Lockbox
by David KaneBurnt meat and smoke.
Anna Saar looked down and tapped her feet drunkenly, out of time with the game-show music piping out of the speakers at the other end of the restaurant terrace. Her two clients - both men, one old, white, and English, the other young, thin, and Chinese-Australian - exchanged bored glances over the blue-and-white checked tablecloth, pretending to listen to her boss, their hands resting on the sides of their white plastic chairs.
The music stopped, but it took three beats for Anna's feet to cease slapping. The race was about 10 minutes away and she sat resigned, a sagging, mid-30s woman with smudgy glasses, mousy-brown hair, and a washed-out face.
She got up suddenly. She couldn't listen to her manager, Mike, for another moment. With a polite nod to her clients, she turned away and trudged across the garishly lit restaurant, through the exit and into the air-conditioned betting room. She walked up to the counter, opened her black clutch bag, pulled out a betting slip and ball-point pen (ignoring studiously the leather dog collar), filled in the slip randomly and pushed it under the chicken-wire grill with a $50 note folded around it.
"You've escaped," said a friendly voice from behind and to her left.
Leaving her feet planted, Anna twisted her head around and looked up at him. It was the young client, Peter Wing. He was leaning forward toward her, his arms crossed over his chest, his polished black shoes splayed into a V. A fan of betting slips stuck out of his crushed linen jacket-pocket, and he wore a blue shirt with a gold tie and cufflinks.
Anna forced a smile. She hadn't noticed it at dinner, but he was tall, with perfect white teeth and a symmetrical, tanned face.
"Just a bit of a flutter," she said.
Anna turned away from Peter, took back the betting slip from the woman behind the counter, and stepped away to her right to make room for him at the counter.
"You look as miserable as I feel," he said, placing his bet. "Only thing I hate more than going to these things is having to host them."
"I'm not bored - I like getting to know clients," she said, trying valiantly to inject conviction into her words.
"Come on. I'm stuck here with my boss - a total inbred. You're here with the most boring man in China. But it's gotta be more than that," he said studying her face. "You look like you're about to cry."
Anna looked down at her feet and blinked away tears. "Tough week," she said. "Death in the family on Monday - my nan."
"I'm sorry," said Peter. "You were close?"
"She practically raised me," said Anna and nodded.
"Then you shouldn't be here," said Peter. "Mike has no right to make you play happy hostess at a time like this. He's boring and a bastard."
"No," said Anna, agreeing silently with Peter's assessment. "This is actually he highlight of my week - and I don't mean that as a compliment. Some cretins broke into my place yesterday while I was at work and scribbled smut all over my walls. They didn't take anything, but I couldn't sleep last night. Then, this morning, I found my dog dead on the doorstep. And the punch-line to my week: the dog was a gift from my Nan."
"Christ - I'm really sorry," said Peter, touching her shoulder, looking down at her with his perfect white teeth hidden behind worry-pursed lips. Despite her tears, Anna felt a ripple of pleasure along her spine, then realized she'd been counting out her woes theatrically on her bony fingers. She looked up at Peter and again down at the floor, feeling foolish.
"I tell you one thing," he said. "I sure hope we didn't bet on the same horse."
Despite herself, Anna laughed, and mock-punched Peter's shoulder. Together, they set off back towards the restaurant.
Anna hadn't been listening to the announcements: most of them were in Cantonese, and she had been flirting with Peter, joking about some dumb shark movie she'd seen on a plane. When they entered the restaurant, she was shocked.
The place was deserted. Their bosses were nowhere to be seen, and a crowd was massed against the railing.
Without a word, Anna and Peter ran down the shallow steps to the packed club box, Anna squinting at the TV monitor on the left wall. Beneath the race statistics - favorites, jockey colors, and perfecta odds - the screen was looping replays of a false start. A frail, old man at the front, enjoying his moment as the centre of attention, turned up the volume, allowing everyone to hear the announcer recount what had happened.
Anna was riveted. One of the horses - a blinkered brown mare - had miscued, or had a heart-attack - no-one was sure yet - and had smashed into the starting gate with such force that she had become trapped. When the gates opened to release her, a gelding up the other end, in its maiden race, had panicked and galloped diagonally into the horse to its right, causing both horses to fall badly. A freak accident. Two jockeys dead.
Anna looked out at the track. Even with her weak eyes, she could see three horse carcasses laid out in the winners' circle. She looked down on the covered bodies, lost control of her breathing and uttered a single loud sob.
Whirling toward her, Peter grabbed her around the waist and held her. "Let's get out of here," he said. "You need to get away from this now."
Fifteen minutes passed and they lurched out of the taxi and into the club. Capsheaf was a large, multi-storied dive, with internal balconies tiered like steppes, looking down onto a bar sunk in a pit below the ground-level dance-floor. A gold balustrade ran across the bar in front of pumped-up barmen flipping cocktails. A fat Filipino hogged centre stage, grinding against the golden pole, lying back, high-kicking her flabby thighs in time with the soft-rock, and winking obscenely up at the writhing mass on the dance-floor.
