Green

by Nick Earls

  ‘Okay. Don’t run away.’

  ‘Just get me the toilet paper.’

  She goes, leaving me to stay as still as I can and watch the lights of New Farm and contemplate the ruins of the evening. Here I am on the Paradise, hiding in a fire-hose recess, cupping my own semen in my hands, hoping there’s not too much of it on my clothes and sending a girl off for toilet paper.

  And that’s when the food and beverage manager appears, with a torch.

  The beam hits me in the eyes, and he says, ‘Oh, g’day. We’re not far out from docking, so I was just giving the place a once over. You on a break?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Listen, you’ve been a big help tonight, what with the sick chick and all. Thanks a lot, mate.’

  ‘No problem.’ He reaches out to shake my hand. I pretend I don’t notice. ‘I’d better be . . . better be . . .’

  He wants me to notice, and he shines the torch lower. The light flares from my white sleeves and wrists. His hand casts a bunny-rabbit kind of shadow on the front of my pants. The huge bulging two-handed front of my pants.

  ‘What the fuck . . .?’

  ‘No. No, it’s not like it looks. It’s . . . an accident. Medical . . .’

  ‘Listen, mate, I know what I’m looking at, and it’s not bloody medical and we don’t do it on this ship.’ There’s a pause, a very ugly pause and it’s not filled by any good excuse of mine. ‘Here’s what we’re going to do,’ he says, in a tone that includes no room at all for negotiation. ‘You’ve been helpful tonight with the sick chick, you’ve been pretty good on the bar. This is the kind of bullshit that could get you into a lot of trouble. And I mean a lot of trouble.’

  What do I say to him? I really, really hate trouble. I’m so not ‘Phil, he’s trouble’.

  ‘So here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to get your pants into a fit state for bar work, you’re going to get your arse back out there, and my guess is you’re not going to expect to be paid at the end of the evening.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ I tell him, in a whiny voice I could do without. ‘More than fair. If that’s as far as this goes I’d have to call that more than fair. If we could not tell Frank, though . . .’

  ‘Frank? Who’s Frank? Is he one of the other bar guys? They’ve all worked bloody hard tonight, and they’re no trouble at all.’

  ‘Yeah, sorry. He’s just a guy who got here at the same time as me, really.’ Still whiny, dammit. ‘Well, we might have done a couple of shifts together at Lennons, but . . .’

  ‘Okay, got some,’ Jacinta’s voice calls out, as if she’s gone to borrow sugar from a neighbour. She stops, caught by the torchlight, and she stands there, half a roll of toilet paper hanging from her hands and glowing in the beam. ‘Hi.’

  She laughs nervously, rolls the paper up as though she’s tidying it. The food and beverage manager looks at her, looks at me, shakes his head.

  ‘Shit, bloody fraternising as well. I thought you were just working off a bit of steam. Pal, you are trouble. Capital fucking T, right? I don’t know what this is all about, and I don’t want to. You’re not coming back here, not even as a paying customer. Life ban, right? Life ban. There’s a list at the gangplank, we’ve got your name, and it’s on it for all time.’

  ‘Sure.’

  There’s something sticky on the back of my knuckles, and that’s the wrong side. Not that there’s a right side, but . . .

  ‘I don’t want to see your face again tonight. Not for the rest of this trip. Not ever. Understood?’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘Good,’ he says. ‘Good. Bloody students. You give ’em a bloody job . . .’ And he strides off.

  ‘Sorry,’ Jacinta says. ‘Bad timing?’ She laughs. ‘Sorry, I meant me coming round the corner, not the other . . . timing problem.’

  She offers me the toilet paper, then realises the situation’s complicated by my inability to move my hands. She turns her head away, and starts pushing the paper between my wrists and down into my pants. Suddenly the whole region that, minutes ago, was so good for rubbing has become distasteful. She laughs again.

  ‘I just wasn’t expecting the hand,’ I tell her. ‘At that point of . . .’

  ‘I thought you’d like it.’

  ‘Well, obviously I didn’t hate it. It was just a surprise. Not a bad surprise, just a surprise.’

  ‘For both of us.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Sorry, Speedy.’

