10.3 Fare Game (The End!)

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Mick McCoy

Right as the taxi was due to arrive, Driver ran through the door. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Thank God you’re home!’ she said, with an entirely different tone of voice compared with that she’d used to greet him earlier in the morning after he’d returned from his ride.

‘It’s time to go,’ she said, pressing herself away from the wall and standing gingerly. ‘It’s past time to go.’

Driver left the milk and bread on the floor where they stood and took Minnie’s hand.

‘My bags are here,’ she said.

‘All of them?’ Driver asked. ‘Can you walk?’

‘Yes, all of them,’ Minnie snapped, but she gripped his hand more tightly. ‘And I can walk. Of course I can walk.’

She stopped on the landing just outside the door as another contraction came. ‘Take the bags and come back for me,’ she said.

Driver complied wordlessly. He was out of breath, not because of the dashing about on his pointless errands but because of the fear that another frantic dash through the streets to the hospital would end the same way as it had the last time. He flicked open the boot of Minnie’s car and threw her bags in. How does she stand it, he wondered? If I’m this anxious, how does Minnie stand it? And how the fuck did I manage to leave my phone on the kitchen table?

Minnie was walking down the path to the front gate. Driver grabbed her hand again.

‘Your phone is on the kitchen table,’ she said.

Driver looked at her for no more than an instant, trying to guess between coincidence and some higher power of Minnie’s that might have triggered her reminder. But it didn’t really matter. ‘It can stay there,’ he replied.

‘Get it.’

Driver ran inside, grabbed his phone and pulled the apartment’s front door shut behind him.

‘Door,’ Minnie said and Driver ran to the car to open the passenger door.

‘Apartment door,’ she said. ‘Front door.’ She didn’t need to turn and look. She could tell from the sound behind her back that it had not shut properly.

Driver ran back up the path to the front door and pulled it shut, giving a shunt of upward pressure to properly engage the lock so it wouldn’t bounce open again off the door frame.

‘Make sure it’s locked,’ she called, having deposited herself in the front seat as another contraction began.

From the gate, Driver doubled back to the apartment’s front door, gave it a push to confirm it was locked, then ran to the car and slid in behind the wheel.

‘Put your seat belt on,’ Driver said to Minnie. He felt like a student telling the teacher how to present a lesson.

‘No,’ Minnie replied, the walls of her uterus still contracting. ‘Later, I’ll do it later.’ She waved him on so Driver started the engine, shifted into gear and the tyres gave a little squeal as he pulled away from the kerb.

Minnie’s phone chimed. It was a text from her mother to tell her she was on her way. Go to the hospital, she texted back once her muscles relaxed. I’m in the car with Driver.

‘Who was that?’ Driver asked.

‘Mum. She’ll meet us at the hospital.’ Minnie sat tensely in the passenger seat, her eyes straight ahead. ‘I called a taxi, too, but I’m glad you came home and I didn’t have to catch it.’

‘I’m sorry Minnie.’

‘It’s okay,’ she said. She kept staring out through the car’s windscreen willing the distance between them and the hospital to diminish. But they hadn’t gone further than the end of their street before Minnie’s phone chimed again, but this text was from The Urologist. I think you’re wrong about us. I need to see you again.

‘Your mum again?’ Driver asked.

Minnie didn’t answer straight away. She wanted to be distracted. She wanted not to have to answer Driver’s question. She had another contraction.

‘Yes,’ she lied, breathlessly. ‘Ohh, shit.’ She grimaced. ‘Can you put my window down? Please?’

Driver pressed the button on his door to lower the window. ‘Are you okay? Do you want me to stop?’

‘No! Don’t stop. Why would you stop?’

‘Well can you make it to the hospital?’

‘Of course I can make it.’ Minnie did her best to sound confident and determined, but she had no idea whether or not she could make it. What her body was doing to her and her baby felt so different to the miscarriage all those years before when Driver had sped through the streets to the hospital, needlessly. She convinced herself that the unfamiliarity was a good sign. That the differences were because it would all turn out differently this time. The contraction eased.

‘How far apart are the contractions?’ Driver asked.

‘I don’t know! How would I know? Do you know?’

‘I’ll time them.’ Driver switched his wrist watch to timer as he drove down Victoria Street past the Queen Victoria Market. ‘Tell me when the next one starts.’

‘I think you’ll be able to guess,’ Minnie replied.

Driver shot a sideways glance at his wife. The corner of her mouth had curled into a wry half-smile. He wondered whether that was the Mona Lisa’s secret. Whether da Vinci captured that look on her face as she was in the early stages of labour, with her husband being a dumb-arse making her wait while he dithered around fetching the nurse. She adopted a stoic, knowing smile to help herself put up with him. Driver chastised himself for his flippancy as he looked down the road at the intersection with Elizabeth Street. The lights were green. How long would they stay green? He accelerated.

‘Slow down,’ Minnie said. ‘Please slow down.’

Her phone chimed again as Driver slowed down. It was a second alert for the unanswered text from The Urologist.

Driver pulled up at the red light at the Elizabeth Street intersection. ‘Do you want me to get that?’ he asked, holding his hand out to take the phone from Minnie’s tightly clamped fingers.

‘No,’ Minnie said. She had another contraction. She held onto the open window sill of the car door with one hand and dropped the phone to clasp the edge of the seat with the other. ‘Start timing.’ she said.

Driver pressed the start button on his watch and gazed helplessly at his wife. The contraction seemed to be in sync with the cycle of the traffic lights, easing as they changed from red to green.

‘Stopwatch,’ Minnie said. ‘And drive the car.’

Driver pressed the button again as he pulled away from the lights and accelerated quickly along Victoria Street. ‘Fifty eight seconds,’ he said. ‘Should I keep it going? What about the time in between?’

‘Yep,’ Minnie replied.

As they reached the Berkeley Street corner neither of them could resist, for different reasons, turning their heads to look out the passenger side window and down the sidewalk to the café where Driver had earlier in the week walked in on Minnie and The Urologist breaking up. Driver watched Minnie looking out at the café. As she returned her gaze to the road ahead he did the same. They both resolutely focused their attention in the direction they were headed, without being tempted to snatch a further look at the other.

‘Maybe a bit faster,’ Minnie directed. ‘Drive a bit faster. Are you still timing?’

‘I am,’ Driver said.

Her phone chimed again. ‘Oh my God,’ she said.

‘Another one?’ Driver asked. ‘Another contraction?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Just the phone again.’ It was a text message from the ambulance service telling her they were two minutes away. ‘It’s the ambulance.’

‘What ambulance?’

‘I called them as well, when you weren’t home and I didn’t know where you were.’

‘I’m sorry baby.’ Driver looked at Minnie beside him, still holding onto the door and edge of her seat in preparation for the next spasm. ‘Are you okay?’

She smiled at him. ‘They can talk to the taxi driver when they get to our place.’ Another contraction began. ‘Stopwatch!’ She squeezed the window sill and the seat edge. ‘How long between?’ she demanded.

‘A bit over a minute. A minute and seven.’

‘And measure the contraction, too.’

Their car passed through the Lygon Street intersection, the traffic flowing smoothly, then Rathdowne Street greeted them with another green light. They cruised along beside the Exhibition Gardens.

‘Stopwatch!’

‘Sixty four seconds,’ Driver said. ‘Is that long?’

‘I don’t know,’ Minnie said, frowning. ‘Keep timing.’

They crossed Nicholson Street. ‘Should I just pull in here,’ Driver asked as they approached St Vincent’s Hospital.

‘No,’ Minnie replied. ‘We’re only half a mile away. Less.’

‘But look at the traffic,’ Driver said, pointing in front of them, all lanes compressing with crawling, patient lines of cars.

‘You know what to do,’ Minnie said, her voice more insistent. ‘Drive like you did last time. This is way more important now.’

‘Okay,’ Driver said and pressed on his horn as he approached the waiting traffic ahead of the next intersection. He switched lanes, cutting off the car beside him, which sounded its horn back at him. He waved his thanks out the window, unconcerned at how angry his fellow driver might be, then slowed down a little as he repeated the same manoeuvre a couple more times. Minnie was amazed they didn’t hit anyone, but at the same time, she barely cared. Despite the red light, Driver crossed into the T-intersection at the top of Macarthur Street. With an arm extended out the side window he put up his hand again, presenting his flattened palm to the oncoming cars as if he were a traffic cop, to alert them to his lawlessness. They obeyed him with a modest screeching of brakes and further sounding of horns, most likely out of surprise as he accelerated through the red light.

Minnie’s mobile phone chimed again. She opened The Urologist’s text message: I can’t do this. I can’t live without those big, beautiful nipples of yours. Minnie re-read it then dropped it to the seat beside her as another contraction came.

‘Stopwatch.’

‘Sixty-two,’ Driver said. ‘So less time between as well as more time contracting.’

‘Hmm,’ Minnie said, as she rode out her body’s latest hint that their child’s arrival was imminent.

‘You can make more noise if you want,’ Driver said. While he felt helpless to ease Minnie’s pain, he was grateful, in a way, that he was at least being of some use to her at that moment.

‘Thanks.’

Through the mature elms and wide, grassy nature strips lining either side of the tram lines that ran up Victoria Parade’s median strip Minnie and Driver could both see the hospital.

Driver shot a glance in the rear view mirror to check they weren’t being tailed by the police given the way he’d been driving. All was clear. ‘Are you still okay?’ he asked.

