forms and then we're jammed, and what does she do? Pressed against me, while I'm hanging onto the bag compartment rail above me with both hands, the cheeky wench wedges her knuckle right up there.

The horror.

Not even a tentative quick jab ha ha I stuck my knuckle into a teacher's arse, oh no.

And in slow motion.

I tried to lean even further forward; an impossible feat to achieve without further compromising myself with the student seated below me, but the little bitch burrowed deeper. The horrible thing, the real, genuine horror is I said nothing. I couldn't. Should one expect this behaviour from a twelve-year-old girl jammed behind you in a bus aisle? But the real, genuine, and unexpected horror, other than the shame of being knuckled on a bus by a little girl, was how, for a few seconds, was how mind-blowing-ly, exquisitely good it felt.

Did Richards see Dominique knuckling me? He gave me funny, squinty glances over his shoulder for the rest of the trip back. If he did, why hasn't he said anything? Wouldn't he be professionally obligated to report that (a) a female student knuckled one of the staff, and (b) the staff member involved did nothing to prevent or stop said knuckling?

In my defence I was trapped, and I was wearing my snug-fitting brown pants that inspire random spanks from George on the way past, but no one's ever knuckled me before, nor have I heard of such a thing. Do I enjoy knuckling? What if one of the boys had done it? Would I have reacted differently? And what twelve-year-old girl goes around knuckling grown men? How does someone that young know what to do with her knuckles? Her knuckle, I should say. I imagine it was her index finger's middle knuckle, with her thumb curled up below it. What would Richards have done if he were trapped and knuckled in that bus aisle? Or Gent?

Gent.

I should've known. She is one of Gent's students, and she told one or more of her classmates and Chinese whispers or not, word of Mr Begg's knuckling on the bus reached Gent's ears, and if it reached Gent's it reached Craig's. In no way does a random knuckling in an extremely awkward and unavoidable predicament testify to any P-like, H-like, or the second P-like tendencies. Face it... it wasn't my fault. But I enjoyed it? What does that mean? How do you know you will enjoy a knuckling until you've received one?

We stop for a breather on the esplanade in the shade of the trees outside the shops. Leaving home in a huff, I forgot to bring money with me today. Sometimes I sit in one of the cafés, sip a latte, and watch the surf and the moody weather. If I remember my notebook I try to write a poem. I usually leave Jacques over by the fountain. I'd take him over there now for a drink, but it's scorching out on that concrete pad. Good old Jacques. I give him a scratch under the ear but he's too busy panting and taking a gander to get into it. In this heat it's better to get home sooner than later and I get him up and moving, albeit slower.

Nice dog, homo.

I awkwardly give him another petting as we trudge. He is a nice dog. I'm bloody lucky to have him in my life. I couldn't afford to keep a big dog with those enormous bags of expensive dog nuts he crunches twice a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks of the year. No wonder he goes on strike for a day or two every other month. George switches brands. Different day, still nuts. I cut through the narrow streets and head up the hill the front way. This route has more shade and it's less steep, but the last stretch is always a ball-breaker.

So, every once in a while, I've noticed small cages stacked up on the side of the street. Inside the cages, mangy stringy cats and medium sized dogs of indeterminate breeding protest their incarceration by the RSPCA. They always look suspiciously like the same cats and dogs the RSPCA rounded up on earlier sweeps of the neighbourhood. I don't know why they leave them stacked on the side of the street. I suppose it's more convenient as the RSPCA officers continue their rounds.

I walk around the corner right into the stench.

Jacques, already acting cagey, baulks and rears up onto his hind legs before trying to bolt. You know how disgusting it smells when you singe your arm hair with a cigarette lighter? The screaming is worse than the smell. Impossibly high-pitched mewling screams come from inside four or five cages; it's hard to tell how many animals are alive in them. They're cats. Writhing and thrashing all movement inside the cages suddenly stops. They're dead. The petrol fumes hit me. I see a red plastic dickey can beside the cages. I want to vomit and Jaques starts up a strange barking cough.

People finally step out of their drowsy houses. Over Jacques' barking, I hear sprinting pounding footsteps. I see them. Two boys sprint away, and one is Toby. I can tell. I've seen that running style often enough to recognise it from fifty metres. It's Toby, and another kid taller and bigger than Toby.

'You fucking little cunts! Stop! Stop!'

I give Jacques a tug on the lead, but he isn't moving forwards. Frantic, he tries to plunge backwards, away from the mess. I drag him out into the street and he consents to pass around the stinking cages in a wide circle. A woman is wailing, and a guy is yelling at me, but I can't be sure he is: I'm that focused on the little bastards sprinting round the corner into Foster Street I'm zoning everything out. I kick hard into a fast lope and Jacques complies, happy to distance himself from the horrifying scene.

I catch sight of them heading into Thompson. Toby's quick off the mark but he doesn't have one shred of stamina. I don't know the other kid, but Toby will be buggered. Jacques is all over the place now and I drag him with big surging tugs on the lead.

I'm considering giving it up as I struggle into Lemond when I almost crash into the little shit. Doubled over and his back turned, he's breathing as if he's sprint finished a record-breaking mile. I kick him up the arse. He topples over swearing, and Jacques makes a go at him, which sends Toby scrabbling away from us on all fours, crab-style. I snatch Jacques back. Here's an awkward moment: Toby eyes up Jacques and I'm at a total loss. What am I going to do? Sirens blare in the distance. Toby swipes snot from his nose with the back of his hand.

'Where's your mate?' I ask.

'He buggered off and left me,' Toby says.

Squad cars sweeping the area will find Toby, and his runaway mate. Minutes away, if that. Could he reach his house in that time? Why am I even thinking this? He's poured petrol over a bunch of living breathing cats and lit them on fire.

'Did you do it? Did you fucking do it, Toby?' I shout.

He's snotty tears and misery now.

'I poured the petrol but Darren lit them up, honestly,' he says.

Darren? Ahh, Darren. I place him now; a borderline delinquent Richards took on when nobody else wanted him.

'Why in God's fucking name did you do that?' I shout.

The sirens sound louder, closing on our position.

'Why? Why Toby?' I shout. My shouting makes him cower and cover his head and face with his arms.

I can smell the shit-fest that's descending on him; it's ingrained in my clothes from the smoking cages. There's no coming back from this, for any of us. Me. Mrs Loverly. Toby. Game set and match.

'They've taken Dad,' Toby shouts, scrambling to his feet. With enough of his breath back, he's ready for another go. The sirens sound on top of us.

I grab his shirttail before he's off again. I yank him back and grip him hard on the arm with my best policeman's grip, although, he might experience that first hand from a real policeman soon.

'Toby,' I start, but he's shouting again.

'Dad. I saw them. They've taken him away' -

'Who took him, Toby? Is it the hospital? Was it an ambulance?' I ask. It must be his Dad's thing, his condition or whatever.

'No! Bloody Mum and Nessa,' he snarls, and stumbling backwards to the nearest fence, he slumps to the ground with his back against the wood. He covers his face with his hands and sobs.

I crouch beside him and Jacques, now concerned for the boy's welfare, gently snuffles Toby's shoes and knees.

'Toby? You're in a whole world of shit, mate,' I say.

'I don't care. Dad's gone. He's not coming back,' he says.

'Were they taking him to the hospital?' I say.

He mumbles about a suit and Lego. Lego of all things? There's so much snot and mucus, I can't make any sense of it. It sounds as if a fire engine has arrived at the scene. At the bottom of Lemond, a police car races through an intersection. Has someone tipped off the other boy?

They will expel Toby. They've been waiting for this, an explosion so huge the shockwave will flatten anyone that could stand up and defend the boy, and Toby fucking handed it to them. Fuck it. Why give them the satisfaction? The Gent's and Craig's, the O'Malley's and Mickels, and the Sandersons?

I don't even like cats.

'Toby, Toby? Get your shit together,' I say.

'Dad's gone,' he whimpers.

'Toby! A police car will come by any second, mate,' I say.

I have his attention now.

'Get up, quick,' I say.

'Eh?' he says.

'Clean yourself up, will you? Wipe your face,' I say. I take off my shirt and hand it to him. I'm wearing a teeshirt underneath. I'm not heading off topless with a small boy and a standard poodle in tow. I wipe his face myself.

'What're you doing, Mr B? I'm in the shit,' he says.

'I want you to act natural, okay?' I say.

'Eh?' he says.

Jesus Christ.

'For fuck's sakes, Toby! We'll pretend we're out walking the dog together, all right?' I say.

'Yeah?' he says.

'Yeah. We bumped into each other after school, by the beach. Got it?' I ask.

He nods, but I can't tell if he understands.

'You were out, I don't know, we'll work that out. You went to the beach,' I say.

'Umh, yeah?' he says.

'Yeah. After your Mum picked you up, you went to the beach. Okay? Where do you live? Not far from here, is it?' I ask.

'Tanner Street,' he says.

'Tanner? Great, I know a shortcut through private property, is that okay?' I ask.

'Okay, okay. Thanks, Mr B, you're the shit,' he says.

'Bloody hell, we're not out of it yet,' I say.

Sirens scream nearby. It's a miracle they haven't driven along here.

'We're out walking the dog,' I say, more for my benefit than Toby's.

He reaches past me and pats Jacques on the head. I catch the unmistakable reek of petrol on his clothes.

'Walking the dog. Got it. What's his name?' he asks.

'His name? Jesus, Toby. Jacques, it's Jacques,' I say.

We're screwed, but if we can make it over to Gershon, I can send him through Old Man Gamble's property. I don't think that will be the end of it though.

The squad car roars past with an intense bullet-headed Gorilla-type at the wheel. For all his speed, he takes a good gander at us and for one impossible second I think he will carry on, but even the poodle can't cover for Toby's uniform. Two boys in uniform are all they'll have to go on at this stage. And a man out walking a standard poodle. Jesus. Some cover. The Gorilla slams on the anchors and performs a fast flawless three-point turn, the fastest I've ever seen. Gamble's mansion is in sight. That's bloody cruel.

'Keep walking, keep walking,' I mutter.

Toby whimpers. One moment he's ready to sprint, the next crumple into a heap on the ground.

The car pulls up alongside and the cop gets out, flagging us to stop. Don't take our fucking names, please, not our names.

'You two been anywhere near Croft Street?' he asks.

'Croft? No, what's with the sirens, what's happened?' I ask.

Toby, suddenly artful Toby, buries himself in petting Jacques.

'He's pretty hot now, eh?' he says, loud enough for the policeman.

The boy is a low functioning genius. The cop takes one look at Jacques and smiles for a split-second before he looks concerned. A dog-loving cop. No, a poodle-loving cop. Who'd have thought?

'Been out awhile have yez?' he asks.

'Along the dunes as far as the clubhouses and back along the beach to the pool,' I say.

'Shit mate, how long'd that take? Get that dog water and get him in the shade, soon as, eh?' he says, ducking back into the driver's seat.

'Yeah, will do,' I say.

Another warp-speed three-point turn and he's growling away up Lemond, racing through the gears.

'He is pretty hot, Mr B,' Toby says.

'Worry about your own skinny little arse,' I say, heading towards Gamble's at a near trot.

Unbelievable.

Artful genius or not, cat-killer, cop-dodger, we're still in a world of shit. Toby's crying again, blubbing now. I want to believe it's from the heat, his guilt, and the sky's weight crushing his pea-knuckle head, but I can't be sure.

'I don't want to go home, Mr B,' Toby says.

'Your father will be okay,' I say, checking for curtain twitchers or approaching cars. These mid-afternoon suburbs are so deathly quiet I often want to scream to see what would happen. Turns out everything happens, although that's only when we're dealing with screaming cats.

'No, he's not,' Toby states.

He understands my plan. Without a word he glances round, moves in front of the Gamble's big stonewall, and motions at me for a foot up. I boost him so hard he barely touches stone on the way over to the other side. He falls but doesn't cry out. I wait: for shouts, calls for help, or shouting from people inside the house. Nothing. After he slips through the Gamble's property, he's a shortcut away from home through a small park and on to Tanner. He's gone.

I wander along to the esplanade. I try to give Jacques water out of my palm at the fountain and I'm more successful this time. It's a pitiful amount compared to how he normally tucks into his water bottle, or his water bowl at home.

I don't want to go home.

On top of this afternoon's dark deeds, I guess Toby doesn't want to go home and face his family, either. My stomach turns over at the memory of those stinking, oozing... how much petrol did he pour over them? The entire can? I can imagine the stories in the newspaper next week - state of the nation stuff: Look at the crimes our kids commit today! My face burns red hot, even my ears. And who helped one of them evade the police? His physical education teacher aide. Fucking hell, that's the state of the nation right there.

George. What's George going to do when I tell her, but what if I didn't? What if I can't?

I pull up a seat on a bench overlooking the beach. Jacques collapses with a loud hrumph, panting hard. I can't face her. Not soon, not this arvo. What supposedly responsible and mature member of society does what I just did? Caught by a moment's weakness... what if it had been yesterday, or tomorrow? I mean, if it had been dogs in those cages, I would have chased those boys down - letting Jacques free to fend for himself - while I beat the crap out of them and then turned them in. Honestly. But I didn't, and it was cats not dogs. I caught up to Toby and helped him get away with what rates as one of the more disturbing juvenile criminal acts committed around here in a long time.

How can I pretend nothing has happened? How can I show up at school on Monday? Questions will be asked of students and teachers. They'll have a special staff meeting over it, even if they didn't pick up Darren, or nab Toby. And everybody round here often sees the guy walking the big poodle and wasn't he out walking the afternoon it happened? That cop won't forget seeing us. Wasn't someone shouting at me at the scene of the crime? What is that guy's name, they'll wonder. That afternoon poodle-walker, and who was the student with him? And on and on, onion layers of lies will peel away as the police apply pressure. I'll crack before Toby does. He's used to interrogation. And what's his name? Darren? Will he hold out for Toby? And will Toby, when they catch up with him - which they will, either the school or the police - will he hold out for me?

I'm walking back along the beach track before I've even thought about it. I have to do it. I'll be in the shit even if I do. I'm exhausted and so is Jacques, but I'm marching back to school.

Andy has his blinds pulled in his office, but his blinds always stay pulled shut. I tie Jacques up to the flagpole on the lawn in front of the office block. It's shaded now the sun has moved on, but Jacques pants, fully tapped. He crumples and lies on his side. The school is silent and empty except for the goodie-goods catching up on marking, and the cleaners unblocking the crappers and vacuuming the classrooms.

I stand in front of Andy's door, heart and head hesitant. Will a night's sleep change anything? A weekend? The whole P-P-H thing? Will a weekend's break change the fact this might be the best thing for everybody? No, I've lost the war. Toby's made sure of that. I experience a shot of the purest, most vile hatred towards him.

Fuck you, Toby Caruthers.

I don't care how fucked up your father is. People counted on you and you shat in their letter boxes, no, their pillowslips.

Andy is on the phone. He waves me into a seat. Jacques worries me - half dead outside on that fussy lawn - I want to get this finished.

Ruggertalk. Coming into form. Long season. Looking sharp? Oh hell yeah, isn't he though? God, he's talking about Gregg Craig. Doesn't anything concern them other than rugby or sport? He finishes the call.

'Braydon, what can I do for you, mate?' Andy says. Brisk and efficient, he was a halfback and in his day represented the province.

'I'm resigning,' I say, smiling.

'You're joking?' he says, looking genuinely surprised.

I shift forward in my seat and my hands grip the chair arms.

'No, Andy, I'm not,' I say.

'This isn't about what happened out in the lobby this arvo, is it mate?' he says, smoothing his hands over his clear desktop.

This is why nuggety little bastards like him end up in positions of power, always one step ahead with two hands gripping the rug under your feet. And I guess that's why delusional little bastards like me sit on the other side of the big desk, wringing their chair arms. I force calm over myself and claim possession of my territory.

