Love and Other Perishable Items Page 9

  “Um, I don’t think I can this week. I’ve got a thing. Family …”

  “Okay.” I wave goodbye.

  I squeeze onto the bus and ride to work, marveling that the aroma of teenage boy remains so pungent even though the weather is turning cold.

  Chris is already on the register next to mine when I get to work.

  “Check it out, y’all”—he punches the air in greeting—“Amelia Hayes is in da house!”

  Bolstered by the warmth of his greeting, I walk, maybe even strut, with uncharacteristic daring around to his side of the register and pull my letter out of my pocket.

  “You requested a letter, Mr. Harvey,” I say, “and I done brung.” I slide it into the side pocket of his black cargo pants. Whillikers! I just pulled a move straight out of Street Cred Donna’s book!

  Chris stops scanning groceries for a moment and faces me. He smiles. It is a special, never-before-seen version of his usual winning smile. He fishes out some folded yellow paper from his other pocket.

  “And for you, Ms. Hayes,” he says, sliding it into the side pocket of my black pants and giving it the tiniest pat.

  I back away a few steps and go behind my own register.

  My eyes bore two holes into his back for the duration of the shift. At about eight, he turns around and bends down to retrieve a potato that’s escaped from the scales. When he stands up, he winks at me and smiles.

  Heaven help Amelia Joan Hayes, for she cannot help herself.

  January 25

  The workdays are long, especially when it’s sunny outside. Ed and I have set ourselves the target of making up a new in-joke at the beginning of the week and having it instituted across the part-time staff by week’s end. Young Amelia is the quickest of the lot, by a long shot.

  There’s this egotistical little shit of a checkout operator by the name of Jeremy. He’s all of fifteen or sixteen and doesn’t he reckon he’s a player. He holds court down at the service desk on Thursday nights to a seemingly unending stream of private school girls. Sells them cigarettes, no doubt, and flirts like it’s going out of fashion. Bianca flirts with him shamelessly, which fuels his ego even more.

  I always thought that being completely superficial was mostly the realm of girls. I can see that Bianca, Kelly and, in my rare moments of lucidity, Kathy are pretty plastic when you get down to it. Jeremy is their male equivalent. I can’t stand him. He doesn’t have a pair of breasts to redeem him. After work I see him hanging around the food court with his skanky minions, wearing a baseball cap backwards—no shit.

  Amelia is Jeremy’s opposite. She’s real. She’s literate. I like her a lot. Or maybe I just like the idea of her. Because she’s so young that she’s out of the question, I can mentally make her into the Perfect Woman in Waiting. Is that what I’m doing?

  Moving swiftly on.

  Yesterday morning I started work at seven, helping out in Perishables until the store opened at eight. I worked through till close at nine, by which time I was climbing the walls. At five to nine, I was minding the service desk while Ed was out for a smoke. Bianca was busy making some careful adjustments to Jeremy’s bow tie and gestured to me to do the closing message over the store PA system. It usually goes a little something like this: “Attention, customers, the time is now five minutes to nine and this store will cease trading in approximately five minutes. Please conclude your purchases and make your way to the checkouts. Thank you for shopping with Coles, the Fresh Food People.” I sometimes wake up at night saying it. Anyway, I picked up the microphone, and instead of doing the closing message, I started belting out “Khe Sanh”—this ’80s pub rock anthem about the miserable homecoming of a Vietnam vet. And I got as far as there being no V-day heroes in 1973 before Bianca wrestled the microphone from me and spat chips.

  While she shrieked at me with Jeremy smirking behind her, the PA crackled to life again and Ed’s voiced boomed through the store. He continued where I had left off for a good few lines until someone wrestled the back dock mike off him. Ed and I are as one.

  It turned out there weren’t any customers left in the store.

  January 30

  Rohan’s back from Europe. Going to the pub with him, Mick and Suze. Now.