‘Still okay,’ she said, gripping the window sill and the seat. ‘Still okay.’

She didn’t sound convincing to Driver. ‘One minute and we’ll be there. Is the contraction still going?’

‘Stopped. Stopped now. Timer?’

‘Same as before,’ Driver replied. ‘No, longer, actually. About eight seconds longer.’

‘Eight seconds,’ Minnie said absently, turning to look out her side window.

They were approaching Smith Street. The hospital was y then directly across the tram lines and the median strip on the other side of the road. Her uterus was relaxed. All that remained of the journey was to do a U-turn across the tram lines and park the car. There was another red light. Driver used the same method as before, slowing and attempting to wave his intentions to his fellow drivers. Fortunately there were no trams to contend with.

Minnie’s mobile phone chimed. She opened the text message. Dimples! I meant dimples! I did not mean nipples! Minnie, please, I’m going to jump off a bridge now. Minnie continued looking at the screen after she’d finished reading the text. She didn’t believe The Urologist meant it. It was just the type of throw-away line he could sometimes come up with.

They’d been forced to stop half way across the tram lines, the hospital directly in front of them. Driver had too little room between the cars in-front of and behind him to move.

‘Was that your mum again?’ Driver asked.

‘No,’ Minnie said.

She turned to Driver and smiled with a tranquillity that surprised him, lightly touching his hand as it rested on the gear stick. Then she picked up the phone from where it lay beside her on the seat and threw it as hard as she could out through the open side window.

It flew in a gentle arc, as if it were a playing card that had been wrist-flicked by the dealer in a casino across the surface of a card table. As Driver watched it, in that initial uncritical moment before reflecting on the reason why Minnie might have done such a thing, the phone’s path seemed somehow elegant to him, before it hit a heavy steel tram rail and split apart.

She turned back to Driver to repeat the same smile. He stared at her, open-mouthed.

‘That’ll put an end to that,’ she said. The car’s engine ticked innocently in the silence as Minnie looked ahead towards the hospital’s entrance. ‘Drive,’ she added, as the traffic in front of them cleared in response to the change in the traffic lights.

Driver shifted into gear, completed the U-turn across the median strip and pulled up outside the hospital.

‘Stopwatch,’ Minnie said, as another contraction began.

This is episode 31 – the final instalment - of Fare Game. Earlier posts can be found by clicking on the Archives or Categories links to the right of the page.

Thanks for following my story! Please leave comments and let me know what you think.

10.2 Fare Game

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Mick McCoy

Two days had passed since Driver’s run-in with Frank Postman. After he’d finished his phone calls and coffees and returned home on the train, he and Minnie had spent the morning together. Punter had rung Driver back and asked him to talk to the media, to answer their calls rather than not take them, because they would no doubt ring in their droves. Better to talk to them but play it down than to refuse to say anything. That way, they’d be more likely to focus on Postman rather than dig around any further and uncover the connections to Punter and Stephanie and the rest of it. So, between massaging Minnie, giving bland interviews to most of Melbourne’s media outlets and beginning to formally disengage from taxi driving, the day had trickled by.

The next day, the day just past, was Minnie’s due date. There were no contractions, no false labour and, to the best of Driver’s ability to understand it, Minnie had not been the slightest bit concerned. In fact, she’d been more relaxed than at any time in the last month.

They drove Minnie’s car to a car park off the Yarra Boulevard in Studley Park. There were some dirt tracks that wound their way through the bush land by the water’s edge and Minnie had decided she wanted to go for a walk there. They’d never done it previously, but she said she wanted to be active and she wanted to go there and maybe have a coffee afterwards at the Studley Park Boathouse. Driver agreed to the plan despite having terribly low expectations of the coffee he’d be served at such a place. He was proud of himself for how considerate he was being, what sacrifices he was willing to make.

Part way through the walk when they were a mile or so from the car, it began to rain. And soon it began to pour. Minnie had the wrong shoes on, she wore only a thin t-shirt and shorts. Driver gave her his jumper and found a tree capable of providing some shelter, then ran back to the car. He was anxious. What if something happens now? What if Minnie’s labour suddenly starts and she’s under a tree on a dirt track between the Yarra River and a very steep rise up a very narrow, irregular and unmade path back to the road. He was no longer so proud of himself for being considerate in agreeing to the walk. He was properly angry with himself for agreeing to it.

So he ran faster, got back to the car soaking wet, ignored the people in the car park and adjacent café who laughed at his folly and sped off. He parked on the side of the road, where an opening in the fence signalled the top of an access path down to where Minnie was hopefully still waiting, unharmed and unworried, huddled and dry under her tree. The rain stopped the moment he reached her.

Minnie laughed at him. He laughed at himself.

They went home and shared a hot bath. It was tight with three of them in the bath, but it felt like a celebration. A celebration of all the things between Minnie and Driver that were spoken and unspoken. A celebration of their acceptance of each other because of those things and despite them. They toasted each other with hot chocolate, the first time Driver had consumed that beverage in many years. And all through that day the phone didn’t ring once. Not the home phone, nor either of their mobiles. They kept the TV and radio off because they didn’t want to know about what was happening outside their world. They didn’t want to be informed. They ate dinner early, read books, discussed Driver’s morning ride and went to bed. It was to be the last day of their relationship for a very long time where their responsibilities and attention could be focused so intently on each other, to the exclusion of children, parents, friends, colleagues, lovers, bystanders, wrong-doers, well-wishers and bringers of good-tidings and bad. And the world seemed to respect that, leaving them in peace.

The following morning, after Driver’s return from his ride, Minnie’s labour progressed slowly. He had showered and returned to bed, as instructed. He had spent the remainder of the morning and into the early afternoon reading and dozing alongside Minnie as the contractions almost imperceptibly became more frequent and more intense. Twice they called the hospital for instructions and twice they were told to stay put.

There were some errands that ought to have been done, but Driver had decided they could wait for another day. In the middle of the afternoon Minnie remembered them and wanted them done. A stack of DVDs should be returned, another stack of library books. More importantly, the upsurge in hot chocolate consumption demanded more milk. And they needed a fresh loaf of bread. So Driver jumped into Minnie’s car. He left his mobile at home but didn’t realise it until he had returned the library books and had progressed as far as the shopping strip to return the DVDs then buy the milk and bread.

While Driver was running from shop-to-shop with the urgency of a man doing trivial tasks at the behest of his pregnant wife who, for all he knew, may at that very moment have been trying to call him to let him know he had to get home fast because her labour had suddenly progressed to the next stage, Minnie – her contractions growing much stronger and more frequent – called his mobile to ask him to come home fast. How long had he been gone, she wondered, as she waited for their phones to connect? Half an hour? More? Less? Why wasn’t he back yet?

But Driver’s mobile phone responded from the kitchen table where he’d left it. She pressed cancel. Where is he? Why isn’t he back yet? How long will he be? She called her mother’s home number but she wasn’t there. She called her mobile phone and caught her at the interval of a play at the Malthouse. The theatre, she knew, was at least half an hour away. She explained what was happening but told her mother not to worry because Driver would be home any minute. She asked her to enjoy the play and hung up. She grabbed all her bags, packed days earlier when the false labour had hit, and assembled them just inside the front door of the apartment. She imagined herself calling a taxi, setting out for the hospital alone and having no choice but to give birth while spreadeagled across the back seat of that taxi, assisted by a bewildered twenty-two year old Indian boy who only drove taxis because he couldn’t get an IT job. Was that racist? She knew it was but was beyond caring. It made her laugh and that triggered a contraction. She sat at the kitchen table waiting for the clenching of her uterus to subside, looking at Driver’s mobile phone sitting uselessly in front of her. She called 000, explained her situation, gave them her address and that of the hospital where she was booked in. While they sent out the dispatch information straight away, they couldn’t guarantee an ambulance would arrive for up to half an hour. She hung up and waited. She had another contraction. She called her mother again but changed her mind and hung up before giving her a chance to answer.

Minnie’s mother, who had returned to her seat for the second half of the play but continued to hold the phone in her hand, felt it vibrate and saw the number on her illuminated screen before Minnie cancelled the call. She stood up in the dark and shuffled anxiously along the row of disgruntled fellow theatre-goers with seemingly immovable, protuberant knees and feet, and left the theatre as quickly as she could.

With a job completed in Richmond, an ambulance set out for Minnie and Driver’s North Melbourne apartment, its siren bawling. Minnie didn’t know the ambulance was on its way. She didn’t know her mother was on her way. She picked up Driver’s phone from the table in front of her and wondered where he was. She had another contraction. She called a taxi and gave them the same information as the 000 operator. They told her she’d be better in an ambulance. She told them she’d already called them and there was a half hour wait, but that she didn’t think she had that long. Five minutes, they said, and the taxi would be at her door. She thanked them, hung up, and focused on the five minutes. She looked at the second hand revolve bitterly slowly around the face of the kitchen clock. She pictured the poor young driver and pitied him for what she was about to put him though.

She got up from the kitchen table and walked to the apartment’s front door, pacing around the hallway just inside it. She tried to stay calm. She leant her back against the wall as she had another contraction.

This is episode 30 of Fare Game. After this, there’s only one more. Earlier posts can be found by clicking on the Archives or Categories links to the right of the page.

10.1 Fare Game

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Mick McCoy

‘Thank God you’re home!’

Minnie greeted Driver with those words as he rolled his bike through the front door. She was still in bed and her announcement, as apparently ripe with meaning as Minnie’s belly, bounced off the walls of their apartment and flew through the empty, Driverless spaces to reach him the instant he stole back inside.