'What exactly did you hear?' I ask.

'Genty, Mr Gent... '

'Gent?' I say, unable to stifle my surprise.

'Braydon, you look exhausted, mate. Do you want a cuppa? Glass of water?' he says.

'No, thanks, I shouldn't stay long, my dog's out on the lawn. We've been out walking, he's a bit hot,' I say. Why, oh why, did I mention walking?

'Dog? What breed? I didn't know you had a dog,' he says. Moving over to the window, he snaps open a blind and takes a gander at Jacques.

'That's some dog all right. Yeah, he looks buggered,' he says. He slumps into his big chair. The sight of Jacques' exhaustion apparently also exhausts Andy.

'I'm not sure what Mr Gent told you, but what he called me...'

'Is absolutely unacceptable,' Andy says, pepping up. 'I've got to tell you, Braydon, the guys round here, Genty, O'Malley? They've got shocking senses of humour, mate.'

'So he was joking?' I say.

Yeah right. The as well bit rankles. For a second, taking in Andy's apologetic smile, it makes me wonder if he knows about the bus knuckling incident. No doubt the bastards sit around in the staffroom after school, drinking coffee, scoffing biccies and laughing over my latest escapades. He's covering arse, I know he is. Joke or not, I'm sure teachers round here, or anywhere, don't go round calling each other the P-word. What if Mum were in my position? She'd leave nothing but razed ground, but that word - razed - reminds me of smoking cages and the sudden stillness of roasted cats.

'I'm always getting good reports from the others. The kids love you, mate. You've been working wonders with Toby Caruther's,' Andy says.

At the mention of Toby's name, I get stuck into the chair arms. Wonders all right, bloody miracles.

'Look,' he continues, 'I admit you're not getting paid proportionately to the work you're being asked to do, and I can look into that for you, but it'd be a bloody shame to see you head out the door over something as trivial as this, wouldn't it?'

'I don't enjoy being called a paedophile, Andy, I don't find it funny,' I say, enjoying his face blanche. He recovers and his attitude hardens.

'Nobody does of course,' he says, looking over at the blinds.

'Why don't you give it the weekend?' he says.

'I'm here to resign, Andy, I'm... not a good fit. This isn't where I see myself,' I say.

'That's right, you're into writing poetry, aren't you?' he says, again smoothing his desktop.

'Creative writing, in general,' I say, wincing at my pomposity. They'll laugh over that tomorrow... in general.

'Writing? Oh yeah. So what job will you get now? I'm just thinking, the hours can't be that bad, eh? You must have time up your sleeve?' he says.

Either he doesn't want to see me go, or he's pointing out the bald truth - I've nothing, no job. WINZ? Maybe... if they'll take me. If they do, I'll soon be back where I started: nowhere. After a waffly few months, I'll take on another lame job, but it's worse than that, worse than Andy realises, cat burning incident aside.

I'm staring at the end of my relationship with George.

This resignation alone will end it. God knows what happens when the rest of it sprays me. It will be the end of Jacques too if he doesn't die from heat exhaustion before I get him home.

Starting over. Square one. Or not...

The cheery bastard's put me in a spot. The staff will be nicer if I stay on, or at least treat me as if I'm packed in cotton wool. I could handle that. Couldn't I stick that out? George will get her Spain, and shit, who doesn't want to go to Barcelona? I'd get to keep my walks with Jacques, and Andy's right, the hours aren't terrible; I have no excuses. I could do with a kick up the arse. Start another story or write a decent poem...

A kick up the arse.

I kicked Toby up the arse this arvo.

'I'm, yeah, I'm firm about this decision, Andy. To be honest, I've no idea what I'm going to do, but I want to take the time to decide,' I say.

Andy slaps his palms on the desktop.

'Okay then. What are we going to say, Braydon? How will we explain it, mate?' he says.

'Couldn't we say I'm leaving for personal reasons, or to write full time?' I say.

'Sure, sure, that's fine, you'd be happy with that?' he says.

'Is there paperwork? Or...'

'Nuh mate, I'll take care of it. I'll contact your case manager,' he says, getting up and coming round the desk with his hand extended.

'Thanks, I'm sorry...'

'Nuh, nuh, don't be. I'm the one that's sorry. It's a bloody shame to lose a good staff member over rubbish like this,' Andy says.

'I'm letting you down though,' I say, accepting his hard grip. He gives me a quick look, dead centre.

'Yeah, it's the last time we'll accept anyone from the WINZ program, eh,' he says, with a harder edge in his voice.

Oh.

Concentric circles. Shit always ripples outwards in concentric circles.

'It seems to me, Braydon, the best thing for you to do right now is float along for a while, mate, have a good think about where you see yourself going, like you said,' Andy says.

He ushers me towards the door. I'm yesterday's news unless I make tomorrows, or next weeks.

'Thanks for the opportunity, Andy,' I say, but he closes the door on me.

Jacques perks up when I walk over and crouch beside him. 'Will we walk, or call George?' I say. His ears twitch at the mention of walk, so that's a good sign. We'll walk, I decide. George might be out looking for us in the car, we've been out that long. What will I tell her? This is usually how long I walk Jacques?

Concentric circles. Shit-ripples. Shit ripples, always.

'Hey, Braydon?' Andy says.

It's Andy. He comes out of the staffroom's side door and walks towards us carefully carrying an old white ice cream container.

'Braydon? Are you walking home, mate?' he says.

'I haven't decided,' I say.

'I can give you both a lift,' he says, placing the water filled container in front of Jacques.

Jacques gives it a tentative sniff then whacks into it, a lapping frenzy.

'Thought your dog could use it,' Andy says, and crouching on the other side of Jacques, he scratches under his ear.

'His name's Jacques,' I say, trying hard not to sound sniffy.

'Thirsty eh, Jacques? Good boy, good boy, Jacques,' Andy says, scratching under Jacques' other ear.

'Thanks Andy,' I say.

One last scratch and Andy stands. I stay where I am. I can't be bothered.

'Second thoughts?' Andy says.

'No, sorry, it's the best thing,' I say.

'All right. Leave the container there, eh? I'll pick it up later,' he says.

'Okay,' I say.

'Good luck, mate,' he says, and heads back towards the office block.

I stroke Jacques' back until wool threatens to come away. Jacques keeps lapping and lapping, and despite everything; the stench of petrol and burnt cats, police cars and sirens; George waiting at home, a home I may no longer have, I realise it's a truly beautiful afternoon, truly beautiful.

I wait until Andy is inside, and then I cry.

***

Liz

Toby tugs his school backpack up off the floor of the car, and balancing it on the tops of his knees, digs through it. His indestructible Optimus Prime lunchbox, plastic cutlery, and empty strawberry yoghurt containers spill out, bounce off the gear stick and ricochet over into the driver's side where they get tangled up under my legs.

'Jesus, Toby! Get those out from under there!'

Toby unbuckles his seatbelt, awkwardly reaches over - stabbing his bony elbow into my thigh - and fossicks them up. He stuffs them back into the lunch box and tosses it onto the back seat where it hits one of Andy's boxes. He snorts and mutters something I can't catch. I try to brush a splash of yoghurt off my jeans. I'm only rubbing it in. Did I give him yoghurt in his school lunch this morning? I don't remember adding yoghurt. Nessa must have finished putting the kid's lunches together. He starts with the bag again; what in God's name is he looking for?

'Toby love, do you have to do that right now?'

I spy a pair of washed-out blue underpants; clean ones, I think, in the churning mess inside the bag. Why does he need to take undies to school? His physed uniform turns over to the top, so I guess that makes sense.

'Who's home with him?' Toby asks.

'Nessa and Andy. He's not alone, Toby, you know we never do that,' I say.

Andy and Nessa's being home this time of day will get him thinking. There are words, but they'd be a lie.

The cellphone buzzes again and slides down the dash. I catch it before it slides onto the steering wheel. When I don't answer it, Toby glares at me.

'Well? Are you going to answer it?' he asks.

It goes off again: bzzzzzzzz, bzzzzzzzz... I drop it into the side pocket of the driver's door. It stops vibrating, thank God.

'D'you want me to answer it?' he says.

'I know who's calling,' I say.

'Well why don't you answer it?' he says.

'I'll call back' I say, avoiding using the word, him, as in I'll call 'him' back.

'I can answer,' he says, trying to reach across me.

'Toby! I'm bloody driving, and no, I don't need you to answer, thanks. Hey, I thought we might swing by the dairy and buy an ice cream,' I say, cringing at the bright u-turn in my voice.

'I don't want an ice cream,' he says, burying himself in his bag again.

'Toby, can whatever you're looking for wait until we get home?' I say.

'No, it bloody can't. Can't you shut up and drive?' he says.

'Don't bloody talk to me like that, I don't deserve it,' I say.

I gun the roundabout, ignoring Toby's protests as he mushes into the passenger door, and race past the dodgy motel where Mark and I once spent an afternoon. His fantasy, Mark said. Cause you only live once and most people don't live, do they, Lizzie? The selfish ginger bastard lay on the musty bed in his red Jockey Y-Fronts and watched me dress up in a sexy nurse's uniform that I bought in a second hand clothing store. Even though we parked a block over and walked there separately, people must have noticed us. At least he checked in. I've never spent a steamy afternoon in a hotel with my husband Chris. How can you be married to someone for as many years as we have and not have spent a steamy afternoon in a motel room? Did Mum ever spend a raunchy afternoon with Dad? Did she ever sneak away and steal an afternoon with a boyfriend on the side? They're coming, the tears. I fight them back. Not around Toby, not now. What are you getting an ice cream for, Liz girl? He doesn't even want one.

'Mum? What's wrong? It's Dad, isn't it?' Toby says, piling everything back into his bag and zipping it up.

How can the most boring looking dairy in the world make the best ice creams this side of the city? I pull over and swing round in front.

'He looked dead this morning,' Toby says.

'Don't say that,' I say, but it's hard to deny.

'He did,' Toby says, his bottom lip threatens to let go, but he buttons it up. He won't cry in front of me.

'Okay, okay, enough of that. Let's get an ice cream, Toby, please?' I say.

'I wanted to keep playing basketball with Mr B,' he says.

'Who's this Mr B?' I ask.

Wait, he must have been the staring, skinny guy fiddling with his basketball at the other end of the hall.

'Mr Begg, Mum. He teaches physed, I have special time with him on Fridays, only if I'm good though,' he says.

Special time? Only if he's good? Does that mean what I think it means... they're giving the monkey a treat for good behaviour? Where does it end for us Caruthers?

'So you're not locked out?' Toby asks, fidgeting in his seat in that way I dislike; his legs slide forward and back; left-right, left-right as if they've a mind of their own.

'No, we're not. Doctor Harrup and Nurse Gladys paid their usual respects,' I say.

He waves at a kid on the other side of the road, 'Who's that?' I ask.

'It's Darren, he's in the class next to mine,' he says, mincing in his seat.

'Toby,' I warn, but he's scrambling for the door handle. I struggle over the seat divide and grab his wrist, but the little bugger shakes it off. By the time I get out of the car, Toby has shot across the road and caught up with his mate.

'Toby! Get back inside this bloody car! Toby! Your father's asking for you. Toby!'

'I'm walking home with Darren,' Toby shouts across the road.

I've never met this Darren, a thuggish-looking little bruiser. The little bastard doesn't even seem concerned about being seen wagging school. Probably grabbed his school bag and walked straight out the front gates. See yez later.

'We don't have to get an ice cream. We'll just go home, okay?' I shout.

'I'll be home later,' he shouts.

They cut in behind the trees in front of the clubhouses. They'll sprint over the sports fields and disappear in the dunes, clever little buggers. Why today of all bloody days.

My cellphone starts up again. Stuffed into the side pocket of the driver's door, its vibrating against the plastic only makes it sound louder.

I drive up the cul-de-sac to the last clubroom and park at the bottom of the dunes. I can't see Toby anywhere. How am I going to explain this? Are you aware that things are this awful, Chris? Why else would you ask to see him? And Nessa with her pot smoking and her quiet sex in the bedroom with her latest boyfriend that climbs in her bedroom window at night to avoid being seen by the photographers and weirdos that park out front. I can't even remember her boyfriend's name? Tam? Cam? Toby fast heading towards... well, nobody wants to deal with that, and what can I do about Andy with his cardboard boxes? It's not normal for an eight-year-old, is it? No, Liz girl, it's not normal for an eight-year-old to carry around a cardboard box he believes transports him to other worlds. Maybe I can see Toby from up on the dunes. Catch him smoking with his mate. Shit, does tussock grass, or whatever you call it, burn easily?

I can't see him. The grass cuts my shins. If I step carefully, I brush past it. The surf sounds like it's trying to break the beach one thumping wave at a time as if it's putting all that sand in its place. You can't escape the sound of the surf can you, living out here? We've lived near it our entire lives. The beaches we walk and swim, and your late start at surfing before you put your back out at the supermarket, you bloody duffer. Even the saltwater pool you love so much is a part of it, you and your great love of water. And out at the Point. The pine forest and the grass clearings, and the water never far away, even if we didn't swim in it after they tested it and found it had high levels of sewage. We used to go out to the Point every weekend until Mark and his family hustled onto the scene.

'Disrespectful wankers!' I shout.

Shouting gets me in the mood: 'Toby! Toby!'

At least you're home, Chris, where you want to be. I didn't let them talk us into it. The American's with their money, or Doctor Hashimoto, the expert we went to see in Osaka although on what I still don't know. Charming determined little bugger. 'Most amazing oppoltunity, Mrs Caluthels,' he said again and again. Opportunity for what? For who? We gave up on their promises, didn't we, when we figured it out: they can't help you.

'Toby! Toby!'

The beach is deserted. I couldn't see him hiding in the grass even if he were five-metres away.

'Toby! Toby! Fucking hell, Toby Caruthers, bloody show yourself!'

I walk the track, towards the esplanade and the pool, calling Toby's name. Fucking little shit. I realise I'm muttering it as I struggle along. The sand is softer here. I stop, slip off my shoe and pour out a steady stream of sand before slipping it back on. Little shit. Little shit. Fucking little shit.

'Toby! Tooobbbyyyyyyy!'

If he is within ten metres of me, he should be able to hear me. Little prick. Why couldn't he stay in the car? Why did I have to piss around? An ice cream. How old is Toby?

'Toooobbbbyy! Bloody hell, Toby! Come home? Please? Tooobby! Tooobbbbbyyy!!'

I stumble off the track and shelter behind a dune. The sand darkens in running lines where my piss trickles between my feet. Great, now my knickers have sand in them.

I climb back onto the track. No signs of Toby. Someone else is on the track though. For a second, I tense, thinking it might be Toby before reality hits. Heart skipping big, the man is bigger than any man I've ever seen, a giant. Mark is tall enough, but gangly, with his skinny, bony arms. This guy might be an All Black. Get your shit together, girl, you're a right bloody mess. I wipe my eyes with the sleeve of my teeshirt and wait for him to reach me. The surf booms on the beach. A good day for surfers and body boarders now there's an offshore breeze. Offshore breeze, things are looking good, you used to say, looking good out there.

I give the man a silly little wave. It only makes him appear more concerned than he already does.

'Hi,' I say.

With deep crows feet at the corners of his eyes, his face looks older than his body, but that easy smile. I bet he's blown a few women away with that while they were waiting for their wine coolers at the bar.

'Everything okay?' he says, glancing up and down the track. Jesus, what's he doing that for?

'Lost your dog?' he asks.

'No, my son actually,' I say, trying to laugh and failing. Liz girl, stop bloody crying, will you.

'Shit. Your son? Bad day, eh?' he says.

'Bloody shocker,' I say, dabbing at my eyes again.