  February 8

  Uni resumes in three weeks. Rohan has found an apartment in Newcastle and we are going up for his housewarming party next week. He starts the new job in two weeks. I’m still working twenty-five to thirty hours per week at Coles, but really hope to cut it down to twelve when uni begins. Zoe has also found herself a graduate position at an accounting firm in the city, and Dad is chuffed. She reckons she’s moving into her own place as soon as she saves enough money for rent and furniture. Good for her, I say. She hasn’t told Dad and Mum about this plan. Dad will freak out big-time and say she should stay at home until she can buy her own place. “Why throw your money away on rent?” is his standard response. I see the payment of rent more as an investment in your own sanity and independence.

  February 14

  I’m writing from Rohan’s flat in Newcastle. The party is tonight. He, Mick and Suze have gone off on a final ice-and-tea-light-candle-buying mission. I begged off and have set myself up on Ro’s bedroom balcony with a beer. I can see glimpses of the harbor. There are several big tanker ships moored way out to sea, patiently (it looks like) waiting for their turn to come into port. I wonder how long they have to wait. I wonder what the crew members do while they are waiting. In my imagination, they are playing cards. Opposite Ro’s block are six huge old town houses, complete with five-pot chimney stacks on every seam. They’re beautiful. It’s a quiet street. It won’t be tonight.

  We drove up yesterday—Suze, Mick and me—in Mick’s dad’s 1987 Land Cruiser. What a beast. After the usual painful crawl along the Pacific Highway getting out of the city, we let loose on the F3, turned up the music and gunned it to Newcastle. As we were driving down and then up the gully with those two huge wind socks, I had one of those moments when you get nostalgic about something as it’s still happening. Anticipatory nostalgia. We were driving fast. Somewhere around the Peat’s Ridge exit I had ferreted out one of Mick’s Kings of Leon CDs and we were chatting and singing by turns. Suze took the album jacket cover out of my hands and studied it. “They are some tight pants,” she said to no one in particular. “Yessir, they are.” We descended the gully, our heads flung back, singing at the top of our lungs. And then coasted up the other side on the speed we had picked up on the way down.

  Years from now, when Mick, Suze, Rohan and I have all grown up, dispersed to the suburbs with our spouses and children, chins sunk deep into collars on the Long March of the fifty-year mortgage and hardly ever seeing each other, I will be going through some boxes of old CDs and will come across that Kings of Leon album. I will put it on and be hurtled back in time to the day when I was fanging along the F3 with my mates Mick and Suze, singing so loudly our voices cracked, on our way to Ro’s housewarming party in Newcastle.

  And what an event it promises to be. The Jell-O shots are in the fridge. When the ice arrives, we will mix up a giant bowl of Blue Lagoon. There are three cases of beer waiting to go into the bath. We’ve ordered a heap of Turkish pizza to arrive at about eight and got chips and dips to last until then. Heaps of Rohan’s engineering friends are coming, including the lovely Stella, who is impossibly petite and pretty for an engineer. Get this—she is now studying for a master’s degree in chemical engineering, after which she will be able to call herself a master brewer. Is there anything cooler than that? Is there?

  Ro’s cousins and their friends from up this way are coming, and some other mates from uni might make it up too. Maybe the Perfect Woman is somewhere not too far away, standing in front of her wardrobe, flushed from the shower and clad in a bathrobe as she chooses what clothes to wear tonight. Godspeed, Perfect Woman.

  It’s hot, damn hot. High nineties. We spent the morning on Nobby’s Beach, surfing and throwing the Frisbee, but had to hotfoot it out of the sun
by eleven. Literally hotfoot it—the sand was too hot to walk on.

  I’ll wrap it up now. I want to rock back on my chair and absorb the view. Thumbnails scraping at the label of my beer. A little black tugboat is chugging out to meet a tanker. There’s a grand old cathedral up the road—I can see the spires. The bells are ringing.

  5 a.m.?

  There are traces of orange in the east.

  Alone, alone, all, all alone,

  Alone on a wide wide sea!

  And never a saint took pity on

  My soul in agony.

  Please God don’t let me puke.

  February 15, 11 p.m.