It was 7:30am and he had been gone only two hours. Minnie and he had discussed the possibility of him going for a ride the night before. It had been her idea. Then they had confirmed it that morning before he got out of bed, since she had been awake and comfortable when the alarm went off at ten past five. The sense she’d had two days earlier that the baby was about to come had abated and not come back. The contractions had been irregular and unpredictable and a warm bath followed by a massage from Driver had seen them ease then disappear.

‘You should go,’ she’d said. ‘It might be the last ride you’ll have for a while, so you should definitely go.’

‘Are you sure?’ Driver had pressed her, concerned about not being home if Minnie were suddenly to need him, as well as the guilt he’d feel about it.

‘Absolutely certain. You need it for your mental health.’

Driver wasn’t going to argue about that. The bike and where it could take him, geographically and spiritually, had become even more of a haven than usual over the last few weeks. The simple and familiar rhythm of the pedal stroke, the continual passage of the air in and out of his lungs and the strong beat of his heart were like a mantra, repeated again and again, giving him the time and calm he needed to think and reflect and resolve. Yet none of that stopped the words Minnie called into the empty apartment the moment he opened the front door from sparking the deep feelings of guilt in Driver that he had feared. While I’ve been out having a fine old time on my bike, he silently chastised himself, my wife has gone into labour. What kind of selfish tool am I?

But if he’d been less sensitive he’d have heard that there was no blame in Minnie’s voice. It was as if his return was a pleasant surprise, rather than an anxiously and begrudgingly awaited overdue appearance. It was Driver’s interpretation that caused him discomfort. It was entirely self-inflicted.

‘Has it started?’ he asked, as he leaned his bike against the hallway cupboard and unclipped his helmet and shoes. ‘For real?’

‘Yep,’ Minnie said, her voice still light and free of worry. ‘For real.’ And hearing those three words was enough to cure Driver of his self-reproach. She sounded prepared and ready, Driver thought, with great relief. She sounded excited, but also composed.

Driver scampered down the hallway floorboards on his socked feet before finishing in a slide, just like Tom Cruise in Risky Business. Bob Seger’s Old Time Rock and Roll was playing in his head. He had no particular affection for the actor, the film or the song, and he considered himself a much more stylish dancer than little Tommy, but he did enjoy the sock slide into the frame of the bedroom door and the cheeky look over the shoulder of his turned back he gave Minnie. The laugh it induced in his wife was even better.

‘Can I give you a hug?’ he asked Minnie, smelling his armpits. ‘I’m not sweaty and I don’t stink too much.’

‘You better,’ she replied. ‘Besides, I’ll be asking for plenty of them later in the day no matter how sweaty and stinky I am.’

Driver sat on the side of the bed, pulled her in tight, and cradled her in his arms.

‘And when I ask, you will obey,’ Minnie said, matter-of-factly into Driver’s ear. ‘No questions asked.’

‘I will obey,’ Driver confirmed.

‘I called the hospital and spoke to the gynae. She said to stay home as long as possible.’

‘Are you having contractions? How far apart?’

‘Little ones. Well, not little, but they’ll get a lot more intense than they are now. They’re more regular than the ones I had the other day and I can feel that the baby has dropped in my pelvis.’

‘Anything else? Waters broken?’

‘Don’t you believe me?’

‘Oh baby, of course I believe you. But it’s not happening to me and I just want to manage my expectations.’

Minnie smiled at him in a way Driver had not seen for too long. It had probably only been a few days, a week at most, but he was used to seeing that smile a lot more often.

‘So what do we do now? Are you packed? Where’s the suitcase?’

‘They want me to stay here for as long as possible, I told you that already.’

‘Okay,’ Driver replied. ‘Good.’ He nodded his head attentively. ‘That’s good. Can I get you anything?’

‘No,’ Minnie answered. ‘Actually, a cup of tea. No, hot chocolate. That’d be nice. And make yourself a coffee and then bring them both back in here and we can stay in bed and read.’

‘Can I have a quick shower first? I am a bit sweaty and stinky. I lied earlier.’

‘Quick, though,’ she said. ‘Not because I’m worried that anything’s about to happen, but because I want you here with me in bed.’

Driver stood up but couldn’t bring himself to move away from the bed. ‘Oh, wow,’ he said. ‘Does déjà vu work in reverse? Because standing here I’m getting a premonition of something that can’t have happened yet.’

‘What do you mean?’ Minnie asked.

‘Well, I can see myself right here in this very spot and you’re lying in bed, exactly like that. Propped up on your pillows as you are now. And its morning, at least I think its morning. I’m nude, though, like I’ve just had a shower and walked out here. And you’ve just fed our baby and you’re handing her to me.’

‘Her?’

‘Her. She’s definitely a she.’ In all their discussions about whether they’d prefer a boy or girl, they’d both said they really didn’t care. Healthy and happy were the main criteria, sex didn’t matter. But Driver could see that Minnie was excited that it was a girl in his imaginings.

‘And you’re holding her out to me so I can take her after a feed. She looks kinda drunk. Like she’s become intoxicated by your milk, or high on it. Just like you look sometimes.’ Driver paused to see whether Minnie was still smiling. Whether she was taking this the right way.

‘Have you seen this in a movie?’ she asked.

‘No, definitely not, because what happens next is, I’ve just taken her from you and I have my hands either side of her chest. I’m holding her under her arms. Her face is right in front of mine and I’m smiling at how drunk or stoned she looks. And she’s smiling back at me. I’m just about to put her across my shoulder and give her back a pat. Is that what you do?’

Minnie nodded. ‘You shouldn’t need to ask,’ she teased. ‘I knew I should have made you go to more antenatal classes.’

‘Right,’ Driver replies, intent on finishing his story. ‘Anyway, she doesn’t burp. She vomits. And this is like a movie. Like Poltergeist. It all comes out in a warm, forceful stream of breast milk straight into my face! And I just stand there as she vomits into my face because I’m thinking any sudden movement will only make it worse and spread the damage. So this flood of your breast milk rushes from her mouth and into my nose and my eyes. I turn my head and it goes in my ear. It keeps pouring out in impossible amounts from a stomach that can’t possibly be big enough until it all starts to run down my chest and my stomach and mixes in with my pubes.’

Minnie laughed. ‘That’s just a beautiful family moment, isn’t it?’ she said, with equal parts humour and seriousness.

‘And you should see her face when she’s finished! Innocence and surprise, her eyes wide and her mouth in a little ‘O’. It makes me laugh.’

‘You’re setting our sights awfully high,’ Minnie added.

Driver knew there was relief behind Minnie’s words for the simple reason that in his vision of the future they were together. They’d tried and failed and tried again and again to have this baby until, now, she was finally coming. She would finally be part of them. So what’s a little vomit if it lands on one of them, or anywhere else?

‘Oh, and by the way,’ he added, ‘your breasts were magnificent. Absolutely magnificent.’

She smiled again. ‘Go have a shower.’

This is episode 29 of Fare Game. After this, there’s only two more. Two! (I know I said that last time, but I was wrong then and I’m right now – there are still two more.) Earlier posts can be found by clicking on the Archives or Categories links to the right of the page.

9.4 Fare Game

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Mick McCoy

Driver ordered his coffee and dialled Punter’s number.

‘Hey,’ he said, when Punter greeted him. ‘Has anyone called you yet?’

‘No,’ Punter replied. ‘What about?’

‘Me and Postman,’ Driver said. ‘He pushed me around this morning and crashed my car.’

‘No! Really? Are you alright?’

‘Yeah, really,’ Driver confirmed. ‘And I’m fine. But are you surprised? That surprised? The man’s not well.’

‘Oh, I agree he’s not well. But I thought he was more gutless than that. In a strange way I’m impressed.’

Driver laughed. ‘I don’t think he’d have tried it with you, Punter, but I’m smaller. I’m an easier target, so don’t give him too much credit.’

Punter chuckled in reply.

‘But anyway,’ Driver continued, ‘if he hadn’t already, surely he must have written the final chapter in his political career.’

‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you?’ Punter replied. ‘Tell me the details, though. Convince me you’re alright. And how’d he crash your car?’

Driver went through his story again. Even though it was still less than an hour old, he’d already told it to me, the police and Minnie, so at the fourth telling it had long since started to sound stale to him. And despite having been the direct victim of Postman’s pointless rage, it all seemed like someone else’s problem. It all seemed like Punter’s problem. With Postman in the lock-up, politically terminal, it seemed solved. Whereas his own problems with Minnie were not solved, no matter what they’d just said to each other.

‘Listen, Punter,’ Driver added once the Postman narrative was complete, ‘I’ve already told my journalist mate. Is that okay with you?’

‘Why him?’ Punter asked. ‘He doesn’t do this kind of stuff, does he?’

‘I just wanted to give him the story first. And I thought it was safer with him, if you know what I mean.’

‘Yeah, I do. And that’s fine. Thanks for thinking of that,’ Punter replied. ‘But it doesn’t matter anyway because from what you’ve told me it’ll be all over the media before the hour’s out. The cops will leak it if no one else does.’

‘I haven’t checked online, but I reckon it’ll go up any minute,’ Driver said. ‘I’ll check when we finish.’

‘I won’t say anything, by the way. Even if they ask me – even when they ask me – I’m not going to say a word.’

‘I didn’t mention you. Why will they call?’

