Toastmaster

Toastmaster.

Written by Anthony Gee. Copyright, 2003.

Darren thought the cheap champagne tasted like soapy bath water. It
looked like fizzy urine. He'd raised his glass four times and with each
toast he'd feel the stuff like a presence in his forehead. He could
feel it glazing his eyes. Flushing his skin. It seemed to continue to
fizz sourly under his chest like giggling that couldn't find anything
funny enough to release it.
"Darren. I believe you had something to say?"
There was nothing he had planned out. As Uncle Don stretched out his
arm with the microphone to where Darren was sitting at the bridal
table, fourth left of the Groom, right on the end, he just felt words
that were ready to rise on the acidic gas; he didn't know what those
words were, but he felt them, ready to rise. Darren rose from his chair
and tried to say something befitting.
"Thanks, Don. Thanks? everybody. If nobody minds, I'd just like to say
a few words, I mean, what's a wedding really, without a hitch?"
If there's such a thing as good natured murmuring, then that was the
sound that acknowledged the pun that just popped into his head. It
wasn't any kind of real laughter. A lot of the people attending didn't
like him. Including Tim's parents. They had regarded him as something
of a distraction from their son's upward mobility. Darren didn't even
notice, suspended as he was in tipsy quietude and besides, he was used
to it.
A pause to let the words rise.
"All of us that have known these guys, knew, from the first moment,
that this day was inevitable."
Knowing smiles and soft, glassy eyes concurred with him. They had
known. They had known the past and all of them were waiting for Darren
to lavish upon them the sentimental corn syrup of it all. Here was a
dead and sentimental tar baby that they expected him to gladly slap on
the back but he knew that this was no funeral. He was obliged to talk
of The Future.
"Tim, you know that I love you like a brother?"
Tim's eyes brimmed with moisture. And Nadia's thick, red smile was
stretched across her face so tight that it looked like it could
possibly snap. He saw Nadia's smile on Tim's face, both of them
indivisible.
Darren closed his eyes to summon some more words from the expanse
inside of him. There was nothing there but a gentle stirring. Something
like a consistent breeze blowing across a desert floor. If he were to
open his mouth, then the words coming out would be the voice of this
place.
"? and Nard? I love you too. I love you both too much to just let
things happen." His voice was flat and quiet. A lot of the guests were
still grinning like idiots because they hadn't really heard him and
assumed that he was jokingly paying tribute. But some of the more
astute people could sense something coming after that last bit.
"Nard, this should be the happiest day of your life?"
Some of Nadia's smile wilted. Tim's eyes seemed to swim up through
their emotional glaze like fish lured to the surface. Then it spurted
out of Darren.
"? Tim, you're going to be dead within sixty seconds."
A few people laughed. Most froze, unsure of what to do. Nadia's smile
collapsed and fell in half as her jaw hung open. Tim's face couldn't
seem to settle on an expression. You might think that Darren felt
awkward, to say the least, but he didn't even really feel like he was
there. He felt like a television. Or a radio, if you can understand
that. He was just taking things from the air and making them into
words. His eyes never wavered from Tim and every person in the room,
including his blushing bride, slowly turned their gazes on him, half
expecting something to happen. And that was the strange thing. Before
they even considered the notion that Darren might be crazy or drunk or
attempting to be funny, they all fixed on Tim like he might explode.
Their half expectations turned into anticipation in the solid
silence.
Tim looked around at all of them imploringly. He still couldn't find
words. He opened his mouth and squeaked. Then his face went red. He
coughed three times. People flinched as he belted out those three
coughs. His eyes went huge as though he were trying to suppress
something rising from his chest. The blood in his face became diffused
with the pastiness of mortal terror. Nadia made a quick, high, rising
sound like a kettle. Tim's eyes bulged like squeezed balloons. They got
bigger and bigger. His face looked like some sort of pagan mask with
the stretched eyes and mouth, his tongue starting to loll above his
chin.
It was Uncle Don that harnessed the fear that was now galloping
through the room.
"Get him some water! NOW!"
The Best Man blundered over the table and reached for a carafe of
water. He succeeded in knocking it to the floor where it shattered all
over the tiles. Uncle Don and Tim's father, Dan, rushed to the Bridal
Table with full glasses. Dan pushed his into his son's hand and guided
it up to his lips. It spilled out of Tim's mouth and down the front of
his shirt. His father continued to force it in. Tim sprayed bursts of
it as he coughed, a chronic, barking cough.
