The Speechwriter by Martin McKenzie-Murray

Author:Martin McKenzie-Murray
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC037000, FIC037000, FIC016000
Publisher: Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
Published: 2021-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

A day passed. Susie was more advanced on her film script than I was with the speech. After opening with a platitudinous Jobs quote, I added: ‘This government believes in robot pilots. For the same reason it believes in innovation. In ideas. In pushing the envelope, expanding the box, sparking the imagination.’

After writing this, I went to the toilet and sparked my gag reflex. Mostly I did this to relieve dread, but I also hoped that, while heaving demonically over the bowl, I would be sufficiently emptied of pride that inspiration might come and refill me. While on my knees, I studied a constellation of hardened shit and waited. But there was nothing. I wasn’t channelling Jobs, but Job, humiliated by a vast power, and in my moment of abjection I waited desperately for guidance.

The bathroom’s door opened. This must be it: Providence. But it was only John washing custard from his jumper. If I was to be guided, I’d have to demand it. So I waited for John to leave before calling my girlfriend.

We’d only spoken a few times since I’d left. I felt too great a burden on the conversation to fill the distance. Too much pressure. To speak compounded the fact of our separation. So we texted. Older readers might seize on this as proof of my generation’s atrophic hearts. But the truth was, my heart was too tender to speak.

It wasn’t just heartache. I was reluctant to call because I was withholding a small but growing doubt. To announce it would undermine the presumed importance of my moving to Canberra. Which was pathetic. I was paid good money for words, yet where it mattered I had none. Pride and longing had strangled them.

But on wet knees, my head above the freckled porcelain, I decided that no more would my heart be silent. It was time to speak honestly. I called Rachel.

‘Hey,’ she said.

‘Hey, baby.’

‘There’s a weird echo.’

‘Is there?’ Fuck. I’d failed already. ‘I’m in a toilet,’ I confessed.

‘A toilet?’

‘A cubicle. At work. It’s rancid, but the fact of my being in a toilet is less important than my telling you I’m in a toilet, because—’

‘I’m glad you called.’

‘Okay.’

‘We need to talk.’

‘We are talking.’

‘Sorry, you’re in the toilet?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘I’m not sure I want you there while we talk right now.’

‘We’ve been talking a lot about my location.’

‘Toby.’

‘Yes?’

‘We need to talk.’

‘That’s why I called.’

‘Can you, I don’t know, go someplace else?’

This didn’t sound good. I wasn’t moving. I couldn’t move. My heart rate was quickening, my limbs tensing.

‘Toby?’

‘I’m moving,’ I lied, while renewing my interest in the bowl’s profane patterns and remaining quiet for the time that it might take to move to the imaginary room.

‘Toby?’

‘Yes?’

‘I can’t do this anymore.’

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