Trav’s dad, slumped on the couch, still has his tie on. He works for some massive financial company and he works a lot. He’s a good guy, Mr Bradbury, unless you slam car doors.
‘Marc, I thought you liked girls.’ Mr Bradbury looks at me, his head still propped on his fist.
‘I do,’ I say. ‘It’s just that one guy at the car yard’s gay, and so Travis thinks the whole place is. It’s not. Anyway, this Mikey’s a good dude. Plus he’s a kickboxer. So, well, you know. Respect.’
Travis looks at me long-range, across three coffee tables, two rugs, and a vase of flowers as big as a fruit tree.
‘That may well be the case, Jarvy. But you sure seem to have forgotten that chick at the flicks in a big hurry. All I’ve heard so far tonight is Mikey this and Mikey that. You haven’t mentioned a babe for days. And you totally ignored that last girls-only downstairs equipment ad.’
Not true! I didn’t ignore that ad, as embarrassing as it was; I just had to be cool about it. And I sure as hell haven’t forgotten Electra, the girl, because I think about her all the time. In fact, I was thinking about her just then, before Trav interrupted me. In fact, I’m thinking about her 24/7 – 25/7 on Sunday, as that was when Daylight Saving ended, and there was an extra hour. So I can’t do better than that.
‘Travis.’ Mrs Bradbury doesn’t look at him. ‘Please. Have some decency. Girls-only downstairs equipment? There are women present.’ She’s including Dot, I take it. ‘Go and put the kettle on. And put water in it. Unlike Dillon’s last effort.’
Trav and I retreat to the kitchen, which is like something you’d find on a Scandinavian cruise ship. Dot sticks with us because she knows she can pretty much have whatever she likes, as long as it’s not dog food, and not from a can.
‘That girl on Saturday night,’ I say. ‘You know, the one from the car yard. I found out she’s on an athletics scholarship. She’s from Broome. She’s a sprinter. The guy who owns the car yard, Vincent, he knows her dad. He helped her get over here. So I should be able to see her again and – ’
‘And freak out like you did with that Johanna chick?’ Trav opens a box of Savoury Shapes. ‘Just because she asked you once to go on a Christian rollerblading camp? I mean, Jarvy, it’s quite possible things could go even worse this time.’
‘That’s true,’ I say, as that’s what Trav expects. ‘But since I’m there for a week, I’m going to ask her out. When I see her. If I see her. All going well. Her name’s Electra.’
Trav tips half the biscuits into Dot’s bowl, takes a huge handful for himself, and gives me what’s left.
‘You made that up. You’re just inventing stuff now.’
Well, I must admit I have been doing a little creative daydreaming about Electra; for instance, there’s the one where she and I are down at the beach, a thunderstorm threatening, us alone in one of those bathing sheds with a nice old couch handy that’s remarkably clean … Then there’s the one where I’m at her house and her parents are away in Kenya for three months spotting antelopes … Then there’s the log cabin, the luxury yacht, the overnight train –
‘How are you going to perform this great romantic miracle?’ Trav eats biscuits as if he were feeding a parking meter. ‘You know kidnapping’s a crime. Stalker.’
I’m prepared for this angle of Trav’s questioning.
‘I’ll just say hello. Evidently that’s very successful. I saw some guy on the Today show. He said that works, you know, with real girls. Not skanky slappers or party-hard chicks. Evidently they like something a bit sharper. I’m not sure why.’
Trav is up to his shoulder in the freezer, digging around amongst frozen chickens and a pile of lamb legs.
‘I shall watch and wait. Still, it might happen. You’re due for a change of luck.’ He drags out three ice-creams and brushes off a layer of frost. ‘Chocolate, mint or vanilla?’
‘Vanilla,’ I say, hoping that my luck might change, as lately the girls that I like seem to look at me like I’m a television with major reception problems.
‘Sorry.’ Trav hands me the mint. ‘Dot likes vanilla. Anyway, we can discuss this at lunch on Wednesday. I’ll meet you at the car joint at twelve-thirty. And that ought to just about see me out for the day.’
‘Done.’ I peel my ice-cream, bin the wrapper, and get up. ‘I’d better get going. See ya, Dotty. Don’t eat the stick.’
