Inside, at the top of the stairs, I handed Will’s money to the girl in the ticket booth and got stamped, cigarette stuck between my lips, trying to lock eyes with her through the thin trail of smoke.
As we moved across the room toward the bar, Will was all over me. He kept grabbing my shoulders like I’d bagged six and the siren had just gone. ‘Dude,’ he said. ‘This is fucking awesome!’
Being my nonchalant, disaffected self, I couldn’t help saying, ‘It’s bullshit, though. It sucks we’ll have to leave before the bands start playing.’
We bought a jug of beer and took up a booth in back, hidden from the few people in the club, mostly bar staff and sound techs. We drank down three jugs, powering through the beer in the short time we had.
By 9.30 the bar was getting crowded, and the first band was about to take the small stage at the far end of the room. Everyone was in their twenties and thirties, all indie-types in skinny black jeans and flannelettes, or white shirts and thin black ties, sleeves rolled up to show off tattoos. I was dressed likewise and coveted their tatts. I didn’t want to leave. I’d settled in with the beer and the vibe of the place, and I was getting a steady, deep drunk after the whisky at Dad’s. All I wanted, forever, was to live inside that kind of drunk.
‘What should we do now?’ Will asked over the din, indicating the time.
‘Fuck the bouncer,’ I said. ‘If he can find us, he can kick us out.’
Soon our booth was being crowded by pretty university students and their dates, asking if we minded sharing. ‘Nah, go for it,’ we replied.
I rarely felt connected to anything, rarely felt most people were anything other than a potential cause of problems. Usually felt that they couldn’t be trusted. But in that bar, with a head full of beer, the stuff that kept me separated from everyone drifted away, and I felt as connected to each individual in the room as I did to the earth, when I’d sat on the bank of the Merri and gazed into its waters.
The bouncer never came after us and, in the early hours of the morning, Will and I found ourselves in Chinatown after the club had shut. It was cold and my jeans were pasted to my legs from dancing and sweating and my shirt reeked of the cigarettes I’d smoked, many of them bummed from the uni students when, boldly, Will and I had confessed our underage status. A girl with a thin face was studying a Creative Arts degree and she thought it was funny enough, and I’d made a fool of myself pretending I knew how to roll a smoke out of her pouch.
As we made our way back to the station so Will could take a taxi from the rank outside, cutting through the alleys and smaller streets, we passed the rear exit of an adult cinema on Flinders Lane. A tiny red light was flickering above the overstuffed dumpsters.
The city was strewn with rubbish. Drunks and bums staggered past one another in the cold. Melbourne looked hard for the most part, icy, but in winter the city’s steely, blue-grey tones were accentuated and the landscape became grey-to-black, all shadows and gothic spires, and it revealed itself to be a place of degradation with the potential for immense violence. It was like the vast stone corridors of some subterranean bunker. Something was screaming underfoot, longing to be released – an ancient source of pain one had to suppress in order to live here.
Spontaneously, Will descended the staircase leading down to the cinema exit.
‘What the fuck are ya doing?’ I asked.
He was prying the door open, giggling excitedly. ‘Are you coming or what?’
From the crack where he held the door ajar, luminescence was spilling forth, splashing against the concrete wall. I descended the staircase, hypnotised like a moth by that strange glow.
When we entered the building, I could only make out the darkness. Then, steadily, what was before me came into view: the seats and the silhouettes in those seats, anonymous masturbators. Faceless in the void, yet I could tell they were looking at us. And as these shadows became apparent, so too did the noise: hardcore porno screams, flesh smacking flesh, fake-as-hell orgasms.
Because he was taller than me, Will was first to notice where exactly we stood. His head was almost touching the base of the screen, and he drew my attention to this fact by pinching my shoulder gently. When I turned round, I was shot in the eyeballs by one thousand watts of pure Americana sex: a platinum blonde with bolted-on tits was being jackhammered to death by some Peter North-looking, Muscle Beach by-product of human excretion.