  I groan, she keeps laughing. She stands guard while I clean up, as best I can. My hands were quicker getting in there than I thought, but I still couldn’t call it tidy. I rub and rub, but there’s a limit to how much good it’ll do.

  The DJ’s voice announces the last song. Survivor, ‘Eye of the Tiger’.

  I roll the toilet paper into a ball, and toss it out into the river.

  ‘I’d better go and meet my friends,’ she says.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Sorry about the job.’

  ‘It’s not a big deal. And thanks for the help with the, um, paper.’

  I give her a few seconds to get ahead of me, then I walk round to the bar.

  Frank’s waiting and, from his face alone, I know he wants a progress report, a hint of some success at the very least. He gives me a thumbs up and it’s clear he’s expecting confirmation.

  ‘Like you wouldn’t believe,’ I tell him, and he claps his arm around my shoulders again.

  ‘I knew it. I knew we’d turn you around.’

  He’s so pleased for me, he practically dances. Which jiggles me up and down, and I hate the way movement feels in my pants.

  The Paradise docks, and Jacinta and her friends pass us on their way off. She gives a polite wave, and one of her friends goes ‘Arriba arriba’.

  ‘Good on you,’ Frank says, when they’re too far away to hear. ‘Bloody good on you, Speedy. Hey, I got her number for you, you know. Just in case you never had the chance.’

  10

  Flirty Boy: comes with patented push-button Quick Trigger Genitals and twelve pairs of highly absorbent Wonder Pantsª. Where were my goddamn Wonder Pants last night?

  Dawn comes to Sunnybank Hills, and I can’t say I’ve slept well.

  I can’t wait to get back to World of Chickens. I’ve now got myself a much better horror date story than any slack reference to Bernoulli. Not that I was even going out with Jacinta last night, but the magnitude of the disaster makes that irrelevant. Cool Hand Phil, the man of total action. Definitely not, when the big questions came to be asked, a substitute penis. Definitely the real thing.

  This can never be spoken of, I can never see her again. And Frank’s going to try to make me, I just know it.

  The day begins, and the dark shapes in the Greens’ lounge room take on colours and clear outlines—the timber-finish TV near my head, the two-tone brown armchairs, the red of painted hunting jackets in the glass-fronted display cabinets. The Greens are collectors, with a particular emphasis on Franklin Mint plates. Dorothy probably started it and her collection goes way back, beginning with English hunting scenes. Vanessa specialises in the ‘Woodland Creatures’ series, AJ collected ‘Legends’ (featuring James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland and more) and Big Artie’s ‘Vintage Cars’ plates are in the far corner.

  The full tour of the room for the first-time visitor involves some explanation of each piece (purchase history at the very least). It’s also important to have it pointed out to you that the three ducks flying up the wall are a set, not merely three ducks put together at random, and indeed they’re one of those rare sets in which you find the first duck turning to look back at the other two. ‘Now,’ Dorothy told me once, tonguing a tissue and lifting a fleck of dust from the duck’s head, ‘you don’t see that everyday’.

  The large butterfly on the outside wall near the front door, however, is merely decoration, but it’s easy for the non-expert to become confused. ‘You can tell it’s decoration and not a collectible,’ Frank sa
id, ‘because it’s pink like the house, with brown spots like the gutters. That’s not like a real butterfly.’

  ‘Thanks, Frank. So, it’s the colour scheme that gives it away? As opposed to the one-metre wingspan, you mean?’

  Frank’s a collector too. I happen to know that he’s got a few plates stashed away in his bedroom. But only as an investment, he tells me, and ‘only if they feature Lady Di. No recent plate’s appreciated in value like the Shy Di plate (1981). I can’t believe I only picked up one of them. I’m a fool sometimes.’

  Frank’s room is on the other side of the wall from the sofa. I can hear him roll over in bed and he starts humming, a snuffly early-morning version of ‘Eye of the Tiger’. At least in his dreams he’s getting some action. And at least he’ll be getting paid for his work last night.

  Last night. Much as I’d like to focus on the Green family’s plate-collecting habits, the twin peaks of last night’s disaster keep coming back into view. First Jacinta going way beyond five dollars’ worth, then the food and beverage manager, his torch and his interest in closing a successful evening with a handshake. Some nights could do with a lot more rewriting than others.

