Mr Vertlan's File
Short Fiction: the curious life of the Accountant
The Accountant held important client meetings on the golf course. He believed the sport helped the wealthiest of the wealthy open up. On the course he was more like a friend than ‘the most brilliant financial mind’ ever wasted. He was a pretty decent golfer too. The Accountant ranked in the Top 5000 Accountants Who Golf Worldwide (AWGW), though he was set for a slip in the standings next month when this month’s disastrous scores are finally accrued.
That morning, the Accountant was on the ninth tee with his wealthiest client. Awaiting them was a par three with a fairway so fat it had its own postcode. ‘I said, “the fairway is so fat it has its own postcode,”’ shouted the Accountant. ‘I heard you the first time,’ said the client. ‘And I heard it on the fifth too. I’m not deaf, or dumb.’
The Accountant felt bad for cracking the joke but also a little resentful. Does his client expect him to carry a logbook to jot down the jokes on each hole? A logbook, dammit—he must think accountants never switch off. Maybe I’ll never say anything funny again, ever, starting right now. Thoughts of this negative hue clogged the Accountant’s mind as he tore a club from the bag and stabbed a tee into the turf. Instead of aiming five metres to the right to avoid the green-side bunker, he aimed fifty metres to the left and struck the ball so hard it cleared the protective chain link fence and shattered a far-off window.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ asked his client.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ replied the Accountant.
A forty-year-old man who lived near the golf course was ironing nine business shirts on nine ironing boards when the golf ball shattered his dining room window. It is more accurate to say it shattered ‘his mother’s dining room window’ though because it was technically her house, even though she had to knock before entering the basement where her son practiced masturbating: he was a virtuoso—10,000 hours.
The shattered glass brought nine shirtless men in from the patio. They had been drinking in anticipation of that night’s event. ‘Are you alright, son?’ asked one of the hairy old men. ‘Don’t call him that,’ said the masturbator’s mother. She pushed through the cheer squad of overweight bellies in her sequin gown, a single red rose in her hand. ‘Only tonight will I reveal which of you is the man’s father. Until then no son, boy or kiddo, or anything; he’s forty years old, for Christ’s sake.’ ‘Forty and a half,’ said the masturbator.
A second golf ball smashed a window. One of the men—a Vietnam vet specialising in horse fertility—called ‘mortar fire’ and dived under the ironing board canopy. There, already cowering was the masturbator. The younger man was quicker but thought the same. The two cowards now stared at a mirrored pair of blue eyes while pressing their palms together. Each felt a wave of feeling. Father and son, perhaps, now blessed with proof that cowardice is a genetic curse. ‘Dad…’ ‘Your mother says I can’t call you son yet, but I really want to.’ ‘She’s scary, I know. She says I’m a hoarder.’ ‘Because of the nine ironing boards?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Well, I think they’re super cool, particularly for hiding.’
‘Leave that proletariat “house” alone,’ said the client. ‘Think of the damages.’
‘You do think I only care about numbers? That’s all I am to you: an accountant. Well, I’m much more, just so you know. With a high degree of certainty, I’m also an actuary.’
‘I know, I know. “And an auditor.”’
‘So others have said, people you can trust.’
‘But you broke those working-class windows; they can’t afford replacements, if such a thing exists.’
The Accountant’s eyes blinked like they were filled with pencil shavings. ‘But they haven’t paid for the new ones yet, so technically the windows are not broken.’
The client peeled his glove Velcro and sighed. It sometimes felt like the Accountant was the multi-billionaire real estate mogul too busy to see, let alone find, his estranged children. It just goes to show: being out of touch is a state of mind not a bank balance. Putting yourself in other’s shoes and doing the right things, like recycling and such, that’s how you stay grounded. The client slid his 18-carat gold-shafted club into its slot and tried to squeeze the entire golf bag in the recycling bin, but it didn’t fit; it never fit. ‘I’ve lost my taste for golf, he said. ‘Let’s go to your office.’
The Accountant’s cheeks blushed the colour of negative figures in a spreadsheet. ‘My office—no. What about the windows? You said they’re broken. Maybe the occupants need help. Or we could stay here, on the course.’
‘Help? The working class are resilient creatures, like poison-resistant rats, but you wouldn’t know that, would you? Typical. To your office—now.’
They drove the Accountant’s car because the client’s driver was unavailable. He was at a funeral service on the client’s behalf, in fact, midway through a moving eulogy. ‘My mother taught me the valve of hard gerk,’ he said. The client’s handwriting was illegible, and with every false word the microphone shrieked. The driver believed the electronics were channelling the dead mother’s ghost and that hell awaited him. ‘I’ll never forgive her beautiful snail,’ he said, before crossing himself and searching the rafters for Heaven.
The Accountant’s office building was in the Port of Melbourne district, right on the seawall. The building once boasted partial views of the Bolte Bridge’s underside but was condemned and struck with a wrecking ball. Now it has uninterrupted views.
