by David Thorne
“Nn. Nh nahh nks eh nhh.”
“Nonsense, how can the butter make it worse? Never mind, here’s the doctor now. Should I wait for you or can you make your own way back?”
“Nnn nn nthn?”
“I’m kidding. I’ll wait. Probably in the car though as sick people have touched everything in here.”
I found the tip of Frank’s tongue while I was waiting; it was wedged between the seat and backrest and hadn’t gone down the side at all. I opened the passenger door and flicked it out with a pen. After an hour or so I went to Burger King and when I got back, Frank was waiting by the hospital entrance in a wheelchair, which was a little dramatic. There was nothing wrong with his legs and the burns on his arm hadn’t been as bad as they seemed. They’d bandaged it though, and his tongue.
“It looks like a giant maggot is poking out of your mouth. Especially when you move it like that.”
“Nn nn nhh?”
“Yes, in a minute, just let me finish my Whopper. Good job on the brochure by the way. It turned out well. Neil signed off on it straight away so it’s ready for pre-press.”
“Hnn nnh n nnhhn?”
“Everything’s signed off. Yola’s sending all the other artwork to the printers today and if we get the brochure off tomorrow, it means we met deadline. We should all go out tonight and celebrate. ”
“Nh nh nhn.”
“Oh, right. Maybe tomorrow night then if you’re up to it. It’ll be my shout for all the hard work everyone’s done. Yola slept at her desk the last three nights and I know you’ve been working till three or four in the morning since the project began. Everyone stepped up; Justin is a Photoshop Jedi and Huang must have made us a thousand pots of coffee.”
“Nhn n nhh eh nhh?”
“No, not yet. They can only approve invoices during monthly director meetings. I agreed to cover the 17K printing costs and add on 10%. Do you want these fries?”
“Nh hhnn nhh.”
“Oh, right. I think your tongue is still bleeding a bit. It looks like a giant maggot wearing lipstick now.”
...................
From: David Thorne
Date: Friday 31 August 2001 2.40pm
To: Neil Fairhead
Subject: Press checks
Morning Neil,
Just letting you know all artwork has been sent to the printers. I spoke to Joseph at Finsbury and they are adding a spot varnish as requested. It’s an extra plate but worth it. They’ll have the brochure on press Monday and I will be at the press check. The corporate folder, stationery and itineraries are on press Tuesday. They’ve guaranteed delivery by Thursday so that works out perfectly.
Also, have you had a chance to look at the 25% deposit invoice Huang sent you a few weeks ago?
Regards, David
................................................................................................
From: Neil Fairhead
Date: Friday 31 August 2001 3.19pm
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: Press checks
David,
Looking forward to seeing the finished product. That invoice was approved during our director meeting yesterday and was sent to our accounts department so you should receive a cheque within 14 days. I made a note that it’s a priority.
I also wanted to discuss an exciting opportunity that I think you might be interested in. Would you be able to meet me for lunch on Wednesday to discuss?
Does 12.30 at Zapata’s work for you?
Neil Fairhead, Director
Southern Australia Shipping Company
................................................................................................
From: David Thorne
Date: Friday 31 August 2001 4.07pm
To: Neil Fairhead
Subject: Re: Re: Press checks
Neil,
Sounds good, I’ll see you Wednesday. Have a good weekend.
Regards, David
...................
Frank was up for celebrating that night. As were Yola and Justin. Hoang was invited but she never went anywhere with us. As she put it, “People see me with you, they think I stupid too.” which is obviously the Mystic East version of being judged by the company you keep. We went to a hotel called The Grace Emily as it was one of the few places in Adelaide that smoking hadn’t been banned. It was sticky, dirty and smelly but so were the people who went there which meant not having to dress up. Occasionally you’d see someone well dressed, but only as they walked in, looked around in horror, and walked out again shuddering. Art students liked the place as nobody judged them when they counted out change to pay for their pint and rolled their own cigarettes. Apart from me of course, I was a bit judgy; I once saw an art student wax their armpits at the bar, which is crossing the social etiquette line as far as I’m concerned. Someone stuck one of the used hairy blobs of wax on a window and it remained there for so many years it became a landmark on busy nights.
“Where’s Yola?”
“She’s talking to a fat guy in skinny jeans. Two tables to the left of the hairy wax blob.”
“Oh yeah. Where’s Frank?”
“He’s being told off by a member of the Lesbian Knitting Club for spilling beer in her yarn basket. Underneath the poster of the horse sucking off a cowboy.”
The poster hadn’t originally been of a horse sucking off a cowboy. It was originally an advertisement for Stetson hats - of a cowboy giving his horse a drink from his hat - but someone had changed the text ‘The last drop from his Stetson’ to ‘The last drop from his cock’ and drawn a penis on the cowboy, ejaculating into the horse’s mouth.
