by Jackson Lear
Daniel glanced at Warrick and shrugged. “Nah. It’s no fun drinking only a little beer. What time are you coming over tomorrow?”
“I dunno. I’ll send you a message.”
“What, tonight?”
“Maybe.”
“Lurkers at eight?” Warrick suggested, referring to their online zombie apocalypse game.
“I don’t think I’ll be home by then,” Ian said. “Anyway, you guys be on there and I’ll catch up.”
“I’ll level up twice before you show up,” said Daniel.
“Probably. I’ll see you later.”
Daniel and Warrick sauntered up along Blyth Street towards Tress, passing over the quiet stone bridge. Ian, meanwhile, headed downhill towards Montague Crescent, which was remarkable for being one of the few actual crescents in town. He snuck along as innocently as he could, passed the kebab shop and the couple of people heading into the gym, and headed home.
He was thirteen years old.
7
Anthony
A week after Josh’s first yoga session, he and Anthony rejoiced in the July weather and took their drinks into the beer garden. Anthony stopped under the oak doorframe and drew in a deep breath of fresh air. At last the smell of stale beer and old gym socks would ease from his lungs. A couple of steps later his shoes no longer stuck to the ground.
Hoolan’s was a monthly ritual that Josh and Anthony had managed to maintain on and off since they were twenty five. Ten years before that they had managed to sneak past the heavy gate and steal a couple of half-full glasses as a test of manhood.
The pair of them had taken to dying their hair and admitted as much. Anthony had adopted the ‘just got out of bed’ look and stuck with it, while Josh liked to style his do by pulling it back into an executive wave. Gone were the days when they both highlighted the tips of their locks. Now it was all about hiding the grey. From a quick glance Anthony could still pass for someone in his twenties, whereas Josh was sneaking up on middle age faster than either of them expected.
They sat at a square table that had long since weathered to a pale grey with the occasional fleck of green paint remaining. A large umbrella that was permanently stretched out and rusted in place sat in the middle of the table. Anthony recognised the style from an old line of outdoor furniture sold by Woodards. The owner of Hoolan’s made an effort to sweet talk Anthony upon every visit to see about getting a mates-rates deal on new furniture, considering that Anthony was the manager of the aircraft-hanger sized hardware store. Anthony asked about getting mates-rates on the beer. The two threads of conversation never seemed to link in the barman’s mind. Now that Hoolan’s was closing for good in a month, Anthony had to wonder if perhaps some mates-rates back in the day might have kept the place open for a little longer.
Josh eased into his seat and looked over his beer. It was god-knows how many calories that he couldn’t afford to indulge in, but one beer, and maybe a second, was a worthwhile reward for maintaining a good balance of diet and exercise for the last two weeks.
Anthony braced himself against the flimsy metal chair that almost collapsed from under him. “How’s the morning ‘just murder me’ ritual going?”
Josh tapped his belly. “Getting there. I can almost walk through the doors without wanting to scream.”
“And I bet you look as sexy as hell in fluro leggings.”
“Well, I got a deal with the membership, you know? Sign up to a fifteen year program and get a free outfit. You can’t pass up an opportunity like that.”
Anthony waited to see if there was a punch line. Instead, Josh simply took a sip of beer. “Are you doing weights or yoga?”
“I’m doing the beginner routine of all things,” said Josh. “Can’t stand lifting dumbbells or standing in the mirror taking a selfie. There’s a chick there, basically wearing a sports bra and shorts that might as well be a G-string, and she’s warming up with hundred pound squats.”
Anthony raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Bloody hell. Wait, warming up?”
“Yeah. The kind who can crush a watermelon between their thighs.”
“I don’t know, that’s probably more abductor strength than quads.”
“Abductor?”
Anthony patted the outside of his hips. “Here. I tore my right one after chasing Tom a few years ago. Since then my watermelon crushing days are over.”
“You could always use a mallet,” said Josh.
“Circular saws would probably be better.”
“But that cuts, not crushes. Not unless you dropped a saw onto it from a great height.”
“Oh, I’ve always wanted to drop a watermelon off a building.”
“So do it,” said Josh.
“The tallest building in Luxford is what, four storeys?”
“I know. Pretty sad, isn’t it?”
Anthony drew in a gasp as a glorious daydream took him over. “A steam roller.”
“Yes! Do you have any steam rollers?”
“No.”
“We need to hire one.”
“That goes without saying. We just need to find a way so that Hannah and Gemma never find out about this.”
“That’s going to be tough, considering the smile on our faces will simply scream, ‘we’ve just hired a steam roller.’ So! What would be the best thing to crush on that momentous day?”
Anthony peered at Josh carefully. “This better not turn into another caveman / astronaut debate.”
“I don’t think either of us can make that promise. Steam roller. Go.”
“A long row of thick light bulbs, the kind they use on those giant Christmas trees. Pop pop pop pop pop.”
Josh nodded in admiration. “Nice.”
“Ta.”
“But what about a convertible?”
“I think you’d want a tank for that,” said Anthony.
“Can’t a steam roller handle a convertible?”
