‘Nelly, sit down,’ Mum said.
‘Hey, Agatha, have you seen Gordon or Courtney? They’re coming too, apparently.’
‘I heard they might,’ Agatha said, glancing swiftly at Mum.
‘Where’s Dad?’ I asked.
‘He’s up at The Kelso with his friends,’ Mum replied.
‘Why isn’t he here? We said to meet here. Why don’t we all go see him now? Shall we go for a beer now and see him?’ I asked urgently, feeling a creamy bead of sweat move down the line of my nose.
‘Will you please sit down?’ Mum asked, gesturing at the only bed in the room. ‘On the bed, Neil, now!’
‘Where will Agatha sleep?’ I asked, my throat closing up.
‘There’s a foldout.’
Mum had the most pained look on her face.
‘Stuart’s coming up!’ I announced. ‘I spoke to him three days ago – he reckons Malaki might come up too and a friend of ours, Nancy –’
‘Stuart…’ Mum interrupted.
‘Can you believe it? Fuck, if Stuart comes I’ll definitely be ne r-vous,’ I said.
‘Stuart’s dead,’ Agatha sounded proud to know this and not me.
Mum slapped Agatha across the back.
‘Well he is!’
‘Neil, we have some news. Please…’ Mum could not have said this softer. I hated her and her patronising face.
‘What the fuck did –’ I was losing my balance and the walls seemed to be closing in on me. Everything was shaking and pulsating and this feeling, this burning feeling, I knew it – fucking please no.
‘Neil, will you please sit down?’ Mum asked, but I wouldn’t. I was trying to open the window, even though I could see it was bolted shut.
‘Sit down on the bed now!’ Mum roared, and before I knew it I was sitting on the edge of the bed with my fists clenched.
Mum rubbed her face with her hands and said, ‘Ok’. She knelt down before me, peering up at me through her eyelashes, which fluttered as a tear crept along their tightrope and fell onto my knee. I had not been this close to my mother since I was a teenager, and she would read to me in bed. I missed her face, and all the stories it told, the blanket of warmth that fell upon me when I was near it. That’s why we lose the handle, I thought, when we veer too far from this face, from this blanket, from this holy storybook.
‘Stuart was a beautiful boy,’ she said.
How could you make him past tense already? Was.
‘How’d he do it?’ I asked.
Mum let her hair fall over her face.
‘Fucking tell me, Mum! How did he do it?’ I blared, snot falling.
She was calm still, which killed me. ‘Stuart was a very tortured boy. The drugs and the girls and the clubs…’
‘Tell me how he fucking did it, Mum! I swear!’ I warned, gripping her hair in my hands and twisting it down.
‘Don’t talk… let go of my hair please…’
‘MUM!’ I screamed, and then Agatha stood up. Crying black mascara she said to me, ‘He shot himself in the head with his father’s hunting rifle.’
The world dropped then like a car crash, got slower so that every moment was filled with a million details of tragedy.
‘When?’ I asked.
‘Three nights ago.’
Mum’s face was in her lap on the floor, she was humming.
‘What time?’
‘Neil,’ Mum said from beneath her hair. ‘This doesn’t help you.’
‘What fucking time?’
‘Around a quarter to two in the morning.’
Five minutes after we hung up. I was the last person he spoke to. Real mate real mate real mate. He was asking me to save him.
‘Why didn’t anyone tell me? Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t my friends ring and tell me! Why didn’t anyone fucking tell me!’
‘They wanted to tell you in person.’
‘He’s been dead three days!’ my voice cracked and squealed.
‘They wanted to see you first.’
‘FUCK OFF!’ I screamed, getting up and kicking the bar fridge until the door broke off and I had smashed all the glass inside it. Then I burst from the room, pushed off my stupid sister and down onto the gravel, still screaming up my throat. Stuart Stone is dead and it’s my fault.
It was late and I had just returned from the technical rehearsal for ME (and Swanna’s house). The line was crackling but I could hear him fine. He kept telling me how talented and special I was and how he could not wait to see the show on Saturday. Nancy wanted to come and so did Malaki and Ebony. Who would have thought?