‘They’ll know. Someone’ll know.’

Clearly, Punter underestimated my talent for lending a veneer of sordid mediocrity to the whole event.

Driver took a sip of his espresso which had been silently placed before him as he spoke. He signalled his approval to the barista, who’d come out from behind the counter to deliver the coffee personally, since Driver was the only customer. He kissed the tips of three fingers before opening his palm like the petals of a flower, as if to say bellissimo. Truthfully, he was thinking, it was okay, but not that good.

‘But I’ve got a question for you,’ Punter said. ‘Why were you driving anyway? I thought you gave up on Cup day?’

Driver laughed. ‘That’s exactly what Minnie said.’

‘Well, she’s got a good point.’

‘I was just trying to do a final few days. Don’t try to read anything into it, Punter, because there isn’t any hidden meaning.’

‘Don’t read anything into it? Says you!’

‘I haven’t changed my mind, Punter. I’m still giving up. In fact, with my car all banged out of shape, I’ve given up. I’m done.’

‘Ah-ha,’ Punter replied, the scepticism coating his words like honey.

Driver knew he was being hypocritical asking Punter not to read anything into it, but that didn’t stop him taking offence, or at least feigning it. ‘Hey,’ he complained, ‘I liked it better when you were my mate and you supported me.’ Driver was remembering Punter’s hoo-fucken-ray comment at the races.

‘I am supporting you.’

‘Yeah, fair enough,’ Driver replied. He waved his hand dismissively, for his own benefit since Punter clearly couldn’t see it. Because he was determined not to be angry. In the wake of his morning’s adventures he was feeling a faint sense of lightness and release. A sense of the potential for resolution, somehow. As if fate was reinforcing that now was the right time to stop.

‘I put the licence up for sale yesterday. I don’t expect anyone will buy it, with the rumours about the massive drop in value your taxi industry enquiry buddy is recommending. But it’s up for sale anyway.’

‘Good,’ Punter replied. ‘And I’m not even going to comment about your dig about the enquiry.’

‘That’s big of you,’ Driver snorted. ‘I could always keep it and get someone else to drive for me. That would at least give me an income.’

‘Don’t do that,’ Punter said. ‘You’re just giving yourself a crutch, a way back to driving if you get nervous about the change.’

‘Why are you being so cynical this morning?’

‘I’m not being cynical Driver. You need a clean break.’

Driver knew his friend was right. Even if financially it made more sense to hang onto the licence, he knew the main reason for keeping it was to give him a fall-back.

‘Do you want my advice?’ Punter offered, when Driver’s silence confirmed he’d read his friend’s motives correctly

‘I probably can’t say no, can I?’

‘Do you want my advice?’ Punter repeated, expecting an unconditionally affirmative response.

But Driver didn’t want his advice, because he knew what it was going to be. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘What’ve you got for me?’

‘Go back to law,’ Punter said. ‘Please, for your own sake, go back to law. You were good at it Driver. Very good.’

‘You’re sounding like Minnie again.’

‘Well, there’s a reason for that. She’s right most of the time, isn’t she?’

Driver still hadn’t told Punter about his discovery of Minnie and her friend sharing an intimate moment earlier in the week. He felt guilty hiding it from him when Punter had been so open about his own troubles with Stephanie. But the comparison gave Driver pause to consider something he hadn’t previously contemplated. What if he’d jumped to the wrong conclusion about Minnie? Whereas Punter knew what was going on between Steph and Postman, Driver had only seen Minnie sitting across a table in a café from this other man and, from that, assumed the worst. But maybe he was wrong? Maybe they were only meeting for coffee? For the first time? Maybe there was nothing to it, after all?

He shook his head silently. Maybe her eyes sparkle as she holds hands with all the doctors she works with, when they meet in a café across the other side of the city from the hospital?

‘Have you got an answer for me?’ Punter asked. ‘Why have you gone quiet?’

‘No reason,’ Driver replied. ‘And you’re right about Minnie, too.’ He downed the remainder of his coffee. ‘Do you know what she suggested I do now? She suggested I catch the train home this morning so I get into practice for my future commute.’

Punter laughed. ‘So she wants you to work in the city as well? She doesn’t want you to go back to the old Footscray office?’

‘Apparently not. But I’ve been out a while. It may not be that easy to step straight in again.’

‘Yes it will, Driver. They’ll be opening the door for you,’ Punter replied. ‘I’ll help. That’s something I can help with.’

‘Before we get to that, what you said on Tuesday when I announced I’d quit driving …’ Driver purposefully left his words hanging.

‘What about it?’

‘Well, I thought you were on my side about the taxi. I thought you agreed with me.’

‘I did,’ Punter said. ‘At the time.’

‘At the time?’ When did you stop?’

‘I don’t know, Driver. Years ago.’

‘What?’ Driver was genuinely stunned. ‘Years ago?’

‘Yes, years ago.’

‘Why didn’t you say anything?’ Driver challenged him. ‘If my closest friend can’t tell me that he thinks I’m wasting my time with my life, what does that say about me?’

‘Driver, you don’t know yourself if you have to ask me that.’

Punter’s voice carried no hint of accusation. No hint of frustration or surprise or disappointment. He was being sincere and Driver heard it clearly.

‘What do you mean?’ Driver asked. He picked up his coffee and looked wistfully into the empty cup.

‘I mean you’re so passionate about the things you do that your own advice is the only advice that matters. It’s not important what I think.’

‘I’d listen to you, Punter. You know I would.’

‘What about Minnie? You haven’t listened to her?’

‘Hmmm …’ The sense of lightness and release Driver had felt just a few minutes earlier had been replaced by a feeling he’d just dodged a bullet. If he’d been so alarmingly wrong about his career choices those last few years, maybe he was lucky Minnie had stayed with him at all?

‘So don’t be stupid Driver, take my help. Don’t even think of not taking my help. I’ll make some phone calls.’

‘When you’re safely re-elected.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Alright, that’d be great, Punter. Thank you.’

‘It’s turned out alright, hasn’t it?’ Punter suggested.

‘For you, do you mean?’

‘And you. What have you got to be miserable about? Did Postman add another whack to your head?’

‘No.’ Driver didn’t want to say any more. He didn’t want to explain to Punter why he felt so flat.

‘Well?’

‘Well nothing. You’re right. Everything’s turned out fine. Or it will have once I know the baby and Minnie are healthy and safe.’

But Punter knew his friend too well.

‘Driver, is there something else you’re not telling me?’

‘No, no,’ Driver replied, trying to sound untroubled. ‘Not a thing. I’m just going to be relieved when the baby is delivered safely and both she and Minnie are happy and healthy. You can understand that, can’t you?’

‘Yeah, that’s fair enough,’ Punter conceded. ‘Give my best to Minnie. Wish her luck. Give her a kiss from me.’

‘I will, Punter. I will.’ Driver said. ‘And thanks, okay?’

‘It’s important Driver. I love you and you need my help.’

‘That’s true. And I love you too.’

After they hung up, Driver sat at the small table on Degraves Street and watched suited workers swarm out of the underpass from Flinders Street Railway Station. He signalled to the barista for another coffee. It was not yet 7:30am and these men and women in their suits and business wear were almost running to get to their desks. A scant few stopped to pick up a take away. But the rest, the overwhelming majority, were in too much of a hurry to get to work and clock up some more billable hours. Just as they’d done the day before and just as they’d do the next day. The next week. The next year. Did Driver want that? Was that right for him? Did he have a choice?

He stood up from the table, walked out a couple of steps into the suited throng and just stood there looking back at his small table. People brushed by him, frowns having appeared on their brows that this man, a taxi driver by the look of him, had stepped out and planted himself directly in their path. He was like a jagged rock disrupting the incoming tide, causing them to ripple and break their progress to shore.

The barista placed Driver’s fresh espresso on the table and pulled out his chair. Driver smiled at him. It was more personal service than he thought he deserved and the coffee was better than he wanted to admit. He threaded his way back through the current and sat down again. He quietly sipped his coffee as he flicked out his phone and opened the newspaper’s mobile app to search for the online version of my story about him and Postman.

This is episode 28 of Fare Game. After this, there’s only two more. Two! Earlier posts can be found by clicking on the Archives or Categories links to the right of the page.

Top 5 things I’ve learnt about blogging literary fiction OR What is clear now is just how little I knew

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Mick McCoy

So here’s the thing; I’m only three posts from the end of Fare Game! That’s right folks, get out the party blowers and fill your lungs, chuck a few streamers in the air. Whoohoo!

Yup. Big deal, huh?

At the half-way point my main concern was that I wouldn’t be able to maintain the pace I’d set for myself. But I’ve just finished the last scene and it will be posted later next week.

In the three months it has taken me to get to this point I have learned enough to look back and squirm a little at my unconscious incompetence. Some of you will be familiar with the ‘four stages of learning’ model. It goes like this:

Stage 1: Unconscious incompetence – not only do you have no skills, you really don’t know what skills you need or how to acquire them

Stage 2: Conscious incompetence – you still don’t have too many skills, but you are developing an awareness that you suck and why you suck. You’re starting to see what you need to get better at

Stage 3: Conscious competence – this is a big step up from step 2 because through trial and error you’ve acquired a few skills. You’ve tried things and kept what works, discarded what doesn’t. You’re not necessarily good, you’re just not incompetent

Stage 4: Unconscious competence – you’ve practiced so much the skill has become second nature. You’re really good and you just do it without thinking about it

Now, this is a massive over-simplification, I realise that. In the blogging caper there are multiple skills you need to develop to be successful AND there are multiple definitions of success. In the beginning, not only was my definition of success wrong, but I had no idea of how to achieve it, whatever it was. If that’s not unconscious incompetence, I don’t know what is.

