Lara ripped into her hamburger. Jesus, that girl could eat. When she finished she had a sliver of sauce on her chin. I watched Scott in the rearview mirror, watching her. Every so often he would take a bite, then put his arm over her shoulder, then move his hand back to secure his burger.
‘Hey,’ he said when he was finished. ‘You have some sauce on your face.’ He gripped her head and gave her chin a kiss. ‘I ate it away.’ She continued demolishing her fries.
We made it back to her house at three. Of course her parents were in the same spot: they needed a bench or something. Lara played it to a tee. She’d really liked Hoodwinked! The wolf was scary. Grandma had a funny voice. Mrs Applebaum looked at her daughter chasing the dog around the lawn. ‘Lara seems to have really enjoyed herself! Maybe we can make this a monthly event. Our turn next time, though, Brendan. It was Brendan, wasn’t it?’
When we got home, I went straight to my room. I was exhausted, and I didn’t want to be anywhere near Scott. As I was about to drift off, I heard a knock at my door.
‘What?’
It was Scott. He was holding a package, bound clumsily in Christmas wrapping. He stood awkwardly at the end of my bed and stuck out his hand.
‘Is it for me?’
He nodded. I ripped it open. It was a red bandanna with paisley eyelets over it: the kind Tupak Shakur wore, that only looks good on gangsters. ‘Wow.’ I unfolded and refolded it into a fat band, and tied it around my head. Surely I looked like an idiot. ‘Thanks, buddy. Hold up, did you put the condoms in a bag in the bin?’
‘Yep.’
It was over, then. I pulled off my shoes and threw one at Scott’s feet. ‘Hey bro, how do I look?’
Two thumbs up.
Hide Your Fires
Guns ’N Coffee
A.S. Patric
I work in the middle of the damned city. I start when every other son of a bitch is about to clock in as well. It doesn’t matter where I go, I can’t get a coffee without waiting for fifteen minutes in a queue. No one likes lines, right? I’m not saying I’m different, but lately, these coffee lines seem to be slowly moving us along like a hissing snake, swallowing all our minds in a milky swirl of white poison.
These days there’s less space in front and behind. The breath of those who haven’t eaten or brushed since the day before, spiced up with a cigarette or two before coming into the crowded café and snuggling up right behind my shoulder, is the kind of stuff that is going to challenge the most equanimous. Me? I only know what ‘equanimous’ means because it was word of the day on my screensaver yesterday.
If it’s not that, then it’s those women with that angry industrial-strength perfume that burns like a corrosive through my nasal passages and leaves a chemical taste on my tongue. I used to think they had lost their sense of smell. Now I know it’s an attempt to get some space in these coffee queues.
None of this is going to explain why I brought a handgun along with me today. I’m just saying, there’s too many people in this damned city, and they’re all starting work around the time I need a coffee.
*
It’s a modest gun. I’m not a closet Dirty Harry wanting someone to make my day. I only want someone to make my coffee.
When I pull it out for the first time the woman in front of me blinks sleepily and goes back to daydreaming about her strong latte with two sugars.
‘Hey,’ I say to her. She’s ignoring me so I give her a wave of black steel near her right ear. ‘Hey,’ I say again. ‘I’m not kidding.’
I fire the gun through the wide doors of the café and out into the street. The shot travels above the heads of the masses of people pushing along the footpaths. The bullet shatters a pane of thick glass in the fashion store across the road. People get a bit cut up from the crashing glass and a man begins screaming like someone has cut off his toes. The pedestrians keep passing, barely pausing, crushing the glass beneath their shoes as they make their way to work.
My wrist is limp from the kickback. I transfer the gun to my left hand as if it’s all the better to display the weapon. The double-sugar-latte woman steps aside. The rest of the folks in the line follow her example.
Bradley the Barista knows how I like my coffee. His arms move with speed and precision – a perfection of machine engineering in human form. It’s as though I press his fast-forward button and then the stop button when he finishes my ristretto-strength long black with three grips and three sugars.
