Loaded

  –Got a job yet? Joe asks me. I hate that question. No, I answer and put the Walkman in my bag. He starts telling me about his job. Working people always think you’ll be interested in what they do. None that I know do anything interesting.

  –Looking for work? I say yes and get up to ask for coffee. Joe calls out for a milkshake and takes a five-dollar bill from his pocket. My shout, I say. Make it mine, he disagrees, you’re unemployed. The young woman looks up at me. I don’t take the money and go into the shop. The cavern in my stomach is still there, in my blood, my whole system calling for food. I order a cake with the drinks.

  –How’s your folks? Joe asks me. The longer we are friends the less interesting are the questions we ask each other. I give him the usual answers and grab a cigarette from a squashed packet in my bag. How’s yours?

  –Good.

  –Going home to watch the cricket? I don’t answer. He knows I hate the game. We going out tonight? I ask.

  –Sure. Meet you at my place. I nod and eat the cake quickly. Syrup coats my mouth and I grab a napkin to clean myself up. The dope is wearing off and Joe is busy checking out the girls around him. Some nice birds here, he whispers with a grin. I give them a quick glance. Too woggy, I say. There is one woman I find attractive; a young girl in a black sweater, her hair in a ponytail, a line of soft red lipstick on her lips. I like that one, I say to Joe, and she notices me pointing. I smile at her and she smiles back.

  –You’re in man, she’ll give you a root. Joe is an idiot when it comes to sex. Talks like a cheap Italian movie.

  –I don’t root, I fuck, I tell him.

  –What’s the diff? I shrug my shoulders and butt out my cigarette. The way you do it, I say and stand up.

  –The guy she’s with is one ugly fuck, isn’t he? I look at the guy. He’s young, wearing a bad floral shirt. Joe’s wrong. He’s got a good body, a mildly handsome face. It’s his clothes that are the problem. I don’t saying anything to Joe, he gets uncomfortable when I talk about boys.

  –I’ve got a joint in my pocket, I tell him patting my tracksuit pocket. Want some? He agrees.

  We go to smoke in Joe’s car in the underground car park. The young security person looks stoned and waves hello to us. He’s sitting with his legs up on the counter, reading the paper. The cricket is on the radio and Joe starts a conversation. I walk off and search for his car. There is a cool breeze in the car park and when I find the car I rest against it and put my bag on its roof. His parents bought it for him for his eighteenth birthday, and over the two years he has washed it religiously every Sunday; he even vacuums the back seat. I don’t drive. I don’t need to. Everyone I know has a car.

  –Take your fucking bag off my car. Joe comes over and searches the roof for any scratches. He glares at me as I get into the passenger seat. I take out the joint and offer him the first smoke. He takes it and lets out a long slow exhale of smoke.

  Joe has got his world worked out, or so he likes to think he has. He’s got a job, got a girlfriend, got a car. Soon he wants to get married. I think it’s a mistake but I figure that it isn’t my business to tell him such things and I don’t. He’s an adult. But it seems to me that there are two things in this world guaranteed to make you old and flabby. Work and marriage. It is inevitable. The faces of all the workers and all the married people I see carry the strain of living a life of rules and regulations. Joe’s face is still young looking, he still has sharp bright eyes. But he’s changing. Doing the nine to five on weekdays. No dirty T-shirts but a shirt and tie and a briefcase by his side. He keeps his crew cut because he still wants to dip one foot into the pool of freedom, but even that will change once the wedding ring is slipped on. They won’t let him walk up the aisle without at least two inches of hair, not in a Greek church. It’s his cop-out.

