The First Third

by Will Kostakis

  We crossed at the nearest intersection and followed Bourke Street. Every time we would cross a main road, Sticks would point at its street sign with one crutch. King. William. Queen. Elizabeth.

  ‘Oh, look at me,’ Sticks said. ‘My streets are straight and their names are in order. Aren’t I clever?’ Melbourne sounded like Judi Dench.

  ‘I think it’s cool,’ I said.

  ‘I get the feeling that it’s trying too hard to make me love it.’

  I did too, but it was working.

  The footpath had steadily grown more populated. Now nearing Flinders Street, we had to weave through pedestrians and cyclists coming in the opposite direction. The city was vibrant, bustling. Even the laneways we passed were teeming with life. Well, some teemed with rubbish and homeless people, but most teemed with life. Tiny restaurants, rake-thin photographers with smart phones, and indie couples holding hands. I’d never been to Europe, but that didn’t stop me saying, ‘Whoa, it’s so European,’ when we eventually turned down Degraves Street.

  Tiny shopfronts opened out onto the narrow laneway, and café tables lined both sides, only affording room for one car to drive through at a time (and even then, a side mirror would probably clip a chair). There was a constant stream of pedestrians walking both ways, sipping drinks from paper cups. Halfway down, all pretence of using the laneway for vehicles was abandoned. Tables took over the centre of the street, crammed under umbrellas sponsored by different coffee companies, and waitresses stood outside their respective cafés spruiking their menus to passers-by. One mentioned pizzas with gluten-free bases and organic toppings.

  ‘Whoa, it’s as if someone thought about what made pizza great and then deliberately took those parts out,’ Sticks said, expecting me to move on to the next café.

  I ordered two of the gluten-free non-pizzas. They were way too greasy to taste as bland as they did, but totally worth getting just to see Sticks’ face contort as he tried to eat his. We abandoned them after a couple of slices and grabbed some Macca’s before Malvern.

  I’d been hoping for one of the old-school trams, so when one of the newer models showed up, I couldn’t help but feel like I’d been robbed of an experience. I stretched my legs out. Sticks sat opposite me, facing the front, his head against the window.

  On my phone, the little red GPS dot inched closer towards our destination. The tram would let us out at the top of the street.

  ‘Then it’s just a matter of walking,’ I said, pocketing Yiayia’s paper.

  Sticks channelled Boromir’s seriousness. ‘One does not simply walk into Malvern.’

  He laughed. He had an infinite laugh. He’d make a joke, laugh at his joke, hear his laugh and then laugh at his laugh. It took something drastic to break the cycle, like my map app closing and a photo of Mum taking over my mobile screen. She was ringing me.

  I freaked out and turned it to Sticks.

  ‘What do I do? Do I answer it?’ I asked. ‘What if she asks where I am?’

  ‘You just say you’re with me.’

  I panicked. I rejected the call.

  ‘Smooth,’ Sticks said. ‘That won’t raise any alarm bells.’

  ‘What if Yiayia’s told her? What if she knows?’

  ‘Stop worrying. You’re fine.’

  Mum’s picture came up again. It was from New Year’s Eve. She was holding a champagne flute, toasting an impending hangover.

  ‘Answer it,’ Sticks said.

  I did. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Bill, what’s the number you call when you leave mince on the bus?’ Mum asked.

  I figured I’d misheard her. ‘What?’

  She repeated herself. I had not misheard her.

  ‘I don’t think there’s a dedicated number, Mum.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’

  ‘Well, are you trying to get it back? Like, lost property?’

  ‘No, I want to let them know I was coming home from work early and I left raw meat on the bus. Get me the number.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘What’s happening?’ Sticks mimed.

  ‘Why not?’ Mum asked. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m on the tra . . . ain with Lucas. I’m going under the tunnel, the reception’s bad. I –’

  I hung up on her.

  ‘Yeah, that was terrible,’ Sticks said.

  ‘It wasn’t that bad.’ I was trying to convince myself.

  ‘It was exactly that bad. Switch your phone off.’

  The map app had reopened. The little red GPS dot was dangerously close to our destination. Like, right on top of it. I looked up from the phone. The tram had stopped and its doors were open. I launched out of my seat and stood with one foot on the tram until Sticks was off too.

