* * *
While all this was going on, Mr Hallum was shooting blanks and Mrs Hallum was none too pleased about it. In one of our regular counselling sessions Mr Hallum related to me in a tone of horror and through the employment of euphemisms how he had entered a small white room in a fertility clinic and tossed off into a clear plastic cup. From his chair across the room from me, Mrs Hallum sitting meekly by his side, Mr Hallum explained to me in lowered sober tones that on that shameful day he had called ahead, being the good Christian that he was, to demand that all pornography should be removed from the masturbatorium prior to his entering it – a request unprecedented in the history of the clinic. The final prognosis: no baby without IVF. But Mr Hallum would have none of that. He was a good Christian, or so he told me, and apparently somewhere in the Bible IVF gets a panning. No more spilling his seed on the ground he had declared. The sin of Onan! Mrs Hallum was also comfortable with that, he told me on Mrs Hallum’s behalf. He looked confident on that score but I knew he was wrong. I knew for a fact that Mrs Hallum was a fucking long way from being comfortable with it.
Mr Hallum, unique among my clients, used to insist on maintaining the formalities. He preferred to be addressed as ‘Mister’ and so his wife, by default, and in his presence, was always ‘Missus’. He would baulk at calling me Simon. He was never good with familiarity, was Mr Hallum. My one-on-one sessions with Mrs Hallum, on the other hand (or Faith, as I called her when Mr Hallum had left the room), tended to be far more relaxed. Very informal. And therefore far more productive in terms of her anger management therapy. First, she’d suck my penis and then we’d root like rabbits. It was an altogether more satisfying relationship.
* * *
Around this time Evie dropped by The Mission late one afternoon. As she walked in the door she tossed me a chocolate bar and flashed me a smile, as she always did. She asked for a kiss good-humouredly, as usual, but didn’t get one, as usual, so she slumped into the chair opposite me and raised her eyebrows by way of a conversation starter. Evie was wearing a short skirt and low-cut shirt and her boobs looked about ready to jump out of her bra. It was a device that would win her several hundred dollars over the next few hours but I suspect that even if she hadn’t worked in the sex industry she’d have worn clothes like that. It was always nice to see Evie. She didn’t take herself too seriously and she was witty and incredibly sharp. God alone knows why she had taken up prostitution but back then I believed that she would tell me one day and we’d nut the whole thing out, but I realise now that I worried about those things much more than the girls who stopped at The Mission ever did. They seemed to live far more in the present than I did. They were never sentimental about the past. The past was the past. It didn’t haunt them. Perhaps that was a defence mechanism. After all, if your power of recall extends only so far as breakfast then you expunge all recollections of sex from dinner time the night before. No recollection. No burden. But without a past, the girls seemed to have had no yard sticks, no anchors. The girls I saw seemed to drift. With nothing to measure their progress by they became complacent and so when I asked Evie that day where she came from she just shrugged. Bathurst, she told me, off-handedly as if it meant nothing and was never a part of her. I asked what it was like growing up in Bathurst and she had no memories to share but bad ones. She told me it was fucking cold in winter, fucking hot in summer, all the blokes there smelt of sheep or engine oil and all the girls lost their virginity in the back seat of a V8 at the age of fifteen. I couldn’t help it. I asked if she had lost her virginity in the back seat of a V8. She shook her head and I laughed. ‘Fifteen?’ I asked, only half-seriously. She was losing interest, or feigning so. ‘No,’ she told me curtly. I rose and walked to the fridge for a coke. ‘Well, I’m glad you made the age of consent at least!’ Evie replied coolly, ‘I didn’t say that, Mister.’
* * *
A room full of silent six-year-olds is never really silent. There is always a lot of squirming and at least one kid full of snot breathing gaspily through an open mouth. That was the noise that I could hear at Sunday School later that week in the moments before Gregory told the children that there is no such thing as Santa Claus. I can still see those poor little buggers gathered cross-legged and exuberant in the minutes before he dropped the bombshell, their cheerful faces crumpling, the bottom-lip-quivering spreading like the Spanish flu, the quivers turning into sobs. When Gregory went on to clarify for them, stating with micro-pauses between each word, that ‘Santa. Is. The. Devil’, little Davy Mortimer’s response was the most emphatic. He spontaneously voided his bladder. And so I was left to console the rest of them while Gregory marched Davy out the door and to the toilet. A Minister of Religion left alone with a six-year-old boy naked from the waist down! There was nothing to worry about with Gregory though. Mind games. That was more his gig.
After Sunday School was over Gregory returned to the classroom where I was quietly sitting by myself and feeling like a total prick. He moved heavily around the room, his big arse following him like a serious consequence, bending with creaking knees and little ughs to pick up the copies of Bible Stories for Children lying scattered about the floor. I watched him as he worked to build up a pile of books on the desk near my elbow. I didn’t offer to help. He’d almost finished when I saw him bend, pick up a book, straighten his back and pause to reflect. After a time he shook his head and murmured, ‘Regrettable,’ for my benefit. I didn’t say anything. He turned, looked at me briefly, dried his palms on his trouser legs, and lowered his head again as he thought something over. He looked very serious. He made his mind up. ‘Next week … dinosaurs!’ he concluded emphatically and departed like he was really going to enjoy it. His arse left a second or so later.
* * *
I realise now that it was all building up to something. Everything around that time seemed to be taking on a new and deeper meaning. On the bus on my way home from The Mission one evening I found myself watching the sun dipping behind the city, my mind in public transport neutral. It promised to be one of those soft Sydney nights. I was still tired. I remember the bus slowed and stopped and the doors breathed open on a young woman who made her way up the stairs, paid the driver and walked to a seat just up the aisle from me. Anorexia. She was skin and bone. Her forearms were narrow and mean. The bones in her wrists were hard round marbles under the yellow stretched skin. Her hair was thinning and I could see the smooth dome of her skull. A death’s head. A Jolly Roger. She was Auschwitz. Belsen. Everything about her, exaggerated. Big bangles rattled down those long arms and fat beaded necklaces weighed around her thin neck. She wore a short skirt and I could see the skin wrinkling around the caps of her knees. I averted my eyes. I couldn’t bear to look. I was almost angry at her for her affliction. I gazed out the window again and my mind wandered. I thought back to when I wasn’t always such a mopey bastard. I thought back to the night in Noosa when Susan, Allison and I rode our bikes down to the beach. I can still see them ahead of me on their rented bicycles, riding side by side, laughing at some stupid joke, leaning forward over the handle bars and pushing enthusiasm into the pedals. I looked back to the anorexic girl. I should have rested my hands on her head. I should have traced every bump and suture with my fingertips and purged her of the horrible demon, like some schmaltzy LA faith-healer. I should have told her about those other girls on the bicycles. I should have described Allison to her just as she was that night. I should have told that poor skeleton how beautiful a woman can be with so little effort.
* * *
Days later, the anorexic girl was still playing on my mind. A world of self-absorption and of self-destruction. A world of appalling need and a world of greed. A perfect world for unequal exchange. It was Monday morning, 10am, and warm for autumn. Bright Sydney sunshine wearied the drooping gum trees behind King Street. In my little workers cottage I showered, dressed and gathered up my gear, not feeling so great about my fellow humans. As I closed my front door and hit the street en route to the bus stop, squinting my eyes against the glare, I noticed a woman walking towards me on the footpath. I was not in the mood. I could tell that she had clocked me, so I averted my eyes. She was maybe 48 years old, wearing a pair of denim jeans and a pink checked cowboy shirt. She was also wearing a white cowboy hat. I looked down. She was wearing white leather cowboy