Gabrielle Taylor's "Cockluck"
February 14, 2002
Judith thrust her cellphone into Bertram's hand. "Great. Use this. Call movers. Call the bar and tell them you're moving so you can't come in."
"Right now?"
"I want you to oversee the cleaners. I want you to make sure they don't mess up the place."
"The only way the place could be worse is if they parked their truck right in the living room. I don't want to move into the middle of this crap."
"The cleaners are coming in the morning. So call the movers now, get them to pack everything up tonight, and then drop it off tomorrow morning. I'll pay for it."
"I'd rather you gave me the cash and I moved myself. I just hired Auntie Dynamite, I don't know if she can handle the place by herself yet."
"So borrow my cellphone and give her the number so she can call you if she runs out of beer or punches out a customer. It's a Thursday. What's going to happen on a Thursday?"
"If I KNEW what was going to happen, I wouldn't be WORRIED." He punched his bar's number into the cellphone.
Auntie yelled, "afternoon, Cockluck, you stake 'em, we bake 'em." Her voice wrapped around Peter Mansbridge narrating, tired, interminably, intercut with planes crashing, crashing.
"Auntie?"
"Hi Bertram! When're you coming in?"
"Why? Is anything wrong?"
"It's busy in here. You always have a full house on a Thursday afternoon?"
"No, it's usually pretty quiet."
"It's the teevee. People see the news and figure it goes better with a double vodka. Running out of glasses."
"Get Colin to show you how to operate the dishwasher."
"Colin works here?"
"He's a bald blonde guy, about forty, probably in a Hawaiian shirt. God's gift to dishwashers. Listen, do you need me to come in? Judith wants me to move into her Glebe house tomorrow."
"It's fine," Auntie yelled. "The place just -- SHUT UP I'M ON THE PHONE! -- just cleared out. Enjoy your move."
"Really?"
"I TOLD YOU I WAS GOING TO HIT YOU! Sure. See you later. WHICH ONE OF YOU GUYS IS COLIN? COLIN? COLIN, SHOW ME HOW THE DISHWASHER WORKS. Bye Bertram."
"At least let me buy you some boxes from U-Haul. You don't have time to," she pursed her mouth, "go to every liquor store in town looking for moving boxes."
"For chrissake, I hardly touch the stuff anymore. I think I can be forgiven for having a bit of trouble with the bottle after my girlfriend cut her wrists in my bathtub okay? But I'm FINE now, okay?"
"Okay. Are you... seeing anybody?"
"Not if she saw me first."
They sloshed through trash out the French doors and stood gazing at the thick back lawn buzzing with tiny clouds of black insects. "You'll want to spray for dandelions. The dandelions were always terrible here."
"It's hardly dandelion season. It's September." He kicked a green shoot with his toe. Then he looked at it again, looked at Judith, said, "what kind of tree is that way over there?" and pointed. He looked back down. He was standing on a baby pot plant.
"This? I don't know." Judith waded through the grass to a knarled dark gray tree with thick rough bark in the middle of the yard. Bertram followed behind to get a better look at the greenhouse. The glass was translucent, but he was fairly sure he recognized the leaves inside. Giant luscious enthusiastic emerald pot plants the size of sunflowers.
"Ornamental cherry. I remember now. It blooms once a year for about two days and it looks so pretty. Then all the flowers fall off, and that's it until next year.
"So about my rent for the back house, you'll be here all day tomorrow moving and keeping an eye on the cleaners, so I'm sure you'll run into at least one of them. The people in the back house, I mean. I gave them notice that they had to pay by the end of August or be evicted so really there's nothing to discuss. Just remember you can't bother them before eight in the morning or after six at night."
"Gotcha."
"Hey, I'm thinking about buying another house. Interest rates are so low, and after what just... happened... I'm sure they're going to go lower soon. It's a good time to buy a house and there's one I really like. Want to go see it?"
"It's that or pack."
"Then we'll go get you some boxes. This really is a beautiful house. You'll be happy here."
"You weren't."
"I picked this house out with Lane Darcy when he was going to, you know, marry me. Then I thought about selling all the jewelry he gave me for a down payment, so it would sort of be like he bought it. I know it's pathetic. I sure know how to pick 'em. Urq and Leo and Lane and all the other losers. Even the ones that weren't losers were losers by the time I was done with them. Like Leo. What a prick! I shouldn't say prick because his was so fucking small. Leo giving those stupid motivation lectures to MBAs in those resorts in the Grenadines. He hated doing those lectures but he did them anyhow so he could keep up his stupid tiny car habit. A man six feet tall cramming himself into Austin Minis all the time. I thought it was cute, you know, but then I realized he was just another loser. Another loser for Judith. And then he sets me up with Lane Darcy."
"What a cock," Bertram said. "I never liked Leo. Too bald."