Hunger

Chapter 3

The kettle reaches boiling point and Max's toast pops up. Sunlight smiles through the window as if its a beautiful day. Max pours water into his mug and watches an apparition of steam curl into the air. He sighs, for the moment content.

He sits down with the paper and the headline is like a yell to the hungover.

HORROR STRIKES THE SUBURBS

His son Col is already at the table reading, studying as always. The goldilocks effect. The golden child with golden hair, still damp. Col glances over at the paper and frowns.

"What a horrible headline."

Max goes to hide the story as if from a child, then remembers Col is eighteen.

"It was a horrible murder."

Max looks at his fingertips, there's black ink in the grooves.

"They live off that stuff. They're probably pissing their pants at the number of sales."

Col has his haughty look upon him, the one that can get away with swearing and being a knowing little shit. He's been doing it since he came out a few months ago - throwing it in Max's face as if he's the professor of modern cynicism now.

"People have a right to understand."

"People don't want to understand, they want to get off."

Sal walks in and saves Max from Col's sexuality.

"Is that your murder on the front page?" She has a sympathetic look on her face. She'd make a terrible policwoman, but an alright nurse. She's neither, since she went back to work after the kids it's been a part-time gig in retail.

"Yep."

Max closes the paper at last and folds it so the accusing headline is hidden.

"Do you want anything for lunch?"

"Panadol and a bottle of vodka?"

Col laughs and suddenly he's back to the ray of sunshine he was until he started Year 12. If only... Max just stops himself from thinking it.

Jessica slumps down the stairs and into the kitchen, throwing droplets of water around the kitchen. She looks happy this morning, which is always a blessing, and for a moment the kitchen is the fantasy of a nuclear family. Then Max opens his mouth.

"Done your homework Jess?" he asks breazily, but it doesn't matter because the moment they intrude her hackles are up. She shrugs. He hardens. "Have you done it? Because last time I checked you hadn't even started."

"I've started it," she says, and has the decency to look nervous for a moment.

"Just get it done Jess, it's not much we're asking." Sal sniffs and shakes her head, annoyed at being dragged into this mess again. "We're paying for you to go to decent school."

Col the little shit pipes in, "Yeah Jess just do it."

"Go suck a dick," she retorts, "That's what you're into now isn't it? Faggot."

Max finds himself standing and staring down Col before he can even think, as if he's forgotten the problem was Jess. Col looks crumpled. Jess races back upstairs. Sal says, "Enough," and Max grabs the newspaper, his coffee, a briefcase and walks out the front door.

Max endures the commute as he makes his way to work on the train with the other passenegers. Max feels like a processed fish, crowded into the carriage like sardines in a can. Join the queue, swipe your ticket, stand behind the yellow  line. He stares at a youth bopping to music only he can hear. 

His and Garth's first call of duty is the bereaved husband. They are ushered into the hallway of a Toorak mansion by a man who has stepped into another world and is now absent. It registers in this one as shock. 

The hallway is polished boards and tasteful black-and-whites of children, his, and probably grandkids too. They sit at the dining room table, and it is not as sterile as Max has always imagined. There are scratches on the wood, water marks, as if people actually lived here.  

"Can you tell me a little about your wife's movements?" Max sighs. It's an unpleasant job. Garth hangs with his pen over a notepad, ready for the merest hint of guilt.

Richard, that's his name, takes a while. First to hear, then to process, then think.

"She went to work Monday, Tueday and Wednesday," like Sal, Max thinks, "Comes home, cooks dinner... Shit."

Garth looks awkward. Max just wants to reach out and take this man's hand.

"Go on," is what he says instead. 

"She had heaps of friends. What's the correct tense for that? They're still here. Has? They don't tell you how to deal with the grammar."

Max straightens in his chair. 

"Look mate, I know this is hard, but the quicker we can get information the more chance we have of bringing someone to justice."

Richard raises his eyes - they've been staring someplace noone invisible to untouched people.

"Why did this happen to her?"

If Max coul bottle the number of times he'd failed to answer that one. From sons of whores, from mothers of junkies, from husbands of rich suburban wives. 

Jess finishes netball practice and darkness is lowering over the suburbs. In the west a band of feeble blue light is the remains of the day.

She bids farewell to her teamates - not all of them mates of course, some of them just the false kind - and pulls her jacket tight around her body, her hood snug around her face. The cold stings on her legs like salt in a wound.

She walks out of the sports presinct, lit up like an alien invasion, and enters the gloom of the streets. Lamps form cones of yellow light that she walks under. The houses loom warm and inviting. 

She walks past a park. The trees are like figures standing on the lawn. Her eyes see movement where there is none.

A man is in front of her. She can't seize a sudden intake of breath, and she jerks out of his way. He keeps walking, he's no threat, just someone else making their way home. She chides herself. Bushes reach out over fences, straining for her face. Their deep shadows hide monsters.

She glances behind her and there, she's convinced there is someone in the street light behind her. She quickens and is determined not to look again. She watches her shadow as it changes angles between lights like a sun dial. There's nothing there, and then suddenly there is. She spins around. She's sure there was something, an extra shadow where before there was only her own. Her heart is   out of step with her breathing and she feels starved of oxygen.