Rose Leopard Read Online Free PDF Page A

company. We do okay.’
    He nodded and I could see what he was thinking: Sponger, eh? Toy-boy and leech. Sexual gratifier .
    â€˜Just write — unemployed.’ He smiled, revealing surprisingly imperfect teeth.
    â€˜But I’m not.’
    He eyed me for a moment.
    â€˜Mr Daley’ he said, ‘if you don’t have a job …’
    I leaned across the table, locked our eyes.
    â€˜I don’t have a job that you can label,’ I said. ‘I’m not a nurse or a boiler-maker or a zoologist but I am employed.’
    He nodded, picked up the pen and toyed with it, turning it over and over in his clean white hands.
    â€˜So,’ he said, aiming for a short snapping smile and not quite bringing it off, ‘what do you do?’
    â€˜Lots of things,’ I told him. ‘Most of the housework, for example. Take the kids to school. Some Wednesdays I read to the Grade Threes. Garden. Wash the windows every third Monday. See, I’m employed. Oh, and another thing. I write.’
    â€˜You write?’
    â€˜Mm. Poems and stories and things. Books. Chapters. Good and bad sentences. The inspirational and the banal. No day is ever the same.’
    â€˜And do you … sell this writing?’
    I hesitated. Discussions about money have always induced discomfort, mainly because I’ve never really had any.
    â€˜I’m going to,’ I tell him. ‘But you have to write it before you sell it. People don’t buy stuff that’s unfinished.’
    He nodded carefully, chewed his bottom lip, then pointed to number 2a.
    â€˜Put down — writer, he instructed. ‘If that’s your major occupation.’
    I did as he asked.
    â€˜So that’s it?’ I raised my eyebrows quizzically. ‘I am now officially, in the eyes of the Australian Tax Office, a writer?’ ‘Yes,’ he said but tightly, like there was a pain constricting his chest.
    We shook hands sombrely; it was, for me, a shining, an empowering moment of professional recognition. I was a writer — it said so on my Tax Return. And everyone knows that Tax Returns never lie.
    A writer who can’t think of anything, Kaz said to me a while back, is still more interesting than an everyday, run-of-the-mill, Johnny-come-lately who can’t think of anything. ‘Besides,’ she continued after a lengthy pause, ‘I’ve never met a real ATO-sanctioned writer before. Let alone slept with one.’
    The sun is fully risen, a perfect shimmering disc in a painter’s sky, a sky that looks like it has been brushed with oil. I trudge inside, hear Milo and Otis clamouring. Cornflakes for both followed by a slice of raisin toast. Jug on, coffee in two cups, sugar in mine. Contemplate boiling an egg, settle for a jam sandwich instead. Clear last night’s debris, put the bottles in the bin carefully so they don’t smash. Water and detergent in the sink, open the blinds, watch the morning light slice into our lives. Think about Kaz and Sunday-morning snuggling, the soft heat of pressed flesh.
    Hear a cry from the bedroom, sharp and anguished.
    Kaz is sitting up, a night-shirt clinging to her long thin body.
    She is staring at her hand.
    The bandage is off and she is staring, horrified, her mouth moving mutely, her shoulders shaking, breath coming from her in small sporadic bursts.
    â€˜Kaz?’
    â€˜My hand,’ she gasps. ‘Look … my hand …’
    There is swelling, skin pulled tight as a drum and an angry redness, then she turns to me and I see long streaks of crimson snaking up her pallid arm, smell the pungent odour of infected flesh.
    â€˜What’s happening?’ she cries but I am already gone, warming the car, bundling our protesting children into the front seat, grabbing my wallet, trying to remember the quickest, most dependable route to the hospital as I pick her up softly, imagine her to be an injured bird, bear her forth and then,