The Crimes and Punishments of Miss Payne by Barry Jonsberg Page A

was boring him.
    “I'm not pretending to be anything, Calma. I'm me, that's all. Like I was saying earlier. Other people think it's dumb, what I am. Who cares?”
    “Does it matter what I think about you?”
    Kiffo took a deep draw on his cigarette and thought for a moment.
    “Yeah,” he said. “It does. But then, you don't think I'm dumb, do you? So no worries.”
    “But it is important what other people think about you, Kiffo. It is important if they think you are stupid when you're not!”
    “Why?”
    “It just is.” I was floundering and I knew it.
    “I'll tell you what's important, Calma.”
    “What?”
    “What we do about the Pitbull. That's important. Where do we go from here?”
    “Are you crazy?” I said. “We do nothing about the Pitbull. I've already had enough trouble with that woman. I'm going to keep my head down, do the assignments she sets and hope that she'll either leave soon or get run over by a very large road train. Preferably the latter.”
    “Yeah. You're right,” he said, scratching behind his ear. “It's too dangerous. Keep your head down. That's the way to go. You're right.”
    That stopped me. God, he can be a real bastard at times.
    “Now, hang on a moment, Kiffo,” I said. I think I even put my hands on my hips. “Just because I'm right doesn't mean I'm right, you know.”
    “Hey, you got me with that one, Calma. Just too smart for me, I guess.”
    “Cut it out, Kiffo. Don't think, not even for one minute, that you are going to do anything about the Pitbull without me. Okay?”
    “But you just said—”
    “Never mind what I just said. We are in this together.”
    I meant it too. It hit me, right then, with all the force of a genuine revelation, that I only took chances verbally. Quick at shooting from the lip, but a bit of a wuss when it came to anything else. Maybe old Kiffo, all action and adrenaline, would make a good partner, a Clyde to my Bonnie, a Butch Cassidy to my Sundance. I decided not to share this with Kiffo. I don't think he would have liked it if I'd called him Butch. But what the hell? I'd come this far, and like old Macbeth said: “I am stepped in blood so far that to go back is as tedious as to go o'er.” Or something like that. And anyway, I was going to find out about the connection between the Pitbull and Kiffo, regardless of what he might think.
    We got back to my place and I invited him in for a cup of coffee.
    “Thanks, but I'd better get back,” he said. “Dad'll be home soon, full of grog and wanting dinner. If it's not ready for him, there'll be trouble.”
    I watched as he walked off into the dark, a slight, bandylegged figure, hunched and curiously vulnerable. I had little firsthand knowledge of the kind of life he led, but I knew that it was loveless and full of casual cruelty. I felt even closer to him then than normal. Not the sort of closeness you feel for the underprivileged, when your own comfortable existence is held up to theirs. Not the sort that is tinged with guilt. I just felt—and I know this sounds really obvious and almost childish—that we were both here and human. That for all ourdifferences, we were still, like the rest of humanity, ninety-nine percent indistinguishable from each other.
    Never mind that the bastard was lying to me.
    The Fridge was in bed when I went in. I had a hot shower and snuggled under the covers, the AC blasting above my head. It felt great, the contrast between the artificial chill in the air and the sense of womblike security in bed. I dozed a little and thought about the day. Curiously, I didn't feel half so bad now. What had seemed a nightmare was only a bad dream and fading with every passing moment. I thought about Kiffo's back as he walked off into the night, and the sense of security that gave. Most of all, I curled myself around an image of someone carefully, lovingly cleaning a photograph of a grinning young man.
    Yes, it had been a strange day. As I slipped under the surface of sleep, I