I'm calming: it's easy. I'm standing in front of the calm centre of the universe. When you're this large, I suppose no one is stupid enough to mess with you, or run away.

'Have you really lost your son? Jesus, he wasn't out swimming was he?' he asks, glancing out at the beach and then squinting at me. He thinks I'm crazy.

'No, God no. He's eleven years old. Kind of small and scruffy? Longish brown hair, down to his shoulders, looks like he hasn't washed it in a week. And he's wearing his school uniform, Tainui. He's with a mate, they're both wearing their school uniforms,' I say.

'Miss, I'm sorry, eh? Haven't seen anyone else on the track,' he says. He seems genuinely disappointed.

'Thanks. He could be anywhere,' I say.

I don't know what I'll do now. My knees might give again. Don't collapse, not in front of a stranger, Lizzie.

'Do you want me to help you find him? It'll take ages to find him,' he says, as if he has just realised the size of the task.

I shake my head. No, he's not hurt.

'Nuh, I reckon he'll turn up when the little bugger gets hungry enough,' the man says. He gives me the reassuring version of his sexy smile.

That's it. Do I look like a parent that runs round after her kids? How can he say that? He doesn't know us, or me. Take a deep breath, Liz girl.

'I'm Elizabeth Caruthers,' I say.

'Eh? Caruthers? Caruthers. Have I? Haven't I seen you on telly?' he says.

'Yeah, my husband, Chris. He's the floating man. Look, you might not want to hear this, but I'll tell you anyway. So Chris, he's bloody well dying, okay? My son ran off and I was supposed to pick him up and take him home so he can spend time with his father. That's the only bloody thing my husband has asked for and I didn't even do that,' I say.

He might cry; you could stand matchsticks up in his crow's feet, he's that miserable.

'Sorry, you didn't deserve that,' I say.

'Nuh, it's all good. I'm Tui, my name's Tui,' he says, his voice breaking.

He hugs me. Not a polite keep the crotch a foot away hug, he crushes me against him with his fried food pong sweating out of his teeshirt, and a recently eaten orange, or two. I place my hands up on the tops of his arms. I've nowhere to go. No one has hugged me like this since I first met Chris, but never by arms this big, or a chest this powerful. I'm not small, but he could easily lift me. I stop myself from squealing. Jesus Christ, he's getting excited down there. Things are warming up for me, too. How can this be happening? What's wrong with me? I try to push off his arms. It's like trying to move a fridge. For a second he doesn't let me budge... for a second.

'I have to go now,' I say.

He lets me step back. The bastard, I guess I'm thankful he didn't throw me down and have his way with me. Or disappointed. Shit, Liz, snap out of it.

'What's his name?' he says, pulling his cell out of his pocket.

Oh. I guess it was a cell in his pocket.

'Your son?' he says.

'Toby, Toby Caruthers,' I say.

'If I see him I'll give you a call, eh? I'll be walking along here. I try to get out most days. What's your cell number?' he says, working his cellphone. I wonder how many ladies' numbers he has listed in it?

'Thanks, that's great, but I've got to go, sorry,' I say, backing away.

'Nuh, it'll only take a sec,' he says, waving his phone at me.

Is he going to follow me to the car?

'No, it's okay, really. You're right, he'll show sooner or later, eh?' I say.

'What'll I do if I see him?' he says, lowering the cell. I guess this doesn't happen to him often, a hot-blooded, glowing woman rejecting him.

'Can you tell him he needs to go home?' I say.

He shrugs and stuffs his cell in his pocket.

'Thanks for the hug,' I say.

'Yeah, good luck,' he says, turning to face the sea.

Back in the car, I check my cellphone. Great, that's bloody great. Thanks Mark. Seventeen missed calls. I switch it off, and heading along Beach Drive turn right towards home. But I'm not going home. I turn into the little streets I've lived with for too long and then I'm driving straight down Lemond Street. I don't see Toby. That's what I'm doing; I'm looking for Toby. So what am I now doing parked outside Mark's house in plain daylight for every gawker to see? It doesn't matter, anyway, everyone on this street must know. Mark's nosy neighbours must have noticed the regularity and the unmistakable lack of coincidence that minutes after Kathy Wainwright leaves the house to go on her afternoon rounds, her husband Mark arrives home. And minutes later - ta-da! - I turn up at his house, park out front and trot inside. Thirty minutes later, a hot rumpled Mrs Caruthers emerges, trots back to her car and roars off as if horned demons are chasing her.

Not exactly the sharpest, Liz girl.

You could've worked for Mark, once-upon-a-time, when things were shaky at the supermarket, after your back went out. Mark told me, 'Just say the word, Lizzie, and Chris is in good as old gold.' Christopher Caruthers, apprentice plumber at Mark Wainwright Plumbers. We weren't even seeing each other back them, Mark and me. Shagging each other, I should say. Why else has the ginger bastard always been so bloody helpful? Did he think Chris bloody useless? Or weak? Kathy hangs that much frothy curtain netting in the front windows it's hard to tell if Mark is watching out for me. I don't bother checking, I'm running to the back gate at the top of the driveway.

He's done it. The bastard's done it. Yes, it's like he said it would be. Green and drooping down, the green stuff... it's netting, and bloody great poles. I lift the gate-latch. My heart always gives a little leap now, a leap of what I've never understood. Guilt, I suppose, or excitement and anticipation. I always think I'm old enough to be over all that by now, but I never am. The little heart-skip and then, like a balm that always calms me, the sight and smell of Kathy's fussy rose garden.

Now it's gone. They're gone every one every single rose bush... gone. He's done it. Now there's a big patch of... what do you call it? Astroturf? Fake grass and this bloody enormous net. Golf. There's a funny little white thingie poking up in the middle of the grass. To put the ball on, I suppose. I guess he comes out here first thing in the morning and last thing at night after he finishes drinking or re-watching whatever dvd he chose for the evening and hits golf balls into this... this ugly bloody thing? He'll have a fancy term for the whole construction and it won't be hitting the ball; he'll have a term for that too. Driving the ball, is that right?

Why did Kathy let him do it? Shit, was it before or after we started up our afternoons together? Kathy wouldn't want him to do this... this is all Mark. He ground away at her and won the battle. I probably knew about his plans months before Kathy did. I can imagine what he said. It can't come as a surprise, Kathy, I've been planning it for a bloody year! Do you know how much it's cost? Can't ask for a refund now!

He's waiting for me at the back door. He ushers me in and takes a second to squint hard at the neighbour's house. Somebody's keeping quiet about our afternoon rendezvous; I keep waiting to get caught out by a photographer, or a news crew, and wait for it to explode on the news. It hasn't happened yet.

'Is there something wrong with your cellphone?' he says, closing the door and crowding me out of sight of the windows. He doesn't even mention the backyard, and I won't bring it up.

'I was out trying to find Toby, he's bloody well run off,' I say.

'There must be something wrong with your index finger,' he mutters. Walking off through the kitchen, he leaves me standing there. He's wearing his overalls; I can't remember the last time I saw him out of them.

'Yeah, I'm having a lovely day, thanks, it's so good to see you, Liz, thanks so much for popping around,' I say.

'What'd you say?' he shouts.

He must be in the lounge. I prefer doing it in the kitchen, I don't know why. Actually, I do. Kathy always takes the front door into the house, so that gives me a better chance of escaping out the back. I've never thought it through, how Mark would explain my car parked out front and its mysterious disappearance. If it really happened we'd straighten up and pretend to be having coffee in the kitchen. I even used to have one as I soon as I got in the door. God, I'm dying for a coffee, do you mind? I'll make it, I'd say. But Mark, thinking himself a coffee expert, would make it himself. I couldn't stand it, having to watch him make a big deal over tipping hot water on top of his special instant coffee blend. After the first two, I stopped drinking them and they'd sit steaming on Kathy's spotless stainless-steel kitchen bench.

'What's going on?' he shouts.

Walking into the lounge, I see he's ready and primed for action. He points at his big comfy black Lazy Boy.

'Sorry Liz, I'm in a bit of a hurry, got a job on,' he says, trying to smile.

'I hope you're not talking about me,' I say.

By the time I realise that I can clearly see us having sex in all our middling, jiggling, rough glory in the reflection of Mark's brand new big screen tv mounted on the wall it's over. He groans, spasms into rigor mortis, and follows through with his bulging hot squirt. I didn't even have time to indulge a fantasy about the charming giant at the beach.

'Jesus that was quick,' I say, watching him on the screen. He withdraws and stands there panting, red and splotchy-faced, cock in hand, and looking down at me. I didn't think it lasted long enough for him to get splotchy. He hasn't even taken his overalls off; he zipped them down and tied the arms together around his waist. But then, I only removed the necessities.

'Shit, off the Lazy Boy. Now! It'll stain,' he says and grabbing me by the wrist, hauls me off the chair.

'Hey, Mark, bloody hell! I'll get off myself, thank you. Some tissues would help, Christ,' I say, semi-crouching with my hand cupping the offending area. I glance at the tv reflection and don't like what I see. A chunk of his come leaks sticky and wet into my hand.

'How the hell am I going to explain a come-shot on the Lazy Boy,' he says, crouching down to check the black leather.

'Maybe we should start using condoms again. Can't have stains on the furniture,' I say.

'You're on the pill?' he says, standing and squinting down at me, and I realise why he's red-faced and worked up; he's angry. He's never been angry about being quick before.

'Shit, I'll go to the bathroom,' I say. Snatching up my jeans and knickers with my free hand, I rush out of the lounge. He shouts something about not using the upstairs bathroom.

'Jesus, Mark,' I shout back.

Grabbing a wad of toilet paper in Kathy's pokey pastel bathroom, I plug over any stray leaks and rinse off my hand. The toilet paper sticks in place and I lean against the apricot sink for a moment. I can't look at myself in the mirror. It's over isn't it? That was disgusting, making me stand there like that in the lounge while he inspected his bloody Lazyboy. I wash but mostly use the hand towel, scrunching it into a ball and sprucing myself up. I fold it as carefully as I found it and put it back on the towel rail. But imagine one or other of their boys coming in here to wash and dry their hands before eating one of Kathy's perfect casseroles? I whip it off and toss it in the fabric-lined wicker laundry basket.

'He's never doing that again,' I say, when I burst out of the bathroom.

'Mark!'

I don't care if Kathy's home. Never again.

'Mark?'

What is that noise? A scratching, scouring sound that reminds me of my childhood: Saturday mornings doing chores with Mum when I was a kid that included scrubbing the bathtub to a white shiny polish. Is he scrubbing the upstairs bath? He must be. Is this why he was in such a bloody hurry to rush off? I don't look at the cheesy family portraits on the way up the stairs. Mark stands grinning in every single one; Kathy sits under him on a chair with her hands muffled in her prim lap.

'What are you doing?' I ask, standing in the open upstairs bathroom door.

It's obvious what he's doing, it's the why that floors me. Why now? Friday afternoon? And he's not just scrubbing it, he's going at it possessed: Jif spattered everywhere; the bath, up the walls, over his now zipped-up overalls, and yellow rubber gloves, and he's using an old-fashioned wooden handled scrubbing brush with bristles so worn and squashed it looks like it was passed down from his great-grandmother.

'Jesus! You frightened me,' he says, dropping the scrubbing brush into the tub.

He peels off the rubber gloves and drops them to the floor. The action reminds me of that Saturday morning Mum did the same thing; peeled of her yellow rubber gloves and dropped them on the kitchen lino. Stuff this, Lizzie, let's get out of here, she said. 'Getting out' meant driving to the brightest newest café in all of Applethorne: it even served espressos. Not that many years later, bringing Len his hot cup of tea, Mum dropped to the hallway floor like her rubber gloves did that morning; clammy and worn, inside-out and all used up. The tea splashed over the wallpaper leaving a brown artistic stain. Dad never changed that wallpaper, not in all the years he stayed in that house. I thought he was honouring her until I realised he was lazy and couldn't be bothered changing the wallpaper.

'We need to talk,' I say.

Why won't Mark get up? Is he waiting for me to leave so he can keep scrubbing the bath?

'Is Chris worse today? He is, isn't he?' he says, as if I've got my period, or my husband's mysterious terminal condition makes me a tad irrational.

'Okay. Let's talk. How about a cuppa,' he says, finally standing.

'I see you've finished your amazing project,' I say.

'Take a gander out the back, did ya? What d'you reckon? My own personal driving range' he says, beaming.

'I hate it, Mark, I fucking hate it, I want to burn it to the ground,' I say, looking him square in the eye.

'Jesus, that's a bit rough, Liz,' he says.

'You destroyed Kathy's roses so you can have your own personal... driving range, you selfish wanker.'

'Hey, Lizzie, what's going on? I was calling to say this arvo's no good,' he says, waving his hand at the jiffed bath.

'Because you have to scrub the... I feel bloody terrible. I can't keep doing this,' I say.

I think I'm going to vomit. He said to me - without... anything - said that he didn't want to see me today because he has a bath to scrub. I am going to vomit; a sob cracks out instead. I squash it down. I won't give him the satisfaction.

'Lizzie? Okay, I'll make that cuppa. Hey, don't worry, Toby'll turn up,' he says, smoothing the air with his big hot hands and his sausage fingers, wafting them towards the open door as if I'm a bloody floating genie, or my husband let out of his straps.

'You can't treat me like that, Mark. Like you did just before, you just can't,' I say.

'All right, all right, I've got a lot going on at the moment as well, eh? I'm a bit stressed out, mate,' he says, angling past.

'Really? Stressed? I can't believe you said that,' I say, but he's off down the bloody passage.

On my way down the stairs, I turn every family photo upside down.

'Enjoy your coffee, I've got to go, got a bit going on at home, mate,' I shout towards the kitchen when I get to the bottom of the stairs.

I hear him shouting after me, and I want to think it's, Liz, no, don't go, or, please, Liz, stay and have a cuppa, or, I'm sorry, Liz, let me make it up, but honestly, it won't be. I catch the words: front door. I think he's paying me out for not leaving the back way.

It won't work, it hasn't worked, it isn't working. We'll mooch for a few days and then he'll find an excuse and come around with that stupid hangdog look on his face and explain it away: the stupid driving range, his stress, and my frustration and anger. His ridiculous hot hands will find their way onto my hips and what will happen if Chris has passed away? Mark the big ginga will be in a suit, and he'll look chipper in a suit instead of his bloody overalls. His hands will grope me, won't they? No matter that I'm bawling with a snotty face, it won't matter to him. Everyone else will huddle in the lounge with their grief and hot cups of weak tea. No, this won't do, Liz girl, this won't do. You're running out of time.

Nessa hasn't called so I know Toby isn't home. Where will he go from the beach? Along to the esplanade, that's where, to the small skate park and the young mincers hanging out smoking cigarettes on the sly, or badly rolled thin joints. I park on a side street and try not to stomp up to the park with a wounded mother on the rampage vibe. He's not there. The usual vaguely intimidating sullen crowd of teenagers make a bloody racket with their boards on the concrete bowls. Clumping back to the car I notice the classy café/restaurant on the esplanade corner, and my heart gives one of its little leaps: Kathy might be inside taking one of her fortifying afternoon lattes before she continues with her errands. I saunter past trying not to stare in, but she's not inside. God, what's with you today, Lizzie? Do you really want to join Kathy for her afternoon coffee and share chit-chat about the kids?

Running hard down the side street I've parked the car on, I see it. Through the open door of a clammy little bar that no one I know likes, I see Kathy's gold Gucci handbag draped over the back of a chair. Hands on hips, I bend over, waiting to get my breath back, and out of the gloom, she materialises. With her back to me, Kathy sits at a table against the wall. Perching on the edge of her seat, she holds someone's hands over the tabletop.

Jesus, it's a man, she's holding another man's hands.

