‘Does this thing ever end?’ said Lizzy.
‘What is it even for?’ said Taylor.
‘I think it’s like a sound barrier to the highway on the other side,’ I replied.
‘There’s a highway over there?’ asked Lizzy, looking up at the wall.
‘Does it go to the city?’ asked Taylor.
I shrugged. ‘Sorry,’ I said.
‘You’re the worst, Nox,’ said Taylor, deadpan.
‘Let’s just keep heading north. Otherwise we have to backtrack and who knows how long it goes southwards,’ I said.
I pedalled off without waiting for a reply.
Following the wall was slow going. There wasn’t always a street that ran parallel, so we had to work in semicircles, keeping it on our left shoulder until finally it was gone.
I was right about the highway. It sat on top of the subdivision, stretching away to the north and south like a runway. Six lanes of vastness broken only by the occasional overpass and hulk of an abandoned car. We climbed down a steep, sandy slope onto the nearest lanes. These were separated from the other side by a tubular concrete island. The section we were in felt low and enclosed. It would be almost impossible to get back up the slope with our bikes and supplies.
Taylor and Lizzy looked at me for an opinion on which direction we should take. The highway wasn’t familiar, but I knew that the city was still closer to our north than it was to the south. So we pedalled northward with hopes that it might magically deliver us to the city.
The riding was good on the highway, but none of us felt at ease. There were long stretches without an exit where the road seemed to close in around us like a concrete riverbed. It amplified the noises we made. Our voices, the squeak of our wheels, the rattle of tins in our baskets. At one point Chess let out a solitary bark that was shrill and piercing and sent a chill rippling across my arms. There were also more abandoned cars out here than we had seen anywhere else. We weaved around their creepy, silent frames and tried not to think of The Walking Dead. I tried to work out why this highway had more early risers than anywhere else we had seen. The only explanation I could think of was that it was heading towards the airport.
Ironically it was Lizzy who wanted out of there first. The thunder we had heard in the morning sounded closer now and the sky took on a slightly purple tinge. The highway had maintained its trajectory with no indication of swinging westward. There was a good chance the city would be south of us now. Subconsciously our pace had quickened and more than once Chess stopped and rubbernecked to look back at the empty road behind us. It was seriously creepy.
‘Okay, we’re getting off at the next exit,’ said Lizzy in the wake of more muffled thunder.
There was no argument from the rest of us.
Twenty minutes later we spotted an overpass. We cycled up the entrance ramp, then swung west and crossed the bridge down into the welcome mess of houses.
The suburbs that used to mark the fringes of Perth were old and tired. Bricks changed to dark browns or morphed into weatherboard. Yards were large and rambling, filled with rusted-out cars and spindly shrubs. The silence of the highway and newer subdivisions was broken here by creaking shed doors and jittery wooden windows. Chess’s ears were rigid with these noises and others. He knew, as did we, that these were prime suburbs for the Bulls.
We picked out one of the nicer houses and sheltered for the evening as the thunderstorms drifted closer. It was a loud and unsettling night. Storms seemed to shift all around us, filling the house with pops and rumbles and flickers of light that outlined the lumps of our bodies huddled together on the living room floor. And there were other noises. Doors banging shut. The rev of an engine or generator. Music, murmured and vague, as if on the edge of a dream, but never quite within it. Suddenly we were in the same world as these sounds. Not listening from the safety of a shopping centre or mansion.
None of us mentioned these things in the morning. But they were written on each of our faces. These suburbs were alive. With what, we would find out soon.
8
For the best part of two days we worked our way westward. The older suburbs were sprawling and full of cul-de-sacs and dead-end streets that had us backtracking and winding north or south to creep our way forward. We stopped into a few houses for food and to use toilets that still had water in the cisterns. But generally we stayed away. They had a feel about them. As if they belonged to somebody. Not the vanished owners or renters. Somebody that was still around. Up until now nothing we had done in Carousel or elsewhere had felt like trespassing. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was exactly what we were doing.
