Free The Tax Inspector by Peter Carey Page A

straps. They looked like battery straps from a fifties Holden, but where the terminal points would be, they disappeared into some fabric – it was unclear how they were attached.
    The woman was held at the shoulders and arms. She was held at the top of the calves and the ankles. The base was made of moulded fibreglass. It was more or less in the shape of a shallow ‘n’, not a hard thing to make, really easy. You could do it in your back yard, your cellar. The end result was that her arse stuck up in the air and she could not move. She could not fucking move .
    You could not see the man’s face, just his torso and cock. There was a pic of him putting Vaseline on his cock. They showed it close and it was good quality printing – you could feel the coolness of grease on the knob.
    Benny thought: this is not nothing.
    It was now sunny. Steam lay along the borders of Loftus Street. The traffic continued between these hedges of steam, unaware of the lives inside Catchprice Motors.
    Benny thought: they could not imagine me.
    When he heard a boot scrape on the concrete floor of the Spare Parts bays, he slipped the magazine into the drawer and locked it. He turned in his chair (only his tumescent lips could have betrayed him) and as he turned he saw Jesse.
    Jesse was only five foot five inches tall. He was fifteen years old and had a freckled, scrunched-up little face, but he was fast and graceful. He was the wicket-keeper in the Franklin XI. He was Mort’s little mate. He had carrot-coloured, springy straight hair. He got his job because Benny failed his apprenticeship, and he thought – they all thought, Cathy, Howie, Granny Catchprice, the men, the cleaners – they all thought it was because Benny was dumb. They thought they were above him.
    Jesse had been fitting new fuel pumps to the recalled Commodores. He had been standing in the pit, soaking himself in petrol. He feinted a light punch to Benny’s shoulder and then tried to grab his nuts with his grease-black hands.
    Benny jumped back from the greasy hands as if they were 240 live. He stood in front of the window. He put his legs astride and held his Aloe-Vera’d hands behind his back and looked Jesse in the eye.
    Benny was older. Benny’s family were Jesse’s employers. Benny was taller. None of this counted. The first thing Jesse said, he tried to put Benny down.
    ‘You reckon you’re a salesman, that it?’
    Benny smiled. ‘You got no future, Jesse.’
    This was new territory for both of them. Jesse blinked three times, quickly, before he spoke. ‘You got fired, not me.’
    ‘Fired?’ Benny said. ‘Do I look like I am fucking fired?’
    It was then he saw Mort coming back up the lane-way from the workshop, swinging his arms. Jesse said something but Benny did not hear him. He folded his arms behind his back and stood right in his father’s path. The heavy aluminium door swung and hit his shoe, but Mort did not even look at him. He walked straight to the bookshelf behind the desk where young Jesse was looking through the dusty spares catalogues for old Fords and Chevrolets. He did not ask Jesse what he was doing there and why the fuck he was not getting the fuel pumps changed. He put his big hand on the apprentice’s shoulder. It fitted round it like a ‘U’ bolt. ‘How’s tricks, titch?’ he said, and stood beside him, right against him, looking at the old Chevrolet catalogue.
    ‘Stephen Wall done another oil seal,’ Jesse said.
    Mort was red and blotchy on his neck. He didn’t seem to hear what Jesse said. When he looked up at Benny his eyes were frightened and angry and his trunk was already twisting towards the door. ‘Who in the fuck do you think you are?’ he said.
    Benny looked at his father with his mouth open.
    Mort walked out the back door, into the Spare Parts bays.
    He came back in a second later.
    ‘You look like a poof,’ he said and banged out of the office and into the yard.
    Benny felt like crying. He wanted to tie his father