I skip back and approach on an angle until the two come into view again. This hands-holding rudder-thin man in a dark suit, brown thinning hair greying down the sides, suddenly explodes into a car salesman's grin. Kathy throws her hands up in the air, like, for joy or something. What's going on? The man gets out of his chair and crouches down beside her and they briefly kiss, but then they do something much much worse: they press their foreheads together so hard, like its an animal ritual, like they each want to merge into the other person's head. Jesus Christ, it's love, Kathy's head over heels in love with another man.

I make it into the car and check the cellphone for Nessa's call. No call. Toby's still on the loose, Chris is at home, strapped to his bed, and Mark's scrubbing the upstairs bath while his wife - Jesus - while his wife maybe just accepted a marriage proposal. Oh my God, how long have those two... lovers been carrying on like this? Months? It's so bloody... something, so something I want to vomit again and this time I do. I throw open the car door, lean out as far as I can, and heave up the lukewarm quiche I had for lunch.

I'm grabbed by a nervous fear of them walking past and noticing me- how would they explain it, eh? I wonder what Kathy's escape plan is? - and I can't face that. Acid in my mouth, I boost past the horrible little scene as fast as I can. Gunning it along the esplanade, I take the first right and head along Beach Front Drive. Toby must be making his way home by now. He knows Chris wants to see him, he can't be that much of a little shit, and the Drive is the fastest way to get anywhere along the beach. There's no Toby, and I even stop and check the dairy and the fish and chip shop, but no, not there. I take a left into the streets and driving slow blocks, peer up driveways and stare into front windows not covered with gauzy net curtains. Where would this Darren live?

I drive another block, muttering to myself, please, please, Toby. I visualise him bouncing down the driveway of the last house I'd expect; a nice tidy house with a lateish model spotless car parked in a spotless garage with its doors open so every passer by and the neighbours can see what a clean well ordered house their child lives in. Willing it won't make it happen. He isn't home yet I know it, there's still no call from Nessa. Toby's hiding somewhere in this neighbourhood, and I remember what he said about Chris earlier, that he looked dead this morning, and the little shit's selfishness forces me to pull over and park until I can get my breathing under control. I can't stay out here any longer I have to get back.

Whose house is this? Is this a nice house with its skirts up for all the clumps to see the tidy shelving and the shadow board of tools up on the garage wall? Once it was. Once a man lived here who left nothing out of place, and everything from pins to fridges had its thoughtful place in the world. Now it looks like a meth house and the man who lives here can barely lift a spoon, and no one can tell you why, and strangers might wonder why there's often a loud news van parked outside. Is Toby home? No, he can't be. For starters, the house is too bloody quiet. Nessa and Toby, fighting again. Shit, what if Mark bowls in and creates a huge shit storm? Calm down, Lizzie, no need for nerves. Park and make a break for the house.

'I'm home,' I say, when I slink in the front door and along the hallway that has no cheesy family portraits on its walls, only yellowing wallpaper that's peeling in places. Jesus, what's that smell? Is that what I think it is?

'Mum? In here!' Nessa calls out from the lounge that has no sleek black Lazy Boys for loose woman to fuck on and afterwards get harassed for dripping on the upholstery. A drip or a stain on the furniture of this lounge would go unnoticed... forever.

'Are you smoking pot in the house again, Vanessa Caruthers?' I say.

They don't smoke pot at the Wainwright's. No sir, Mark might spend half an evening chugging tall bourbon and cokes, or working through a half-dozen, before he heads outside to his personal driving range. But no pot. Before this afternoon my guilty heart bled for Kathy who I always thought spent every evening cleaning up after making tea; the dishes, the laundry, more cleaning, and dealing with her boys, and tomorrow, tomorrow, always preparing for tomorrow, and now? She's been preparing all right, hasn't she been busy.

'Dad was,' Nessa says, emerging pale and red eyed in the hallway.

'Andy's bloody breathing this,' I say, lowering my voice.

'It won't make much difference to him,' she says.

'Nessa!'

'It was Dad, honestly,' she says.

'Oh please.'

'Andy's in his box. He's been under there for ages,' she says.

'Shit, he can breathe under there, can't he?' I say.

'Yeah, I cut air holes in the sides. He said his craft is under attack from Morfians, mid-space warp,' she says, giggling.

Bloody giggling? Let up, you'd smoke pot if you could handle it; you'd smoke, eat, and drink it in a heartbeat, and afterwards stand out on the middle of the street and laugh and laugh until everything around you melted away.

'Was Chris really smoking?' I say.

'Uh-huh, he reckons it helps,' she says, giggles dying.

Where does she get the money for weed? That's a question you should ask yourself, Lizzie. You've seen her part-time Countdown pay stubs scattered across her dresser. Maybe she grows it? Where though? Under the house? Now you haven't thought of that. The reporters would have sniffed that out by now.

'I need to have words about this recreational drug abuse with your father,' I say.

'He's asleep, he shouldn't be disturbed,' she says.

'Since when did you become Nurse Gladys?' I say.

'Dad said Doctor Harrup wasn't a happy chappy this arvo,' she says.

'Is he ever?' I say.

'Mum, we're doing the right thing, eh? Keeping him at home? He's, he's having problems talking, he's so quiet,' she says, voice dropping to a whisper.

Doubts doubts doubts, always doubts.

'It's what Chris wants that's important, not a bloody doctor,' I say.

'But is he...? It's hard to understand what he's saying now,' she says.

Now that's a question for you. Is he... right in the head? All there? Was your Dad before the end? Saying strange things and coming out with God knows what was our old Len. And Chris' parents... were they in a position to understand what was best for them? Face facts, Chris is home because nobody can put a finger on what's wrong with him, except the osteoporosis, and can't an osteoporosis sufferer suffer at home?

'He made this decision right at the start remember? He wanted this, Nessa, us being a family together. Is Toby home yet?' I say.

'Didn't you pick him up?' she says.

'He got away from me, he ran off with a mate,' I say.

'Shit Mum, Dad really wanted...'

'I know, I know. Look Ness, can you get Andy out from under that box? I need some time with your Dad,' I say.

'I'll try,' she says, heading back into the lounge.

Don't we all want a bloody big transporting box? Flying through space at warp speed and leaving Planet Earth far, far behind. I have to check, don't I? Just in case? What am I going to do if he's outside? He won't be, will he? What if he is? I'll snick a peek from the lounge windows.

'What're you doing, Mum?' Nessa says, crouching beside Andy's box that now appears to be vibrating.

'Pulling the curtains, that all right with you, your majesty?' I say.

'Why?' she asks.

'I thought you might appreciate less light in here,' I say.

There's enough to do in here without worrying about what's out there.

Crap, there he goes. Look at him park that van. It's not possible. A van is a van it can't be self-righteous; Mark's parking self-righteously. Don't look at him just don't look at him. He's not getting out, he's sitting there. Staring isn't illegal, Lizzie. Shit, he's waving at me, no, pointing: he's pointing towards the back of the house. Fuck, he wants to meet in the old laundry. Pull the curtains completely shut just shut him out. You've more than enough on your plate this afternoon, haven't you? Pull them shut. Yes, goodbye Mark. Mark the plumber. Pull them shut, Lizzie. But they're only curtains.

'I want to see your father,' I say, shrinking at the ruthless lie, but the kids don't even notice.

Even though I know Chris can't hear me, I tiptoe past his bedroom door. Smoking pot, Jesus, I'm surprised he has the energy. He's smoked more since he got... sick then he ever did before it happened. The kitchen is a disaster, even worse than usual. That's it, done. I'll invite Mark into the kitchen for one of his cuppas. He'll walk in here and try to smile away the overflowing sink and cluttered benches even though it will make his fingers twitch. I'd give him a minute before he breaks, makes an excuse, and leaves. Gotta get back to the bath, Liz. God only knows what he thinks about the old laundry out the back. I think he finds it interesting. It looks like it was lifted out of a different century and barely attached to the back of this house. Concrete floors and deep concrete sinks and an ancient washing machine - hand use only \- and a corrugated iron roof; the whole thing would topple over if you gave it a decent shove. Mark didn't seem to mind those first few times before we moved our afternoon activities to his house. The gloomy dustiness was probably making his skin crawl. He sideways through the useless half-open back gate, scans the house, and trots over. I don't know why, but I want it to rain: hard rain drumming on the iron roof would make this perfect.

He gathers me in a hug, and every other time he does this I've always been so grateful I could sob, but this afternoon it seems empty, empty and pitiful compared to the hug I received from the charming giant at the beach. I don't hug him back.

'Mark, what'...

'I know, I know, I wanted to say sorry, but you'd already left. Toby make it home?' he says, stepping away and checking the yard.

'We're okay, everyone's busy inside,' I say, thinking about Chris strapped to his bed. When was the last time anyone checked in on him? What if Nessa's pot was too much?

'Look, I've got to get back, we can do this another time,' I say, angling past.

'No we bloody can't, I want to do it now,' he says, and snatches the top of my arm that's already aching.

'Shit, I can't do anything right at the moment,' he says, and dropping his hand, miserably stares at the back wall.

I move back in front of him, and I know its time, you have to seize the moment, right? And even though I know it's time to say it, I say nothing. Instead, I look up at him without really seeing him. I see Kathy and her weird forehead ritual with her lover and her throwing her arms up in the air and I realise neither of us will make each other that kind of happy.

'What is it Liz?' he asks, and his voice sounds strange, trembling.

Silence will do it, silence will cut through the hot air and bullshit and strip this horrible little thing down to the essentials: I've been his afternoon shag long enough.

'Oh shit, you know. About Kathy. How'd you find out?' he moans, running his hand back through his hair.

'Did they start before or after us?' I ask.

His shoulders slump; his entire upper body deflates, and it starts, as if someone is reaching down into his chest and tugging each one up through his throat.

'After, I'm pretty sure it was after. She's bloody leaving me, Liz. Some wanker, I don't know, one of the plumbing lads told me what he does for a living, Government position,' he sobs.

'Where is this going, Mark? Honestly? You once said you wanted to be with me, for real. Do you remember? Was that bullshit?' I ask, and I can't stand it; his pain is so real it's making a throbbing sound. I rub his chest with my hand and wipe his wet cheek.

'I'm taking on another two guys next month. It's doable, I mean, us, being together, we're doable,' he says, and the bastard sounds reluctant about saying it.

'Yeah, we'll wait for Chris to die, and then we'll tell the kids,' I say, peeling my hand away as if it's stuck to something sticky and unsavoury.

'What're you going to do for money? You told me Karen said that super-temp is muscling in on your job?' he says.

'Well I haven't been fired yet, have I?' I say, but I know, I know. Karen hasn't called or visited me in ages. The temp with the fantastic legs probably took over her job as well.

'Hey, Liz, wait, it's not like that,' he says.

'Don't you think I've been your afternoon shag long enough? I'm just an afternoon shag,' I say. That's it, I'm needed elsewhere.

'You're not my afternoon shag!' he says, grabbing my upper arm and digging in with his big fingers.

'You need to leave now, Mark, right fucking now,' I say.

'Okay okay, Jesus, I'm sorry,' he says, holding his hands up and stepping back.

'Do you know what makes me sad, Mark? I thought you respected me,' I say.

'Jesus, of course I respect you,' he says, and he sounds so fake I almost laugh in his face.

'I don't want to be with you anymore, Mark. Okay? I'm sorry about what's happened to your marriage, and I'll never forgive myself for being a part of that, but I don't want to be with you,' I say.

'You weren't complaining when I was doing stuff round here, when I was coming round with Kathy's casseroles,' he says, steaming with self-righteousness.

'Well why don't you go finish scrubbing Kathy's precious bath before she gets back? If she's even coming back today,' I add, and I know I shouldn't, but I roll around in the satisfaction of watching his face drain bloodless and pale.

'What a huge bloody mess,' he mumbles. He doesn't know what to do with his big mitts, where to put them. But he's not leaving, he's standing there crowding and breathing, mitt-heavy.

'You're not my afternoon shag,' he says, reaching out for me, but I step back and fold my arms over my chest.

'I hope you sort things out with Kathy,' I say.

I sideways past him and run for the back door, leaving him standing there snuffling with his head hanging down.

Back in the lounge, Andy's hiding under his bloody box again. I need to know Mark's left, and I leg it up to the curtains and take another look. He's in his van all right; he's slumped over the steering wheel. Why can't he go home? Does Kathy know that Mark's aware of her forehead-pressing lover? As long as he doesn't do anything stupid, he can sit out there in his van and mope all he likes. I tug the curtains back into place.

'What's wrong, Mum? Another journo-creep?' Nessa says, poking Andy's box with no response.

I'm too tired to answer. A creep? I guess he is as far as these things go. What about me? Marriage-breaker? I kick off my shoes and collapse on the couch and I shouldn't be here: I haven't checked on Chris yet.

'I am the galactic chieftain of Obarashi-shi,' Andy suddenly roars, and lifting the box off him, lobs it across the lounge.

'Do you think you're in Japan, Andy?' Nessa says, pretending to collapse on the carpet from Andy's unexpected onslaught.

'Doctor Hashimoto will suck your blood,' Andy says, leaping on top of Nessa.

'Or something else,' Nessa says, squealing with laughter.

'Hey, you two, bloody keep it down,' I say.

'Yeah, ssshhh, Andy, Dad's sleeping,' Nessa says, struggling out from under him.

'I know, I heard youse,' Andy says.

This is not my day, not my life ...

'Who's that?' Andy says, frozen mid-action, a possum in headlights.

Someone is having a bloody good go at the front doorbell. I have to move, I have to move, move, move.

'Don't bloody answer it!' I shout, racing for the curtains again.

'Oooooooh, why not?' Andy says, sounding suspiciously close to the lounge door.

I can't see Mark and his stupid van, but I can't see who is on the doorstep either. He must be at the front door. Prick.

'Mum, what's wrong? Who's at the door?' Nessa says, drifting over.

He's going at that doorbell again.

'I've had a bloody awful afternoon, Nessa, I don't need anything else today, is that all right with you?' I say, but that's so unfair.

'If it's a reporter...' Nessa says, but Andy runs out of the room.

'I'll get it,' he shouts.

'Go see who's there, will ya, Ness,' I say, heading for the couch again. Jesus, I need that bloody cuppa now.

'Are you feeling all right, Mum?' she asks on her way out.

Brace for impact, Liz girl, but honestly. If it's a game he's playing it's a daft game - bloody power games. It doesn't sound like Mark's voice at the door anyway.

'Who is it?' I shout.

'Courier!' Nessa shouts back.

'It's here, it's here, it's finally here!' Andy yells.

It's not Mark, thank God. Someone's pulled the valve; Nessa will have to scoop me out of this couch. A bloody courier. Wait, Mark has a mate that's a courier. Great joke, Mark. Hang on, what's arrived?

'Are we expecting a package?' but I haven't finished speaking before it hits me: We are expecting a package.

'Look at the sender address, look! Japan, Japan!' Andy shouts, as Nessa walks back in with a large box in her arms.

'Mum, it's from Doctor Hashimoto,' Nessa says, standing in front of me and trying to twist away from Andy's attempts to wrestle it off her.

'Andy, bloody well calm down, will you?' I say, trying to struggle up off the couch.

'But it's Dad's suit!' he says.

'It could be, and we'll open it and find out, but will you calm down, please,' I say.

I can't do it, I can't move.

'All right, all right' he grumbles, folding his arms.

'Why don't you help me open it, Andy?' Nessa says, putting it down beside me on the couch.

Christ, I literally can't move. A dog at a fresh bone, Andy tears into the packaging. Nessa's trying to keep him under control but she's losing patience. Move, Liz girl, move, you're needed here, here, now. I sit up as the box emerges from the packaging.

'That's so beautiful,' Nessa whispers.

