by E. M. Reapy
Norman only played the same music, only told the same stories, only bought the same food and drinks and shook them about in noisy bags.
He followed Hopper everywhere. He paid for everything but kept letting Hopper know that he paid, reminding him constantly.
‘Stop fucking buying me stuff so, Norman,’ Hopper said. ‘It’s that simple.’
‘You know I can’t do that,’ Norman said. He was rubbing his chest. ‘That’s why you’re still here.’
‘What? Yes you can, just don’t. It’s easy. You quit pints. Surely not spending money on me has to be easier than that.’
‘Our paths crossed. For the moment, our journeys are intertwined and I don’t want to jinx my future.’
Hopper refused all gifts, food and money from Norman for three days but gave in when he needed to replace his sun cream.
Norman was clingy. Too clingy. It was time to move on.
★
Hopper brought Norman to a cathouse. He had saved some of the spends Norman had given him. It was a sleek set up and they could book into different themed rooms – Oriental, Mediterranean, Tropical Paradise, Safari. Hopper reckoned they should go with the standard rooms. After all, they were there for the ladies, not the wall paintings and decorations.
‘This is fucking amazing, isn’t it,’ Hopper said.
Norman nodded but was pale-faced.
The madam came out to speak to them and find out their ‘needs’ and Hopper wanted her but knew she was too good for him. He loved how her straight black hair swished when she talked. He loved the swell on her hips and arse.
She showed them a catalogue and Hopper was on a semi.
Norman was coughing and acting weird.
‘Are you alright, Norman?’ Hopper asked. ‘Are you going your own age or young one? The mature women are unreal. What ya reckon?’
Norman coughed again but this time at the end he made a high-pitched throaty sound. He was holding his chest.
‘Are you okay, Norman?’ Hopper asked again. ‘Norman?’ He turned to the madam, ‘Maybe you should call an ambulance?’
★
Norman was sent home from hospital after they observed him and ran tests on him for a few hours. They said it was a scare. Not a heart attack. They told him to relax and stay away from stressful situations. When Norman was sitting up in his double bed back in the gaff, wearing his shirt and jocks, Hopper brought him in some water and a cheese sandwich.
‘The excitement got to you, eh, old boy?’ Hopper said, passing him the tray.
‘No.’ Norman had his head low. ‘The jealousy did.’
Hopper took a few minutes to think about this and then he left the room.
That night, he went back to Norman’s room and stripped down to his jocks. Norman looked at him confused. He climbed into Norman’s double bed and turned to him. ‘You’ve been awful kind to me.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Norman said.
‘I’ve calmed down, the fizz is gone. I don’t barely have it anymore.’
‘Barely have what?’
‘I owe you for the accommodation and food,’ Hopper said.
Norman waved his hand across the bed. ‘No. You don’t. It’s been a good time.’
‘Yeah it has,’ Hopper said. He scooted further into the bed, closer to Norman.
‘What are you doing?’ Norman asked.
Hopper’s thighs were against Norman’s. They were hot and hairy.
‘What are you doing?’ he repeated.
Hopper went to unbutton Norman’s shirt and he pushed his hand away at first but then he let him. His breathing quickened. Hopper undid the shirt and pushed it on the ground. He lifted the leather satchel and threw it near the door. Norman was in his vest now. Hopper could feel his horn. He took it in his hand and played with it. Massaged it. Gripped it and moved it up and down, it was silky and fat. Norman lay back into his pillow and gasped. Hopper went faster until his wrist was strained and the sheets were wet.
Norman fell into a deep sleep after. His snoring was loud and steady. Hopper got up and dressed silently. His hands fumbled around on the ground until he found it. He picked up the satchel and unzipped it. Six hundred and fifty bucks.
Hopper snuck out the door and into the night.
★
He hitched a lift to the airport with a miner flying out. A new chance. This time, he could make a go of it on his own. He could see Perth on the horizon and she looked beautiful.
★
He shouldn’t.
