Review of Australian Fiction, Volume 9, Issue 6

by Alison Croggon

  The Green Lamp

  Leah Swann

  After Jimmy was sacked, he spent several days sleeping. At two he’d get up to surf the net or watch telly and drink Coke, creeping back to bed before his flat mate Paula got home. On Friday he didn’t rise till almost three, and spent a fruitless ten minutes searching for the Xbox before remembering Marko had borrowed it. He shuffled into the living room with his thin doona still draped around him, nursing a packet of lime and black pepper crisps.

  Daylight shone on the iPad screen, blurring the images. He logged into his bank account. Ten dollars. It would hardly buy him a coffee and BLT. Back in the kitchen he raked around in the fridge like a madman and found the half-eaten pie from last Sunday night. The night of bongs and beer with his boss that had cost him his job. He peeled open the brown paper and sniffed the onions and meat. Was it off? Dare he bite it? He drew it closer to his nose and held it there, sniffing.

  Through the window he saw Paula marching along the footpath. Home from work already! He hurled the pie into the bin and raced to the bathroom to wash away his five-day reek. His reflection told a sorry tale: unkempt whiskers, gungy teeth.

  ‘Hell,’ he muttered. ‘That’s what you look like, mate.’

  A yellow pimple extruded through the whiskers. He popped it and hopped under the shower and lathered. It was good to wash. He was coming out of some kind of fog. He decided to shave, scolding himself for squandering water but loving the heat driving out gloom from his body. Whiskers filled the razor and he knocked it against the tiles to empty it. Next to the wet patch of whiskers he noticed a tiny rainbow made by the bevelled glass window.

  Jimmy towelled himself dry and contemplated his stiffly soiled pyjamas on the bathroom floor. He couldn’t wear them again. He wrapped the towel over his hips and dashed into his bedroom. Paula was making real coffee. He could hear the machine percolating and smell coffee beans roasting. What a smell! He licked his lips and flicked open the blind. Callous light exposed dirty clothes and a bowl full of half-smoked roaches.

  ‘God,’ he said, under his breath.

  His drawers were almost empty. He dressed in a pilly tracksuit and running shoes. There was rent and reckoning to get through. He needed shoes to face Paula.

  ‘Cuppa, Jimmy?’ she said as he came down the hallway. She was bustling around in a red skirt a tad snug over her pillowy hips. So far so good. He sat cautiously on a kitchen chair. A book of Chinese poetry was lying open on the table. Paula’s last boyfriend gave it to her when he dumped her. Jimmy hadn’t heard the end of it.

  ‘That’d be great, Paula.’

  She steamed the milk and sprinkled chocolate over the froth. She set it down in front of him along with a plate of fruit toast. Jimmy’s stomach growled audibly. Paula smiled.

  ‘Have some.’

  Was that… a tear in his eye? Nah, couldn’t be. It was days since he’d eaten properly, that was all. Not since that pie. Unless you included cola and crisps and bowls of Weet-Bix.

  ‘So why did you lose your job?’ she asked, sitting across from him. He could smell her perfume. Something very flowery and sweet.

  ‘Fight with the boss.’

  ‘What about?’

  Jimmy took a bite and chewed, relishing the butter, dates and crunchy macadamias, and wondering how to change the subject.

  ‘Did he crack on to a girl you like?’

  There was no way out when Paula wanted to know something.

  ‘He was drunk. Came on to a girl who didn’t want him. Wouldn’t stop.’

  ‘Ah,’ Paula leaned forward, her eyes glittering. ‘You stopped him! Good boy!’

  Jimmy squirmed.

  ‘Yeah, well, look where it’s got me.’

  Paula got up to take an empty Coke bottle to the sink, and gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze. The bottle clinked on the stainless steel.

  ‘You shouldn’t drink that stuff. It’s got aspartame in it.’

  Jimmy shrugged.

  ‘It turns into formaldehyde. A deadly neurotoxin. It’s what they pickle rats in. Maybe they don’t dissect rats in school any more?’

  Paula was thirty-five and Jimmy was twenty-four and she often found ways to remind him of this. She was no beauty while he was considered quite good looking, and Jimmy wondered if this was her way of evening out the social stakes. Her maturity. And her education, of course.

