‘How much have we taken tonight, Josh?’ Ollie asks me, and I have to go through the motions of doing a till read-out because Ollie has this constant need to check how much money he has made. I used to love doing this too, turning the key on the cash register, pressing the button and watching the docket spit out its inky purple running tally for the day. I don’t want to tell Ollie that it’s probably only fifteen dollars, but then luckily Dallas comes to the counter to order her own FLO, a large basket of chips with gravy, and Ollie forgets about the read-out and seems happy again. I turn the fryer up to 180 degrees and go into the small kitchen annexe to get the frozen chips. The coffin freezer is almost empty except for a box of squid rings and a handful of loose chips which have melded into the icy bottom, so I pry them off with a knife and put them into the wire basket for frying. It’s so embarrassing. Ollie hasn’t done a shop in ages, but at least we still have the ginormous tin of instant gravy that we bought from Foodland Cash and Carry, the warehouse wonderland. You can only shop at Foodland Cash and Carry if you have proof you own a business, and in Ollie’s case it’s having his own ABN. The first time Ollie and I went shopping there, we were like little elves looking up at the giant shelves of jumbo-sized everything: tomato sauce, mustard, sacks of sugar, flour, rice and plastic spoons. Everything economical and in bulk. We went crazy during that first shop, even adding giant bags of lollies—milk bottles, musk sticks, snakes, teeth, sour worms—that Ollie was going to make up into lucky dips. We circled the warehouse with our two trolleys, looking at the other customers and trying to suss them out: the hamburger joint owner with his super-sized tubs of mayo; the not-for-profit holiday church groups with their forty loaves of white bread; and the mothers in loose shorts and flip-flops, their cracked heels a floury-grey colour, making us wonder, did you really need an ABN to shop at Foodland Cash and Carry? And there is something about jumbo-sized things that makes you feel tired, saps all the energy out of your dwarfish legs. We loaded up the car and I felt drained and blah, that same kind of feeling I get when shopping for Back to School supplies with Mum.
When the food is finally ready I take it out to Dallas. She is standing at the counter with Ollie, having a conversation of sorts without facing him. Dallas, bigger than the State of Texas, wearing her signature muumuu dress with white bobby socks and red bowling shoes. I explain to her that I don’t have enough chips but have given her a complimentary serve of squid rings to make up for it. Squid rings and chips are not her FLO, but she doesn’t complain because she knows that squid rings are the most expensive item on the menu. Ollie looks a little peeved, but then I realise he is waiting for something else. Happy Days. He has instructed me to say these magic words every time a customer receives their order, but I can never bring myself to do it. It sounds too naff. I prefer to say Cheers— short and abrupt yet breezy friendly. But Ollie is watching me and I can see he is moving his lips slightly, pre-empting the words like he does when watching a favourite movie. So Dallas stands there heavily shaking the chicken salt all over her complimentary squid and chips and I start to speak, then lose my nerve and the words come out in a quick tumble, sounding something more like ‘happy ears’.
Gutter Ball
Ollie’s next shot for the night trickles down the channel without collecting a single pin. Strictly speaking it should be called a channel ball but the word ‘gutter’ punches at the heart more. I watch the replay on the video monitor, the cheesy animation of a little pig crying wee wee wee all the way home. That’s the worst thing with the video screen— your humiliation plays out in animal form. Ollie makes a joke of it and gives a little shrug. That’s Ollie’s way of dealing with disappointment—a shrug or a plan. He is always coming up with a new scheme to make this shithole work. Pizza ’n’ Bowl—install a wood-fired pizza oven, and make some dough outta dough! Drive-Thru Bowl— knock a window through to the car park for those who want takeaway without setting a foot inside. And some of his ideas aren’t that crazy. Almost doable. One time he asked Gary if he could convert the crèche into a birthday party room so he could have multiple birthday parties booked at the same time, instead of trying to cram all the kids onto the plastic tables at the front of the counter. This crèche is a complete disaster, a narrow, dark room filled with old school desks and dirty toys: baby rattles, stackable plastic ring sets with only one ring left, used colouring-in books, and naked Barbie dolls, their faces scrawled with blue biro. No-one ever uses this room except for a couple of single mothers from the team Alley Cats on the Wednesday night league. But Gary refused, forcing Ollie to come up with even more outrageous ideas. He thought about converting old car bodies into table booths to fit in with the Happy Days theme, but when he asked Mum if he could store the wrecks on her back lawn, she simply said, Oh, Ollie.
