Shelf Life

by Robert Corbet

  ‘I don’t usually wear dresses,’ said Tessa.

  ‘Sure you do.’

  ‘But they make me feel so . . . girly.’

  ‘Girly is OK,’ said Ruby.

  Tessa touched the material. ‘Are you sure it will fit me?’

  Ruby held the dress up against her.

  ‘It suits you,’ she said. ‘I think you should keep it.’

  Tessa smoothed the soft fabric.

  ‘Why did you invite me? Why are you being so nice?’

  ‘I thought you looked lonely.’

  ‘How would you know?’

  ‘I’ve been lonely,’ said Ruby. ‘I know how it feels.’

  ‘I’m not lonely,’ said Tessa.

  ‘You think no one understands you. It’s the same thing, isn’t it?’

  ‘I am who I am. I can’t change, just to suit others.’

  ‘That’s what I like about you,’ said Ruby.

  Tessa put on the dress and felt the cool velvet against her skin. She never wore dresses at home, but tonight she could be whoever she wanted to be. Ruby started dancing without music. She danced like a blissed-out raver, then a cosmic earth mother, keeping a straight face to make Tessa laugh. They danced together, then to cool down they stood at the open window, feeling the night air on their faces and listening to the faraway sounds of the city. They saw a cat leap from one roof to another. They watched the moon find its way through a maze of clouds. Then, unexpectedly, Ruby leaned across and kissed her softly on the lips.

  After that, they lay in Ruby’s bed, talking about witches and how if they drowned they were innocent, but if they could swim they were burned alive. They talked about death and what would be the best way to go. Tessa wished it would happen unexpectedly: electrocuted by the toaster or hit by a falling branch. Ruby wanted it to be dramatic: struck down by an unknown virus, buried in a landslide or attacked by a killer whale.

  ‘Sometimes I imagine my own funeral,’ said Tessa.

  ‘Do you ever speak to the spirits?’

  Tessa shook her head.

  ‘Would you like to?’

  Ruby brought out an Ouija board marked with the letters of the alphabet and numbered from zero to nine.

  She placed the teacup upside down on the board and the two of them touched it lightly with their fingers.

  ‘Ask a question,’ said Ruby, ‘and the spirits will spell out the answers.’

  ‘Hello!’Tessa laughed. ‘Can you speak to us?’

  They sat there watching the flickering shadows and waiting, until suddenly the glass began to move. Tessa was sure she wasn’t pushing it and Ruby swore it wasn’t her either. The glass moved slowly across the board and came to rest on the number ‘1’.

  ‘What does it mean?’ whispered Tessa.

  ‘I have no idea.’

  The glass moved on, but it only ever stopped at numbers.

  1 7 7 1 7 0 7 7 3 4

  Then the teacup returned to its starting position, which, according to Ruby, meant the seance was over. Tessa wrote down the numbers. They made no sense, as far as she could see. If the spirits had gone to the trouble of moving the glass, why hadn’t they spelt something out?

  But Ruby, sitting opposite, had seen something Tessa hadn’t.

  ‘Look at them upside-down,’ she gasped.

  When Tessa turned the numbers around, they said:

  h E L L o L I L L I

  On Monday, back at work, the register girls were in the tearoom. Chloe was telling Louisa and Emma about the beefy new instructor at her gym. When Tessa walked in, with her hair cut short and dyed blue-black, they took a moment to recognise her.

  ‘I don’t believe it!’

  ‘Tessa?’

  ‘Is that you?’

  ‘My name is Lilli,’ she quietly informed them. ‘And I have come back from the dead!’

  DELICATESSEN

  Adam sat at his bedroom desk with his homework journal open in front of him. In the space where it said SUBJECT / DATE DUE he had written PLAN B / NOW! The desk was laid out with delicatessen food he had bought with a ten per cent staff discount. There were tubs of Greek olives, sun-dried tomatoes, Bulgarian goat’s cheese and Hungarian salami. It was good that Louisa was older, of course, in several ways that Adam could happily imagine. But it meant that Plan B—like the food from the deli—would need to be cosmopolitan and sophisticated, to show her how experienced and worldly he was.

  Adam selected a piece of goat’s cheese and popped it into his mouth. How would you milk a goat? he wondered.