The box colour shifts; it won't settle and changes with the light. It's deep blue, now dark green, now black...

'A magic box,' Andy breathes, making us both laugh.

'It's not magic, Andy. But it's amazing, eh?' I say, reaching out and touching it.

'Feels weird, silky, doesn't feel like cardboard, or wood,' Nessa says, smoothing her big hand over the lid.

'Metal?' I say, but Nessa and Andy disagree.

'Do the honours, Andy, let's see what Doctor Hashimoto has sent us,' I say.

The wee guy's hands tremble as he lifts the lid. It's a suit box, or a fancy shirt box. It's not how I imagined it. When Hashimoto told us his plans to build Chris a special suit, I thought it would look like an astronaut's space suit, or a vintage diving suit with iron boots, a glass face and an air hose. What sort of special suit fits in a slim box like this one? A tracksuit from the Warehouse wouldn't fit in a box this size.

Andy carefully lifts away the perfectly folded soft paper and Nessa says it before I can get it out...

'What the fuck's going on?' Nessa says.

***

Chris

Toby reckons they don't sing that song at his school anymore. Nessa knows it, or reckons she does. We can't remember the name though. Why did I? Why was I? That's right, I was trying to explain how the song lyrics nail what has happened to me, and she asked me, or did she? Shit. No, she did, she asked me and she keeps asking me. Everyone keeps asking what's it like and how does it feel and if I've told them once, I've lost count of the other times. Do they have memory problems? Or they...

'Dad? Are you okay?' Nessa asks.

...don't want to believe me, or they never get sick of hearing the story, the fairytale. Come on, come on, tell us the one about the amazing floating man.

What were you thinking, they ask? What was going through your mind? As if I made it happen on purpose. Christ, I was asleep and then I was awake with my nose banging into...

'Eh?' I say.

...the ceiling. But those words. That song? That's right, that's right; 'I woke up this morning, and my mind fell away, looking back sadly from tomorrow, and I heard an echo from the past softly say, come back, come back, won't you stay?'

People like Doctor Harrup and Nurse Gladys, they don't say as much, but it lurks behind everything they say and do: Why is this guy - a supermarket foreman - the centre of the whole world's attention and not say, me? I reckon that's why 'they', the doctors and nurses, scientists, corporations and governments want to take me away. They want to make me bloody well pay for my cheekiness. They want to imprison me. What a joke. I asked Nurse Gladys earlier, when she was taking blood for the umpteenth time, if they've figured out what they're testing for yet? She keeps taking my blood, for God's sakes, they must have enough by now. What did she say? 'I'm just a district nurse, Mr Caruthers, people smarter than you and me are studying this kind of thing, young man.' She isn't that much older than I am, and how many floating people do you know, Nurse Gladys? That's not what Harrup was on about though. The cynical bastard said something about a dog, keeping me at home like a dying dog.

'Do you need anything? Are you talking in your sleep, Dad?' Nessa says.

When did she come back in? I didn't even hear her. See how carefully she holds your hand? My mind fell away, and Liz, where's Liz? Slow, slowly now. I'm looking back sadly from a tomorrow I don't have, or I'm looking back slowly? Slow or sad? Bloody hell, which one?

'Doctor Hashimoto,' I say.

'What? Hashimoto? What about him, Dad? Dad?' she says.

I once told Nessa that Hashimoto brushed my cock with his hand, but that was wrong. It was a nurse at his Institute, and not so accidentally; they're all interested in cock size in Japan. I'm stoned and if that's not good, it's not exactly bad. Nessa's weed turns the volume down and dampens everything except the panic. I keep fighting the panic, but it gets the better of me... I've nothing to do but lie here listening to my racing heart as I stare at the ceiling or whatever wall they've turned me to face. We tried tv and dvds, but even listening to music got too tiring.

Soon the padded straps felt too tight; I thought they were cutting me in half. Bloody pathetic, but what can anyone do? And I keep getting skinnier, so Liz tightens the straps even more. I wait for results from the blood tests, but they brush me off when I ask about them. They mix whatever medications they think I need with whatever else I'm taking, and hope my bones will stop fading away, or miraculously rebuild. Biophosphonates. No, hang on, biophosphates? Whatever they are, they're not rebuilding lost bone. You can't make new bone with what I have attacking them and you can't kill it with drugs if you don't even know what you're trying to kill. They discussed using chemo; they wanted to kill everything. That fad passed. I float: I don't have cancer. For most it's physics gone wrong, a misalignment of gravity, atoms, and molecules, as if my body is a giant warehouse and the foreman has cocked up the arrangement of goods. Mostly they base everything on what I tell them about... my condition. My answers never make them happy.

I feel so heavy, one of these days I expect to fall through the floorboards. That's what they don't understand. That's what Lizzie doesn't understand. 'But how the hell can you feel heavy, Chris?' Lizzie, my bones, they're made of concrete not crumbling chalk. Like clockwork were Lizzie's morning checks to see if I had gained weight and lost flotation, 'Any change, Chris? Are you sure, mate? Let's have a quick check, eh?' she'd say. After undoing the straps wrapped round the mattress, she'd let me go. This was before we moved on to the hospital bed. But sure enough, the foreman floats to the ceiling, again. And again. And again. What were we thinking? I was a balloon and I would leak air? Because I have to that's the way things work, that's physics, what goes up... I can't float forever. Nobody in my family ever floated, Jesus, no way. Dad wasn't the floating kind he wasn't even the talking kind although Mum might have flotation. The morning arrived when I couldn't take anymore, and Lizzie bounced in with the usual words on her lips, 'Any change, Chris...' but that's where they stayed. No more flotation checks, thank you. She hasn't asked since; she doesn't need to.

What I want is to feel light, like the man in that painting looks, the way I look when I'm not strapped to this bed.

Where did I see the man in that painting? In Japan? Yeah, at a big gallery in the city: I can't remember which city now. The painting had a long European name, and it was bloody massive, a wall of a painting. What is with this painting? That's right, I want to be the man in the painting. He was floating up off the ground, his face to the sky and his arms wide. He looked so peaceful, dissolving into the night, yeah, bleeding back into the stars as if he was going back to where it started and where it might begin again for him, cause who knows, eh? Imagine that? Getting to start over?

I beetled around the gallery in a wheelchair with steel plates strapped onto the bottom in case the whole contraption achieved lift off. I float: I don't make other things float. Bloody Muppets. I was lucky the chair was electric. The best part about Japan was nobody knew who I was. Just a sick man beetling around a gallery while a young kid ran riot through the place with everyone running after him calling his name, Andy! Andy! And that Lego man at the gallery, Jesus, Toby couldn't tear his eyes away. Someone with too much time on their hands constructed a life-sized man wearing a black suit and carrying a black briefcase. 'Do you want to make one, son? We'll build one of our own at home. You build and I'll supervise, what do you reckon? We'll use the spare room. Keen or what?' I said. What would we make? 'Whatever you want, as long as we can get our heads around it,' I said.

And what did he choose? A man walking a dog. Why would he choose that? We've built up to the man's knees and a part of the dog's body, mostly the legs. Why not a car? A rocket ship? A rugby player? No, basketball, isn't it? A basketball player slam-dunking? We're not sure what breed the dog is, only that it's black. There's a problem with the lead. A dog doesn't have to be on lead. But we won't finish it, will we? Toby's lost interest, and Caruthers, well, you haven't lasted the distance. God knows I've fought, I've refused to leave, but let's face it I'm nearly dead. Now I can die in peace in my own home surrounded by my family, well, most of them. Bloody Murphy's Law, dying at home is the last thing I want.

'I want to be the man in the painting,' I say, but Nessa's left the room. You didn't even notice her leave, dozy bastard.

I gave up thinking about my predicament for a while, isn't that weird? Fun at first and by the time I got used to it I was already half-buggered: osteoporosis. Old chalky bones. Kept hoping though, didn't we? We tried selling the story even though Liz was against it. That's not fair we were both against it. The big fight for privacy. We should have sold out to a reality telly show months ago for at least a million bucks. What did that journalist say? You're a significant, yeah, that was the word, a significant part of the history of the human race, Mr Caruthers, the second Adam, a new Adam - don't you want your amazing transformation documented for future generations? We're still using the money from the story unless Lizzie's lying and we've spent it. The guy had made his mind up before he interviewed me, I don't know why he bothered. New Adam. Slick bastard. The only thing I'm leaving them is my bloody story, a cock-eyed fairytale at that. I want to show the kids what it's all about, but I'll never do it with words, I've never been any bloody good with words.

Nessa returns and perches on the edge of the bed, or tries to. Her added weight puts more pressure on the straps and more pressure on me. The bed is too small for perching. I don't have the heart to tell her.

'Where's your mother? Is she back yet? Toby?' I ask.

Who can blame him for all the trouble he's causing? Not Toby's fault, it's not his fault his father's a living balloon. The shit he must take from the kids at school. His father who art thou full of helium. Except it's the weight, I can't stand the weight. Hashimoto, Hashimoto. Something about Hashimoto I need...

'Mum's not back yet, Dad. She'll be back soon, no worries. Have another snooze,' she says.

'Thanks for the herbal medication,' I say.

'What? Sorry Dad, what was that?' she says.

'Herbal medication,' I say.

'The weed? Mum's gonna spaz when she smells it,' she says.

'She's no saint, mate,' I say.

A car? Is that the car? Shit, I've dozed off. Yup, that's the old sedan pulling up in the driveway.

'Ness, is that your Mum home?' I shout.

I've just realised I'm not shouting, am I? I might be whispering. Fuck, is this really dying? Did Dad go through this after his stroke? Mumbling out of the right side of his mouth when he thought he was talking clearly? I couldn't take the pleading in his eyes and you'd never figure out what he was pleading for, but now I do, the poor bastard. That's not true; I knew. I couldn't face it. I guess I'll end up doing the same thing if I last long enough.

Only one door, Caruthers. One door closed, that means...

'Nuh, nuh nuh nuh nuh, NO! Toby, bloody Toby,' I say.

An afternoon, that's all I wanted with Toby, a little time before it runs out and the bloody stack's toppled over and there's vinegar spilling everywhere, a flood. The great foreman in the sky has fucked it up and misplaced precious goods.

'Dad? Mum's home,' Nessa says.

'Is Toby with her?' I say.

Was that two car doors closing, or one?

'Nessa? Nessa!' I shout, but she's left the room.

What I am supposed to tell the kids? I could tell them it will be okay, but it's not. Why would you tell your children a bunch of bullshit and lies about everything being okay when it won't and my passing will at least be a bloody inconvenience? Christ, they're not stupid. But why tell them it's terrifying and painful this lonely dying business? Why would they want to know that? So what am I going to say? Good luck with everything, sorry, I tried my best. My best? What does that mean, my best? What could I have done differently?

Is that the doorbell? Yes it is. Jesus, I must have dozed off again. Toby! It'll be Toby. Lizzie's locked him out. Finally, he's...

'Japan! Japan!' Andy shouts.

They must be in the lounge. What's this about Japan?

'Hey, what's going on? Is Toby home?' I shout, but the buggers have closed the bedroom door on me.

Jesus, Japan? Does that mean?

'Dad! Dad!' Andy shouts, throwing open the door and running right up to my bed.

'Your suit's arrived, Dad, looks awesome!' he says, and he bloody well turns and runs back out. At least he left the bedroom door open. I'll be able to get an earful of what's happening out there.

'Can I get a gander at it, or what?' I shout, but no one answers.

Did Hashimoto do it? My suit? A bloody gravity suit, that's what it's supposed to be. We agreed he'd bit off more than he could chew when it didn't arrive. What we didn't say was that maybe he was bullshitting. We didn't believe it when he explained it to us. We didn't, or couldn't get it. Who would? What are they doing out there now? Laughing? That was a courier at the door. The suit is supposed to weigh me down so I can walk about in it and now that it's here and finally arrived the buggers can't stop laughing; they're bloody howling with laughter. Jesus, they're laughing so hard, they'll wet themselves. Hashimoto made it for me and he reckoned he modified it for the one thing I want to do before the end. 'What is thing, ah, thing would you love to do, Mr Caluthels?' The one thing, the only? 'Yes, Mr Caluthels, I make for you special suit, what use you for? Sorry, you use?'

Swimming. Mate, I'd go for a swim.

'Swim? You swim, yes, possible, ahhh, possible, I make... change-ee, chang-ee,' he said.

Hashimoto, did you make it work?

'Have you been smoking pot, Christopher Caruthers?' Liz says, scraping the vigil chair over. Will she call the cops on my dying, osteo-arthritic arse? I didn't inhale, Officer, my lungs will burst and collapse. Something has happened to them, it's like breathing through soggy cloth.

'Toby?' I say.

'Andy love? Go see what's keeping Nessa, will you?' she says.

Jesus, Andy's in here? When did he walk in here? Has he been watching me?

'It might take me a few minutes, Mum, I'm wearing my zero-gravity suit,' Andy says, walking past in slow motion.

'If you start now the sooner you'll find her, won't you, hon? Chris, do you need anything? Shall we roll you over onto your side? Can you hear me okay?' she says.

'I'm forty-one, not eighty. What's going on.' I say.

'Not eighty? Yeah, funny,' she says.

'Toby?' I say.

'Shit, I'm so sorry, the little bugger scarpered at the dairy,' she says.

'Dairy?' I say. What? She stopped for milk? Seriously?

'I tried to buy him an ice cream. I know, I know, thought it was a good idea,' she says.

'Not much time now,' I say, thinking about the suit. Where is it? Why can't I see it? Bloody well bring it in here.

'Time? Oh Jesus, Chris, I'm sorry. He bloody ran away, he's not coping. I tried looking for him, that's what took me so long. Down at the beach, along the dunes, you know? Shall I call the police? They could keep an eye out for him,' she says.

'No, that's bloody daft, no, not the police, he'll come home when he needs to,' I say, but I reckon she only caught half of it. He'll come home when he gets hungry. More bloody sausages and chips.

'Yeah, okay. Hey, Chris? We've got something to show you, you must have heard us,' she says, and she calls out for Nessa and Andy to bring in the box.

Box? It comes in a box?

Finally, the bloody suit. Why were they laughing?

Nessa walks in and holds it up from the shoulders.

Oh.

Now I get it. Andy says it looks awesome, totally awesome, and the ladies are trying to hold back the giggles. It might be an outfit those characters wear on the telly shows Toby and Andy loved watching in Japan. Skintight spandex suit wearing heroes that fight giant monsters with stun guns, and plough through faceless hordes with bad Kung fu; it has a hood, and booties. It might be a touch shiny, and its white, a pearlish white. I reckon the girls are too embarrassed to go out with me wearing it... if we can get my crumbling body into it and that's a big if.

'I'm so sorry, hon,' Liz says, turning her big wet eyes away from where Nessa has the suit held up against her.

Sorry about what? Hashimoto said he would make a suit and its here plain as truth. They must think it's a joke. No, no, he made it, it's here and I want to wear it. Liz holds up a note from Hashimoto and reads it aloud. I think she skims over a few things and I'm not sure why. Hashimoto wishes me luck and is certain the suit will work.

'Not exactly the voice of confidence, is he?' Liz mutters.

It was difficult to develop and hard to apply without testing someone with my condition...

'There's no one anywhere like Dad,' Andy says.

and time is of the upmost importance as he believes (correctly) my condition may rapidly deteriorate, and yours sincerely, Doctor Hiroki Hashimoto.

'God, he's got a bloody cheek,' Liz swears, and Nessa and Andy both try to say we haven't even tried it, but Lizzie's decided. It's obvious she believes Hashimoto's played a practical joke on us.

'Lizzie? Can you ask the kids to leave?' I ask.

