‘I’m not always gonna be here, right?’
Before I can ask where else he’ll be, Pat curls my hands into fists. Puts his own up and jiggles round like a boxer, motions me forward, but I’m too sore to move so I stay put. He takes one of my fists and hits his chest with it. Nods and eggs me on but I’m not playing this game. So he hits me gently on the shoulder. Just mucking around but takes me by surprise and I stumble back.
‘People will hurt you if you let them. And you won’t understand it, but they’ll do it anyway.’
I’m a lover not a fighter, so I don’t retaliate. Pat gives up and walks away. (Mum says that’s what men do best.) I crouch down next to the rabbit and stroke his fur. He shouldn’t be alone, being freshly dead, so I put him in my backpack. Suddenly I’m angry that not one single thing will change. Those boys will be back breaking and killing tomorrow and I can’t do anything about it except let my fury off the leash right now. I run up to Pat and whap him on the back. Never saw it coming so he falls to the ground and I’m punching him in the chest: 1, 2, 1, 2. Then we’re rolling around in the dirt like animals and it feels good just to think with my hands. When we’ve got nothing more to give I get to my feet. Pat reaches out and I pull him up.
Taking a grown man down’s not something to brag about so when we’re back in the car I put a lid on my smile and buckle up. Pat, on the other hand, is beaming from ear to ear as he reverses the car out, arm stretched over the back of my seat.
‘You gotta good hook. Could make a career outta that,’ says Pat.
‘Lady fighters are down-and-out dogs,’ I say back.
‘Says who?’
So I tell Pat about the lady politician who wanted to ban women in the ring because it wasn’t proper letting their female bits get bruised and battered about. It mucked up the cycles of femininity she said.
Pat goes all red in the face and doesn’t know where to look. ‘Well, yeah, okay. All I know is you got a crackin’ uppercut on ya.’
I watch as a skinny-fat family push their little three-legged terrier in a pram down the street.
So long, Weirdsville. Thanks for the punch in the guts.
14 178 little specks
‘Where’ya puttin’ it all? You’re skinny as a rake.’
‘I have a fast metamorphosis.’
‘Righto.’
That night we got to Gummagi, which has a pub but not one Pat has anything to do with, so he let me get ribs as a special treat. Pat didn’t really touch his honey prawns and to be honest I don’t blame him. They were covered in pink gunky sauce, and anyways, where did they find prawns out here in the middle of the bush? I reckon they’re golden-syrup yabbies but I don’t tell Pat in case he kicks up a stink. So it’s only when I get napkins for my sticky fingers that I see Pat looking at me. Shifts his prawns round on the plate like dodgem cars banging into one another.
‘Your Mum...did she ever say anything about me?’
‘Like what?’
‘You know…about the future…feelings…’
The waitress comes over with another beer for Pat. ‘How is everything?’
I look at Pat’s fluorescent prawns. ‘Bit bright don’t you think?’
She glances at the ceiling, then turns to Pat like he’s my translator.
‘Lights don’t go down ’til seven.’
Some people pretend they can’t see me. But invisibility like that doesn’t make me feel good. She takes my plate without asking. There was all this sauce I’d saved for the end, but I can’t call out because suddenly Pat’s choking on one of those yabbies. Eyes bulging he leans across the table just in case it crawls back out on its own. I jump up and whack him on the back like I think you’re supposed to. All I can hear is the sound of other people’s cutlery clinking on their plates as they stop eating and watch like gagging is a spectator sport. Then I remember it’s the Heinrich movement I’m supposed to be doing. I wrap my arms around his middle and yank hard. The prawn pops out and back onto his plate.
Pat downs his beer in one go then clears his throat like a tyre skidding on gravel.
‘I think we’ll have the bill.’
At 3.27 am I wake up from another nightmare. Cockroaches, hundreds of them trying to eat my eyes out so I can’t find the boat. Mum’s calling my name but now I’m blind it makes no difference. That purple-eyed eagle flies down and tries to eat the cockroaches but its claws end up scratching my face and I wake myself up before the blood comes pouring out of my eyes.
Part of the dreaming world is still here. I can feel the bugs all over my body and the eagle flapping at the window. I call out to Pat but he’s not there so I grab my backpack and run downstairs. In the pub bistro the clocks have stopped hours ago and people are wandering through time fast or slow as they please. Pat’s at the pokies in the gaming room. Though his eyes are half shut he offers a dozy smile. I try to tell him there’s a plague in the bedroom but he waves me quiet.
‘It’s systemic—systematic, Dylan. You have to believe in the system!’
He giggles, then looks at me like he’s only just realised I’m there. ‘They’ll sing to you,’ he whispers.
The machines don’t care who’s feeding them. There’s a gadget inside that’ll play a song no matter who hits the button. Flashing lights glow through my fingertips. I tell him about the dream but he just agrees that cockroaches could be a real bugger and next time maybe I should wear an eye mask when I go to bed so they can’t get me. I needed him to say it would be okay and that I could go back to sleep and my eyes would not see the same thing, but he just gave me some money for the jukebox and told me to go cheer myself up.
I knew as soon as I saw the playlist. Johnny Farnham’s ‘Burn for You’. There’s only a few couples on the dance floor and a swaying drunk with his eyes closed, talking to someone who isn’t there. I take the snow globe out of my backpack. Shake it up and watch all the tiny snowflakes fall softly around the Eiffel Tower. 178 little specks of white floating through watery air. There’s me and Mum climbing up that tower staring at a city where the streetlamps turn into a thousand fallen stars and someone somewhere plays music on a wind-up box, a tinny song everyone half remembers from long ago. I hold the snow globe up to my eyes and look through it. This time I see Mum for real. She’s on the dance floor beckoning me over. But I don’t go. It’s her turn to listen:
‘You have to call, otherwise people won’t know where you are,’ I tell Mum.
I know she’ll be gone, but I take the snow globe away from my face anyway.
‘You might make them feel bad, don’t you know that?’ I say to her even though she’s not there.
The corners of the room are etched in darkness and suddenly that drunk with his twelve-beer breath is dancing with me. Too much, too close. All the little pock-marks in his face where the whiskers come out and glassy bloodshot eyes drowning in missed opportunities. He stumbles round squeezing me closer and closer. When he laughs I can see gold in his mouth and a wicked tongue that wants to tell me things I should not know. I try to get away but he’s too strong and I’m too sad for my mama. All the colours of his boozy song run into each other like a dirty puddle. I can feel him get hard in places that men are supposed to keep to themselves. Not for me, not for me, not in this place, not ever.