by Nick Earls
‘Much like yourself.’
‘Shit, yeah. It’s like, “I shot this for you, honey,” and then they owe ya.’
Sabre-toothed tiger, big furry toy. Not much has changed in Frank’s world these past million years. I try telling him about how much daytime TV can offer, if you’re prepared to give it a while to work its magic on you, but he’s never been patient. Neither have I, really, but Frank’s so bored he takes the trouble to get analytical about the plot holes in Days of Our Lives, so it’s inevitable he’ll crack first. And when he does, he gets us Ekka jobs.
‘Mate,’ he says. ‘Mate, the Ekka, the show, think about it. This is the solution. This gets us in there, and it gets us cash. A holiday job, right there, right under the mighty Ferris wheel in sideshow alley.’
‘Yeah, but . . .’
‘Cash, uniforms, chicks,’ he says, counting them on his fingers like an inventory of a lifetime’s best ideas, as though, just over the old broken-glass-topped showground wall there’s a land of plenty waiting for us to plunder like conquistadors.
Which I have to spell for him of course, and no simile is well served by that.
‘I thought it was pronounced con-kwis-tador, anyway,’ he says. ‘But fucked if I know what bullfighting’s got to do with all this.’
Frank does the talk on the phone, puts in quite a few calls that get nowhere. I leave him to it and get back to the TV.
‘Hey, pay dirt,’ he calls out a while later, as Days of Our Lives stages something threateningly climactic and the theme music swells. ‘I’m on hold at the Whipster ice-cream people and they’re checking their rosters.’
I mute the TV. I hadn’t expected we’d actually be contenders. They get back to him and I hear all kinds of lies about experience, the holidays we’ve spent travelling the eastern seaboard as itinerant soft-serve squirters. I think I hear him say, ‘Mate, your stall’l be nothing without us,’ and that’s when I have to unmute.
‘But we don’t know what we’re doing,’ I tell him when he comes back into the room, both thumbs up and a big, stupid grin on his face.
‘It’ll be fine,’ he says, doing a levering motion with his right arm and something swirly and soft-servish with his left.
‘But I’ve got no idea how you get that right. How you squirt the soft serve into that neat coil.’
‘Mate, dogs just have to bend their knees to do it. It can’t be hard.’
‘Did you say that on the phone?’
‘Nuh, it just came to me then. Pretty good, hey?’
‘When they go to show you how to operate the soft-serve machine . . .’
‘Actually, you’re the one who’ll be doing most of that.’
‘What?’
‘The soft-serve part of things. And they probably won’t be showing you.’
‘What?’
‘The soft-serve stuff. I said you were the boy for that. I sort of had to to get us the jobs. Their star soft-server’s done his wrist, apparently. So I said you could pretty much guarantee height, consistency and speed. And that I was more your hard ice-cream man. Your tough scooper. Maybe a squirt of cream on top. Maybe stretch to a spider.’
‘A spider?’
‘Yeah, the ice-cream and soft-drink combo. It’s pretty much a chick thing. You know the spider. Daytime drink. Low-key aperitif.’
‘Sophisticated chicks, obviously.’
‘Yeah? I’d never really thought of it that way. Sophisticated chicks? This just gets better.’
*
We go in early on our first day.
‘They mainly come in large,’ Noela, the manager, says, when she hands us our white Whipster overalls. ‘And you’re not particularly large, so you might have to roll some bits up. Like, the sleeves and legs.’
Which I do, and somehow this makes the crotch seem even lower, down about knee height.
‘Frank, I don’t feel very attractive in this,’ I can’t help but say in the decompensation of the moment. ‘I’ll never do justice to these pants.’
‘You haven’t got the cap on yet. I wouldn’t worry.’
‘And your name tags,’ Noela says. ‘Have we sorted that out yet?’
‘I phoned up yesterday about it,’ Frank tells her.
And she says, ‘Oh, yeah, that was you, Green,’ and she pulls an envelope out of her pocket and hands it to him. ‘There you go.’
And Frank opens the envelope, tips the tags into his hand, smirks. And mine says Philby, which makes me really shitty, the way he knew it would. But what really surprises me is that his says Juan.