I was writing at every opportunity. On breaks in drought-stricken parks. On the dusty kitchen tables of strangers. At night beneath a harsh circle of torchlight. The work wasn’t singular or focused. I was just filling pages. Writing to convince myself that I could. Racing towards some hidden moment when I might become the same as Taylor and Lizzy and the rest of the living world. The distant city felt like a ticking clock running faster and faster as we closed in towards it.
The Finns watched me with a mixture of bemusement and encouragement. I hadn’t told them what I had Tommy. But then, the two of them knew me better than anybody now. They knew that the writing wasn’t just about what was on the page. Their silence and space was solidarity in its simplest form.
Lizzy seemed busy with her music anyway. She had brought a laptop along and would occasionally allow herself an hour to fiddle around with mixes before quickly shutting it back down and hoping the battery might last until we found more power. Meeting Tommy had made the album real again. It actually existed. And so did she. The poppy half of Canadian indie pillars Taylor & Lizzy. A fixture on any alternative radio station or hip summer festival. If what Tommy and Taylor said was true and we were now in a city, or a world, full of Artists, Lizzy wanted to be on her game.
Taylor seemed edgy for other reasons entirely. Things I knew about that maybe even Lizzy did not. I had underestimated the connection she had felt with the Boxing Day painter. Sold it off as loneliness. The thought of human contact after years without it. But Taylor felt a real connection to this mystery girl. Enough to convince Lizzy to forget the airport and its fractured link to Canada and their mother. Enough to have us leave the security of our cushy hillside life. To risk running into Bulls and Loots and whatever the hell else lay in the abandoned sprawl of future Perth. Leaving the hills was about much more than Taylor finding her painter crush. Yet once again Taylor was leading, and Lizzy and I following. Like the doors in Carousel, it was Taylor’s goal that defined us the most.
We started passing the occasional shop and warehouse. Really niche places like a repair centre for remote controllers or a ride-on lawnmower reseller. They filled the gaps between a depressing series of houses. Small box-like fibro places set back on quarter-acre blocks, sold off in the seventies in a city sprawling outward wherever it pleased. We were relieved to be emerging out of endless suburbia, but what lay ahead didn’t feel overly welcoming.
We came across a couple of blackened buildings and street corners where it seemed like a gas pipe might have blown and burnt out the surrounding area. Chess sniffed cautiously and I thought again of Tommy’s warning about the city.
‘I need a bathroom and some lunch,’ said Lizzy.
She had stopped cycling and was assessing the options.
‘Which one of these palaces would you like to make a home?’ asked Taylor.
The three of us looked around. One side of the street had a series of water-stained fibro houses. The other had a warehouse with an ambitiously large car park neighbouring some kind of fenced-off power grid.
Lizzy rolled forward.
‘Number twelve has roses in the garden. Let’s run with that,’ she replied.
The laundry door was open at the back. Taylor let herself in and walked through to the front.
‘Soup anyone?’ she asked as she let us in.
‘Wow,’ I replied.
A wave of old-lady-at-the-stove smacked us in the face as Lizzy bombed through to find the toilet.
‘I swear that smell is immune to the apocalypse,’ I said.
Taylor smirked and wandered through the neat shrine of a living room. It was dated and dusty, but neat as a pin. Patterned wallpaper. A cabinet housing glassware and football memorabilia. An orange couch with wooden veneer. I stayed away from people’s photos, but Taylor drank them up like some wacky anthropologist. She nosed around while I distracted myself with an ancient TV guide.
‘This place is empty,’ said Lizzy from the kitchen.
‘Let’s go next door,’ I said, replacing the guide.
‘You’d think there would be some minestrone at least,’ said Taylor.
We went next door but found the kitchen empty there also. As were the following four houses. Doors unlocked. Cupboards ajar and empty.
‘Popular street,’ said Lizzy at the sixth house.
Taylor and I glanced at her. It was unnerving to see such obvious signs of someone else in the area.
‘Let’s get out of this weirdo suburb,’ said Taylor.