'The kids? Oh, okay okay, everyone out. Yes, out! Nessa put that back in its box, we've had enough laughs for one afternoon,' Liz says, ushering the kids out, and talking over Nessa and Andy's protests. I'm sure Andy wants to try it on himself. I imagine he will when gets a chance.

'Lizzie, I need to ask you something,' I say, when she scrapes up in the vigil chair again.

'Ask me? What is it, hon? Do you need an ice chip? Is your mouth dry? Sounds dry,' she says.

'I want to go the pool, I want to go swimming,' I say.

Some months, I swear it kept me sane. Liz could never see that, she never understood what drove me down to the saltwater pool first thing in the morning, most times before breakfast. Yeah, it was fun charging up and down the lane, especially with surf breaking over the wall and into the pool. I even swam in the rain. That was when it was the most fun, eh? In a decent downpour with the pool to yourself, and the staff standing around under cover and gawking out at you as if you've lost your mind. Mostly it was need, a need to move, a special privacy of movement where you're completely alone even if you're sharing a lane with another swimmer. Physical movement, rhythmic movement, movement so complete nothing can break your concentration; no Department Managers harping on at you about lost or misplaced goods, no breakage reports, no space problems, no late deliveries and no early deliveries to screw up everything else. No marriage troubles, your kid's problems, money problems, Jesus H Christ, always those, nuh, nothing more than moving through that weakly chlorinated lukewarm salty water with as little effort as possible, as fluid as fish. Cleansing. Clean. This is the life; I'd say to myself, brother, this... is... living. The only thing Liz came to understand was that swimming was important to me.

They've moved through into the lounge. Liz stormed out after I told her I want to go swimming. She didn't believe me. I had to tell her at least three times until I got through. Yes, swimming. I thought Nessa would go for it, but she's sitting on the fence. Turns out she's had reservations about the whole Dad being at home thing, and all this time I thought it was Liz. Good old Lizzie, but she's not pulling through for you now, mate. Lizzie's exhausted, more than usual. Nessa's stoned. That'll be sending Liz up the wall.

'We can't bloody do this on our own, we'll break every bone in his body!' Liz shouts.

Yeah, that's not necessarily exaggerating, Lizzie, but why you think lying here strapped to this bed is...

'I know we will. Stop shouting at me, why are you shouting at me?' Nessa yells back.

'You were feeding him pot, for God's sakes. He's bloody well got weaker, Nessa, thanks for that,' Liz says.

...why you'd think lying here is any better, beats me. This isn't how I pictured the end. Made of glass, made of chalk, light as air and as heavy as a block of concrete, but here I am - the end - and I want to go for a swim, my last. I'd ask to go surfing but I'm a crap surfer. I'd snap in half, literally. A rag doll swept out from under by a rip, food for barracuda.

'I can't take this we can't do it. That's that,' Liz shouts.

They'll be barging in here in a mo'.

'Chris? Chris, hon? I'm sorry love, but it just isn't, we can't, it'll kill you,' Liz says, walking in and for the umpteenth time pulling up in the vigil chair.

'Dad? How would we get you to the pool? Should we call an ambulance? They're professionals,' Nessa says, crouching beside Liz.

'Let alone getting him into the pool,' Liz says. She's been crying, and not from laughter this time. Poor Lizzie, she has big black rings under her eyes. This arvo's hit her hard. Wait, uh-oh, the committee's over, they've reached a decision. Or not. Watch out, here it comes...

'Chris, do you really want to do this? We don't even know if it works. It looks kind of, you know?' Liz says, leaning over me.

'Not like our parents, not like my Dad,' I say.

'Dad? Your Dad? That's different, no, a lot different,' Liz says.

'No different,' I say. And it's not. Forty-one or eighty-one, floating or otherwise, I'm buggered if I'll lie around here waiting for everything to fail on me. If it will get me out of this bloody bed, I don't care how half-baked the suit looks.

'Dad? Does he mean granddad? What does he mean?' Nessa says.

'It means we've got to get him into this suit and down to that bloody pool,' Liz says.

They've turned on little Andy. They do that when Toby's not around. Have you been playing with the suit, Andy? Where did you hide the English instruction manual, Andy? Have you lost them, Andy? Do you remember playing with the instructions, Andy? Andy? Andy! I didn't lose the instructions, I didn't, the wee fella's repeating. I wonder if they've checked inside his teleporting box. Ha ha, this could be Hashimoto's real joke; it'd be a great joke to leave out the English instruction manual. They're turning the place inside-out searching for it even calling the courier company and asking the driver to check his van. Surely they can work it out. A remote control's involved, but what's it going to control? Me? Okay Chris, get ready to walk; I have to press the red button. Are you ready? Now! Oh no, sorry love, it's the green button. Okay, ready?

'Chris? We can't find the instructions,' Liz says, pulling up in the vigil chair again. Nessa's going through the wardrobe, but why is beyond me.

'Try anyway,' I say.

'Oh Chris, how are we going to get you into it?' Liz says.

'Carefully. I need to do this,' I say.

'Dad's looking better now, Mum,' Nessa says.

That's my girl.

'But how do we get him into it, Nessa? What about the drive down? And getting him into the pool, how do we do that?' Liz says.

'Mum, they have wheelchair access. How do handicapped people get in and out of the pool?' Nessa says.

Great, now I'm considered handicapped. And I believe they're called physically...

'What's so funny?' Liz asks me.

'Never considered myself handicapped,' I say.

'What? Handicapped? All right, all right, what about the suit?' Liz says.

'We could slip it on, one strap at a time, you know, work it up the bed,' Nessa says.

'You mean keep him strapped down on the bed while we pull it on?' Liz says.

Workable, Lizzie, that's workable, you can see it. My kids are bloody geniuses, I tell you.

'Yeah, we'll start at the feet and work up,' Nessa says.

As long as the bloody thing works and I don't float to the ceiling, I don't care how they do it.

It feels like live eels. You know, the first time you fish an eel out of the creek when you're a nipper, and you and your mates are laughing like hell, the bloody thing thrashing and wriggling, fighting to get back to the water? Slippery and mushy, like rotten sponge, but hard under the slipperiness; firm, strong, and cold, and so different from anything you've ever touched before it may as well be an alien from one of Andy's planets. I say, 'Eels,' as they slip it on over my floating feet and shins. They don't hear me. They could perform laser surgery they're that intense. I try to say I'm not made of cotton wool, but bloody Nessa bangs my shin hard, at least, it feels as if she did. Trying to pull the suit up another inch, she slipped. Hashimoto's made it skintight. Couldn't be loose fitting that wouldn't fit the image of a floating space age Kung fu warrior.

'Sorry Dad,' Nessa says.

'Shit. Anything broken?' Liz says.

'Don't think so,' I say, but I wouldn't know, would I? My bones are so fragile a bone or two might have fractured. Wasn't there sharpness, more than a needle's prick?

The gravity suit obviously isn't working yet. They've paused and left my lower limbs floating towards the ceiling. It needs activated unless it's a coverage thing, that when enough of the suit covers me it will weigh me down. The suit is super light so how does that work? There's a small box sewn into the suit material up by the neck. They still haven't found the instruction manual.

'I don't know about this,' Liz says.

'Won't happen again, promise,' Nessa says, louder than she needs. My hearing's fine, better than fine, I swear it improves while everything else packs up on me.

'Keep going, keep going,' I say.

If they give up now there'll be no second chances.

'Okay Dad,' Nessa says.

'No second chances,' I say.

'All right, all right,' Liz says.

'Mum,' Nessa says.

My legs aren't staying down they're still floating from the waist and the pressure on the next strap up cuts into me. I won't give in, no way, suck it up, you bloody Muppet, last chance, Caruthers. At this rate the pool will close, and we still haven't figured out how to use the bloody thing.

'We're taking off another strap now, Chris,' Liz says.

'But they're not staying down,' Nessa whispers to Liz.

'Shall we try the remote control now?' Liz whispers.

'We'll have to do the straps up,' Nessa whispers.

'Chris? Chris, are you okay? We have to do the straps back up, just until we get you sorted,' Liz says.

'Okay,' I say.

Liz carefully lowers my legs back down to the bed, and she has that nice touch, eh? She always has known how to touch me that way. Tender, I guess is the word, a considerate touch. She was the same with sex, too. God Lizzie, you gave the best...

I try not to cry out when Nessa lashes my ankles back to the bed.

'Is that too tight, Dad?' she says.

Last chance Caruthers, don't put them off, not now, they've already pissed around long enough.

'Where's Andy?' I ask.

'Over here, Dad,' he says.

Christ, he's been in here the whole time, I thought he was hiding in his box. Maybe Hashimoto made him an invisibility cloak to go with my gravity suit.

'Hang in there, Dad, hang in there, mate,' he says.

'Okay, mate,' I say.

'I didn't lose the instructions, Dad,' he says.

'Andy,' the girls say.

I reckon Dad was wrong about the Ten Commandments. Stick to the Ten Commandments and you can't go wrong, that was his philosophy. I can't even remember when he first gave me that speech, one of the few. That and his belief about pre-dentist grooming: nose hair, ear hair, and facial hair all clipped, trimmed, shaved, and the old body clean and smelling fresh. Not to mention the actual teeth. He had good teeth, the old man. Cheaper to look after your teeth than lead them into wrack and ruin and have to cough up a small fortune. That was his thing, his... other thing. He didn't have many things, the old man.

Seems naïve now, doesn't it? The Ten Commandments. I've stuck to the Ten Commandments, most of the time, haven't I? Guess where that got me - dead - not yet, you silly bugger, not yet. I haven't even got through my mid-life crisis. No toupe. No sports car. Unless you look at it from that whole New Adam thing and floating is a reward for good behaviour. A reward, eh? Bloody booby prize.

'Okay Chris, how're we doing?' Liz says.

She looks proud, with a rosy flush on her face. Nessa's trying not to laugh. They're both trying not to laugh. Even Andy, who spends most of his time under a box, looks like he'll burst out laughing.

'Sexy,' I say.

This time they laugh. Thing is, it does, it makes me... loose? Loose and free, but it isn't bloody working.

'Wait a sec,' Nessa says, and giggling walks away.

'Where are you going?' Liz calls after her.

'How is this going to work?' I say.

I'm in the suit, for sure, but I'm still strapped.

'It completely covers him now, right? Is it working, Chris? ' Liz says.

'No,' I say.

'Oh,' Liz says.

'Ta-da,' Nessa says.

She has brought in her full-length mirror from her bedroom.

'Not now, Ness, not good timing, mate. Maybe later?' Liz says.

'Eh? Sorry,' Nessa says, looking at me.

She props it up against the wall. For a second I see myself on the bed, and it hits me; they've left out the booties, the gloves, and the hood. And I'm half the size I used to be. If I didn't look like a skinny performer at a gay mardis gras, I'd cry.

'Sorry Dad,' Nessa says.

'The booties, you left...'

'Booties? Christ, you're right,' Liz mutters.

'And the hood,' Andy tosses in.

'Oh yeah, they're in the box,' Nessa says.

'They must have something to do with these here,' Andy says, touching a small, hard object down on the side of my leg, an inch above my ankle. They're above my wrist too, and on other sites.

'I've been wondering about those,' Liz says.

'Magnets, I reckon,' Andy says.

'Here we go,' Nessa says, holding up a bootie. It has a nifty grey sole with an angled tread and what looks like Andy's magnets near the ankle. I'm guessing that's how they'll attach to the suit, but how are they going to keep out...

'Whoa,' I say.

'Dad? What is it?' Nessa says.

She just snapped the magnets together. Yes, Andy, you're right, they're magnets. An electric current shoots up my leg. Bugger me, they're light, my foot and leg, my God, I'm lighter.

'You okay, hon?' Liz says.

'The other one, the other one,' I say, trying to struggle up onto my elbows.

'Jesus. Pass it over, quick,' Liz says.

'Must have done the trick,' Nessa says.

'You're going to be fine, Dad,' Andy says.

Why can't they get the fucking remote to work? It's working, now that everything's on: suit, booties, gloves, and hood. Fan-fucking-tastic, I'm one of those fizzy drinks you take the morning after a big night out on the sauce. Berocca? I'm a glass of Berocca, fizzing and spritzing, ready to burst out of the glass, or float out the window. That's weird though, now I'm light and feel like I could float except I'm still not strapless. I'm a giant condom strapped to the bed, somebody's idea of a twenty-first century Japanese Buck Rodgers crossed with an elephant's prophylactic.

'Is he going to cry?' Nessa whispers.

'If he isn't, I bloody well am,' Liz says.

'We'll figure it out, Dad, don't worry,' Nessa says.

They decide to call Hashimoto, but the twats have lost his number. They scrounge around and put the courier packaging back together and eu-fucking-reka! A phone number at the Institute, but Nessa can't get through to anyone, not a soul.

They keep un-strapping and re-strapping with each little experimentation: What does the blue button do? What does the green button do? What does... but my legs keep floating, feet first. We're so close, Liz keeps saying, we're so close. But we're not, and I'm so bloody tired, but I can't imagine getting out of this now.

'Looks like our console,' Andy says, piping up. He always sulks after he's suffered one of their nasty turns.

'Console what?' Liz mutters.

'Our Playstation console,' Andy says, in that tone of voice kids reserve for people they suspect are mildly mentally retarded.

'Let the boy take a look, eh?' I say.

'Sorry hon, what was that?' Liz says.

I swear she selects what she wants to hear only when I have nothing to say.

'Let's let Andy have a look,' Nessa says.

'Over my dead body,' Liz says.

She hasn't a bloody clue. Her nose almost touches the instruction pages she holds them that close to her face. Nessa's given up on strategy; she hits buttons at random and squints at me as if I'm a piece of meat on a slab: is it moving? Did it move? The remote, the remote...

'Can't hurt,' I say.

'Let Andy check it out, Mum,' Nessa says.

'Oh for God's sakes,' Liz shouts.

Why is she ripping the instructions in half? Of all the Muppet things to do.

'Are you past caring?' I say, but no one hears me, busy with shouting at each other.

'Mum,' Nessa says, rushing out after Liz, who's fleeing the scene. Christ.

'Just us boys now, Dad,' Andy says, holding the remote in one hand and what's left of the instructions in his other.

'What's the plan, Andy?' I say.

'Plan? Did you say plan, Dad? Pushing two buttons at once always works, does in Mortal Combat,' he says, pushing buttons with a will.

'That's reassuring, Andy,' I say.

The pressure against the straps drops away.

'Hey! Andy?' I say.

'Not now, Dad, I've figured it out,' Andy says, pointing the remote at me.

'It's working, it's bloody working,' I say.

'Working? It's working, Dad, I said I've figured it out,' Andy says, moving closer to the bottom of the bed. Pointing the remote at me, he unwraps the bottom strap.

'Andy? Andy! Call the girls before you do that, eh mate?' I say.

'Mum! Nessa!' he shouts.

One strap, two, three, no floating feet no floating legs.

'You've done it, you fucking little beauty,' I say.

'You said fuck,' Andy says, staring at me as if I'm the boogie monster.

'What's going on in here? Andy! Are those straps undone, Jesus... your legs,' Liz says.

'Going to have a heart attack, Lizzie?' I say.

'Andy! You bloody legend,' Nessa says, rushing over and trying to hug him.

'Not now, Nessa. Nessa! Get away, will ya? I haven't figured everything out,' Andy says, trying to fight her off without losing the remote.

'What did you do? How'd you do it?' Lizzie says.

'Pushing two buttons at once,' I say.

'We're supposed to be filming this. I can get a video, easy as,' Nessa says, turning on Liz.

Video? I've a hunch Liz skimmed over that part in Hashimoto's letter. It makes sense. Poor Hashimoto, he's probably waiting at the airport for a phonecall he'll never get.