‘Can you believe it, Nelly? My brother’s coming. Everyone loves you, man. That faggot’s never seen a performance piece. Other than Blackmarket! Hahahaha!’
I asked Stuart how he was and he said, ‘Filth, everything’s wicked,’ and he went on again about admiring me, and how good it was partying with me at Blackmarket, especially seeing me blow that huge ball of fire; it was ‘symbolic’, he said.
‘Yeah, wicked night,’ I agreed.
‘You were on fire.’
‘I know. Literally!’
We laughed and filled in more about it.
‘Fuck man, you should see Gordon’s house now,’ Stu said, out of nowhere into the phone.
‘Which house?’
‘Y’know he bought this massive block of land on Wanda Beach, fucken waterfront and all.’ ‘How did he afford that?’
‘He’s making a killing, man. Blinds. And Albert used to be an architect or building guy or whatever, so they did it together, knocked it down then turned it into a duplex so they can all live there.’
‘Moving on up,’ I said.
‘The Australian Dream,’ Stuart said, and I could hear him grinning.
‘Courtney living there with him too?’ I asked.
‘Um… yeah, think so. They got a pool.’
I wondered what he knew about Gordon and his dad, I wondered if he could tell me what really took place; how much of Courtney’s story was actually true, and how much of it was designed to make me feel bad about my behaviour. Surely Gordon and Albert didn’t murder the man, surely they just issued a strong warning, surely that kind of thing didn’t happen in sweet little Cronulla town.
‘I did this real estate course with this homo from L.J. Hooker,’ Stuart said, coughing away from the phone.
‘No shit?’ I said.
‘Yeah, the bloke reckons I can start working there if I want. I just got to get this TAFE certificate.’
‘How long will that take?’
‘Not long, and it’s not heaps hard, they said.’
‘Cool,’ I said, encouraging this rare glimmer of ambition.
‘But fuck that, I’m not putting up gay flags and showing losers through houses.’
‘Stuart, you’d be awesome at it!’ I yelled.
‘Why?’ Stu asked, serious as all get-out.
‘You got charm.’
‘Yeah, chicks like me,’ Stuart admitted.
‘Why don’t you give it a bang? See what flies?’ I asked.
‘I dunno, man… Just cruise, I reckon. Party. Got some bouncing work coming up at Tank nightclub. Might go up the Gold Coast. Y’know if you tap a backpacker on the head their panties fall off?’
‘But, mate, you’ve got a gift! You have to use your talent – you have to do something with what’s been given to you!’
‘What’s that, Neil? What’s my gift? I can bash up tools and bend blondes over the kitchen table, eat eccies and fucken dance in a cage, like, what the fuck is that? Where is the gift in that, mate?’
I had helped Stuart study for the HSC, night after night wandering over to read up on Islam, maths in society, The Taming of the Shrew. I put serious hours into getting the big unit up to speed, and it helped me, helping someone else. But still he left the exams as soon as the fifteen-minute buzzer went, exclaiming ‘Fuck this for a joke’ and throwing his HB pencils at the examiners on the way out of the auditorium.
&nb
sp; ‘You’re the gift, Stu. Stuart Stone is the gift. That’s why sales –’
‘I dunno, man,’ Stu interrupted. ‘I dunno about that. You’re the special one. Everyone knows that. Me, G, Courtney – every cunt. I’m fucken… I’m bored already, Neil. I’ve fucked the sweetest pussy. Asians, blondes, models, Austrian whores, thirteen-year-olds, whatever. I’ve been to Spain. I’ve taken pure MDMA, been to the sickest parties, driven a Ferrari two hundred clicks. I’ve done it, mate.’
I’d never known Stuart to be a whinger and here he was making that god-awful sound. ‘So just give up then, right? You’ve got this great opportunity with L.J. Hooker and you’re just going to throw it in their face and stay on this stupid path to nowhere. Well that’s pathetic, Stone.’
Then his voice dipped, went all hollow, and he said, ‘You’re my real mate, Cronk. You are a real mate, you know that?’
‘I know mate,’ I said, and now I felt awkward.
‘I could do with a real mate right now.’
‘I’m seeing you on the weekend – you’re coming up, right?’