It’s not that Mum isn’t supportive. It was her idea to let her brother move in with us shortly after Dad died. Ollie was given the spare room, but soon he’d taken over the shed and the conversation pit began to fill up with boxes. Then there were the wings of a glider kit which he left out on the buffalo lawn, the silver streaks being slowly eaten by runners of green. Eventually Mum told him it was time to move on and found him the small unit, and it was sad to see all the stuff go. And even now when I go into the spare room and open the cupboard where a few of Dad’s old shirts are still stored, I can’t tell if it’s Ollie’s smell or Dad’s that returns like the infilling of the Holy Spirit after Mum does a quick once-over with a can of Glen 20.
A Turkey
On the monitor I can see a turkey with a thanksgiving tail strutting down the lanes proudly, and I wish it was Ollie who’d got the three consecutive strikes in a row. Ollie loves this turkey animation—maybe that’s why he was chuffed when he dreamed up ‘Turkey ’n’ Bowl’, a way to cash in on the Christmas in July phenomena.
He convinced Mum to hold the teachers’ annual Christmas party at the bowling alley even though they had their hearts set on a Miss Maud’s all you can eat smorgasbord. Mum allowed me to sleep over at Ollie’s the night before so I could help with all the prep. In the morning I found him dunking a frozen turkey in a sink of hot water. It was too late to defrost and cook it in time, so Ollie ended up going to Chicken Treat and buying eight cooked chooks to make into platters, along with iceberg lettuce and carrot sticks. He had spent the previous night peeling bags of potatoes. ‘No-one can say I’m stingy,’ he boasted, proudly covering them with a drum-tight layer of gladwrap before putting them in the car.
When we arrived at the bowl, we set up quickly, me putting bits of gold tinsel over the monitors and red plastic cloths over the tables while Ollie started deep-frying the potatoes whole. Then he loaded the bain-marie with mountains of spuds, and one tray with gravy, which he’d mixed from the tin.
Mum was the first to arrive. She carried in the Secret Santa gifts and, as if on cue, Lee put on the Michael Bublé Christmas CD. Mum looked tired but happy, wore her favourite floaty, peacock-blue blouse and had a bounce in her step in time with the music. Then she saw the chicken platters, the potatoes in the bain-marie. ‘Are they roasted?’ she asked, and when I told her they were deep-fried she frowned, saying, ‘Are you sure you can cook them like that?’ I, too, had my doubts but wasn’t going to tell her.
Soon the place filled up with teachers, and it had the smug buzz of a quiz night. Lee lined up the battered red-and-white bowling shoes on the counter, their tongues hanging out like panting dogs, and he sprayed a large green can of deodorant back and forth over them. The teachers picked through the items as if they were choosing the least damaged fruit at the market. Mum looked frazzled. Entrées were meant to be served before the first game, and afterwards, mains followed by dessert. I raced around with the dips still in their containers and the packet of Ritz for dunking. Ollie followed behind with the olives. I recognised lots of faces and they all wanted to ask me questions. There was Mrs Johnson, the music teacher who had known Mum for ages, wearing flashing reindeer earrings; Miss Lewis, a leathery, shriv
elled-up sports teacher who’d spent a lot of time chasing balls in the sun; and Mr Sims, the bearded chemistry teacher, who walked as if he has a rod up his bum. I weaved my dips through the group, giving out as much information as it takes to scoop some hummus onto a cracker. For once I didn’t mind that Mum had shared so much of my life with them. It might just get us over the line.
At twelve, the teachers all lined up for the buffet, full of expectations, picked over the chicken and left the mound of potatoes. There was a sombre mood in the room—it was the sound of no-one eating—but the Coles pavlovas were perking Ollie up. He dolloped cream and piled strawberries and kiwi fruit on top. Everyone loves a pav! (Not if they thought they were getting trifle.)
