No More Boats

by Felicity Castagna

  Now they were at Francis’ old school. One of his old schools. He’d spent the last two years at Arthur Phillip instead of the local Catholic where he’d started out with Charbel and Jesús, because the fat old Brother who ran the place had had enough of Francis by the time he finished Year Ten. Public school. His father never got over it. The kids there were from a wholly different planet than the Catholic school ones. Francis thought he was a bad-arse before he wound up there but afterwards he learned to stay silent.

  Just as he had done a few times in his school days, he picked up a rock and chucked it at the windows of the science lab. He chose those windows because he’d always failed science and because the safety glass in the windows always broke into patterns like spiders’ webs and refused to fall out. It was a challenge: he was rising to the occasion. But the wings he took earlier had made him into some type of bird with no power to break glass.

  It was a while before Francis realised he was still standing in the same place holding a rock, staring at his own reflection in the glass windows. Maybe he’d been there, yesterday, today, the day before, maybe he was back at school.

  ‘Stay loose,’ Jesús said, holding Francis’ hand, but Francis could feel the blood pumping right through his arm and out to his palm. They cut through the library car park and walked out onto the main street. People thought nothing went on this far from the city, but they were wrong. Everybody came to Parramatta Friday and Saturday night. Everyone. Night-time and everyone went off. This was what defined the place these days – the constant parade. For instance, as he walked down the street there were two men with too-tight tops and too-big muscles, who took up most of the wide pavement just because they could, and girls who stood on the corner and waved to the cars as if they knew everyone. The cars cruised slow and loud down Church Street. They were hot pink Echoes and lowered Hondas with orange racing stripes. Chrome. Blue lights. Hubcaps glinting in the neon glow of the restaurants. There were calls back and forth, windows rolled down. Some fat bald head in Ray-Bans yelled ‘hey ladies,’ and twenty-somethings in hotpants smiled and said ‘fuck you’ in the most seductive of ways. Francis paid particular attention to the ladies: he would take them, any of them, anytime, anywhere, if only they would have him.

  They walked up through the mall to the Burger King on the corner. Everyone started here before they went anywhere else. Jesús pointed to a spare table in the corner and put Charbel in charge of Francis. Francis watched as Charbel took out his door key and tried to scratch a line through ‘Charbel + Lee’ where he’d carved it into the wooden wall when he was in love with Lee Chang back in the day.

  The music wrapped itself around Francis’ body. Jesús showed up again with the food. Francis watched the red stream of light that followed his hand each time he put his arm into the bag and pulled out a burger. Then he was stuck to his chair chewing, chewing, chewing. The food was something musical. His throat was a flute. His body was light but he couldn’t move. He looked at Charbel, who was trying to eat his entire burger in one mouthful.

  Moving again. They were out in the open mall. St John’s Church was twice the size it usually was. Jesús was standing in the flowerbeds in front of the church. He was all movement and light. Francis found it difficult to keep track of where he was amongst all this moving. Now Jesús was next to the old men with worry beads sitting on the bench near the children’s play equipment, and then he was next to the guy with a sign that says ‘The End of the World is Coming’ and a microphone, then he was hanging around the entrance to the Connection Arcade, smoking, talking shit in Spanish. Maybe he was skipping. Maybe he wasn’t. The flight of his feet across concrete.

  They went off again. They headed south towards the brighter lights of Church Street. The bikies had parked on the pavements again, just because they could. How do you join a bikie gang? Francis would like to be one of them. They had a tribe. He’d like to be in a tribe. Francis thought he would like to sit up on the thick leather seats of one of their Harley Davidsons. He didn’t. The hot spice smell of cheap men’s cologne. Somewhere, an apple hooka. People cram their legs up underneath too-small tables in front of the restaurants on the footpath.

  The words ‘One World’ glowed in the distance. They headed towards them. The shops selling cheap shit. Shirts for five dollars. Jeans already ripped at the knees hung in the windows. Plastic cats with oversized heads that bounce in the sunlight. Everyone wanted something cheap. More two-dollar shops.