  He reached over and held my phone’s power button down until it switched off.

  ‘Oh, right. Thanks.’

  We were at the top of the street. It was a short walk to number five, a red-brick cottage with a cream-coloured picket fence. There was no car parked in the driveway.

  ‘Are they even home?’ Sticks asked.

  ‘Wait here,’ I said.

  The front gate squeaked on its hinges. I stepped over a toy truck on my way to the door.

  My finger hovered over the doorbell.

  ‘Oi, dumb-arse.’ Sticks had opened the top of the letterbox and was going through their mail. ‘Coupon, flyer, catalogue. Ah, here we are,’ he said, waving a white envelope at me, ‘addressed to . . .’ He squinted down at it for a second. ‘Shitballs.’ He didn’t conjoin swears lightly.

  ‘What?’

  He’d gone quiet.

  ‘Who is it?’

  I stepped down from the porch and approached the fence. With some reluctance, Sticks handed me the letter. I blinked down at the envelope. It was addressed to Mr A Tsiolkas.

  As in, Mr Angelo Tsiolkas. Dad. Yiayia had found Dad.

  I went to say something, but couldn’t. Mouth open, I pointed at the toy truck on the lawn. Breathing was suddenly more difficult.

  I gave the letter back to Sticks.

  ‘Bill?’ he asked.

  I came back through the gate.

  He tried again. ‘Bill?’

  I started back the way we came. Briskly. Sticks was lagging behind. I turned around.

  ‘Faster,’ I barked.

  He rested on his crutches for a second. ‘Difficult.’

  ‘I can’t be here.’ My heart was pounding. ‘He can’t see me.’

  ‘He’s probably at work.’

  ‘And if he’s not?’

  A car had turned off the main road. I quickly looked away from the street.

  ‘Is that him?’ I asked, panicked.

  ‘Not unless he’s Indian. And a lady,’ Sticks said.

  I was walking again. ‘Come on.’

  Sticks wasn’t moving. ‘Yiayia brought us all this way. We can’t –’

  ‘We can.’

  The wait for a tram into the city was excruciating. It was only a few minutes, but it felt like forever. I kept my back to the curb and one hand over my face.

  When we boarded, I collapsed into the nearest seat.

  I exhaled.

  When Yiayia said she wanted me to visit someone, I hadn’t thought of Dad. It spoke volumes for the quality of my parents’ separation. While their marriage hadn’t been great, their divorce was spectacular.

  Dad was the past – distant, fading.

  And with one tiny piece of paper, my grandmother had dragged him into the present.

  What had she sought to gain? No matter how many times I asked myself the question, the answer didn’t seem any clearer.

  Sticks led me back to Degraves Street and chose the emptiest café. He intended to talk about what had happened and I intended to talk about anything but. Melbourne hipsters. Approaching exams. Drunken text messages.

  ‘We’re, spelt W-E-apostrophe-R-W, goin to te, T-E, and then there’s an ellipsis, and then, where yo am, and then a comma, as if to imply there’ll be more. The
re’s not.’ I looked up from my phone. ‘What was that supposed to be?’

  Apparently, attempting to decipher drunken text messages he’d sent on his birthday was the furthest from relevant Sticks was willing to go. His patience snapped.

  He placed his teaspoon down on the saucer. ‘So,’ he said, ‘we’re going to pretend your grandmother didn’t just send you all the way to Melbourne to visit your dad?’

  ‘Pretty much.’

  He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. ‘Right.’

  I took a deep breath and shut my eyes, and when I did, all I could see was the yellow toy truck.

  It was nine o’clock when we finally touched down in Sydney. I didn’t have the energy for two trains and a bus, so I didn’t fight it when Sticks suggested we catch a cab. He asked the driver to pull over outside the New Pavilion Hotel.

  ‘This isn’t my house,’ I said.

  ‘No?’ He handed the driver a twenty.

  ‘No, it’s a pub.’

  ‘Fancy that,’ Sticks said, passing me back an expired drivers licence.

