Waiting (31 page)

Big moves through into the newspaper section and spreads The Age and The New York Times right across the table as a consolation, and it always is a great satisfaction. While they are reading and thinking, several computers become vacant and are taken again. The last of the summer wine. A kind of bliss.

Here we go, calls Little, and shuffles away from the table. She sits down at a computer, the seat unpleasantly warm. She would prefer to cover it with something but she has forgotten about it by the time Big has dragged a spare seat across to sit down laboriously beside her. His knees are wide apart and his bag swings from the crook of his elbow. It nearly always makes her giggle.

Virgin Blue.

The woman next to them frowns and looks away when Big begins addressing the air, the desk and then her shoulder:

Virgin Blue, he repeats. My favourite company name. Even if Richard Branson does seem such a permanently grinning twat. He's half grown-up boy scout and three quarters nerd with a lot left over of corporate trickster. Also, but hardly worth mentioning, a perve. On younger women in tight skirts. I for one would like to know what his teeth are made of.

The woman does not answer but she can't help smirking at the teeth. Little is intent on doing what he never would: checking the flight arrangements. She is searching inside the pre-Christmas bubble. Not encouraging. Everybody with a yen for family or holiday or escape up in the air moving forwards, for fantasy or duty, is chocking their wide bodies into thinnish seats and hoping for a toilet opportunity without having to charge the foodndrinks trolley for aisle room.

Big is encouraged by the woman's amusement.

I still maintain the Howard Government and their cronies brought down Ansett to suit their Qantas plans. Whatever they were at the time – a monopoly? Do I have a seconder? Motion carried. I've always thought that a tautology, motion carried. Or a contradiction.

Nothing's coming up.

Little turns her comment but not her eyes towards him.

I'm trying lots of dates but… They say cheap flights on the home page. They are awesome, they are fast-food cheap…

Awesome? Are we talking a largish double or triple several-of-everything plus drinks and chips etc cheap?

… About ninety five dollars one way…

Hail the Virgin. That's a very substantial meal.

… but all I can see is $240 a seat return – and two of them is too much even if we fly out at 6.05am which means getting up at…

No.

We haven't got…

Not a chance. We cannot be up and seated on a plane by dawn. That's outrageous. Flights should be free at that ridiculous time. We will simply come in every day until we find something.

Every day?

She knows how long this idea will last. Give it a few days and it will join all the other brilliant ideas in the Big backyard.

I have to say though… Big has his head down now, at last sensing the moment to stand up and let the secret out.

Little, I ah, must say I enjoy our life. The way it is. They're a funny lot we live with, the men, even when they're being dumb-arses, as the Americans say, maybe even more when they are, if you follow my reasoning? I feel a strange humanity through them and it's good for the soul. It's… in your face. But real. The company of other people.

The screen is static in its red and white its Branson design bravura. Not a tight skirt in sight. The complicated feeling in Little returns and thrums unhappily. It is not the fear she had tried to make it, if only to make it familiar, it was not that at all, it was this thing happening in the words of Big. What does she feel about it now that she is guessing his meaning?

Do you mean you still want to stay in the hostel?

His face relaxes like the proverbial balloon, not from deflation but relief. Why, he thinks, why does so much deep feeling lend itself to cliché? But. What would he do if they left and went to live in a house. They would have, instead, neighbours! Who would he be able to talk to?

Yes, for me, the familiar company of other people. And it's only my general feeling, it's only my sense of… personal homeostasis, yes? It may not be shared. I realise you may… you may… prefer to…

Only may?

Prefer a place…

This is what she has been feeling. She is aghast. It has sprung from his suitcase into her chest.

And what do you mean – other people? I want a place where we can be just us, she says.

The next morning she is looking in the mirror and rubbing foundation into her skin. She had freckles before other girls did, then she had freckles when many girls did, in their teens, then she had freckles when other girls lost them again. She kept hers, or they kept her. She tries brushing on a bit of eye-shadow to do something there, anything, even maybe this morning some eyeliner even if Big frowns to see it, as if he isn't made up himself, in a manner of speaking. But she hasn't the hand-eye co-ordination required for hand-eye application. The Gen Y girls go off and get spray tans even if they have to steal to afford it. She wants some protection. She doesn't want to go to Adelaide alone, she is too scared, the rellies are going to boss her over the will. No, she is too nervous to get the airport thing right, and find buses, get to Gawler, the right streets, and then stay somewhere. She hardly remembers the place.

