Look. I don’t know what the date is. I’m guessing must be 94. About six in the morning. Melbourne. Late winter dark orange wet light on the bluestone drains. I’m leaving.
The cabbie has pulled over. I’m apologising and…
Look. I’m sorry to do this to you in the very first paragraph of a novel that is really sweet, resonant and aesthetically pretty damn gorgeous. How can I say this nicely? I’ll start again.
I say:
I’m sorry. It’s just that it was my last night at work and I had a few knock offs and…
But that would be lying. It wasn’t just a few drinks, it was a couple of buckets of vodka lime and soda and a posse of cock sucking cowboys and a mulled up pill. Mulled up. Oh please. After all the time I’ve done in clubs. And from The Whippet of all people.
It seems like a really good idea to go to East Melbourne for a smoke, but I get a look at Sam’s little lace up Mollini platforms kicked off on the rented carpet. I know then that the doorman has been flicking her ankles up around her little ears. She’s little, really little, so little she’s big. The biggest little door bitch in town. The promoters must think kicky punchy young virtual midgets are a good look. The doorman would have had her keep those shoes on, and he’d have gripped the curving great (little) hourglass heels in his big hands and stared at a spot on the wall above her head as he drove her home. When he says he’s driving a girl home, it’s hammers and nails. He’s been doing a bit of woodwork on me. Wrapping my ankles around my ears. Hanging onto my Mollini platforms too. Same shoe, five sizes bigger.
I know I’m leaving and I know what I have with the doorman is just the world’s longest running one-night stand but I’m riled up, and the love drug seeping through my system is starting to sour. We’re in the kitchen. They’re poring over a 24hr pizza menu, I’m in the fridge.
Ahhhh.
The doorman has stashed a six pack of Beck’s in there. He never keeps beer at my place. I can feel myself slipping and sliding down the harem hierarchy. Maybe it’s nothing personal. Maybe it’s because she’s a smoker and I’m a drinker, and he’s too smart to leave beers with me. I look up over the fridge door and see those bloody Mollini’s in the hallway. Right then and there I decide I’m going to take responsibility for the fatherless bottles chilling and glowing in front of me. Time to swipe them, swipe the shoes, set myself up in the lav and decant the beer into those size fours. It pisses out through the eyelets where the laces have loosened and I am well pleased. Then there’s a bath and somebody has really really beautiful skin and, whoops, Hawaiian all over the shop. Bad call at the end of a string of bad calls. Call cab.
I hold tight to the back seat, and the cab, and the earth as it turns, and every star in the galaxy draws a white line across the back of my eyelids. As we swing around under the train tracks I remember the way the doorman drives. That same bend, me, the whole damn town, knocked off in one smooth reflex move.
…So I had a few knock offs and. Got a bit carried away. Thanks for that. I’ll be right now. Just open the window a bit. Where? Japan. I’m going to Japan. Nope. Don’t speak a word. Nope. Got thirty bucks to my name. But I know people there…Here. Turn right here. Down this alley thanks.
The cab pulls in round the back of Pete’s. I wouldn’t normally let a driver get this close to home but hey. I’m leaving.
Got any good advice?
Well darl, I can tell you one thing for sure.
Every cabbie can do that.
I say:
Yeah?
Tell ya one thing for free. You’ll either love it or hate it.
That’s the moment. The door is open, small change rolls, a white feather escapes my boa and floats floats floats above the water and down to the flat surface of the shining sea that is the puddle under my nose. It’s not six in the morning. It’s six at night. It’s the moment when I decide.
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