  Back in my own bedroom. Tonight is my first alcohol-free night in I don’t know how long. My stomach has just protested at the mere mention of alcohol—oops, sorry, stomach, I mean the a-word. It was a subdued drive back to Sydney. I don’t know who among us was more hungover. We all looked as rough as guts. Uncle Jeff was here for dinner when I got back and wanted to start something with me. As usual, he initially disguised this as seemingly innocuous chummy inquiries about my life or my opinion of some current affair. I offend something that runs deep in Uncle Jeff. More so since his divorce. Or maybe his divorce just coincided with when I started to grow a personality.

  Anyways, I made excuses of feeling unwell and stumbled straight out to my bedroom. Aspirin, ibuprofen, Tylenol, bacon and eggs, tea, coffee—none of them can fix the pain at the base of my skull, the taste in my mouth or the general indignation of my internal organs.

  I may have gotten a bit messy last night, as evidenced by the scribbling of what appears to be a verse from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Needless to say, the Perfect Woman was not in attendance at Rohan’s housewarming party. Some of Ro’s mates came to the party at about midnight, having been to see a band at the uni bar. In my lubricated state, that got me to thinking about what I had been doing a sterling job of not thinking about for the whole trip. Namely, the one time I had been to Newcastle before.

  Just after midyear exams last year, Michaela and I came up to stay with a friend of hers who was doing a semester at Newcastle Uni. A “Perth girl.” There’s a whole Perth thing. They all seem to know each other. Like a big country town. I digress. We came up to stay with this friend in her giant share house. Student share houses always fascinate the likes of me, who have to live at home if we want to keep studying.

  Bernadette, this friend of Michaela’s, lived with eight other students. There were two big living rooms, with coffee tables made from milk crates and huge, tired-looking Tarantino posters on the walls. We slept on the floor of her big, damp bedroom with peeling wallpaper and rotting carpet. We had a big barbecue out back with a bunch of other students on Saturday afternoon. We went to the uni bar to see some indie rock band. It was three weeks until Michaela was due to go back home. I was dreading her immediate absence, but I didn’t think for a second that we would be over when she went back. Pretty much the only time we weren’t touching was when one of us went to the toilet. This bordering-on-desperate grip was mutual—she must have been holding on for all she was worth, knowing that soon she’d be going back to Brad, and wondering how on earth she was going to play that one.

  In retrospect, I can see that Bernadette was a bit uncomfortable and bemused by all the coupliness. One time she and Michaela were in the kitchen and I overheard her ask in a low voice, “Have you spoken to Brad lately?” and Michaela reply, “Um, yeah. Last week.” They both started, almost imperceptibly, when I came into the room.

  “Who’s Brad?” I asked.

  “A friend from back home,” Michaela replied without missing a beat.

  “There are real people called Brad?”

  “At least one.” She smiled in my direction but didn’t look at my eyes. “Cup of coffee?”

  At the gig we were one of Those Couples. You’ve seen them at every gig you’ve been to. They stand oblivious to the many petty insults of being surrounded by a sea of buffeting, drunk people. Usually the guy is standing behind the girl, both his arms encircling her, almost supporting her weight and protecting her from the crowd. They whisper in each other’s ears from time to time. The bloke will often tap-tap along with the music on the girl’s hips. And they are so going home to get it on after the show. You know it and I know it. Anyways. That Couple was me for a few months.

  Later that night I woke, on the dusty floor of Bernadette’s room, to find Michaela propped up on one elbow, studying me while I slept.

  Alone on a wide wide sea.

  February 28

  Ed was more or less lucid at work yesterday, so I took the opportunity to make a couple of suggestions. One—he should cut down on his pot. Two—he should ask out young Amelia. She’s not even three years younger than him and she’s a great girl, all of which I pointed out. She’s smart, she’ll make you laugh, I said. She’s cute, she’s straight down the line, I said. You’ll have a good time with her, I said.

  Ed shrugged and made noncommittal noises.

  “What? What?” I pestered him. “Why not?”

  He put down the crate of receipt rolls he was carrying and leveled with me. “Chris, she’s a very nice girl. But I’m not quite the fan that you are.” Well. His life. At least I gave Georgia from the deli a go!

