On the hour-long long stretch from Ouyen to Mildura, the sun hammers down on the roof of the Pitbull. The spring breeze outside is fresh; the inside of the car heats up fast. Another minus for the Pitbull, but it’s collecting so many minuses now I’m starting to lose track. It doesn’t matter anyway – I’ve named the car. Once you name a car, you’re pretty much stuck with it.
During the drive I think about what I’m getting ready to do.
The outskirts of the city will be the battle line. Once I arrive I’ll be in it, and there’ll be no retreat. In the rear-view, my forehead’s creased and my expression’s grim. Most people moving to a new place, with the prospect of a potentially lucrative job, look happy. I’ve gotta practise relaxing my face.
My crap is all packed into the duffel bag sitting on the passenger seat beside me. I left a note propped up on Mark West’s kitchen table. Pretty soon everyone in the district will know I’ve thrown over a good situation to hook up with the seedy element. If they think I’ve gone bad it won’t actually be too far removed from what they think of me already. In terms of my cover, it’s probably better if Westie just thinks I’m an arsehole.
Even if he knew the whole story, Mark’d only try to talk me out of it. But it’s too late for that. I’ve made a decision. It was based on a gut feeling, sure. But I reckon gut feelings are more accurate than people think. Your reptile brain gets all the same information your conscious brain gets. It rolls the information around and comes to its own conclusions. You end up with a feeling, an instinct. It might not be logical or reasoned, you might not even realise it’s happened. It’s not a conscious process. But that doesn’t mean it’s not accurate.
I have a gut feeling about this.
It doesn’t make me less nervous.
The road from Ouyen is just yellowing miles of wheat with the occasional silo or power line. It’s like driving through the desert. Then I look up and suddenly I’ve arrived at this oasis. The irrigation has kicked in and houses have sprouted up like brick-and-weatherboard mushrooms, grapevines growing behind them in long orderly rows.
Mildura is weird. Like a giant market garden with suburban housing and warehouse shopping malls sprinkled over the top of it. There’s fucking palm trees and roses in people’s front yards, for god’s sake.
I clench my fingers on the steering wheel. Salted through my anxiety are flashes of Amie’s face. The way her eyes widened when I volunteered to narc. The way she stood up for me and, before that, stood beside me, when we were shoulder-to-shoulder looking at the photos on the wall of her room.
I had no idea she was a photographer. Her shots are incredible, heaps better than those pictures she’s clipped out ofNationalGeographic. Each of her photos forces you to have a closer look at something you’ve taken for granted, like she’s peeled back the layers of ordinary so you can see the beauty underneath.
My face relaxes thinking about Amie. Her scent, away from the antiseptic smell of the hospital. Her black hair falling loose over her shoulders, the kinks from her plait like the ripples on a sand dune. Her eyes are rich brown, shot through with a lighter gold near her irises. Long eyelashes. Cheeks that flush pink when she’s angry or embarrassed. Lips the same dusky pink…
Okay, hold it. No thinking about Amie’s eyes, or Amie’s lips, or Amie’s anything.Head in the game, Harris.Right.
Snowie flashes his lights at me from where he’s parked beside the Red Cliffs Hotel. I pull the car over, give him a chance to swing around so he can lead me through the outer suburbs. The main drag into town is dead straight: four lanes with sky-scraping streetlamps down a wide centre island. I can already see how this place must be heaven for the Friday night car jockeys.
I follow Snowie’s silver Celica past the hotel-motel strip. We’re driving away from Coles supermarket and through a series of turns. The houses around us start to get smaller, lower to the ground. Then, seedier. More neglected.
Snowie’s car turns into a suburban court and down a bit before easing to the curb. The gardens here still have roses, but they’re tangled and dry, paired with ugly weathered shrubs. I slide the Pitbull in behind the Celica, clamber out of the driver’s seat with my cane, lock the car. Better to lock it around here, I reckon. All my shit’s inside it and I’m not in Ouyen anymore. The sign behind us reads Amblin Court. I don’t know if I could find my way back here without help.
‘Harris! Mate!’ Snowie walks over from his car to meet me, gives me a slap on the back. ‘You made it. Good on ya.’
‘Yep, I made it.’ My jeans are sticking to the backs of my legs from the sweaty drive. ‘Thanks for meeting me. Bloody maze, this town, yeah?’
‘You’ll figure it out.’ Snowie grins. ‘Right, here you go. Come on in.’
Snowie nods his chin to show we’re crossing the road, waves a hand at the cracked concrete path in invitation. The house itself doesn’t look all that inviting. A flat-walled brick box in the classic commission style, plonked in a dry patch of weedy lawn. There’s an old caravan in the driveway. Shit-loads of garbage – broken furniture, bin-bags of rubbish, mouldy blankets – is mounded between the end of the caravan and the side of the house. The front screen door wheezes on its hinges.
‘You said someplace cheap, right?’ Snowie holds the door open as I enter.
‘Cheap is good.’
‘This is the place, then.’ Snowie grins broadly as he ushers me into the living room. ‘Gotta warn you, though, it doesn’t quite have a woman’s touch.’
No shit. The living room is large and butt-ugly: brick walls, pub carpet. A moth-eaten brown velour sofa is dumped in the centre of the floor. The rest of the living room furniture comprises a standing lamp with a bare bulb, two green plastic chairs and a milk crate. The whole house smells like bong water.
Yesterday morning I was in Mark West’s homey cluttered unit. Then at Amie’s, seeing the jewelled cave of her bedroom, the clean cosiness of the kitchen. Normal houses, with people living normal lives. The contrast here is jarring.
The living room is deeply shaded by a batik sheet hung over the window. You wouldn’t know it was a nice spring day outside. The sofa is currently occupied by a skinny guy, pale as milk, in a blue tank and trackie pants. His hair is tied in a top-knot, tangled dread ends leaking out sideways, and he’s smoking a joint while he watches cartoons on a giant flat-screen to my right. His socked feet are up on a wooden coffee table decorated with cigarette burns, an over-sized ashtray, and a crinkled chip packet.
‘Hey, Snowie.’ He raises the hand with the joint in salute, gives me the eyeball.
‘Kev,’ Snowie says. ‘Brought you a new housemate. Harris, this is Kevin.’
I nod, Kev nods, ‘heys’ are exchanged all round. I see Kevin checking out my cane. The sound of the cartoons is all over-bright voices and zaniness.
‘You fellas can get to know each other later, eh?’ Snowie nudges me, points with his chin to a white laminex room extending beyond on the left. ‘Kitchen. Oven doesn’t work.’