If Big goes with her she will still be the one planning it, given his complete uselessness, and yet it will all work out. Silly but true: with the two of them it will work. It's her nervousness that undoes her, not her plans.

Lipstick… She leans forward like a small bird close to pecking the glass at her faint outline, her not so clear vision. If only she had the bloody Julia look. And then the lipstick. She's wearing green, her shirt that is, and her lipstick is sort of silly pink. She might have to go by herself.

She can hear noises in the main part of the hostel, maybe an argument, they have them all the time, in loud and slow Strine. Angry voices rend the peace in her body. These situations rarely get worse, she is just sensitive to the sound of anger in the voices, though this time the shouting is turning red.

In the TV room Julia's tattoed boyfriend has walked in and grabbed the remote. He keeps switching channels just to wind up Tourie and Sammy. Saying Stop it and Let go the remote and Hey, let me fucken watch the news and You don't even live here… doesn't get him at all. Boyfriend stands in the middle of the room, stares them down with a nasty hard-look, the crim or punchyafacein kind of look, then he laughs at Sammy, changes channels again and drops the remote into his pocket.

They turn to watch the news, try to lose themselves in the sight and sound of Sandra Sully being sexy and weird with the words, then he reaches for the remote and gets them again. And they start wailing again.

Tourie is a foul-mouth but for all its shock and maybe fear-value that is just a symptom. He's not aggro at all, quite unwilling to confront anyone. Dazza has been asleep. Over-medicated as usual, or should we be frank and say he's pissed. Better than being mad. He puts up no resistance but might have, were sleep not his program, and snoring, snuffling, the crenellated cough, his dialogue.

The Boyfriend has a captive audience to antagonise.

Until The Sheriff comes in angry and shouting to shut the racket. His sleep interrupted by said racket, he snarls, and what he now susses as the boyfriend's raucous laughter. The Sheriff thinks all ugly laughter is Greek. He tends to think in bad memories rather than observation of the moment, so no one knows why he thinks this laughter thing. When he sees the hard-head boy­friend the hard-head in him stands up even harder. The old Sheriff attitude shed in a flash for this meaner, younger, nastier thing in him.

They stare at each other, shoulders up, head out, their ears back. Eyes glittering.

The adverts are back on and blaring. Unbelievably the boyfriend squeezes the volume up on the remote. The set distorting. So too The Sheriff:

Shut that fucken thing down ya fucken alien! Whatdoya think ya doin you bludgen cunt, can't even pay ya own way. By Jesus…

Don't call me a cunt, ya cunt. Don't call…

Get out of this fucken joint ya shit, ya don't belong.

This without a muscle moving, and sounding like a script, but now the tatt man in him steps forward.

You pathetic old bastard, sneers the boyfriend. Ya don't scare me.

His voice is nasal as hell, all tin-can sing-song but nasty, make no mistake, and not stepping back. The men in the room are mes­merised. Scared and getting high on The Sheriff and A Fight. Revenge.

Now. The Sheriff gets in close and swings a punch but the boyfriend bends a big right-side kick into his face. Fucking martial arts. The pain shoots down wet and red. No one can believe it. Another kick gets him over his hip but The Sheriff grunts back upright, angry as all hell, and elbows the boyfriend viciously in the eyes. Twice, hard, and then head-buts him to break his nose, and does, the guy rears back but The Sheriff coming in again misses, loses his balance and they both stumble onto the floor. Not good, not good, and the boyfriend half-beaten, pulls a knife and is jabbing and wallowing as he clambers out from under The Sheriff.

Little and Big have come out and Little is shrieking:

Do something Big! Hit him!

The men are grappling but Big is horrified, he doesn't hit. He is a bluffer with his meaty fists.