Peter grabbed Anna's hand and steered her towards the bar. The place was hot and smelled of dope, recycled beer breath and vanilla. Smoke billowed up from vents in the floor and strobes flashed the crowd like paparazzi.
They reached the bar, and Peter thrust his head through the fat woman's legs and sang out for two Stellas. He fumbled into his pocket, threw some grimy notes up at the barman, grabbed the pints, and passed them behind his back to Anna. After collecting his change, he swiveled to face her and pointed her up to one of the sound-proof private lounges on the second floor.
Anna nodded, turned, and pushed a voguing, blonde slattern out of her way. She walked across the room, climbed the stairs, turned along the dark corridor, through and under an arch and into the lounge. She could hear Peter's breath behind her.
Slowly, they lowered themselves onto overstuffed floor cushions. But for a goth, sleeping Japanese guy, they were alone. Afro-portuguese lounge music suffused the room and Anna closed her eyes, her hips and stomach jiggling unconsciously against an engaged column.
"Better," said Peter smiling across at her. "Good place to chill."
With her eyes closed, Anna smiled, agreeing with him. "Sorry I freaked out. So embarrassing."
Anna opened her eyes to see Peter waving his hand dismissively. "Forget it. It could've been worse - you could have found out that your boyfriend's been cheating on you."
Anna stifled a laugh. So clumsy and juvenile, but there it was. "You've got to have one first," she said, accepting his poorly-coded invitation.
She spun herself around and dropped her head onto his chest. She was skunk-drunk and tired, she realized, but happy.
"I was meant to be out of this accounting shit by now," she said, "running my diving school in the Maldives. Bonking the odd dutch boy and living my life."
Peter smiled and massaged her temples.
"I planned it all out, just like an accountant. The competition, strategy, the funding. All filed in a box at home."
Anna paused for a moment to slurp her beer and then continued: "But I couldn't do it. One more year, I said every Christmas. But it's never enough money to go for it, so I stayed on, frightened to try. And then I changed. Got addicted to five-star day-spas, Manolos. Passed over the simple life. One more year," she said, then frowned. "But that was too long for Nan to wait in the end."
"No," whispered Peter, and waited for Anna to go on.
"I was sure she'd last forever. And she'd have been the first to agree. She was sick, and she was old. But she escaped the Russians to get out of Estonia. And she gave so much to mum and me."
Anna started to cry again. Peter rubbed her back until she was ready to go on. "I didn't go home when she was sick. It was peak season. Fares are crazy. I needed - wanted - the cash for my mythical school. I was so close to having enough with a buffer. But then she died. And then Kaja."
"Kaja?" asked Peter.
She flipped around in his arms like a landed fish, gulping up at him. "Poor thing. The runt of nan's pups, and never got much bigger. Mum rang me with the news about nan. Kaja was excited, yapping and jumping up onto my lap, tangling his paws and neck in the phone cord. It wasn't right. Not. Appropriate," she said, over-articulating the last two words primly.
Anna reached up behind her head and grabbed unsteadily at the column, pulling herself into a half-sitting position. Then she picked up her clutch bag, unclasped the lock, upended it and spilled its contents out onto a blue-velvet ottoman.
"The world punishes the trusting," she whispered, sorting carefully through the mess of tissues, cosmetics, betting slips, pens and tampons. Finding her quarry, she picked up the black leather dog-collar and proffered it to Peter. Peter accepted it gingerly.
"So while mum blabbered on about coffin-prices, flight-times, Whitney-Houston-ballads and readings from the letters of St Paul," said Anna (as though relating a dirty joke to friends), "I pulled the cord tight and choked him. When mum hung up, he was..."
Anna broke off and slid down the column, retching spastically against Peter's arm. Then her sobbing ceased as, without warning, she passed out.
A little while later, Anna awoke in the back of the taxi, remembering nothing of Capsheaf. She looked at the driver, and then over to Peter. He was watching her intently. A sharp pain carved its way into and through her skull, but she ignored it and sat up.
She'd been lying on Peter's lap, and her face was red and patterned where she's burrowed her head into his linen jacket. Her lips were parched, and she was still drunk.
"Come home with me," she said to Peter. "I can't be alone tonight. After the break in."
He smiled, his perfect white teeth glinting, his head bowed. She croaked her thanks and her address out to the driver, who nodded and turned the taxi around.
Anna felt the first cramps as she pulled into her block. Urgent spasms: she couldn't wait.
"Apartment 31-06," she cried back at Peter as she jumped out of the cab, and ran toward the elevator.
The elevator shot up, but not fast enough. Anna bounced impatiently, glaring up at the black-mirrored dome of the security camera.
Finally, the elevator doors opened onto the 31st floor. She galloped out, turned right and ran to her apartment. Reaching into her bag, she grabbed the key, plunged it into the door-lock. She shouldered the door open with a turn of her arm and flicked on the chintzy chandelier in the living room. She then waddle-ran into her apartment, across the lounge and into the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind her.
Anna's thighs were clenched and sweating. She thumbed her pants and panties down, turned around, squatted down, and opened her bowels. As ever the romantic, she thought with relief. A sobbing, shitting mess. She giggled at the thought. Quite the first date.