  They were standing in line in front of One World. Francis stood up as straight as he could for the bouncers. He gave instructions to himself: Get your ID out of your wallet. Hold it in your hand. Look them in the eye like you haven’t been up to nothing. Play it cool. The signs in front of the bar said: Sexy. Bounce. Karaoke.

  Inside, the place was dark and cool. Blue lights skidded across the dance floor. The ceiling was stained by cigarette smoke, from the tradies who used to come for a beer after work, to the professionals who came here now from those corporations that had relocated from the city. In the corner, a giant screen played soccer from another country. Two thirty-ish men sat at the counter drinking beer, not talking. The DJ played Prince. Maybe it was retro night. Francis hoped it wasn’t retro night. Three women, all with frizzy hair, drank Bacardi Breezers by the bar. Retro brought out women who looked like schoolteachers. They should have stayed in Burger King where Shaggy and Tupac brought out the girls in the short shorts. Almost ten, and there was the slow creep of people entering the place. Things began to slow again. The boys sat down at a booth in the corner. Francis lit a cigarette and watched the smoke disappear into the air in front of him.

  Francis watched Jesús’ eyes dart around the place. It was too loud to really hear anything. Francis stood up, did the drinking gesture with his left hand, pulled on his cigarette with the right. ‘Drink?’

  Jesús stopped looking around and faced Francis. ‘You alright?’

  ‘Yeah, fine.’ He gave himself the instructions in his head again. Stand up straight. Look the guy behind the counter in the eyes. Keep your hands in your pockets so no one can see they’re shaking. Charbel looked at him again. This time for too long. You are not the boss of me, Francis thought. You are not the boss. ‘Beer?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Jesús got out his phone. Francis knew he was trying to work out if the women in the bar were a better chance of a hook-up than the girl he’d been texting with. Francis moved towards the bar where a woman with dark roots and bright blond hair was wiping the counter with a rag.

  ‘What can I get you?’ she shouted over the music. AC/DC started up with ‘Back in Black’. It was definitely retro night.

  ‘Three schooners of New.’

  The woman pulled out three frosted glasses and began to fill them up. One of the frizzy-haired women leaned against the bar next to him, sipped her pink Bacardi in its bottle. She didn’t look so bad up close. Too much makeup but he wasn’t picky. Her clothes said she’d been at work all day. The ID card she used to get into work was still clipped to her pants. She was tapping out the rhythm of the song with her hands on the bar.

  He could feel the words vibrating underneath his feet. The woman behind the bar put his drinks in front of him. He brushed up against the woman with the frizzy hair on purpose when he went to pay. She turned and looked at him. They made eye contact. Where to go from here? He was pretty shit at this but it wasn’t for lack of trying.

  He smiled. She smiled back. He ran his hands down the front of his shirt to smooth out the creases. ‘You like AC/DC?’

  ‘Yeah, they’re alright.’ She nodded, looked him up and down.

  ‘My dad knew AC/DC, like back in the day, before they were all famous and shit.’

  She looked at him. Raised her eyebrows. Disbelieving. Never tell a real story that sounds like it isn’t true. ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Yeah. They were in Villawood together, back before it was Villawood, like now. They came from Scotland and my dad came from Italy. They lived together.’

/>   ‘Your dad’s in Villawood?’

  ‘Not like it is now, like it was before the refugees. With just regular migrants.’

  ‘Regular,’ she said. She nodded her head. The music just kept on getting louder. He wasn’t sure she’d heard a word. She looked at him like he was a wanker. He was a wanker. Shitty pick up line. He needed to work on something better. He realised just how much he was moving: swaying from side to side. Some guy pushed up against his back to get towards the bar. He looked towards the guy and then the girl was gone. Shit.

  He pushed the beers into a triangle. Held them with his hands. Tried to give it all his concentration but couldn’t. He was looking for the girl with the frizzy hair. Where did she go? He should have started with, ‘What’s your name?’ ‘My dad’s a regular guy from Villawood.’ Fuck. What kind of pickup line was that? Maybe he could find her. Buy her a drink. She was interested, maybe.

