This book was at one point being considered for a Bollywood production. They knocked it back because the guy pitching, who hadn’t read it, thought it was too complex. You decide.
Al has just arrived in Sydney. This is his first time in town.
This, he discovered, was Paddy’s Markets, a Sydney institution, stall holders, souvenirs, people, plants, clothes, people, hot nuts, people, shoes, vegetables…….. well, he needed some of those. He bought a pile of greenery, some capsicums, a cantaloupe, which he discovered was called a rock-melon, some carrots, live tomatoes, spuds…….
According to the bathroom scales he bought 19 pounds of vegetables, some hot nuts, and a few good reasons to see an osteopath, soon. Added to which he still needed a meal, as in immediately. It was mid-afternoon, and he was literally starving. He tried across the road. Finally, in a shopping arcade-cum-pigeon roost he found some Chinese food. $4.50 for all you can fit on the plate. Expertly he made a bed of rice on which to balance the heaps of meat and vegetables. They even served beer at another shop.
“The superior man eats as though nothing in the world concerns him”, quoted Al to himself from an ancient Chinese text. Chopsticks keep the mind focused, too, and he thoroughly enjoyed the noisy clatter and chatter.
He discovered soon enough that Australian beer does not keep the mind focused. However, it was beautiful with the food. A truly enjoyable meal. He looked around dreamily at the herds of customers, smelt the magnificent aromas. Peace had come……….
His mistake was standing up. The beer, the food and the lurking jetlag had evidently decided that he needed to sleep, right then, right there, and there was no right of appeal. He dragged himself the 800 miles across the street and held on to the elevator as it went up to the apartment. He authoritatively and decisively flaked out on the couch.
Some hours later he woke with a form of furniture-induced arthritis. Groaning loudly enough to frighten himself, he managed to attain a vertical position and tried to walk. Well, so to speak. It was dark out. He turned on the TV and fooled around with the remote until he got a station plug. It must be about nine, he decided.
He cursed himself. No bedclothes. He wasn’t sleeping in that. He found a few clean looking blankets, washed, and piled into the bed. He was just drifting off when he realized he hadn’t set the alarm. He settled in, whereupon the phone rang.
“Yeah?” Al wondered if his phone manner was better when he was awake.
“Tony?” a female voice asked.
No, this is Al. Tony’s gone back to the States.”
A silence, punctuated by a breaking sound, apparently something heavy.
“Sorry.” She hung up.
Poltergeists, thought Al. He found the bed and crashed out.
Two minutes later the alarm rang and the sun conspiratorially leapt through the window at him. Carrots for breakfast……there were no words…. His suit climbed onto him somehow and he followed gravity to the street. Using a ouija board and sign language he found George Street, which was coincidentally where he was going. He thought about getting a taxi, then realized that it was only a few blocks to the office, it was a little early anyway, and that walking would keep his brain from realizing it was waking up. Trotting uphill he watched commuters as they went on their staring way, as buses passed in streams. He arrived at what appeared to be a church with a church attached to it, and some odd, domed, Victorian building across the road from it.
There was a statue of Queen Victoria. The strange menagerie of Sydney architecture appealed to him somehow. He was right, the walking was preventing him thinking, which could lead to comprehension. Pleased at having outsmarted his brain, which he imagined to be plotting a terrible revenge, he crossed and looked closer at the bronze queen. Reminds me of White, he thought. Serves him right, looking like a statue. Happily he explored the big domed building and came out wondering if Escher had ever been a retailer. Down George Street he trundled, feeling pretty good for some reason.
He wandered happily. Arriving at Circular Quay, he discovered that The Rocks were the expanse of folksy looking buildings on the other side of George Street, which he’d crossed repeatedly in his sightseeing. Despite himself, he found the right building, two blocks down from George Street in a road/laneway which looked as though Queen Victoria had built it herself with her sandstone building blocks set. Somebody had sneaked in an office building while she wasn’t looking. He checked the index of offices, found the suite, and strode into the office looking dapper and alert, he hoped.
A plaster duck sailed past him as he entered. It spun on its axis and impaled a picture of Tony set up among the remains of several previous plaster avians. Its neck went through the picture with deadly accuracy. Probably a more dedicated duck than the others, reasoned Al. Removing his eyes from the scene he saw a young and dangerously attractive woman looking very much like she should be making an explanation.