When I ask him why, he shakes his head as though I know nothing at all about life, and he says, ‘New chicks. Totally new chicks, right? Possibility of sophistication?’ And he taps the white and pink Whipster name tag with a worldly, knowing finger and says, ‘Get this. Latin lover. Frank hasn’t been getting much lately, but Joo-ahn? For Joo-ahn, it’ll be another story.’
‘Wouldn’t that be Juan? Like, no ‘J’ sound. And a bit less like Joanne?’
‘Joo-ahn, Joo-ahn,’ he says as though I have a hearing problem, a small brain and no sense of the exotic. ‘Juan is like the Spanish for Wayne. W. Get it? I think they don’t have an ‘ay’ sound in Spanish, or something. And there’d be a problem if you spelt Wayne with a ‘J’, hey?’
So Joo-ahn it is, clearly. And already, as we stand here in our big-man’s parachute gear and our Juan and Philby Whipster name tags, I know the Ekka will be so bad (and in a way that will take Frank completely by surprise) that I’m regretting how weakly I defended the safe tedium of daytime TV. And I’m thinking I might be the kind of person who gets talked into things too easily.
‘Does my arse look big in this?’ Frank says, his mind fixed permanently on the science of chick magnetism.
‘Frank, No one’s arse could look big in that. An inflatable boat couldn’t look big in that.’
‘But you can see my arse?’
‘You can’t see anything.’
Actually, he looks like an unmade bed with hands, and a head sticking out the top. Somewhere in there, there is probably an arse, but there’s no way it’s going to get to be the love-feature Frank would like. So it looks as though it’ll all be down to personality.
‘You were hoping for something a little more fitted, weren’t you?’ I say to him, realising that his disappointment needs acknowledgment.
‘Yeah. More like a uniform. You know how uniforms have that thing about them?’
‘You haven’t got the cap on, yet,’ I tell him. ‘I wouldn’t worry. And you can tell them about your arse, anyway. They don’t all have to see it first up.’
‘Yeah, I guess.’
‘Okay, Joo-ahn, let’s do it.’
‘Joo-ahn,’ he says slowly, and the smile is back. ‘Yeah. Si. Si, se–or.’
‘You’ve been practising, haven’t you?’
‘Nuh. I think I just know this shit,’ he says in a way that sounds dangerously proud.
As planned, he gets the hard ice-cream end, and a guy called Leon leads me to the soft-serve machine.
‘You’d ’ve used one of these before, hey?’ he says.
‘Maybe not this model,’ I tell him, going with my plan but hoping all the rehearsal doesn’t show.
‘Not this model? Not the Ultraserve 480?’
‘I would’ve spent more time recently on the 485.’ And it was a good plan, but it might be getting too fancy now.
‘There’s a 485?’
‘Yeah, but not everyone’s got one, I suppose. It’s no big deal.’
‘We’ve only had this a couple of years. You reckon it’s out of date already?’
‘No, I’m sure it’s fine. The 485’s just different. Actually, surprisingly different but, you know, I’ve heard plenty of good things about the 480, so . . .’
‘Yeah, it’s a good machine, the 480. A fine machine. Drop ten thousand softies between services.’ And he gives it the kind of pat usually saved for a reliable working dog. ‘Better show you the ro
pes then, hey?’
And I get the predictable jargon-riddled run-down that lets me know I’ll have to work it out for myself when his back is turned, and then he says, ‘Any questions?’
‘Um, yeah. Clockwise or anticlockwise with the coil? The swirl? How do you want me to do it?
‘The coil? Clockwise,’ he says indignantly. ‘This is Australia.’
And he goes to check on Frank as I’m doing a practice clockwise coil, and uncoiling a large amount of soft-serve onto my wrist and then my left shoe, and I hear him saying, ‘Hey, where the fuck have you been, pal? Not more than two strawberries in the Super Strawb, and I don’t care how small they are.’
Frank apologises, and Leon says, ‘I don’t know what kind of fancy joints you guys have been working at before now,’ and shakes his head. ‘Customer loyalty’s one thing but three strawberries is bloody madness.’ He goes out the back, muttering something about stock levels and people ‘tossing round the strawbs like there’s no tomorrow.’
And Frank turns to me, and says, ‘We’re in,’ and throws a few strawberries into his mouth.