★
Her face was pierced. Her cheeks. Her eyebrows. The middle of her nose like a bull. Her lip and ears. She was in the airport café and he knew it looking at her. He tapped his head. He walked around her table twice before stopping at it, fresh coffee and pastry smells mingled.
‘What are you selling?’ he asked.
She looked up from a glossy magazine. Her black eye make-up sparkled. A New Zealand accent. ‘Excuse me?’
‘Have you got anything?’
‘This is a fucking airport. Do I look like a complete idiot to you?’
Hopper checked around him and noticed all the security guards and announcements everywhere.
‘Where you going?’ she asked, her eyes on the magazine. She licked her finger and flicked a page. There was a big picture of the Beckhams, looking in love and happy, with a new wee baby beside them.
‘Perth.’
‘Me too.’ She inspected him. ‘I know people in Perth.’
Hopper smiled.
★
And her nipples and her clitoris were pierced too.
He’d needed to be with a woman.
Ruby brought him to her rented apartment overlooking Cottesloe Beach. They smoked a small bag of weed.
He needed to remember who he was.
She was from Christchurch and made a lot of cash working in the mines, cleaning dongas, the places where the miners kipped but she didn’t want to talk about the job, wrinkling her nose when Hopper asked her. She only talked about the sweet cash she earned.
‘Bloody needed that pay. Told men to rack off twenty times a day. Way they bloody looked at me. I was meat. Intimidating place for a chick. Ninety per cent male. Bloody intimidating.’
‘Don’t be getting thick,’ Hopper said and kissed her nose. ‘Just come here to me.’
He buried his head into her neck, nuzzling her soft skin, inhaling her scent, the sweet on it, the perfume, the female.
★
Hopper woke to the sound of rain outside. He hadn’t heard or felt rain in ages. He got out of bed, Ruby was still under the sheet, her tattooed shoulder bared.
He went to the balcony and opened it, the rain poured heavily on the roof. The ground was splashing and Hopper put his head out into it.
Ruby came in to see where he had gone. ‘You’re a bloody madman.’
He washed his hair in the rain and drank it.
She kissed him and he’d felt pure joy for a moment.
But moments like that never lasted long for Hopper.
★
‘I can’t get into something with you,’ Ruby said. ‘I’m just out of something. I want to stay out for a while. Reconnect with myself.’
‘Sure why would you be with me so?’
‘I think you’ve got a good heart.’
‘Do ya?’ Hopper said, his eyes narrowing, the walls closing in on him. How could he? All he done. All the bad. All he fucked up. ‘Really?’
‘Yes, definitely.’ She nodded, smiled.
His body relaxed like something huge had been taken off him.
★
Ruby got rid of him after the weekend.
Hopper sat on a park bench for the afternoon and wondered what to do but his mind came up with blanks. Perth had been his only plan. Get to Perth. He spent the last ages trying to get to Perth. Since he left Ireland he was trying to get to Perth. Now he was here, he didn’t know what to do.
He was empty.
He shouldn’t have g
one smoking with Ruby. He’d have to stay strong and not get in touch with her, though every time he took his phone out, he wanted to text her. He walked around the park and decided to check into a backpackers, whatever one he could find first.
★
He came across two Irish lads in the hostel’s smoking area. There was a breeze in the night air. They saw him passing and shouted.
‘Hey, you, where you from?’ The smaller one said. ‘I’d know from the head on you, you’re one of ours.’
‘Dundalk, ye?’ Hopper replied. He itched the palms of his hands and noticed the three goon boxes on their table
‘I’m Murph from Mayo and me man here is Shane from Galway. Are ya gooning?’ he asked. His eyes were twisted from drinking.
Hopper hesitated. ‘I – I wasn’t going to. No. Trying to stay off that stuff.’
‘What do you mean?’ Murph asked.
‘You know, just, not. I don’t think I should drink. Don’t really…’ Hopper talked but he was losing his voice. He didn’t want to say he was trying to go sober. Not to these two. Being on the wagon was as humiliating as being off it.
‘Will you stop, here, Shane, pour this Louth man a drink,’ Murph said.