  ‘This is the best fruit toast I’ve ever had.’

  ‘It’s a Phillippa’s loaf. Seven dollars,’ sighed Paula. ‘Rent’s due.’

  ‘I’m going to Centrelink on Monday to sign up…’

  ‘Centrelink?’

  Jimmy’s eyes fell to the open poetry on the table, next to Paula’s new iPhone. He dragged the book closer. It might distract her. He read a few words by an old Chinese poet, Gekkutsu-Sei:

  I set down the emerald lamp

  Take it up — exhaustless

  Once lit,

  A sister is a sister

  ‘Why don’t you just work for yourself?’ asked Paula. ‘Tradies make heaps.’

  ‘I don’t have any clients.’

  ‘Put an ad in the local rag. Run off flyers.’

  He gulped, forcing toast down his throat. He sipped coffee to loosen it.

  ‘I don’t have the money.’

  He couldn’t say that he hated wiring electric currents through dark and dusty places. His squeamishness had once, famously, led him to re-route all the electrics because he’d seen a rat’s tail. His mates whooped when they worked out why. Paula’s face was intent, round, expectant. Just looking at her made him shivery and tired.

  ‘I’ll give you till Wednesday,’ Paula said. ‘Just get any job. They need pizza makers at Fahd’s.’

  ‘I don’t know how to make pizza.’

  Paula swept away the empty plates. Feeling vaguely ashamed Jimmy lowered his eyes and read the poem again. It was nothing special. It didn’t even rhyme.

  Fortified by fruit toast, Jimmy made his way to Fahd’s that night. He walked down to the Windsor end of Chapel Street with the wind cutting through his tracksuit top. Cars belted past, some throbbing with rap. If he’d saved some of his last pay-cheque he could have put petrol in his own car. He’d never saved a cent. Money was slippery. You couldn’t own money: it came and went like breath.

  The smell of roasting mushrooms and cheese and salami wafted out of the pizzeria. Night-clubbers, students and locals were packed in front the counter where a black-haired man was frenziedly making pizzas. Jimmy shouldered his way to the front. Dockets bristled around the till and someone was complaining.

  ‘I ordered a capricciosa half an hour ago!’

  ‘Here it is, my friend,’ said the man, whipping a cheesy ham confection into a box. The damp smell of hot dough rose through the cardboard. He presented it to the customer with a one-handed flourish while his other scattered chunks of pineapple over a raw pizza. Seeing Jimmy, he said:

  ‘There’s a thirty-minute wait.’

  ‘I’m here for the job. I can come back—’

  ‘No joke!’ said the man, staring at Jimmy with sudden, blazing intensity, eyes as green as olives in his tanned face. ‘Grab an apron.’

  ‘I’ve never made pizzas—’

  ‘You’ll learn. Ten dollars an hour orright?’

  Jimmy blinked.

  ‘Okay, fifteen. Just get back here. Fahd’s my name.’

  Behind the counter was a row of glass bowls filled with chopped tomatoes, mushroom crescents, grated mozzarella, pink ham shreds, salami, creamy white goat’s cheese, spinach, rolls of fleshy coral salmon, capsicum, black olive discs, and a bottle of golden garlic sauce.

  ‘Get the pizzas into boxes. When the bowls get low refill them from the big tubs on the shelf under here. If you’ve got a minute, spread cheese for me, like this.’

  Fahd fanned grated cheese over the dough with an expert flick.

  ‘The cheese makes a bed for the other ingredients. Soaks up the juice.’

  For the next few h
ours, Jimmy and Fahd worked like dogs. Fahd could assemble a pizza in about thirty seconds. Jimmy learnt the docket codes, took orders, figured out the till and slotted hot pizzas into boxes.

  ‘You’re good,’ Fahd grunted at him and Jimmy felt absurdly pleased. It was almost eleven when Jimmy handed a box to the last customer. The restaurant was still busy, but the shop was empty.

  ‘Ahhhh!’ said Fahd, with a long sigh. ‘I don’t believe it.’

  He collapsed on a chair to eat a pizza someone had forgotten.

  ‘Want some?’

  Jimmy took a slice. It still had a hint of warmth, and was flavoured with salty salami and garlic. He crammed it down and took a swig from the orange juice Fahd offered him. The door jingled and in came a girl wearing an old-fashioned dress and pink Converse shoes.