I pay him and tell him he can keep the change on a ten-dollar bill. It’s only polite to show an appreciation for good service.
‘How’s your day been, Brad?’ I ask after my first satisfying sip.
‘It’s been pretty busy, Mr Bushnell. This is the first time I’ve had a moment of stillness for two hours.’
‘Are you enjoying it, Brad?’ I ask.
‘I am indeed, Mr Bushnell,’ he replies, and adds, ‘There’s something about a loaded gun that makes one appreciate a moment like this. Thanks for that, Mr Bushnell.’
‘Glad I could do that for you, Brad. I’ll now have the pleasure of strolling to work rather than the unwelcome power slalom through those frustrated crowds outside. I’m going to have a lovely amble to work today.’
As soon as I move away from the counter the line resumes its shape, longer and angrier than ever. A rattler of a line extending outside the front doors, the furious tail shaking with the anger of twenty smartphones going off simultaneously. It’s a soothing sound when you have discovered the ways of the snake charmer as I have.
*
I come in the next morning with a smile in my stride and a spring in my face. I’m eager to display my Kimber 1911 Compact again. I want to get that snake dancing out of my way.
I don’t have a problem until I arrive at the head of the line and a high-powered exec smiles like his teeth are made out of diamonds and he eats crystal croissants with his coffee. He’s been held in the purgatory of the line for the last fifteen minutes and can’t swallow me moving past everyone with a royal wave of black steel. Maybe he didn’t see my warning yesterday but I can tell he is a natural-born hero.
‘You are not going to shoot me for a coffee. That’s ridiculous! It’s only a few dollars and a few moments. You can’t kill a human being with such little motivation.’
‘What’s your game, Mr Suit?’ I ask him.
‘I don’t want to play. I’m just going to get a coffee and go to work.’
‘Well, Mr Suit, I’m not going to go into a lengthy analysis of the situation here. But I will say this – it’s not about a few minutes or a few dollars. It’s about an accretion of time that mummifies my brain and turns my thoughts into sand. More than anything, it’s about the brief, black, bitter taste of liberty in those cups. You’re standing in the way of my freedom, Mr Suit. I advise you to step aside and give me a moment with Bradley the Barista.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Mr Suit tells me with his diamond grin.
‘Mr Suit,’ I say and step forward. I raise the gun to the height of his heart. ‘Reconsider, please,’ I say and wiggle the Kimber 1911 Compact. I polished it last night and I know it has a lethal gleam.
He looks at it like it’s a water pistol and turns around and asks Bradley for an affogato. It’s more of a dessert than it is a coffee. An affogato! It also happens to be the most time-consuming thing he could have asked Bradley to make him. I take it as a personal affront. Mr Suit says he also wants two scoops of ice-cream and not just one. I give him two bullets instead and I’m not sorry.
Mr Suit dies in a very elegant creaseless crumple of the best Italian fabric and design. A macchiato stain of blood spreads across the immaculate collar of his white shirt and drips onto the black marble of the café’s floor. Everyone lines up behind me. Bradley’s hands fly to the handles and dials of his Gaggia Deco D espresso machine.
*
The next morning I walk into the café and feel sure there will be no more need for gun-waving and I won’t have to kill anyone to get a coffee. I had a difficult night getting to sleep. For hours I tried to rest my mind and body. Even when I managed to drift away I found myself waking in a fevered state, my sheets wet right through and my pillow soaked. In short, too much coffee. There have to be limits even to these dark pleasures, I suppose.
The line is long and I can barely get through the doors of the café. I announce myself but no one moves.
The double-sugar-latte woman stands before me again and I tell her, ‘Surely, my mettle has been tested. My resolve can’t still be in question.’
She turns around and a wash of her perfume breaks over me in a dizzying ocean of petals and pollen, bouquets of sweet-smelling chemicals rushing down my throat. I take a step back but I stumble and grab a chair to steady myself.
