Victoria on the Move

I watched the scruffy kid come towards the car holding the squeegee mop up like one of those bromide cameras. I half expected him to gesture at the gridlocked commuters to bunch in closer so he can get everyone in shot. Even though it was evening rush-hour, it was still blistering hot, and his sloshing bucket of grimy water had some kind of subtle presence in our pressure-cooked minds. My fingers felt a little numb from the slight burns received from my steering-wheel. These were some of the longest traffic-lights in town and this kid had somehow cornered the squeegee market, despite having the demeanor and build of a whippet. Quite often he put on a laughable limp to get the sympathy dollar, forgetting the regularity of his customer base.

My mind began to wander, thinking about Victoria’s threat to accept her posting interstate. The idea of her being somewhere else was too remote to even worry about. Her leafy courtyard beckoned to me from the other side of town, a champagne-flavoured oasis in this concrete heat. The chilled bubbles blended in my mind with the foamy water the squeegee kid was pouring over my windscreen, only half-registering in my thoughts. By the time I returned to the here-and-now the lights had turned green and I automatically accelerated with the remaining soap streaking over the glass in the slipstream. In my rear-view mirror I could see the kid waving his mop at me like the spongy sword of a thwarted pirate. A dollar saved is a dollar earned.

Two hours later I was curled up with Victoria on one of those minimalist matt-black couches which were the height of chic in the 1990s, but now seemed somewhat gauche. Just as I pulled up in her driveway, the stifling heat gave way to a soupy storm which only managed to soak the courtyard with large warm splashy raindrops before moving along. Now a golden light reflected itself off the television and onto Victoria’s face. Despite our affectionate familiarity, her subtle features formed such a confronting beauty that I would often be jarred out of any lazy love-gazing and be forced to contemplate her face as one would absorb an aesthetic novelty – slowly and with inchoate reservations. The apricot light only added to the uncanny allure of her expression, which masked the relentlessly prosaic side of her personality.

A while ago, during a particularly slow day at the Department, I accessed a database in Norway which contained every family-tree in the world. This was an attempt to solve the mystery of her misplaced exotica, so I felt vindicated once I traced her bloodline to the sixteenth century pirate enclave of Salé on the Barbary Coast. However, when I asked about her heritage she could only list some vague great-grandparents from Scotland. I found that I couldn’t admit to running a background check on her gene-pool, and was consequently alone in my constant wonder at the practical blossom which had sprung-forth from such romantic roots.

Victoria worked at the Department as well, but she was in a different building on the other side of the river. When they asked if she could transfer interstate she at first declined, but they insisted that she would be generously compensated for any inconvenience. They told her that the Department doesn’t ask much from its members, which is technically true – they always tell us what to do. All of this was rattling around my mind as she stared at the TV sipping champagne. Her perfume seemed to be ripening and rotting in the humidity, but she was oblivious to everything external to the flickering screen, and I too focused my attention when the beast report came on after the weather forecast. The familiar man in the suit seemed glazed by his daily diet of carnage.

"The beast killed seven people in the last twenty-four hours, which brings this month’s total to three hundred and six – twenty three up on last year. We expect activity tonight in the north-east, particularly around Emmerson Bridge . . . "

Victoria became suddenly animated at this news.

"Well, that’s good isn’t it? We can go to that Italian place for dinner. It’s far too hot to cook."

"You can’t always believe the report. You know that."

I instantly felt bad for stating the obvious. Her husband had been claimed by the beast on the "safe" side of town, at least according to that day’s forecast. His insurance company had to cough up quite a sum to Victoria after she went through the painful judicial process of proving radial distances from predicted danger areas. She was graceful about my insensitivity and pretended she didn’t hear it.

"Well if you want to whip something up you’re welcome to, but I need some fresh air."

Our moods had lightened by the time we were walking down Central St. to the piazza. The stars looked freshly scrubbed from the storm, and steam curled around our ankles from the slick pavement. We danced elegantly around the topic of her transferal, which still seemed like it belonged to someone else’s future and not mine.