‘Yeah, but I need a mate now eh…’ he said, without a hint of colour or shape in his voice, just this sullen flat line.
‘You got mates,’ I said, suddenly so sleepy and distracted.
‘I’ve got a million mates, in the green lights and the corners of the bar. But you’re my only real mate. I could do with a real mate now eh. Do you know what I mean, Nelly? Sorry, man, had a large one and just took some Rohypnol to get to sleep, but I close my eyes and all I see are faces. I see all these faces but they are not my friends. You don’t make friends in the clubs. Just acquaintances with sliding faces.’
‘What are you talking about mate?’ I asked, peering in to see if Chandra had been woken by the call.
‘Nothing, nothing mate,’ he said. ‘I’m just so fucking bored.’
‘Stu…’
‘Sorry man…’
‘Stu listen to me…’
‘I’m being gay; I’m being a faggot…’
‘Hey…’
‘You got to get ready for your show…’
‘Will you listen to me please?’ I asked him.
‘It’s cool man, you got your life going on…’
‘Stone!’
‘You’re amazing Cronky, you’re an amazing kid.’
‘Will you shut the fuck up please?’
‘Ok… I’m just sayin’…’
‘You’re up here in two days pal, then I’m finished in a week and back in Cronulla – stay with Mum until I sort the next move. I’m going to be just down the road again Stoner!’
‘That’s wicked…’ Stu said, his voice getting slower and lower.
‘I’ll be back in town – the dream-team – just like old times, chase pussy and play golf on the computer at mine. Get wasted and go to Carmen’s, eat kebabs or just fucken chill on the beanbags watching This Violent World. Whatever man, summer with the boys again!’
‘Yeah…’ he said, with the most cantankerous lethargy.
‘Stone? Are you hearing me?’
‘Yeaahhhh…’ he said, nearly gone from here.
‘What about L.J. Hooker?’ I asked. ‘That sounds exciting, Stu. Like an excellent prospect for you.’
Through his nose then from his throat he laughed darkly, kept saying how funny I was, and real mate real mate real mate, over and over again and I should have known, but it was all about ME.
19
You know when you just can’t stop? Driving, smoking, wailing. The Great Western Highway held no cars but mine and the odd trucker on trucker’s dust and AC/DC. But, strapped to the sides of the (great) highway were clumps and clusters of walkers, seemingly headed in to town. Where were they all going? Where were any of us fucking going? To hell? To the shops? To prayer? To pasture. I flicked on the windscreen wipers but they did very little. Mainly because the fog of water blocking my vision was not outside the car in the form of rain. It was in my eyes in the form of salted tears. I could not stop screaming because if I stopped screaming that meant it was true. My friend was gone. And my friend was not gone. If I continued to drive fast and if I continued to scream and if I continued to smoke, then he was still here. On this planet and approachable. Roaring wagon, my roaring heart. My foot on its throat – distance and bitumen in pain. Past the Kelso Hotel. Past the crumbling silo where the teenagers go to hide. Past the turn off to Sofala. Past Steggles Chicken Industry Headquarters.
Features and creatures of Bathurst whipped by my window undisclosed and wax-figured. Nothing mattered and nothing existed and nothing would. I could twist this wheel and GO towards that wall. I could swing this thing into a truck (HEAD ON). you were everything to me. Come back and I will tell you. Come back and I will teach you. This Violent World – don’t leave me here. If you only waited one more day, I was yours again you fucking cunt you fucking impatient scene-stealer – had to do a pre-show before my show. Suicide, you selfish cunt!
And yet here I am without you on this spinning planet of yes and no and maybe. What fuck matter now? What fuck mark indelible? What fuck spent or earnt? What fuck concern?
There was a field approaching. A dark purple field I had never bothered with, the trillion times I’d passed it since 1994, I had never shown it much – I barely remembered it being there, in its sprawling dank. But today, today it reached out and asked of me. Rows of vines and were they wine? Vines dark and expansive and I saw a deer.