And then I laughed. Uncontrollably. I got those big, limb-shaking belly heaves that grip you only at the worst of times, the kind of giggle-fit that we altar boys would attempt to give one another during the gospel when we served Mass, when we had to stand rigid either side of the pulpit, holding our candles right next to Father Vito’s ears. We would stare and pull subtle faces, and the loser who broke would feel the pincer grip of Father’s dismayed hand on his elbow, squeezing out the mirth.
In that cinema my laughter was contagious. It spread to Will.
‘Get out of here!’ someone yelled from the back.
Light was still flooding in from the open door behind us and, knowing our escape was secure, I shouted, ‘WANKERS! WANKERS! LITERAL WANKERS!’
‘Get out of here!’
‘FUCK OFF, YOU FILTHY CUNTS!’ screamed Will, laughing so hard he could barely mount the staircase back up to Flinders Lane.
We cowered by the dumpsters in a hysterical fit. Will’s hand was on my back, the two of us bent double, pressing into each other for support. Will’s hand was on my back, pressing into me for support, drunk. Drunk, Will’s hand was on my back. Will’s hand was on my back, as I straightened up. Pressing into me. Will’s hand.
‘What are you —?’
Will’s face was in front of mine.
‘Are you —?’
Pressing into me. For a second.
Will stepped back. His eyes were wide and shiny with laughter, and I didn’t quite know what to say. He lurched to the left and sprayed vomit across the wheel of a dumpster.
‘You awright?’ I asked, tempted to place my hand on his back out of solidarity. But I didn’t.
He wiped the corner of his mouth with the cuff of his jacket. ‘Fuck. Sorry. I, ah …’
‘It’s okay,’ I said.
‘I’ve gotta go. See you on Monday, yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
Will muttered a ‘thanks’ as he staggered off to the station, leaving me between the dumpsters staring at his puke, which covered the black rubber wheel and the bluestones beneath it. I was staring at the way the viscous fluid gathered in the cracks between the stones. Eventually I left too, thinking that I didn’t know much of anything. Thinking that the city was a strange and scary place to be alone so late at night, when my gumption and my guile abandoned me.
Big People, Little People
Halfway through my last year at school, in an effort to get the money together for weekend drinks, I’d taken a job three nights a week. It was in a call centre on Sydney Road, selling farming equipment from a converted room above a disused video shop.
After my shift one evening, I took the tram up Sydney Road to the mall and cut through the lane, entering the footy ground via the carpark out front. It was bitterly cold when I arrived for training. The lights around the stadium were pouring artificial golden-yellow onto the grass and making it go all shiny, like there were these pools of reflective light out there on the oval. Whenever anyone kicked the ball your eyes would lose it the moment it cut across the stadium lights, when you were momentarily blinded.
I didn’t feel much like training, because of the cold. Once you started to sweat, the second you stopped moving it would be like ice all across your forehead and the back of your neck. But if you never broke a sweat, you were just cold anyway, and I spent half my time blowing hot air into my fists and lifting one leg off the ground then the other, trying to ignore the goosebumps like a billion stiff nipples running up my calves and thighs. Idiotically I’d forgotten my beanie, so my ears were numb. But Vince took a nice speccie over Dougie, a
nd that, at least, was worth seeing.Maybe not worth two hours freezing my nuts off, but worth seeing, for sure.
After training everyone was hanging shit on Doug because of the mark, and he was just giving them slow nods and plenty of fuck offs. The boys left quick once they’d gotten changed, and I was leaving the carpark to hightail it the six blocks home for a warm shower. But as I was nearing the driveway, someone shouted, ‘Oi! Wanna lift?’
When I looked across the park, Moose was standing by his brother’s Skyline.
‘I’m only round the corner,’ I said.
‘Come on, but,’ he said. ‘No dramas.’
I walked over. Moose got in the driver’s door, and when I opened the passenger’s side I saw he was the only one in the car. ‘What’re ya doing?’ I asked.
‘Come on, man. Get in.’
I hopped into the passenger seat and dropped my backpack between my legs. ‘You’re fucken insane,’ I said, pulling the seatbelt across my body and fastening it into the clasp. ‘Your brother’ll kill you if he finds out.’
‘You gunna tell him, are ya?’