“Nice shot,” said Al. “You knew Tony well, I take it?”
“Much too bloody well. I’m Carla Jones. You must be Al? I was the one that rang last night. Sorry…….”
Al decided that anyone prepared to kill Tony, literally or figuratively, with a plaster duck, was an asset to the company. He waved away the apology.
“Nah, don’t worry about it. I just wish I’d thought of offing him with a duck, myself…..Nobody ever suspects the plaster duck,” he explained.
“At least it’s a way of getting rid of these damn English curios, or whatever they’re supposed to be. One of our invaluable clients’ great promo ideas.”
“That bad, eh?”
“Worse. Actually, Bill should tell you about all that, but it’s been pretty grim. He’ll be in any minute. Tea?”
Al suddenly felt very weak. Giddy. My God, I’m recycling myself. Carrots for breakfast…….. a man rushed in, saw Al, remains of plaster weaponry, and Carla looking guilty. Al more or less saw a guy about the same age as himself, but bigger and fitter.
“Al? I’m Bill Mackenzie. You OK?”
“As well as a jetlagged man who had carrots for breakfast can be,” he said, from several light years away.
Bill looked at Carla. The look said, “You?” The return look said, “No, I was just killing Tony with plaster ducks.”
“Classic case of decaffeinated American. Get the shovel,” said Bill, kindly.
Al gathered that any sympathy was going to be slightly qualified.
No, not that! Not…..the shovel,” he gasped piteously. He batted his eyelids unforgivably.
“In zizz case ve giffs zer patient zer caffeine. Zen ve fattens him up,” said Carla.
They each grabbed an arm and hauled him to a restaurant, where they filled him with coffee, very drinkable.
“I’m surprised you Yanks don’t have caffeine patches, or drips, by now. God knows nothing ever seems to happen over there without it,” said Bill.
“I once heard that the correct description of an unarmed, decaffeinated, American is a Canadian,” said Carla.
“The defence rests,” said Al.
They all reacted to the smell.
“Some ruthless bastard’s cooking a jaffle at us,” said Bill.
Toasted sandwich, piquant, causes mysticism in housewives,” explained Carla.
“With salami, cheese, tomatoes…….” They found the culprit skulking behind the counter.
Whatever that is, can we all have about eight of them, each?” asked Al.
“With salad?” asked the itinerant.
Al gaped. Salad? He remembered Salad…….wonderful town…….
Bill saved him from answering.
“Our friend here is just over from America and not used to our exotic customs. We will guide him. With salad, please.”
“Are all your cooks so inhumane?” asked Al, as he recovered from the mention of the word salad.
“Things are different here. Food, for example. Over here, we eat it. You’ll get used to it.”
The food arrived and Al gave a display of Olympian eating. Bill and Carla looked on in awe as he went through five jaffles, with salad, and three pots of coffee.
The conversation had covered Al’s arrival, Carla’s call, the dangers of Australian beer to the jetlagged, and grudgingly got round to Tony. Bill was no admirer. Personal info was pretty utilitarian; He was married, one kid, she wasn’t, he evidently wished she was, almost as much as she seemed to be avoiding saying she did. Al, now alert again, remembered that it was Bill, as business manager, who somehow had a direct line to Saul, who had pulled the plug on Tony, Harvey or no Harvey.
“The trouble was that he had so much “ongoing business” we were forever trying to find out who we were paying money to, and for what,” said Carla.
“That was when we had a theoretical say in what was spent. He had some sort of arrangement that covered his authorizing any expenditure, and we had to follow around and try and make accounts out of the paper trail. I think we met every account freeloader in Sydney in the process. He didn’t know anybody, and he scared off David’s clients. He brought in all these people and they sat around with nothing to do on big retainers, then they walked, with their contract money.”
It transpired that David’s low-end clients, painstakingly built up over nearly two years, hadn’t been impressed with sales spiel talking about vast sums, and projections they didn’t understand. From Bill’s politely outraged if terse description he gathered they also thought they were quite capable of making their projections for their own businesses themselves. Al groaned.
“Tony is no adman. He looks good and talks big. That works in some places. You start talking about other people’s money, and those people are going to get defensive, fast. David’s clients were little guys, and they have to watch what they spend. You want someone to sell you a lousy car, get Tony. You want someone to sell advertising, get David.”
