Reality

by Ray Glickman

Overview

Six people have been chosen at random. Without their knowledge, Kathy, Mario, Garry, Hannah, Robert, and Julia are about to participate in the ultimate game of manipulation. A stranger brings them together, but can this ruthless puppeteer really be held responsible for the choices each makes? In the end, who is to blame for their deceit, infidelity, and crime? At the heart of this thought-provoking novel lies questions of fate and self-determination.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781922089373
Publisher:	Fremantle Press
Publication date:	07/01/2014
Pages:	380
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Ray Glickman was the CEO of the City of Fremantle for nine years and president of the Fremantle Chamber of Commerce for three years.

Read an Excerpt

Reality

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By Ray Glickman

Fremantle Press

Copyright © 2014 Ray Glickman
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-922089-38-0

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CHAPTER 1

PROGRESS

It was good coming over for the job. I achieved a lot. From time to time, doubts crept in about what I'd really changed in the face of such appalling bureaucracy. But I shrugged them off. Let's face it — the Department was a demolition job. I had to take it apart piece by piece. It turned out to be much worse than I'd been led to believe. Every time I touched something, the foundations were rotten underneath.

From the very beginning they knew I'd arrived. Things changed big time. Some of them didn't like it, but they grudgingly admitted it had to be done. But, the rest of them. Jesus. They were the kind who wouldn't know if their arse was on fire.

I didn't make myself popular. But then, I don't set out to be Mr Nice Guy. If people won't face facts, that's their look out.

All in all, it went pretty well. The smart ones could see what I'd achieved. More importantly, the Minister was happy. She thought what I was doing mattered.

It didn't, of course. What counted was that I was in a new city. And a new city is a perfect place for delicious diversions.

CHAPTER 2

EDGY

Kathleen felt that telltale frisson of excitement at the prospect of her meeting. This case had come her way in circumstances she still barely understood. She found it all intriguing. Lovely and edgy.

She arrived early at Milkd — her favourite coffee hangout. She loved everything about the place. Sarah and Pablo knew her by name and would have her double shot skinny cap ready almost before she sat down. The décor was funky and cute. There were brightly coloured tables and chairs on the footpath and the prices were written neatly on the blackboard menu as 20 without the cents.

She liked her hip neighbourhood too. The Perth metro area has five or six of these suburbs at its core. Kathleen imagined cool places like these to be circling their wagons against cultural attack from the city's endless urban sprawl.

Yes, she loved that feeling when life might be teetering precariously on the edge. She sipped absent-mindedly at her arabica blend and passed the time checking in with friends online and checking out the guys passing by. Some of the dudes showed signs of a heavy Saturday night. She felt a bit musty round the edges herself.

Fortunately, Matt had been satisfied that morning with a sleepy wake-up fuck and then had made himself scarce so she could concentrate on work. Concentrate on the new client that serendipity had dropped right in her lap. She was up for this meeting and saw from her reflection in the shop window that she looked great. It wasn't her fault she was a budding hot-shot lawyer who looked damn hot.

CHAPTER 3

THE SHITS

I remember waking up on that Sunday morning fair quivering in anticipation. It was exciting. After so much planning and preparation, the day of days had finally arrived. The initial phase of the Master Plan was now complete. I was more than satisfied with the overall approach, the strategies and the individual tactics. We were moving into the implementation stage.

Then I spoke to Mark and that stuffed everything. I was up for some positive diversion on this auspicious day, but instead I got Mark-style negative frustration. I knew when I came over here that hanging out with Mark again would give me the total shits. Just my luck that the only old friend I had on the west coast of Australia would be unreliability personified.

I had a great day planned out. I would go to the gym, draft the discussion paper for the following day's Executive Management meeting and then relax and unwind over a couple of drinks with Mark. But then the Markness intervened. He texted me to say he couldn't make it to the pub as certain things had cropped up.

What things? Mark didn't have a real job. He didn't even really have a life.

CHAPTER 4

MOONLIGHTING

Garry came to around seven thirty on Sunday morning. He opened the blinds to a blast of dazzling sunlight. It was going to be a hot one. He liked his brick and tile house. His wife and kids had their lounge and family room and he had his double lock-up garage with space to park the boat and set up his workbench. Average family home or not, it cost an arm and a leg in Perth and the mortgage repayments were getting out of hand.

Garry was determined to have Sunday free of thoughts of money troubles. He wondered if this could be the beginning of summer at last. The morning easterly was full of promise and his thoughts wandered to getting the boat ready for action. Then he remembered how much he hated the routine of hitching the boat to the trailer, carting it down to the boat ramp, waiting for a lifetime to launch it and then going through the whole bullshit again in reverse just to get home.

He remembered not to forget he had a quote to do for an old lady later that day. Sunday or not, he thought, a fireman's two or three jobs are never done.

