Beyond Carousel (14 page)

Eventually I reached the top of a rise and drove down into the sunken streets of Victoria Park.

At the supermarket I parked the golf cart, turned off the engine and listened. All was quiet in the car park and surrounds. I set a timer on my watch, took the cap off the bug spray and headed inside.

It seemed darker than last time. The weather was overcast and just a dim haze found its way into the supermarket. I paused briefly and listened some more. The ceiling shifted and creaked with the wind funnelling through the door. There was a drip of water from the freezer section. Otherwise it was quiet.

I gathered Rachel's items first. Nurofen. Nail polish remover. Tampons. I moved quickly, filling the first bag and starting on the second. Tinned asparagus. Noodle cups. M&M's. Four minutes down and her list was done.

My list was slightly longer. There were some things I hadn't wanted to ask Rachel for on previous runs. Just stuff like the valerian that I used to sleep better. And the after-dinner mints that reminded me of Mum and Dad.

Still, I had six minutes left. There should be time.

At eight minutes I was all but done. I just wanted to check out the small Blu-ray section to see if there was
anything worth taking. As I knelt down to take a look, I heard a noise outside. Like a rumble or churning.

Like an engine.

I shot upright. Then bolted outside.

The poet was already moving when I got there. Hunched over in the golf cart. A screwdriver wedged into the ignition.

‘Hey!' I yelled.

His head snapped in my direction. Eyes wide. Shoulder twitching.

‘What are you doing?' I shouted and ran after him.

He ignored me and crunched the cart up and over a parking island. It slowed him down and I made some ground. I had the bug spray held out in front of me like I was chasing some giant insect. I closed to within ten metres when he ploughed over another island.

‘You're going to blow the tyres,' I yelled.

I was right behind him now but there was just the kerb left between him and the street. He rammed up and over it at full speed.

The front tyres popped in unison.

I got alongside him and tried to grab onto the cart. He saw me and freaked, pulling the cart hard left onto the sidewalk. It shuddered and slowed, but I was slowing too. The sidewalk began a decline. He bumped down onto the road and picked up some speed. I fell behind and sprayed the can desperately. I was too far away and most of it blew back into my face.

The rampaging poet sped onward as I hunched over, defeated. My breath was ragged and shallow. There was a popping noise ahead of me. Another of the tyres had gone. I watched as the guy chugged onwards ambitiously towards the distant charcoal hills. Off to find some dude that probably didn't even exist.

‘Great,' I sighed.

I stood up and looked around. My skin rippled with panic. The streets had swiftly resumed their oppressive calm. I quickly set off back to the supermarket before it got any worse. It was a long walk back to the casino, but it wasn't like I had any other options.

I gathered our shopping and looked around for something to help me carry it all. I found some dusty laundry bags in the cleaning aisle. They were effectively just cotton sacks with a drawstring opening at the top. One of them was able to house all of our stuff. I pocketed the bug spray, swung the bag over my shoulder and took off westwards towards the river.

The sun dropped fast this time of the year and I cursed myself for leaving the casino so late in the day. I could see the resort from where I walked, and it seemed like I could make it back before dark, but I hadn't had to judge this kind of thing for ages. And I didn't think to take a torch.

This side of Victoria Park was mostly residential. I passed quickly through streets full of proud Federation homes. Cobwebs strung across their long verandas.
Volkswagens abandoned in the driveways. These gave way to small high-rises peering westward at the city lights. Shifting winds jittered balcony furniture and windows on the higher levels. I lost sight of the horizon and focused hard on the street names so as not to take a detour.

I started noticing street art on the sides of buildings and fences. It was complicated and dramatic. Big swathes of colour morphing their way into intricate typography. It covered walls, but also ran across windows, doors and down onto the sidewalk. It made me think of the graffiti Artist Tommy had mentioned. I wondered whether this might be his work. Whether he might be staying somewhere nearby. But there was something disconcerting about these apartment buildings. They weren't that old, but they felt like they could topple down on me at any minute. The whole suburb did. It creeped the hell out of me.