'Look! If we get your father down to that pool looking like this, bloody Hashimoto's will get ten years worth of footage, okay?' Liz says.

'Watch this,' Andy says.

My legs are floating again. The suit, it controls... gravity, it controls the amount of gravity that's working on me. I'm pressed tight against the straps again, my upper body that is, and now the cheeky little bugger's increasing the gravity in jerky little stops. The pressure drops away from the upper straps. God, that's restful. I'm resting here, a normal human being. How many times have I daydreamed about this exact moment?

'Andy?' I say. He's too busy playing with the gravity working on my legs to pay me any attention.

'What is it Dad?' Nessa says.

I want to say, find that bloody telephone number will you and get the phone handy, cause I'm calling that mad genius, Hashimoto. It worked, it worked, I'm getting out of here, we'll have his phone number somewhere, but time, time, last chance Caruthers, do or die, the last bridge, he who dares wins.

'Get the wheelchair ready,' I say.

This... is... the... life, brother, you're living now even though I must look a bloody treat in my fancy suit, spread-eagled in the middle of the pool. Andy stands at the pool edge, consulting the remote. I can only imagine what's going through his mind: He's a NASA technician going through a checklist seconds before Space Shuttle lift off, or he's a space warrior about to battle the Morfians with his new weapon. I guess if he cocks it up, we might achieve lift off. I'm surprised Liz isn't with him, or Nessa. Hang on, that's why they're terriers at my side. Sharpen up, Caruthers. Shit, you can't blame me for slipping. I'd take slipping at the pool for getting my bloody foot jammed in the front door on the way out of the house and banged again getting into the car.

'They're laughing at me, aren't they?' I say to Liz.

'Laughing? Whose laughing? Hon, how's your ankle?' Liz says.

'The water might be good for it,' Nessa says.

It doesn't matter now, Nessa, but I don't have the energy to tell her. My foot throbs; it's pulsing a message to outer space. Most of the bones in that foot - in my ankle - have probably fractured, and yes, these are tears of pain mixed with joy. But the water, oh God, the water, you're right Nessa, the water's bloody amazing. I'm floating, not bobbing about like a bloody balloon.

'We'll have to take him to the E.R. after this,' Liz says.

Hospital? God, I'm not going to hospital. No getting out of there once they've taken me prisoner.

'It's not that bad,' I say.

They're laughing, the crowd up by the café tables and on the landing. The staff, swimmers, and watchers on gawk at me, the man in a funny suit floating in the saltwater pool. It won't be long before the news crews and reporters arrive with their stupid questions.

'Hey, excuse me? Excuse me? Can you give us a couple more minutes, please?' Liz shouts at people I can't see behind me. Someone determined to get in a quick kilometre or two, their daily fix before the pool closes, like I used to be.

'It's okay,' I say, but they're both too busy trying to block the intruder or intruders.

'Hey? Anyone?' I say.

'You okay, Dad? Mum? Dad wants something,' Andy shouts.

Nessa's arguing about the arrangement with the pool staff. They realised we were serious once they stopped laughing and recognised me, the famous floating man, and understood I wanted the pool to myself for a few minutes. And they gave us a few minutes, God bless the officious bastards. I guess a few minutes are shot.

'What's wrong? Everything okay?' Liz says, cradling me again, and not for my safety. She can hold me here in water she can hold me.

'As long as no one bangs into me, she'll be right,' I say.

'All right? You sure?' Liz says.

'Public pool,' I say.

'Just a wee bit longer?' Liz says.

Christ, the first time in months we've been together outside the house and the bloody bedroom, and we're in a swimming pool, my pool. Bloody perfect, isn't it?

'Liz, grab the remote off Andy,' I say.

To hear me, she lowers her head until her ear is right next to my mouth.

'Take the remote off Andy,' I repeat.

'The remote? What's he doing wrong?' she says.

'I want to go,' I say.

'Okay, we'll try not to bang your foot this time,' she says.

'No, not home, I want you to let me go, float away,' I say.

'Float? I'm not letting you float away in a public pool,' she says.

Nessa pleads for more time, but no one has any to give.

'Hey! Can you give us space, please? This man here is fragile goods,' Liz shouts, as young kids, with their parents as curious as the kids, slosh over.

'Is it him?' someone says nearby.

'He isn't floating, retard,' another person says.

'How we doing, Dad?' Andy shouts.

'You're not going anywhere, Christopher Caruthers, not yet,' Liz says, giving Andy the thumbs up.

That was a good observation, whoever said it: He isn't floating... Am I floating in this water? Or am I floating free of the water? That's the weirdest sensation, eh? Water or no water, I'd still be floating, wouldn't I? I mean, without the suit. Am I in this water or not? No, I'm floating in this water; it's a bloody mind-bender. Jesus, get it together.

'Shit,' Liz says.

'What?' I say, turning my head. She's staring up at the café.

'Eh? Oh, a reporter, arsehole with a camera,' Liz says.

'Hey, guess who I saw,' Nessa says.

'Nessa? Tell those people to back up, please,' Liz says.

Somebody asked me if it was okay, probably Lizzie. Word travels fast in this town. I guess a moron caught it on his cell phone, and now it's on the internet; a rare sighting of that freak show, Chris Caruthers... 'Swimming in a pool, bro.' I guess it was Andy's fault. Little bugger floated me up out of the water for a second before he lowered me. Unless he wasn't paying attention and hit the wrong buttons? Guess what that means, old fella? You might get out of here. It's mob rule now, with punters swamping the pool to get close to the loony in the suit. Do they know it's the floating man? Or have they come to check out the perv who has the balls to go swimming in a skintight spandex suit in a public pool? This suit isn't made of spandex. Things have definitely got weird.

'Oh crap. Everyone's pouring in,' Nessa says.

'What's that guy asking you, Nessa?' Liz says.

'They want to touch him. Hey, Dad? I think they want to touch you,' Nessa says.

I'm too tired to say no.

No one hits or bumps me hard, and Liz screams at them to be gentle, as if I'm a dog and they're small children full of good intentions and rough clumsiness. There'll be no biting from this old mutt, only my breaking bones if it turns to custard.

I can't look at them it's too uncomfortable, it's too... it's like being at the dentist. I try to stare at the sky: big, blue, and clear as a bell this arvo, but the cheeky bloody monkeys keep leaning over, getting in my face with big gapped tooth smiles and bloody freckles. I recognise a handful. Might've come up through school with Toby. They're being gentle and tender, young and old alike, and saying nice things in amongst the obvious - 'Keep your feet on the ground, boss' - ha ha, that one never gets old. No, some of them are telling me things no one's ever told me, at least not in public, 'Our thoughts are with you and your family, Mr Caruthers.' Their little touches are like caresses they're so bloody gentle as if they're touching a saint. This one guy, an elderly gent who has seen twice the years and has twice the wrinkles I'll ever have, lightly rests his fingertips on my chest and whispers, 'Safe journey,' in my ear and for a second I thought he was my father and he hadn't died.

'Why is he crying?' a kid asks.

Jesus, am I? I hadn't noticed. And why not? These people, everyone; the photo snapping wankers, and people who never believed I float, let alone believe I will die from the privilege, are flocking to this pool and quietly waiting their turn to wade up and touch yours truly. They know they're saying goodbye. Any fool can see I've run out of time, even the kids.

'Time to go, Chris,' Liz murmurs in my ear.

'Let me go, Lizzie,' I say.

'I can't bloody do that,' Liz says.

'I don't want to get out of this pool, I can't,' I say.

'Eh?' she says.

'I can't get out.'

'I'm not bloody doing it, okay? What about your Mother, and your sisters? What about Toby? He's not even here. And Andy? What about your mates at work?' she says.

This would be the mother and sisters that distanced themselves from their embarrassing floating son and brother. And my mates? My so called mates that haven't visited me in months? There's my mate, Mark the plumber, Mr handyman around the house while the floating invalid deteriorated, who stopped popping into the bedroom to say hello after I put the damper on his great idea for me to be the Super Fourteen team's mascot. God he pestered me about that. But it'd only be home games, he'd say. I've been so unreasonable so disrespectful of everyone's wishes.

'Okay everybody! Show's over, the show's over!' Liz shouts, standing poolside and waving her arms around. When did she get out of the pool?

'Don't worry, Dad, I'm here, I've got you,' Nessa says.

I wonder if I could convince Nessa to grab the remote off Andy and get her to do the deed. She might.

'Andy can lift you out now, Dad,' Nessa says.

I bet that boy's having a field day. Kids from his school are here, I'm sure. Whoa, that's pretty sweet. The show isn't over yet; Andy's raising me high above the pool. I'm dangling, that's all I can do. Beyond the pool, good-sized sets roll in and I watch the waiting surfers' turn and frantically paddle, trying to time their runs.

'Andy! Not so high, Andy,' Liz screeches from below.

Yeah, he's putting on a good show the boy, a pity about the damaged goods on display.

'Lower him, Andy, we need to get him over by the wheel chair, lower him for God's sakes,' Liz shouts.

I guess that means I need to get my legs below me without somersaulting.

'Slowly, Andy, slowly,' Liz shouts, and Nessa chips in as well.

Higher not lower, Andy, higher, higher. But no, lower we go. Helping hands from punters in the pool below help me across to the waiting wheelchair as if I'm the Sultan of Brunei.

Trying to catch a glimpse of me, the punters cram into the changing room entrance, but they can't get past the pool staff posted sentry at the door. The photographers must be winning the ruck, going by the amount of camera flashes going off; there's a bloody lightning storm bouncing off the walls in here. Why are they bothering? I'm behind the shower wall. They'll be getting shots of Nessa's back, or her bottom if they can even get those.

'What's happening to the suit?' Nessa says.

'What's wrong?' I ask.

'Is it the shower water?' Nessa asks.

'Looks funny now, Dad, like totally weird,' Andy says.

And it didn't before? He definitely has a different outlook on things, our Andy.

'Has the seawater streaked it? Funny blue streaks,' Nessa says.

'They're green, are you blind?' Andy says.

Hashimoto probably made it specifically for fresh water. That would be Japanese of him. Precise and specific, they must have fantastic foreman in Japan, the type that fuss for hours over the exact placement of two small boxes on a shelf.

'I have to keep adjusting it,' Andy says.

The wee fella seems to be busy with the remote. I'm not as light, not as anchored as I was earlier.

'How're you feeling, Dad?' Nessa says.

'It's coming in waves,' I say, but she won't understand my panic at the returning weight.

'Waves? Do you want to watch the surf?' she says.

Why the hell not? When you're as far gone as I am, what's better or worse than watching the sets rolling in?

'Okay. Where's your mother?' I say.

'We parked on the level up behind the pool. You could watch the surf from inside the car, would that be okay, Dad?' she asks.

'Where is Mum?' Andy says.

'I don't know,' Nessa says.

'I need to go to the toilet,' Andy says.

'One's or two's?' Nessa says.

'Two's,' Andy says.

'How much longer?' one of the staff posted at the door says.

'Not much longer,' Nessa says.

'Sweet, take your time,' the smartarse says.

'Time to get going,' I say.

Nessa's towelling me down, well, towelling the suit, and with her free hand furiously pushing buttons on the remote.

'How did he figure this out?' Nessa says.

Nessa reckons the saltwater is screwing round with it. How does she know that? Christ, it won't be saltwater that's the problem although fancy scientific suits might react to salt. What are you now, Caruthers, the great foreman turned scientist?

'Can I sit down?' I say.

Why do this standing when I could sit? Ahhhh, that's the stuff, eh? Throw in a pie and a lukewarm cup of tea and we'll claim overtime.

'Where's Liz?' I say.

Where is Liz? The longer we spend in here more and more camera flashes go off. The annoying reporters outside won't stop shouting stupid questions that echo around the changing room. I hear Nessa's name called out. Front page news... Daughter Towels Down Floating Man At Pool. There'll be a tv camera crew waiting when Nessa wheels me out of here, sure as. Maybe that's what Liz is doing? Getting rid of the cameras? I hope she is; I hate seeing myself on television. The first time I couldn't get over how fat I appeared. Later, I was skinny and bony. Fat or skinny, I don't want to see myself on telly.

'She saw someone in the crowd she didn't care for,' Nessa says.

'My mother?' I say.

'Andy? How's it going, mate?' Nessa shouts towards the bogs.

Hell of a time to take a dump, son. I would have thought Toby'd be here by now. Surely someone's told him that his weird old man is at the pool. When will he come skulking back? I can't go without saying goodbye to him. What kind of father buggers off without saying goodbye to his children?

'I'm poohing, give me a break,' Andy shouts.

'We doing all right?' one of the staff bouncers says.

'I asked your Mum to let me go,' I say.

'What? Let you go? Nobody's going to fire you, Dad, not even Countdown did,' Nessa says.

'I want you to be there, for Andy,' I say.

'Andy? Sorry Dad, you've lost me,' she says.

'To help him when I go, like the man in the painting,' I say.

'A painting now? Do you want to go to the art gallery? Have you been smoking more weed?' Nessa says, squinting at me.

'All done,' Andy says, washing his hands over at the sinks.

'I want to go, Ness, today, I can't... I'm sorry,' I say.

'Go? Fuck, you mean... go. Dad, you don't have to be sorry, shit,' she says.

She tries to hug me but ends up resting her fingertips on my shoulders. She pecks me on the cheek.

'I don't want you to go,' she whispers.

'Enjoy yourself, Saint Christopher? We ready to go yet?' Liz shouts from the entrance.

'Here's Mum, what have you been doing?' Andy says, shaking water off his hands.

'Having a moment are we? What a bloody circus, eh? Whose bright idea was this?' Liz says.

She doesn't have to use the remote; the seat belt's doing the job, but it digs in across my shoulder and my hip. The camera clickers won't fuck off, will they? We're bloody animals in a zoo, as far as they're concerned: Hey look, he moved, I didn't think he could move? Oh yeah, he can float. The wankers were coming right up to the car windows before Liz scared them off with her wild woman act. 'Let him enjoy the view for a few minutes, you bloody arseholes! Fuck off, will ya? Fuck off!'

The view is worth the hassle. I'll miss this; the coast, with its beaches and bays and the kids running over the sand, well Toby and Andy running around with not a soul in sight, not one. I want to laugh now, at our disappointment when a punter comes strolling along, paradise ruined. What a bloody joke. Like now, a multi-million dollar view and we're sitting in a pool car park taking it in free. You'd have to pay for the privilege in another country packed to the gunnels with people. You'd be looking out of an expensive motel window if you were.

'I guess this would be the time to get stuff off our chests?' Liz says.

Andy will have ice cream covering half his face by now. Poor little fella, he wasn't happy about giving up the remote to Lizzie. 'She doesn't know how to use it, Dad!' he squealed. I'm banking on that, son, but there'll be no floating out of here, not in this position. A seat belt. God, I bloody hate belts and straps.

'Stuff?' I say.

Oh Jesus, we're not doing this now, are we? Stuff? Stuff, like little Julie at work? Bright, lovely, sparkly-eyed, Julie, that I couldn't stand going one day without talking to, or at least seeing from a distance? I never told Julie. No, I didn't, bloody perving coward. Used to hang around waiting for her to come in with the early birds on the night shift, or I'd make up excuses to go in on the weekends. That was always a soft excuse though. That weekend foreman, Wes, couldn't shift goods from one side of the warehouse to the other without cocking it up, the bloody mug. Julie will finish her degree and head back up north and will never know about the dirty old day foreman's crush on her unless I ask Nessa to tell her. What would Julie have done if she'd known? Laughed it off, or led me on, or both? Didn't she treat you differently than the others? Too late now.

'Jesus, Chris, why did this happen to us?' she says.

That's what Eve told the first Adam after it turned to custard, Why, Adam, why?

'I'm sorry,' I say.

'That's a bloody stupid thing to say,' she says.