"There's something in there!' cried Uncle Don. He slipped behind Tim
and wrenched him from his seat as though he were plucking him from the
icy ocean. His hands scrambled down Tim's chest until he found his
diaphragm. He crushed Tim against him and each time he did, Tim's face
would strain forward, all the blood squeezed into it now, and his mouth
would take huge bites at the air like a dog that's trying to vomit.
After the fourth squeeze, Tim extricated himself from his uncle's grip
and leaned on his new wife's shoulder. She just gawped at him in frozen
shock. Threads of watery saliva dripped on to her shoulder but she
didn't notice.
"Water went down the wrong way" he gasped at Don, holding up a hand as
if to ward off his Uncle's fervour.
Kelly, the Head Bridesmaid, put a consoling arm around Nadia's
shoulders. That's when Nadia's astonished countenance fell apart and
she started to wail. Kelly stood up and a sharp finger flicked out of
her arm like a blade that she pointed straight at Darren and she
screamed "WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?"
Darren's eyes were still fixed on Tim, dispassionate and far away as
though he were watching fish idly bobbing around in a tank. He blinked
once. Uncle Don looked at his watch and noted that three minutes had
passed since Darren had pronounced death on his nephew. He drew himself
up to his full stature and turned a withering gaze in Darren's
direction, as did every pair of eyes at the reception. Even the Flower
Girl, Tim's five year old niece, held him with a malice that was
cooking with righteous hatred.
Darren blinked again. His eyes focused on Amber the tiny Flower Girl,
and darted from one angry face to another. A feeble voice mumbled
through his slack lips.
"I'm sorry. I'm very sorry. I really am very?"
Tim's Uncle and his Dad and his Best Man and his Cousins and family
and friends swarmed all over Darren and escorted him from the hall. He
closed his eyes and let his feet drag as they bustled him to the door
like a convict. He kept them closed and let his body go limp as fists
sporadically thudded into his kidneys, his arms and his chest. He felt
the one that snapped his head back on his neck but the blow was like a
match that had been struck somewhere behind his closed eyelids. The
pain flared for a moment, then died. He lay in the carpark in a state
that wasn't conscious, but he also wasn't unconscious.

There was a twister in the desert, the skinniest twister he'd ever
seen even though he'd only ever seen them on television. It was as thin
and as pale as his pinkie finger. It cut a line in the desert sand as
it moved, slowly and not wobbling around like twisters usually move,
but straight and purposeful. It was connected to a cloud that was so
high that the receding end could only be discerned as a fine
hair.
Darren looked straight up its slender length and could see it taper to
where it almost blended with the sky. He put his hand in the spindly
column of twisting sand and the portion between his hand and the ground
just stopped and collapsed like a pillar to settle back down as a part
of the desert floor. He took his hand away. The skinny twister
reconnected itself with the ground instantaneously.
There was a small, green lizard sluggishly crawling on the sand. He
picked it up and touched it to the side of the twister. It sucked the
lizard like wet spaghetti straight out of Darren's fingers. He had an
idea.
He took off his shirt and draped it on the ground, about six inches
ahead in its path. He waited about six seconds. When it reached the
edge, the shirt just disappeared. Darren wasn't sure but he guessed
that it must have been sucked up so fast that he didn't really see it
happen.
He was astounded until it all just blinked out of existence and he
realised the Flower Girl was stamping hard on his right hand with her
little high heels.

When he rolled out of bed at two thirty the following afternoon, it
was only the bruising on his face and body that reminded him of the
previous nights drama. His conscience was untouched by everything that
had taken place.
How could he regret being something that he never chose to be? He had
heard of psychics and clairvoyants and people that supposedly
channelled the spirits of those that had since passed on. He knew that
he wasn't one of them. Theirs was a new-age culture that tied in with
esoteric belief systems, a hybrid house of cards that stood on
something that couldn't be properly explained.
Darren didn't believe that what he had was any kind of gift. He was
even doubtful that he could develop whatever it was that he did have.
What he did know was that his friend, Tim Galen, was meant to die
exactly sixty seconds from when he predicted. Of course he was glad
that he didn't.