  Unless you’re a smart thief everyone has to work, or scrounge around saying yes-sir-no-sir-can-I-have-a-raise-sir-can-I-have-the-day-off-sir-my-grandmother-is-sick-sir-dad-can-you-lend-me-twenty. We all have to sell ourselves. But you don’t have to get married, you don’t have to sell all of yourself. There is a small part of myself, deep inside of me, which I let no one touch. If I let it out, let someone have a look at it, brush their hands across that part of my soul, then they would want to have it, buy it, steal it, own it. Joe’s put that part of himself up for market and he would be the first to say it’s because he can’t put up with the demands. Parents, friends, bosses, girlfriends, girlfriends’ parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, even the fucking neighbours. They all want to sell, buy, invest in the future. And now he’s just waiting for the right bid, and I know what it is. Once his parents and her parents offer a house, or at least a hefty deposit, the deal will be clinched. The marriage will be arranged. Joe will have joined the other side, just another respectable wog on a mortgage. I look at him drawing on the joint and I turn away and make circles in the air with the smoke. Coward, I whisper. But he doesn’t hear me.

  –What you say? Nothing, I reply and he gives me the joint. We smoke it and he offers me a lift home but I prefer to walk. It is a good half-hour but I want to clear my head from the alcohol last night. I get out and confirm meeting at his place tonight. Joe waves me away and goes off to have a conversation with the security guard. I shuffle around my bag and find my Walkman.

  Dad is in the garden watering the plants. The garden is the most important part of his life now. If he’s not among the plants, he’s asleep, or down at the coffee shop with his friends. That’s when he’s not working, but I don’t know what Dad is like at work. We don’t talk about it.

  I go up to him and gently touch his shoulder. He pulls away. Go see your mother, he says, she’s upset. He yanks the Walkman out of my hand. Where have you been you animal?

  –With Panayioti. He walks away and fiddles with some flowers. I hear him muttering about me, about my brother, about my sister. I expected his anger, I’m used to it, but at the same time the whole of my emotions, all the shit fluttering around my head, feels like it’s going to erupt out of me and all over him. My body is immediately tense, waiting for the fight. I yell arsehole at him. He hears and shakes his head. Then he looks sad and I wish I could walk straight past the gate, back down the street and away from him, my family and the world. But I don’t. I walk in the front door.

  Mum’s smoking a cigarette in the kitchen and listening to the radio. I smell tomato and eggs and hope the shouting is over quickly. I’m starving. She begins and I shut off. It’s an easy trick I have learned. I focus on her forehead. Peter taught me the trick but we use it to different results. Dad can rave at him for hours and Peter will walk away unaffected. It’s Mum who drives him crazy. But I have no patience for my mother. Dad has an excuse, he was born in Greece. A different world. Poverty, war, hardship, no school, no going out, no TV. It’s a world he’d prefer to go back to and a world I have no fucking clue about. Singing around coffee tables, sleeping in the afternoon, walks in the evening and celebrations in the night. He should never have left, no matter how bad things were back there. Here, under the Australian sun, he’s constantly sniffing the air and looking disappointed. He can’t really breathe here, he says.

  But Mum’s different. She was born here and is as Australian as me. Shit, with the nasally squawk she speaks in she’s more skip than me. She butts out her cigarette and lets fly. Where have I been? Why don’t I ring? I stare into her forehead. The questions continue and I don’t answer any of them. She starts a rave in Greek, calls me a fucking animal, a pig in the mud she stresses, throws a tea-towel at me and starts crying. I go to her, put my arm around her shoulder and kiss her on the cheek. Hi Mum, I say, I’m hungry. She slaps me lightly on my arse and, grumbling a little more, starts preparing lunch.

  I turn on the TV in the lounge room and flick across the stations. A young James Stewart in a cowboy suit. I sit down to watch the movie and Mum brings in a plate of tomato and egg, some fetta, some bread and a salad. Do you want some meatballs? she asks me, and I refuse. Some coke? I n
od and she brings me a full glass and sets it down on the table.

  –I used to fight with your grandfather all the time, Ari. I scoop the meal in my mouth, wrapping the fetta in bread and swallowing it in large bites. But I always respected him, Ari. Always. She says the last words in Greek.

  –I respect you too, Mum. And Dad too. It’s a lie and maybe she knows it. I love my parents but I don’t think they have much guts. Always complaining about how hard life is and not having much money. And they do shit to change any of it. Dad would like to go back to Greece some day, he thinks that life will change for him then. But Mum wouldn’t leave us behind and I don’t know if Greece would make her any happier. I don’t know what would make her happier; she must dream of blinking her eyes, finding herself sixteen again and making different decisions.