‘Mummy!’ I saw a deer. Deers’ heads. Venison – a doe, a deer popped its antlers over the fence and scanned my disposition as I passed. A deer. A female deer? I hauled us over and down the embankment to a skidding stop. I got out on an angle. ‘Stuart!’ The deer saw me. The deer had had a wagon coming towards it, spinning out of control right at it – careering one could say – and all its deer friends had fucked off and bolted. But this one deer, this special deer – well it had not moved. Special deer remained, its wise old noggin resting on the cut in the fence. Its antlers like sticks reaching out to God, it all looked so make-believe. I said, ‘Deer’, and it let me touch it. I said, ‘Oh dear’ and it let me kiss its nose. I never understood why Stuart and I were friends. I never understood why he took such care of me. Ask the deer. There was love in an animal and there were no computers. I said, ‘Deer, my friend is gone,’ but then a townie yelled out to me, ‘Better be good – your fucken show!’ and I realised all the people walking in to town were on their way to see ME. I had wet myself down the side of my blue jeans and I was smoking four cigarettes and I was still screaming and, yes, I kissed that Brave Deer on the nose in the gap in the fence and you tell me, grief, where do we go from here?
Standing at the edge of the Steel Mill forecourt with an open mouth, the smell of piss reminding me of the piss I had pissed on myself.
‘Nelly!’ Dick yelled, his pink, alcohol-wrenched face beaming hard confusion as he approached me. He had a suit and tie on now, he looked dapper. ‘It’s five-minute call! Where the hell have you been? Swanna is in tears.’
‘Dick…’ I couldn’t put the sentence together it was… not arriving. ‘Dick…?’
‘It’s alright, son. We all get it. Just take some deep breaths and remind yourself of who you are and what you have achieved over the past few years. You are meant to be here, my son.’ He patted my back warily, like I might unleash fangs or a cleaver.
‘Dick…’ I could not finish the sentence. Tears in my eyes again and yes, I wanted to fucking scream until the roof came off. ‘My friend just killed himself,’ I said, staring up into his bloodshot eyes.
I could see him lying on his bedroom floor with his brains blown out. I could see his skull in pieces and his brains, his brilliant, neglected and taken-for-granted-by-everyone brains dripping out and I knew right then, before this great man, that I would follow one day soon or sooner.
‘Julien? He’s inside.’ Dick said.
‘No, my friend Stu. He was coming to see the show, but he… he sh-sh-… shot himself in t
he head. With a rifle. Just after I spoke to him. I was the last person he spoke to, he spoke to me, and then he…’
Dick took me in his arms and soft-bashed my back with his fists, like he was trying to get me to hawk something up – the boy.
‘You get a bit of that down your way, don’t you, son?’ Dick said, now circling my back with the curve of his palm.
‘I can’t go in there, Dick,’ I announced, pushing out of the clinch.
‘Ok, ok. Right, then.’
‘I can’t do the show. I mean, I just… even if I could, Dick, even if I could do it, I don’t know why I would do it.’
‘Alright. Alright. I’ll go tell Swanna to make the announcement. Fuck there’s about four hundred people in there. Fuck. Alright. Is there anyone else who can do your parts? Can little Luke do it?’
‘Luke doesn’t know anything beyond room 2: adolescence.’
‘Of course he doesn’t.’ He sighed. ‘I’ll go tell them. Fuck.’ Dick patted my shoulder and waddled off towards the ME sign.
‘Am I doing the right thing?’ I wondered aloud.
‘You want to know what I really think?’ Dick said, turning back like he had expected the question. ‘I think those who take their lives are selfish little buggers whose one act of theatre ruins everyone else’s. Little prick just lacked the balls to get on with the job like we all gotta, so instead of sucking in the deep ones and getting on with it he had to take the darkness out on everyone else!’ Dick was dribbling now, enraged. ‘You want to look back on this night when you are older and know that your mate with the coward’s balls cost you this dream? Then fine, but you’re bigger than that. I know you loved him; I am sure you did, son. But this is your dream, not his. Claim it back!’
I slapped Dick in the hair and flesh of his face and then I went to slap him again, harder, but he held my wrist. My eyes were boiling with hot oil and all I wanted to do was run and jump down into the water behind Courtney’s house and never come up again. And so, I thought, why not go inside? For in seeking death, I fear no more.
How it feels Page 15