The Piper's Son

“I know Eva,” Francesca says, ignoring the compliment. “Great girl. Smart as, and I can assure you, she has her boyfriend under her boot heels. The pointy ones. I could imagine the conversation. One year in Indonesia to work on a bridge with a bunch of guys? ‘Oh, sure, off you go, babe,’ I could imagine Eva saying. ‘Have fun. Yeah, baby.’”

“She’d stop him from working overseas?” Tom asks.

“Maybe, and if she couldn’t, she wouldn’t be sticking around.”

“So why do you stick around?” Will asks.

“Because I’m not frightened of hard work, Will,” Francesca says.

“Did I say I was?” he asks.

Tom thinks this is a good time to step in.

“I have to be honest, I can understand Eva not wanting her boyfriend to work overseas,” Tom says. “Guys get carried away, regardless of whether they have girlfriends or not.”

“Guys only?” Francesca asks. “What about that chick you slept with who had a boyfriend?”

“I told you that in privacy,” he mutters, pissed off. “Anyway, it doesn’t mean she loves her boyfriend less,” he adds. “If you slept with someone else, would it mean you love Frankie less, Will? Like, if you picked up at one of those strip joints you go to over there?”

“Thomas,” Justine warns.

“It’s okay,” Tom says. “Will and Frankie have an open relationship —”

“We do not have an open relationship,” Francesca says, furious.

“I meant I tell her everything,” Will says, teeth almost clenched.

“What I’m saying —” Tom begins.

“Garbage,” Stani says, looking at him. “It needs to be taken out.”

“It’s not —”

“Now.”

While he’s outside, banished to Garbage Land, he smokes a cigarette, vowing it’s the last time he’s going to indulge in hypotheticals with his new forced friend, Will. But a part of him feels guilty and he figures that he’ll do the right thing and help him out. Maybe give him advice on how to deal with an impending fight with Francesca. With only five days together, his best advice would be to pretend the conversation never happened. There’s nothing worse than Francesca wanting to “talk” or “flesh out” the core of the problem.

He walks in and makes it as far as the bathroom, but steps back instantly behind the piled-up boxes of toilet paper, serviettes, and straws. Beyond the boxes, in the kitchen, Francesca sits on the bench. Opposite her, with a lot of space between them, and a lot of silence, Will leans on the preparation bench.

“What do you always say about me?” Tom hears him ask.

She’s not answering.

“Frankie?”

“That you use calculus to work out whether we should be together or not,” she says.

“I mean when you’re trying to compliment me.”

She hasn’t looked up yet and Trombal waits.

“That you’re the smartest guy I know,” she says finally in a flat voice.

“Which kind of means less to me these days when I think of the guys you hang out with,” Will says.

Bastard.

“Why would the smartest guy you know do something stupid and lose you?” he asks.

She sighs. “Because smart guys have two brains, Will. One in their head and one in their pants.”

“Yeah, well both my brains are co

Francesca doesn’t react and even Tom wants her to talk. Or workshop. Or be Francesca in overload. Even he’s stressed by her silence.

“I thought we weren’t going to drive each other crazy with this type of stuff, Frankie,” Will says, frustrated.

“We aren’t,” she blurts out. “But it’s just been the longest year and most of the time I just think of something terrible happening to you over there, Will. But sometimes . . . when you’re speaking strip joints with Tom . . . what was that? Bonding?”

“Yeah, like I’d really bond with that dick. Hasn’t anyone explained to him that there’s a big difference between Sumatra and Bangkok?”

“And I’d appreciate if you changed your attitude about my friends.”

“I don’t have a problem with your friends, except for one. Fuck, how do you think I feel, Frankie? You’re either up there onstage with him or in a room with other guys ogling you. You think that doesn’t go through my mind when I’m over there? That you might act on the chemistry you have with people who have everything in common with you in the way that I don’t? Like Mackee. How can I compete with that? While guys I’m working with are telling me their girlfriends back home are screwing around behind their backs?”

“Okay,” she says, determined. “Let’s go back to the part where we aren’t going to drive each other crazy with this type of stuff.”

Tom can see that Will’s still fired up.

“Come here,” she says.

“No, you come here.”

“I said it first.”

“Rock paper scissors.”

“No. Because you’ll do nerdy calculations and work out what I chose the last six times and then you’ll win.”

Will pushes away from the table and his hand snakes out and he pulls her toward him and Tom figures that Will was always going to go to her first. And here he is. Stuck behind boxes of toilet paper, where he’s going to have to sneak back outside and make a song and dance about walking in. Or he can go into the bathroom and flush the toilet and let them know he’s there. Especially if he sees skin. It’s pervy if he sees skin, although he can see skin now because Will’s hand goes up her skirt and it’s bunched up around her thighs. So Tom makes the decision to look away the moment, the very moment, he sees anything more than that. The moment he sees a glimpse of underwear, he will be officially in Sicko Land and he will be forced to make some kind of noise. Flushing, coughing, heavy footsteps. Talk to himself out loud. The moment he sees anything that in anyway will be considered a sexual act between . . .

“Stani, the bins are done!” he yells out.

“What was all that yelling about? The bins are done. The bins are done,” Ned says as Stani locks up. The others are already halfway up the street.

Tom doesn’t respond. He’s over the Frankie-and-Will show and it’s only day one.

“Were they making out in our kitchen?” Ned hisses.

“Yes,” Tom said with gritted teeth. The kitchen he keeps spotless. Now he’s really angry.

Francesca, Will, and Justine stop at the lights.

“We’re going down to the Hopetoun to see the Jezebels,” Francesca calls out. “Are you guys coming?”

“No,” they both snap at the same time.

He doesn’t quite promise Francesca that he’ll be kind and hospitable to Will Trombal, but he’s already committed to going to the football match with them. Another reason to hate Trombal is for his choice of football teams. The Dragons are an aberration to anyone Tom has ever known, and sitting next to a supporter almost makes him feel like speaking to his father. His father and Tom still do football. Just like they do the AA meetings together. Just like they work in silence in Georgie’s backyard on the cradle Tom’s making and the rocking chair his father’s restoring.

The irony of Francesca coming to a game she has no interest in is that she knows half the people here and spends the whole time socializing instead of getting to know the rules. Tom tries to explain them to her at one stage, but both Francesca and Trombal stare at him, the latter with hostility.

“Don’t even try,” Francesca says. “Not interested. Only here because my beloved is leaving tomorrow and this is the best I can get. Baby, this is settling.”

She’s enjoying herself at Trombal’s expense, but it’s at Tom that Trombal is directing his hostility.

When she waves at yet another person and jumps out of her seat to say, “Oh, my God, what are you doing here?” he feels Trombal’s intense stare again.