We cycled through a series of similar streets as the sun dipped and spread giant eucalypt-shaped shadows across the bitumen. I checked a couple of houses and a deli as we went. Each place told a replica story. No sign of habitation, but the cupboards and shelves were stripped bare. We stewed quietly over our lack of supplies and kept moving. Eventually it was dark and we bunked down in a brick-and-tile place to eat some dry noodles from the hills. Taylor got caught out in the toilet and Lizzy and I had to ransack the place for tissues. It was like somebody was going from house to house, taking everything but the furniture.
The place was hot and musty and before long the three of us gravitated to join Chess on the porch. Taylor and Lizzy scrolled through the iTunes library on somebody’s laptop. Between them they had a couple of hard drives and a plan to collect some decent music as we journeyed to the city. So far the bounty had been small. Most laptops were out of charge, having lay dormant for so long. Others, like this one, did have charge, but the library was full of Idol winners and top forty.
Chess shuffled about and whimpered. I watched as his ears shifted about with the sounds of the night.
Abruptly they stopped.
There were footsteps coming from somewhere down the street. The three of us froze and stared out into the blackness. The footsteps shifted from the road to concrete or something smoother. A door opened somewhere, then there was silence. We shared a glance and strained our ears. After a few moments we heard the door reopen and the footsteps resumed across the concrete, then back out onto the street. This time they were getting louder. Moving toward us.
Lizzy took a hold of Chess’s collar. Out of the darkness came the tiny red glow of a cigarette. Then the thin silhouette of a young guy carrying a can of food and some toilet paper. He shuffled along, smoking and humming a silent tune in his head. He was right alongside us when he stopped and looked up.
Chess let out a bark.
‘Hey,’ he said.
‘Hey,’ said Lizzy.
‘Just getting some beans,’ he said.
We nodded. He finished his cigarette and looked up at the sky for a while as if he had almost forgotten we were there. He looked like your regular everyday hipster. Beard. Boots. Oversized flannelette.
‘You live near here?’ asked Taylor.
The guy looked confused. As if the idea of having a home was somehow strange.
‘We jam at a warehouse on Henry Street,’ he replied.
9
The warehouse was a slum. In a previous world it had been a food wholesaler with a converted rehearsal space for bands built into the back corner. Now it looked like the set from Trainspotting. There were mattresses scattered around the floor. Rubbish kicked into corners and stacked in overflowing boxes. The charred remains of haphazard fires made during winter. A layer of dirt on the floor so thick that it felt springy to walk on. And, slumped on couches beneath a bank of jittery fluoros, four anaemic looking members of local five-piece Kink & Kink.
Joseph, the guy from the street, didn’t introduce us. He just took his beans over to a sink area and started looking through a stack of grimy pots and plates. The people on the couch, a girl and three guys, had glanced at us upon entry, but appeared totally underwhelmed at our presence in their warehouse. A Smiths record was droning away under a dusty needle in the corner.
Taylor glanced over at Joseph and shifted uncomfortably.
‘How are you guys doing?’ asked Lizzy and strolled over with Chess at her heels. Taylor and I trailed behind her.
The band looked our way, a little surprised.
‘Where did you find an Australian shepherd?’ another bearded guy asked.
‘Oh, he’s a border collie I think. He kinda found us,’ replied Lizzy.
‘It’s an Australian shepherd. The colouring is darker,’ said the guy.
Lizzy mouthed okay and looked like she might walk out then and there.
‘I’m Taylor, this is Nox and my sister Lizzy. Our dog’s name is Chessboard,’ said Taylor, trying to salvage the situation.
The girl looked up and flashed a big smile as if she had just noticed there were other people in the room. I got a weird feeling in my feet and clammed up.
‘Do you have a Residency in Kewdale, too?’ she asked.
‘How do you mean, Residency?’ asked Taylor.
Lizzy had tired of waiting for any kind of hospitality and slumped down onto a couch. Taylor and I sat down next to her.
‘An Artist Residency. Somewhere you can work on your art without distraction,’ she replied.
‘Oh. No. We’re just passing through,’ said Taylor.
Joseph walked over, eating the beans straight from a pot. The others watched him hungrily. Adjacent to the couches was a semi-enclosed room with an impressive array of instruments, amplifiers and mixing desks.
‘What do you guys play?’ asked Lizzy.
