would you recommend?’ she asks. There are so many! Clearly, these are going to change my life!
She’s in her mid thirties, pudgy but not fat. Not as fat as the men who usually come to browse this section, who absolutely never want to talk to anybody about their options (if caught gazing at the weight-loss shelf, they usually swerve just to the right, where we’ve cleverly placed the Protein Muscle Bulk powders so as to save them the embarrassment of admitting what they were really looking for). The whipped cream of the woman’s mocha Frappuccino is piled high beneath a domed plastic lid, a crowning chocolate-covered coffee bean beginning to sink into its sugary pillow. She seems entirely oblivious to the irony.
‘A lot of people are going for the cinnamon extract,’ I say non-judgementally, pointing to a green bottle. ‘But others swear by the basic fibre capsules. They fill up the stomach with harmless bulk.’ A brown bottle. ‘Keeps you from wanting so much when you eat. So the theory goes.’
And they’ll each do you about as much good as closing your eyes, clicking your heels three times and hoping the fat will make a pilgrimage to Oz.
I artfully keep that last bit to myself. My job is to get her to pick a bottle, any bottle, and politely charge her the 450 per cent mark-up we make on what is mostly encapsulated sawdust with a token sprinkling of your favourite herb. I smile warmly, something I’ve practised. She goes for the brown bottle and I nod in knowing approval. A wise choice, ma’am. That’s the one I would have suggested all along. A few minutes later I have gratefully relieved her of $39.50. If she loses a pound from a fistful of fibre capsules three times a day, I’ll personally double back her money. But at least she won’t be suffering from irregularity.
My mind is back in the park. He remained a few minutes, there, the boy. Standing motionless on the far side of the pond like he always did, though not for quite as long, I think, as usual. When I saw his wound I felt the urge to say something. Are you all right? Did you fall? Do you need that looking at? But I sat quietly, instead, and I wished I’d had a coffee. Maybe that was selfish. I’m not used to looking after other people’s children. And after all, it’s just a scrape.
A few moments later, the boy plucked up his stick, turned and walked back into the greenery, into the depth of the park.
Tough breaks, kid. Everybody falls. Given the calmness of his demeanour, it was a lesson he seemed to have learned with grace and dignity.
Once he’d gone I closed my notebook. The muses had still not come and there was no more time to wait for them. My two lines remained an unaccompanied duo. I rose from my bench, said farewell to Margaret’s ghost, and walked away.
That was hours ago. I must really be bored to have spent the afternoon dwelling on it as I have. The clock on the wall says 5.49 p.m. and I can’t imagine anyone is coming supplement shopping between now and six, so I flip the sign to ‘Closed’ and lock up. It’s enough for today. There’s a bus ride ahead. Home, and diamonds, and memories.
Taped Recording Cassette #014A Interviewer: P. Lavrentis
The recording hisses slightly as it begins, but she is content. The sound quality overall is good.
A rustle of papers before the dialogue ensues. When the voices emerge, their interactions pick up mid-stream; a continued recording from a continuing conversation. Not the first Pauline Lavrentis had had with him, and far from what would be the last.
‘I want us to return to yesterday.’ Her voice creeps out of the small speakers. In recordings she hears what always sounds an odd echo of herself. Her voice emerges as that of a woman of indeterminate age, though certainly without the lilt of youth she’d once had. It’s free of the humour she likes to feel she possesses, and the emotion by which her husband has always characterized her. That dispassion is intentional now, of course – speaking in just this way, in just this tone, has become a crafted skill – but it still sounds odd to her in the recordings, and she assumes it probably always will.
A pause.
‘What about yesterday?’ The voice that responds is a male’s, its own ambiguous qualities creeping through. Definitely not a child’s tones, but not an old man’s either. Somewhere in the vast expanse in between.
‘You said you killed your wife.’
A far longer pause. Plastic squeaks: the back of a chair bending under readjusting weight. Pauline leans towards the small recorder in its playback, straining to catch every sound.
‘I had to admit it eventually,’ the male voice finally responds. ‘Can’t keep everything bottled up. That’s what you’re always telling me, isn’t it?’ More fidgeting.
‘It’s good to talk,’ she answers with words she’d spoken a hundred times before, ‘to open up about ourselves.’ But not everything about this interview is usual. Some of her words are rarer, less customary on her lips. ‘I’ve been troubled by what you said.’
‘No shit.’ The male voice is flippant, now. The change happens quickly, seamlessly. ‘Can’t say I’m not troubled by it myself, lady. Terrible. Just a terrible, terrible thing. A man shouldn’t kill his wife.’
‘It’s not the killing that’s troubling me, Joseph.’
A hesitation.
‘You’re … not bothered I killed my wife?’ Genuine confusion sounds in the man’s voice. The cassette captures a different, halting rhythm to his speech. ‘That’s just sick.’
‘Killing is very—’
‘No, seriously,’ his words slice across hers. ‘You ought to be fucking revolted. I told you I killed my goddamned wife! Held a pillow over her head till she stopped breathing.’
‘I remember what you told m—’
‘What sort of callous bitch are you?’ His voice is angry now. Pauline recalls how swiftly it had changed, the features of his face altering along with it. ‘You’re always doing this! Playing with me. Finally getting me to open up, then you toy around.’ A pause. His breathing is heavy and angry. ‘Bitch.’
On the cassette, Pauline allows a silence to linger. The man’s breath continues to resonate. Several seconds pass. When Pauline begins to speak again, her voice has a different tone to it. A deliberate strategy, and on hearing it now on tape, Pauline is certain it was the right one.
‘Perhaps that isn’t where we should begin, today. Perhaps it’s too much.’ She’d let her focus remain vague, unclear whether she was speaking to the man or to herself. But then, more definitively, ‘Did you love her? Your wife?’
The question provokes a hesitation, captured on the miniaturized magnetic tape. ‘That’s … that’s a ridiculous thing to ask. Of course I loved my wife.’
‘And you remember that – that love?’
The pauses grow longer and more frequent. ‘You ask foolish questions. How could I not remember being in love? Obviously I remember it. We were head over heels. Full of romance. All that.’
‘It