Darren didn't regard his kind of foreknowledge as something spiritual,
he suspected that it had something to do with time and his own place
within it. He suspected that for whatever reason, he had come to occupy
a unique position in the way things unravelled. Perhaps he stood at a
vantage point from which he could see things from a distance. Whatever
it was, it didn't feel external or special or even surprising.
He remembered his vision of the desert. He was sure that he'd been
there before.
He looked at the palm of his right hand and saw the eggplant coloured
bruise that blotted the centre and he remembered Tim's niece bringing
her foot down hard as though she were trying to stamp a cockroach. He
remembered sitting up quickly and her defiant little eyes holding him,
and her voice hard with the corrupted spite of someone much older than
she was, spitting:
"Get up fart face. Get up and go home! Or my Dad'll beat you up?
again."
On the last word she gave him the finger. He remembered not feeling
anything but a little sore from his injuries. There was definitely no
trace of anger. He felt as he had when he was in the desert- as serene
and expansive as that place had been. He remembered looking through the
flat malice of her eyes, down into that as yet untainted soul, and
proclaiming without any vindictiveness whatsoever:
"You will set your bed on fire with a lit cigarette when you fall
asleep, four nights before your seventeenth birthday. Only your teeth
will be left."
He remembered her shrill screech assailing his ears, more alarm than
terror, and the scuffling of feet as his punishers ran back out of the
building.
"Daddy? Uncle Jim? he tried to give me a cigarette! He tried to make
me smoke!"
"Son of a bitch!"
"You sick bastard!"
He remembered panic settling on him for the first time that night as
he caught sight of Tim Galen bearing down on him with fists drawn and a
gutful of salvaged bravado. The men seemed eager to let him be the
first to get to Darren.
He remembers that he ran two kilometres home and only looked back to
double check that the front door was definitely locked.
Today he would go see his friend, Manushka. Manushka read a lot of
stuff that other people didn't bother with and it was for that reason
that Manushka knew a lot of things that other people didn't. It's not
as though he thought his friend might know what was going on with him,
but he was sure that 'Noosh would have a slant on it that would be
enlightening in some way.
After Darren showered and washed the dishes, he lit a cigarette and
jumped in the car. As he was backing down the driveway, he had a
reassuring sense of his destiny, that it was a safe and favourable one.
Which was ironic, considering that he seemed to have acquired the knack
of foretelling the terminal misfortune of others.

Manushka rarely, if ever, went out in the course of an average day.
She seldom needed to. She had weaned herself off "small-talk,
double-talk and happy whoring" as she put it. She believed that people
had lost touch with themselves and had devolved into insipid little
sheep that needed to be fed and patted and led. Classic cat person. She
owned three.
If Darren hadn't known her since school then perhaps she would never
have had any friends. Who could tell what part he had played in her
life? If she'd never met him then perhaps she would be a tax paying
career woman or a spoiled rich trophy wife.
He gave her front door three quick raps while he mused on this.
He'd almost forgotten that he was waiting at her door, for her to open
it, and then suddenly he was looking at her with her dyed black hair
showing three inches of brown roots and her white, almost faintly
marbled skin. Her serious, stiff lipped mouth somehow clearly
pronounced, "Well, to what do I owe the privilege? You forget to pay
the phone bill again?"
When that serious mouth softens as close to a smile as it can, Darren
knows two things. One being that there was no fate, no possibility
within that concept of her ever becoming a career woman or a trophy
wife. The other thing is that if he hadn't known her since school then
she would never have given that exact same smile to anyone else, ever.
As far as friendships go, they were tight.
"You look serious?"
'Noosh had only the vaguest detectable trace of an accent but it was
the phrasing that had stuck with her. She had come to Australia from
Russia as an exchange student in the last year of high school. She had
brought with her a little piece of the Cold War blues mixed with some
repressed Communist reds. She advertised it in both her demeanour and
the tips of her hair that was dyed so black that it reflected purple in
sunlight.
"Hey, Noosh. The phone's probably gonna get cut off tomorrow, but hey,
I don't need a reason to drop around."
"Everybody has a reason. Nobody wants to be alone. Nobody is their own
friend" she glowered at him.
