Devolution

Framed by a wide and beautifully landscaped plaza, Circular Quay housed two of Sydney’s three most famous landmarks. On the left as you looked out into the dirty green waters of Port Jackson was the Harbour Bridge, it’s one hundred and seventy five year old steel arch decorated from one side to the other with Australian flags; the white Southern Cross motif on a navy blue background.

To the right, radiant under an overcast sky were the extraordinary curved sails which formed the roof of the world’s most distinctive looking theater; the Sydney Opera House. Tourists milled around the Opera House’s forecourt gazing in wonder, taking photographs as they chatted and laughed, ignoring the rush of businessmen and office workers out of their tall towers in the hunt for lunch time sustenance.

Joshua watched the scene from the window of the transport as it pulled into the delivery bay at the eastern end of the plaza. He stepped out into the crowd and felt its energy as he walked towards the Opera House.

Hungry and ahead of time for his next meeting, Joshua decided to eat and so began to search the plenteous selection of cafes and restaurants on the promenade. He passed a very old man sitting still and silent on a park bench, and shivered when he noticed the color of the man’s skin. Was he dead? Nobody else paid him any attention. Joshua stopped and looked harder at the old man. He also looked around to see if anyone was watching him.

The man was staring at something on the other side of the plaza, or maybe he was staring at nothing. Joshua waved his hand in front of the old man’s face.

‘Are you all right?’

He quickly glanced behind him and to both sides, again worried about being watched. The man was so dirty and lifeless that Joshua was afraid of him. Afraid to touch him and yet, his curiosity kept shoving him in the back and yelling in his ear, ‘Go on touch him!’ Joshua studied him for a few minutes trying to detect any movement, at least maybe a slight rise and fall of his chest, but there was none.

More than just curious, Joshua felt compassion for the man. What if he had just sat down here alone in a crowded public place to take his last breath unnoticed by anyone.

Slowly, Joshua reached out with a single pointed index finger, as though at any moment the man might erupt into life and attack him, or vanish in a puff of smoke. The finger reached the cloth of the man’s tattered gray suit and continued till it found more resistance in the man’s arm, and further through the softness of the skin to the muscle beneath yet still the old man did not move an inch or make a sound.

Joshua withdrew his finger and wondered if he pushed from the side this time whether he might push the old man over. The muscle he felt through the man’s coat was hard, but seemed without conscious resistance. If he was dead, he must have passed very recently. After the brief reign of rigor mortis, a corpse becomes flaccid, and so if long dead, this old man would have been slumped on the ground like a bag of garbage, overflowed from a trash can.

Just as he began to stretch out his finger once more to test his theory, the old man suddenly lifted his right hand to his mouth and coughed. Joshua jumped backwards, stumbling as he tried to keep his footing. The old man stood easily from the bench and walked briskly away without giving Joshua a second thought.

Embarrassed and stunned, Joshua again looked around but still nobody seemed to see him, or care what he was doing. He observed the old man walk on to the next bench and sit down in the same stiff backed manner, and once more dive into inertia.

‘He’s an actor,’ said a female voice from behind Joshua which startled him.

‘The local government pays him and other entertainers to amuse people.’

Joshua turned and found himself face to face with a gorgeous beauty, the like of which he had never seen before. When he went to speak, only air passed between his lips.

She spoke again, ‘He’s good isn’t he?’

‘Very clever,’ said Joshua struggling to compose himself. Her wide white toothed smile and large green eyes made him feel weak in the knees. She looked like she had stepped straight off the cover of Modern Woman magazine.

‘Yes,’ she said in a liquid voice, ‘That’s a God-given talent he’s got there.’

‘You’re a Deist?’

‘A Christian actually.’

Joshua’s pulse was racing now. This was unbelievable. Out of nowhere, this hot woman comes up to him and speaks to him, and she’s a Christian. What were the chances of that happening? Very slim? No, that would be to overrate it. He backed off a little, told himself to calm down and turned up the volume on the voice of reason.

Her smile faded a little and she looked away before turning back to arrest his senses once more.

Joshua didn’t know what to say and it seemed to him that the woman didn’t have anything further to contribute either so he just stood there, captivated.

‘My name is Celeste,’ she said. ‘Would you like to have lunch with me, Joshua?’

Did he want to? Does a thirsty man want to drink? Hang on, thought Joshua, she called me Joshua. He frowned at her.

‘How do you know my name? Do I know you?’

‘You’re supposed to be meeting someone at one thirty and you were just going to grab a quick bite before that. I am that someone so let’s make it a proper meal rather than just a snack, okay?’

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Do you come here often?’ It sounded like a dumb cliché as it left his mouth but Joshua was too spellbound to stop it. He meant, did she know of a good place to eat because he was a first time visitor to Sydney, but it came out like a corny pick up line. It was unnecessary anyway because it seemed Celeste had picked him up without any effort at all on his part, and she apparently worked out what he meant anyway.

‘I always take my lunch breaks down here. My office is only ten minutes walk away. Do you like Indian food?’

Joshua laughed.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘I was born and bred in Mumbai.’

It was Celeste’s turn to laugh, but not for the reason Joshua assumed.

Celeste led the silent and star struck Joshua as they walked through the crowd to a small Indian eatery called Taste of Mumbai. As she entered the eatery, Celeste made an exaggerated gesture to point out the name of the establishment, and although she did not turn around to see Joshua’s smile, she would have known it was there. She knew so much, maybe too much. Once more, Joshua felt the rational caution of suspicion tickle his mind.