The Accountant parked a safe distance from any tyre-popping debris and ushered his client under the hazard tape. ‘Good Lord, what is this place?’ asked the client. ‘It’s a tax write-off.’ ‘No, it’s a write-off write-off.’ ‘Yes, that too.’ At the door, which many linguists—and theologians— would call a ‘chasm,’ the Accountant paused. ‘I want to warn you,’ he said. ‘In here can get quite dark.’
Inside, the two men tip-toed over a rugged film of building debris, take-away wrappers, and Accountant’s Weekly magazines with their pages stuck together. The walls had been punched in by bikies during one of their wall punching parties, and though ventilated by the broken windows and missing doors, the room smelled of leaking gas. The Accountant told his client not to worry though. ‘Your nostrils grow accustomed,’ he said. ‘But I am a little ashamed of how dark it is in here, I must say. An office needs natural light. That’s what all the big firms have: light.’
The client gripped a splintered door frame and stepped in something soft. ‘What was that?’ he asked.
‘Faeces, from the river vermin,’ said the Accountant. ‘Again, I’m so sorry about the light. I do hate bringing clients here. I much prefer the course. The course is really an outdoor office building. Do you get river vermin in Brighton?’
The client inspected his shoe; the caviar-encased sole was ruined. Now the eggs will hatch. ‘Get to it, will you. About my island, please. I beg you. Let’s discuss my island.’
‘Of course,’ said the Accountant. ‘Please, have a squat on the oil drum. I’ll get your file.’
In the corner was a pristine filing cabinet. The Accountant opened the top drawer and flicked through the folders until he found the correct one. It was a complex and testing file, this one. How the ATO delineates between an island and a continent had serious tax, not to mention foreign affairs, implications. All year the Accountant had wrestled the file like a frenzied grizzly bear: Man vs File, the oldest story ever told. And apart from a few papercuts he came out victorious, but it was a heavy file. It took both hands to carry the damn thing, and when he dropped it in the client’s lap it landed with the thud of a twenty-pound dumbbell.
‘Mr Vertlan’s file,’ he said. ‘That’s you.’
Mr Vertlan ran a hand over the beige cover and forgot his island. ‘That’s me,’ he said.
When he looked up, the Accountant was facing the water. His elbows were on the windowsill, resting in jagged shards of glass, and his palms held his chin like a goblet. The glass shards had cut him. The elbows of his shirt were soaked red, but he did not seem to mind. ‘What a strange man,’ thought Mr Vertlan, ‘living such a strange life.’
Outside, a cargo ship entered the port’s mouth. The ship’s corroded hull wore the dents of rough seas and collisions, and as it sailed by the office, the hull’s metallic panels resembled the largest spreadsheet ever made—or as some accountants prefer: ‘discovered.’
Leaning against the starboard railing was a sailor in a yellow fisherman’s suit. He was an older man with a grey beard and deep creases at the eyes which he gained from facing the fires of life. The sailor had seen and done things at sea that most cannot imagine. He had wrestled hell beasts and nightmarish monsters, and in the throes of battle he had yelled with such defiance that the monsters and beasts quivered in retreat. He had their names tattooed on his heart, next to that of a long-lost lover’s.
The Accountant believed the sailor was history’s most handsome man; there had to be one. He tried to imagine what it must be like to be that handsome, but he had a better chance imagining life as a longhorned tick crawling into a cow’s anus. The smells, the warmth—those things he understood. Being handsome was beyond imagination. Then, as if to drive the point home, the sailor climbed the railing and swan-dived thirty metres into the sea. The Accountant’s mouth hung agape. The sailor next appeared climbing one of the emergency ladders. Once on the landing, he removed the yellow jacket, looked to the sun for his bearings, and sprinted south-east.
Only three days ago, the sailor’s long-lost lover—the woman whose name is etched on his heart—got word to him in Argentina that he had a son. When the sailor went to sea all those years ago, she decided not to tell him she was pregnant. But it was time now for the son to have a father, one who might kick him out of her basement, or at least help throw away his ironing board collection. That night she was to name the father, and if the sailor was not there, she would name another in his place. The choice was his. The sailor only hoped there was still time. He disappeared around the corner, a man running to make up lost ground.
‘I lied to you,’ said the Accountant, watching the sailor disappear.
‘What about?’
‘I am only an accountant, and that’s all I’ll ever be.’
Mr Vertlan pinched his folder between finger and thumb. ‘But a very interesting accountant,’ he said. ‘Not all of us can even say that.’
The Accountant noticed the blood on his elbows. He pressed off the windowsill, fetched a pair of scissors, and began cutting his shirtsleeves off above the blood stains. ‘Mr Vertlan,’ he said, ‘do you ever get the sense that life is happening somewhere else? Like you live your life between those bumper rails at a bowling alley. Any stray ball that might have guttered your life just bounces right back. You stay safe, but all you’ll ever know is what you know now. Do you ever feel that way?’
Mr Vertlan felt the weight of his file on his lap as he gazed at the strange man.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘All the time.’
I laughed out loud on this one. Yes, I LOLed! The 'nine iron'ing boards were a very clever segue from the golf scene.
This was so good. I really laughed a few times, I didn't want it to end.