  Enough. That’s what you’ve told them, but the music’s back. A hum only, but an intrusive hum. And some of your thoughts return to the night before and the speed things sometimes move, mainly hands. Another strange bed, another improbable night now done. There was dancing, seduction, a kind of alcove. Then . . . the song sucks you into its whirlpool and parts of you—parts of you for which you’d had far higher hopes—are suddenly as hypnotisable as a snake in a basket. It’s a simpler life for the woodland creatures. That’s what you’d rather think about. Badgers and foxes, rabbits and dormice. A simpler life, and guaranteed only forty-five firing days.

  Next, I’m woken by sawing from a dream made up of bits of a clumsy weekend last year, but featuring the food and beverage manager from the Paradise more than I’d like. Except in the dream he’s a weasel, I’m a vole and the whole thing’s like A.A. Milne gone to porn. There’s a handsaw working beneath me, under the house. There’s a yelp in a voice that sounds like Vanessa’s, then Vanessa telling herself to be more careful, followed by sawing again.

  I get myself a glass of water from the kitchen and, once I’m convinced after a quick inspection in real daylight that there are no external signs of the catastrophe, I go outside and down the back steps.

  Vanessa looks up from marking a piece of wood and says, ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hi. What are you doing?’

  ‘Bird house. Hope I didn’t wake you.’

  ‘I wasn’t really asleep.’

  ‘We’ve got this rule. I can’t saw before seven. Well, I can’t make things before seven, but this’d be the first time there’s been sawing involved so I’m only assuming it’s the same rule. And I make it seven-oh-five, pretty much on the dot.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right.’

  ‘How do you think it’s going?’

  ‘It looks good. Not that I’m an expert on bird houses, but it looks good to me.’

  ‘Hey, you’re a chicken sometimes.’

  ‘So, I guess I’m qualified after all. I’m sure, at my more chickeny times, I’d be happy to call it home.’

  ‘Good. Good to hear. And it’s still only pieces. Wait till it’s all put together and painted. Hey, what colours do you reckon I should do it? We’ve got house leftovers around, but do you think I should get something different?’

  ‘Well, if you did the bird house with the same colour scheme, it’d be like a kind of model of the house. That could be nice.’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, like, deliberate? That’d look good out the front, wouldn’t it? Like, a feature.’

  ‘A feature, good thinking.’

  ‘See, that’s the kind of thing I’ve learned from work, florist work. Features. If you’re putting a bunch together for someone, you’ve got your leaves, you’ve got your babies’ breath, you’ve got your regulars and you’ve got your features. Like, you know, bird of paradise.’

  ‘So how’s work going?’

  ‘That, my friend,’ she says, measuring another line on the timber, ‘is the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.’ She looks up, pushes some hair away from her face and tucks her pencil behind her ear. ‘I’ve learned a thing or two, there’s no denying that, but do you ever get those times where the things you learn are the things that let you know you maybe want to be doing something else?’

  ‘Sure. Obstetrics might just be shaping up that way. But I’ll be on to something else in a couple of months.’

  She puts the wood down and opens a couple of fold-out chairs. ‘Smoko,’ she says, and points me to mine. She sits, pulls the pencil from her hair and taps it on the plastic arm of the chair. ‘Right. The flower caper? I’m not sure it’s for me. I can’t say that to . . .’ she points up to the floorboards and the world upstairs . . . ‘but I can say it to you. You want to get into the film game, and maybe I’ve got a few wild ideas myself. Right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Good.’ She picks up a glass of Diet Coke from the floor and takes a drink. There’s noise upstairs now, footsteps in the kitchen, a jug boiling. She looks down at her rainbow-coloured handpainted sandshoes. ‘I’ve got a plan. I want to finish this bird house for a start, and maybe do more in that line. So do you really think it’s going okay?’

  ‘Let me take a proper look.’ I pick up the pieces she’s cut, and she leans over to fit them together so that I can see how they’re supposed to be. ‘I can confidently say that this is a better job than I could ever do. You’ve got these edges joining perfectly. I could never do that at school.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. I’m not bullshitting you. For a lot of us, this kind of thing isn’t as easy as you might think. You, I think, might just be one of those people who can do it. A lot of us are pretty bad with our hands. So, interestingly, some of us’ll get to do surgery instead. I couldn’t make a bird house, but I’ll be operating on human skin some time in the next year or so. Figure that out.’

