Fall by Candice Fox Page B

the former.’
    That hurt. She was referring to the time I’d hit my first wife in a drug-fuelled brawl at our cheap fibro bomb of a rental house in the Western suburbs. It was more than a decade ago, but Eden’s brother had brought it out into the light and Eden was never going to forget it. She didn’t forget things she knew about people. It was probably just a stab in the guts to cover for the compliment, to balance the universe, but in any case it seemed unfair.
    â€˜And then when you do snap at her, boy,’ she said, ‘then she’s really going to own you.’
    â€˜This conversation is getting far too deep,’ I said. ‘Come to dinner. Please. I’m asking you nicely. Stave off your jealousy of Imogen for an hour or so.’
    â€˜My what?’ She squinted.
    â€˜Your barely contained jealousy of Imogen.’
    â€˜Jealousy over what? What could Imogen possibly ever have that I would want?’
    I tapped my chest and nodded knowingly, gave her a happy wink.
    â€˜One of these days you’re going to wake up to yourself.’
    â€˜Hopefully not,’ I said.
    I jostled her in the ribs again with my elbow and she jumped, swiped at me. Her flesh felt weird under my skin. I reached outand grabbed at her ribs, and heard a crackling sound under the fabric that was very familiar to me. Something I’d heard many times.
    â€˜What is that?’
    â€˜Get your fucking mitts off me.’
    â€˜Is that a tattoo?’
    I was certain I’d heard the crackling of sticky tape and the squish of damp plastic wrap, which is the kind of dressing only applied to a freshly inked tattoo. I’d stopped counting how many tatts I had myself. I was proudest of the gigantic traditional-style eagle, wings spread, that dominated my chest. My first. It was tough to go big on your first ink, and that’s basically all the image stood for. My young, stupid toughness. The design could have been anything.
    â€˜Do not touch me, Frank. Ever.’
    â€˜We’re about to get going here, people,’ the head technician said. He lifted the sheet from Ivana’s body and pulled it down over her naked figure, folded it at her feet. I looked up and saw that the brother was gone.

 
    Ruben tried not to snoop but he couldn’t help himself. Something was very wrong in the house by the park, but he couldn’t fit the clues together, could not make any kind of sense out of what he saw. The path he took vacuuming from the ground-floor kitchen to the stairs outside the attic room was like a morbid tour of the moment things went wrong, the last days of joy before the hellish fall.
    The previous summer he’d been in the States and stopped in Dallas to take the tour of the preserved Book Depository from where Lee Harvey Oswald had shot President Kennedy. He’d stood behind the glass and looked at the spot where the killer had perched, saw the scuff marks in the dust, the boxes still sitting unpacked as they had been that fatal day, forever to remain as they were, as though the moment could be returned to, changed somehow, if nothing was touched. He’d heard the haunting shots ring out over the little speaker in the corner, punctuating the commentary of the virtual tour guide. The house on the park was like the Texas School Book Depository. A frozen moment of terror and pain.
    The wrongness of it all had struck him as he entered the bedroom the first day, puffed the pillows and shook the dust off the bed covers. The bedroom belonged to a man and a woman.History books on his side of the bed, business management books on hers. Ruben’s written English comprehension was terrible, but he flicked through the pages and found a shopping list bookmark in one. Then he spied the man’s heavy Omega watch sitting by the lamp. He glanced behind him at the door. Felt a tingle in his palms. Why had the master of the house left his watch there? It was obviously his daily watch.