ecretly festered inside him ever since. It was natural to feel vulnerable given the circumstances, Gavin reminded himself, trying to remember if he’d ever felt this way before. Maybe once: the day his father sat the family down and announced that he had lost the farm. The burly farmer had actually broken down in tears. The sight had so shocked his two sons that later they made a pledge with one another never to weep publicly themselves.
The Merc screeched around the corner and up the ramp into Bridgeport. As soon as the car entered the artificial greenish light of the car park Gavin felt better, as if he was sheltered within a great concrete womb of his own making. It was only on the way to the elevator that he remembered the car park had been the scene of his erotic fantasy two days before. Perhaps there was some potency left in him yet. Cheered, he entered the elevator whistling.
He decided to double his dose of sleeping pills. After an accompanying glass of whiskey, he left a message on Amanda’s landline telling her he couldn’t see her for a couple of weeks. Afterward he slept like a baby, floating in perfect drug-enhanced dreamless slumber.
In the morning he woke groggy but invigorated. He leaped out of bed and even managed a few of the yoga stretches Amanda had taught him to ward off backache. He was in the child’s pose in front of the full-length mirror, staring in admiration at his firm buttocks and long muscular thighs, the comforting weight of his testicles resting against his heels, when he noticed the strange dust. The sole of each foot was covered in a greenish powder, as if he’d been standing in a dried-up riverbed. Where had it come from? He’d only just taken off his perfectly clean nylon socks.
Sitting up he examined himself. Trapped under his toenails was more of the mysterious dirt and also under his manicured fingernails. He shuddered, repulsed. It looked like algae. Thinking back he tried to work out where he might have picked up the dust during the day. Nowhere. The itchy feeling of being unclean made his stomach lurch.
He ran to the shower and scrubbed himself until his skin was wrinkly and bright red. Standing under the high-speed shower nozzle he let its luxurious pounding wash all misgivings from his mind. Nothing had meaning, just this, the immediacy of physical pleasure. He was okay. He wasn’t just going to survive; he was determined to flourish.
His pager went off in the other room. Gavin stepped out of the shower and, still wet, walked into the bedroom. A trail of shiny footprints followed him, each one a clear outline of an alien claw with three toes.
“She’s a beauty but she’s a bugger to drive. It’s all this semi-computerized bullshit, you have to be a fucking genius to operate some of the equipment nowadays.”
Gavin’s main project manager, a Pacific Islander named Murray but nicknamed Shortstuff due to the fact that at five foot four he was the shortest Islander anyone had ever seen, gestured to the mammoth crane. The name Stella was painted in scarlet calligraphy on the side of the operating cabin.
They were on Gavin’s third building site—a considerable tract of land that was to be a new housing development west of the Brisbane hills. They’d already cleared the site, despite some local protest over what had been described as an endangered wetland. “The Kellen wetlands? Give me a fucking break—a bloody swamp more like,” Gavin had scoffed before giving the order for several tons of sand to be dropped on the area before they leveled the ground.
Relishing the memory, Gavin stood in a hard hat and shades looking up at the crane that arched into the blue like a beautiful giant steel praying mantis.
“Let me have a go.”
“Boss, I don’t think that’s a good idea. You know what the men are like about the boss—you’ve got to be superhuman, eh? Can’t have that illusion shattered.”
“I’ll be all right. I’ve got my operator’s license and the model I used to operate is only a couple of generations before this one. The basics have got to be the same.”
Ignoring Shortstuff’s warning he hoisted himself up into the cabin. “Mind if I ride the bitch for a couple of minutes?” he asked the operator, who was leaning across the controls, a cigarette stuck precariously to his lower lip.
The operator threw his cigarette away, grinned shyly, then swapped seats with him. Gavin’s hands hovered over the miniature thicket of gear sticks and brakes almost as if he was saying grace. A giddy excitement overtook him. He glanced out the window—they were a long way up. He’d forgotten the exhilarating feeling of being the nerve center of this massive machine that could destroy as well as create. He reached for one of the handles.
“Wrong one, boss. Try this to get her moving.” The operator shifted a lever and the crane began to slowly shift, the enormous tread rolling forward over the compacted earth.
“I know what I’m doing,” Gavin hissed, determined not to lose face. He reached for one of the control sticks and the arm lifted, the oversized trowel swinging up from the ground. “I used to operate one like this about fifteen years ago. Jeez, it was a buzz,” he shouted over the roaring engine. The operator grinned, a gold tooth flashing at the edge of his mouth, but fearing more reprisals stayed silent.
The crane moved out toward an open area of the site. There was a lone tree marring the skyline. Pushed over at an angle, it clung to the earth in mute protest. Gavin aimed the crane straight for it. “Let’s get rid of this fucker!”
He pushed down the accelerator and the crane lurched forward, squashing bushes and gliding effortlessly over lumps of buried debris.
Just before they reached the tree Gavin went to lift his hand but found that it was glued to the gear stick. Mystified, he struggled, his right hand clamped around the accelerator. The crane was picking up speed; the herculean arm swinging dangerously from side to side threatened to topple it.
“I can’t move my hand!” Gavin screamed. He pulled with all his might but the hand remained stuck, as if the palm had somehow fused with the machine.
The horizon jolted with the motion of the rolling tread, sky and ground threatening to collide with each new lurch. The operator, clutching at the side of the swaying cabin, stretched across and with an almighty shove managed to push Gavin’s hand off the accelerator. Reaching for the brake he pulled the crane to a slow rumbling halt against a slope. It groaned then leaned at a forty-five-degree angle.
There was a violent stillness. Outside a flock of cockatoos flew up squawking with indignation. The two men, pinned by their seatbelts, contemplated the burnt-red diagonal of the earth. Gavin lifted his hand. In the center of his palm, branded into the skin, was the neat outline of a leaf—a simple fernlike frond ending with the delicate outline of a seed pod. Shaking visibly the property developer held out his arm.
“Do you see that? Do you see it?” he asked the operator whose olive skin was still blanched with shock. He looked down at the hand blankly then back up at Gavin, his features settling into a rigid caution.
“No, boss, I see nothing.”
“What do you mean? Can’t you see that…that mark?”
“Boss, I’m telling you, there’s nothing there.”
Gavin looked back at his palm. The brand was entirely visible to him; he ran his fingers across it—unmistakable; a lifted ridge rough to the touch. He thrust his hand back under the operator’s nose. “Feel it.”
“Feel what, boss?”