by Omar Musa
‘Nah. I mean, I can pay.’
‘I’m sure you can, babe. I just don’t do it. Sebastien should have told you.’
‘Orright.’
He sits back down with his mates. They talk among themselves.
‘It says Johnno’s next.’
‘How much longer till me?’
‘You Solomon?’
‘Yeh.’
‘Ah, shouldn’t be long. Maybe twenty minutes. Sorry, babe, Seb called in sick. Probably hungover. Fucked everything up.’
‘No worries. I’ll be back.’
A joint
I duck out the back and roll up a joint.
This weed is wet.
That dodgy fucker Grunt
flysprays his weed
to make it heavier, I heard.
Gotta be careful.
The main street is changing.
It even has a coffee shop. With a barista.
Fucken sacrilege.
I think of some mad lines from a Horrorshow song:
‘Every day, the heritage fades/
Gentrification, nothing’s gonna get in the way.’
Change is a nest of white ants in the wall,
acid to the face.
Sudden or slow,
it terrifies me.
Today’s heat like a fillet blade,
taking strips off me.
I blow smoke,
mouth tasting ashy but the weed working nicely.
Someone joins me. It’s the tatt artist.
She has a smooth, pale throat.
‘Finished already?’
‘Yeh. Those fellas chucked a tantrum cos I wouldn’t do hand tatts.’
‘Ah.’
‘Idiots. I’m not gonna take responsibility if they wanna fuck their lives up.’
‘You gave that guy a neck tatt, though. What’s the difference?’
‘Dunno. Gotta draw the line somewhere, I guess.’
‘You want some of this?’
‘Don’t smoke. Thanks, though. Come in, babe.’
Skin
I point at an elephant in an art book I brought with me.
It’s stylised, with swirling designs on its hide.
An Albanian king had it on his chest,
supposedly.
Suddenly Aleks’ voice comes into my head.
Anytime you hear of someone getting clipped in Melbourne,
it was probably an Albo that done it.
‘Nice piece. Why this one?’ she says.
‘My mum’s favourite animal.’
‘Aww, a mama’s boy.’
Truth is,
I don’t spend enough time with Mum,
even though I still live with her,
but I say, ‘Yep. Heaven lies at the feet of the mother.’
She looks up, her eyes a startling green. ‘I like that.’
‘Yeh. It’s in the Qur’an. I think.’
‘You Muslim?’
‘Once upon a time.’
‘Well, it’s nice. Problem with most hip hop guys is that they all think their mum’s a queen but every other woman’s a whore.’
‘True.’
‘And you?’
‘I got a girlfriend.’
‘And?’ Her cat eyes shine.
‘I treat her very well, thank you very much. You worked here long?’
‘A while. Moved from Auckland a few years back. Hey, you’ve got nice skin. You must eat well.’
‘Dunno.’
‘You get all types. If you’re lucky, it’s lovely and buttery. You should thank your parents.’ She wipes some ink and blood away.
‘I’ll try to remember.’
‘You a coconut?’
‘Samoan.’
‘Afakasi?’
‘I’m Samoan.’
‘Woah. Calm down. Just asking. When was the last time you went?’
‘Never been.’
‘Well, I like those,’ she gestures at my sleeve tatts.
‘Cheers.’
‘What do they represent?’
‘Oh, you know. Power, money, respect,’ I say nonchalantly, trying to throw her off the scent.
She looks up again. ‘Tatts like that are a pretty modern thing. Based on tapa designs.’
‘Ah, okay.’ I didn’t know that.
The zzzzz of the tattoo machine.
After a while she says, ‘Sometimes you get skin that’s coarse and dotted with pores as big as bullet holes. People who’ve been eating chips and gravy every day since they were ten. Two-minute noodles and toast. Drinking beer and smoking bongs twenty-four seven, getting psoriasis. But whatever the case, skin’s the best canvas. Bleeds, fights, fucks. Skin tells a story like nothing else.’
‘But not the whole story,’ I say, thinking of Jimmy.
She doesn’t reply. The outline is nearly complete.
‘You got a boyfriend?’ I ask.
‘Used to. Now I date women. Mostly.’
‘Sweet. We got something in common then.’
She laughs, showing very white teeth.
She’s the least-inked tattoo artist
I’ve ever seen.
Her skin is perfectly bare
but for one teardrop
tatted under her right eye.
