By Mark O’Flynn
Dean’s wife, Shona, likes to fill out forms in supermarkets, in the backs of magazines, newspapers, anywhere where you might stand a chance of winning something. You know the sort of thing: ‘your chance to win! Be the first in your street! Save save save!’ Such temptations – they’re like a light dangling off the forehead of an anglerfish at the bottom of the ocean to lure an unsuspecting passer-by. Shona seems to be a sucker for advertising. She won’t listen to Dean when he tells her it’s all a scam. No one ever wins anything. It’s simply a means of distracting your attention while they pick your pocket. Dean and Shona have long held different attitudes towards capitalism. Let’s say, for the sake of domestic harmony, they agree to disagree. Shona believes it is simply cutting through the crap until you find the bargain lurking underneath the glitz and glamour of the promotional material. The hidden pearl. There is a way of making it work for you. Dean believes that the promotional material is merely a tacky manifestation of evil in disguise. Because he doesn’t want to be labelled a pessimist or a depressive, he generally keeps these feelings to himself.
One day Shona fills in a form without thinking, without reading it properly, and pops it into the cardboard letterbox at the cash register of her local supermarket. Win win win! in bright, sparkly lettering. She posts the form. What she might win she forgets immediately. That’s part of the appeal – to surprise yourself. To have a part of yourself existing beyond conscious awareness. This must be what fame is like. You certainly won’t win, she thinks, if you don’t fill in the required information. So, she does. The usual junk mail, Dean calls it, ticking all the boxes which surrender her valuable customer details for nefarious commercial purposes. This is how a modern, twenty-first century Mephistopheles works. And yet, a month or so later, a letter comes announcing with a star-spangled flourish ‘CONGRATULATIONS!! You’ve won!!’ etcetera – with a bevy of exclamation marks. She squeals in excitement, in which Gracie, their daughter, joins. What have we won? She can’t wait for Dean to get home so she can say she told him so.
On closer examination, it proves that what she has won is the chance to go into the draw to potentially win — wait for it — a quarter share with three other families in a holiday apartment on the Gold Coast in glorious Queensland. There’s lots of small print. There are fifteen up for grabs. Be quick! Won’t last long!
‘At least it’s better than nothing,’ says Gracie.
The medium sized print describes the scheme as a timeshare type of operation. The periods of availability will need to be negotiated with other stakeholders for access, especially during peak holiday demand.
‘I don’t want to share my holiday with anybody else,’ says Shona.
‘I don’t think that’s how it works,’ says Dean, really giving the letter a good going over. The photographs he knows are lies; the prices and interest repayments obfuscating. Shona’s excitement cools in the cold hard light of Dean’s caustic analysis.
‘Look, these palm trees have been photoshopped.’
Nevertheless, she still feels chuffed with herself. She’s never won anything in her life before, but that’s not the point.
There are conditions attached. Even smaller print. Principally, the requirement to attend the prospective investor’s symposium at a venue neither of them has heard of, way across the other side of the city. Failure to attend will rescind any claim to the holiday apartment and any future claims will be rendered null and void. It is this sort of language that makes Dean hate venture capitalism. Prospective investors are also required to bring along their partners. ‘Why?’ he wonders. How do they know you’re married? What else do they know? In retrospect, this condition is what makes Dean suspicious that the effort Shona went to in making such a lovely dinner last night was all a part of the plan to soften him up.
And Dean falls for it.
‘Can’t you see this is all a part of the plan to soften you up, to get into your purse?’
Shona doesn’t like to think ill of people. She’s the glass-half-full part of the equation. God knows why, Dean thinks, she’s had plenty of cause to burst that bubble. Shona thinks it is just the marketplace at work. Other objections raise themselves in Dean’s suspicious heart, first and foremost: they have never been to the Gold Coast. It’s supposed to be awful.
‘You only think that because you never go anywhere,’ says Shona.
‘I don’t want to go anywhere.’
‘My point exactly.’
‘I certainly don’t want to go to the Gold Coast.’