We get working, and the crowd builds up quickly and business is good at Whipster. I’m coiling and coiling and occasionally using a lid from one of Frank’s tubs to scoop the spillage onto the ground outside where, hopefully, Leon will never see it. Frank’s working the scoop down firmly into the tubs and saying, ‘Jeez, they freeze this stuff hard,’ and rewarding himself with mouthfuls of fruit.
And he’s chucking on nuts and cream and squirts of topping when he’s not supposed to, and telling me it’s customer loyalty (when I know it’s all about girls). And he’s engaging as many as possible in go-nowhere conversations about spiders and recommending lime, large, two scoops of vanilla.
‘For the price of a regular,’ he says, and I know his eyebrows are twitching up and down like a sleazy old showman’s, and surely none of them’ll go for that.
Leon comes back from one of the other Whipster outlets, takes a look at technique.
‘Yeah, nice coil,’ he says to me, in a one-pro-to-another kind of way. ‘Good on you.’ And he goes down to Frank’s end and I hear him saying, ‘Balls. I said balls. Good, firm balls. People aren’t paying you for those little scruffy bits of ice-cream. They can do that at home. Put a bit of wrist into it. Here.’
And he takes the scoop and does a couple before striding out again.
‘He’s tough,’ Frank says. ‘But he’s fair. He can scoop, you know.’
And we start getting queues, and there’s some pressure on my coiling and I’m going as fast as I can, bunging in Flakes, losing lumps of ice-cream in the choc dip. But mostly getting away with it, mostly keeping them happy. Hardly noticing any girls, though. This is too much like hard work.
At lunchtime a guy called Steve comes to help out and he says, ‘So you’re the pros, hey?’ and Frank says, ‘Yeah.’
‘Yeah, Leon’s been talking about you. The one of youse on the 480, mainly. Reckons you’re good. Reckons that’s why you’re up in this one.’
‘What do you mean, this one?’ I ask him.
‘This one. This stall. The flagship. Noela’s pride and joy. Whipster Central. You didn’t think you blokes got the stall at the entrance to sideshow alley for nothing, did you?’
This gives Frank confidence, even though he’s never been near a 480 in his life. He bosses Steve around and Steve’s happy to go with it, figuring he might learn something. Steve likes Frank, mainly because Frank’s rude to him and because he’s called Joo-ahn. Steve’s impressed by both of those things.
Most of the time I’ve got my back to them, and my day’s becoming a blur of slow, white clockwise swirls. Sometimes Steve appears next to my elbow, staring down at the nozzle of the 480 at another perfect coil, and then saying something like, ‘Joo-ahn wants another two up our end. One choc top, complimentary choc.’
‘Is she good looking?’
‘Nuh. He’s got Spanish blood, but. Remember?’
Our own late lunchbreak gets closer. I’m missing daytime TV. The morning bottoms out when my mother visits, dressed semi-formally, wearing sunglasses and speaking in the accent she used for her much-misunderstood Edith Piaf tribute at her last office Christmas party.
‘If you sing you are dead, all right?’ I manage to say quietly to her before any real trouble starts.
‘But Monsieur Philby. I am ’ere only for your wonderful ice-cream. All around the world they are saying about it, c’est magnifique.’
‘Go away.’
‘Ah, Monsieur Philby,’ she says, getting louder as a crowd starts to gather, ‘they are saying about you that you are lovely, attractive young man.’
‘Go away.’
‘And that all the daughters, they should be being the locked up when Monsieur Philby is about and on the look for lurve.’
‘That’s it. I’m going to kill myself if you don’t go away,’ I say to her in the most forceful, quiet voice I can manage. ‘There’ll be blood on your hands.’
‘But no, Philby,’ she whispers back in her regular voice. ‘I think we’re just getting some interest. And Frank did say you were both doing this to meet girls. So I thought it’d help if I talked you up a bit.’
‘Frank only ever does anything to meet girls. Now, thank you, but I think I’m probably as talked-up as I need to be now. I really think I have to take it from here myself.’
‘Well, if you’re sure . . .’
‘Oh, I’m so sure.’
‘All right, then. Now, you give me one of those cones and I’ll go off saying some good things about it.’
‘But restrained.’