The band looked at Lizzy like she was some boring auntie or writing for a community newspaper.
‘Anti-folk,’ replied a guy wearing what I’m pretty sure was a ladies’ leather jacket.
‘Oh yeah. Like The Racketballs?’ asked Lizzy.
‘Who?’ replied Joseph, mouth full of beans.
‘They’re small. You probably haven’t heard of them,’ said Lizzy.
A couple of the band members nodded. Taylor looked at Lizzy, slightly agitated.
‘Anyway. Joseph said you guys have been here since the Disappearance?’ asked Taylor.
‘I didn’t say Disappearance,’ said Joseph.
‘It’s a time vortex,’ muttered a scrawny dude from behind a book titled A Detailed History of the Nautical Knot.
The girl looked at him and pondered this earnestly. She looked dirty, with matted brown hair and jeans that seemed pasted to her legs. But her face was animated and pretty. I tried my hardest not to stare.
‘Have you met a lot of other Artists?’ asked Taylor, moving on.
‘A Japanese manga Artist. His work is amazing,’ said the bearded guy.
‘Right,’ said Taylor. ‘Anyone else?’
They shrugged, uninterested. I took a trail bar out of my pocket. All five band members turned my way.
‘Do you guys want a trail bar?’ I asked.
They nodded, but none of them got up. I walked over and handed them a box of six. They sat eating quietly, like mesmerised schoolkids. Taylor and Lizzy glanced at each other. Neither of them seemed to have a handle on these guys.
Taylor sipped on some water and looked around.
‘Is that spring water?’ asked the girl.
Taylor looked at her. ‘You don’t have any water?’
‘There’s something wrong with the plumbing here,’ she replied, sheepishly.
Taylor sighed and passed her the bottle. The five of them huddled around and hydrated their sickly hipster bodies.
‘This i
s amazing. Thank you,’ said the girl earnestly.
Taylor forced a tiny smile.
‘You don’t have any blues records, do you?’ asked the bearded guy.
Taylor stared at him. Lizzy held in a laugh.
‘No. Just food and water,’ replied Taylor.
‘Are you guys Patrons?’ asked the ladies’ leather guy.
Lizzy groaned. Taylor shook her head. These idiots had no idea who they were talking to. Lizzy walked over to the guitars, plugged in a Gibson and ripped through a couple of riffs that shut everyone the hell up.
Taylor turned to me in between riffs. ‘These guys are amazing, right?’ she whispered.
‘I don’t get how they’re still alive,’ I replied.
‘They cleaned this place out, then just started going from house to house whenever they remembered to eat lunch,’ said Taylor.
I couldn’t help but laugh. Taylor looked at me for a moment, then started laughing too. Thankfully Lizzy’s guitar drowned us out.
‘It’s getting late. We might as well crash here and see if we can find out anything useful,’ said Taylor.
I nodded but felt uncomfortable in our abruptly social surrounds.
‘You should talk to that girl,’ said Taylor.
My face burned like a fool. Taylor smiled and ruffled my hair. ‘There’s whisky in my bag,’ she added and walked over to join Lizzy at the guitars.
Chess hung by my side looking overwhelmed by all of the smells in the place. I knelt down and hugged him under my arm while I rummaged for the whisky. I necked some and looked up to see Kink & Kink staring right at me. I held up the bottle and they shuffled over.
The bearded guy, Yoshi, insisted that we drink it three-to-one with some room-temperature water. Even though there weren’t enough glasses, and the ones they had were stained with who knows what. At one stage Lizzy walked over and took a swig straight from the bottle, just to spite the guy I think. He just started on about Polish vodkas.
I found out the girl’s name was Molly. She was friendly and smiled a lot, but talking to her was weird. It was like she really thought about and assessed everything I said. Which in turn made me do the same and question whether I even had opinions or stories or anything. She also looked right into my eyes, like right into them, the whole time we spoke. I had no idea what this was about, except that it probably wasn’t a come-on in any traditional Hollywood sense. If Molly was with one of the other band members it wasn’t obvious to me.
Beyond Carousel Page 5