He considered re-entering the battle zone called kids eating breakfast but there was no way he was volunteering for a further tour of duty in Perthghanistan. He had served his country yesterday so Kirsty could go shopping with the girls. Today, leave in the form of reading the Sunday paper was the least he deserved.

He slipped quietly from the heavily fortified barracks of the bedroom but didn't get far before ambush from enemy fire.

No, sweetheart, I can't take the kids to your Mum's. I have to do that quote I told you about. Garry pecked her on the cheek, groped her still-cute bum and made a run for it.

CHAPTER 5

ABOUT ME

I think it's helpful if you get to know me.

I'm an analytical person so I encourage understanding. Understanding breeds appreciation. Please don't confuse my desire for understanding with a quest for your approval. That really is of no consequence to me.

I've been told I have winning ways. Sometimes it's called charm or even charisma. People like me in spite of themselves. Remember the kid at school who was good at everything? Remember how hard you tried to hate him? But you couldn't, could you? That kid was me.

When I do things, I do them well. Actually I do them better than anybody else. It stems from innate ability but it's more than that. I'm more driven than other people. It's genes and guts. It's the deadly duo of nature and nurture humming like a well-oiled machine.

On reflection, I can see that having a drunken, degenerate bum for a father was the best thing that ever happened to me. Obviously, it didn't seem that way at the time. Certainly not when he beat Mum up and scared me so much that I shit my pants.

My dad would drink away the rent money and terrorise the neighbours, so we found ourselves constantly on the move from one rental to another. From time to time, he would 'go away' and Mum would drag me to see him in Melbourne's Pentridge Prison. I can still remember how cold it was there. Even in the heat of summer, those thick stone walls and inmate stares chilled me to the bone.

When I say my dad was like that, he was the man I called Dad. I never met my actual father nor was I told a thing about him. My mum kept up the pretence about my paternity throughout my childhood, but Axe (yeah, he was huge) made sure I was reminded when he and I were alone that I was literally a pathetic little bastard.

Mum remained fiercely loyal to the abomination of a man I was forced to call Dad, as do so many women who've been battered by their so-called men. I speculate that my real father was a Greek or a Turk. I have olive skin and what people describe as swarthy good looks. So I am rather handsome and, as I told you before, I have a certain charm. Axe was neither handsome nor charming. He was an ugly, ignorant brute with all the charm of a spitting cobra.

So my childhood experiences weren't great. But I am thankful for them now as I can trace my toughness and determination back to those formative years. All in all, I'm a self-made man. Maybe this will help you understand what drives me to be the very best.

Let me share something else to put you in the picture. I crave admiration. Don't confuse that with approval. I use words precisely and I do mean admiration. The admiration I refer to is the shock and awe reaction when people witness amazing things. I'm the kind of guy who wants to take your breath away. I want you to marvel at me. Like when the dashing hero rescues the damsel in distress. Or when the thief brazenly robs the bank in broad daylight.

As a consequence of moving from house to house, I also had to constantly change schools. Thanks to my indifferent home life, I was malnourished and always the weediest kid in my class. Interestingly enough, I was never bullied. When they first saw me, the Neanderthals in the back row would lick their lips. At the first opportunity, they would get me alone in the playground to do their worst. The funny thing was they never did. They would look at me and I would look at them. They were bristling with menace and I was supposed to be scared. The trouble was, I wasn't.

I've thought about this a lot over the years. Why didn't they go ahead and bash me? The fact is they were scared of me and not the other way around. Gradually, I would weave those boys under my spell. Before too long I would become their leader and they would do my bidding. At that time, neither they nor I could understand why.

As I made my way through university in Melbourne, the influence I had over others endured. Not that I was threatened physically by anyone. Instead we competed for the grades and the girls and the crown of king of the cool. I took what I wanted and I was the sun around which all the lesser planets orbited. If anything, the force field has progressively strengthened. These days I can fully harness the attraction. My gravitational pull is simply irresistible.

I'm confident I can get what I want. Working out what I'm going to attempt is the trickier thing. But, once I found myself here in Perth, a new man as it were, I quickly found a purpose. Something that would interest me and challenge me and justify the move to Wait — A while WA. Something that would combine tower rescue with bank robbery.

It all started in earnest on the very Sunday you're reading about now.

CHAPTER 6

MAYBE A LITTLE IRREGULAR

Robert loved this time of the year now the weather was really warming up again. He sheltered his eyes from the rising sun as he waited to brief the new guy on the mass of maintenance work around the property that was now way overdue. Things were getting out of hand and that's why so much activity had overtaken his Sunday morning.

Robert and Jack introduced themselves to each other and exchanged pleasantries. Robert had just joked for the millionth time that being a gynaecologist was like being a mechanic, but with a much better view. He chuckled to himself as he always did. Luckily, Marjorie wasn't there to tell him off this time.