As we walked down the steps our conversation suspended itself at the sight of one of those ridiculous robots approaching us. It was walking up the stairs, propelled by freakishly human leg movements, while the top half bobbed rigidly like a futuristic beer-keg. The public had been assured that these automatons helped in the fight against the beast, and that they had not been enhanced for human surveillance of any kind. Nevertheless, people still tended to clam up or cross the street if they saw one coming.

My opinion was that it was all another gigantic waste of money and brain-power. When the proto-types were first released into the C.B.D., kids would chase them around and throw bottles at them trying to tip them over. The city council had to appoint police-officers to follow the robot’s beat in order to ensure that they were left alone, which kind of contradicted the whole idea. Plus, if it can’t defend itself from a gang of skate-punks then what chance does it have against the beast? The whole thing was a policy disaster, but the government continued to pour funds into the project with confidence as stubborn as it was hollow.

It was still common to see a robot walk mutely by with a "Kick Me" sign plastered to his back. So common that people didn’t even laugh any more.

And yet there was something eerie about a distant silhouette crossing the bridge at twilight, and not being totally sure if it this figure is alive or not.

Victoria picked at her garlic bread and tried to convince me that it was all for the best, however I had started to sulk.

"You can come and visit me on long-weekends."

"Uh huh."

"Besides, don’t you think it would be good for me to get away for a while? Be in a new city?"

"No doubt. It would be good for everyone."

"So is that what this is all about? You’re resentful."

I searched the restaurant as if to find a more convivial companion, yet our eyes eventually locked and she forced a smile from me.

"No, you’re right," I admitted. "Do what the Department wants. After all, they don’t ask for much."

Victoria smiled at my sarcasm, scanning my face for signs of sincerity. Then the pasta arrived.

A month later I was sitting at the same traffic-lights while Victoria was settling into her new place. Summer was fading, and the same squeegee kid was waving his soapy saber at his captive customers. This was all for show, as he seemed to begin his task in earnest whether you said yes or no, which is why I had a dollar ready this time. Luckily he didn’t remember me after my hasty escape, one advantage of looking like every other office stooge in their new cars. I’d seen him spit on people who refused to give anything for his compulsory services. His tatty flannelette shirt looked like it had been given to charity by an artist who was obsessed with red paintings, but this kid wore it like a second skin.

He stuck out his hand for his dues at the car in front of me, but I could see the middle-aged woman shaking her cabbagy-head in moral defiance. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but the kid was suddenly becoming all jerky and yelling, "filthy whore! Rich cunt! Can’t even keep your car clean." He kicked the tyre for effect while she tried to wind up her window. He was too fast though, and shoved the squeegee inside the car and mopped her face. Her hands tried to grab the sudsy weapon off him but he was surprisingly strong, defending his livelihood with wiry arms. The lights turned green.

People started beeping their horns prematurely, even before the first two cars could pull away – they just wanted to enhance the whole scene with more aggression. Being right behind the action, I watched with interest as he wrenched the squeegee from her meaty grasp and fell back into the road. She raced off and I – perhaps influenced by my latent guilt – asked him if he was ok. He half-snarled as I flipped my dollar coin at him. He looked from the coin to me, bewildered for a moment. The disharmony of horns echoed in our ears. Then something snapped, and he started screaming at the top of his lungs, frothing at the mouth:

"You’re all going to die! You’re already dead! I am the beast! I . . . am the BEAST!"

I accelerated through the yellow light and noticed that my hands had started shaking. Of course I didn’t really think he was the beast; many crazy people wandered the streets claiming to be the beast. And yet I knew I would be taking a detour home from now on.

A few miles along I drove past one of those robots trapped in a guard rail, his perfect legs walking up and down on the same spot. Someone had put on a blue-lace bra around his barrel-body and strapped a Santa-hat onto his head. I suddenly felt a pang of sympathy, like he could do with a lift. I drove on, however, just wanting to get home. The message the city was trying to tell me seemed all too obvious: I was stuck here, while Victoria was on the move.