But at least I did know I was incompetent. I embraced my incompetence and was comfortable with it. If you’re really rubbish at something and you don’t even know you’re rubbish, you can’t start on the journey to competence.

So, of all the things I became conscious of in my journey from stage 1 to somewhere around the border between stages 2 and 3, here’s a top 5:

Success is not what I thought it was. I thought it was a big following, but it wasn’t. It was ‘Mick McCoy’s writing re-animated’. That’s what it says on my page banner. That’s why I chose to call the blog McPhoenix. I thought the measure of that would be a big following, but I was wrong about that. The measure of it was the writing schedule I set for myself and the process of bringing each post to readiness. It required an intensity of writing and a process of drafting / rewriting / editing that was of great benefit.

People who blog fiction generally don’t achieve large followings, particularly if they start from scratch. Commentary and opinion pieces are more instant, more connected to the blogosphere’s and the wider world’s stream of consciousness. That’s not a criticism at all. Bloggers who produce such work are often exceptionally talented, not to mention hard-working. They go after their audience, spending as much if not more time on finding and building community as on crafting their posts.

I didn’t do so much of that because I was so busy writing and because from one post to the next I was serialising the same story. My aims were to build character and plot, create a sense of time and place that people could recognise. That shrinks your audience. But that’s okay, I am enormously grateful to my audience for the feedback they’ve given me via comment, email and voice.

Blogging fiction can be a good idea. This is more about marketing and promotion, than writing. In that way, it’s an extension of my first point.

In my case I think blogging my fiction was a good idea. I have read plenty about why it could be a bad idea, but I have slowly teased out the detail around that and come to the conclusion that whether or not it is a good or bad idea depends on your context.

The two key points in defining my context are that I write literary fiction and, while I have had two novels published, that was 12 years ago. This is relevant because literary fiction has a smaller market than genre fiction and not only do very few people know or care who Mick McCoy, writer, is, those who do have some vague recollection that I once had a fledgling literary career might be a little dubious about my commitment, since I dropped out for 12 years.

Regarding the first point, there is a single big issue that makes people question whether blogging fiction is a good idea, That is, does the availability of a draft of my story in post-by-post serialised format mean that, if I get a publishing deal for the story, the prospects for the book would be diminished by its earlier availability in blogged format? For many reasons, in my context, I don’t think so. Here are three of the more fundamental reasons:

Before it achieves publication it will undergo rewriting, so it will be different from the blogged version
A published version will be compiled in one volume, a much more convenient way to consume it
The reading experience is markedly different between serial 2,000-2,500 episodes and a single continuous story that the reader can consume at their own pace. This is one of the things that has become most clear from reader feedback

The second point of context specific to my situation is that it is important for me to overtly hang out my shingle. Mick McCoy, writer. I have to actively rise from unknown, step-by-step. Creating a blog and committing to posting on it are very important manifestations of that shingle hanging.

A writer must seek out and engage his audience. There are bloggers out there who are wise enough to combine or even precede their fiction posts with commentary and opinion posts. They do this to build audience, to garner confidence that an audience will appreciate their words, and sometimes to delay the commitment to writing and/or posting fiction.

The audience is readers of your kind of words. They may or may not be bloggers. They may be members of TheReadingRoom or Goodreads. They may subscribe to online journals, such as Kill Your Darlings. They may buy hard copy books (particularly readers of literary fiction, I suspect) from Readings and Dymocks and their local independent book shop, as well as ebooks from Amazon and The Book Depository. They may read the reviews and opinions of others in newspapers and online. They may like Facebook pages and follow tweets.

So it’s important to get out there and be seen. And it’s not a chore. I’ve really enjoyed the posts I’ve written for other outlets. It’s something I must do, because I want to be read.

I want to be read. I want to get back in the game. That’s what it says on my ‘About’ page and that is a stronger urge now than it was three months ago. I know I’ve got to earn the right to be read.

This is different from seeking out an audience. This is why you need to seek out an audience. I love the writing. I love invention, the crafting of words and sentences and paragraphs and chapters. But you can still do that and not have a single person read it. I write because I want people to read what I’ve written. It’s a compulsion, a very internal thing. And it demands an outlet.

The blog gives me that, but I want to be read via paperback and ebook.

Having ‘top 5’ in your post title draws readers. That’s why there’s a fifth point here! Nothing more to say on this other than I flatly reject the notion that compiling lists is a form of procrastination and avoidance of actually doing something valuable. Shameless, eh?

Anyway, it was all getting a bit too serious there. I needed to lighten the tone before finishing, in case some of you thought I really cared about what I was doing. As if …

So thanks for coming on the ride with me this far. I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I have and I look forward to hearing from you as I post the final three episodes.

After that, I’ve got to figure out where to next … but I do have a few ideas.

9.3 Fare Game

Posted on April 29, 2013 by Mick McCoy

Degraves Street, by Amyq, Creative Commons

It was one of those times when I wish there was still an afternoon edition of the newspaper, because a story like that was all over the evening TV news, which is where most people consumed it. As a result, my write-up in the paper edition the next morning was fish-and-chip wrapping very quickly. Still, it wasn’t about me, was it? It wasn’t about me claiming the back slaps and kudos for breaking the story. It was about Punter and, more importantly, Driver. And I never would’ve got the back slaps anyway because of how muted and unforensic the writing was. Mind you, I did enjoy the coppers adding affray to the assault charge, which is technically impossible since it requires two fighters to be charged, as well as their actions to have caused terror to the general citizenry. Funny.

There were two reasons I took on the story. First, Driver rang me straight afterwards while he was still standing on Collins Street, to tell me what had happened. So I got the chance to get the story out first, on the newspaper’s website, literally before Postman had arrived at the police watch house. And it was that much shorter, punchier online release that started the news media juggernaut delivering its saturation coverage by the evening.

Seeing that story go live with my name in the byline gave me a rush I hadn’t felt in years and I’ve got Driver to thank for that. It was news, real news, rather than the coagulated mess of opinion that normally runs under my name.

He made me promise, before he told me what had happened, that I wouldn’t hand it off to one of my ‘straight journalist colleagues’.

‘Are you calling me crooked?’ I asked him.

‘No,’ he replied. ‘Just jaded. And goading. And it’s time you got over both.’

But Driver admitted that he wasn’t thinking solely of some form of career resurrection opportunity for me when he called me to take the story. He called me because he didn’t want another journalist to take it and then apply the level of journalistic inquisitiveness that would expose all the messy details that lay not too far beneath.

And that was the second reason I took the story. I wanted to do what I could to attempt to keep the back story from coming to light. If it was at all possible, Driver didn’t want people asking how Postman knew him, why Postman – or his wife – booked him specifically, and why he felt the need to assault Driver and prang his taxi. Because sooner or later the trail would have led to Punter. From there, apart from the possible political fall-out, Postman’s affair with Stephanie and the whole unsavoury business would have been the next step. It wasn’t like an investigation would need to delve too far since all the key players had been together at the races just two days earlier. They’d all been in the same dining room. And the joy-sucking cab driver, for example, plus numerous others could verify it and might quite easily have been vindictive enough to come forward.

Amongst those others was the No-Good Boyfriend. If Driver was going to go back to law he didn’t want his own name on the front page of the papers for more than a day, if that. He wanted to stay a bit-player, unconnected from the greater disarray.

Since Driver didn’t know the full details about the forces that had been prepared to rally against him those six years before and since the No-Good Boyfriend was tied by blood-lines to those forces, I knew even better than Driver did about the importance of him staying a bit-player.

Successfully keeping all that quiet was a long shot. It required a very delicate piece of writing. I had to expose enough of the facts to satisfy my editor that he’d made the right call in letting me run with the story, rather than give him new reason to tell me how shit I was for missing the bigger picture. But I also wanted to keep at bay any deeper investigation of the reasons for Postman’s attack on Driver. I thought I had next to no chance. I thought it was almost certain someone from another news outlet would dig it up, if not another journo from my own stable. But luck was with us and it did stay quiet. I can only conclude that the remarkable level of entertainment Postman had provided all by himself was what kept everyone busy with other lines of investigation for the remaining week of pre-election period. I did some more work on the genesis of the homosexuals versus smokers angle and that seemed to provide enough smoke – pun intended – to throw people off the scent. And after the election, in which Postman’s former party hadn’t lost so much as they’d been humiliated, humbled and ultimately eviscerated, Postman’s shenanigans were only one of a great many sideshows featuring a much larger cast of political actors and clowns, the collective effect of which was to produce one of the most disastrous election outcomes in decades. In picking over the carcass, the analysts had such a ripe and mouldering body of ineptitude and misadventure to autopsy, the genesis of Postman’s tom-foolery with Driver wasn’t even considered as a main cause of the party’s death.

After he phoned me with the story, Driver had planned to call Minnie and to Punter. The police had already questioned him, corroborated his version of events with the Westin staffer’s as well as with what they’d heard from their own officers, so they left him in peace. While he was at the police station he’d arranged for his taxi to be picked up later in the day after the police had finished with it. He’d also called into the depot to report the accident, after which he walked down to Degraves Street for a coffee. One of his favourites, The Cup of Truth, opened at 7am but was down in the subways that led from the platforms of Flinders Street railway station out into the city’s streets and laneways. His taste buds wanted him to descend the stairs from Degraves Street into those subways and experience a truthful double espresso, but there was nowhere to sit. And he wanted to sit. So he made do with a lesser epicurean reward to satisfy a more general emotional need, taking a table on the bluestone cobbles outside the best of the above-ground compromise options.