  I recognised it immediately as his old fakie. The guy had a mohawk and a soul patch. Basically, he looked nothing like Sticks, let alone me. And his name . . .

  ‘Steve Wright? Who’s going to believe that?’

  ‘Just walk in next to me, nobody will ask. And if they do, say it’s been anglicised,’ Sticks said. ‘You were originally Stefano Wrightopolous.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like a Greek name.’

  ‘It does to people who aren’t Greek.’ He thanked the driver and stepped out.

  The bouncer looked like he could thumb-wrestle me into a coma. Sticks took the inside lane. We’d barely lifted our cards when he waved us inside. The door shut and the sounds of the busy street were muted, replaced with quiet chatter, clinking glassware and an amateur comedian breathing too heavily into his microphone.

  The tables were arranged around him. Patrons were either there or chasing the blinking bulbs of the gaming corner.

  ‘A Greek and a cripple walk into a bar,’ I began.

  ‘It doesn’t work without a third someone,’ Sticks said.

  One of the bartenders rang a bell and the guy at the mic abandoned his routine. The audience clapped, but I got the feeling they were only being polite. Sticks joined in.

  ‘A rabbi, a priest and a minister walk into a bar,’ he explained. ‘There’s always a third.’

  ‘Not always.’ I could think of plenty. I recited one. ‘A mushroom walks into a bar and orders a drink. Bartender says, “I can’t serve you.” Mushroom says, “Why not? I’m a fun-guy.”’

  Sticks didn’t laugh. ‘Correction – all good jokes come with threes.’

  ‘Well, we’d need another friend.’

  ‘I can’t stand most people.’

  He hunted down a vacant table while I fetched the beers. When I set the two schooners down between us, another comic had taken the microphone – Laurence from the Sutherland Shire. He flicked his greasy, knotted mane out of his face.

  Sticks waved a flyer at me. ‘Flippant,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sydney’s leading amateur stand-up comedy comp, ­apparently,’ he said.

  Over March and April, judges toured pubs and clubs, inviting aspiring comedians to try out their shtick. Each comic had five minutes to wow them.

  ‘You should give it a go,’ Sticks said, raising his glass and taking a sip.

  ‘Yeah, because standing in front of an audience, facing certain rejection is totally up my alley.’

  ‘Wait. You mean all this time you haven’t been trying to get rejected?’

  ‘Bite me.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be like that. You can tell them your mushroom joke.’

  Laurence cleared his throat. ‘You know when you’re on one of those really long train journeys, and there are toilets onboard?’ he asked.

  ‘Promising start,’ Sticks muttered.

  ‘I mean, they seem like a good idea, until you try to use them.’

  Laurence mimed unzipping himself.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Sticks whispered. ‘Oh. No, Laurence.’

  He was miming trying to pee straight in a rocking train carriage.

  After what felt like the longest, unfunniest thirty seconds of my life, Laurence realised the joke hadn’t stuck. He released his imaginary penis and continued, ‘So, my girlfriend broke up with me recently and I don’t know why.’

  Sticks couldn’t help himself. He cupped his mouth and shouted, ‘Because you were covered in piss!’

  It got more laughs than anything Laurence had said. A guy sitting at a nearby table raised his glass to Sticks, who accepted the compliment with a slow nod.

  ‘Mean,’ I said.

  ‘I prefer to think of it as constructive criticism.’

  Laurence didn’t last much longer. He stepped away from the microphone and the MC took his place. ‘Well, it looks like we have an especially vocal audience tonight,’ he said, adjusting his bowtie. He seemed like the sort of person who kept his ­bowtie slightly askew so he had something to adjust. ‘Anybody keen to volunteer?’

  ‘Yeah, good luck with that,’ I said.

  ‘God forbid you talk to people about personal things,’ Sticks said.

  ‘I know, right?’

  ‘Just tell me how you feel.’

  I was looking past him. There was a Labrador in the bar. I smiled, then I thought about it. Naw, cute dog! became, Why is there a dog in a bar? became, There’s a police officer standing beside a dog.

  ‘Crap,’ I said.

  ‘Okay, so you feel crap. Good start. Elaborate on that.’

  ‘No, I mean “crap”, as in, “Crap, there’s a cop in here.”’

