How to be a Good Veronica. Michael K Freundt
cynicism she couldn’t abide: isn’t the best for your kids to keep them out of places like this? She wondered at the commercialism of business creating a need in people they didn’t know they had but then wondered if she was doing the same thing: buying things she didn’t really need: do I really need a mouse-pad?
2
Veronica Souter drove unhurriedly with the traffic to Surry Hills on the other side of, but close to, the city. She parked her car in the basement car park, beamed it locked, and made her way to the elevator. Inside the elevator she watched the numbers change above her, avoiding the mirrored walls, but really she was just watching the numbers change, as people did. Such animated electronic stimulation was a large part of the attraction of television, regardless of what the images meant. She smiled to herself but thought of Jack and her smile faded. He didn’t care much for television. Was that a bad thing when all his peers did? Or was it a good thing, showing some individuality?
Her office was on the seventh floor, No 15. She opened the door of 715 with a swipe-card and put her bag on a small hall-stand and walked into the single room, a bed-sit with en suite. She opened a laptop on the bedside table and as it booted up she took off her shirt and jeans and threw them on the bed. She chose a white camisole from the top drawer of a small chest and threw it on the bed and went into the bathroom in her underwear. She took out her makeup bag from the bathroom cabinet and re-did her makeup: more eyeliner, eye shadow this time, and darkened her lip-stick. She returned to the bedroom and clicked a few buttons on her keyboard. She checked her diary, confirmed her appointment, then checked her inbox before putting on the camisole, took a dark blue suit, skirt and jacket, from the wardrobe and put it on. From a high shelf in the wardrobe she chose a short dark wig from a collection of seven on old collectable wooden heads and once she had tied back and raised her shoulder-length light brown hair she covered it with the wig, adjusted it slightly, tugging at the forelock and tweaking the look. After buttoning the lightweight jacket she unbuttoned it again and tucked in her camisole a little further into her skirt, re-buttoned the jacket and checked the effect in the wardrobe mirror. She lightly tugged the front of the camisole so that it showed a little above the 'V' of the jacket but also revealed just a little of her cleavage. From out of the second draw of the bedside table she took a little black book-like object, turned a few pages and chose a small removable transfer, one from a page of identical transfers: a single red rose bud. She peeled off the cellophane, thought for a moment and then pulled the edge of her camisole down and to the left a little with her left index finger and applied the tattoo, with her right hand, to the inside mound of her left breast, down and under a bit. She held it there for twenty seconds, checking her watch on her left wrist, then slowly peeled off the transfer leaving the perfect rose bud on her pale skin. She returned the top of the camisole to its original place hiding the rosebud and ... no no no, the camisole didn’t work: it got in the way. She took the jacket off, removed the camisole, threw it on the bed, and put the jacket back on. Her cleavage was a little too obvious but it was better than having to deal with the camisole as well as the jacket. And it might actually help. She completed her preparation, including a fine gold chain, chosen from the third drawer. She clasped it around her neck and checked its effect. She turned off the computer and closed the lid, grabbed her bag, checked herself one last time in the mirror, paused, decided against and removed the single gold chain, avoiding her eyes of course, and left it, along with the discarded camisole, with her home clothes lying on the bed. She walked out and left the door to close itself behind her.
Living in a city could be like living in a desert. She had thought this many times as she drove through it. Hordes of little lives focused on the next step, and then the next, the next; carrying little backpacks of miseries and joys; eyes looking straight, never left or right, oblivious to the identical lives flowing all around them; like wells of sustenance that she has no access to, like river-water avoiding rocks and debris by just finding a way around them. A person could perish in a desert. But when you bump into someone and eyes meet eyes a city can be exhilarating. Veronica's problem, she will soon realise, is that she hadn't bumped into anyone lately. And it was a male someone she particularly wanted to bump into, her body sometimes told her. And then sometimes she told herself that it was really for Jack’s sake that she needed a man in her life. Yeah, right!
She remembered, as a girl, while waiting for nature to drop the next bombshell, using the backs of two fingers to practice kissing and wondering what to do with her tongue. She remembered a same-age cousin lying on top of her in the back seat of the Vanguard as his parents, her uncle and aunt, sat up front seemingly oblivious to what their charges were up to. They didn't worry so why should she. His wide mouth clasped to her wide mouth as the car bumped over rocky roads and she spent all her attention trying not to bump teeth. It was a singularly dry and uninteresting experience she remembered and she wondered, then, what the fuss was all about. Awareness of what needed to happen, and would happen one day, stopped at the neck.
A horn from an impatient commuter woke her from her reminiscence and the insistent green light urged her to catch up to the cars in front before a vehicle from another lane snuck in raising ire and a sense of betrayal. There were laws regarding the people behind you so why bother with them? Rear view mirrors were for checking makeup and squeezing pimples. But there she sat, moving forward at the same pace as everybody else: a lot of cars, a lot of people and a hell of a lot more empty seats. Traffic!
Later she sat, one knee on the other, in a waiting room in a medical suite in a glass and concrete high-rise on Macquarie Street. She casually flicked through a Vogue Living magazine that was surprisingly recent. An advertisement for a pair of shoes caught her attention and she smiled at the ironic thought that the less there was of a shoe the more attractive it seemed. Why was that? Maybe a single spike glued to one's naked heel was the ultimate in feminine footwear.
She was the only one left in the waiting room, apart from the receptionist, of course. The other patient, who hadn't checked her outfit before leaving home, Always a good thing to do, I think , had gone into the doctor's room some fifteen minutes ago. As Veronica checked the other magazines on the little table the other patient came out of the doctor's room, That was quick , and stood at the receptionist's counter with her back to Veronica. It was the slope of her shoulders or perhaps the double look the receptionist gave the woman, or maybe it was the cacophony of bracelets on the woman’s left arm that gave the little scene its pathos and convinced Veronica that the woman was crying. The receptionist smiled coolly and returned the Medicare card to the woman and she stuffed it hurriedly into her bag and jingled her way out the door. The receptionist went back to staring at her screen. Moments later she looked up and said, "Mrs. Abbott, the doctor will see you now." Veronica smiled, put the magazine back on the small pile, stood, straightened her skirt, and walked to the door of the doctor's room. She paused ever so slightly with her hand on the doorknob and, with an expression that showed she had collected herself and knew exactly what she was doing, she turned it, entered and gingerly closed the door noiselessly behind her. The little corridor lead past a small toilet to another door which she opened and entered the Doctor’s room. It was as you would expect: small, with a high bed and a curtain to pull around it if necessary, another door, a desk, computer, bookshelves, few books, a plastic gerbera in a plastic pot, and medical degrees on the walls. No doctor, but this she expected. She walked confidently, she had been here before, to the other door opened it and entered another room. Here the doctor sat in an almost identical room to the first, except that it was a little smaller. The doctor looked up as she closed the door.
“Ah, Mrs. Abbott! How are you today?”
As Veronica turns slowly to face the doctor she adopts a demure and sad expression and looks as if she is about to cry. “Fine, thanks,” she says in a little breathless voice and sits down in the chair by the side of the desk. She crosses her legs, tugging a little on her skirt.
“Good,” says the doctor. “Now let’s see what we have here.” He turns to his screen and surveys its contents. He is a middle aged man with thinning grey hair, a face that still shows traces of his once very good looks, a little paunchy now and looks like someone who is about to lose interest in looking after himself. “We’ve reviewed your application very closely, I can assure you of that, but it seems that there are a few little problems.”
“Problems?”