  On the TV there was an ad for a camera store sale. Never to be repeated. Huge reductions on cam-corders, SLRs, polaroid, instamatic and digital cameras. Out they go! As Adam watched, suddenly the picture faded to a greeny-orange monochrome. He tried everything he knew to fix it, and when that didn’t work he punched the set in frustration. The picture shrank to the size of a dot, then disappeared. Adam stared at the blank screen, not knowing what to do. Louisa was working at Customer Service, but he had no goods to exchange or enquiries to make. He didn’t smoke. He couldn’t buy a bunch of flowers then hand them back to her. For the rest of that night, without the TV to console him, he tossed and turned, unable to sleep. Until finally, at daybreak, he came up with a brilliant idea.

  AISLE

  six

  BISCUITS/ SNACK FOODS/JUICES

  Careering down Aisle Six on an out-of-control trolley, Dylan’s foot knocked a packet of Custard Cream biscuits, which fell from the shelf before he could catch it.

  ‘Whoa! Back up, dude!’

  ‘Firing retro rockets, now!’

  Jared jumped from the trolley and dragged it back the other way, crushing the biscuits in the process.

  ‘They’re history, dude. Flat as a pancake.’

  ‘Flat as a focaccia.’

  ‘Flat as a dead battery.’

  ‘Flat as a Pommy beer.’

  Steering the trolley piled high with empty boxes, they burst through the clear plastic doors and out into the storeroom, where Adam and Stephen were waiting for them. Manoeuvring skilfully along the rows of unstacked pallets, Jared brought the trolley to a halt beside ‘Goliath’ the box crusher. Goliath was a relic from another age, battered and bruised by generations of storemen. Adam watched Jared open the rusted orange metal doors. Inside was a solid block of crushed cardboard—a hundred boxes or more, compressed to the size of a beer slab.

  ‘Getting it out can be a bit tricky,’ Dylan told Adam.

  Jared grinned at Stephen. ‘You want to show him how we do it?’

  Stephen was a pale boy with greasy hair and sideburns. ‘Not me.’ He shook his head.

  ‘I’ll give it a shot,’ said Adam.

  The others stood watching while Adam wrestled with the dead weight of crushed cardboard. He pushed and pulled. He strained and heaved. He struggled and swore. The damn thing wouldn’t budge.

  ‘It’s stuck,’ he said, wiping his sweaty forehead.

  ‘You have to give it a kick,’ Jared instructed.

  Adam kicked at the block until his foot hurt. He kicked with his other foot, then he kicked Goliath, just for good measure.

  ‘Take it easy,’ Dylan warned him.

  ‘It’s hopeless,’ said Adam, exhausted.

  ‘I told you,’ Stephen smirked.

  ‘There’s a trick to it,’ said Jared. ‘Watch and learn from the master.’

  Adam stood back while Dylan hung from the top of the box crusher and kicked at the cardboard block so violently that the storeroom walls began to rattle. There were very few workers who had the strength or the nerve to do this job, but because of the metal pin through his right ankle, combined with the loss of feeling in his foot, Dylan was one of them.

  ‘Nice work,’ said Jared, when the block had fallen to the floor with a heavy thud.

  Dylan rested his foot on it, like a big game hunter. ‘You know how cardboard comes from paper, and paper comes from trees?’

  ‘Everybody knows that, dude.’

&
nbsp; ‘Well, it just occurred to me, where do trees come from?’

  ‘They come from the ground, dude.’

  ‘Sure, trees come from the ground, but they’re not made out of dirt. So, like, where do they come from?’

  ‘That’s a botanical question, dude. I’m sure there’s a simple explanation.’

  Adam and Stephen both shrugged and shook their heads.

  ‘Think about it,’ said Dylan. ‘Trees are just Nature’s way of turning dirt into cardboard boxes.’

  Jared thought about it. ‘Interesting angle, dude . . . You ready?’

  ‘Willing and able.’

  Adam and Stephen watched as Jared and Dylan began their assault on the boxes. Like footballers, they hand-passed and kicked them. Like dancers in a modern ballet, they stomped and pirouetted, treading each box down flat before throwing it into the crusher. The job was almost done. A single box of V8 vegetable juice to go. When Dylan went to stomp it, somehow his foot got stuck inside. He raised his leg and tried to shake it off, but the box had bent into the shape of his shoe and wouldn’t move. Dylan went rigid.