“It might not be able to get enough traction to climb over it.”
“What if it was pressed up against something?”
“Then you can kiss your deposit goodbye from whoever is dumb enough to loan you this thing in the first place.”
“Nah, they’ll be the type who’ve always wanted to do it as well, they just never had the balls to go through with it.”
Anthony shook his head. “You’ll have to practically sign your life away if you wanted to hire one.”
“Still …”
“Let’s go smaller,” said Anthony. “Light bulbs are easy to do. Cheap too.”
“Hmm, okay.” Josh cast his eyes around the empty beer garden to help his mind wander, and wander it certainly did. “Got it! Board games.”
It was only out of sheer politeness that Anthony didn’t roll his eyes at his oldest friend. “Board games?”
“We get a hundred different ones, have them half played by kids or people who take those things way too seriously, line them up on the road, and chucka-chucka all over them.”
Anthony dropped one eye into a squint before he shook his head. “Why not add model railways as well?”
Josh opened his mouth to retort, then his eyes glanced up towards the sky as he entertained that idea. “Remote controlled cars? Or airplanes! That’s it! No, fuck it! Real airplanes!”
“Bye bye deposit,” said Anthony.
“Who the fuck cares when I’ve just flattened a Cessna!” Josh clapped his hands together. “Right, how do we make this happen?”
“You’d need a TV production company.”
“I know some of them.”
“Good. Insurance needs to okay the event. Release statements and what have you. Maybe a whole Internet site dedicated to ‘Can it be crushed?’”
“Pretty decent way of getting subscribers.”
“I don’t know, it’s more about personality than content these days,” said Anthony.
“And then we can have a special for your tank episode.”
“Good.” Anthony raised his glass to cheers Josh. It then took him a c
ouple of moments of backtracking to figure out how they managed to arrive onto this.
Even Josh was struggling to connect all the dots. “The caveman still wins, though.”
“Oh, fuck you. Your caveman has got shit on my astronaut.”
“Both in the prime of their life.”
Anthony was forced to quickly shake his head. “We’re not doing this again.”
“Your astronaut has crashed in my forest.”
“I thought it was in the plains.”
“That one was.”
“So this is a new crash?” asked Anthony.
“Yes.”
“That means both have access to making spears.”
“Ergo, the caveman wins with the home advantage.”
“Not if …” Anthony shook his head again. “No, I don’t have all weekend again. We made a promise.”
“What are we – married? No. We made a deal.”
“A deal then. And now we’re going with a truce.”
Josh clamped his mouth shut just in time. “A truce?”
“For the sake of mankind and whoever owns a convertible, yes.”
“What are the terms of this truce?” asked Josh.
“We drink beer.”
“Fair enough.” They both took a sip before getting back on track. “So there I am, four times a week, being stretched out into these insane positions while some Canadian talks about finding our centre like we keep losing it every thirty seconds, and all you can think about is that you still have half an hour to go of trying to hold in this fart that’s built up because you’ve been stretched out like a cat in a sunbeam. That’s where the mind over matter bullshit comes into it.”
“Maybe I should come along and see what you look like in lycra.”
“At what a sight it would be.”
“Still, I bet your blonde sexpot Brooke is nice to look at.”
“She is,” said Josh, as he edged into the slightest of smiles. “She’s conservative in the gym, though. Wears all black. It’s hard to see anything even with all the sweat clinging to her.”
“I’m sure Hannah is relieved to hear that.”
“She might be. And you’d think for six in the morning no one would be there at all but I see people claiming their spot a second after the door opens and they’ll still be there when I’m leaving.”
“How long have you been going?” Anthony asked.
“Just a week.”
“Only Monday to Friday?”
“Mostly. My weekends are sacrament,” said Josh, with a deep nod. “And I wouldn’t hear the end of it if I ditched on breakfast in bed with Hannah to work out in a gym with sweaty girls and guys. The problem is I can’t get a lie-in anymore. Still have to get up at the same time every day to maintain a ‘healthy’ sleep pattern, which means for the rest of my life I might be going to bed two hours before Hannah. So, that sucks.”
“Maybe weigh things up and go to evening classes,” said Anthony, with a solemn nod.
“Maybe. You remember a couple of months ago when I was complaining about not sleeping right?”
“Yeah.”
“So Hannah treated me to a massage.”
“Oooo?”
Josh rolled his eyes. “A professional one.”
“Ah.”
“She thought I was stressed out or had built up a few knots across my back and shoulders, so maybe that was keeping me from sleeping properly. And it’s probably true. So I went in and this guy jammed his hands or elbows into me, trying to kung-fu the demon of bad sleep out of me, and as you do we were talking. I said the main reason I’m here is because of sleep issues. We talked about diet, exercise, and he suggested all of the usual stuff including yoga. Now, four times a week, I try to kill myself in front of attractive people and then hobble to my car afterwards like I’m walking off with an anvil on my shoulders.”
Anthony fell into a broad grin, as Josh had dismissed yoga many times in his life as being the most pointless activity ever imagined.
“It’s a lot harder than you think,” said Josh.