Finally I reached the top of the rise and started heading back downhill. I cut across a playground where a Transperth bus had ploughed through the waist-high fence and come to rest against a bordering townhouse. Grass had grown around its tyres, giving it the look of a giant forgotten campervan. The high-rises fell away and I relaxed a little. There were some shops and cafes ahead, before the car yards began. I swapped the laundry bag to my other arm and kept a lookout for a chemist. Rachel would be pissed about the golf cart. Maybe if I found her
something for her cold it would soften the blow.

A lot of the shops looked like they had been smashed into some time ago. The glass was dirty and clustered into piles by wind and rain. I passed a Baskin-Robbins where the ice-cream had melted into a sludgy rainbow across the counter and floor. Gloria Jean's, where the chairs and tables had been pushed aside to form a path in and out of the ransacked kitchen. A lonely health insurance outlet with just a token rock thrown in through the window.

We had been late to the party on all of this stuff. Sheltered and oblivious inside the talcum-white walls of Carousel. Walking those streets I got the unnerving sensation that I had arrived at some kind of post-post-apocalypse. A place where a new civilisation had been trialled, and swiftly failed, with no obvious successor rising up to take its place. Perth drew a nervous breath and hung in limbo all around me.

I found a chemist and some supplies to take back to Rachel. Mostly vitamins. Most of them were out of code, but a few looked to be fine. As I exited the dank and dusty store something caught my eye.

A solitary white ute was parked across the street.

It was out the front of a neat Federation hotel. A posted timber balcony wrapped around the upper floor. A bar with decorative brickwork and brewery logos sat tucked away beneath.

I stopped and looked at the car. Something wasn't
right about it. Not with the vehicle itself, but where it was. It was parked squarely inside the car bay. Not abandoned and part of the old world. But somehow new and foreign. As if it had only just arrived.

I crossed the road and looked it over. It was a late-model trayback Toyota. Nothing fancy. There was some dirt on the lower panels and windscreen. I peered inside and saw the cab was empty but for a road map, some food wrappers and a pair of sunglasses. I stood and listened, but the quiet streets told me nothing. It was dimming rapidly toward dusk and my instincts told me to forget the car and get the hell back to the casino. But I suddenly remembered something Rocky had done when we found the Fiesta in Carousel, and placed my hand on the bonnet.

It was warm.

Somebody was inside the hotel.

‘So I guess you're the Curator?' I asked.

The guy sitting at the bar picked up his beer, finished the inch or so that remained in the bottle and placed it back down on the coaster.

‘Can I buy you a beer?' he replied.

I hesitated, still just a step inside the door. The guy waited calmly on his stool. He was shortish and had the weathered, everyday face of a dad who coached the cricket team. I quickly recognised him as local folk singer Ed Carrington.

Ed was a bit of an icon in Australia. It felt like he had been around forever. He wrote the simple, melodic songs that soundtracked just about everybody's barbeques, Christmases and road trips. His music was nostalgic and truthful in a country without a lot of either. Everyone in Australia was supposed to like Ed Carrington. And there I was wanting to punch him in the face.

‘It's not cold. But it's not warm either,' said Ed, looking
at the empty bottle like he was about to write a fucking song about it.

‘What have you done with everyone?' I asked.

Ed exhaled and weighed up his answer.

‘I can't answer that. But I can tell you a bit of what I know, and some more of what I think,' he said.

‘Why not?' I asked. ‘
Are
you the Curator?'

I was still standing by the door with the bag strung over my shoulder. Ed slid off his stool and pushed out the one beside him as an invitation for me to sit. I placed my bag carefully by the door and edged my way over. Ed's eyes flashed a welcoming smile and he held out a hand. I took it and shook, despite myself.

‘I prefer Ed,' he replied.

I sat on the stool while he circled the bar and disappeared beneath the counter, then emerged with two beers.

‘Melbourne Bitter okay?' he asked, opening the bottles before I could answer.

