Australia Day by Melanie Cheng

Author:Melanie Cheng
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2017-05-18T04:00:00+00:00

Doughnuts

Pandora was Barry’s first client, ever. They’d met the year he graduated with a bachelor of social work from Victoria University. Back then she was stunning: dark, feline, defiant. Like Cleopatra, except with a potty-mouth. But that was ten years ago, and all the long admissions had played havoc with her. Every now and then, Barry saw a hint of her long-lost beauty—in the line of her regal nose, or her vaguely purple eyes, which Pandora likened to Elizabeth Taylor’s. Despite the age difference, Barry had been attracted to her at the start. The way she’d looked at him was exhilarating, like she could tap into his core.

Pandora had been doing well recently, and Barry had cut down his visits to once a month. But last Tuesday at three am, a neighbour had called 000 about booming ABBA music, and the local police, who all knew Pandora well, had alerted Barry.

It was nine-thirty by the time Barry arrived at her weatherboard near the housing commission. Pandora’s father, a hardworking pharmacist, had left her the property in his will, which—in spite of its proximity to the flats—would easily fetch $800,000. Barry was surprised Pandora had never mentioned selling it during one of her manias, but luckily simple logic often evaded her at those times.

The garden was full of weeds. Somebody had scrawled PORK in spiky capitals across the splintered timber fence. Piles of painted canvases were stacked on the front verandah—oils in bright primary colours, peanut butter thick. Pandora would be in the backyard, painting probably, in spite of the bitter winter weather.

Pandora was out the back, as Barry thought, but she wasn’t painting. She was lying on a broken deckchair, naked, except for sunglasses and a tanning mirror open on her lap.

‘Barry,’ she said, as if his impromptu visit were nothing out of the ordinary. ‘Sit down.’

Barry turned a milk crate upside down to make a seat. ‘Top of the morning to you.’

Pandora laughed. Her flesh was a field of goosebumps. ‘Glorious day, isn’t it?’

Barry looked up at the sky, heavy with grey cloud.

‘We’ve got to enjoy these last moments, Barry. Before the end.’

Barry nodded. Armageddon psychosis. There’d been a lot of it around lately.

‘When Trump presses that button, we’re all dead. Kaput. And the unlucky ones who survive the blast will be destroyed by their own radioactively mutated cells.’

Barry could see the shadows of veins like tangled wires beneath Pandora’s skin. He pulled a picnic blanket from beneath a stack of newspapers and laid it on top of her.

‘Never mind climate change,’ she said and laughed. ‘We’ll all be dead this side of Christmas.’

As Pandora cackled about the impending apocalypse, Barry constructed a plan. First he would speak to her psychiatrist, then the crisis assessment and treatment team, and finally, as a last resort, the police, if she refused to go willingly.

‘Fancy a bloody mary?’ Pandora said, sitting up. Her pendulous breasts swayed, metronome-like, above her knees.

The admission was messy. Casey, the woman who arrived from the crisis team, was someone Pandora had had run-ins with before.

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