He still wasn't completely sure about how she had managed to stay
here, but he was glad that she had. He didn't know whether it was
chemistry or what, but Darren had been one of the only ones to identify
the defiance that others mistook for the a nature of abject misery. As
she was shrugging off the tail end of her adolescent years, it was that
defiance that was taking her somewhere new. Her questions were
demanding answers, and those answers were demanding a new way of
living. If she knew that Darren- anybody- would follow her example,
then maybe it would have repulsed her. Then again, maybe not.
"Nice to see you too. Have you noticed what a brilliant day it is?
What do you think the weather is like in Russia at the moment?" His
needling drew another ironic smile on to her face.
"Where I'm from it is hot at this time of year. It is? tropical. Come
in. What did you say you wanted?"
As they walked into the small, dark living room, Darren almost stepped
on one of her cats .
"I have a ? not a problem? a situation. That's what it is. I have
reason to believe that I can see the future."
Manushka's expression didn't change. The smile still hovered on her
face.
"What makes you believe that?"
Darren wasn't quite sure of how to answer that. Anything he thought of
saying seemed fatuous. So he said it anyway.
"I can feel it, Noosh. I know that that must sound weird, but?"
"You're a weird guy, Darren, that's why I put up with you. What does
it feel like to know the future?"
"That's what it's like, Noosh. You said it. I just know." He held his
hands out in front of him as though he were presenting her with fact
instead of thin air.
"The only thing anyone knows is how to shit and eat. There's got to be
more to it than that. Have you predicted anything that has come
true?"
Her response doesn't quell Darren's fervour.
"No, but I had a vision."
He tried to let the word 'vision' settle its profound weight on her
but it elicited a sneer instead.
"So you have visions. Lots of people have what they think are
visions."
Darren was not to be deterred.
"Naa, these are real visions. They're as real as anything else. I go
to a real place."
"A place? What is this place like?"
It rolled out of Darren as though he had kept it pent up for too
long.
"A desert. And there is a thin twister there and I seem to be able to
control it if I touch it."
"It sounds like the Wizard Of Oz to me. What does any of this have to
do with seeing the future? I don't think we're going to get hit by a
twister soon."
Manushka grimaces with scepticism but Darren could tell by the way she
leaned her head towards him that she was interested in what he was
saying.
"I don't know. But get this- I went to Tim and Nard's wedding on
Saturday?"
"The one that I wasn't invited to?"
"You never talked to Tim at school. Or Nard. You never talked to
anyone. Anyway, they were doing the speeches and I felt- I knew- that
Tim was about to die. It wasn't a question of whether it could be
stopped- he was going to die."
"Why? How?"
"I don't know."
"Did he?"
"No, he didn't know either."
"Did he die, you idiot?"
"No. But I stood up and told him. I told everyone."
"Nice prediction. You're not making sense to me, Darren. There are not
many people that I believe are crazy but you could be one."
Darren stuck a cigarette in his mouth and played with a match before
lighting it. He tried to think of a way to put his story in a context
where she could perceive something that he couldn't. She was trying to
get a rise out of him, he knew her well enough to know that.
"For some reason, I absolutely knew that he was going to die. I had to
say something."
"Do you think you could have stopped it?"
"No"
"Then why didn't he die?"
Darren couldn't believe he hadn't asked himself the same question and
then he suddenly realised just how implicitly he believed.
"I don't know."
They sat in silence for quite a while. Darren was starting to think
that he wasn't going to leave Manushka's house any wiser when all of a
sudden she ventured something.
"Either you're deluded or you can see the future, but if that's the
case, then it doesn't come true if you say what is going to
happen."
Darren didn't like that theory but the problem was that it was very
plausible. It seemed evident from what happened at the wedding. He
started to ponder the grim implications of having extra sensory
perception. Well, the troublesome kind that he had anyway.
"Does it come when you want it to? Can you look at anybody and know
what's going to happen to them?" she asked.
"It just happens when it happens. It's strange- it feels natural, like
when I told Tim, it was like I'd always known. I don't know, if it had
happened, if he'd died, I guess I'd feel pretty bad."
Manushka gave voice to the ugly truth as it dawned on him-
"You are going to have to prepare to be a martyr, Darren. What
happened after you freaked out the whole wedding?"
"They beat me up. They were angry."