In the ten minutes after they opened and before Driver was satisfied that their espresso machine had properly warmed up, he phoned Minnie. ‘I’ve had another crash,’ was how he’d initially planned to start the conversation, but while he waited for her to pick up he settled on a more considerate opening.

‘Hello?’ Minnie’s greeting was full of sleepiness, making the word sound like it was tucked in under the doona with her. But despite the sleepiness, in that single word Driver interpreted several things he was sure were running through Minnie’s head. This is almost certainly Driver calling – Who else would call at this time of morning? – Why would he be calling at this time of morning? – It better be good – Oh God, I hope nothing’s happened! – What if it’s not Driver? – What if it’s someone else?

‘Hey baby, how you feeling?’ Driver greeted her.

‘I was asleep.’

‘Yes, I thought you might be. I even hoped you were, but something happened that I need to tell you about so I had no choice but to risk interrupting you. Sorry.‘

Driver could hear the bed sheets rustling and imagined Minnie drowsily pushing herself up into a seated position to better hear his words. He could see her sitting there, a great, knotted mess of hair falling about her face, with a couple of tighter, lustrous ringlets hanging down by her temples where at some point in the night she’d hooked in a finger in her sleep and twirled it around and around those fortunate strands, then released it and repeated the twirling. Then released and repeated, released and repeated.

‘What?’ she asked, sounding concerned rather than suspicious or frustrated. Driver would not have blamed her for the either of the latter emotions after the week they’d just endured.

‘Are you okay?’ she added.

‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Really, I’m fine,’ he repeated, before proceeding to give her a summary of events.

‘Was he on something, do you think?’ Minnie asked about Frank Postman. ‘Was he drunk?’

‘He might’ve been. He smelt like he was a diabetic. You know, like old men smell when they have diabetes and they’ve been drinking? That sharp, sweet smell.’

‘I know this is a terrible comparison, but your dad sometimes smelt like that.’

‘Hmmm … this bloke is so obnoxious I didn’t even think of my dad.’

‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have said.’ Minnie let out a deep sigh. ‘But I do wish you’d stopped driving on Cup day like you said you would.’

‘Well, the car’s a bit bent so I’m definitely done now,’ Driver replied. ‘I don’t even want to take a ride in another one to get myself home. And I’m down in Degraves Street so I’ll catch the train home, I think.’

‘Good,’ Minnie said. ‘Come home soon, baby.’

‘I will,’ Driver said. ‘I will. I’ll be home within an hour. I want to have a coffee and ring Punter, and then I’ll come home.’ There was a silence between them during which Driver thought about telling Minnie he loved her. ‘I still love you,’ he heard himself saying, but he stumbled over the ‘still’ that had crept spitefully into the sentence. What right did he really have to use it? And it was certainly neither the right time nor the right manner to let Minnie know that he’d seen her being publicly intimate with another man. He was pondering more appropriate phrasing when Minnie interrupted his thoughts.

‘I think the baby’s going to come.’

‘What,’ Driver asked. ‘When, now?’

‘Not now, no, but soon. Maybe today. Maybe later today.’

‘Are you sure about that? How do you know?’

‘I don’t know. I just feel … ready. Or, it’s not me. It’s the baby. The baby feels ready.’

‘I’ll come home now, then,’ Driver replied. ‘I’ll come home straight away.’

‘No, no,’ Minnie said. ‘An hour’s fine. Call Punter and have your coffee. I can hear an espresso machine in the background.’

‘Have you called the hospital?’ Driver asked. ‘There’s a taxi rank outside Flinders Street station. I can be on my way in two minutes and home in fifteen.’

‘No,’ Minnie repeated. ‘I haven’t called the hospital and I didn’t mean it like that. When I said I think the baby’s coming it’s just a sense.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m sure. Braxton Hicks, false labour, that’s all. I shouldn’t have said that either.’

‘Yes you should and I’m glad you did, but …’

‘Driver, please don’t worry. It was another way of telling you that I love you. Without actually saying the words.’

Driver drew in a sharp little breath, as if someone had crept up behind him and unexpectedly tapped him on the shoulder. As if Minnie’s words had been a modest slap on his cheek. Without actually saying the words. He was sure Minnie must have heard his startle, but she said nothing.

‘Why couldn’t you just say it to me, then?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Minnie replied. ‘I could have. I love you.’

‘I like the sound of that,’ Driver replied. ‘Tell me as often as you like.’

They fell silent a while, confident they were listening to each other smile. Sharing an emotion – a positive emotion kept exclusively between the two of them – was a welcome change.

‘Well,’ Driver said, ‘I better go and call Punter. And then I’ll be home. I’ll catch a taxi.’

‘You’ll be quicker on the train at peak hour. Why don’t you catch the train so you can get used to it for when you go back to work?’

‘Okay, I’ll do that,’ Driver conceded, knowing that behind Minnie’s suggestion was an assumption that in the wake of his break from taxi driving he’d go back to law. But he didn’t want to fight that battle just yet. ‘I’ll be home within the hour.’

‘Okay, I’ll have a shower and wake up properly.’

‘I love you, too,’ Driver said.

‘I like the sound of that,’ Minnie replied, mimicking Driver. ‘Tell me as often as you like.’

They shared another silent smile.

After they’d said their goodbyes and hung up, Driver ordered his coffee and dialled Punter’s number.

This is episode 27 of Fare Game. Earlier posts can be found by clicking on the Archives or Categories links to the right of the page.

9.2 Fare Game

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Mick McCoy

Frank Postman resigns after CBD assault and affray
Goading Columnist

Frank Postman, the Shadow Minister for Transport and Racing, resigned yesterday after assaulting a taxi driver, Mr Driver Ancelotti, and causing a collision between Mr Ancelotti’s taxi and two parked cars, outside the Westin hotel in Collins Street in the Melbourne CBD. One of the parked cars was a Victoria Police patrol car. Mr Postman was later charged with assault and affray.

Following his release later in the day from police custody, Mr Postman announced his resignation, effective immediately, throwing his party into further turmoil in the week before the state election.

It appears Mr Postman targeted Mr Ancelotti specifically. An unknown female booked the taxi under a false name for a 6am trip to Tullamarine airport. The woman, claiming to be Mr Postman’s personal assistant, made the booking directly with Mr Ancelotti, rather than through the general taxi booking service.

When Mr Ancelotti arrived at the Westin yesterday morning to pick up his passenger, the troubled politician confronted Mr Ancelotti, forcibly pushing the taxi driver in the chest. Mr Ancelotti stumbled in an effort to regain his balance, Mr Postman’s assault resulting in distancing Mr Ancelotti from his taxi.

Mr Postman then released the taxi’s handbrake, after which the unmanned vehicle rolled down Collins Street towards Swanston Street. The taxi collided first with a hotel patron’s car, parked on the side of the road, and then with the police patrol car. No one was injured in the collisions.

The Victoria Police patrol car had been left at the Collins Street location only ten minutes earlier, with the police officers in charge of the having attended a disturbance at McDonalds in the Town Hall Square. The officers were in the process of returning to their patrol car and had just arrived on the footpath adjacent their vehicle as the taxi began its twenty metre unmanned journey down the Collins Street hill from outside the Regent theatre, neighbouring the Westin hotel.

A staff member from the Westin, Mr Ever Vigilant, was standing at the driveway entrance to the hotel while the drama unfolded. Mr Vigilant also witnessed the progress of the taxi as it collided with the hotel guest’s car and the police patrol car, as well as the altercation between the two men that preceded and followed it.

Mr Vigilant had been alerted to the developing altercation when, from his post outside the hotel’s front doors, he heard raised voices on Collins Street, immediately prior to Mr Postman’s alleged initial assault on Mr Ancelotti. Mr Vigilant arrived on the footpath to see Mr Postman advancing on the taxi driver who, he said, was standing by the taxi’s open front door.

The politician was talking to the taxi driver with ‘a raised and belligerent voice’ according to Mr Vigilant. He described Mr Postman as ‘a very arrogant man’.

Mr Vigilant said he did not see Mr Ancelotti acting either violently or in a threatening manner towards Mr Postman. Mr Vigilant said that he saw Mr Postman forcibly push the taxi driver away from his taxi then lean inside the taxi’s open front window, after which the taxi rolled down the road and collided with the parked cars.

After the collision of Mr Ancelotti’s taxi with the parked cars, Mr Vigilant saw Mr Postman approach Mr Ancelotti for a second time and grab the taxi driver with both hands by the front of his shirt. Mr Vigilant added that Mr Postman ‘raised a fist as if he was about to punch’ the taxi driver.

He said that as Mr Postman’s assault of Mr Ancelotti was proceeding, the two Victoria Police officers, Constables Robert Bobby and Thomas Beat, ran up Collins Street from their stricken vehicle, past the hotel entrance where he was standing, and towards the altercation.

Mr Vigilant said that it seemed Mr Postman had not been aware of the presence of the two constables. He alleges that when Mr Postman finally did hear the constable’s approaching steps and their calls for him to release Mr Ancelotti, the politician initially attempted to evade arrest by running up Collins Street away from the police officers.