Once seated, she began talking immediately about him, making flattering comments and asking questions. Joshua was much more interested in her, but she carefully avoided direct answers to his personal questions while at the same time, easily extracting all sorts of juicy private information about him. Celeste was completely in control of the situation.

‘Veena and Ted are being held in custody for their own safety.’

Joshua suddenly crashed through the middle of the trampoline he had been happily bouncing up and down on.

‘Where are they? I want to see them.’

‘I don’t know exactly where they are.’

‘You don’t know exactly where they are… then can you tell me approximately where they are?’

The spell had been broken by the mention of his friends. Ever since he arrived at Circular Quay and set foot on that plaza he had been in some sort of dream. The buzz of the crowd, the lifeless old man, the cover girl who invited him to lunch, who flirted with him and flattered him. Before she could answer his first question, he pressed her again.

‘Who are you and who do you work for?’

‘I can’t tell you that.’

Joshua watched his hand slam down on the table and wished he could have stopped it. Celeste jumped in her seat.

‘You can’t tell me that?’

‘Keep your voice down, please.’

Joshua stole a glance around the crowded diner and noted the inquiring eyes of its occupants.

‘Very wise, to have this meeting in a public place,’ said Joshua. ‘Very wise.’

Celeste sat in silence while Joshua collected his thoughts from the bottom of his glass of Coke.

‘So this meeting was not about giving me any information at all but about extracting as much as possible.’ The cover girl’s continued silence answered his question. ‘You knew my name, where I was from and where to find me? But you don’t know very much else, do you?’

Joshua leaned forward and almost fell headlong into the dream world of Celeste’s beautiful eyes again before he recovered his balance and said. ‘Do you know what the worst part of this deception is? That you would call yourself a Christian. You’re not a Christian, are you?’

‘I’m a Deist, like you said.’

‘Really,’ said Joshua, raising his eyebrows in an exaggerated show of surprise. ‘Well, your beliefs don’t seem to be communicating very clearly with your ethics, Celeste. That’s probably not your real name, either, is it?’

She nodded. Joshua reached out to take her hands in his and although she flinched initially he tried again, and she submitted. He looked into her eyes, more composed now, much more in control, and said, ‘Celeste is such a pretty name and you are such a beautiful woman, so why is there darkness in your heart? Who forced you into this game? Surely it’s beneath you.’

The smile was gone now, buried by the gloom which overtook her face, stealing some of its attractiveness. ‘No one forced me. I chose this path.’

‘Celeste, I think we should stay together until you feel like telling me more about what’s going on here?’

‘Joshua, I swear that I don’t know anything. My instructions were to meet you, get friendly with you…’

‘To disarm me?’

‘Tell you that your friends were together and safe but under arrest, and to find out what you had been doing since you arrived in Australia. Where you’ve been, who you’ve met with. Stuff like that.’

Finally their orders arrived and although Joshua had lost his appetite he ate anyway, dishing some of the yellow curry on top of a pile of steaming rice, before taking a little of each on his spoon and putting it in his mouth. Celeste ignored her food, and watched Joshua as he chewed slowly, savoring the rich taste.

‘Tasty but not spicy enough,’ he complained light heartedly. ‘Where do you work, Celeste and who for?’

When she didn’t answer immediately, Joshua returned his attention to the curry. While his tongue worked over the spicy and aromatic texture, he prayed that Celeste’s would loosen.

‘We are contractors to the security and intelligence agencies which operate under government license. When their agents are too busy or unwilling to take on some simple jobs like this one, they contact our firm-and there are others like us-to arrange for one of us to do the job. None of our operatives deal directly with any of them. It’s done through intermediaries for security reasons.’

‘Who lines up the go betweens? You or them?’

‘They do usually, because they don’t trust us.’

‘They don’t give contact numbers so you can report on your progress?’

Celeste picked up her glass and drank slowly from it, draining the Chardonnay from it before continuing to speak. ‘No. They advise us that they will contact us on a particular day and at a particular time.’

Joshua served himself another scoop of rice and covered it with curry. He considered the stunning cover girl for a while as he chewed another mouthful.

‘You really chose this line of work?’

She nodded.

‘How long have you been doing it?’

‘You are only my second assignment.’

‘I hope the first one went better for you,’ said Joshua sincerely.

‘It was piece of cake,’ she replied. The sun of her smile briefly broke through the clouds of her face before disappearing once more.

‘All right,’ said Joshua, ‘We’ll do it this way. I’m actually prepared to let you make your report. When is this guy going to call you?’

‘At six this evening.’

‘Great. In the meantime you can show me around Sydney. I assume you don’t need to return the office today?’

‘No,’ Celeste replied cautiously, ‘but what benefit is it to you to listen to me repeat into a phone the things you have told me?’

‘Some benefit, but don’t you worry about that. We’ve got plenty of time for getting to know each other better as well, and I haven’t done any sightseeing in Australia yet.’

‘You’re mad Joshua. What makes you think I will consent to that? I could simply leave.’

‘I could simply follow’

‘I could get away from you easily. I know Sydney. You don’t.’

Drinking the last of his Coke straight from the bottle, Joshua rinsed his mouth with the caffeine and sugar water, swallowed and said, ‘I think if you were going to do that, you would have gone already. The fact you’ve sat here all this time, even after I broke out of the spell you had me entangled in, tells me something.’

Celeste relaxed noticeably and leaned forward on the table with her chin resting on the back of her delicate hand. ‘What does it tell you, Joshua?’

‘It tells me you had better eat that food in front of you because we have a busy afternoon ahead of us and you are going to need all the energy you can muster.’

’When she didn’t move, he made the suggestion more like an order from a mum to a reluctant toddler, ‘Come on, eat up. It’s good for you.’