"Uh-huh. You have two choices. You can either ignore these predictions
of the future and have the outcome on your conscience, or you can speak
up and accept that no one is going to understand. You are probably
going to take many more beatings but I think you know what is the right
thing to do. Especially if it is the difference between life and
death."
Darren felt depressed. He started to contemplate how lonely he was
destined to be. There was very little room in the world for freaks such
as himself and he found himself cursing whatever it might have been
that had dumped this burden on him.
"However," she pronounced assertively, "there is no reason why this
should have to be a complete disaster for you. There must be a way we
can make some money out of this."
Darren wasn't sure he liked the way this was going.
"I never picked you for a capitalist swine, 'Noosh."
"I am an opportunist. This is an opportunity. People are so insecure
that they need to know the future and that has opened the door for all
sorts of charlatans and frauds. But we offer something much better. We
offer the chance to alter a bad future. We don't know the details but
who does? We shall hide behind words like 'spiritual' and
'supernatural'. And I shall be your manager."
She was joking and Darren knew it. He inadvertently got into a staring
competition with one of her cats as he brooded about his unwanted
phenomenon. The long, grey Abbysinian gave a victory stretch when he
looked away, then it stood up and arched itself before sauntering
off.
"Hmm. I don't think so. That seems a little tacky."
"There's nothing tacky about it. You can let this thing ride you or
you can make it work for you."
"I don't think you believe me."
"I believe you."
She dragged herself a little closer to him on the couch. Darren felt
surprise that he was noticing something ripple through her, something
that seemed to be deeper beneath her clothes than the breathing of her
pale body. He was flustered. She seemed to undulate across slowly like
one of her cats. Darren had never thought about her like this before.
As a matter of fact, he wasn't thinking anything at all. He was feeling
downright disconcerted, his head seemed to be buzzing somewhere between
fear and anticipation.
"Ah, 'Noosh? do you feel okay?"
She took his hand and touched it to her warm neck.
"Do I?"
Darren felt something familiar twist inside him but it was less urgent
than the present moment. Words began to rise but his lips were
cauterised by the heat rising in her skin. He thought of the smooth,
grey felt of exotic cats and imagined that he could detect a low trill
murmuring through her that instantly quieted the turbulence within
himself. She slowly guided his hand to the low neck of her dress but it
felt more like his hand was drooping, melting over her. He closed his
eyes.
"How long have we known each other, Darren?" she coaxed.
Darren really had to think about that.
"Uh? two years. Two years and four months."
"Uh-huh. I haven't slept with anybody in the time we've known each
other."
"You don't talk to anyone."
"There isn't anybody worth talking to."
"Are you saying you're lonely?"
"I have three cats."
There was only the faintest insistence to speak and he barely even had
to repress it. First the words went silent, then thoughts. She slipped
her tongue into his mouth and fell upon him.

They were both on the floor when he woke up, covered by a large
patchwork doona cover that was draped over the couch. Manushka breathed
the slow, measured breaths of deep sleep. Darren raised himself up on
an elbow and touched her hair gingerly as though it were a fresh wound
on his own body. He smiled contentedly but he knew that he should be
practical and get some distance in order to think about this new
thing.
He found his jeans half under the couch. A different cat to the one
that stared him down peered out at him from the darkness. He saw its
eyes shine malevolently.
Jealous little bastard, thought Darren. Get ready for some changes
around here. He was by no means a cat person.
His knees popped as he stood up and pulled on his jeans. As he walked
out the front door, he threw a quick look over his shoulder at the girl
that had gone from being his buddy to being beautiful. She was
motionless, weightless and timeless. He marvelled at the way love could
do that- the way that it could birth a person as new to his sight. The
way that it could put a new pair of eyes in his head.
It wasn't even like they had grown closer than the propinquity that
they already shared, it was like they had just met. It was with that
freshness that he walked out into the weak, yet bright winter sun that
seemed to tease a glow from the colours of everything he looked
at.
Darren started the car and set a course for Crusty's where he
frequently bought breakfast- coffee and bagels. He picked up two that
were stuffed with chocolate and cream even though he wasn't hungry,
along with a latte, and went and sat out in the lucent morning that was
surely becoming a glorious day. The bagels were left to bleed greasy
splotches through the white paper bag that they came in.