Trav lets me out a back door wide enough for an elephant to run through; no, I don’t think one could, because this door has three deadlocks, and is about twenty centimetres thick.
‘I want to see bling!’ Trav calls out, as I head across the stone terrace. He shakes his hands as if they were wet. ‘And plenty of it. But nothin’ too gay.’
‘Yeah, right.’ I jump over a broken pot plant, the blue pool cover beside me carpeted with soggy brown leaves. ‘Whatever. Anyway. Catch ya.’ I go out the back gate, let it lock behind me with the sound of hardened steel interlocking with even harder steel, and I’m gone.
I like being outside at night, and as I walk home I think about being on a cargo ship crossing a black sea, or blasting up a highway on a big red Ducati road bike, or being stuck in a mountain hut with some gorgeous (female) mountaineer. But I’m not. I’m not even cutting through a dangerous ’hood in danger of being attacked. I’m just going home to bed. Man, it’s appalling how plain my life is.
But all this could change; if I was going out with Electra, then I’d be quite happy just to walk around to her house, and do whatever with her, because doing normal stuff with girls can actually make it interesting, and just possibly, it could make it very interesting. Unfortunately, that’s not happening, or not yet, although things can change – especially if I try to change as Ms Inglis has so kindly told me after a recent series of English exams that I didn’t exactly rock in.
Now I’m closing in on the big tree in my street where Amelia-Anne and I used to talk. Her house is just across the street, sad-looking, the garden overgrown, a single light on. Like always, I slow down, thinking about Amelia as I pass into the shadows, and although I feel guilty about liking Electra, deep down I know I shouldn’t. Still, I stop for a moment, thinking that however old I get, Amelia-Anne, or AA as she was mostly called, will always stay the same age.
She was one funny, freakin’ fearless kid. She loved footy, played footy, listened to the footy, went to the footy, and knew footy.
‘AA backs into the pack!’ she’d yell, as she barged backwards through the tuckshop line. ‘AA takes them all on!’ she’d shout as she dodged between the teachers heading for the staffroom for morning tea. ‘AA shirtfronts M. Jarvis,’ she’d say, and give me a quick kiss.
But AA is gone.
Never to be found.
And don’t I know it.
8
On Tuesday morning Mikey and I wash the cars, looking after them as carefully as farmers look after their cows.
‘Grey old day.’ Mikey tries to get some shine onto the bonnet of an old green Subaru. ‘All we need now is for it to rain and we won’t see a punter for a week.’
Over our heads, the wind rattles the plastic streamers, and pushes the clouds along like a slave-driver.
‘You’d be missing the weather in Cairns, wouldn’t you?’ I say. ‘This is great, eh.’
Mikey scrubs a windscreen.
‘I’m not actually from Cairns.’ He dries his hands on a rag. ‘I come from a little town down the coast a bit. And it wasn’t really the weather that was the problem. There were certain other difficulties that put me off the place.’ Mikey gives me a tilted grin. ‘So I hit the road. That’s not illegal, is it?’
‘Ah, nope. I don’t think so.’ I squeeze out a rag. ‘So. Ah. What about your family?’ I kneel down to get to a Camry’s scratched-up wheel rim. ‘You’d go back and visit them, wouldn’t you? Occasionally?’ I get the feeling, probably too late, that I should keep quiet.
Mikey sets to work on a headlight. ‘For a funeral, maybe.’ He doesn’t look up. ‘But since
I don’t ring, I don’t hear much news. Call it a breakdown in communication.’
I move onto the headlights as well. They’re weird things, headlights. From close-up they’re like what I think a mirror ball might look like from the inside, or a glass eye.
‘The old man’s got a cane farm.’ Mikey drops his rag onto a car bonnet and looks at me. ‘So let’s just say that’s not quite the right cuppa tea for an artistic type like me.’ He grins. ‘Screw it, eh? Let’s get outta here for ten minutes. I could do with a decent coffee and a change of scenery.’
And subject, I think.
‘No worries,’ I say, pushing my cleaning gear together. ‘And I’ll mind my own business from here on in. You know, I get it that you might not want to talk about that stuff.’
Mikey stops right where he is. His eyes are the same serious grey as the clouds.
‘Hey, no, Marc. You’re all right.’ He comes towards me, one hand up, as if he wants to stop me leaving a room. ‘You’re fine. It’s just that I’m a grumpy bastard. Really. Anyway, one day I’ll tell you the whole story. It’s not even that special. It’s just, well, you know, life. For better or for worse.’