Mr Postman was arrested at the scene by the police officers before being taken to the Melbourne East Police Station on Flinders Lane. Mr Postman was formally charged with assault and affray, as well as wilful and negligent damage to provide and public property. He was later released under his own recognisance.

Immediately after his release from custody, a more sober Mr Postman announced his resignation on the steps of the Flinders Lane Police Station. Surrounded by media representatives, Mr Postman cut a solitary figure, with neither his wife and family, nor any of his political colleagues being at his side.

This latest disturbance comes less than a week after Mr Postman claimed, during a private pre-Derby Day function at the prestigious Tulloch Club last Friday night, that gay people where a greater economic burden on society than cigarette smokers. Those remarks were recorded by an audience member and quickly made public through a YouTube video.

In the YouTube video Mr Postman can clearly be heard to say that the homosexual lifestyle results in a shortening of a person’s lifespan amounting to at least twice the number of years as that caused by cigarette smoking. The economic consequences of the homosexual lifestyle, Mr Postman goes on to say, ‘eats into not just their own pockets, but into the pockets of each and every normal Australian.’

Within thirty minutes of Mr Postman’s release and resignation, the leader of the Victorian opposition, Mr Hasn’t A Chance, issued a statement on the steps of parliament. In stark contrast to Mr Postman’s earlier companionless address, at Mr Chance’s side were senior members of his shadow ministry. It was a clear but unsuccessful attempt to demonstrate party unity during an election campaign that has been wracked by internal conflict and ill-discipline, ahead of next Saturday’s state election.

‘Frank Postman today offered me his resignation, effective immediately, from his parliamentary duties, his representation of the people of his electorate and from the party in general. I have accepted that resignation,’ Mr Chance said.

‘We are fortunate to have a deep vein of talent within the ranks of the party and the people of Mr Postman’s electorate will not want for the highest quality of representation in the most diligent pursuit of their interests. I am delighted to announce the appointment of Mr New Talking Head.’

‘And let me take this opportunity to assure you that despite the unfortunate timing of this ascension by Mr Talking Head, he has been groomed for this very role for some time. Our party is not about individual personalities but about sound principles, good policy and affirmative action. Our party is about moving Victoria forward.’

‘Accordingly,’ Mr Chance concluded, ‘this change should not be seen as a knee-jerk reaction to recent events, but rather as a minor variation to the schedule of an otherwise pre-determined transition of responsibility. A transition, I might add, that Mr Postman had been privy to and had whole-heartedly accepted, well before this last week.’

Mr Postman’s replacement, Mr Talking Head, was not available for comment last night. It is understood Mr Talking Head has been on holiday in Bangkok and, at the time of the announcement, was en route from Thailand back to Australia. Mr Talking Head was due to touch down at Tullamarine in the early hours of this morning.

Mr Ancelotti, the victim of the assault by Mr Postman, insisted he was unhurt in the scuffle that both preceded and followed Mr Postman taking control of his taxi. While temporarily fearing for his own safety during the sometimes heated confrontation, after the event he expressed greater concern for the mental health of his assailant.

‘You can only wonder at the pressures these people must be under that lead them to suddenly crack like that,’ Mr Ancelotti said. ‘I just hope he gets the help and care he obviously so desperately needs.’

Mr Ancelotti said he was unaware of any reason why he might have been singled-out for this rough treatment by Mr Postman.

Following his announcement on the steps of the Flinders Lane Police Station, Mr Postman was also not available later in the day for further comment. Equally, in the wake of Mr Chance’s formal acceptance of Mr Postman’s resignation, former party colleagues and a rapidly dwindling group of previous supporters of Mr Postman also remained tight-lipped.

Political analysts have been quick to reinforce the position of all media commentators in dismissing Mr Chance’s claim that Mr Postman’s departure was no more than a matter of timing. They are unanimous in their assessment that as a result of this last embarrassing, hostile and, on this occasion, bellicose public act from Mr Postman, the electoral backlash at next Saturdays polls will only worsen.

Mr Talking Head, they say, faces an unwinnable fight in Mr Postman’s previously safe inner bay side electorate. They question the logic of Mr Talking Head’s presence in Bangkok, on a holiday rather than business, in the week before an election, and suggest it is clear evidence that his replacement of Mr Postman was not planned to take place any time soon.

With only eight days remaining before the state election, the entire Victorian public will not have to wait long to find out whether the predictions of electoral catastrophe for Mr Talking Head, Mr Chance and their embattled opposition party are accurate.

This is episode 26 of Fare Game. Earlier posts can be found by clicking on the Archives or Categories links to the right of the page.

9.1 Fare Game

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Mick McCoy

City Square, Melbourne, by Mat Connolley, Wikimedia Commons

While all this was going on I had my own dramas to contend with. Nothing as personal as those confronting Driver and his loved ones but dramas none the less. They were caused by my ‘goading’ columns, as Driver so succinctly described them, when he first picked me up at the airport and drove me into work all those years ago. News often involves describing the deeds and declamations of people who would be ashamed of having those deeds and declamations made public. I’d have loved to have been the first to get my hands on the recording of Frank Postman’s unwise words, for example, but some things are better consumed live, accompanied by sound and vision, than just in print. Either way, the public has a right to know and even if that’s after a YouTube premiere, my colleagues and I get paid for exposing events that are in the public interest. Besides, there’s always a back story. Continue reading →

8.5 Fare Game

Posted on April 19, 2013 by Mick McCoy

Flemington good seats doublebug flickr Creative Commons

The lift finally arrived at the fifth floor and The Innocent and the No-Good Boyfriend filed out. But a few steps into the corridor The Innocent stopped directly in front of them. ‘It’s almost like you’re following me,’ she said to Driver. ‘But in case you haven’t figured it out yet men like you, men of your age, are invisible to me.’ She slipped her arm around the No-Good Boyfriend’s elbow. ‘So quit following me and quit your pathetic games.’

They walked away.

‘Let’s wait here a minute,’ Driver suggested, in her wake. ‘Let them get some distance.’ Continue reading →

8.4 Fare Game

Posted on April 16, 2013 by Mick McCoy

Inside elevator Bedtime Champ, Creative Commons

‘I’ve got an announcement to make,’ Driver said, wrapping an arm around Minnie’s shoulders and pulling her close. ‘I declare, here and now, that I am going to quit driving taxis. And just as soon as I possibly can.’

A tear came instantly to Minnie’s eye. ‘Oh God,’ she said ‘Before yesterday I couldn’t tell you the last time I cried. Now it’s twice in two days.’

Driver kissed her softly on her forehead. He held her by both shoulders and kissed her again, this time on the lips, before wrapping her up in his arms. Continue reading →

8.3 Fare Game

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Mick McCoy

Flemington Racecourse, Members Drive. By Camaldulensis. Creative Commons

Driver unbuckled his seat belt and slid himself forward. Both Minnie and Steph put a hand on his shoulder, if not to stop him, to at least encourage restraint. ‘Listen buddy, you’re out of line,’ Driver said. ‘And before you interrupt again, I’m a taxi driver just like you. And, just like you, I hold my own licence.’

At first, the Self-Centred Conversation Hijacker didn’t respond to Driver.

‘At least, I’m taking your word for it that you hold your own licence,’ Driver added. Continue reading →

8.2 Fare Game

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Mick McCoy

Red light: Photo Nut 2011, Creative Commons

The following morning, after showering and dressing almost wordlessly, Driver and Minnie made their way first to a café in Docklands where Punter had decided they ought to meet for breakfast. It was the last thing that either of them wanted to do, but they agreed for the same reasons that led to them agreeing to attend the races afterwards, and because they thought they should be there to support the ongoing rehab of Punter and Steph’s relationship. So Driver booked a taxi, they were picked up and delivered to the café with the minimum of fuss and they ate a perfectly pleasant breakfast with Punter and Steph, who were in such affectedly high spirits that they seemed not to notice that Driver and Minnie were so quiet. They barely even mentioned the gash on Driver’s head. Continue reading →

8.1 Fare Game

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Mick McCoy

Cafe by ippie + janine Creative Commons

Consistent with his love of a good list, Driver has defined three types of joy-sucking cab drivers. That, in itself, is an admission that not all of his colleagues share the same outlook on the calling as he does. On the trip into Flemington for the Melbourne Cup, Driver and Minnie endured a cabbie who had achieved the singular distinction of condensing all three varieties of joy-suckers into one distasteful package. Ultimately and inadvertently he did them both a very big favour, but at the journey’s outset their driver’s odiousness did nothing to ease their shared discomfort over the decision that they would actually go to the Cup at all. It was a decision made after the most superficial of conversations during which they were both trying so hard to avoid upsetting the other, for their own different but related reasons, that neither felt they could be honest enough to declare that they didn’t really want to go. Continue reading →

7.4 Fare Game

Posted on April 5, 2013 by Mick McCoy

Invisible man, by Marc Falardeau. Creative Commons

So Minnie finally summoned the courage for one last meeting with The Urologist, committed to telling him it was over.

But that’s not what Driver saw.