‘You don’t look good,’ she tells me.
‘I didn’t sleep very well,’ I explain. ‘Frankly, my experiences in the toilet haven’t been too pleasant either. I’m sweating a lot and my stomach feels uneasy. Queasy, I feel very queasy.’
‘Coffee’s not for everyone. Perhaps you should drink tea instead. Take a few moments every morning, perhaps – treat yourself to a pot of Orange Pekoe leaf. You’ll find it’s better suited to your nervous system. Our culture has so many problems and diseases that stem from stress and anxiety, and there’s nothing that generates and promotes these things like the addiction to the coffee bean.’
I’m starting to feel disorientated. People are pushing past me to get into the store and others are coming out with steaming takeaway cups filled with the delicious beverage that will give me the boost I need to get through the next few hours of my life. ‘Shut up, you scandalous hypocrite. You’re here for the same reason I am. You need the coffee bean as well.’
‘I drink decaf.’
‘Decaf?’ I say. ‘Decaf!’
‘Yes, decaf. Decaf indeed.’
‘Don’t talk to me about decaffeinated coffee. It’s like taking a shower in a raincoat.’
‘I don’t think so,’ she says.
‘It’s like eating one of those burgers made out of lentils and cabbage.’
‘No, it’s not,’ she says, looking at me like I’m someone to be pitied.
‘Should I remind you I’m carrying a weapon?’ I reach below my arm and remove my Kimber 1911 Compact from a holster I bought for it yesterday afternoon. ‘You don’t require further demonstrations, do you?’ I pull it out and hold it before her.
‘It’s not a good idea. There’s a room full of coffee drinkers here, after all. Every single one of them desperate for that first hit, just like you. There’s no way you can keep a trump card like that in a room full of losing gamblers.’
‘What?’ I blink at her. ‘Just move!’ I wave the gun with two sharp movements to the right.
She steps aside with a sorrowful expression. I see the line has changed. Everyone in it has removed a firearm from a pocket or handbag and they all have these guns pointed at me. Thirty barrels are trained on my head, chest and stomach. I blink. I can’t really take in the image of all these respectable city workers armed with such deadly weapons.
I look over to Bradley the Barista and ask him, ‘What’s going on here, Brad? Didn’t I invent the game? It’s my ball, isn’t it? I get to say how we play. Bradley – tell these people!’
The Barista wipes his hands with a tea towel and a regretful look passes across his face. He says, ‘I’m sorry, Mr Bushnell. No more coffee for you.’
‘What?’ I ask the question meekly but I feel my heart kick in my chest at the thought of never having another morning jolt from Bradley’s beans. ‘What?’ It comes out as a roar this time. ‘You can’t be serious. I’ve been coming here for years. I’ve been working in this damned city …’
*
My anger had begun to foam like milk in the bottom of a metal jug and I was spitting with my eyes closed when I said ‘damned city.’ My weapon might have been raised. It was more a gesticulation than an intent to harm anyone. Coffee drinkers are jumpy though and their fingers get twitchy.
fourW
Yia Yia on Papou
Zoe Norton Lodge
If my name is Koula and your name is Mick and we shall be met and we shall be married under the auspices of the father in the Greek Orthodox Parish & Community of Saints Raphael, Nicholas & Irene, then you shall remember this, you shall remember this forever, and if you shall remember this, then you may begin to understand my eternal contempt.
