A while back Walter had told Dr Feldman that he longed sometimes to tell Dev to go get fucked. Those specific three words, he thought, although not grammatically stellar, were important—not only was Dev to get fucked, which was, of course, quite damning in itself, but he was to go to do it, go, that is, away from him, Walter, and do it somewhere out of his sight, because he couldn’t even be bothered watching it—those three words, he felt, so perfectly expressed disinterest and disdain in equal measures, he was quite pleased with them.
‘So this Dev makes you feel angry?’ Dr Feldman had asked him.
‘Angry?’ Walter had repeated, wide eyed.
‘Yes. You sounded very angry just then. When you said you wanted to tell him to go get fucked. I mean, that sounded angry to me.’
‘Did it?’
‘U-huh.’
‘Oh,’ Walter had said to the doctor. ‘I do apologise.’
‘Why don’t you tell him how you feel?’
‘Tell him?’
‘Yes. Not perhaps in those exact words …’
‘Oh,’ Walter said, slightly flustered. ‘I couldn’t do that. He’s Indian.’
*
Walter had a cubicle in an open plan office. His was a very neat desk with computer, phone and various stationery items arranged neatly, parallel to each other, all tidy and rigidly spaced, as if measured. He didn’t know it, but sometimes while he was away from his desk, out to lunch or in a meeting or something, his co-worker Mick would come up to his desk and move one of the items, maybe his stapler, so that it sat cocked a little to the side, just the smallest bit out of alignment. Then, when Walter returned to his desk, Mick, and sometimes some of the others, would be watching from a few cubicles away, peeking over the carpet divider, waiting for Walter to notice and correct the position of the stapler, which he did immediately, automatically, every time. He didn’t hear their titters of laughter, or if he did he presumed they were laughing at something else.
That morning was exactly the same as any other in Walter’s work life—that was kind of the point with him—but in the back of his mind he was unable to stop thinking about that man at the station. Don’t get on the next train. It was there with him all morning, like something hovering over his shoulder, in his peripheral vision. By mid-morning he decided he had to do something about it. He went and got himself a cup of tea—first things first—black with two sugars. Then, after checking the whereabouts of Dev, whose cubicle backed onto his (he was safely ensconced in the Senior Staff Meeting and wouldn’t be out until lunch) he logged on to the internet and checked a couple of local news websites. He glanced down through the headlines—something about the outcome of a major crime trial, sporting news, some political mumbo-jumbo about the next budget, blah blah, but nothing was reported as having occurred on or to the 7.15am express from Wintergardens to the city. Perhaps it was ridiculous of him to think that something had happened, but checking the internet news pages, finding out, knowing for sure, that wasn’t ridiculous at all, that was just conscientious.
Perhaps the story, whatever it might be, just hadn’t been reported yet. It was only—he glanced at the time on the bottom right hand side of his computer screen—10.45am after all. He tapped his fingers on his desk, then, after a moment, he looked around the office. Most of the desks near his were empty. The coast, as they say, was clear.
He typed another web address in the browser and found the website of the company that ran the suburban train system in Melbourne. A few more clicks and he had found a phone number for enquiries. He picked up his phone, dialled zero for an outside line, then dialled the number.
The call was answered by a recorded voice giving Walter various options. He pressed zero to be put through to a real person. Soon enough someone answered. A woman.
‘Hello,’ Walter said. ‘I wonder if you could put me through to …’ Only then did he realise that he probably should have thought ahead to this moment. ‘Information,’ he finished lamely.
‘Information on our services, Sir?’
‘Well no, not that. Information about …’
‘Timetables?’
‘No, no. Is there someone I could talk to who could tell me about the … well, tell me if anything happened to the 7.15am express from Wintergardens this morning?’
‘Tell you if anything happened to it?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Like what, Sir?’
‘I don’t know. An accident? A … something. I don’t know.’
There was a considerable pause before the voice resumed.
‘Could you please hold the line, Sir? I’ll get someone to speak with you.’
Walter waited. He swapped the phone to his other ear and gave a quick look around the office. No-one close enough to overhear.
Soon a new voice was on the phone. A man this time.
‘Hello, Sir. Is there something I can help you with?’
‘I just wanted to know if anything happened to the Wintergardens train this morning.’
‘Could I have your name, please, Sir?’
Walter hesitated. He blinked a couple of times. Oh crap!
He hung up quickly, slamming the phone down with such violence that a conversation a couple of cubicles away stopped dead. He sat hunched and still until the conversation started up again.
His hand was still on the phone when it rang. He jumped and withdrew his hand to his chest as if it was burnt. Then, after a moment and a breath or two, he picked it up again. It was Ros-at-Reception (he thought of her like that, not Ros, but Ros-at-Reception), a middle-aged woman who had obviously once been told, possibly on some professional development course, that she should always answer the phone with a smile because the person on the other end could hear it. Having done the job perhaps a little too long, the smile had gradually become a grimace, and her voice, when she answered the phone, ‘Equity-Insurance-good-afternoon’, sounded lilting, arch and incredibly insincere.
‘Man here to see you,’ she said shortly. She didn’t smile for internal calls.
‘Really?’ Walter didn’t usually get visitors to the office. ‘Who is it?’
There was a pause as Ros-at-Reception presumably asked the visitor for a name.
‘A Mr Michael Everaardt,’ she said.
Walter had never heard the name before. Didn’t have a clue who it was.
‘I’ll come round.’
The man waiting in Reception was young, dressed in denim jeans and an untucked button shirt, with a sports jacket over it. He had brown hair and a triangular tuft of facial hair under his bottom lip. He was slightly crumpled and gave Walter the impression of being a slacker. He extended his hand as Walter approached, and Walter, still not knowing who he was or what this was about, extended his own hand. They shook hands, three pumps, up and down, of medium firmness—entirely appropriate for a greeting in a business setting.
‘Mr Kovak?’ the young man asked.
‘That’s right. And you’re Michael … Everaardt