at Walter.
‘What if you don’t drive?’ he asked, as if he’d found a loophole.
‘Then you’re unlikely to be that one person,’ Walter said dryly. He shrugged. ‘There are plenty of caveats, and being at risk of dying in a certain way isn’t the same as the odds of dying in that way. Risk varies with age and location and medical history. And of course the odds skew if there is an unexpected medical epidemic say, or a natural disaster. The odds of dying are based on generic overall number crunching, but they’re incredibly accurate all the same.’
‘Right,’ Dave said.
‘Good one, Walt.’
They were impressed, certainly, but there were still smirks across their faces. Walter knew that even though he had an impressive memory and had such detailed statistical information at his fingertips, he was, nonetheless, to them, an oddity. He made another move to leave the kitchenette, but again they remained standing in his way. He couldn’t get past them without pushing past, without crossing a line somewhere, breaking some rule of workplace etiquette—the ‘I pretend not to know you’re taking the piss and you pretend not to be taking the piss’ rule.
Don’t make me push past, he thought.
They just looked at him.
And suddenly Walter thought of the moment on the train station platform that morning when he had stood rooted to the spot, unable to enter the train, and people had met his eye, looked at him. He blushed at the memory. Sometimes he felt as if the worst thing in the world was to be looked at, sometimes he felt as if it bruised him.
*
Walter usually arrived at work at 8.00am, had his morning tea at 10.30am and his lunch at 12.30pm. That morning, having arrived at 8.45am, he found his routine out of whack—he had his morning cup of tea at 10.45am and he only noticed the time on his computer, grabbed his coat and headed out for lunch at 1.10pm.
Walter regularly bought his lunch at a sandwich shop around the corner from Equity, and he invariably got a ham, cheese, tomato sandwich and an orange juice. If the weather was bad he would eat in at one of the little tables down the back of the shop, or at the bench that lined the shop window. If the weather was good he would take his lunch and go to a nearby churchyard. It wasn’t that Walter was in any way religious—he had been brought up to be a good Catholic, as most Poles were, but had abandoned religion as soon as he moved out of home. He visited this little church, hidden away behind a spiked fence between two hi-rise buildings, because it had a small public garden that nobody seemed to know about. He enjoyed coming there to sit and eat his lunch on one of the benches under the straggly plane trees, watching the religious pass into and out of the church while the scrappy little city sparrows hopped around his feet and darted in for crumbs.
The sandwich shop was owned by a middle-aged couple and amazingly, given his track record with shop people, the second time he had gone there, so long ago now, the woman had remembered his order and had asked if he wanted the same thing. Walter was impressed that she had got it right, flattered and amazed that she had remembered him, and he nodded and agreed, even though he probably would have ordered something else. From that day on he had ‘the regular’ no matter what he actually felt like.
When it came time to pay for his lunch, Walter realised he was missing his wallet. He felt in his hip pocket, then patted the rest of his pants pockets, both front and back—nothing. He checked his coat pockets but again, nothing.
Perhaps he had left it in the office?
He apologised quickly to the woman who had made his sandwich and said they should keep it aside, he would be back shortly, that he’d left his wallet behind. The woman told him he could pay another day, but now that he knew he’d misplaced his wallet he wanted to find it as soon as possible.
It took him only five minutes to get back to his desk at Equity, but there was no sign of his wallet. He checked his briefcase—again no wallet.
Odd.
Perhaps it was in the car? He thought back to arriving that morning, late and a bit flustered. Had he taken his wallet out of his briefcase then? Perhaps to put away the car park ticket he took from the machine on entering?
It was only a quick trot a half block to the multi-level car park. When he got there he entered the lift, pressed a button for his level, then stood back and noticed a sign advising patrons that valuables should not be left visible in cars as this encouraged theft. As the lift ascended slowly to the top of the car park Walter stared at the poster. It had a tacky clipart picture, a silhouette of a hooded man with a crowbar, and a red circle with a line diagonally across the middle over the top of him. As the door dinged open Walter felt a sort of resignation wash over him.
Great, he thought. Just great.
He went to his car. The driver’s side window had been smashed. Little cubes of shattered glass were scattered all over the driver’s side seat and the floor. He peered in through the shattered window but could see no sign of his wallet. It also appeared that his CD player had been stolen. Ibiza Summer with it? Possibly.
He went to the passenger side, opened the door and got in, fastidiously brushing some of the broken glass off the seat first. He checked the glove box but found it empty. No wallet. No CDs. He sat there looking from the broken window to the gaping hole where his CD player had been. He felt this was just his luck. He said to himself, in his head, feeling sorry for himself: The story of my life. He sighed, and as he breathed in again he noticed something. He sniffed a couple of times, then wrinkled up his nose.
What was that smell?
He leaned across towards the driver’s side seat and sniffed. Again he smelt it, but not noticeably stronger. He looked into the back seat. There was nothing in there. He sniffed again, and again there was the smell but again not noticeably stronger.
What was it? It was definitely unpleasant and somehow human. Was it the smell of the man who had smashed the window of his car and sat, presumably, on the driver’s side seat on top of the glass? Yes, he thought, it was the smell of perspiration, unwashed clothes, stale cigarette smoke, and perhaps, he sniffed again, the slightest suggestion, somewhere in there, of human or animal faeces. Dog shit?
Walter got out of the car rather rapidly and returned to work. There, he went directly to the toilets and washed his hands— thoroughly. After a while of scrubbing he dried them under the air drier, wiped them together a little, then gently sniffed them. Sniffed again. They seemed OK but …
He sniffed at the cuff of his suit jacket. Oh crap.
*
Back at his desk, in his shirt sleeves, Walter got on the phone and began all the necessary arrangements with a definite sense of ennui. First he called the police and reported the break-in. After being placed on hold for some time, a constable asked a lot of questions in a desultory manner and didn’t seem, Walter thought, all that hopeful of any outcome other than a lot of paperwork. Then Walter rang his bank to arrange the cancellation of his credit card and VicRoads to notify them of his stolen driver’s licence. Both also put him on hold, but at least his bank notified him of his ‘place in the queue’ and how long the wait would be. This didn’t serve to cheer him up any.
While on hold this last time, Dev put his head up over Walter’s carpeted cubicle wall.
‘You do work here, don’t you?’ he asked. ‘I mean, for us?’
*
