Story and Artwork by Sandshoe

The 75 cents woman lent me 75 cents one afternoon when she thought I needed to be offered a loan and I agreed after consideration she was sincere, earnest, could top up my change that added up to $1.75 and make it $2.50.  She told me I could buy a meal.  I agreed to be nice, although in truth I needed the meal.  She gave me directions.  That’s not why I call her the 75cents woman.  That’s a bit of a story.

When I saw her as I anticipated a few days later and was listening to her as I always did my best to although what she had to talk about was almost always about her property and bored me, she became more agitated than she usually is.  Her topic was not her property and the problems of owning it, but about a close female friend of hers who drove off leaving her owed several hundred dollars and as far as she was concerned, as she was saying, an explanation of why the almost overnight disappearance.  The more agitated the woman got as the story developed the more I felt insecure about owing her 75 cents even though I was on my way to the bank to get it anyway, but felt obliged to defer to listen to her story when suddenly she said between thin lips stretched tight as the thread of a sewing needle between two fingers snapping it taut to verify its strength that she really would appreciate it if I returned the money.

I know.  It seems ridiculous I did not have 75 cents in my pocket.

It usually would be alright if it was not just that people were, well, doing what they are doing and she really needed the money.  It would be different I agreed if people were not doing what they were doing and of course I would give her the money as soon as I was back from the bank where I had to go. My wording was nice I thought and meant to not place any sense of duress on her that I was going only to the bank for 75cents.

She thanked me with a reference of repeated conciliation that if it was not for what people were doing to her she would not be in the least concerned about the 75 cents. It was just that she would appreciate having the money returned to her because she was so short that week and she wasn’t going to be taken for a fool any longer. She should learn (I agreed with her) in the same way she intimated I would by asking me the emphatic question did I think she would ever learn.  I hesitated to rush out of the door and leave her alone given her need to talk to someone so I repeated for her greater sense of security my own reference that I supposed she would learn.  She would have to learn she agreed vehemently otherwise who knows what might happen to her if she didn’t and I suggested I would be soon back with the 75 cents.  Which I was.  Not far and the bank had its full staff on counter duty so every cage was operational.

I counted it out.

The carpet in the main bedroom of one of the houses had to be replaced which meant she had no money she told me as I set the final five on the top of the silver stack. No good I said with a tone of expressive sympathy. The tenant just left like that. She had a run of bad luck with tenants I observed.  I thanked my lucky star silently I was not a tenant, but chance to speak by way of reply allowed me chance to thank her for being patient while I got the money from the bank, although I assured her I understood she needed a rest and I was not an inconvenience.  She said she had finished most of what she had to do.  She enjoyed dropping in to sit and read the paper.  Not in any hurry she reiterated her feet were so sore.  Pages of the news paper were fluttered and flapped and flustered.  It hardly feels like 7 years I’ve been coming here she stated as pages spun over and tangled and rolled onto each other like happy bear cubs tumbling which looked curious I considered later.  How long have you been coming here she asked.  She paused turning pages to lavishly moisten the thumb and finger she was using by licking each  to better toss pages apart from the other when they entwined.

I watched out of a sense of helpless awe as insidious as watching a train wreck spread people flat on the ground and out of windows. Is it long she asked indicating at my silence as distraction she could not entertain.  It’s a while I ventured turning my back on the image of the saliva and climbed away from the wreck to mental ground that allowed feigned indifference to what was happening to the newspaper rise like a pure white cloud above a gently steaming train.  The last thing I wanted to do was antagonize her given I could see the dimension of her suffering was greater than usual.  Have you got the telephone directory she suddenly asked and looked up.  No, I said, nettled by her looking directly at me where I was sitting in a blue chair with my arms resting on its puffy arm rests.  No, I repeated and stood up to look and walk around the chair and through the requisite door to secure the telephone directory from beside the telephone on the desk in the adjoining room.  It’s here I said as I returned and thrust the large book forward at arms length by way of indicating I had fetched it to be helpful.  She took it and screwed up her eyes and her nose as she set to finding a telephone number by holding the book up to the light at an angle and her head on an acute angle.  I sat down.  Got it. Aah, I have to ring them.

The emphasis on them was italic as it always was in reference to the people or the firm or that lot she would ring. She dropped the book she had doubled almost in two to a dangling arms length by her side as she stood to her feet with a struggle of hip and buttocks and stalked in her usual manner at this time of the afternoon towards the room behind me where the telephone was and the telephone book had been.

Damn she said, returning, I can’t ring them now.  That would not be wise.  I need your help.  What could I do I wondered out loud.  You could remind me in half and hour to ring these people I have to ring because they will not be in now and I won’t remember when they are. It had not occurred. I  conceded that someone would have to remind her.  Did she have a mobile telephone.  She could set the alarm to a low volume ringtone and vibrate.  Hoh, she snorted, that’s no good and resumed her position flicking the curling pages of the newspaper.

“I’ll forget what I set it for,” she said and laughed the whinnying kind of laugh that people do when the muscles of their vocal chords have almost nearly contracted to occlude sound.  It was a wheeze followed by a giggle that stretched to a tee hee like a tee pee. It was a cone of sound that stopped at a high volume and rang like a monotonous ringtone.

The next morning I gave a lesson on email to a woman.  I was tired and her laugh was like a shaft of wood in a broken horse cart.  It snapped off even as she framed it and she smiled instead like a pixie with bright eyes and a silver fringe of straight hair like a cat walk model’s.  The light spackle of dotted freckles gives her an appearance like a loved child’s toy.  She lost her own child in an adoption bungle when he was born and she was too young to resist authority so authority she has no respect for.  She writes letters about social policy and politicians and street louts and wild families.  It is hard to laugh in the face of such adversity and myself I chuckle as much as I can.  When we left to go our respective ways, I take trouble as usual to steer my way past the coffee table corner before I am asked to tutor its worried business woman who never arrives with a biro of her own to use and is always filled with feelings of dread…

The numerologist was at the bus stop with his worldly shopping bags and bags of books, but not so laden to not seem freer in his concerns and with his replies than might be expected on a hot day.  He seems to swing with the bags as if his fragile torso cannot resist the motion once that has begun.  He is a repatriate who lived in India he has told me and wishes to translate and publish the Adelaide telephone directories as volumes of numerological significance and similarly, a key of a town street map and its addresses where he lived in India.  We part at the street corner after a short walk of ritual when we disembark from our bus journey to the outer suburbs.