  March 3

  Okay. Let’s take stock. I’m working only fifteen hours per week, so am more or less on top of uni work at this early stage in the game. This morning I didn’t start till eleven, so when I dragged my arse out of bed, everyone was at work. A magazine article titled “Are You Drinking at Problem Levels?” just happened to be open on the kitchen bench. Mum and Zoe are in unsubtle cahoots. Let’s take a look at the Field:

  —Kathy The Kathy virus has been in and out of remission for, let’s see, three years now. I might make an executive decision sometime this year to actually hit on her proper and see what happens. Kathy reserves the right to shoot me down in a ball of flames at all times. At least I’ll go to my grave knowing that I did not go quietly into that good night.

  —Stella the master brewer The pretty engineer. Although, I noticed her and Rohan doing some close-talking at his housewarming. Perhaps I should sound it out with him before I ask Ro for her number.

  —Sveta Tarasova (token youngster) Sixteen-year-old checkout operator. Perfectly legal. Amazing legs. Trained her up with my own hands. Bet I could have her on her arse in a matter of coffee dates. They all seem to look up to me with starry eyes, the youngsters. I excite them. I wish I was as irresistible to the Kathys and Michaelas.

  March 15

  There was a fire in the Wonder Bread factory last night. Thousands have been left breadless. Foul play is suspected.

  March 18

  It’s Sunday night. Uncle Jeff was here when I got home from work this afternoon and was obviously staying for dinner. He and my parents were sitting out back under the awning. The empties from a six-pack of beer were lined up along the kitchen counter. Crap. I skulked about in my room and pretended to be doing uni work until Mum came in and said I had to come out and talk to him. It is SO humiliating when she does that. I’m one-and-twenty years old. I can vote, enlist, drink legally in the US and “come into” my inheritance in a Jane Austen novel. But I can’t come home from work and flop onto my bed in peace if I choose. It’s all wrong. God, I wish I could move out. If I dropped out of school and went full-time at Coles, I could start looking for a place after a month’s pay. The Perishables manager would have me full-time in a heartbeat.

  So out I come to talk to Uncle Jeff, who is my father’s brother, older by five years and the worst kind of baby boomer. He’s an environmental manager or some such. No one knows exactly what he does. He worked for years and years at the Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Natural Resources. Then he left there to work in the “private sector.” He and Aunty Jo used to live in Lane Cove with my two cousins. After the divorce, he moved to a flat in Rose Bay, where he has remained. His barely veiled anger toward me also extends to “my
generation,” whatever that means. I suspect that Uncle Jeff rides his angry wagon in my direction because his own kids chose to live with their mother. Today—predictably—he expostulated about how “my generation” is apathetic and never protests about anything.

  “Yes …,” I said. “Well …”

  My mother shot me the pleading look. Let it go, son.

  “When I was a student,” Jeff continued, “we got out there and protested about the things that mattered. We made our opinions known. We put in the hard yards. We effected change.” He paused for breath and looked pleased with himself.

  “You raged against the dying of the light,” I added helpfully.

  My mother looked uncertain and Jeff looked undecided.

  “Chris, you have an essay due, don’t you?” Mum was giving me an out, knowing there was only so long I could hold the line.

  “I do.”

  “Well, you can be excused to go and work on it.”

  “What’s it on?” Uncle Jeff piped up, louder than necessary, in all his belligerent glory. “Bloody poofterdom in John bloody Keats?”

  Oh, good times.

  I put in the hard yards, I thought, back in my room. I just put them in at the Land of Dreams.

  April 2

  Bianca’s having a party at her parents’ place. Waterfront home on Rose Bay. I’ve been there a few times before. You could swim out to Shark Island.

  It’s time I threw my hammer at destiny and put my case to Kathy. The Kathy virus is hard to understand. Is it just because she is beautiful and uninterested in me? Is it just the chase? The masochistic thrill of the threat of being rejected? Coupled with me being lonely and rootless? Whatever it is, it’s pretty strong and has been going on for long enough. Time to act—and then at least I’ll know. After some careful mustache-twirling consideration, I have devised the following plan.