  ‘Hello darling,’ said Fahd, getting to his feet. ‘I would’ve said we’re closed but for you of course we’re open.’

  ‘I’m not here for a pizza,’ said the girl. Tiny blonde locks curled over her brow. ‘I’m here for the job.’

  ‘A female pizza-maker?’ said Fahd. ‘Don’t think it’s done.’

  The girl waited. She couldn’t be more than twenty, Jimmy thought.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Bethany.’

  ‘Would you take me to the Equal Opportunity Commission, Bethany?’

  ‘I—don’t know,’ said the girl. She looked confused. Then she smiled crookedly, white teeth protruding through round lips.

  Fahd tossed her a menu.

  ‘Learn those by tomorrow.’

  He was leaning forward to disguise that he was rubbing his crotch against the bench.

  ‘Okay,’ Bethany said. ‘See you tomorrow.’

  The little bell tinkled again when she left.

  ‘How hot was she! Whew!’ said Fahd, adjusting his fly. ‘Don’t look at me like that, mate, she hasn’t taken your job. We need two pizza makers.’

  Sixty dollars and a free pizza made the cold walk home more bearable. On foot, he noticed things he didn’t notice when he was driving, like the intense green of the traffic light. It was unnaturally green, he thought—his current aversion to all things electric was influencing how he saw things. Where would you find that green in nature? Not in plants. Certainly not in flowers. Maybe in water, he thought, remembering TV ads for Hayman Island, where women in white bikinis cleaved through impossibly aqua seas. Or in gemstones like emerald and jade. He remembered the emerald lamp in that Chinese poem. Exhaustless. A light that never got tired.

  When he got home he sat down in front of the telly to watch footy highlights and eat his pizza with joy. Paula appeared, curvy and cosy in a red dressing-gown.

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘How was it?’

  ‘Pizza?’ he said, happy to offer her something.

  ‘Mmm. Oh, I shouldn’t,’ she said, patting her hips.

  ‘You gotta try it,’ he said. ‘Salami and green peppers and garlic sauce.’

  She sat beside him and picked up a piece and bit into it.

  ‘Oh, delicious! It’s like savoury cake.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, guzzling his Diet Coke. ‘They taste pretty good.’

  She ate some more. He rolled a joint and got up to smoke it outside.

  ‘Just smoke it in here,’ said Paula, indulgent from her pizza.

  Jimmy lit up and smoked. He offered it to Paula but she declined. The soft fog surged over him in prickly waves.

  ‘Thanks for the pizza,’ said Paula, getting up.

  ‘There’ll be more,’ he said, grinning stupidly.

  ‘You know, that’s a lot of your trouble.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That stuff. Dope. Keep smoking it and you’ll never get ahead. It retards your growth.’

  ‘Foof!’ Jimmy sputtered out smoke, laughing. ‘What—like smoking cigarettes stunts your growth?’

  ‘Your maturity, you great oaf,’ said Paula. Evidently the goodwill from the pizza had worn off.

  Socks. Two pairs. His Dad’s old thermal. A fleece grandpa shirt. A Saints beanie. Thus arrayed, Jimmy got into bed and wriggled around, trying to get warm. He was sure he could feel toxins mushrooming in his body, heavy under his muscles. Inside his muscles. He was a bit too foggy to worry about his retarded maturity. Somewhere in his brain the thought formed that he wouldn’t be impressing Bethany right now. He recalled the skin glowing above the scooped neckline of her dress. Out. Of. My. League. Girl who dressed like that. Arty type. He thought of Fahd rubbing his crotch in that obscene way. A man like him couldn’t appreciate her details, like the lace-up shoes on the end of her soft, stockinged legs. Little laces criss-crossing.

  Jimmy arrived early at Fahd’s the next afternoon. Despite the sunlight the place was garishly lit. The only person there was an older woman with an immense bosom under her knitted jumper of sparkly brown wool.

  ‘Hello,’ said Jimmy. ‘I’m the new pizza maker.’

  ‘My son not here,’ the woman said, accusingly. ‘You clean.’

  Jimmy looked about somewhat helplessly. The place was already clean. The woman handed him a Chux Superwipe.