She has messy black hair piled on her head
and is wearing a loose white singlet
with a black bra visible from the side.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Scarlett.’
‘Scarlett what?’
‘Planning to look me up?’
‘Nah, just wondering.’
‘Snow. Scarlett Snow.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeh, yeh, I know. Sounds like a porn name. Or a metal band.’
‘Nah, I think it’s cool. It’s . . . evocative. You should thank your parents.’
She laughs again.
When I leave, I call Georgie
but she doesn’t answer.
Broke as, now
At the paint shop looking at Beltons and Montanas.
Good paints.
Can’t afford em, but.
I momentarily think of racking them
but there are people everywhere.
Racking paint
The rush of theft
turned into a part-time occupation,
back in the day.
Stash the tins in an anorak.
Wheel a bin full of paint
out the back of a hardware store.
Whatever.
Jimmy, Aleks and me kept our spots secret,
guarded them viciously.
It was like a game to see who
could get the best paints.
Back then,
Bunnings was good for Dulux and Wattyl.
Autobahn for Krylon.
Magnet Mart for PlastiKote.
Shoe stores for Tuxan.
Horse saddle places for raven oil to make stainer.
Art stores always
cottoned on quickly
and stopped stocking cans.
Fuck those were good times.
There is one thing I could do
I walk to the basketball courts with Mercury Fire on a leash.
I chain him up and he stands stock-still,
staring far off,
a muscle in his shoulder twitching.
The afternoon’s cooling down at last,
the sky as pink as a cat’s mouth,
spires of smoke on the hills.
I do some lazy stretches and
my hamstrings scream.
I almost feel like crying at the pain.
Mercury starts barking
at a bunch of colourful parrots sitting in the bending fennel.
I let him off the leash,
and they twitter and fly away,
points
in a
moving constellation.
Dad used to say Aussie birds reminded him
of fish in the reef near his villa
ge,
Free, multicoloured, dreamlike.
This court’s been here ages,
blacktop crumbling around the edges.
Beneath the hoop is a hopscotch grid in yellow chalk.
Common’s ‘Be’ playing from my phone.
I pound the ball on the ground a few times,
the ring alien at first,
but soon I’m sweating,
getting my range back.
I take my shirt off to feel the dying sun,
being careful of the cling wrap over my new tatt.
Bounce, bounce,
fingertips, rhythm,
limbs turn to fire,
Bounce, bounce,
my body an instrument
of knowing,
of knowledge,
of concentration,
Bounce, bounce,
the flick of the wrist,
the release,
swish.
Just like before the injury.
A scar the size of a caterpillar
hums on my Achilles.
Now I’m in the rhythm,
counting my shots:
miss, miss, one,
miss, two, miss,
three, four, five,
miss, six, seven,
miss.
That word floats into my head.
Afakasi – the Samoanisation of ‘half-caste’.
Not white, not brown.
Outcasts, loners, entitled.
I keep shooting, angry and imprecise,
until the rhythm calms me down again.
My knees and ankles ache after minutes
and I take a long draught of water,
squinting at the sun,
when a man calls out.
His name is Fred,
a small Filipino dude with a transatlantic accent
and a furry lip.
He’s excited to have made a new friend.
As he shoots wildly,
he explains that he just moved from Perth.
He’s shirtless as well,
lean and muscled,
which makes me feel self-conscious.
‘First to five?’ he says.
I’m worried about the new tatt,
but I nod.
He starts quickly,
feinting to the right then throwing up an improbable shot,
which banks hard off the backboard and in.
1–0
He has no technique,
but makes up for it with quick feet and floaty,
almost boneless movement.
He’s difficult to read.
He dribbles to his left,
gets trapped,
slips,
then suddenly jumps and scoops a shot up with his right.
Swish.
I land awkwardly
and there’s a dull toll in the back of my head.
2–0
Everything swollen and tight already.
I try to focus.
This time, this time I’ll get him.
I stretch out my arms in a defensive stance,
showing off my wingspan
and getting in his face.
Fred trips forward,
suddenly unsure,
apologises when he steps on my foot,
then runs in circles around the three-point line before I get an easy
strip.
I face him and it takes only a flicker
for my mind to register every possibility,
the lie of the court,
his uncertain feet.
I jab step to the left.
