Chapter 2 #2
“I’ll tell you one thing, if the old bastard has even a breath left in him, he’s going to do this bloody interview.”
“And what if he is dead?” Persephone asks.
I pause. “Then I’ll kill him.”
I really shouldn’t say stuff like that. It’s those kinds of comments that can land a girl in hot water. I should know.
Have you ever noticed there are two types of postal workers? There are the extremely helpful kind. The ones who pat the dogs, stow the package somewhere out of the rain, wait the extra minute for the elderly people to get to the door. And then there’s Dwayne, our postman.
Dwayne, if you don’t mind. Not Wayne. Not Dane. Dwayne. As if his mother had a stroke while filling in his birth certificate and the scrawl next to the name Wayne looked a little like a D.
As I arrive at Ishaan’s gate, Dwayne pulls up on his scooter and retrieves a small square box from his satchel. More vitamins, no doubt.
“Not home?” Dwayne asks.
I point to the small pile of boxes already on Ishaan’s doormat. “Apparently not. I can take it.”
“Can’t. Needs to be signed for.”
For pity’s sake. As if someone is going to steal his bloody vitamins.
“I’ll sign,” I say.
“Are you Ishaan Patel?”
“There is nothing less attractive,” I tell Dwayne, “than a humorless man.”
Dwayne returns the box to his satchel and moves to the next house, and I turn to the small pile of boxes already on Ishaan’s doormat.
I rap on the door with the old knocker.
“When was the last time you saw Ishaan?” I ask Peter, who is wheeling his rubbish bin, and mine, out to the mouth of the lane for collection.
“Ishaan?” He thinks a moment. “Must have been a couple of days ago. He was bent over retrieving a package from his doorstep when I walked past. When he’d noticed me he shouted: ‘Vitamin C!’ Not ‘Good morning. Have you ever thought about taking vitamin C?’ Or even ‘Looky here, my vitamin C has arrived.’ Just ‘Vitamin C!’ Then he disappeared back inside his house.
Between you and me, Blind Freddy could see that Ishaan needs something a lot stronger than vitamin C. ”
“Ne’er has a bigger truth been uttered. Thanks, Peter.”
He moves along, unperturbed, and I go to the window and peer inside. It is impossible to see anything through the dirty net curtains.
I return to my place, past Daphne and Persephone, who are still on my porch.
The floorboards creak as I make my way down the hallway—if I were any younger I’d have worried I might need to redo the floors.
I pass my bedroom, wallpapered in the once-vibrant orange and brown shades that were the height of fashion in the ’70s; the bathroom, with its avocado-colored sink and toilet; the spare bedroom, door closed as always.
I make my way into the back room, made up of a kitchen, a mishmash of orange laminate and cheap wooden cabinets; a dining corner, comprised of one small, lacquered round table and four threadbare chairs; and a lounge room, with vintage armchair and couch, both upholstered in a faded tweed.
Through the back door is a small brick-paved courtyard and Hills Hoist. Ishaan and I share a fence line on one side, and the palings face him, so I climb onto the bottom rung and peer over.
Nugget sees me and begins barking hysterically.
“Ishaan!” I call out, leaning over the top. “You there?”
No response. Then again, Ishaan is hard of hearing, and he’d be hard-pressed to hear me at the best of times, let alone over the top of Nugget’s barking.
“You’re going to jump over?” Daphne asks, suddenly behind me.
“I guess I’ll have to.”
It’s true that I’m eighty-one years old, but as I’ve mentioned, I’m not your average eighty-one-year-old.
I start climbing. It’s pretty easy. My knees crack a little, and the weathered wood presses into my old hands uncomfortably, but it’s fine until I get to the top.
I’d hoped to see some sort of ledge, or chair, or BBQ area that I could step onto, but there is merely a drop straight down to a weedy-looking garden bed below.
“Do you see anything, Elsa?” Persephone calls.
“Elsie,” I correct. “And yes, I see an incensed dog.”
Having Persephone on my side of the fence is all the motivation I need.
I don’t give myself time to consider whether I might break a hip or my neck, or even how I will explain that I’m rappelling into Ishaan’s back garden down the track.
I also don’t take the time to consider that, perhaps, a call to the police to conduct a welfare check might be a better idea.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t occur to me until I’m sliding down Ishaan’s side of the fence, catching my ankle painfully on a shard of wood or nail.
“Shit!”
“I’m telling my mum,” Persephone calls. “You sweared.”
“Fuck off,” I reply.
Daphne chortles.
I stand straight. To my surprise, Nugget doesn’t take a chunk out of my ankle, or even my slacks. Instead, she looks at me intently, then runs back toward the house.
One thing I hadn’t considered until now was what I would do once I got into Ishaan’s backyard. I don’t typically consider myself a fools-rush-in sort. Perhaps I’m experiencing some of the Alzheimer’s-induced madness that I read about recently in Pensioner’s Weekly.
“What are you doing now?” Daphne calls.
“I’ll just … go rap on the back door, I guess,” I tell her, and myself.
But as it turns out, I don’t need to rap, because Ishaan’s back door is glass, and through it I see him lying on the kitchen floor. He’s in his brown terry cloth dressing gown, and his skin is the dirty white color of the linoleum floor. His eyes are open and unblinking.
Nugget watches him, her nose pressed up against the glass, her energetic little body suddenly drained of energy. For the first time all day, she doesn’t yap.