Shane emptied a beer glass, shaking out the last few drops onto the floor. He poured some white goon into it. ‘There you go, sir.’
He handed Hopper the drink.
He shouldn’t.
But they were watching him. They were his age. They’d keep chatting to him. He finished it quickly, which they cheered. His blood warmed. He felt good. He remembered this. They filled his glass again and he took a seat beside them on a metallic deck chair.
★
The lads told him about fucking up their interviews for the mines.
‘Like, we didn’t know they were going to get urine samples.’ Murph was accusing in his tone. ‘We’d have prepared ourselves adequately if we knew.’
Shane said, ‘Yeah we wouldn’t have been flute acting last weekend. Imagine running on a treadmill in our fucking borrowed suits and shoes for the fitness test?’
Hopper shook his head. He liked these lads. He wanted them to like him.
‘Look at those mares,’ Shane said and pointed to a table of foreign women.
‘Would ya shift any of them, hey?’ Murph asked. He slapped Shane in the shoulder. Winked at him. Shane sniggered.
Hopper took a big swig of his goon. ‘I’d shift the lot of them. I’d do worse than that to them.’
The boys laughed.
‘Rides.’
‘You go talk to them so, Hopper,’ Murph said.
‘I would but I don’t speak their speak. Anyway would ya look at them and look at me. I’d say your boy here has the best shot.’
‘What about me?’ Murph was mock insulted. ‘This man’s been breaking hearts and beds around Australia.’ He slapped Shane’s chest again. ‘Getting us into fine messes.’
‘Here, will you fuck off telling everyone my business. You don’t be complaining when you get the spare friends or the free stuff they give me. Hanging tight and getting all me benefits without any drama.’ Shane shrugged. ‘Sure, I don’t know, they come to me. They give me gifts. I don’t do fuck all.’
‘Why don’t you talk to them?’ Hopper asked Murph.
‘Ara, me heart is taken.’
Hopper understood that.
‘There’s this unbelievable London one, talked to her earlier. Sionnach, so she is. Asked her if she’d any Irish in her, she said no, asked if she wanted some and the way she laughed, man, no lie. Me lad is restless thinking about her. Shane, you talk to them.’
‘No,’ Shane said. ‘Well, I will, but let me have a few more of these first. Pints of confidence.’
‘I’ll fucking talk to them,’ Hopper said and got out of his seat. He went over to the group. ‘Any craic?’
The giggling and chatter from the girls stopped dead and they just eyed Hopper. It made him uneasy. He tapped his head.
‘I’ll take that as a no,’ he said. He went back to the lads. ‘Shower of stuck-up…’
Shane nodded.
Murph said, ‘Get this testicle another drink.’
★
They got locked together, slurring stories of misadventures. When the lads mentioned the drug binges they’d gone on, a light went off in Hopper. The world changed. It gave him a break. He wouldn’t have to try anymore. He had his way in.
He told them stuff he shouldn’t have but he trusted them. He even offered to get them acid when they said they’d never done it before. He’d have to ring Ruby and see would she find some for him. The three of them drank until they were told to shut up by people trying to sleep in the dorm nearest the smoking area.
‘Night Hopperoo, me auld flower,’ Murph said and almost tripped down the stairs.
Hopper tried to creep into his room and make as little commotion possible. Them buffer lads, they were sound. They would be mates, like. He lay on his bunk looking up at the ceiling, the room dark except for his dormmates’ charging phones and blinking laptop lights.
Norman had been sound but Norman didn’t count. Ruby was sound too but she didn’t count either. Hopper had the warm in his chest, been a long time since he’d had real friends. It had been a long time since Ger.
★
He’d a splitting hangover in the morning and so he stayed in bed until it was late afternoon. The boys came looking for him.
‘D’ya want a game of pool, Hopper?’ Murph asked.
He joined and they played for a few hours. The lads went to ‘scab’ a dinner. They said they’d try grab a meal for him too. They were meeting again for some pints that night.
‘Money’s a fucking nightmare to keep a hold of over here,’ Murph said. ‘I’m literally pissing it out of me. I’m gonna call it alcomy. I turn money to urine through a process of drinking.’