Actually, Dean had been to the Gold Coast, many years ago, with a person he wouldn’t like to run into, with Shona by his side. It would be like meeting yourself in a dark alley. Dean likes to keep his universes separate. He, therefore, stands by his first impressions – that the Gold Coast was a hole then and there is no reason to think anything has changed. However, Shona rationalises all this with clichés like: ‘How would we know if we don’t try?’ and, ‘You’ve gotta be in it to win it’.
So, against his better judgment Dean gets up early on the appointed Saturday morning. They leave Gracie sleeping because – one, she has gymnastics training later on, and – two, she’d probably take Shona’s side in any negotiations and together they’d gang up on Dean and persuade him to change his mind and they’d get what they want. Aaron, their son, never wants to go anywhere. He takes after Dean in that respect. Gracie doesn’t. All Aaron wants to do is practice kicking a soccer ball, or sleep in his foul-smelling bedroom. They drive all the way across town to a suburb they have never been to before, to drink some shitty coffee with a bunch of other prospective timesharing investors. Is this what life’s come to? Dean wonders. Am I that age? Kill me now.
It’s midday by the time they get there. They pull into the car park. The bitumen is baking. Not a tree in sight. It’s a fair walk to the conference building. No one else seems to know what they are doing there. There is a theatrical delay before they open the doors from the foyer into the main hall, which has been decked out as if it’s going to double as a wedding venue after lunch. Speaking of which, Dean’s grumbling stomach is telling him his blood sugars are getting low. He needs a snack. Each couple, for it becomes clear that the clients (prey? dupes?) are all couples of a similar class and vintage, are ushered into the hall. Each pair has been assigned their own personal sales service executive. Dean and Shona’s personal sales service executive is named Liam. He has the energy and enthusiasm of a life coach on caffeine. He is friendly. He is young. He wears a lilac suit with a red tie. His beard looks as though he may have drawn it on with the pen he brandishes in the air like a magic wand. The lights dim. Voila.
After the power point presentation extolling the virtues of the Gold Coast – the shopping, the beaches, the snorkelling, the hinterland – all of which amounts to a ‘Glorious Quality of Life’, Liam plies them with more coffee. Dean is worried if this goes on much longer, he’s going to miss Aaron’s soccer game later this afternoon. Can’t they hurry it up a bit? From his briefcase Liam pulls out a thick, A4 ream of contract and slaps it down on the table. There are echoing slaps throughout the hall. It’s as coordinated as D-day. Dean notices that the décor and colour scheme have also been well thought through. Again, he thinks it’s like the pulsing luminous ganglion on the forehead of the anglerfish at the bottom of the Mariana Trench with Liam’s face swimming in the shadows behind it.
‘So you agree,’ says Liam, approaching the epiphany of his scene, ‘that for people on your level of income, at your stage of life, the apartment is definitely affordable.’
Shona nods her head in a vague, placatory way. Far be it from her to be disagreeable. She just wants him to be less pushy.
‘You agree that, for people with your time constraints, with two school aged children, for holiday purposes the location is just about perfect.’
More tentative nodding.
‘That the facilities are ideal.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘That the weather also is excellent.’
‘Hard to argue with that.’
‘How do you know we have two children?’ asks Dean.
‘Then what are you waiting for?’ Liam asks, not listening, almost pouncing like a circus cat onto the table between them. ‘Live the dream. Be the beautiful. Sign here and receive, in addition, the gift of this magnificent silver, rhinestone-encrusted fountain pen.’
‘Not so fast,’ says Dean.
‘Not so fast? What’s the problem here? You said you agreed. Do you want to let this deal of a lifetime, which you yourself have seen the merit of, slip through your greasy fingers?’
Greasy fingers? Liam has slipped from his spiel.
‘Where’s the cooling off clause?’
‘Right here on page 78, but you won’t need it, I promise you. No one has ever been disappointed.’
‘Can we sell our share if we want to?’ Shona wants to know.
