Tax Inspector: Complete & Unabridged by Peter Carey

Author:Peter Carey [Carey, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Literary
ISBN: 9781856957007
Google: gi_uAAAAMAAJ
Amazon: 0679735984
Publisher: Isis Audio Books
Published: 1993-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

29

Cathy McPherson came back from the bathroom smelling of Elizabeth Arden and whisky. She wore her chamois leather cowgirl suit with high-heeled boots with spurs. Her waistcoat cut into her big fleshy arms. She stood in the kitchen doorway with her huge guitar and her little white hands and sent confusing signals with her eyes.

The guitar was a big instrument – too big to take visiting, but presumably too valuable to leave in a parked car. Cathy McPherson leaned against the doorway, on the hallway side, fiddling with the little mother-of-pearl guitar picks which were wedged in beside the tuning pegs like ticks on a cattle dog’s ear.

If this had been an investigation Maria had wanted to pursue, this would have been the turning point. Someone was about to divulge some information or to try to cut a deal, but Maria did not want more information about the Catchprices. She wanted them out of her house, out of her life and if this was a confession, she did not want to hear it.

She said: ‘You didn’t need to drive all this way to say sorry.’

‘But we didn’t come to say we were sorry.’ It was the boy again, back from wherever he had been in her house. He slid around the edge of the guitar and stood with his back to the refrigerator. His hair looked as hard and white as spun polymer.

‘Would you mind staying right here?’ she said. She shifted her kettle on to the hottest and fastest of her gas jets. When she looked up, his eyes were on hers.

‘Mrs McPherson is going to sing to you,’ he said.

Maria looked at the woman.

‘I’m really a singer,’ she said. Her face was burning red.

The boy came into the kitchen and plugged the ghetto blaster into the power point next to the kettle.

‘We’re people, not numbers,’ he said. He would not take his eyes off her eyes. She thought: this is the sort of thing that happens in Muslim countries – these dangerous doe-eyed boys with their heads filled with images of western whores in negligees. She looked away from him to his aunt.

‘So you would like to sing to me in the hope it will affect your tax assessment?’

Cathy McPherson had the good grace to look embarrassed, but her nephew buttoned the jacket of his suit without taking his eyes away from Maria’s. ‘We think you’re human,’ he said in that nasal accent as sharp and cold as metal. He moistened his lips and smiled. For Chrissakes – he was coming on to her. ‘We want to talk to you like humans.’

‘O.K.,’ said Maria. ‘I’m going to make one cup of tea, then you’re going to sing, and then you’re going to get out of here because I’ve really had enough for one day.’

‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘We’re going to present two songs.’

‘You can have one.’

‘One is fine,’ Benny unbuttoned his suit coat. ‘You can have recorded or live.’

‘I don’t care what it is. Just do it.’

‘You’d like live?’

‘Sure, live.

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