A Woman Sphinx

Amongst the mysterious internet detective work I may or may not have been doing, and the new fashions I have been trying out unawares (see previous entry), here is Chapter the Fourth of my greatest ever semi-written novel, Balwyn Fountain. I still haven't introduced my second main character yet. I'm trying to make the guy appear, but he's too busy to be in my novel yet, it seems.

Just before I left the house to get to the first support group meeting, I got my Biff�s Fleet trucking cap, which incidentally they didn�t make in my size, and planted it on my head. It sagged over my eyes. It usually frustrated the hell out of me, and even though it was part of my uniform, I never bothered wearing it unless I was at a staff meeting, which was usually held in a grubby room dubbed Tom Thumb�s in the Matthew Flinders pub and usually went on far too long and was far too informal for my liking. But I wanted good coverage around my face so I didn�t have to hallucinate in my front yard as much as I made a beeline to my truck.

I still had my sunglasses on. They were beginning to take on a safety blanket role in my life.

I jumped up onto my truck and leapt ungracefully into the window. At that moment, my cap came off and flew on a strong breeze into the yard. In fact, it flew so far that I watched it hover above the infernal fountain for the briefest moment, and then got sucked into the top.

I screamed. And then I put my seatbelt on. And then I fumbled with the gears and tried to get the handbrake off and it was all taking way too long and I screeched and made sparks along the truck as I dewedged it out from between my bent wrought iron gates. I sped down the street and nearly ran over a recently escaped pedigree Chinese Crested looking forlorn in the middle of the road.

I felt sick. I couldn�t concentrate. My palms were sweaty and this sort of state to be in wasn�t the right state to be driving a huge truck all over suburbia. But, whatever. A support group advertised in grammatically incorrect English on the internet I didn�t quite understand that only cost twelve bucks that seemed to be held under an overpass was better than being anywhere near my freaky fountain, especially because my freaky fountain not only gaveth, it also tooketh away.

I forced myself to calm down. My oversized cap probably only looked like it had been sucked into the very top of the fountain. I�d probably find it lying around in the violets on the other side of the yard when I got home, and if I didn�t, then I could always buy another one. They only cost eight bucks.

My heart was still beating a little more frequently than usual as I parked tentatively in a side street near Gardenvale Railway Station, taking up most of the street. I still wasn�t exactly sure where the hell this meeting actually was. I had a bad feeling that it was an outdoors, hippie-style meeting with druid overtones until I saw a little shed tucked into a copse of trees and pilons that a few people were slowly making their way into, with a sign that said, �Gardenvale Bridge Club� on it.

It was cramped and a bit too dark inside. I wasn�t sure why nobody had turned the lights on. In fact, I wasn�t sure whether the place had any lights. The room was crammed with plastic chairs; the kind you had to sit on in Primary School, except adult sized. There were seven people in there, including me. Technically, I wasn�t actually in the place yet, as only my head was physically in there. I still wasn�t sure whether this was bridge, or the support group.

Everybody was shadowy. Someone appeared to be leaning on a table with a small box on it at one side of the room in the way that teachers often do, so I directed my question at that particular figure. I asked, �Is this the support group?�

�Yes,� said this particular shadowy figure. �Did my sign blow down again?�

I popped my head out and looked around for a sign. Finally, I found it. It was an extremely rumpled piece of A4, sticky-taped to the building. It was underneath the Gardenvale Bridge Club sign and was being completely dwarfed by it. Also, it didn�t help that the sign was written out in greylead.

I said, �Don�t worry; the sign�s still there,� and I went in. The shadow at the desk had since lit a hurricane lamp, and it flickered and lit up about 60 percent of everyone. I supposed it didn�t help my viewing abilities that I felt bound to leave my huge sunglasses on.

There was still three minutes to go until seven-thirty. People sat there respectfully.