  ‘Clean, you clean,’ she said, forcing his hand down onto the bench.

  ‘Yes, alright,’ said Jimmy, shaking her away.

  Fahd still wasn’t there by six. Fahd’s mother didn’t explain. When Bethany arrived there was a crowd waiting, and Jimmy had five pizzas in the oven. He was hot and sweaty already.

  ‘Watch me,’ he said, taking an order from two high school students. ‘You write the dockets like this—c for capricciosa, a for Aussie, g for gourmet, then l or s for size. You take the money. Know the prices?’

  Bethany nodded. ‘But where’s the other guy?’

  ‘Fahd? God knows.’

  Later that night, wriggling under his thin doona, Jimmy remembered Bethany’s tears. She’d given two customers the wrong pizzas, another the wrong change, and at one point she had both Fahd’s mother and a customer yelling at her.

  ‘I should go, I’m no help,’ she’d said.

  ‘What! Don’t leave me with this lot,’ he’d said, using a light tone. She was a bit hopeless, actually. She’d told him she was a literature student. He wanted to joke with her that he could tell she wasn’t a maths student, but thought better of it.

  ‘Ok—if you really need me,’ she’d responded, almost dropping a hot pizza as she jammed it awkwardly into a box. The customer smirked.

  ‘Omigod,’ she’d said then, under her breath. ‘I didn’t think pizza making would be this hard!’

  Some time, thought Jimmy, he’d tell Bethany about the Chinese poem. He’d say something about how lanterns must have been so comforting in the dark countryside of the olden days, and how it was hard to imagine real darkness when you lived on Chapel Street, where every inch of surface seemed to either be or reflect electric light.

  ‘I’ve got my book-club coming over tonight,’ said Paula, when Jimmy handed her a yellow envelope full of rent money. ‘Will you be at work?’

  ‘Till ten. Marko’s coming over after but we can go into my room,’ offered Jimmy.

  ‘And play Xbox?’ she asked, sarcastically.

  For the hundredth time he wondered how much longer he could live with Paula. There were good things. She cleaned the bathroom even when it was his turn. He liked a clean bathroom. Living with blokes wasn’t the same.

  ‘I heard you stomping around last night,’ she said. ‘It’s all that Coke.’

  ‘No. I was cold.’

  On Friday, Jimmy purchased a down-filled doona from Habby & Craft on the way to work. He enjoyed the busy night, the three of them working in that close space. When Bethany got hot her cheeks turned such a cute pink.

  ‘Dough machine or toilets upstairs, I’ll toss you for it,’ said Jimmy, when the last customer left and it was time to clean up.

  ‘Heads. For the dough machine.’

  ‘Heads it is.’

  Jimmy dragged the bucket upstairs while Bethany p
eeled dough from the inside of the dough maker. Ten minutes later, he heard Fahd coming up the stairs:

  ‘Come on,’ he was saying. ‘I just want to show you how pretty the restaurant is up here.’

  Through the crack in the door, Jimmy saw Fahd was holding Bethany’s wrist. Don’t get involved, he thought.

  ‘You make me so hot for you,’ Fahd said. ‘Just touch me. Feel how hard I am.’

  He patted Bethany’s hand over his crotch. Her lips had parted slightly. In shock? Or was she interested? Nah, she wouldn’t be. Surely. Fahd touched her breast.

  ‘So beautiful,’ he whispered. ‘Can I see?’

  Jimmy’s face flamed as he realized he was getting turned on, watching. He swallowed. Fahd was pulling her t-shirt down, exposing her skin. Bethany made a muffled noise and pulled away.

  Jimmy stepped out of the bathroom.

  ‘Oh—sorry,’ he said. ‘Um. Is everything all right?’

  Bethany shook her head, yanked her hand out of Fahd’s and ran down the stairs.

  ‘Whatcha do that for?’ whined Fahd. ‘I was gonna see her tits.’

  ‘She didn’t want you to, mate,’ snapped Jimmy.

  ‘A little peek doesn’t hurt anyone.’

  Jimmy raced down the stairs after Bethany and caught up to her on the street. Her face was wet.

  ‘You alright?’

  ‘You took your time,’ she croaked. ‘You were there, I knew you were.’