But the final straw was the coffee. People can put up with bad food, but when you’re paying top dollar, your cappuccino cannot be Nescafé instant with whipped froth on top. The deputy principal, Sue McGurk, had put her shoes back on, become the leaning tower of Pisa again, and her heels rasped and snagged across the thin industrial carpet as she approached our counter.
‘I’ll have a flat white.’
Ollie looked confused.
‘You do know what a flat white is?’ she said, as she adjusted her tortoiseshell bifocals to examine the chalkboard menu, to take it all in.
‘Cappuccino,’ Ollie replied, and handed her the instant coffee topped with an eggy white cloud.
And that was the beginning of the end.
Wombat
That’s what you call it when you throw a spare after a gutter ball. Ollie’s last ball of the night is a wombat and he dances around on the ‘approach’, high-fiving his other team members. I almost think he is going to attempt a click of the heels like Andy Varipapa does in the old movies. Everyone starts huddling in for the final debrief and review of the leader board, and I know I have about fifteen minutes to do a quick mop of the floor and count the money before the bowlers start grabbing their stuff and exiting to the car park.
I look across to the other side of the room and see that Lee and Gary already have their heads bowed together as they do their own till count, their fingers trilling over the paper bills. The first time I saw them count their money I was secretly pleased to see that they weren’t as quick as Ollie. Ollie’s first job was in a bank, in the days you could leave school in Year Ten with an achievement certificate, and I could imagine his chubby face at fifteen peering through a glass window at the line of customers. Even though Ollie is almost fifty, and grizzled around his temple with a harvest crop of stubble on his chin, there is still a round schoolboy softness about his face. And he has the bluest eyes, the kind of blue I always associate with clear skies and open doorways. I don’t know what happened at the bank, maybe it had something to do with the nervous breakdown that Mum hints at, but I sometimes see it when he zones in and out of conversations, or in the involuntary muscle spasm beneath his right eye, like a tiny tremor along a dangerous fault line.
I am squeezing out the mop head—a grey trickle of water oozes out, into my bucket—and Ollie comes over and bangs his bowling bag onto the counter.
‘Super sippers,’ he blurts out. ‘You fill these cups with postmix and give a refill for half price. If we water down the second lot of syrup no-one will ever know. The law of diminishing returns, right?’ He smiles at me. ‘The second bite is never as good as the first!’
I stare at him dumbly, wondering what on earth he is on about, but before I can answer Gary comes up to the kiosk, the smirk on his lips twisting into a Joker-like grin.
‘I was thinking, Ollie. We’ll have to add an extra tariff to your electricity bill. You know, the carbon tax and all.’
As he is saying this, Gary presses down on the silver straw dispenser, a pad-like movement with his fingertip, and a straw neatly rolls out into the depository. He fishes it out with his fat finger and thumb, and twirls it around like a swizzle stick. I stare at Gary’s dirty fingernails and funnel as much hate as I can muster into the fingertips, down the straw hole and into his greasy, black heart. I glance across at Ollie, but he doesn’t look any different. Maybe there is the slightest movement beneath his right eye like the pulse of a tiny sparrow, but his clear blue eyes are staring ahead at the video monitor, which has gone into its usual default image of a desert island. There’s a sandy beach, a single palm tree, and the bluest water stretching out to a winking horizon. And I too stare at that screen, so that my eyes begin to do strange things with the pixelated dots and colours of the sand, the tree, the water, the sky. They start to blur and move together, in the same way that when you stare long enough at a whiteboard full of mathematical equations the numbers begin to sway and dance and join hands with one another, not unlike a never-ending chorus line of paper-chain children.
FABULOUS LIVES
It was too late for Edith. She knew that when she stood in the lobby of 11 Howard Street staring at the warehouse-sized sterile room, empty except for a central round table with an iPad plonked in the middle. Ricky had organised this SoHo hotel for her and she wondered if it was intentional, to suggest a place where she was clearly not the intended demographic. At forty-eight, she was the oldest guest here, though it was difficult to tell the customers and hotel staff apart—everyone wore the same stock-standard uniform of dark hoodies and designer ripped jeans.
