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Normally I only have one disaster per dinner party. Sometimes it’s a big disaster, like putting out a whole spread of curries and then realising that I forgot to turn on the rice; sometimes it’s a little disaster like forgetting to put out some side-dish that nobody expected anyway. But once I’ve had it, I know I’m clear, and can relax.
This party I had last month, I wasn’t so sure, because the disaster was up front, in the guest list.
Petra had brought Robbie. I’ve nothing against Robbie. Salt of the earth. Good worker. Great with cars. Ask him. He’ll tell you. No don’t ask. He’ll tell you anyway. Not his fault nobody’ll give him a job. Well, it wasn’t his fault the PM’s car exploded in the middle of Commonwealth Avenue. He’d been told to clean out the bloody carburettor, not put the damn thing back together again. That was Andy’s job.
Robbie reckoned dinner parties were a bit posh, so he’d dressed down in a pair of torn jeans and a T-shirt that described his last sexual encounter with a crocodile. Petra was most embarassed, but only because he hadn’t washed the T-shirt since the encounter. Robbie’s moustache fitted neatly around the outside of a can of beer — his fourth, and they’d only been there half an hour.
He’d decided I was a greenie because I hadn’t mowed the lawn.
"Sanctuary for the lesser spotted ten-toed numbat, is it?" he asked, in a voice which said, I want trouble.
"Yes," I said.
"Cat too good for you?" he said.
"They’re predators," I said. "They eat the wildlife."
"Good on them. That’s what we want." He shoved a foamy moustache forward. "Real survivors. None of these endangered bloody species that die out if you pick a bloody gum leaf."
"We need genetic diversity," I pointed out. "For when the climate changes."
"That’s what we pay the guys in white coats for, isn’t it. They built bloody Frankenstein. They ought to be able to sort out a bit of sunburn."
I retired to the kitchen to stir the soup, wondering where the hell Sue had got to.
Emma joined me.
"Where does Petra find them?" I asked.
"Robbie told you. The guys in white coats, they churn them out by the hundreds."
The doorbell rang. Sue, but she wasn’t alone.
If I haven’t already told you about Sue’s married used-car salesman, you haven’t missed anything. Sleaze is not in it. A six foot slob in a suit with a permanent five o’clock shadow, flabby lips, and the biggest ego since Saddam Hussein. He’s the sort of guy that boasts about having made money from HIH because he knew when to sell.
I’d taken great care to check with Sue that she was free — even changed the night — but there he was on the front doorstep, hand pumping like a stationary steam engine, latest model mobile phone in his top pocket.
Sue presented a bottle with a label written in French and a $39.95 price tag on it.
"I hope you don’t mind," she said, "but Des was free, and we didn’t want to waste the opportunity."
Des winked. "Sales conference. Bungendore," he said.
I ushered them in. Des and Robbie glared at each other, like two tomcats, before Robbie tried to rip Des’s arm off in a pretence of greeting.
Dinner was painful. If anyone said more than two words, there was Des, finishing the sentence in his own way, and Robbie topping it, or vice versa. Most of the time, we concentrated on chewing and left them a clear field.
"0-200 in 0.79 seconds..."
"It’s a heap of shit..."
"Immaculate styling..."
"Lines like a steaming turd..."
"It was such an incredible buy..."
"Even the block was solid rust..."
During the middle of the main course, Des pulled out his 3G video mobile phone and started tapping away. Having secured two sets of football replays and arranged lunch, he replaced it with a man-of-the-world smile. Later, while Emma was on an extended visit to the lavatory, he received an obscene call from a hooded alien, complete with tentacles.
For dessert, Des cornered Petra, salesman style, cutting off the corner of the table, back to the rest of us, so we couldn’t horn in, leaning towards her so she couldn’t escape without him taking the rest of her private space.
"You’ve never had anything like it," he was saying. "It’s total magic."
"But how come it’s a 2028 vintage. Is it like buying futures?"
"Relativity. Time dilation. You can’t ship a wine half way across the galaxy and expect to get this year’s, you know. It’s a good year. The best. You can’t imagine what you’ll be getting. The first three million cases, didn’t get out of the States."
We all knew what he was talking about. I don’t know if you’ve seen the reviews of the Altair ‘28, but the word they use is mind-bending. In the Golden Triangle, they’re dead worried, and the New South Wales Rugby League are already testing for it. As for the police, they’re helpless. It’s supposed to get you down to the new legal limit of minus 0.5 in one sip.
And Des, being Des, had a case in the car. For sale, of course. And there was more where that came from.
"Altair?" Emma whispered.
"You’ve got to try it," Des was saying, as he made for the door.
It fumed slightly as Des poured a purple stream, glinting yellow and green and orange, into a glass. He waved it around, waiting for a taker. Emma held up a full glass of white, Robbie did the same with a can of beer. "Not now," Emma said. The rest of us watched in silence.
"All the more for me," Des said, swilling it around in the glass.
Two drops spilled into the rubber plant. It clapped its leaves to its head, a tentacle lashed out, then it staggered two steps, collapsed and began to go brown.
"It thinks it’s a triffid," Petra said.
"Thought," Emma said.
"Some drop," Des said admiringly.
"You’re still going to drink it?" Sue said.
"Why not? I’m not a rubber plant with delusions."
He sniffed at it.
Emma nudged me in the ribs. I glared at her. Robbie had been doing it all evening, whenever I wasn’t listening, so I was sore.
"With luck he’ll turn into a purple blob with pseudopods," she whispered.
"Don’t," I said. "It’ll probably be telepathic and increase its sales a hundred-fold."
Des delicately tipped the wine past the flabby lips, every inch the connoisseur. We waited, holding our breath.
Nothing happened.
Des took another sip, surveying his audience with a superior smile.
Then he frowned a little.
"It’s not bad," he said. "A little lacking on the middle palate, perhaps."
Sue clutched Emma’s arm in panic. "There’s something wrong," she said. "Two sentences, and not a single superlative. Can we ... call a doctor."
Emma was already heading for the telephone. "Bugger that," she said. "I’m ringing Altair to see if we can get some beer for Robbie."
Copyright © D.W. Walker, 1990