  –I’m sorry Mum. I got drunk and forgot to ring. And I didn’t get up till late.

  –Just like your brother to get you drunk. She looks at me, smiles a little. Is he at the library? she asks. Yes, I lie, he’ll be there all day.

  –You can tell me, she says, he’s gone out with Janet, hasn’t he? I just stare at the TV. He’s studying, Mum. I finish off the food and she starts clearing away the mess. I never see your brother any more. Not since that bitch took him away from us, I hear her yell loudly from the kitchen.

  On screen an ugly bad guy has started a fight with Jimmy Stewart. A blonde woman in tight black suspenders and a white petticoat helps him out by smashing a bottle of spirits over the bad guy’s head. She’s got great legs and no talent. You can see her eyes wandering towards the camera. I’m not listening to Mum. She can go on about my brother having left home for ages. She broods, cries about it, holds her head low sometimes, sighing deeply, lamenting her boy’s betrayal of her. Yet she nurses the betrayal, cultivates it, makes her pain ecstatic because it adds a sheen of tragedy to a boring life. I let her rave and watch the movie. Soon she gives up on me and weeps silently to herself in the kitchen, doing the dishes.

  There must be thousands of movies I’ve seen on television. It could be that the one I’m watching now I’ve seen years before. The best run early on weekday mornings and I often go to bed setting the alarm for 2.15 am or 3.35 am. I wake up in the middle of the night, grab some biscuits and chips from the pantry, or a glass of whisky, or roll a joint, whatever addiction I need to satisfy at that moment, and watch an old movie. There are fewer ads at that time of night and there is no one else around making noise, asking questions, ruining the film for you. I don’t talk much about movies to people. I prefer to watch them on my own, even at the cinema. Everyone around me talks about loving the movies but that’s bullshit. They’ll go to see a movie because everyone is talking about it, or they need to do something before dinner or clubbing, or because the ads for the movie are good. Most people prefer television. I hate television, only watch it to catch up with old movies. People on television – actors, journalists, entertainers – are all second-rate. Movies are movies. They’re an occasion, a night out. Television is a piece of furniture.

  An ad comes on the television and I jump to my feet. Mum, I yell, where’s Alex? At your aunt’s, Mum yells back. She comes in with her packet of cigarettes in her hand. I grab two from her and light them both. I hand one back to her. There you go, Bette, I say. She looks at me with a puzzled expression. Mum is part of the television generation as well, and she knows shit about anything except what the television and magazines tell her. Brain dead. For her the real world begins every day at seven in the morning with ‘Good Morning Australia’.

  –I’m going over. Do you want to come? She shakes her head. I kiss her goodbye, yell something neutral in Greek to my father who ignores me, hitch the Walkman around my track pants and put the headphones on. I press play and walk out the gate.

  A Vietnamese woman, thin and dressed in a white singlet, dark glasses over her eyes, walks towards me on Church Street. I wave to her and take off the headphones. She stops for a chat. Trin is lovely, with dark shimmering skin, but she’s smacked out most of the time and never takes the sunglasses off. Our conversation is stilted. I ask after her kid and she becomes a bit more animated, telling me she’s left him with her parents for the weekend. She loves her child. She walks with me to the bottom of the hill and I invite her into my aunt’s place but she declines. I don’t blame her. The Greeks, the Vietnamese, the skips, the whole fucking neighbourhood is suspicious of her. She avoids people as much as possible, except for the junkies and people like me who don’t wish her any harm. The rumour is she whores for a living but I’ve never asked and I don’t care a shit either way. She told me once, with her broken accent, in her soft voice made raw by cigarettes, that Ari, you know, it not true what they say about me. Sure, mate, I told her, anyway, a living is a living. It didn’t seem to be the answer she wanted but I wasn’t going to pretend that I believed her completely. A junkie needs cash. It’s not my business to blame her. Nor is it my business to absolve her.

  Trin says ciao to me outside my aunt’s house and walks back up the hill. Take care, I say softly and hope that my whisper wraps around her slight shoulders and comforts her a little.