But, but…

You have to, he's got a knife!

I can't.

Suddenly the Boyfriend gets on top of The Sheriff, knife-arm up like a comic book killer. And then it happens. Crack. He thuds down like a sack of wet sand. Big is standing above him, red-faced, furious. Has startled everyone. He is suddenly anguished: he has king-hit the bloke from behind. KO. His red face slowly turns ashen, in blotches. Little screams like a kid behind goal at the footie.

Jesus Christ, gasps Big.

Now the Sheriff squints up, pain everywhere. He is mortified, suffering. Not the measly fucking pain, no, this slowest thing he's ever done, as he crawls out from underneath and then whacks the awful Boyfriend's face into the floorboards a few times. Once thudding sickly against the wall for good measure. The boyfriend is slithering on his knees, then is crawling off into the walls as if blind and brain-injured. Then lumbers out into the night. The Sheriff drags himself up, blood running from his side.

Fuck him, he got me with that fucken pick.

And pulls up his shirt, falls back and has to pull it up again: a hole in the side of him like the taken-down Christ.

Jesus, he says, that fucken shithole. I shoulda known that bastards use knives now just like inside. I shoulda known.

His head is down. The poor Sheriff. Losing his touch, he keeps thinking, not happy about it, not happy at all, as much this as the blood leaving him for the slops and puddles of the floor.

Little has a first-aid kit for their health things, rushes off, ransacks it and finds a patch and a drab bandage. Never used. She pushes the white square onto the wound and immediately winds the bandage around The Sheriff's rib-cage, dressing him like a growly mummy, over a square of blotter-like dressing. She is quite the nurse. The men praise The Sheriff and thank him.

But where is bloody Julia? Someone gets her.

The Sheriff snarls a bit in the telling and pretends it is laying down the law when he tells Julia – she has been asleep in her room all the time – that they gave the boyfriend a big no-option: find a new bed or meet the law of the fucking land. He has gone without his bag as part of his show of being convinced, or anyway having his way blocked by large bodies. The only way out was the way he came in. She can take it to him some other time. Quite frankly it isn't their concern. And so why the fuck did she bring him here when she knows what a cunt he is?

The Sheriff shows her his knife wound and the extent of his own unhappiness, and she finds it hard to disagree. No more boyfriend-till-Christmas.

It helps them all feel calmer after the violence. It helps The Sheriff make a story of it, almost glad the boyfriend showed the knife: it puts a bit of poetry into his loss. They are a family and The Sheriff is their protector. And Big, of course. Nothing is too good for The Sheriff. He says he hopes like fuck the bastard doesn't come back with his mates and steel bars. He wants to growl for this, more than for any wound on his body.

The stories come out: of a sneer the Boyfriend gave as he barged past, a bit of a shoulder as he shouted Move off! to Sammy to get out of his way, whether in the corridor, or in the kitchen, the bathroom, just picking his targets carefully so it wasn't obvious and grinning so it was, just them, being pissweak made them feel intimidated. Been doing it since he arrived. On the quiet.

When he finally stands and walks stiffly to his room (and he is stiff, he is bloody bruised and his nose and cheek ache) The Sheriff knows he couldn't fight again for a few days, would have trouble wielding the baseball bat he has dragged out from under the bed and now plonks onto the chair near his door. He is getting slow. He wants to cry more for this than any frigging wound on his body. He should've guessed a knife.

Back in their room Little is all leaning forward and staring with new-eyes at her Big, her conquering hero, he the manwoman, the loved one.

Look at this thing, he says.

Little comes in closer to see, not realising he'd nicked it from the floor earlier. He drops the knife onto the table. It clinks and he sniffs while looking at it.

Couldn't even gut a rabbit with it.

Her Jasmin Flavour

Sometimes she thinks men are rough things to make smooth and other times she thinks of them as smooth from the beginning. Smooth and urbane, her preferred… but she dislikes the idea of a preferred, as much as she dislikes conformity. But sometimes, to rub against a man like a cat against a tree… Rough. Contrast, mismatches of meaning and understanding can have a frisson, not a binary but a differance as the Derrideans like to say.