  His hands shook again. He turned with the three beers. Pushed them straight into some big bloke’s chest and watched as the beer jumped out of his hands and all over his shirt and down the other bloke’s pants.

  ‘Shit.’

  Two hands jumped out at him from the enormous body, pushed him backwards and then he was on the floor, and a giant foot kicked him in the stomach. He was wet all over. He thought his insides must have burst open and were soaking through his shirt. He ran his hand over his stomach, checked it for blood. It was beer. It was only the beer he spilled.

  ‘Fuckin’ cunt,’ someone was yelling from above. He was so small down here, everyone else was huge. And then someone got their hands up under his armpits and he was being dragged across the floor.

  ‘Get up. Get up.’ He couldn’t work out where all the instructions were coming from until someone pulled him onto a chair. It was the bouncer. He remembered his instructions to himself: Get your ID out, look them in the eyes, be cool.

  This big black face was all up in his and was saying, ‘I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’ And Francis was looking from his big stern eyes in real time to the ID tag he was wearing around his neck. The face on the tag was smiling. The face in front of him was not.

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Leave.’ Look him in the eye, like you’re not high or anything. Charbel took his left arm. Jesús took his right. He was out in the night air and the bright lights of Church Street again, just like that, before he could even understand how he got there.

  ‘Can I sit down?’

  ‘No.’

  Jesús and Charbel were dragging him down the street.

  ‘Walk.’

  He started to use his legs. His head was thumping. He walked. They were back in front of the library before he was allowed to sit down on the steps.

  Charbel was huffing and puffing in front of him. ‘You almost got bashed.’

  Francis watched him look around like there might be someone waiting to hit him again. ‘Fuck. Why do you always do that?’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Make people want to bash you?’

  ‘I never did nothing.’ Francis ran his hands over his body just to make sure all his parts were still there. It was true. He never did anything really, but he was always getting into fights. He just had something about him. Something that said bash me.

  Hours later, when Mrs Consalvo came home, they were sprawled out on her flowery couch again, ordinary as a Neighbours episode. Mrs Consalvo was too tired to talk in the mornings. Francis watched as she came through the doorway, paused to run her hand across the image of her husband who went missing all those years ago. In the kitchen she turned the radio on to the Spanish news. In the living room she sat and ate toast, leaning against Jesús’ shoulder. Francis shoved his shaking hands deep into his pockets. The boys watched TV and laughed and talked about shit.

  2.

  Antonio still had one leg that moved properly (the right) and an arm that functioned (also the right) so he got in the car and drove after Rose had gone to sleep. Since the accident he had stopped being a morning person and turned into a night one. He slept late into the day. No more waking up at four in the morning to get to work. He wandered the streets on his crutches.

  Tonight, he started out where his downfall began, with the building of the first McMansion in Australia, Old Government House in 1799. To the outsider all these things may seem unrelated but in his mind it all made sense. It wasn’t far. He drove down Victoria Road and up O’Connell St and entered Parramatta Park through the main gates next to the RSL. He couldn’t smoke and drive at the same time anymore. He didn’t have enough good arms. He parked on the roadside and looked up to where Old Government House sat in the darkness up on its hill. Light spilled from the back where the restaurant was still open. An elderly couple walked out of the restaurant holding hands and slowly wandered down the street. Antonio wound down his window, lit his cigarette, exhaled.

  He’d gone on a tour of Old Government House when they’d opened it up to the public not so many years after he built his own home in Parramatta. He’d thought the place was going to be a whole lot more than it was, but in the end it was all illusion. Wooden Greek pillars covered in paint and sand to look like sandstone. Wooden floorboards painted in small squares and lacquered to look like tiles. Wooden counter tops with contrasting layers of coloured paint so they looked like marble. This was Australia: marble and granite and sandstone that was really just cheap old wood.