Frank wasn’t supposed to have alcohol while on Oxycodone but there was no way he was missing out if I was paying. Drinking beer through a straw may sound awkward but he was actually able to down a pint in less than two seconds. When he eventually passed out in the bathroom, someone drew a little smiley face on his tongue bandage with a Sharpie.
A guy named Wilson drew on my face with a permanent marker while I was passed out drunk on a couch once. He also shaved off my eyebrows but was kind enough to draw on a new set. I get that it’s hilarious for the artist, but the unwilling canvas has enough on their plate to deal with the next morning without having to go to work with Spock eyebrows and the words, “Beam me up, Scotty” written on their cheek. Also, if you are going to do to this to someone, don’t get drunk and pass out at a party a week later when the victim is present. It took over an hour to shave Wilson’s head and super glue on a swimming cap - then another hour to super glue his hair back on top of that - but quality work takes time. I wasn’t there when he woke up the next morning but apparently he didn’t notice anything different - even after using the bathroom - until his scalp began to itch. Then several pieces of furniture were smashed and the police called to remove him from the premises. I saw him at a supermarket a few weeks later, he was wearing a baseball cap but you could still see bits of rubber stuck to the back of his neck. I ducked behind a display of pasta sauce because it’s always awkward bumping into people you know at the supermarket. Especially if you exchange formalities and then have to pass them again several times in different aisles. Usually I’ll just abandon my cart and go home after the first round. Sometimes I wear a disguise though.
“Is Frank okay?”
“He’s fine, Yola. I offered to call him a taxi but he said he just wants to have a quick rest and then he’ll be out for another beer. Who was the fat guy in skinny jeans you were talking to earlier? The one with the Carol Brady haircut.”
“Thomas de Masi. I know his brother, Nik. He was showing me news clippings about himself.”
“He carries around news clippings about himself to show people? Why are you still here and not in his bed?”
“I know, right?”
“What were the news clippings about? Court rulings on the distance he has to stay away from schools?”
“He runs a small agency d
own the street called de Masi jones. They did the public transport livery design.”
“Nice. If you dated him, you might get a travel discount on bus rides during non-peak hours.”
“His brother Nik had an art exhibition a few months back. He’s actually a very talented artist.”
“Speaking of which, someone’s drawn a smiley face on Frank’s tongue bandage - it looks hilarious. I wish my phone had a camera. Have you seen those, Justin? Camera phones?”
“No.”
“I read about them in Wired, they’re coming out next year apparently. You can take a photo with your phone and send it to anyone. I bet by the year 2010 we’ll all have phones that have the Internet.”
“Why would anyone want to look at photos or the Internet on a tiny phone screen?”
“By 2010 there won’t be a screen, you’ll wear the phone on your wrist, like a bracelet, and a microchip in your eye will display the information as if it’s floating a few feet from your face - you’ll control it by hand and head movements, or possibly by thought. Ten years is a long time technology-wise, have you seen that graph thing with the curve?”
“No.”
“It’s a graph that shows technology increases over the last two-thousand years. We’d all be living on space stations and have personal nano-dust by now if it wasn’t for religion.”
“What’s nano-dust?”
“Millions of nanomites, tiny robots the size of dust, that float around you. You can hardly see them but they’re programmed so that if you think of a chair, they form together to make a chair. Say you’re outside and it starts to rain, pop, you’ve got an umbrella.”
“Like magic?”
“No, like science. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic though, it’s one of Clarke’s three laws.”
“Clark Kent?”
“Yes, Justin, the man of steel. Superman also wrote the three laws of robotics.”
“Well if I had nano-dust floating around me, I’d tell it to turn into another beer.”
“It doesn’t work like that. You can tell it to be a cup but it can’t just turn into beer.”
“Fuck that then. Can I have another beer?”
“Yes, of course, grab another round for everyone. And check on Frank. He’s been in there a while.”
I rode with Frank in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. Yola and Justin followed in a taxi. Vomit had forced its way out of Frank’s nose, down his esophagus, and into his lungs due to his mouth being blocked by the bandage. The paramedics placed a tube down his throat, pushing his bandaged tongue to the side. It pointed at me, smiling, for the entire trip. Even after they removed the tube.
“Is he alright?”
“No.”
“What does that mean?”
“He died in the ambulance on the way here.”
“Oh my god... wait, this isn’t another joke, is it?”
“Why would I joke about something like... okay, yes, Frank’s fine. They’re keeping him overnight though.”
...................
From: Thomas de Masi
Date: Monday 3 September 2001 10.09am
To: David Thorne
Subject: Yola’s email address
Hi David,
I hope this is the right email address. I was wondering if I could get Yola’s number off you. I meant to get it Friday night but she left in a hurry. Thanks.