They told Hopper about a job a Donegal lad had offered them.
‘It’s up the back arse of nowhere. John Anthony or whatever he’s called is a fucking potato head. Total prick but we can ditch him there. Easy enough if we’re working all the time. Won’t have to talk to him.’
‘He’d probably feel like punching a bag of potatoes too, tough cunt,’ Shane said. ‘D’ya wanna come, Hopper?’
Murph said, ‘Huh?’
‘Where?’ Hopper asked.
‘On the job? Yer man is looking for Irish fellas to go and work on a mango farm for the harvest. They want us ’cause we work hard,’ Shane laughed, ‘or at least we have the reputation of hard workers. Sounds like a doss too. Easy. Hopefully some easy women. Chance to save some money. Perth has me paupered.’
‘Chance?’
‘Yeah, sure come on with us. What would you be doing here?’
‘Shane. No,’ Murph said.
‘Sure why not, like?’ Shane said.
Murph raised his shoulders. ‘Just.’
‘It’ll be grand,’ Shane said and turned back to Hopper. ‘Do ya wanna come?’
Hopper nodded his head.
He was in on the job and he was in with the lads. All above board, clean work. His life was falling together. At last. That faith Norman used to go on about. Have faith things will work out the way they’re supposed to. Put your life in the faith. This was faith. Things were really looking up. It was time for him to get a real job like every other bastard going.
★
John Anthony was a fat-headed thug. Murph called him a latchego.
Hopper had no interest in him and he’d no interest in Hopper. They knew the likes of each other already. Hopper, growing up near the border, had come across Republican muscle bastards before. Power tripping. Tricking lads off the estate into dirty work for cheap gear.
John Anthony didn’t shake Hopper’s hand when they were introduced. Hopper heard him mutter ‘spide.’ The fizz stirred. But Perth wasn’t for trouble, that wasn’t why he was here. He ducked out of his way.
★
He was lying in his bunk
when Ruby contacted him for a ‘business meeting.’
She was waiting at a chip shop near Cottesloe. Hopper ordered fried hake, chips with vinegar and ate using a fork so she wouldn’t think he was rough. He smiled at her.
‘So, you said you might be interested in getting to know some people around Perth?’
Hopper shrugged.
‘Well, I had an idea. As you’re already aware, I’ve some connections but I’d really like to get some other ones. Bloody over working in the mines. Prison camp. Easier lives to live, bro, easier methods to make good money. Wouldn’t mind a way into the backpackers, is it big?’
‘Grand size. Probably sleeps 200. Why?’
‘Sweet as. I need to get a rep in the hostels. To direct the travellers to me. A go-between. Understand, bro? Someone I could trust. I’d give you a nice cut.’
Hopper laughed. Of course he fucking understood. But he’d agreed to head on to the countryside. ‘Look, I’m no good to you. I don’t know too many here yet. The ones I do know, I’m leaving with in the morning. Me and my friends are going to some mad mango village. I’m staying out of trouble from now on. But it’s a decent business plan. Good luck with it, Ruby.’
She sighed and broke eye contact but he didn’t care. He was going straight. He was going to be a farmer.
‘Want to get baked so, Irish, since it’s a going away party? Hit some clubs?’ she asked.
Sure why the fuck not.
★
Hopper hadn’t slept. He went straight from the chipper to Ruby’s to a few bars and nightclubs to the beach to smoke more weed.
He said his goodbyes to her, tried to kiss her again but she resisted. She gave him the acid in tinfoil.
‘Gratis,’ she giggled. ‘For free, my friend.’
He walked slowly to the backpackers, filled his small bag and went to the car park. The early morning sun hurt his eyes.
John Anthony was bulling. Hopper pretended not to notice, he put his bag in the boot.
‘How’s things?’ Murph asked, his eyes were bloodshot and a fine whiff of drink off him.
‘Devil a bother.’
Murph grinned.
‘Travel light?’ Shane asked.
‘Don’t need much more than my jocks and a couple of t-shirts,’ Hopper said and scratched his head.