  Sticks looked over his shoulder. He wasn’t fazed. ‘Relax, they just come through checking for drugs. They don’t check IDs.’

  The officer held out his hand and a young-looking patron surrendered his licence.

  ‘Okay, so he’s checking IDs,’ Sticks said.

  ‘Anybody?’ the MC’s voice rang out, almost pleading.

  If I ran for the door or stayed put, I would definitely be caught, but there was no way the officer would try to card me during a stand-up routine. For five minutes, I’d be untouchable.

  All of a sudden, facing certain rejection didn’t seem so bad.

  The officer manoeuvred between the tables. He was ­heading in our direction. The Labrador sniffed me as I brushed past.

  ‘Ah, a volunteer,’ the MC said. ‘And what’s your name?’

  I spoke before he’d pointed the microphone towards me and had to repeat myself. ‘Steve Wright.’

  I hated the sound of my voice amplified.

  ‘Everybody give it up for Steve Wright!’

  The applause was tepid. The MC put the mic back on the stand and placed his palm over the top of it. ‘You’ve got five minutes, mate. The judges are on your right, try not to look at them too much. Have fun, and I’ll see you on the other side.’

  He pulled away and held out his hand. ‘Steve Wright!’

  ‘Woo, go Steve!’ Sticks shouted.

  The policeman had one thumb tucked under his belt as he circulated, scrutinising everyone he passed.

  ‘Right,’ I began. My left leg twitched. I planted my heel firmly into the carpet. ‘So.’

  My mind was blank. I didn’t have anything to say.

  Not ideal.

  My nerves traced crooked lines up my chest. I swallowed hard.

  Somebody booed.

  And then I found my voice. ‘Oh, come on, I haven’t even started.’

  He was a smart-arse. ‘That’s why I’m booing.’

  The audience laughed.

  There was a spotlight sitting on the bar, aimed squarely at my head. I squinted.

  ‘Uh.’

  I could be funny with Sticks and I could be funny in conversation, but I had never been funny by myself, unprompted, to strangers, with the Bat-Signal pointing at my hea
d. I’d never tried.

  I would have probably just stood there, nervously eyeing the police officer as he moved through the audience with purpose, were it not for the next heckler, who yelled, ‘Say something, bro!’

  Only a particular kind of people punctuated sentences with ‘bro’ in accents that thick. My people. We were in Rockdale. I had home crowd advantage.

  ‘How many of you are Greek?’ I asked. ‘Raise your hands.’

  There were a few.

  ‘Macedonian? Italian? Turkish?’

  More hands.

  ‘Right, well, I’m Greek, but we’re similar. My grandmother says, “Same, but different.”’

  There were a few laughs. I hadn’t said anything funny, at least, not intentionally. I’d only mimicked Yiayia’s voice.

  Was that all it was going to take?

  Encouraged, I had another go.

  ‘Greek Easter was yesterday. We were having lunch in hospital, my younger brother leaves, says he’s going to the gym. My grandmother asks, “Why he always go to Jim? Who is Jimmy?”’

  More people laughed that time.

  The effect was instant. My body conducted electricity. It made my chest feel light and my heartbeat heavy.

  ‘The best though,’ I said, standing back and relaxing into it, ‘is when my grandmother goes shopping for bed sheets. She calls them “shits”. But she doesn’t just walk in and say she wants “shits”, no, it’s always “high-quality shits”, “comfortable shits”. That’s what she says – “I want comfortable shits.” And the people working there look at her like they want to say, “I don’t know, fibre?”’

  Beyond the audience, I saw the police officer lead his Labrador out of the pub. I could have finished my routine then if I’d wanted to, but something kept me up at the mic. The exact opposite of rejection. The knowledge that no one was stopping me halfway through and asking how old I was.

  ‘You know, we’re lucky nobody sends faxes anymore,’ I said. ‘Can you imagine my grandmother running around telling ­people to fax her?’

  A girl on my right cackled.

  ‘Yeah, she got it.’ I nodded at her and noticed the people ­sitting behind her making notes. The judges. I remembered the MC’s advice and quickly turned away. I sighed. ‘Oh, you guys, this one time . . .’