  My aunt’s home smells of basil and lemon and I walk straight through to the back. My aunt and my sister Alex are sitting at the kitchen table and my aunt is reading the coffee cups. I kiss them both and get a big hug from my aunt.

  –What are the coffee cups saying, Thea Tasia? I ask in Greek.

  –Shut up, Alex says, we haven’t finished mine. I ignore her. Can you read mine as well, Thea? She nods and I start making some Greek coffee. While I stir the sugar and coffee in the briki I listen to what she’s telling Alex. She sees a snake being trodden on by someone. That’s a good sign. Some friend of Alex’s is talking behind her back but Alex is going to get even with her. She sees a black spot in the home with a ‘J’ close to it. That part is bullshit. Like my mother, my aunt blames Janet for my brother leaving home. Alex has the good sense to ignore that part. I bring the coffee to the boil and pour some for myself. I get a glass of water from the fridge, sit down next to them and drink the coffee as fast as I can. The mixture of dope and caffeine is rushing through my system, sending the blood into spasms and I’m fidgety. My aunt notices. We’ll be with you soon, she says. Alex kicks me under the table. Wait your turn. I finish the coffee and turn the cup upside down to let the sediment dry.

  A lot of Greek bullshitters read the coffee cups but I reckon my Aunt Tasia is the real thing. She’ll make up stuff, of course. She always foretells wedding rings and jobs; you have to ignore that part of the reading. Alex dips her finger into the bottom of the sediment in her cup and my aunt has a look at it. I see a ‘C’, yes it’s an English ‘C’, and your heart is encircled by it. Do you know any boy starting with ‘C’ Aleka? My sister lies. No, Thea. I keep a straight face and ask what else she sees. My aunt looks a little concerned. She makes the sign of the cross but doesn’t answer me.

  She reads my coffee slowly, turning the cup around and around in her hands. I stare at her face, at her hair; look at the strands of grey hair peeping through the dyed blonde curls. There is someone who is wanting to look after you, Ari, someone who cares for you, but you are not facing them. You are ignoring them. She points to a few blobs of dried coffee. I can make out figures in the blobs. A line does divide the figures. Their name begins with a gamma. I know immediately it is George. I can even smell a faint trace of his sweat in the room. I say nothing. I feel foolish about the thought.

  Alex gets up and puts a Greek record on the stereo. A slow, old tsamiko. My aunt begins to sway a little to the music.

  Someone is going to offer you a job, Ari. I see a long road but there is money at the end of it. I smile at her and look to where she is pointing in the coffee cup. I see the road but the blob at the end of it is just a blob. Alex comes over to have a look. What’s the job, Thea? she asks. A garbage collector? She laughs and dances away from us. My aunt bangs the table and tells her to shut up.

&nbs
p; Continue reading, I tell her, and just ignore the little bitch. I’m not really offended. I’d hate any job she would have mentioned. Alex moves away and continues her solitary tsamiko and I press my thumb into the sediment. We both look at it. The perpendicular lines of the gamma are clear in the middle of the black muck. I tell you, Ari, she says, a girl whose name begins with a gamma is going to steal your heart. I avoid her eyes. I can taste George’s sweat. I lean over and kiss her. How are you? I ask.

  –Like shit, she answers. Alex tells me you stayed at your brother’s last night. Is he alright?

  –Yes, he’s fine. He sends his love. My aunt makes a face. Sure, sure, she mutters, but he can’t find the time to visit his thea. I ignore her and ask after my cousins. Sam’s at the shop and Katerina is out watching a movie. She asks me if I want something to eat and I refuse. She asks me again, pleading with me, and I refuse again. I get up and say I have to go. Alex is still dancing and I kiss my aunt goodbye, tell Alex I’ll see her later at home. On the way out I use the phone to ring Phil’s place. I ring once, let it ring through twice. I hang up and ring again, letting it ring twice again. On the third try I let Phil answer the phone. Who is it? he asks. Ari. It’s fine, come over. I yell gia sou to my sister and aunt and I’m out of the door, Walkman on. The blast of music wipes out the world in front of my eyes.