It sure is for better or for worse; although I know for a fact it’s got to be better than the only other alternative I know of.
We cross the road to an old arcade filled with hairdressing salons and jewellery shops, and go up a flight of stairs into The Leadlight Coffee Shop. And sure enough, some of the windows are leadlights; I know this because my mum did leadlighting before she did Japanese flower arranging before she did aromatherapy before she did Buddhism, which has everything to do with the Gretchen Effect.
Mikey and I grab a window seat and order. It’s not so bad up here. There are one-hundred-year-old photos of Glenferrie Road, the counters are like big glass boxes with copper frames, and the girls who work here are smiley and busy.
‘So I’m a gay runaway from up north.’ Mikey leans on crossed arms. I see a thumb ring. ‘What, pray tell, is the Marc Jarvis story?’
My story?
My story?
Holy sheet, I don’t have a story.
Ms Inglis, who’s also my assigned mentor, which is really just a special comments person commenting on me, tries to get us to write stories, not realising that none of us have any – because once anything is written down, generally whatever was good about it disappears.
For instance:
Chapter one/page one.
‘My Day’
A story by Marc E. Jarvis.
Today I went to school – oh, first I had break fast and couldn’t find my bloody tie – then I went to school. On the way to school a fire engine went past, but as it did not have its siren on I guess they’d either put the fire out, it was a false alarm, or they were just out getting petrol. I then saw about one hundred people I didn’t know going to the railway station. Then I crossed the road.
Paragraph two.
Shortly after that I saw some girls from East Melbourne Girls’ Grammar, but since I didn’t know them, either, I didn’t take much notice except that two were blondes, two were brunette, one had red hair, and they all had fake tan, apart from the redhead, thankfully. Also, one had a tennis racquet, one was on a mobile, one had a juice, they all had on short white socks, one girl’s bag had snagged her skirt but not enough to show her undies, none of them looked at me, and they all were going in the opposite direction to where their school is, which I can’t explain.
See? There’s my story. Good, wasn’t it?
‘Mikey,’ I say, ‘I don’t have a story. I go to school. I play footy. I hang out. That’s it.’
But if I do have to find a story for Ms Inglis, I simply rework this old ‘Caught in the Rip’ thing I did in Grade Six. And although this never happened, I present it as a true reconstruction, and just change the names, the location, and the prevailing surf conditions. This year I added a passing whale to increase the environmental interest, because Ms Inglis is a Greenie.
‘So, you seeing anyone, Marc?’ Mikey asks. ‘Come on. You can tell your uncle Mike.’ He laughs, and runs his fingers through his hair.
I would if I had anything to tell.
‘Nope,’ I say. ‘Unfortunately. Er, you? You know. Ah, you, seeing … anyone?’
‘Nah.’ Mikey shakes his head. ‘I’m just concentrating on the gallery thing at the moment. Which’ll take a while.’
Thank God we skimmed over that pretty quick.
‘I bet,’ I say. ‘So, like, are there any real artists living in Melbourne? I sure don’t see too many around here.’
‘Yeah, quite a few.’ Mikey finishes his coffee. ‘But I’m not in any killing hurry to corner the market. I’m kind of just getting used to the freedom down here. It was pretty tough up at home sometimes. Trying to play the game.’
I’m sure glad I don’t have to think about my life. I mean, I do have my worries about lost property, girls, the bicep problem, haircut trends, fashion issues, possible bad breath and dandruff scares, but I haven’t ever considered leaving home over any of them. Or not yet.
‘Kickboxing’d help though, wouldn’t it?’ I ask. ‘I mean, if you can kick someone’s head off, hey, respect.’ Trav and I punch the bags for school footy training, although no actual hitting of people is allowed; which is fine by me, as Trav has fists like bricks and no conscience.
‘Yeah, handy, I guess.’ Mikey makes a fist but softens it fast, as if he doesn’t truly believe in its power. ‘But it’s no magic bullet. Besides, I only do it for fun, and to keep fit. But it’s always better to know something than nothing.’
Exactly! Now this is classic Fighting Theory, something I reckon at least ninety-nine per cent of guys are interested in, me and Trav included. Boy, what you can learn over a coffee! From a gay dude! No offence!