I nodded. Ed placed them on the bar and made his way back to his stool.

‘People drink a lot of fancy stuff these days. Now that it's free and everything,' he said. ‘But you have to ask yourself, when the shit is hitting the fan, is that really your drink?'

We clinked bottles and I took a small sip.

‘I didn't catch your name,' said Ed.

‘Nox,' I replied.

‘Where you from, Nox?' he asked.

‘The hills,' I replied, bitingly.

Ed put down his beer. There was empathy in his gaze.

‘North or south?' he asked.

‘South,' I replied. ‘Roleystone.'

Ed took a moment to think this over.

‘I've spent some time in the hills. Was up there last weekend,' he replied. ‘The fire took out a lot of land. Nearly all of the north and down into the valley. But I've heard that some pockets in the very south made it through okay. Maybe some of Roleystone.'

‘My friend Tommy was up there,' I said. ‘He was looking for you.'

‘I hope he's okay, Nox,' replied Ed. ‘We got a lot of people out before it really took off. But it's hard to know how many are about these days. People have scattered.'

‘Not what you expected to happen?' I asked.

Ed looked at me, then took another swig.

‘I got to level with you, Nox. I'm a regular guy. Just like anyone else left wandering around this city,' he replied.

I didn't buy it.

‘How come you have a car when nobody else does?' I asked.

‘I'm a mechanic by trade, so that helps. But these days it's mostly about the fuel. Petrol goes bad pretty quickly. Diesel is better, but there's not a lot of that around now either. I read somewhere that a country should have a
three-month stockpile of fuel in case of a catastrophic weather event. How much do you reckon we have in Australia?' he asked.

I shrugged.

‘Around three weeks worth,' said Ed.

He seemed staggered by this, but I felt like he was avoiding my question.

‘So why do people call you the Curator?' I asked.

‘There's a lot of grief in this city. People are lost. They need a lighthouse,' he replied.

‘A lighthouse?' I asked.

Ed looked at me and waited.

‘My family is gone. One of my friends died in a shopping centre. The others were lost in a fire. People need more than a fucking lighthouse,' I snapped.

I shoved my stool away and paced across the bar. My head was swimming with confusion and bitterness.

Ed remained seated, calm as ever. Eventually I stopped and glared over at the solitary figure seated at the bar. Shafts of late afternoon sun stretched in through the windows. Ed took a long draw on his beer, then turned to face me. It felt like we were standing off in some bizzaro western.

‘I'm sorry, Nox,' said Ed.

He sounded genuine. Actually, Ed was kind of genuine personified.

I took a breath and thought about my conversation with Lizzy. About how we project stuff onto famous
people depending on what we need from them. How we make them out to be something they're not.

‘You said you could tell me what you know,' I replied.

Ed nodded. ‘And what I think,' he replied. A showman's sparkle danced in his eyes.

I returned to my stool and necked my beer. Ed finished his off and settled comfortably against the bar. I watched him and waited.

‘Have you ever heard of something the French call the Prix de Rome?'

In that shadowy abandoned pub, over a series of lukewarm Melbourne Bitters, Ed Carrington filled me in on the history of the Prix de Rome.

The Prix de Rome was an award for artists that dated all the way back to the seventeenth century. It was started in France by a king who decided that the country's best artists should get the opportunity to develop their art from the masters in Rome. Winners were given residencies in the city in order to study, develop their craft and create definitive artworks. These residencies often lasted several years before the artists returned home to continue their careers.

Ed was quick to add that it wasn't all ‘beer and skittles'. Returning artists were often expected to use their new skills to glorify the relevant king to the public in future work – no pressure. The award was also adopted by other countries and became super
competitive. In the Netherlands artists had to pass a series of exams just in order to qualify. The final of these tests involved being locked in a cubicle for months, where you were fed meals through a hatch while you tried to paint a masterpiece that justified your place in the residency.

Since then the award diversified from painting to include all kinds of art forms, and ebbed and flowed throughout history until France abandoned it in the sixties.