Anthony gave him a quick nod. “Oh I know. I tried a couple of hot yoga classes and they wrecked me. The first time I went completely unprepared. Literally unprepared. No water or anything, so when they called for a break I ran to the bathroom to stick my head under the tap. It made me throw up. The manager came to see if I was okay and she was nothing but a twenty three year old waif.”
Josh’s attention drifted to the side as three ladies in their mid-twenties strolled by and sat at the far end of the beer garden.
Josh returned to his senses. “So how’s the Gemma thing?”
“Better,” said Anthony, offering a quick toast of thanks with his glass. “We had Claire and Ian over the other day.”
“Oh yeah? Family dinner?”
“Yeah. The kid has two months off for the summer holidays.”
Josh rolled his head. “Lucky fucker.”
“I know. He gets four months off a year and squanders it. I get two weeks off as a minimum and another two if I’m lucky.”
“Me too,” said Josh. “And too bad he and his friends will never be as awesome as we were.”
Anthony nodded. “Sure, given the whole increase in surveillance cameras around here.”
“Not just that. I bet he sits inside playing his computer games all day, whereas we actually went out and conquered this little town.”
“Well, we were the best generation to ever come along, no question there. It’s one thing I’m trying to impart on Tom and Sarah; how to entertain yourself. Computer games don’t count. Last week we made our own board game, which will not be crushed by a steam roller …”
“That remains to be seen.”
“We came up with a full set of rules, complete board, and the kids got to colour everything in. They taught Ian how to play, which was nice.”
“You should get him to make an app out of the game. Make millions.”
“And split it six ways?”
“Seven. I gave you the idea.”
“Deal.”
“And one night with your sister,” said Josh.
“Does that mean I get one night with Hannah?”
“You can certainly ask her. And good luck with that.”
Anthony studied Josh carefully. “There is a chance that I could double down and take Hannah and Gemma at the same time.”
Josh shrugged at the image. “Yeah, you could, but for as long as we know each other I’d be the guy that finally nailed your sister.”
“She has a kid, you know, so that pretty much confirms that she’s had sex at least once.”
“Or she got fat for a few months and adopted some street urchin.”
“That little urchin might make us a million pounds,” said Anthony.
“Not if he’s outside enjoying the trees and swings. You need to crack the whip, get him in front of a computer so he can learn how to code games and program apps.”
“It was probably best you missed out anyway,” said Anthony. “Gemma and Claire spent just a short bit of the evening talking about Lucy’s wedding and the rest of the time was an in-depth look at dating Mr Here And Now instead of dating Mr Right. After that was a debate of ‘guys are straight forward’ versus ‘guys are as confusing as hell.’”
Josh nodded quickly. “Straight forward.”
“Yeah, I may have dug my own grave when I said the only reason guys are as confusing as hell is because they take advice from women. In hindsight, probably not the best thing to say in front of my sister and wife.”
“Or fifteen years ago when you said the same thing in university.”
Anthony shook his head. “That wasn’t fifteen years ago.”
“It was, but instead of ‘women’ you said ‘girls.’”
Anthony paused as he counted back between the years of nineteen and thirty four. His mouth dropped open while his eyes started to space out in horror.
“Did I hit a sore spot?”
Anthony
took a little too long to respond. “Jesus.” He glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one could over hear them. The three ladies at one of the far tables were engrossed in their own conversation. Anthony leaned back in. “Gemma freaked out a month ago. She got out of the shower and found a couple of grey pubes.”
“It happens,” said Josh.
“Not to Gemma. There were quite a few of them as well. She never even noticed the first, so finding six of them in one go was something akin to the end of the world. Of course, she didn’t tell me this until a few nights ago. So what did she do? She shaved herself completely bare.”
Josh arched an eyebrow and nodded in approval. “Very nice.”
“I thought so too. Until she was hit with shaving rash ...”
“Ohhh.”
“Yeah. Then she decided that my aftershave was the best solution.”
“Ay! Oh, fuck! No …”
“Yeah.”
“No, no …”
“Not just a little bit of it, either.”
“Oh, shit.” Josh rolled his head until he finally started laughing. “She didn’t know?”
Anthony had no other choice but to laugh in shame. “She’d actually never tried my aftershave before. Not even on her lip to test it out. No wonder she was walking funny.”
“How much did she use?”
“Pretty much the whole fucking bottle! She ended up back in the shower scrubbing herself down while crying before using moisturiser, talcum powder, then an ice pack downstairs, the whole works. It was the most buffed and polished lady bits the world had ever seen.”
“Any photos?”
Anthony paused and considered how to best answer.
“Show me,” Josh said.
“Well, no, hang on. And you’ve already seen her naked.”
“Not recently.”
Anthony blew out a reluctant breath. “Okay, there are photos, but they’re on her phone. She must’ve forgotten that they were on there because she was showing her mum some of the pics of the kids chasing Ernie around. Then her mum looks in surprise at a couple of nudie shots of my darling, fully shaved, slightly embarrassed Gemma. So her mum put the phone down and pretended that nothing ever happened.”
“Right.”
“Unfortunately …”