Crusty's had a magnificent location, right on the esplanade, and
Darren watched couples walk in tandem down the beach. Some of them were
quite old and Darren marvelled at the continuity of the way they spoke
and walked as one entity. The ones that held hands were the ones that
he admired. He loved the thought of being in love with one person for
the rest of his life. He let his mind drift into that place that was
open to him now, that place where his future was entwined with
another's. He felt compelled to go back over to Manushka's just as soon
as he finished his coffee. He could take her those sweating
bagels.
Darren's mind was still fixated on the romantic notion of presenting
her with breakfast in bed when he realised that he was standing up. He
felt a familiar stirring and he became aware that he was staring at a
man that could not have been any older than his early fifties, on the
beach about thirty metres away. He was walking briskly alongside his
wife.
Darren let out a few yells, he didn't know if they were words or not.
He didn't know the man's name so whatever came out of his mouth took a
few attempts to get the man's attention. Finally the man stopped
walking and looked at him with a quizzical expression as Darren ran
toward him. The man's wife looked visibly uneasy.
When Darren was within metres of him, he tried to force out something
amiable. Not that there was any point. The kind of news that he brought
was very hard to put a friendly spin on.
"Uh? hi? sir, uh?" he tried to collect some rational measure of
sociability but it was all swept away by the strange gust that whistled
through him and out of his mouth. His mind was disconnected as he
announced:
"You are going to have a heart attack, a fatal heart attack, fifty
eight steps from where you stand."
The man's mouth dropped open for a moment. It seemed to be trying to
form words and his wife gripped his hand and her face twitched with
absolute dread. When the man did start to speak, it was with an
eloquence that had been refined by anger.
"Listen, I don't know if you are some sort of crazy but I underwent a
triple bypass only a month ago. I'm going to be fine if I get enough
exercise and that's what my wife and I are doing here- obviously! Are
you a doctor?"
Darren had no idea of what to say.
"No."
The man's right hand, the one that his wife was clinging to, shook
itself free and curled itself into a solid fist.
"I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here. Am I showing some sort
of symptom that I am about to keel over?"
Darren shook his head like he was trying to fend off flies.
"No."
The man started to relinquish any control that he was keeping on his
rage.
"Then what's the big idea! You've frightened my wife half to death!
You sure haven't made my day either!"
He made a lunge for Darren but it was a slow punch and he ducked it
easily. He did, however, take the brunt of the man's knee as it drove
into his shoulder. Darren didn't feel it but he sank face down on to
the sand and feigned serious injury. He heard the man's furious heavy
breathing as he stood over him. Some sand piled on to his back.
"Son of a bitch should be locked up!"
When he was sure that the man had moved on, Darren raised his face and
swept the sand from around his eyes. It crunched between his teeth. He
could see the couple walking slowly. They were counting their steps. He
waited until he counted fifty nine steps and then he ran for his
car.

He drove for Manushka's house, pining for comfort and sympathy.
Damn, I forgot the bagels! He was befuddled enough that he almost
turned the car around, but then he thought better of it. She would
probably still be in bed and he would crawl in there and spend the rest
of the rotten day wrapped up in her.
When he finally rolled up to the curb outside her house, he turned off
the engine and tried to clean out the bleak thoughts that were fighting
with his elation at being with her again.
When he felt composed enough, he walked up to the door and paused to
knock but then thought better of it. If she was still asleep then he
wanted to just sneak in and lay down beside her. He would wake her up
with kisses. And flowers! That was what he needed. Flowers.
Darren looked into the neighbouring front yard that was overgrown with
about two feet of crab-grass and weeds. It was obvious that no one had
lived there for months, and even if anyone did, it's not like they were
going to care about anything being taken out of there. There were some
beautiful, big sunflowers and some dainty, little blue blossoms that he
couldn't identify, getting strangled in the overgrowth. He arranged
them into a loose bouquet. He hoped she liked flowers.
He went back to her front door and opened it slowly, his eyes on the
floor where he had last seen her.
There was a cat there, the same one he had seen glaring at him from
under the couch. It was standing on its hind legs. Manushka wobbled a
little on the rope that she had hung herself from and the cat continued
to paw at one of her feet like it was a toy.
There are some things you never see coming.

*****