The Tax Inspector

‘Mrs McPherson,’ said Maria. ‘Don’t you realize how prejudicial it is for you to be here?’

Cathy McPherson stepped down off the step. ‘I’d be obliged,’ she said, ‘if I could use your toilet.’

28

Cathy was in this ridiculous position because she had done what Benny had said. She could not stand being told what to do by anyone, and she was here because Benny told her to be there – little frightened, crying Benny whom she used to take into bed and soothe to sleep – Benny who ground his teeth – Benny who wet his bed – Benny who did so badly at school she had to take him to Special Needs to have his I.Q. tested.

Now the alcohol had worn off and she was following the Tax Inspector into her house holding her guitar. She knew right away this woman had no personal connection with Benny. He had dreamed it. He had manufactured it inside his head.

Benny came behind her carrying his cassette player. He was smiling, not at anything or for anything, but smiling like an evangelist on television. He had been like this already when he had appeared in front of her. That was at ten o’clock and she had had a row with Howie about all the songs he had copyrighted ‘Big Mack’, and she had been sitting up drinking Scotch and Coke by herself because she was upset – about her mother, about the tax audit, about the ownership of songs she had written but now might not own, about the shambles she had made of her life – and Benny crept up the stairs – she had The Judds’ version of ‘Mr Pain’ playing really loud – and gave her such a fright. He just appeared in the kitchen in front of her and spoke. She nearly shat herself.

He said, ‘What are you doing to control your destiny?’

As if he read her mind.

He stood before her in his fancy suit and folded his hands in front of his crotch. The hands were even more amazing than the suit. She could not help staring at them – so white and clean like they had been peeled of history.

His hair shone like polyester in the neon light and when he spoke, it was in a language not his own – his mother’s perhaps (although who could remember after all this time how Sophie spoke?). In any case, it was not the language of a problem child, not someone whose I.Q. you worry about.

He said: ‘I can take you to talk to the Tax Inspector.’

Normally she would have poured him a drink and tried to talk him out of it, whatever the latest ‘it’ was. But she was dazzled, no other word for the experience. She turned off The Judds.

He said: ‘Her name is Takis. There are only three in the phone book and I’ve ruled out the other two. She’s not back yet because I’ve been ringing her every twenty minutes to check.’ He wiped some perspiration from his lip with a handkerchief with a small gold brand-name still stuck in the corner.

She had sipped some more of her Scotch. Howie always said the Coke killed the Scotch but she could taste it. ‘Ben, what’s happened to you?’

‘Getting fired was the best thing ever happened to me,’ he said. She started to say sorry – and she was sorry – it was the worst thing she’d ever had to do – but he held up his hand to stop her. ‘I’ve come to repay the favour,’ he said.

She pushed out a chair for him but he would not sit. He grasped the back of the chair with his hands and rocked it back and forth.

‘You can see I’ve changed?’

‘You could have been your Mum,’ she said.

He nodded his head and smiled at her. His eyes held hers. They were as clear as things washed in river water. ‘We all possess great power,’ he said. Jesus Christ – he gave her goose-bumps.

‘Get your guitar,’ he said. Not ‘please’ or ‘would you mind’, just ‘get your guitar’.

Later she told Howie: ‘It was like your dog stood up and talked to you. If the dog said get your guitar, you would. Just to see what happened next.’ She lied about dog. She did not think dog at all. What she was thinking of was that holy picture where the angel appears to Mary. Only later she said dog.

She sneaked into the bedroom where Howie was asleep, straight up and down on his back – taught himself to do it in a narrow bed. She got down the Gibson. She brought it back into the kitchen and he was trying to unplug the ghetto blaster from over the sink. He had all the power cords tangled – toaster, kettle, blender.

‘Benny, I don’t know this is smart,’ she said.

‘What’s smart? Waiting here so you get busted?’ He pulled the ghetto blaster cord clear of the mess and wound it round his wrist. ‘Spending the rest of your life stuck here paying off the tax bill? You want to stay here till you die?’

She saw it. She felt it. Some tight band clamped around her stomach.

‘The Tax Inspector likes me,’ he said. ‘That’s the key to everything.’

‘You talked to her?’

‘It’s personal. We’re going to call on her in a personal capacity. Come on Cathy – she’s kind. She’s a very kind person.’

‘She sure doesn’t feel kind about me.’

‘You have the power,’ Benny insisted. ‘I’ll introduce you properly. She is going to see who you are. We are going to show her your life.’

‘My life?’

‘Our lives have power,’ he said. ‘You’re an artist. What was it Ernest Tubb wrote to you?’

‘Oh, Ernest Tubb …’

‘You have the talent to … ?

‘The ability to change the rhythms of the human heart.’

‘Right. Ability. Plus: she’s pregnant. She’s full of milk.’

‘Benny,’ Cathy smiled, ‘there’s no milk till there’s a baby.’

‘O.K.,’ Benny said impatiently. ‘Forget that bit. Once she understands the consequences of her actions, she’ll go easy on you. Sing her a song. Show her who you are. You’ve got to sell her. You’ve got to demonstrate what’s at stake here. Come with me,’ he said.

And she did.

But now the alcohol had worn off and she felt sour and dehydrated and she just wanted to apologize. She stood on one side of the Tax Inspector’s neat white kitchen, filled with shame. Maria Takis was holding a shining metal kettle. Cathy admired ‘nice things’ although she did not own many and the obvious quality of the kettle, its good taste, its refinement, the sort of shop it must have come from, all this somehow made the intrusion worse. Cathy felt coarse and vulgar. She had not even washed her hair before she left.

‘Ms Takis,’ she said, although she hated to hear herself say ‘Ms’. ‘I think I’ve made a big mistake. I’m sorry. But I was really horrible to you this morning and it’s been on my mind and I just wanted to say how sorry I was. I know you’ve got your job to do.’

She said she was sorry. She made herself small. But there was no relief. All it did was make the woman look at her as if she was a frigging ant.

29

Cathy McPherson came back from the bathroom smelling of Elizabeth Arden and whisky. She wore her chamois leather cowgirl suit with high-heeled boots with spurs. Her waistcoat cut into her big fleshy arms. She stood in the kitchen doorway with her huge guitar and her little white hands and sent confusing signals with her eyes.

The guitar was a big instrument – too big to take visiting, but presumably too valuable to leave in a parked car. Cathy McPherson leaned against the doorway, on the hallway side, fiddling with the little mother-of-pearl guitar picks which were wedged in beside the tuning pegs like ticks on a cattle dog’s ear.

If this had been an investigation Maria had wanted to pursue, this would have been the turning point.