Good old Lizzie, never afraid to call a spade a spade.

'Sell the story,' I say.

'Sell? Oh, don't worry, Nessa's all over that one. Are you hungry? Thirsty?' she says.

'Just dying,' I say.

'Chris, this isn't fair. Those pricks out here. Why do they have to spoil everything?' she says.

'They don't have to,' I say.

'What? Yeah, you're right, they bloody don't, they bloody well won't,' she says.

Liz said she wanted to do one last thing. I didn't imagine this, eh? Jesus Christ, the woman has real talent when she can work up a dying man. Is she getting enough air? Can she breathe under the towel? I should be embarrassed about people watching, or Andy and Nessa returning to the car. The bastards outside are shocked aren't they, once they figured out what Mrs Caruthers is up to under the towel.

The suit has a fly, a line of tiny magnets nearly too small to see if you weren't searching for them or dying to take a leak. Hashimoto thought of everything, clever bugger. And the punters, 'Whoa, what the bloody hell're they up to?' Yahooing and laughing with that laughter people get when they're half-surprised, or shocked and half-excited. And those prudish types that sound like my mother, 'Oh for God's sakes, oh for crying out loud, we can't have this, we can't have', but we bloody can, can't we? Unless someone's called the cops: I bet they have. More photo opportunities for the front pages, more photos for their stupid Facebook. Liz's revenge, isn't it? Fuck them. They've shown us bugger all in the way of respect these past months - except for in the pool just now - why should we bother? Don't they want to be flies on the wall?

'Try and relax,' she says, taking a breather.

A kinky bastard might enjoy all this attention.

'Think about that time, back at the start,' she says, getting back to work.

The start? What start? Oh, the start, that's right, Jesus, that's right.

'Do you remember?' she says, taking another quick breather.

'Never forget,' I say.

How could I? I was healthy, except for my floating around, and we thought that was the way it would be, big strong Chris, the floating foreman. What fun, eh? It was the first time, and I was strapped to the old marital bed. Did we have proper straps? What were we using for... but Lizzie, good time Lizzie, she came in one arvo. She was off work, and the supermarket didn't know what to do with me. They never did.

She crawled over the bed towards me in her knickers and bra, and we tried everything you could do with a floating human being. Liz was mostly on top at the start and we laughed our heads off when I tried to be on top. She wrapped her legs round my hips, but it wouldn't bloody work, would it? Not that way, but I wanted to do it from behind. And how did we solve that arrangement of goods? Oh Christ, that's right, we used a tie off the mattress and tied each other together. We looped it around our waists and tied it tight around her tummy. She held on to the headboard, and I held on to her hips as hard as I could and the floating added to it. It was glor...

'Oh Lizzie, Lizzie,' I moan.

...glorious, I can't believe it, I'm going to, I'm going...

'Jesus, Liz! Jesus!' I say.

...and the punters outside - don't pay attention to them - remember that afternoon. Hey, isn't that Mark the plumber? Jesus, someone's removed his head, boiled it for ten minutes, and reattached it.

'Ohhh, Liz,' I say, groaning it out, what little I have.

What the fuck is Mark doing here? Is he watching us?

'Oh Liz, thanks mate,' I whisper.

'You're welcome,' she says, surfacing and wiping her mouth on a corner of the towel.

'That'll give them something to gossip about,' I say, but I can barely say it, my energy limped out with my gizz.

'Oh Christ, we better get you home. You're bloody exhausted. Shit, what was I thinking?' Liz says, folding the towel up and tossing it over the back.

'I'm sorry, oh God, Chris, you look, I just wanted...'

'Not home,' I say.

'Hospital? Do you want me to call Harrup?' she says.

'Let me go now, Lizzie,' I say.

'Go? Chris, I can't bloody do that, okay?' she says.

'Not here, somewhere else,' I say.

Bugger me. I can barely get the words out. I'm fading, fading, dissolving.

'Chris,' she says.

'Dying, Liz, let me go,' I say.

'Chris,' she says, and she's bloody crying now.

'Please, Lizzie, please,' I say.

'You bastard, you knew I'd give in, didn't you? Okay. The Point? Out at the Point? That's a special place. We'll get privacy out there at least,' she says.

'Perfect,' I say.

Of all the things to weep about, Nessa's pissed at the arse job they both did of stapling up the pant legs and taking in the jacket of my best suit. It won't do, they won't let me go to the heavens dressed as a streaked Kung fu space age giant-lizard fighter so they slipped my Sunday's best over the top. What's the bloody difference? I might not even make it out to the Point. What will they do if that happens? I suppose, when I die, I'll keep floating, won't I? Dying won't suddenly change me. No, you won't bloody die yet. They got you into the car without breaking bones this time. Someone's looking out for you, Caruthers, maybe it's the Old Man?

'We did the best we could, I'm not a bloody tailor,' Liz snaps.

'He looks like a P O W,' Nessa whimpers.

'Nessa! Keep quiet if you've nothing nice to say,' Liz says.

Great. I'm shipping out and my daughter says I look like a prisoner of war. It doesn't matter, Nessa, dignity only goes so far where dying is concerned. You don't understand, but Lizzie does. It doesn't matter one iota, Nessa.

'Where's Toby?' Andy says.

The little guy hasn't cried once. Does he understand why we're going out to the Point?

'Andy,' I say.

'He's okay, Chris, he wants to be here,' Liz says.

Andy's wanting to be here doesn't mean he needs to be here.

'We can't wait forever, Mum,' Nessa tries to whisper from the backseat, but my hearing is sweet as.

'You be quiet, Vanessa Caruthers,' Liz says.

Bugger me if it isn't our Toby. He's peeking round the corner of the Carlson's hedge, and it looks as if he's crying. The girls haven't seen him yet, and they won't. They're on the wrong side of the car to see him as easily as I can. Clever, he probably thought of that too. He shakes his head. Stubborn little bugger: He's not coming with us. Goodbye Toby, eh? Some bloody father you turned out to be, Caruthers.

Take a kiss I blow at you, Toby, take it to your heart the way you did when you were a nipper. Good boy, he remembers. Make a stacking motion with your hands, Caruthers. The Lego. He'll get that, won't he? He gets it, or does it look like I can't breathe? Don't forget the Lego, Toby, don't forget the Lego project, will you? He nods. He understands. But even from here, I see he's losing it and balling his eyes out. He ducks out of sight. That'll be the last time, Caruthers, you screwed up that one. You said goodbye though, and everyone has their own way.

'Chris,' Liz says.

'We have to go, Mum,' Nessa says.

'We can't bloody well leave Toby behind,' Liz says.

'Okay, it's okay, I said goodbye,' I say.

'Dad said its okay,' Andy says.

I wonder if the little bugger saw Toby? Andy's behind me in the back seat.

'He bloody did not, Andy,' Nessa says.

'He did. God you're deaf,' Andy says.

'Enough of that you two. There's dodgy buggers parked down the street,' Liz says.

'Reporters?' Nessa says.

'You'll have to lose them, Mum' Andy says.

God, what I wouldn't give to have Andy's teleporting box, I'd take the Morfians on at their own game, though I've never figured out what game that is. Better than trying to survive this; Liz couldn't outdrive a car full of Sunday morning nuns on the way to church.

'They're still there,' Nessa shouts.

We're not even out of the City boundary. If they follow us across the bridge, we'll never see the end of them. I'll be saying my goodbyes with sunglasses on to keep out camera flashes.

'Hang in there, Dad,' Andy says.

As slow as Liz is driving, every time she corners, I'm expecting bones to snap.

'I can't bloody lose them,' Liz says.

'Nuh, you are, you've put some distance on them,' Nessa says.

'About bloody time,' Liz mutters.

'Shit, isn't that Mark's van?' Nessa says.

That would be Mark the plumber's van that's now passing us on the wrong side of a suburban street, with Mark at the wheel, waving at us like a man trying to flag down a battleship.

'What does he want now?' Liz says.

Now? What did he want earlier? My body might be dying, but my mind is here, I think.

'Follow him, he wants us to follow him,' Andy shouts.

'Yeah, he does. Follow him, Mum,' Nessa says.

'Follow him where? He doesn't know where we're going,' Liz says.

'He knows we're going somewhere,' Nessa says.

Mark knows these streets better than anyone does, the time he spends driving from job to job round here. Nessa's right, he's followed us, and any fool that's following us can see we're trying to avoid the other dickheads following us.

'We should call the police, it's bloody insane,' Liz says.

'Van,' I say.

So infuriating, I'll end up like the old man, playing charades with my eyes while everyone tries to guess what I'm saying. Lizzie, we could switch vehicles and use his bloody van.

'See? Dad wants to find out what Mark wants,' Andy says, his head bouncing against the roof.

'All right, all right, how're we doing behind us? Andy! Bloody calm down,' Liz says.

'Clear. Nuh, that red one's still there,' Nessa says.

'Okay, okay, let's see what Mr Wainwright wants, eh? We'll have to lose that other car,' Liz says.

Mark laughed when he saw me slumped in the seat, and he laughed at my best suit. I'm one and a half feet in the grave, more than, and he bloody laughed at me. What else did he say, fuck, what was it? Oh, he said, shit, he said, bla bla bla, he didn't bloody know what to say, did he? Bobbing from foot to foot, he couldn't look me in the eye, the guilty bastard. He's been dropping by the house for more than a quick cuppa and a hello, and there's Lizzie's afternoon disappearances Nessa's tried to cover up for months.

'It was a good idea, Mum,' Nessa says.

Yeah, flooring it through a red light and switching vehicles behind the old bank building, sheer genius.

'He's not as comfortable in this smelly van,' Liz says, considerate woman.

That's what Mark said! 'Not too late to be the team mascot, Chris.' Who would say that? In my state? Come on. It was like that every day for a while, wasn't it? Mark poking his ginger head into the bedroom, and saying, 'Howz Mr Floatie today?' Dropping off one of Kathy's dry casseroles, a quick tinker with the ancient superheater, replace a worn washer here and there, and oops a daisy, you're looking lonely this arvo, Mrs Caruthers, what can I do to cheer you up, eh? As long as it wasn't with Nessa, there's no knowing with that guy. She's a good girl. She wouldn't touch him with a barge pole.

Shit, Mark said something else, yeah: I'm sorry I won't be there to see you go, Chris, he said. I reckon he meant it, but why he'd believe I want him to be there, when my own son won't be is beyond me. That last part, what was the last part: At least I can do this much for you, mate, he said. As if driving our car home and leaving the key in our letterbox is the least you could do... mate. He did more than most of them, that's what sucks.

'Almost there, Chris,' Liz says.

'Jesus Mum,' Nessa says.

I guess I'm not looking that good, eh? My head keeps banging against the door, that's bloody irritating.

'Well, can you straighten him up please, Nessa?' Liz says.

'Okay, okay,' Nessa says.

'Don't break anything,' Andy says.

We conceived Nessa out here. That was always my theory. Liz has found the actual clearing we parked in that evening. It's the same one. Already gloomy in here, but that's why I remember it. Backed up into the trees in the back of my blue Datsun 180b full automatic, we called it our cave. I nod and try to smile at her, but she gets it, she knows. It's smaller than I remember. There's the estuary past the pine trees and the walking track starts over there, on the far side of the clearing. We used to take the kids along that for a post-lunch amble. It links up all over the Point. Walk for an hour easy. We used to have barbies on Sunday arvos down the road at the bigger clearing with the picnic tables, not in here.

We were so bloody poor we didn't even talk about the future. We knew we had one, but not one like this and we're not even old and you'll be starting over with three kids and a bunch of bills. Will you get in trouble for this? People go to jail for... what's this called? Unauthorised euthanasia?

'Jail?' I croak, but the effort, it isn't worth repeating.

'Don't worry love, save your energy,' Liz says.

'You're a floating man, Dad. Rules don't apply to floating people,' Andy says.

'Andy,' Nessa says.

I guess the boy's right. Surely they can't be held to blame if I accidentally float away. They could lay the blame on Hashimoto's suit and say it malfunctioned, or even blame the saltwater, which isn't fair on Hashimoto, the suit works perfectly. I should have told him, but Liz will. I hope she does. His name is too much work to get out now. Not many words left.

They're crying; even Andy's caught the bug.

'Is here okay?' Liz says.

'I can't believe we're doing this,' Nessa says.

'Andy? Can you work the remote?' Liz says.

'It's not working anymore,' Andy says.

'Okay guys, listen, we're going to float him out of the van, all right? And we'll carefully...'

'Okay Mum, we get it, eh?' Nessa says.

'No listen, Nessa, we'll carefully walk him out to the middle and we'll say goodbye one last time, okay? Do you understand, Andy?' Liz says.

'What if Dad gets hit by an airplane?' Andy says.

'Andy,' the girls say.

'He won't get hit, okay?' Liz says.

'I hope he doesn't,' Andy says.

'Can he hear us? Dad? Can you hear us?' Nessa says.

'Dad? Dad, can you hear what I'm saying?' Andy says.

'Yes, he can hear you. Trust me, he can hear you. All right, let's honour your father's last wish,' Liz says.

All business, that's my Lizzie. I'm nearly floating up out of this seat. Open the door and unbuckle the seat belt. Everything's packing up on me faster than that old Holden did. Well, the car body went to shit the engine went on forever.

'Careful, careful,' Liz says.

They make an awkward job getting me out - my head bangs into the doorframe - but I feel awesome, and I try to tell them, except it sounds as if I'm gurgling.

'Quick guys, let's go let's go,' Liz shouts.

And it's a bloody great rush; it always is at the end - for my father and for Liz's parents - a race to get everyone where they need to be, in my case the middle of a clearing at the Point. I always thought it would be that bloody hospital bed.

'Say goodbye, everyone, say goodbye,' Liz says, and they're all bawling. I want them to understand: I'm so light I'm a feather. I'm the man in the painting. I'm going back I'm going back there's no need to cry you should laugh. It's all over and I'm floating. Let me go now let me go.

'Bye Dad, bye Dad, I love you, I love you Dad, thanks for being the best Dad in the world. You look good in your suit, Dad, I didn't mean what I said, I love you so much,' Nessa's saying.

'See ya Dad, see ya, love you, love you,' little Andy's saying.

'Take care on your way up, Christopher Caruthers. I'll be seeing you again one day, I never bloody deserved a man as good as you, no girl in her right mind would let you go, and Toby loves you, he loves you, I'll say goodbye to him for you, I'll let him know how much you love him,' Liz says, and...

'Okay guys, it's time.'

and...

'Let go now, Nessa. Andy. let go. Andy love, it's time.'

and...

I'm free.

****

About the Author

David Bath was born in a steel bathtub in the middle of a freak lightning storm.

The bathtub was located in a small town at the bottom of the world (Invercargill, New Zealand).

David is a father, a husband, and an excellent conduit for electricity.

Overqualified with degrees in Art History, English Lit, and Physical Education, one day David decided to add creative writing to the list. David has published poetry in literary journals in both New Zealand and America.

His two novels, The Disrespect of Christopher Caruthers and The Fragile Castle are available for purchase at Smashwords.com and other affiliated e-book sellers. He is now working on his third novel.

His website - davebath.com - contains a blog he calls GUFF, which is full of articles about his various travel (mis)adventures, poetry, book and film reviews and more besides.

Currently living in Japan, he juggles his time as a shufu (housewife) and a writer.

David wishes he could transcend all his perceived, real, or deserved slights, irrational grudges, feuds, and separations; his irritability and fatigue; his stubborn anti-social tendencies, and his hot and cold sex drive. He doesn't want to be different anymore; he is who he is, and he can only work on that flawed clay.

David is reading the collective works of Leo Tolstoy on his Kindle; he has 88 hours and 47mins left.

Contact

davidbath18@hotmail.com

http://www.davebath.com