‘No. Forward selling is not an option in the first thirty-six months of the life of the contract. But why would you want to sell it? It’s the Gold Coast!’
‘You’re moving too fast,’ says Dean.
‘I beg your pardon.’
‘It’s not a race.’
‘There’s no need to bring race into it, sir,’ says Liam. ‘I’m simply doing my job. Where I was born is irrelevant.’
‘What? I’m not bringing race into anything.’
What has the boy thought he’d said? Dean has no idea.
From across the room comes a spattering of applause. Immediately Liam jumps to his feet, along with every other personal sales executive in the room, and enthusiastically joins in the clapping. It’s an ovation. There is the sound of a champagne cork popping. Liam sits back down, offering the pen once more. Rhinestone-encrusted.
‘Well,’ Shona turns to Dean, ‘what do you reckon?’
‘What?’
‘What do you think?’
He gives her a glance which he hopes communicates all the pent-up, sugar starved, coffee enhanced subtleties of his feelings on the matter, which are as follows:
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Are you for real? Fuck me, there’s no way in a million fucking years I’m signing anything this little twerp puts on the table. It’s a total fucking scam. What a con job. You made me get up early and waste my Saturday morning fucking around with this juvenile bloody idiot who gives a fuck about nothing but his stupid fucking rhinestone pen… What does he mean race? Want to smack the gormless grin right off his face. Can’t believe you’re taking this spiel of horseshit seriously. What a farce… How gullible can… Jesus Christ! Stupid bloody grin on his face. Can’t believe that I have never comprehended… how susceptible… to the simplest propaganda. The lies. Fuck me drunk. After all these years… coming to the realisation – Jesus wept! – that maybe this… is all a… big, big mistake… that maybe… yes… all your fault… maybe this is… maybe we don’t… Incompatible… You… Me… Opposite ends of a dark alley… No… Fuck… You owe me so big for this…
It’s an eloquent glance. Shona has no time to understand any of it before Liam directs his attention back to her, obviously the power broker in the relationship.
Dean unclenches his fists. His armpits are sweating. He normally doesn’t swear so much, even to himself. It seems almost out of character. There is another burst of applause from across the room.
‘Another happy customer,’ says Liam.
‘Another gullible schmuck,’ Dean thinks. Snap goes the anglerfish, and he can almost feel its needle teeth pierce him. Fuck! He suddenly stands and turns.
‘Mr Dean, Mr Dean,’ Liam calls after him. Dean can’t believe the look of disappointment on the young man’s face. ‘Please don’t go. The deal is forfeit if the husband does not sign.’
Dean continues through the foyer, out the glass doors to the car park. He would like to slam them shut, to hear the glass shatter, but they are softened by pneumatic air cushions. His precious Saturday. Where is the car again? The sky is bare and barren. Even the birds know it is a place to fuck off out of. He doesn’t even know what suburb he’s in. He is so angry he would like to jump in the car and drive off, leaving Shona to find her own way home, by which time, when she gets there, he will have packed a bag with all the things he would ever need and head for the hills, maybe Victoria, somewhere far, far away. Maybe his mother’s place in the short term. Unfortunately, Shona has the keys in her bag. They’re too bulky for his pocket and Shona thinks the bulge draws attention to his groin. Where’s the train station, then? He doesn’t know. He realizes that running away to his mother’s place is hardly the seismic upheaval he is picturing his life might now be undergoing. In fact, it might be a bit of an anticlimax. Yes, he hates to admit it, there is nowhere else in the world he can think to go where he would be welcome. He’s not going anywhere. There is a crushed flavoured milk carton by the wheel of the car. He picks it up in order to put it in a bin. He looks around. There is no bin. He feels silly holding it, so he tosses it on the ground again. What he really needs is something to eat.
He has to wait in the car park for a good half hour before she comes out of the building along with all the other schmucks, red faced, smiling, clutching bundles of paperwork. Some of them holding helium filled balloons. Shona beeps open the doors, flopping into the passenger’s seat beside him, hands him the keys.
‘Well, that was a waste of time,’ she says.
