Pat glances at the writing on his hand again then acts all casual. ‘Got some time up my sleeve then.’ He heads towards pokie machine two because he thinks there’s still magic inside like there was last time. You can’t tell Pat he’s put more coins in than he ever gets out ’cause he’ll get all huffy and say you don’t understand the logic involved in playing.
‘How about a washing machine? You got a fridge up your sleeve too?’ I’m all sarcastic and Pat glares at me but he knows what I’m talking about. Money owing? Then you got a knockin’ coming your way. Every now and then the repo men took a whitegood from Pat’s house. Repo men wear singlets stained dark with sweat right through the middle of their chest, who always told Pat they didn’t make the rules, they just enforced them.
Days when Pat was real quiet and went out the back of our place to fix something we knew another whitegood had been taken. Funny thing is, Pat never really got around to mending anything. Holding the kitchen curtains back I’d watch him just flicking pieces of paint off the verandah staring into space. Once I thought if I made a pretty picture collage out of all that dried paint it would make him forget about the pokies. But the wind always blew those flecks away before I could catch them. So I can’t help Pat now like I could never help him back in Beyen. Oprah says we all gotta be agents of change for ourselves so I just sigh like a sad orangutan and watch the horserace on TV.
‘Handsome Prince has a clear lead, with Daddy’s Little Girl closing in...’
And that is when it happens. The race caller’s voice suddenly becomes like static, all fuzzy and out of focus, then I can’t hear him anymore. As they come round the last bend the horses move in slow motion and I hear Mum call the race in French, just like she used to with the potatoes we rolled down the front driveway. She was messaging herself to me through the TV: ‘And 3 Times Lucky comes round the bend, will he make it?’ But horse number three came in almost last. This made Mum really upset.
‘Oh no, this is a tragedy! As a Frenchwoman I renounce the number three as lucky!’
I was right about the number three and Mum’s spirit was trying to protect me. No one else knew what was happening. The punters are either cursing the TV or rubbing their good luck between the palms of their hands. And Pat? Well no surprise there. Flashing colours dance around his face with every coin he slots into his machine. I turn back to the TV but the real race caller’s voice is back.
‘Chinese Lantern coming in there third, with Lazy Weekender fourth...’
Why didn’t Pat ever believe me? I KNOW about number three and all the corresponding dangers. It goes back to the ancient Greeks and their mythological multiples of three like Cerberus the three-headed dog or Scylla, a sea monster with six heads. Now I have proof from Mum’s spirit so I march on over to Pat and clear my throat.
‘I don’t think the car is all right. I don’t think we’re okay. I better just check it.’
‘Sit and drink your juice.’
‘It’s not juice, it’s lemonade.’
Pat can’t take his eyes away from the machine, and because there’s always a gap between justice and the law I take the car keys without asking.
Head back towards the toilets then duck out the front. I unlock the car and slide in like liquid. Turn the key, but nothing happens. Then I remember to push down on the pedal at the same time. I slot the car into reverse and shoot across to the other side of the road, put my foot on the brake just before the car rams into the St Vinnie’s display window and a rack of half-price winter cardigans. I push the other pedal very gently a few times, slowly forward when another car drives right into the spot I want without asking! So I rear-end it accidentally on purpose.
That is called shit hitting the fan. Pat runs out screaming at me but I can’t hear ’cause this big white pillow has exploded in my face and the horn won’t stop beeping. Pat told me to always lock the doors if you felt like you were in danger and so that’s what I do, but now he was telling me to open up. I push some buttons that just make lights flash and the windscreen-wipers go back and forth and then the sunroof starts to open and Pat jumps up on top of the car like he is a lion in a safari park and falls inside head first. Quick sticks he presses more buttons and the balloon falls away from my face. The noise stops. Then all the people standing on the footpath stare at me and Pat like we’re in Back to the Future when Marty crashes into that barn and the farm boy thinks he’s the spaceman from his comic book. That was funny, but this is not.
This, I thought, is exactly what happens when you do not park in the right spot in the first place. Pat said he was about to win some money because the time and day were all in alignment like the moon in front of the sun. But those machines are never soft on the inside like Turkish Delight; they only make things harder for everyone.
The exploding man says, ‘What the bloody hell was she doing?’ like I’m not even there. Pat gets out of the car and talks to him in a mumbling voice that adults do when they are trying to put a lid on things. I reach into the back seat and pull out one of the merchandise caps as a sign of goodwill.
‘What the fuck is this? I don’t want a fucking cap! I don’t even drink Coopers!’
Pat grinds his teeth so loud it feels like an earthquake in my ears. He shoves a hand deep down into his pocket and pulls out a lot of money which he gives to the exploding man. Maybe so he could buy a hat of his own choice. All the while Bob is standing in the doorway to the pub and you can’t even tell if he’s happy or sad because that thin scratchy mouth never moves, not ever. He just shakes his head and goes inside again. And then all the other stodgy sad sacks, as Pat would call them, shuffle after Bob like he’s mother duck heading back to the pond. That is the end of the story about why you always park in the middle. Pat was in a Richter-scale-27 mood so I couldn’t even tell him about how Mum had talked to me through the TV. Mon Dieu!
10 A darkly shadow
The speed dial keeps going up and up. If there was a copper waiting behind a bush he would’ve clocked us at 143 km per hour. A siren-worthy number. The copper would say, ‘A tad too fast for these parts don’t you think?’ Pat would scrunch the ticket up, drive off and say, ‘I play by my own rules.’ There was no copper so that didn’t happen. This was the real conversation:
‘You’re a first-class shit, you know that! Do you want me to lose my job?’
‘No, that’s okay. You can keep it.’
‘That was a lot of money, my money and I can’t get it back! Do you understand that?’
I understood he’d made his own mess, like a dog that pees in his kennel.
‘What are the odds? Go on, you tell me what the odds are of you keeping your mouth shut for the rest of the trip.’
I thought this over seriously.
‘They are two and six.’
Pat screeches over to the side of the road and stops. He is panting real hard so I think I’ll tell him a story. That’s what Mum used to do when the buzzing round my head got too loud. I was gonna tell him about my Great Uncle Frederick, who used to eat soap and cigarette butts when he went sleepwalking in the middle of the night, but Pat is having none of it. He bosses me about, says I should get out of the car and find my own way.