  ‘You OK?’ Jared asked.

  ‘He looks like Han Solo, flash-frozen in carbonite,’ smirked Stephen.

  Adam started laughing, but when he saw Dylan’s face, he stopped.

  ‘Hey, dude,’ said Jared. ‘Are you all right?’

  Dylan didn’t answer. His face was a mask, and his mouth hung open, as if he had just seen a ghost.

  Dylan’s family owned a motor repair business. His older brother, Phil, worked for their father as an apprentice mechanic. It was Phil’s job to wash the engine parts, clean the benches, and help with services and minor repairs. Phil was a good worker, but he and the old man were always arguing about new technology versus time-honoured traditions. Sometimes the arguments got heated. The two of them would stand there, face to face, each refusing to back down. Phil would threaten to quit, then storm off to the pub to curse the ignorant old fool and his dumb-arse backward ways. He always came back.

  Dylan had never trusted Phil. When they were kids, Phil ignored Dylan, as if he was a stranger. Then, after Phil started working with the old man, Dylan hardly saw him any more. His big brother was little more than a scribbled name inside the covers of his hand-me-down textbooks. It was Dylan’s ambition to go further at school, to learn more than his brother had, and to write his own name on the unmarked pages of new textbooks. But when Dylan’s friend Jared started selling amphetamines, it wasn’t long before Phil heard about it. Not only did Dylan’s big brother become a regular customer overnight, he also became Dylan’s best mate.

  There was one job that had been a huge source of conflict between Phil and the old man. For his eighteenth birthday, Phil had been given the family car. Phil had big plans for the Torana. He wanted to take out the 202 straight six-cylinder engine and put in a V-8. He wanted fat tyres, chrome wheels and chrome tailpipes. He wanted to vent the bonnet and lower the front suspension. In Phil’s head, the Torana was all set to be the greatest hoon-mobile ever. But the old man wouldn’t have it.

  ‘You can’t put a V-8 engine into that car,’ he said. ‘It just won’t go.’

  Phil showed him the drawings, and they argued about it. The old man explained that a V-8 Torana was totally different under the hood, and that insurance premiums increased with engine size. Phil showed the old man the mounting blocks designed to his personal specifications and said he couldn’t give a stuff about insurance premiums. The old man said he didn’t care whose car it was.

  He wasn’t letting Phil do it in his workshop, especially since he wasn’t even a qualified mechanic yet.

  So Phil went down the pub and got drunk again with his mates.

  ‘I’ll show the old bastard,’ he told them.

  Eventually, Phil found the V-8 engine he was looking for. He had it tested and oil-bathed, then he waited for a weekend when their parents were away. Bright and early on the Saturday morning, he had the new 308 engine delivered to the workshop. He and Dylan unloaded it with the hydraulic floor crane and set it down on wooden blocks. When the delivery truck had gone, Phil rolled down the garage door and padlocked it. From his toolbox he produced a bag of white powder he had specially bought for the occasion. It was speed, Dylan knew; enough to start an elephant stampede.

  All that day and on into the night, the two of them worked on the car. First, they used a block and tackle to get the old engine out. Dylan wondered if the chain was strong enough to lift it, but Phil said it didn’t matter. The 202 was just a piece of junk, anyway. With the engine removed, they put the Torana up on the big hoist. When Dylan checked the supports to make sure they were holding the car safely, he noticed that two were off-centre. He showed his brother, but Phil assured him it was OK.

  ‘Look!’ he laughed, pushing the Up and Down buttons, making the car jerk around on the hoist. ‘Steady as a rock.’ The two of them got in under the car to change the mounting blocks. Dylan calculated the dead weight of the chassis, its large mass times the force of gravity, suspended above his head. He imagined the forces in equilibrium, the change in kinetic energy, the principle of moments and the stresses they must be generating in the T-frame of the hoist. He thought about the hydraulic lifting system and the explosive pressure of the compressed oil inside each cylinder.