What Driver saw was two people who were comfortable in each other’s company. Comfortable in presenting to the world that they were a couple. An intimate couple. And in a place where it might have been him and Minnie presenting that comfortable intimacy for any and all to see. How many times had he and Minnie gone to that very same café together? Often enough, he guessed. It wasn’t their local and they probably hadn’t been there together in six months or more. Maybe not since before the pregnancy, if he thought about it. But, putting aside the faithlessness for a minute, how could Minnie risk presenting that comfortable intimacy with two different men at different times but in the same place? How familiar were he and Minnie to the wait staff? The baristas? How familiar were this other man and Minnie to the wait staff and the baristas? Maybe they thought this other man was Minnie’s partner and Driver was the rat? Or maybe they recognised Minnie but not either of the men she brought in? One could’ve been a brother. One could’ve been a friend. One could’ve been a husband or a lover. Maybe they didn’t give a shit? Continue reading →

7.3 Fare Game

Posted on April 2, 2013 by Mick McCoy

Four Seasons Hotel, HK. Creative Commons

The Urologist produced an undeservingly smug grin, but couldn’t muster the verve to return Minnie’s attention. Yet that was enough. That was all it took. With one word Minnie had taken matters into her own hands and the transition of her infidelity from intention to reality was confirmed.

On the Sunday morning, after two nights spent with a man she barely knew in a room she didn’t rent, Minnie returned to her own room with just enough time to pack before check-out and the remaining half-day’s conference sessions. She switched the overhead light on and stood in the middle of the room, struck by the almost complete absence of any sign that she’d rented it since Friday afternoon. She wondered how often this happened. Commonly, she concluded, for no other reason than it made her feel less uniquely guilty. Continue reading →

7.2 Fare Game

Posted on March 29, 2013 by Mick McCoy

Darren Foreman, Creative Commons

When Driver left for work that morning, Minnie had professed to no plans. She had begun maternity leave a couple of weeks earlier and had spent her days catching up with friends and family, enjoying the independence that would soon be exchanged for motherhood, and assembling the seemingly endless paraphernalia required to look after a baby. In the last week, sleep had become elusive and she constantly woke up early, tired and unrefreshed. That morning was no different. While Driver had been out riding his bike Minnie had decided to finish cleaning out the pantry, a task she had started the day before while Driver moped around the house with his hangover. The pantry tidy-up was preceded by a laundry clean-out during which old sheets, with holes caused and then expanded by errant toe nails, were discarded. Old towels and flannels were afforded no more mercy. And before the laundry, the refrigerator had been returned almost to showroom sterility, the sticky rings tattooed onto shelves by the base of fish and hoisin sauce bottles, jars of capers and anchovy fillets, tubs of Thai curry paste and marinated olives all erased. In fact, even before she’d begun maternity leave, the Monday morning rubbish collections could not come soon enough to keep up with Minnie’s cleansing. Continue reading →

7.1 Fare Game

Posted on March 25, 2013 by Mick McCoy

Driver got himself too pissed on Saturday night to get up early for a ride on Sunday morning. As a younger man a long ride the morning after a big session was his preferred, most reliable hangover cure. He’d ignore the nausea no matter how productive it was, drink vast amounts of water before, during and after the ride, and burn up every last drop of alcohol consumed the night before as fuel for nonsensical sprints up merciless hills. That used to work fine when he was twenty-four, but at 5:45am on the morning after his fortieth birthday celebrations with Punter and Stephanie, too booze-fugged and uncoordinated to figure out how to turn off the alarm that chimed mockingly in his ear from the bedside table, Driver slapped the clock-radio to the carpeted floor and ignored it much more successfully than Minnie could. He fell immediately and precipitously back into a very deep sleep, satisfied with his rational decision to ride on Monday morning instead. Continue reading →

6.3 Fare Game

Posted on March 22, 2013 by Mick McCoy

Photo by Clare Bell, 2009, Flickr: Dirty van @ Creative Commons

Punter returned his hand to Driver’s shoulder. ‘Let me tell you a secret,’ he whispered, manoeuvring Driver away from the pub entrance again and around the corner. ‘We set this up.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh, it was glorious, Driver. Fucking glorious. On Thursday night Postman’s mob had a party function in his electorate. You know, a rallying of the troops, insincere thank-yous for cash donations, a reminder that the battle is not yet over, you are all an important part of the process of giving the Victorian people a better government blah, blah, blah.’

Driver stood with his head bowed and hands in pockets, smiling broadly as he listened to Punter talk. Part of him wanted to get back inside to see how Minnie and Steph were getting along, but he didn’t dare rush Punter when he was so excited and absorbed in the telling. Continue reading →

6.2 Fare Game

Posted on March 19, 2013 by Mick McCoy

It took only a single minute for Frank Postman to deliver his astonishing proclamation. And it’s worth dwelling, for at least as long, over the importance of the scene of the proclamation to the reception his words were given. That Frank Postman had chosen the Tulloch Club to spout such rubbish was nothing short of astounding, given its long tradition of gentlemanly etiquette and steadfast adherence to the appreciation of sport and sportsmanship. Frankie had been invited to speak on account of his glorious successes as a rower and had been in the public eye for long enough to know that on an occasion such as that, in a setting such as that, he should have stuck exclusively to tales of his youthful athletic derring-do rather than take the opportunity to make politically motivated comments, regardless of whether or not those comments were also blatantly bigoted. From Punter’s point of view, the fact that he almost certainly did know better yet couldn’t summon the self-control to follow the script just made it all the more sweet. Continue reading →

6.1 Fare Game

Posted on March 15, 2013 by Mick McCoy

Driver and Minnie bought their drinks from the bar and quickly claimed a just vacated table as Punter and Steph arrived.

‘Drink?’ Driver asked, shaking Punter’s hand.

‘Hang on,’ Punter replied. ‘I can’t concentrate on anything else until I’ve kissed your wife.’ He made a show of shoving Driver aside, wrapping Minnie in his arms and kissing her full on the lips.

‘You alright, mate?’ Driver asked, although he was relieved to see him in such good spirits.

‘Second most beautiful woman in the world. What else am I gunna do?’ Continue reading →

5.3 Fare Game

Posted on March 12, 2013 by Mick McCoy

Pipedream #9

This is the 12th instalment of Fare Game, a new novel. Earlier instalments are available by clicking links in the Archives or Categories boxes to the right of the page.

Last time, the heavy toll of Luca’s death. This time, The Innocent calls Driver back.

And The Innocent reminded Driver very strongly of Minnie. As much as the No-Good Boyfriend stirred his anger and loathing for the entire Thompson clan and anyone remotely associated with them, The Innocent took Driver back to a time before he’d been forced to come to terms with the killing of his father and the loss of his first child.

All those years ago he’d felt a tingle of anticipation when Minnie called him back after he’d rescued her from her own semi-conscious drunkenness clogging the service lane of Royal Parade. To hear her voice again so soon after that first ride not only brought to mind the memory of her dishevelled beauty but also suggested she wanted to see him again and wasn’t interested in waiting. Driver experienced a tantalisingly similar sense of anticipation when he got a call from The Innocent just hours later on the same afternoon that he’d dropped her and the No-Good Boyfriend at the Thompson family home. Continue reading →

5.2 Fare Game

Posted on March 8, 2013 by Mick McCoy

The car the killed Luca Ancelotti

This is the 11th instalment of Fare Game, a new novel. Earlier instalments are available by clicking links in the Archives or Categories boxes to the right of the page.

Last time, with The Innocent and the No-Good Boyfriend in the back seat of his taxi, Driver’s route took him past the scene of his father Luca’s death. Belatedly, Driver realises the No-Good Boyfriend looks familiar because his brother was the driver of the car that hit and killed Luca

Here’s what was established according to the police and to the undisputed acceptance of all parties, regarding the night Luca Ancelotti was run down and killed by person or persons unknown. Continue reading →

5.1 Fare Game

Posted on March 5, 2013 by Mick McCoy

This is the tenth instalment of Fare Game, a new novel. Earlier instalments are available by clicking links in the Archives or Categories boxes to the right of the page.

The Innocent and her No-Good Boyfriend hailed Driver’s cab just east of the corner of Lygon and Elgin streets early the next afternoon. Driver eventually came to see it as a meeting driven by fate, but he was in that kind of mood at the time.

The Innocent reminded Driver more than a little of Minnie, as she was when they first met. As she was when Driver became instantly infatuated her. She possessed the same freshness and beauty and feistiness but, significantly, without the practical, street-wise wisdom that would provide her with the protective outer shell that someone with that much freshness and beauty and feistiness ought to have for their own safety. The absence of that vital ingredient was no doubt why, in Driver’s overly hasty estimation, she found herself in the company of the No-Good Boyfriend. Continue reading →

4.2 Fare Game

Posted on March 1, 2013 by Mick McCoy

This is the ninth instalment of Fare Game, a new novel. Earlier instalments are available by clicking links in the Archives or Categories boxes to the right of the page.

Last time four of Driver’s top 5 taxi movies were revealed. This time, the unlikely fifth entry achieves it’s status because it resonates with Driver’s current predicament. Punter would tease him for indulging in pop-psychology, but it doesn’t matter what Punter thinks …

Which brings us to Collateral. Not the kind of film Driver would normally give so much credit to, it snuck into the top five for its first ever appearance at the very last minute. Released in 2004, it starred Jamie Foxx as Max, the taxi driver, Jada Pinkett Smith as US Justice Department prosecutor Annie Farrell and the cold and arrogant Tom Cruise as Vincent, an extremely effective hired killer, meaning little Tommy didn’t need to act much in this role. Continue reading →

mcphoenix

mick mccoy's writing re-animated

Category Archives: Fare Game

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Top 5 things I’ve learnt about blogging literary fiction OR What is clear now is just how little I knew

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