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8. friends of frazer's
There were the warnings from those who had known him. But of course I was in love by now. I had to learn the hard lesson in my own way and in my own time. Once Frazer had driven us both out to the country. It had been his intention to reunite with his family. We arrived in a small and sleepy town, with wide streets and verandahs that yawned and stretched in the sun. His ex-defacto was standing in the garden doing the hosing. She was bony and brown and wore a floral frock. I was surprised by her appearance. She was a dry old shell, a woman who had been in deep trouble for many years. But there was now something peaceful about the way she had contact with her plants. Frazer smiled loudly and started to call out her name. Within a few seconds the hose was abandoned and left to flood and ruin the garden. She ran indoors and started locking and bolting everything. We had startled a man-shy animal. I turned to Frazer in disbelief. 'What's she so frightened of?' I thought she was overreacting, that the two of them were playing games. In the next minute, three police patrol cars surrounded us on the road. The cops told us to get out of town. Frazer lit up a cigarette and looked at his watch. He said, 'I'll give you three minutes to leave town'. The police told him to get out of the car. He wouldn't do it. He said to the big cop with the red moustache, 'Don't waste my fucken time'. Instead of engaging further, we drove slowly away. The patrol cars waited until we were a few blocks on before driving off. Having failed to visit the ex-defacto, we then attempted to visit his intelligent twin brother, Rivers. Frazer said that Rivers had become a dropout after leaving University. I was looking forward to meeting Rivers, as he was one of the few people that Frazer spoke of fondly. But when we arrived Rivers wouldn't let us inside. Instead he had locked himself behind the glass and wire mesh of the old house up in the bush. When Frazer said, 'Rivers, can we come in?' he sat inside calling out, 'Go away! You've ruined by life! You've ruined my life!' He never did let us in. But when Frazer went down to the car to get some insect repellant, he came up to the window and got a look at me. I didn't know what to do with Frazer gone, so I just stood there and said nothing. Rivers checked me right over physically, but was mainly focused on my face. Then he said in a hoarse whisper, 'How the Hell did he get someone like you?' Later, as we drove back to the city Frazer said to me, 'He's got a hang up about the womb. He blames me for taking all the breast milk once we were out. That's all front. Underneath it all he loves me. Basically, the guy can't live without me'. We hadn't got to visit anyone, but Frazer confessed to having a good time. It was the injured frightened people that were attracted to Frazer. Recently there was this sleazy guy that did a hit and run. He approached Frazer and myself at an inner city cafe with that haunted guilty look on his face. He was concerned mainly about his own protection and about knocking another drink down. Frazer told me that the guy had run down two pedestrians in broad daylight. It had been a middle-aged business couple whose car had broken down on a city-bound freeway. He described how their bodies had flown at least forty feet from the impact. I thought of their crumpled unconscious bodies left on the road, as the traffic began to slow down and bank up. I thought of that guy that drove off, his head dizzy and blood fizzing with alcohol, without knowing whether they had lived or died. I thought of his concern for himself only, and that Frazer's concern was with his side of the story and the cover-up. Frazer always maintained that he defended those who nobody else would defend. I felt sorry for the drunken driver too. But no matter what I said, Frazer would not acknowledge the couple who had been hit. At first hatred had puzzled me. Soon Frazer only recognised good enough to try and kill it off, like a bushfire sweeping through an arid landscape will recognise a shrub. Fortunately, many shrubs near magical billabongs survive, long after the fire has burnt itself out. When I spoke to Frazer for one of the last times on the phone, his emphysema was raging down the receiver. His voice contained the dry crackling of a bushfire that had begun to consume him in his suit. At the same time he drowned on his own lungs, it appeared that his body was filling with smoke. The tips of his fingernails to the soles of his shoes were alive and whirling with inhaled smoke from his endless supply of cigarettes. The inhalation of white smoke sped up the hands on his wristwatch, to make him live and die faster than any non-smoker on earth. He could live five years in a day with forty cigarettes as the fuel. Soon he would be decrepit, crackling up at me from a hospital bed, blaming me for his self-destruction. He ate small chimneys, hating the fact that he died by his own hands whilst I lived. |