Tom de Masi
................................................................................................
From: David Thorne
Date: Monday 3 September 2001 10.32am
To: Thomas de Masi
Subject: Re: Yola’s email address
Hello Thomas,
It would be inappropriate for me to give out a staff member’s contact details but I will certainly forward your email to Yola. That way she can contact you should she choose to do so. I’ve no doubt she will though; she hasn’t stopped talking about you. I think she might have a bit of a crush.
Also, credit where credit’s due; I saw the new STA bus livery design this morning and was quite impressed. It came out well. Congrats to you and your team.
Regards, David
................................................................................................
From: Thomas de Masi
Date: Monday 3 September 2001 11.12am
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: Re: Yola’s email address
Hi David,
Thank you very much. We worked hard on the liveries and are proud of the result. I will pass your kind words on to my team. I saw your work on the Yaldara labels a while back and was also impressed. We should have a beer sometime.
Tom de Masi
...................
Thomas had a dozen long-stemmed roses delivered to our office address that afternoon. There was a card attached that read, ‘Yola - Can’t stop thinking about you. Tom.’ As Yola was out of the office when the courier arrived, I swapped the card out for one that read, ‘Yola - Roses are red, violets are blue, I’ve got another news clipping I want to show you. Tom.’ I also had Frank whip up a quick 30% discount voucher for bus travel.
“Is this a joke? Did you send these?”
“No, I swear to you I didn’t.”
“He wants to show me another news clipping. What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Maybe it’s a euphemism.”
“And there’s a bus voucher attached.”
“Someone’s obviously smitten.”
“It’s weird...”
“You should probably email and thank him regardless.”
“I don’t know his email address.”
“I’ll send it to you, he emailed me earlier asking for your phone number.”
‘Are you serious? Did you give it to him?”
“No. Just your home address.”
“What?”
“How else was he supposed to add you to the State Transport Authority’s mailing list? You’re all signed up to receive their monthly newsletter and a free subscription to Ride! Magazine.”
...................
From: David Thorne
Date: Tuesday 4 September 2001 10.10am
To: Neil Fairhead
Subject: Press Checks
Hello Neil,
Just letting you know we changed the yellow (PMS 121) to PMS 122 on press yesterday. With a spot varnish on the blue, PMS 121 was looking too light. It’s a minor change and doesn’t effect pricing or delivery. We will update the style guide accordingly.
I’ll bring a few first run copies from yesterday’s press check (and this afternoon’s press check for the other artwork) with me to our meeting tomorrow. Delivery will be the day after but I thought you might like to see them earlier.
Regards, David
................................................................................................
From: Neil Fairhead
Date: Tuesday 4 September 2001 12.55pm
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: Press Checks
Fantastic. Looking forward to our meeting tomorrow. Can’t wait to see the final product.
We had a director meeting this morning and the printing invoice was approved. You should receive that within 14 days with the other one.
We also discussed the opportunity that I wanted to talk with you tomorrow about and I think you are going to be very pleased with the decision.
Neil Fairhead, Director
Southern Australia Shipping Company
...................
I read somewhere that everyone’s life can be broken into seven year segments - seven, fourteen, twenty-one, twenty-eight, etc. At each of these specific ages, an event - or a choice, or a mistake - changes the direction our lives take.
When I was seven, I waded out into the middle of our family pool holding a brick. Nobody else was home. I threw the brick into the air a few times, to test
trajectory, then threw it high and stepped under it. My plan was that the brick would knock me out and I’d drown. Which would mean never having to go to school again.
The day before, during lunchtime at school, Peter Jackson pulled my shorts down in the cafeteria. My underpants went with them. I was holding a tray of food at the time and had coloured my penis with blue food colouring the night before. I’ve no idea why, it was probably just a boy thing. I’ve done a lot of stupid things with my penis since then and it was a long time ago so the specifics are hazy. I do remember that my hands were also stained blue, from the application, and I’d told kids that it was from eating blueberries.
It worked, in part; the brick knocked me out for a bit, but I was pulled out of the water by our elderly next-door neighbour, Mr Williams. He’d been raking leaves in his back yard, stopped to watch the whole production, then jumped the fence. Mrs Williams put Mercurochrome and a Band-aid on the small cut on my head while I sat on their kitchen counter wrapped in a towel. Mr Williams made me a cup of tea. He used two teabags, I remember as he used both hands to jiggle, and added lots of sugar and milk.
“Drink this.”
“Thank you.”
“What the fuck where you thinking? You could have died.”
“It was an accident. I was just playing a game.”
“Oh yes, the ‘get in the pool and throw a brick in the air and step under it’ game. I know it well. Were you practicing for the finals?”