‘Restraint, Philby, is my watchword.’
I hand her an average-looking ice-cream. She tips me generously, backs away through the queue, giving them all a good look.
‘Such style,’ she’s saying, that French accent more outrageous than ever. ‘Such form. Surely there is genius in the young soft ’ands of Monsieur Philby.’
And the girls in the queue now treat me as though I, too, am touched by madness, give me their simple orders carefully, hand over exact change where possible, back away before I try to get interactive.
I keep squirting, keep coiling, keep up the young, soft genius and keep trying to ignore Frank, hard at work up the other end. Cruising into Latin-lover win-on mode.
He’s got someone interested in his name, and he’s handling it like clumsy fishing, trying to reel her in as quickly as possible. But so far it’s working, and it’s the results Frank seems to get that have always made me hate his patter most.
‘So. Joo-ahn,’ a girl’s voice is saying. ‘Where’s that from, exactly?’
‘Spain,’ he says, with an exotic kind of confidence.
‘Spain? Wow. What part of Spain?’
‘Part of Spain?’ Less confidence now. ‘Spain generally. We travelled a lot when I was young.’
He thinks it’s a slick save, and I’m about to laugh at him when she says, ‘Hey, cool,’ and it’s looking as slick as it needs to be.
‘Hey, Leanne, how long are you going to be with that?’ a guy says as he comes up to her, chomping at the end of a Dagwood Dog.
And she takes the large lime spider with two complimentary Flakes and says, ‘See you, Joo-ahn,’ and the two of them leave, starting an argument that begins with, ‘Hey, did you know that guy?’
‘Fuck,’ Frank says, but quietly, so it’s not bad for business. ‘Fuck, I was in there. Thirty seconds more . . . Hey, what part of Spain do you reckon I should be from?’
‘Portugal. Portugal could be good.’
‘Okay. Portugal. Is that still actually part of Spain? Didn’t it become independent, like, in the seventies, or something?’
‘Yeah, good point. Still be a few Joo-ahns there, though, I’d think. But maybe Madrid. Maybe go for Madrid.’
‘Madrid. Okay. So what do I need to know about Madrid?’
‘No details, Joanne. It’ll only get you in trouble. You came out h
ere when you were a baby.’
‘Joo-ahn,’ he says. ‘Joo-ahn. There’s an inflection involved. And I’d stop putting shit on this if I were you. People are getting into it, you know.’
Leon turns up again at two, and tells us we’re on lunch.
‘I’ll look after things with young Steve,’ he says. ‘And I’ll see you at quarter to three.’
We go out the back and I’m about take my overalls off when Frank says, ‘What are you doing? Men in uniform, remember? Don’t even touch the cap.’
So we head out into the Ekka crowd, men in uniform, and pass conspicuously unnoticed by girls. I’m not sure what Frank expected would happen, but it doesn’t happen.
We’re leaning against the railings near the Zipper, taking stock, when a twenty-cent piece falls from high-up on the ride and lands near Frank.
A guy in the queue is about to pick it up when he notices the uniforms.
‘Oh, sorry,’ he says. ‘I guess that’s why you guys are there.’
‘Yeah,’ Frank says. ‘That belongs to someone.’ He picks it up and pockets it. ‘And I’ll be minding it for them till they get off.’
‘Sure. But do you actually work here? Doesn’t that say Whipster on your name tag?’
‘Yeah, but it’s like . . . a conglomerate.’
‘And we’re multiskilling,’ I toss in, in case it helps, particularly now that a few people in the queue are taking an interest. ‘So if you could all get back a bit, that’d be great. We’re actually here on safety duty. You know, Safety Regs? It’s a government thing. We need a perimeter.’
‘No untrained people directly under the Zipper is pretty much what we’re looking at,’ Frank says. ‘Some stuff comes out of these things, you know. And we can’t have any of it landing on anybody. Plus, it’s all got to go to its rightful owners.’
And at that, a cigarette lighter drops onto the grass, followed by some more loose change and, a matter of seconds later, two Iced Vovo biscuits. We pocket the change, begin a responsible-looking pile of other items. And we usher the crowd along carefully, keeping it all low-key so that the Zipper staff round at the booth don’t see what’s going on.