  ‘Okay, next question. This is medical. If you wanted to bulk up a bit, add some muscle, what would you do? What would you take?’

  ‘Well, some people go for Sustagen, and stuff, but it doesn’t always have the desired effect. Some people are good at adding muscle bulk and some aren’t. But I don’t think I really need a lot more muscle bulk for what I do.’

  ‘So, Sustagen, good. And upper body work—what would you do there?’

  ‘For what exactly?’ She sounds like someone who knows far too much about my bedroom. But no way am I going to be the first to say the word bullworker.

  ‘Just work for your upper body, you know? I’ve got some weights down here. They’re AJ’s, but he left them ’cause there’s a gym near where he lives now.’

  ‘Well, coincidentally, I happened to have a tutorial or two in the uni gym on upper-body weights. Back when we were studying anatomy.’

  Back when we were studying anatomy and about to start taking off our outer layers for surface anatomy tutes. I had weeks of slinking off to the gym in its quieter hours, working away at creating at least some muscle definition.

  She takes me over to AJ’s weights bench and I pick up two of the smaller dumb-bells and show her some of what I learned. She draws stick figures of the exercises on a spare piece of wood and makes me check that they’re correct.

  ‘And what about balance?’ she says. ‘Dad’s got this thing with his ears, or something, that affects his balance. Like, whenever he looks up, he gets really dizzy.’

  ‘I don’t think you have to worry about that. You want to do things to avoid it, is that what you mean?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I don’t think it works like that with balance. You should be okay. But this is pretty impressive, trying to do all these healthy things now.’

  ‘Well, Dad can’t climb because of his balance problem, so it really gets in the way. And Nev’s not much of a clim
ber either. He’s a demon on the ground, but he’s a dud up a tree. So, you get to thinking about these things. Your back and your balance, Dad reckons you don’t miss them till they’re gone.’

  ‘I think you’ll be okay. But it’s good to look after yourself.’

  ‘Hey,’ Frank’s voice says from the doorway. ‘If it isn’t the last of the red-hot lovers. You should have seen him, Nessie.’

  ‘Seen what? He didn’t tell me about any lover stuff.’

  ‘Cool Hand Phil, they call him,’ Frank says, his words getting a kind of swagger to them. ‘Who would’ve thought? The guy waits months for some action, and then he scores and he hardly says a thing about it in the car on the way home. If I’d been waiting so long I’d be busting.’

  ‘Some of us,’ I lie, ‘have more restraint.’

  ‘Restraint.’ He laughs. ‘And don’t the ladies fancy that? He was firing last night. They were calling him Speedy, those girls.’

  ‘Really?’ Ness says. ‘Like Gonzalez, you mean? Cool.’

  ‘Last night,’ Frank goes on, like a man about to flourish the final card in a trick, ‘he was such a bad boy they figured they couldn’t even pay him.’

  Ness looks at me with bug-eyed admiration. I could do without anything bug-eyed too close by at the moment. She has no real idea what we’re talking about but, then, neither does Frank. And from my point of view it’s just another conversation I’m going to have to live through, and then it’ll be done. I preferred it down here when it was me, Ness, her obscure health concerns and the beginnings of a bird house.

  ‘What a night,’ Frank’s saying. ‘What a night. I got the cash, Philby got the chicks. Who would have guessed? And they were mad about the powder, weren’t they? Mad about the brizgarita. We’ve got ourselves a hit.’

  ‘I think we were lucky to get away with that.’

  ‘Yeah, it was probably your smokescreen that helped. Hey, remember how you said that thing about it going up people’s noses?’

  ‘You didn’t . . .’

  ‘No, no. Well, only mine, but you put the idea in my head. I only did it to see what it was like. To see if it did something I could sell. Shit it stung, and then it started to fizz and I was down the back of the boat and these chicks turned up and it was coming out my nose. This green foam, like I was possessed. So I shouted out, Ah fuck, my septum’s going, and they ran away.’