Lydia Ludvich was easy to spot. I saw her walking towards my table at Bubble Butt from several meters away. She was neatly dressed in dark denim jeans combined with a white, short sleeve shirt. Her hair was white-blonde, ultra short and spiked up and she wore a pair of black rimmed, fashionable glasses. In her arms, Lydia carried a bulky black diary and personal organizer, as well as a mobile phone.

Lydia recognised me from the description provided when we’d spoken earlier on the phone. She offered a tight smile and we exchanged greetings as she unloaded her possessions onto the table and took a seat.

No sooner was she seated then one of Bubble Butt’s attractive young male waiters pranced onto the street and approached Lydia, asking if she would like a beverage. She ordered a short black while I elected to sit on my still warm, partially consumed café latte. The waiter did a twirl with considerable aplomb, and went back inside the café.

“So…? You wanted to chat about Michael?” Lydia asked. “How’s the poor love doing?”

I gave her a quick appraisal of Michael’s condition. She responded with a clucking of the tongue and a concerned frown.

“Well... you let me know if there’s anything I can do, yeah?” she offered. I thanked her for her kindness, but then turned the conversation round to the real reason for our meeting.

“I understand there was an incident at RL last week. Michael took a call that turned nasty,” I began.

Lydia’s eyebrows raised a little then dropped looking hooded and annoyed. “Where did you hear that?”

A fair question. But I replied in a roundabout manner. “There are few secrets on the gay scene,” I said, telling her nothing she would not have already known. “But don’t be too freaked out – no one’s broken any confidentiality clauses or anything like that. And I don’t expect you to tell me anything you shouldn’t,” I added.

She eyed me critically. “What’s your interest in all of this?” At this moment, the waiter returned to our table, brandishing Lydia’s steaming hot beverage that was deftly laid out before her, complete with a cheery, lip-gloss embossed smile. She thanked him curtly and we were once again left to ourselves.

“There’s a chance that what happened last week is related to Michael’s suicide attempt,” I told her, picking up on where our conversation had been interrupted. Lydia’s face registered some surprise. “The more we know, the more we can help Michael once he wakes up.”

Lydia appeared to consider this for a moment, then responded. “This is what I can tell you: at 10:15pm last Wednesday night, Michael took a call. It lasted until 11.27pm. The caller was male. The call progressed without incident until approximately 11.20pm,” Lydia said. “Our operators notarize all calls’ start and finish times,” she went onto explain. “And in the case of escalated calls involving such situations as suicidal or abusive callers, for example, operators are instructed to make notes providing as much detail as possible. This is for legal reasons as much as anything else.”

“So what happened then…?” I inquired. “The call was going fine until 11.20pm… then what?”

“The male caller was in a state of extreme distress. Michael indicated that in his notes, and later reinforced it when we spoke in person, that he believed the caller was drunk,” Lydia recounted. “And yes, the call was going fine.

“Michael is a good operator, always happy to go above and beyond the call of duty, y’know? But just as he was winding things up, the caller and Michael both realised – at about the same time – that they knew each other. At that point, the caller became aggressive and threatening.”

I thought of Sevastian’s snide ”Rest in peace, Michael” comment from the previous evening at The Depot, as well as Goldie Knox’s account of their argument the Friday night of the previous week.

“Michael assured the caller that nothing he had told Michael would ever be repeated,” Lydia said. “But he wasn’t buying git. The abuse and threats worsened. Michael felt he had no other choice but to end the call.”

“He hung up on the guy?” I cried, unable to mask my surprise.

Lydia nodded. “Yes. But first he ran through the usual spiel we instruct all our telephone counselors to use under such circumstances: ’I’m sorry but it appears that I’m unable to assist you further while you are in this frame of mind. Therefore, I am going to have to terminate this call…’, yadda, yadda, yadda…” Lydia gave a wave of her hand in the air with considerable flourish (for a lesbian) in a dismissive gesture, then sipped at her coffee.

“OK, so what happened after that?”

Lydia described how after completing an Incident Sheet, outlining the call in detail, Michael left the Rainbow Line’s Prahran based office shortly after midnight. He walked to a taxi rank on nearby Commercial Road where he took a cab home.

It was while the cab was parked outside his building that Michael noticed the black BMW parked across the street. He had the distinct impression the driver, who appeared obscured within the darkened interior of the vehicle, was watching him. Moreover, Michael was positive the car had been on Commercial Road, near the Rainbow Line office, and had followed him home.

When safely inside the apartment building, Michael called the Rainbow Line’s administration phone number. Of course, no one was there to pick up. But he left a message: “Hi. It’s Michael. Um, look… I’m pretty sure that has followed me home – the guy who was abusing the shit out of me earlier… There’s a car, a black BMW, outside. May be I’m a bit stressed out or whatever… but I’d swear it followed me from Commercial Road, and I’m positive I saw it parked near the office when I left the building. Lydia, I really need to talk to you about this as soon as you get this message, ok?” He’d then hung up.

“When I got into the office the next morning,” Lydia went on, “I got Michael’s message first. But there was another message on the machine, from an unidentified caller – male – shortly after,” she advised. “It was brief: ’Michael, I know where you live, you little fucker’.” She paused, allowing me to digest the message and its unmistakably menacing tone.

“When I met Michael later that morning to discuss what had happened,” Lydia went on, and then signaled to ask if she could help herself to one of my cigarettes; I nodded wordlessly, eager for her to continue. She lit up, inhaled, then spoke.