I think that we were all taking the opportunity to size each other up. Who are these other people? What are their stories, we were all thinking. I could just about hear it. There was a clown-shaped man in a business suit, a thin, fragile-looking youngish lady completely in grey, a couple of other people who I couldn�t quite discern at this point, and me, a messy, long-haired, short, sallow person in a large shirt that had the compulsory trucking nickname Biff had bestowed upon me embroidered on it over the pocket (Stretch), and a denim skirt.

A watch alarm went off somewhere in the room. Nobody else had come in. Nobody closed the door and the sky outside grew darker at a snail�s pace.

The guy leaning at the table still managed to be completely unlit by the inadequate hurricane lamp. He pressed his left wrist with his right index finger, and the alarm ceased its beeping. There must have been a watch there, lying around on his shadowed wrist.

�Hi everyone,� he said. �Forget my last name. It�s just too long. Just call me Doctor Andr�.�

�Hello, Doctor Andr�,� everyone said with undetectable traces of enthusiasm.

�Yes, I know,� said Doctor Andr�. �That�s my secretary, Dave. He did the sign outside, too.�

�In fact, right now I�ve gotten Dave to go to his sister�s house to get her to check the grammar in the workbooks we put together for these sessions. He�s hopefully going to be able to get them printed out and brought round to us by the end of our time together today.�

�Dave�s a good sort,� said Doctor Andr�. �He�s getting better at his handwriting. Any more questions before we begin?�

Suddenly, the hurricane lamp flared up for a bit. I could finally see everyone in the room. They all looked fairly normal. The shadowy figure up the back was just a guy wearing glasses and a hoodie that said �I ♥ MELISSA� on it. Doctor Andr� was a normal looking guy in a fawn jumper and fawn pants and dark brown shoes. He looked exactly like how somebody who was named Doctor Andr� Rajagopalachari would look.

It was all still a bit strange, though. The hurricane lamp had finished its flare and went back to throwing shadows.

�Alright. Let�s get started,� said Doctor Andr�. �I hope that Dave�s description of my support group has given you at least a vague idea of what we�re going to be working through over the next six or so sessions. This group is for those of us who have reached dizzying heights and treacherous lows at the same time. This sort of concurrent occurrence seems to be happening more often in our troubling modern world. People with the world at their feet have lost their heads. That is why the group is named Acephalus. It�s Greek for �headless�.�

The once-again shadowy guy in the corner with the �I ♥ MELISSA� hoodie put up his hand again.

�Anyway,� said Doctor Andr�, �We�re going to be doing a number of exercises over the coming sessions to help you get to terms with your problems, whatever they may be. But firstly, I think that we should introduce ourselves. I�ll begin with me, and if we could go around the room after that, giving an overview of what they would like to achieve in our time together, please.�

Ugh, I thought. I just can�t stand people who say IF we could do something and then don�t finish their sentence properly. Why even put in the word IF? The aforementioned sentence could have actually worked if it did not contain that superfluous irritating word in it. And the sentence just before this one had a perfectly functioning IF in it without any trouble at all.

By the time I�d had all these thoughts, Doctor Andr� was just trailing off. He�d said something about his research, and how his postdoctoral studies brought pop culture and economics together in some sort of fancy way, and a bandana, but I wasn�t clear on how the bandana had fit into what the rest of his �Hi, I�m Doctor Andr�,� speech went.

�Alright. That�s me,� he finished with. �I�d like to hear from one of you now. Who�s up for it?�

�My name is Michael Bolton,� said the man in the business suit. There was some twittering. �Yes � that�s right. That�s my name. It has been both a blessing and a curse. Every time I think that the famous Michael Bolton�s career is finally down the drain, he puts out a Christmas album. Every time I think I see a blank face in reaction to my name, it turns out to be a look of bemusement. I�ll get promised free stuff on the phone when I make a booking at fancy restaurants, and I got to meet Karl Marx backstage at a concert once, just because of my name, and he was really cool and everything, and I�m a great big fan of his music, so that was good. But then, just when you think, hey, my life is OK, this Michael Bolton name thing is working out alright, there�ll be that slap in the face when somebody says to me, �Hey. Are you related to that guy in Office Space who�s called Michael Bolton and everybody asks him in the movie if he�s related to Michael Bolton?� He�s a fictional character! Or whether I was the inspiration for the character in the movie. I�m going to go nuts the next time I open a birthday card and get treated to the compressed strains of How Am I Supposed to Live Without You? See what I�m dealing with, people?�

�OK, thanks for sharing that with us, Michael,� said Doctor Andr�. �We�re all in the same boat here, in one way or another. Did that feel cathartic to you?�

�I don�t know, because I don�t know what that means,� said Michael Bolton.

�Don�t worry,� said Doctor Andr�. He turned to look at me. �Hi there, Stretch. Those are some big sunglasses. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?�

�Oh, that�s just my professional name,� I said. �I�m a truck driver, you see. Well, OK, here�s my story. My name is Anastasia Nemtsova, and I�m very rich, and I�m also hallucinating. I don�t feel like talking about it today. I was wondering whether I could stay over at somebody�s house tonight, though. There�s a malevolent fountain in my front yard. I think it has a crush on me.�

�Alright, thanks,� said Doctor Andr�. �Excellent work. We were going to organise ourselves into mutually supportive partnerships tonight anyway, so perhaps somebody would like to put up their hands now to volunteer to take Anastasia on as their partner, and if not quite going to the extreme of having her as your house guest tonight, perhaps you might want to spend a little bit of time together after the session just to make her feel secure in herself again.�

Another thing I didn�t like was when people said that other people might want to do things.

Nobody put their hand up. I guess I didn�t blame them. My little speech did sound rather grumpy and off the wall at the same time. It did seem to come off as something slightly less amusing and charming than Michael Bolton�s problem.

The hurricane lamp went out at that point. The sunlight which had been crawling away from the wide open door had been long gone by this time now without anyone noticing. It was really rather dark in there now.

�Blast,� said Doctor Andr�. �Dave is a great guy, but I knew he wasn�t the expert in portable lighting.� He made a fumbling sound, and then a smashing sound.

The room was silent, save for the squeak of a chair moving one centimetre across the floor in no known direction.

Finally, Doctor Andr� broke the silence. �Alright. I�ve got it. How many of you could make it to a replay of this meeting tomorrow night? I know that the bridge club only uses this place in the daytime, because they�re all retired and they all go to bed at 5:30.�

I heard air moving. Presumably this was the sound of a small bunch of people putting their hands up in the dark.

�OK. How about I reengineer that question? Let�s get a verbal indication of those of you who cannot make it to another meeting tomorrow night.�

�Great. Alright. This will also give Dave�s sister some time to really go over those spelling mistakes in the workbooks. We probably even have time to get them bound at Officeworks tomorrow afternoon to make them really snazzy. How does that sound to everyone?�

�Now, I�ll say class dismissed for today, but if anyone would like to stick around and ask me a question, or get into partnerships so you can start your talking it out straight away, that�s fine by me. We can collect the session fees tomorrow night, hey?�

He sounded like he smiled when he talked, like somebody on a television program about wonderful holidays you can go on.

I heard the sound of creaking chairs and creaking knees as people got up, and a low, exploratory murmur came out of the half-dozen people in the room, introducing themselves and using sonar to find their way around at the same time.

I decided there was no point sticking around tonight. I was too bloody short to be getting around this completely dark chair-choked room without getting trampled to death, plus everyone probably thought I was too loopy right now after my little speech. Michael Bolton was going to be way less of a handful than me. Plus he was a free ticket to backstage at a Richard Marx concert. I was now probably marked as the jabbering fool of the group.

I left the place, feeling a bit confused and a bit rejected. I didn�t know where to go that night, so I just went back home. I made a hash of my park once again in the driveway, ignored the ring of groaning purple mushrooms that had made themselves at home around the fountain, and slammed the front door.

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