The Tax Inspector

Someone was about to divulge some information or to try to cut a deal, but Maria did not want more information about the Catchprices. She wanted them out of her house, out of her life and if this was a confession, she did not want to hear it.

She said: ‘You didn’t need to drive all this way to say sorry.’

‘But we didn’t come to say we were sorry.’ It was the boy again, back from wherever he had been in her house. He slid around the edge of the guitar and stood with his back to the refrigerator. His hair looked as hard and white as spun polymer.

‘Would you mind staying right here?’ she said. She shifted her kettle on to the hottest and fastest of her gas jets. When she looked up, his eyes were on hers.

‘Mrs McPherson is going to sing to you,’ he said.

Maria looked at the woman.

‘I’m really a singer,’ she said. Her face was burning red.

The boy came into the kitchen and plugged the ghetto blaster into the power point next to the kettle.

‘We’re people, not numbers,’ he said. He would not take his eyes off her eyes. She thought: this is the sort of thing that happens in Muslim countries – these dangerous doe-eyed boys with their heads filled with images of western whores in negligees. She looked away from him to his aunt.

‘So you would like to sing to me in the hope it will affect your tax assessment?’

Cathy McPherson had the good grace to look embarrassed, but her nephew buttoned the jacket of his suit without taking his eyes away from Maria’s. ‘We think you’re human,’ he said in that nasal accent as sharp and cold as metal. He moistened his lips and smiled. For Chrissakes – he was coming on to her. ‘We want to talk to you like humans.’

‘O.K.,’ said Maria. ‘I’m going to make one cup of tea, then you’re going to sing, and then you’re going to get out of here because I’ve really had enough for one day.’

‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘We’re going to present two songs.’

‘You can have one.’

‘One is fine,’ Benny unbuttoned his suit coat. ‘You can have recorded or live.’

‘I don’t care what it is. Just do it.’

‘You’d like live?’

‘Sure, live.’

‘O.K., that will be live, then.’

He was one of those people whose personal space was too large, who could be too close to you when you were a metre from them.

She waited for the kettle to boil, staring at it like she might have stared at the floor numbers in an elevator. When the kettle boiled she gave them tea bags of English Breakfast tea but, for herself, an infuser filled with the foul-tasting Raspberry Leaf which Gia’s naturopath said would strengthen the uterine muscles and promote a quick labour.

The Catchprices jiggled their tea bags in silence and dropped them into the kitchen tidy she held open for them and then she shepherded them into the living-room.

Maria sat down on the rocking chair her father had bought for her and put her feet up on the foot stool. She began to see the comic aspect of her ‘information’ and began to observe details of the Catchprices’ dress in order to tell the story properly to Gia.

‘Is this going to be too loud?’ she asked.

‘If you’re worried about noise,’ Benny said, ‘we can play you the demo tape.’

‘It’s just acoustic’ Cathy was trying to fit her bottom on the window-ledge opposite. She strummed a few chords, stopped, started again, and then stood up. ‘Ms Takis,’ she said, ‘it would be more polite if I sang sitting down, but I’m damned if I can get myself comfortable.’

‘Fine,’ Maria said.

‘Thank you.’ Cathy tapped her boot three times. The floor shook. It was an old wooden Balmain cottage which was badly built even in 1849.

‘You were a married man I know,’ she sang. The voice got Maria in the belly. It was raw, almost croaky, and way too loud for this street, this time of the morning.

I shouldn’t have begun.

Cathy McPherson changed physically. She became taller, straighter. The athletic armature of her body revealed itself and she rocked and rolled and showed a sexual confidence which was previously unimaginable. There was something happening in those belligerent little eyes which made her as soft as a cat rubbing itself against your leg.

You told me you’d always love your wife

I shouldn’t have begun.

Thirty seconds ago she was big and blowzy like a farmer’s wife, or someone with fat burns on their sallow skin, working in a fish ’n’ chip shop at two o’clock in the morning. Her arms were still plump. Her belly still pressed against her leather skirt, but now you could not look at her without believing that this was someone who made love passionately – she was a sexual animal.

But it was late at night and I was lonely

I didn’t know I’d fall in love

and now you’ve gone and left me baby

with a freeway through my heart.

She occupied Maria’s living-room like a compressor unit or some yellow-cased engine so loud and powerful that it demanded you accommodate yourself to it. This was what Maria did not like about it – she felt bullied on the one hand and seduced on the other. Also: the subject matter was discomforting. It seemed too close for coincidence.

Trucks are running

through the freeway in my heart

Twisting sheets

All this noise and pain

Ten retreads hissing

through the driving rain.

Just as the second verse was about to start, the singer saw Maria’s face and stopped.

Maria said: ‘Thank you.’

Cathy shrugged.

Maria said: ‘How do you think this could affect my work?’

Cathy opened her mouth, then shut it, frowned, rubbed her bedraggled hair. ‘This doesn’t make a pinch of difference to anything does it?’

‘No, it can’t.’

‘Fine.’

‘What the hell could I do?’ said Maria, angrily. ‘What sort of corrupt person do you want me to be? Are you going to try to bribe me now?’

‘I’m sorry.’ And Cathy was sorry; at the same time she was angry. She was sorry she had placed herself in such a foolish position.

‘If I cared more for Country music I could say something intelligent about your song.’

‘You don’t like Country music?’