If my name is Koula and your name is Mick and we shall be met and we shall be married and we shall cohabitate in a house-familius in Suburbingford with our two children and our patio and our various Shih Tzus named Dadie and Sadie and similar and our Carltonware, our plastic-covered couches, our china horses, cups of tea, brass statuette of the harbour bridge, our security blinds and tobacco, our flannelettes and mouthwash. If one day in this situation unto which we have found ourselves you shall ask unto me:
Koula, pou ine tou alago thacktilithi mou favourite? I will say: How the fuck should I know, Mick. If it’s not on your butso-glifti finger, then pous thialo would I know where your stupid favourite ring with the horseshoe is? If you shall suggest that blame for this ring misplacement lies outside the gelatinous boundaries of yourself, perhaps with me or our children or our Shih Tzus and you shall make us search the house. If one day, two weeks after you have lost the ring, and we have searched the house, you shall cry out unto me from your seat on the toilet, whilst peering southward, with a repulsive strain over your gut, down to your knee-ward underpants: Koula! Do echo vriso. Ine sta y front vrakya mou!
If you shall find, sitting there in your underpants, your favourite horseshoe ring, understand that I shall know you have not changed your underpants for two weeks. Understand that the fact that you did not notice a ring with a jagged horseshoe setting burring into your buttocks for two weeks suggests a disturbing deficit in observation and a medically significant lack of somatic response in your fat arse. You should see several kinds of doctors.
Furthermore, understand, Mick, understand that I have never lost anything. Understand that I have no sympathy for you. Understand this and you shall begin to understand the emergence of my eternal contempt.
If my name is Koula and your name is Mick and we have been met and we have been married and you have no feeling in your arse and one day you tell me you are taking our seven-year-old son to the Maritime Museum. If, instead of taking him to the museum, you leave him in the car for four hours while you drink at the RSL with other arseholes like you, who you are friends with because you all share ninety per cent of your genes with elephant seals. If you do this Mick, our son will remember forever, and I will never forget. And when you are old and vague and I am old, I shall carry my blackened memories of you forever in my mouth ulcers.
If my name is Koula and your name is Mick and we have been married and you have no feeling in your arse and you have previously left our son in a car for four hours and you are sixty-eight and you are not dead and I have not forgotten and we are flatting together for apathy and convenience. If one day in this situation unto which we have delivered ourselves, you shall suppose to comment on my cooking. If one day you shall squint and wheeze as the pencil shavings and hairy sodden bath plugs comprising your brain attempt to inhale, interpret and re-release information back into the ether. If your brain shall miraculously evade electrocution through unprecedented usage, and you manage to sneeze out of your teeth bucket the premature stillborn of a would-be verbalised thought. Should this premi-thought call into the arena of question an aspect of my cooking. Understand this. Understand that every day for fifty years, I have, in spite of the emergence and subsequent exponential growth of my eternal contempt cooked you three perfect me
als every day. Understand that perfection is my only weakness. Understand that my kitchen has a fucking chef’s hat. And understand that in order to ensure that nothing of this sort recurs I shall beat you repeatedly over the head with a Christmas placemat.
If my name is Koula and your name is Mick and we have been met and we have been married and you have no feeling in your arse and you once left our seven-year-old son in the car and I have beaten almost every last drop of your ambition to engage with the world out of your head with a Christmas placemat and you are seventy-five and you are not dead and I have not forgotten. If one morning before dawn, in this situation unto which we have found ourselves, I encounter you in our driveway, with a garbage bag full of tissues and ornaments, wearing nothing but a pair of white stubbies, waiting for your eight-year-old grandson to drive you to your lacrosse game. Understand that you seem to have gone completely mad. Understand that the only upsetting part of this situation for me is that I briefly had to look at you without a shirt on.
If my name is Koula and your name is Mick and we have been met and we have been married and you have no feeling in your arse and one day you left our son in the car and I have beaten your churlishness with a Christmas placemat and you have gone mad and you have disappointingly recovered quickly and we have moved to stou thiavolou ti manna retirement villa and one day you shall sit at your windowsill, staring at the happenstance in your visual field, and you shall say: Koula, you have to come and see this. There is a little white dog, just sitting there on the grass. It’s so still. I wonder if it’s lonely. It’s so beautiful. Parakalo Koula.
And I will refuse.
Parakalo.
No.
Parakalo, just one little look.
No.
Koula …
Fine …
The Best Australian Stories 2012 Page 25