‘Nah.’
‘Yeah, well, let’s hope not, ey.’ Moose turned the ignition.I wasn’t sure how serious the threat was, but I didn’t like it. I figured Steven would find out about this somehow and – what? Was Moose going to blame me automatically when he did?
But I quickly forgot this concern when Moose pulled out of the carpark and into traffic on Harding Street. Mostly, I was jealous he knew how to drive a manual.
‘Hey! Ya missed my street,’ I said a moment later, as he sailed past Barrow Street and went down to the corner of Nicholson.
‘Come on. We’ll take her out for a spin. Then I’ll drop ya home.’ He turned left onto Nicholson and travelled down to the intersection at Bell, where we’d reunited just before the beginning of last summer, when he’d been tooling around on that inane minibike.
I shook my head, resigned to whatever Moose might want to do. He was bigger and braver than me, and bigger people always got to take the lives of littler ones in their hands. It was the way of the world. Still, I wanted to find out where this was headed.
Moose drove us out to Reservoir. I knew Melbourne well – I’d memorised the streets by poring over Mum’s Melways as a kid. It was a source of pride to me that I knew how each suburb connected to the next. The city was more than streets and houses, concrete and steel; it was a living thing that evolved and expanded, contracted sometimes, and morphed and adapted.
But, as we made our way onto Rose Street, something dark crept into the cabin of the Nissan. It’d been along this same road that Matt Neilsen and Tonk Anu, a couple guys from the footy club, had died the summer after graduating high school years ago. It’d been here where, speeding beneath the canopy of oddly placed gums that lined the street – not uniform, symmetrical plane trees like those along the roads in the south-east – Matt and Tonk had lost control of their car.
Their deaths had rocked the club, and the tragedy had hung like a black cloud over the senior playing group for a few consecutive seasons. They’d been Steven’s mates, part of Steven’s playing group, part of and then absent from those premierships Steven had helped win.
As if reading my mind, Moose said, ‘Ya know, this is where Neillie and Tonk died.’
‘Yeah, I know,’ I said. ‘Wasn’t Matt meant to get drafted that year?’
‘Yeah. They reckon he would’ve gone top ten, easy.’
‘Didn’t his old man play for the Swans?’
‘Dunno. Maybe. Ask the old man. He’ll know.’ Moose pulled the car to the side of the road and looked ahead. ‘How fast ya reckon they were going?’
‘Dunno,’ I said. ‘A good clip, but. Must’ve been a hundred, at least.’
‘Reckon anyone could do better if they tried.’
‘You’re joking?’
‘What? It’s a straight fucken road. I dunno how ya can bugger that up.’
I picked at the stitching of my backpack in silence. Matt’s and Tonk’s deaths were supposed to serve as a reminder of the recklessness of young men – a warning to us all. At least, this was what older people down at the club would say. But it wasn’t the case. Their deaths served as provocation for some of our darkest desires, an invitation to test our mettle in the only way an environment such as ours provided. In the absence of war, driving your car really fast fitted the bill.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘if you’re doing it, you’re doing it.’
‘Whaddaya reckon I can make?’
‘Dunno.’
‘One-twenty, quick, I reckon. Then cut out,’ he said, looking behind him through the rear windshield.
There hadn’t been a single car along the road in either direction. We hadn’t seen a soul in ages.
‘You make one-twenty, then ya cut out.No bullshit,’ I said.
‘No bullshit. Promise.’
We shook hands.
He checked the mirrors a final time, before putting the car in drive, and together, in silence, we entered that concrete and foliage tunnel.
I was a shivering mess by the time the car was leaving Reservoir and we’d begun to head home. We both were. Our nerves were shot. Moose could hardly bring himself to drive the Nissan above forty kilometres since racing it along Rose Street. Something about the way the wheel had rattled, sending vibrations through Moose’s arms and body as if he were having a fit, had paralysed us both, and the sweat that had run from my forehead after we’d pulled back to the roadside had been so heavy that Moose had leaned across from the driver’s seat and dabbed it off for me.