  His brother was working intensely now, asking for tools and straining silently until the veins stood out on his oil-stained arms and hands. ‘Shifter . . . Not that one, the big one. Torque wrench . . . Get us another beer, would ya?’

  When the new blocks were finally bolted into place, they lowered the hoist until the car was on its four wheels again. Next, they rolled in the floor crane, with the new 308 engine swinging from side to side. Dylan wondered about the tension in the chain, the forces inside each individual link and the molecular structure of steel as they moved it into position, making sure that everything lined up. He pulled his hands out just in time, as Phil released the hydraulics, letting the engine drop down with a clunk.

  It didn’t fit.

  Phil took a break to assess the situation, sculling stubbies, cursing and shovelling handfuls of chips into his mouth. They were running out of time.

  They took out the new engine and put the car up on the hoist again. They unbolted the mounting blocks and redrilled the holes. Phil was working in a frenzy now, sniffing and mumbling and rubbing his eyes to stay awake. It was the old man’s fault for having such lousy tools. It was the old man’s fault that the business was losing customers. If his old man couldn’t get with the times, Phil would have to get out and start his own business. Who knows, maybe one day the old man would end up working for him!

  Dylan looked at the floor of the workshop, covered in discarded tools, empty beercans and crushed potato chips. He wondered what the old man would say if he walked in the door right now.

  When the modified blocks were in place, they tried to lower the engine again. It wouldn’t go until Phil got out a mallet and furiously hammered the blocks into shape. He banged his knuckles and tore off a layer of skin. But instead of stopping to bandage his hand, he wrapped it in a dirty handkerchief and kept going.

  By now, it was Sunday afternoon. Neither of them had slept or eaten a proper meal. The bag of speed was empty and Phil was a nervous wreck. He wouldn’t stop cursing and swearing, blaming Dylan for wasting his time and giving him the wrong tools.

  ‘What the hell was I thinking, trying to do this on my own? What’s the point of you even being here, when you’re so useless?’

  ‘Do you want me to leave?’

  ‘You’re not going anywhere until we’re done.’

  Finally, the new engine was in place. It took them another several hours to connect it all up. By the time they were done, it was Sunday evening and getting dark outside. The plan was to take it out for a test run. If all went well, they would come back and weld the new mounting blocks permanently into place. The old man would arrive at work the next day, and when he saw the Torana wit
h its new V-8 engine, he couldn’t help but be impressed.

  When everything was ready, Phil got behind the wheel and turned the key in the ignition. The car started nicely, then he gave Dylan the thumbs up through his blood-stained handkerchief.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

  The street ahead was empty so Phil pressed the pedal flat to the floor. The big V-8 engine roared as the car accelerated. From the horrible smell of smoke and the grinding metal noise, Dylan knew they had burnt the clutch to hell. They would need new plates and a gearbox, but Phil hardly noticed. He was beyond exhaustion and way past caring. Nothing could stop him now.

  Force equals mass times acceleration. Momentum equals mass times velocity. There was a Stop sign ahead of them, but they were going too fast. Dylan grabbed hold of the dashboard as Phil slammed on the brakes. The vehicle skidded. There was nothing he could do to control it. The principles of motion and the laws of kinetic energy were unchanged. The car hit the corner lamp-post with such an impact that the engine came free of its mountings and was pushed back into their unprotected legs.

  ‘Dylan! Are you OK?’

  As Dylan stood motionless with his foot stuck in the cardboard box, the terror of that moment came flooding back. Twelve months after the accident, his body had more or less recovered. The pin in his ankle was made of titanium alloy and held in place by twelve screws going into the bone. Dylan had lost all feeling below his right knee and would never be able to drive a normal car. But after months of pain-killers and physiotherapy, at least he could walk with a limp. It was more than his brother would ever do.

  Both Phil’s legs were crushed. In the surgeon’s opinion, Dylan’s brother was lucky to be alive, but twelve months after the accident, Phil still wished he was dead.

  ‘Dylan. Can you hear me?’

  Jared stepped up to face his mate. He ripped the cardboard box from Dylan’s foot. Then, with his hands on Dylan’s shoulders, he spoke calmly.

  ‘You told me how it was. The flashing red lights, flashing blue lights. The sound of tearing metal as they ripped the car apart to get you out.’