Edith felt wearied from the long journey from Australia and thankful that Ricky kept cancelling on her. He was held up in meetings with his agent, and then there was the situation with another acting friend. You know the type, Edith. Real drama queen.
So she spent the first few days on her own, walking the streets of SoHo and then visiting all the landmark buildings—the Empire State Building, the Rockefeller Center, Grand Central Station. And it was quite surreal. She would have this sudden flash of familiarity—a sense of déjà vu, as if she had been here before—and then the frustration would take over as she pushed her pitiful brain to nut out exactly which movie scene she was remembering. In this way Edith never felt fully present, push-pulling her brain for a slice of something, so that the whole experience became dissatisfying and exhausting. Central Park was different though. She stood on the outer fringe of the park, saw the leafless, barely-alive trees, and the horses shivering and exhaling puffs of air like dragons, and thought dispassionately, this moment belongs only to me. It didn’t last. It was too cold to stand outside—her Perth-bought coat clearly inadequate for a New York winter—so she crossed over the street and went to find refuge in an Italian-style restaurant.
The cheeriness of the place instantly lifted Edith’s spirits. Big brass lamps glowed and candles flickered light into all the dark recesses, and the young waiters had a healthy sheen to their skin that suggested long summers in faraway places. She was shown a table one back from the window, so the only way she could see the park was to look through a gap created by another seated couple. A tiny gap, because, being in love, they spent the majority of the time leaning in towards each other, scalps almost touching. When they pulled away to deposit a spoonful of food into their mouths or take little sips of wine, she took advantage of the viewing opportunity and greedily drank in a quick snapshot of the park.
Edith knew the restaurant would be expensive by the way the waiter shook out a cloth napkin onto her lap and filled the water glass to the brim. Even though Ricky had promised he would cover everything, she’d already paid for the hotel in advance and was worried about maxing out her credit card. She ordered a bowl of minestrone, hoping it would come with extra bread. The waiter withdrew from her quickly, and flitted around the other couple. Soon another waiter came over to their table with a bottle wrapped in a white cloth, and a flirtatious energy filled the room, oscillations of desire between the young couple and the two dark-eyed waiters, different permutations of body language and banter so that it was difficult to tell who was batting their thick lashes at whom.
The cynic in her questioned the performance, the waiters’ motives. Truth be told, New York was all about the money—Edith ha
d recognised that already. Throwing those dollar bills to waiters, taxi drivers, doormen, bellhops, when she should have been the one holding out her hand. Edith thought about her earlier life and whether she could have survived here on her own. A penniless, talentless girl. No, New York would have gobbled her up. Though there was always the groupie thing, attaching yourself to someone else’s glitter and gold, before you end up barefoot and back in Nebraska.
* * *
Edith hadn’t spoken to Ricky in years, so when he had reached out to her via Facebook a month earlier, she was surprised. She’d had little contact with him since university and the unpleasantness of the graduation ceremony, and mainly kept up with all of his accomplishments through their common circle of friends. Have you heard Ricky is doing a one-man show at Fringe? Have you seen Ricky in the new TV series on SBS? It was better to hear it from others, for she couldn’t continue to fake her enthusiasm over the phone; her voice gradually gave way to an insincerity—you could detect it in the lengthened vowels—Oooooh, how wonderful!—a widening arc of despair. It seemed that Ricky was the better actor after all.
They had first met during orientation week, signing up for Theatre Sports, and then sat in the same row during the first Semiotics of Performance lecture. Edith had recognised Ricky instantly by the purple happy pants and his erect dancer’s posture—all the other students slouched back, into their chairs. From a distance he could have passed as Chinese—pale, angular face, short black hair and almond eyes—but only when Edith finally spoke to him at length did she get a chance to examine his face up close, and she was surprised to see he was wearing makeup: a thick paste to mask his acne, and eyeliner drawn up into cat’s eyes.
Fabulous Lives Page 4