“I played the message back to him. Michael identified the voice as that of the caller from the night before,” she said.

“OK, well, do you have some kind of strategy or procedure in place for things like this…?” I inquired.

Lydia nodded vigorously, her expression stern as she drew back on the fag before answering. “Oh sure, yeah, sure. I lodged a complaint with the police that same morning. But you see, as we take the whole confidentiality aspect of our service very seriously, I wasn’t able to provide the cops with the details of the abusive call Michael had taken at the RL office. However,” she said, her tone brightening a little, “as the message on the machine was not directly related to the nature of our business, and was in fact hostile and apparently threatening, well that was sufficient to get around the ethical dilemma we were facing in terms of reporting the guy to the police in the first place, if you see what I mean?”

I did and nodded, impressed by her integrity and devotion, insofar as Rainbow Line was concerned, as well as her sense of ‘duty of care’ towards one of her volunteer staff members.

“What did the cops do?” I asked her.

Lydia pulled a face. “Nothing. Not for lack of wanting to do something, though,” she added quickly.

Lydia explained how Michael had, for reasons he did not share with her, asked that the complaint be dropped. I shook my head in dismay, sharing Lydia’s own apparent air of frustration at Michael and his whole ’Turn the Other Cheek’ philosophy towards life which, in my opinion, was probably something best left to the gay saunas and bath houses where it was entirely more suitable and productive.

We had now arrived at a delicate juncture in our discussions. I’d assessed Lydia Ludvich fairly thoroughly and somehow I doubted that my infamous charm and beguilingly boyish manner would be enough to procure the name of Michael’s mysterious and maniacal caller from her. Indeed, I suspected I could’ve been k.d. lang, naked and dipped in honey, and still Lydia would not have willingly given the name and betrayed her sense of morality and ethics.

I would have to approach her from the level upon which she operated – of high ethical fortitude. For a moment I wondered what life experience I could draw upon to prepare myself for such an operation, as it was a little beyond my usual daily encounters. But then luckily I had another idea altogether.

“I’m very grateful to you, Lydia, for meeting me and telling me what happened. And I promise none of what we’ve discussed will go any further,” I assured her. “But there is one more thing I need…”

Lydia – clearly no fool – eyed me expectantly, and I fancied I could see Lydia mentally preparing her ’No way’ speech in advance.

“You can’t give me the caller’s name,” I stated. “And I respect that,” I told her truthfully, and Lydia nodded, giving me a tight smile that seemed to be saying ’Yes, but…?’.

“But I’m sure you sincerely want to help Michael. And to that end, I’m going to drop a couple of names. I do not expect you to either confirm or deny whether or not a particular name is familiar to you. Do you understand?”

Lydia paused for a moment, apparently deconstructing my words, analysing them, then deciding it was safe enough to respond. “I understand what you are saying,” she said evenly. “I cannot stop you from mentioning a person’s name in my presence….” Her voice trailed off.

“Leo Clarke,” I began. Lydia said nothing and actually stared down into her empty coffee cup, looking blank-eyed and stony faced.

“Jason Naylor,” I said. This provoked a similar response, although this time Lydia feigned momentary interest in the front cover of the issue of MCV that sat between us on the table.

“Alexander Simmons.” Still no reaction from Lydia. There was only one name left.

“Sevastian Von Dahl,” I said, feeling the breath chill and tighten in my chest.

Lydia met my gaze levelly. “I can neither confirm nor deny that that was the caller’s name,” she said automatically.

I gave her a small, grateful smile. “I understand. Thank you.”

Sitting on the tabletop, my mobile vibrated and rang, and I saw via the caller ID that it was Drew. It was tempting to let it go through to voicemail, but I forced myself to answer it.

“Hey…” I opened cautiously.

“Hi. How are you?” Drew asked, sounding mildly anxious as well. Even so, I felt a thrill on hearing his rich, deep voice, followed by a rush of resentment.

“I’m fine.” The lie announced itself with all due fanfare; neon signs, roving spot lights and a float chockfull of scantily clad and gorgeous gay men, gyrating as Kelis belted out ’Trick Me’. It was a sight worthy of being at the head of the Annual Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade.

“So how are you? How’s work?” I asked him.

“Yeah, good,” Drew’s float was almost as good of mine, or so it seemed. “Puck…” he went on. “Are we good? I mean – where are we? After Brian’s party, I just don’t know what’s going on…” he stated.

My tongue decided to do a fair impersonation of a mime artist with severe muscle spasms. In the end, I spat out awkwardly: “Dunno’… Drew, all I’m thinking about right now is Michael…”

“And I understand that, Puck, I do,” he said honestly. “But I can’t help wondering if you’re using what’s happened to Michael as an excuse…”

I was about to shoot off successive shots of scathing retribution, however my phoned bleeped, alerting of another incoming call. “Hold on a sec,” I said grumpily and checked the caller ID on the new call. It was Desi.

“Drew? It’s Desi. She’s at the hospital. I have to take this call. I’ll phone you back, ok?”

“Sure,” he replied, but sounded somewhat doubtful.

I cut Drew off and picked up Desi on the line. “Hi, Desi… what’s going on? How’s Michael doing? Is he -?” But Desi interrupted, blurting out a string of words in an excited stream of syllables that drowned out my own outpourings.

“Puck! It’s Michael!” she cried breathlessly. “Get here as fast as you can! He’s awake!”

<< - >>

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