‘I s’pose we’d better go back to the yard,’ I say. ‘And I’ll call Mrs Lockwood to see if she wants to bring in her daughter to test-drive the MX.’
Mikey picks up our mugs and we cross to the counter.
‘You should come down to the gym one night. Just to punch the bags and stuff. You don’t have to spar or sign your life away. It’s fun.’
Shoot. Now what do I do?
‘Yeah, all right,’ I say, and look at the girl taking the money who isn’t the Girl, like Electra is for me, but I guess she is the Girl for someone else. Or I hope she is. ‘Can I bring my mate, Trav? He can punch like hell.’
‘Sure.’ Mikey pays for a coffee to take back for Belinda. ‘The more the merrier.’
Merrier? As in …?
‘It’s not a gay gym, Marc.’ Mikey pockets his change. ‘It’s just a smelly old gym. Though if you know any gay gyms …’ He grins, and I get it.
‘Whatever,’ I say, grinning back, knowing that I can safely say whatever now because it’s not a whatever gym. It’s straight! ‘That’d be great.’
And so, having played my Get Out Of Redneck Gaol card so brilliantly, we head back through rain that washes the wax shine off every car in the yard.
9
The three of us take cover in the office. It’s nice and warm and smells like a heater. On the corner of Belinda’s desk there is a piece of folded white cardboard that says, in perfect black printing, Marc Jarvis – Sales Consultant. Belinda looks pleased.
‘You can have half my desk, Marc. All your contacts and paperwork I’ve put in that folder, along with two GateWay Auto pens. I think they work.’
I don’t know what to say, but I do know that Belinda has done something that makes me feel special, like when Dot meets me at the gate with her frisbee in her gob, because most other people she just growls at. I thank her.
‘I guess I ought to ring Mrs Lockwood, shouldn’t I?’ I say, answering my own question, which is unusual, as I don’t often ask or answer questions, especially not at school, because I can’t see the point. ‘I’ll do it now.’
I ring, and end up talking to the supremely gifted Antonella, who informs me that she’d be more tha
n happy to come in this afternoon to look at the MX while her piano is being tuned – by a piano mechanic, I suppose.
‘Oh, and one more question, Antonella.’ Man, I am just so professional. ‘You can drive, can’t you?’
‘Of course,’ she replies. ‘A bit. See you in an hour. I’ll bring my P-plates. If I can find them.’
Mikey and Belinda refuse to take Antonella out for her test-drive.
‘It’s your sale, Marc.’ Belinda looks up from some letter she’s typing for the newsagent, who she says can’t read or write very well – which is strange when you think about it. ‘You do it. There’s nothing to worry about.’
‘That’s right,’ says Mikey, sitting with his runners up on the edge of Belinda’s desk. ‘You’ll breeze it in. Besides I’m far too busy. You just get out there, and explain why it’s the best car for her in the world, and how happy it will make her.’
I’d be more inclined to take Mikey seriously if he’d actually stop reading an art catalogue with the picture of a neon frog on the cover. I look outside and see a girl walking up the driveway. She has long brown hair, flat shoes, and is carrying P-plates and an umbrella.
‘Go and bring her in,’ Belinda says patiently. ‘Sit her down. We’ll get her a tea or a coffee. You ask her for her licence, which we’ll photocopy, and you tell her how great the car is. Remember. Features. Advantages. Benefits. It’s that easy.’
Whenever someone says something’s that easy, I know it’s not. And so do they. But despite this, I head down the driveway in the drizzle, trying to work out if having a convertible sports car on a day like today is a Feature, a Benefit, an Advantage, or a Disadvantage.
‘Hi.’ I smile as I close in. ‘You must be Antonella.’
She is, which is lucky, and so I take her into the office, and we sit down at my desk corner. Somehow a brand-new writing pad has appeared and Mikey and Belinda have disappeared.
‘Gee.’ Antonella sits, her coat open to reveal a black jumper that’s not tight but tight enough. It also has a Minnie Mouse badge on it, which is a little alarming. ‘Your writing’s really nice.’ She smiles, her face so pale and her skin so clear I know she’s one of those girls who went straight from kindergarten to ballet lessons to piano exams, and not via the drive-through at McDonald’s.
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