He bites, so I drive hard to the right
and bully the shorter man out of the way for an easy lay-up.
1–2
Check ball.
I wipe sweat away with my forearm,
then begin dribbling from the three-point line.
I drive right,
cross him up with my left hand,
the Shammgod move leaving him stranded.
I finger roll the ball in smoothly.
2–2
He looks at me in awe. ‘Did you used to play? Properly, I mean?’
‘Nah. Just messing around.’
‘Damn. You should join a team, bro.’
I don’t reply.
The next points don’t come for several minutes.
I shake beads of sweat off my dreds,
lungs small as a baby’s fist.
My Achilles white hot.
Impotence and fury.
I try to rearrange my features into the mask I used to wear,
but I’m breathing so heavily it’s difficult to.
Fred seems to notice the change in atmosphere
and has fear on his mug.
He hadn’t anticipated being drawn into a battle of this kind.
The sound of the ball on the asphalt
like a war drum.
I post him up,
use my size against him
and back him down,
slowly, slowly,
facing away from the basket,
slowly, slowly, wearing him down.
It’s ugly but effective,
not the fancy moves I once prided myself on.
I pivot and my hook shot drops in.
One more to win.
I summon my fury and focus it into my body.
I drive for a fadeaway,
mishandle and bounce the ball off my shin.
It shoots over the dry grass
and rolls down a ditch next to the dilapidated wooden fence.
As I jog to retrieve it,
I’m suddenly filled with a deep sadness
at this deteriorating body,
my waning manhood,
and I feel tired.
I wish I were alone.
Fred shoots and misses.
I finish it off with a feathery jumper that he praises exuberantly.
‘Mad shot, bro!’
As I drink deep from my water bottle
and twist on my hips,
I notice crumbs of light sparkling on the edge of the court,
like the glow of treasure.
I stand for a moment,
half bent,
staring,
thinking about how it was luck that won it,
how I only shot the last one
because I was too damn tired to run
or back him down.
From a house nearby
I hear that ubiquitous Lorde song, ‘Royals’.
I realise the sparkle on the blacktop
is the remnants of a beer bottle broken long ago.
High above is a red kite,
twisting and turning.
I walk away from the court,
thinking of the sparkle and the kite.
I feel a bit ashamed at not saying goodbye to Fred,
but I keep walking,
faster and faster.
I hear yelling,
and ignore it until it gets to my shoulder.
It’s Fred, breathless. ‘Your dog! Your dog!’
‘Ah shit, thanks mate.’
I try to smile.
Up close, Mercury Fire unnerves me.
He once inspired excitement and joy
but now he seems the portent of something dangerous,
something tragic and shameful.
Of failure.
He yawns
and the silt of resentment boils up in me.
When I look into his eye,
it’s my own eyes I see.
10
Jimmy and Solomon wander through the supermarket, bored, while Ulysses squeezes avocados and raps on coconuts. First, they have a chilli-eating contest, which Jimmy wins determinedly. Panting and fanning their mouths, they go into the cold room to see how long they can stay in there. Soon bored, they move to the toy aisle and find a packet of plastic cowboys and Indians. The whole packet only one dollar.
A voice from above, ‘I reckon I could
spare a buck.’
An immaculately dressed man is standing next to them, pencil thin with a smile on his face. Wearing fashionable sunglasses, he has light-brown skin and is of ambiguous ethnicity. He crouches.
‘Hi, James,’ he says.
‘Who are you?’ says Solomon.
‘You must be Solomon. Big fella.’ The man offers his hand and Solomon shakes it reluctantly, by the fingertips only. The man’s hand is bone-dry. He lets go and conjures a two-dollar coin, as if from nowhere. He lets it trip down the knuckles of his right hand and drop into his left palm, then holds out the coin to Jimmy. As he does, a shadow appears over him and he is knocked to the ground by a crushing blow. Ulysses Amosa. The man stands up, bleeding from his nose onto his starched white shirt, afraid and blinking. He tries to smile and reminds Ulysses that they were once best of friends. As soon as he stands to full height, another blow. This time Ulysses hisses, ‘Get out. Get the fuck out of here now.’ The man scrambles away. His sunglasses bounce on the tiles and a manager waddles over to berate Ulysses, who is shaking. The boys are astonished – they have never heard Ulysses Amosa swear.
11
Aleks has a day off work and is in his basement.