We were about to cross the Merri Creek when my phone started ringing. I took it out of my bag thinking it was Mum, but I didn’t recognise the number.
‘Who’s that?’ asked Moose, seeing me staring at the screen.
‘Dunno,’ I said, answering.
‘Ford?’ a gruff voice wanted to know.
‘Yeah. Who’s this?’
‘Ya with Moose?’
‘Um … Steven?’
Moose’s eyes lit up when he glanced back in my direction. I remembered, then, that Steven had called me last summer about tryouts.
‘You with fucken Moose or what?’
‘Er …’ I put my hand over the mouthpiece. ‘He wants to know if I’m with you.’
‘Fuck. Just say no.’
‘No,’ I told Steven.
‘Bullshit. You in my car?’
‘…’
‘Tell Moose to drive that thing back here right fucken now.’
‘Well, if I see him, I’ll —’
Steven had hung up the moment I started to respond.
‘So?’ Moose asked.
‘He says you’ve gotta drive back right now.’
‘Fuck. Awright. We’ll have to go by mine first.’
Moose went past Barrow Street once more and across to West Coburg. When we got to the house, Mr Mousali was standing under the front porch light, his bald head gleaming. A second later, Steven was out there too – he shot through the flywire door and was on the front lawn in a flash. The muscles either side of his neck were seized up and his shoulders seemed massive, powerful. He looked like an angry, nightmarish stray with its hackles up.
‘Turn it off and get the fuck outta the car. Both of youse.’
I gave Moose a glance, but he didn’t look my way, was instead looking down at the lowest section of the steering wheel, the circumference of which was divided into three discrete segments.
I realised later he knew what was coming and was resigning himself to it.
I picked up my bag from between my legs and stepped onto the lawn. Neither Steven nor Mr Mousali paid me a second’s attention, and I edged back from the property waiting for Moose to emerge from the Skyline, with Steven hovering outside the driver’s door like a wasp.
The ultimate punishment is making someone punish themselves. Moose knew what would happen when he opened the door, and so did Mr Mousali and Steven, but Steven left him to open i
t. When he did, after he’d made it three or four paces clear of the car, Steven shadowing his little brother’s every step to the porch, Steven asked Moose to stop, to look at him. ‘Why are you so fucken dumb?’ Steven asked.
Moose didn’t have an answer.
‘Ya know you could get in a lotta trouble for that. Ya know you’re gunna end up in gaol one of these days, you’re not careful. Now tell me,’ said Steven, ‘I know you took it out for a joyride, but what did ya do? You race it? Drive it real fast? What?’
Moose was silent, still.
‘What’d he do, Ford? Speed?’
I followed Moose’s example.
‘One of youse cunts better answer me.’
‘Awright,’ said Moose. ‘I drove it up Rose Street. It was dumb.
I’m dumb.’
‘Up Rose Street? Where Tonk died? … You. Are. Fucken.Retarded.’
There was the briefest moment, maybe not even half a second, when I thought, hoped, that might be all. But then Steven’s fists were raining blows on Moose, who went down fast and cowered on the lawn behind his cupped hands.
‘And ya got your mate involved,’ Steven said, pausing and waiting for Moose to look up between his hands. ‘Look at me, ya simple cunt! AND YA GOT YOUR FUCKEN MATE INVOLVED!’
Steven was pointing at me on the verge of the lawn. I kept standing still, silent.
Steven punched Moose again and again. He said, ‘You get Ford involved in something like this and he’s in the shit, too. Ya ever think about that? Some of us have got a future to protect. You’re a fucken waste. You’re a dog.’
He took one of Moose’s wrists and tenderly moved it away from his younger brother’s face, before striking him a final time in the unprotected area of his cheek and nose. Bigger people get to take the lives of littler ones in their hands, I reminded myself.
Steven strode back to his car and took the keys from the ignition and then walked back into the house past his father, who was still standing beneath the porch light. I watched as Moose got up from the lawn and walked, head bowed, toward that front door. But his father only put up his hand, like signalling cattle to ‘stay’, and said, ‘No. Not you.’ Then he, too, walked into the house and shut the door.
Everything in its right place Page 12