He oriented Jack to the features of the site. There were paddocks with sheep to do the gardening, rows of fruit trees in the scenic valley, verdelho and chenin blanc grapes planted in the perfect terroir of the gravelly, loam soil and a market garden area let to the neighbours. One hundred hectares with breathtaking views was bloody great, he told him, but having no time to do things was a problem. A busy practice, you see. The basic maintenance was getting him down, let alone the hassles with the hopeless people from the viticulture collective who were supposed to be developing his vineyard. Perhaps he was getting old, he thought, but fifty-four isn't that old these days. The new forty-four, he said to himself, as ever amused at his own joke.

Robert left Jack to it and wandered back towards the house. He noticed that the BMW Sports Z4 needed a clean. He wondered if he could fit in a clean-and-go before his appointment. It was a little irregular to see a patient on a Sunday, but she seemed desperate. She also sounded alluring. Her verdelho voice conjured up lime and honeysuckle so intensely that he could almost taste it.

At worst, it would provide a decent excuse to drop into the bar. Owning a bar by the river was fun. Something to play with, Marjorie said. Cruel but fair. Nothing wrong with a bit of fun, especially when there were young girls to ogle. It was a licence to print money too. Yes, the bar was a winner all round.

CHAPTER 7

BRAVE NEW WORLD

When I told people I was leaving Melbourne, they were shocked. To go to Perth of all places, that made them laugh. That's what they're like in Melbourne. Superior and complacent.

The trouble is, complacency suffocates risk. The complacent classes, with silver spoons stuffed in their mouths, would rather choke on them than taste freedom. But people like me aren't afraid to take a chance. We boldly go where we've never gone before. We star-trek to another city where we know no one (except for Mark, who is too unreliable to count).

Despite the sneering looks on the faces of my colleagues, I could tell they were jealous as hell. To get head-hunted from interstate to run a whole Department, a whole service for the entire State — that was something they would only ever have dreamed of for themselves.

They thought I was heading West just for work. They didn't know it was also an escape. Not from anything bad or from any sort of scandal but more so from the confines of myself. People like me can get dragged down and diminished by the stifling conventionality of a smug, established city.

What better place to allow the spirit to run free than the most isolated capital city in the world? Where better than a new frontier to explore one's potential for great things?

CHAPTER 8

THAT IT SHOULD COME TO THIS

Hannah couldn't understand how she got to be eighty-two. That was no great surprise. Last year, she couldn't understand how she got to be eighty-one.

When she looked ruefully in the mirror that Sunday morning, a withered old lady looked back. Inside she was still herself as she had always been, but now she was locked inside some ghastly shell.

People often commented that she still had her marbles. Hannah resented this ageism just as she had rejected racism and sexism before it. Not only was she anti the isms, she was one of those pioneering women who led the movements against them.

And yet it should come to this. Only a few years ago, she would have done the work herself. She renovated her own bathroom when she was seventy-five and it got her headlines in the local newspaper. Some achievement that — to be a DIY celebrity in the Community News! That's what currently passes for fame for a world-renowned Viennese pianist, celebrated Jungian psychiatrist, revered feminist flag-bearer and refugee from the Nazis, whose entire family had been butchered before her eyes.

She didn't waste time on regretting the past but, justifiably, she had come to resent the present. How cruel it was for a woman like her to have to ask a man for help. Now what time was the young man coming round again? It was written on that scrap of paper near the telephone table in the hall. Here it is. Damn these infernal glasses. Here we go. Two o'clock.

CHAPTER 9

MARK

I spent a fair bit of time with Mark when I first came over. At first I wasn't entirely sure why. I thought it might have been out of nostalgia. But I soon realised that it stemmed from what you might call forensic curiosity. For me, spending time with Mark was like looking at the world through one-way glass, paradoxically coupled with the reflective benefit of looking in a mirror. When I was there with Mark, I was a dispassionate observer of life. Strangely, that helped me develop and realise self.

He seemed pleased to have me around in that special Mark way. That merely meant that my presence was, on balance, welcome. If I'd told him I was heading straight back to Melbourne, he would have shrugged his shoulders and said what time do you leave?

Mark hadn't changed much from university days but then I guess none of us do. It's not hard to understand why parents find it all so depressing. They enslave themselves to their kids for twenty years, fork out a small fortune to bring them up and then the brats turn out just like they were going to anyway.

As the Britney generation would say, Mark's parents would so-ooo feel like that. I once came over to Perth and visited him in their impressive house in their leafy suburb. Mark's parents spent the whole time apologising for him. A genius he was without a doubt, but he was as erratic and lazy as he was brilliant.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Reality by Ray Glickman. Copyright © 2014 Ray Glickman. Excerpted by permission of Fremantle Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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