  All those years later when Fat Frank drove him out to the acres and acres of nothing where he wanted to build houses that had roofs with no eaves and plastic pipes glued together instead of copper pipes, stick-on yellow fake windowpane strips, stick-on shutters, stick-on chimneys and polystyrene frames for the slabs, he thought of Old Government House. He should have known Fat Frank was right when he said those houses would sell. Everyone here wanted to live in joke houses, even the leaders of the country. Fat Frank thought he invented the McMansion but it was really Mrs Macquarie when she moved into Old Government House and wanted all those things like the sandstone and marble and tiles she couldn’t afford, so she faked it.

  Antonio flicked his cigarette butt out the window and watched it land on the ground. He unfurled the fingers on the only hand that worked right. He thought about the undertaker preparing Nico’s body, the cleaning of his skin, dressing him in his good navy suit. He thought about how histories could be written on bodies. Nico had always had bumps and scars, places where the skin was uneven.

  He checked the glove box to make sure he had another pack and he did, squashed under the small bottle of whisky he kept there too, for his night-time driving. Of course, he didn’t drink it while he was driving, just when he stopped, when he’d settled in for a few hours in a cul-de-sac or a side street. These were the places he drove to, to think about what he was going to do about everything. Other people, they went to the beach or a river or a mountain full of trees when they just wanted to stare out into space and think. Antonio, he liked looking at houses, streets too, but mostly houses.

  He started the ignition, bashed the gear back into drive with his elbow. He drove up onto the highway and cut across to Woodville Road, headed south-west towards another of the places where he’d begun. He drove. During the day Woodville Road was always full, always loud, the houses had people on their verandahs, people parked on the sidewalk in front of the small shops. Children skipped on their way to school. At night, the whole place went quiet. The landscape was so flat you could see right out to the horizon, no place for anything to hide. He took a long hard look at the houses when he was stopped at red lights. Sometimes he stayed there and looked for more than one red light. If there wasn’t anyone behind him he’d stay for two or three red lights, just staring until his eyes were full up with the place. There were the Queenslanders stuck too far south, and the places made from shit-brown bricks sitting in their squat squares, and the odd McMansion with its Greek columns and gold-plated exterior fittings sitting like a giant ‘fuck you’ in between two fibro houses with walls you could break through w
ith a kitchen spoon. Giant rectangles of brick apartment blocks three to four storeys high broke everything up with their straight, straight lines. It pissed him off, the disorder of the place. Sometimes when he looked at things like this it made a lot of sense how everyone around here wanted to move sideways – not out of the community, just to the nearest estate where they could be in the community but not in the community, where everything was given a bit of symmetry and all the chaos got locked out at the gate.

  Not too far from here, behind Villawood Station, was where he’d first met Nico, but he wouldn’t go there now. Instead, he kept driving, drove until he ended up at the same place he ended up most nights. He came around the back way and entered down the side of one of the last houses that was being built. He couldn’t go through the front gate. The security guard knew him now, had told him last time that he shouldn’t be coming around at night anymore. ‘On account of you don’t live here,’ he’d said. ‘And,’ he’d added, ‘you don’t even work here anymore.’

  He may not work here anymore but he still knew that this was Lot Number 185 that he had his car parked in front of, and that the security guard wasn’t moving from that gatehouse unless the little TV he kept in the corner blew up.

  To his left was where the new residents lived, all oversized houses shoved up too close to one another, the lights were still on in some of them. To his right there was nothing and nothing and nothing. Fat Frank was behind schedule. Antonio could see it from here. It would give Nico some satisfaction to know that he had caused all this lateness.

  ‘Sixty days, sixty days.’ It was Fat Frank’s mantra as the site manager, none of the McShitboxes should take more than sixty days before the basics of walls and flooring were up.

  Antonio fished the whisky out of his glove box, shoved the bottle between his thighs and unscrewed the lid with his good hand. He got out of the car, leaned up against it, looked up at the sky and back to Lot 185 and took a deep drink. The house was still half finished, still had the yellow tape that the guys from WorkCover had used to cordon off the investigation site around the scaffolding lying on its front lawn.