She sat there a while, emptying filth into the bowl below her, gazing at the mold between the blue-gray bathroom tiles and on her shower curtain, her legs splayed like a hooker in a wheelchair. Eventually, she wiped herself, leaned forward, put her hands in her knees, pulled her suit-pants up, flushed and turned to the sink. She washed her hands and face, patted her mousy hair down, lit some incense over the sink, and walked to the door.
Anna had a small apartment with sliding glass doors on one side that opened onto a little open air balcony opposite a flight of stairs. The stairs led to the single bedroom and then up to the roof.
Worn-brown carpet covered the floor and Japanese prints hung on the grey papered walls. A teak daybed dominated the living room and faced an stoneware urn on a white plastic cabinet where the TV should have been. Behind the sofa, wedged up against the edge of the small kitchenette, was a wrought iron and glass dining table and two mismatched chairs. Grey and white cables snaked together behind an army-green filing cabinet in the far corner. On top of the filing cabinet was a CD player, amplifier and small speakers.
As Anna opened the bathroom door she saw none of this. The room was dark and smelled of piss. The CD player had been switched on and a folk-song fiddled and clapped out from the speakers on top of her filing cabinet.
Anna paused. She didn't own any folk music.
"Peter?" she whispered.
No answer, but there was rustling sound from the far side of the room. Anna felt a breeze playing with her hair. The balcony doors were open. Instinctively, she edged across the room toward the dining table and the now-closed apartment door, reaching vainly for the light switch.
The barbecue exploded into flames. Anna snatched back her hand and froze. Framed in its sudden light stood Peter. He was naked and white and wore the dog-collar around his left wrist like a bracelet. He held a knife in his right hand. He held it like it was part of him.
Anna tore her eyes away and looked around. The Japanese prints had been cut down from the walls. The cables had been chewed through. The urn was smashed, its contents mixed with a a viscous liquid and smeared pornographically across the wall in the same markings she'd scrubbed off that morning. The latch on her lockbox was broken, and its contents were soiled.
Anna looked back to Peter's corner, and found that he was no longer there. From somewhere in front of her, she heard a low growl. She squinted and saw him, crouched in front of the door she was edging toward, the knife hidden. Anna swallowed and shook.
"I reared you as my daughter," snarled Peter in a whisky-soaked alto. "But you never listened to my stories."
Anna blanched with terror. The folk-flute ceased mid-trill. Silence fell between them. A silence with meaning.
Anna shook her head in confusion and Peter unfurled his body, his torso glinting with sweat, red from the reflected firelight of the barbecue. His eyes were ice. He smiled and chained the front door shut. Then he stopped, his body a statue in profile.
Anna closed her eyes and tried to lengthen her breaths. She took a mental inventory - a mop, a broom, a spice-rack, a bucket, and a vase - no weapon, no defense. Not against this.
Her eyes had adjusted and she could see him clearly. He was thinner. His spine was curved with fused, jutting vertebrae. His ears were erect and glistening. He had hair-thatched legs and eyes that were blue and vacant. Lines gouged his face and his hair was long and snowy. His shaking left hand clawed slowly at the air in Anna's direction, and jagged fingernails pocked his velour gloves.
"Have you forgotten the tale of the village crone and the dog-headed man?" hissed the voice from Peter's mouth. "Many years he and I played love in Tallinn. Most pups we raised for pelts; but one runt I saved for you."
Anna remembered dredged-up flecks of her girlhood: the old woman standing by the clapped-out stove, chanting and beating at vegetable gruel in a copper-plated pot. She remembered, too, the cellar beneath the kitchen, and the whimpers of small dogs scratching a door forbidden to six-year-old hands. Many memorable things forgotten.
"N-Nan?" stammered Anna.
"You neglected my tongue," spat Peter's mouth. "Kaja. My echo. He was my pathway here, with my body cold. But your will is dishwater: you dream on as you age, and do nought important."
Peter splayed his left paw and pointed to the scribbled phalli and breasts etched onto the wall. "You ignored my pleas for a strong man or woman, while I trembled in your lap. And then you murdered my echo, and made me hide in this," he said, and twisted the collar cruelly, burning Peter's wrist.
Anna flinched and stepped back.
"This one was suitable," it moaned, running Peter's palms lecherously over his torso and genitals. "But too late. My link was corrupted. And I am reborn to this world a monster."
Anna could take no more and bolted across the room. Up the stairs and onto the roof she went. Away from its gnarled fingernails and knife and maw.
Passively, the thing watched her feet disappear up the staircase. It then uttered a cackle-howl, lunged over the daybed and, in one mouthful, gulped down the lockbox.
A few minutes of stillness passed as it digested the flimsy steel. It was furious, but patient. There was no rush. Before that night, years before, the prey had lost the wherewithal to survive.
Satisfied momentarily, it curled its lips back over its gums and teeth - its perfect white teeth. Over to the stairs it went and climbed up towards the girl, the knife wedged purposefully between the white hooks of its poisonous teeth.
©David Kane
Born in rural Australia, David Kane now lives and works in Hong Kong, paying the bills by writing copy for banks and law firms. He is married and - to date - has 0.75 children.