RAGAZZO SQUILLO
ZEKE
On Friday morning, as I use my wet finger to draw my daily dick and balls on the fogged-up glass of the shower door, I hear Sabrina shout and know it means Woolies fucked up our delivery order again.
I step out of the beige-tiled shower recess, making sure to wipe away all traces of my steam phallus, wrap my Green Lantern towel around my waist, and pad into the living room.
Home is this eighties cream-brick villa in Joondanna. Sabrina rents it off her parents, so it’s hard to think of it as ‘our’ place: more Sabrina’s flat I have a room in. We’re down a laneway, so it’s quiet and has some charm, with a patio birdbath and wooden wind chimes and native plants.
In our combined kitchen–dining room, brown paper bags are strewn across the bench, their contents disgorged like a bomb blew them open; the fridge door is hanging open, beeping an alert nobody is listening to.
Sabrina’s in an even more hectic before-work hurtle than usual. She’s hunched over the dining table, urgently tapping on her laptop to print something; half a custard Danish is hanging out of her mouth, the flakes littering her chic grey blazer; and her iPhone is pressed to her ear, water droplets sliding down the pink plastic case from the freshly apple-shampooed blonde hair hanging in limp strands around her cheeks.
‘No, I said frozen food. FROZEN FOOD!’ Sabrina barks into the receiver.
I raise an eyebrow, wondering what the person on the phone did to deserve her wrath, when a robotic AI-generated voice replies.
‘Did you say “dog food”?’ it asks, grotesquely buoyant.
Sabrina’s face contorts, causing the Danish to tumble from her mouth; she whacks it away from her laptop, but directly onto her lap: custard spurts up over her work blouse.
‘Oh come on!’ she cries. ‘FRO-ZEN FOOD. FRO-ZEN FOOD.’ She covers the mouthpiece, as if the robot could care, and hisses at me, ‘Woolies didn’t deliver the ice-cream cake I got for Maureen’s birthday morning tea today, and there’s nothing in the house for me to take. Surely I can get their delivery driver to circle back? Otherwise I’m going to show up empty-handed and look like the mean office bitch, or I’ll have to hit the shops before work and rock up lateagain.’ She stares in horror at the custard mess all down her blouse. ‘Ew!’
I wince. ‘Have I ever told you you look absolutely ravishing in the morning time?’
Sabrina half-smirks, half-scowls and flings the Danish at me; I dodge it and it soars clean into the open fridge, landing between her bottle of Prosecco and my soda water.
‘At least your aim is still good,’ I offer. ‘All those years of hockey paid off.’
I forage in the dryer but can’t find myNinja TurtlesT-shirt or my jeans. After the robot AI voice says to Sabrina, ‘I can’t seem to see any frozen food in your order …’ Sabrina shrieks, ‘It’s literally called ICE-cream cake, you clanker!’ then calls to me in a gentler voice, ‘Oh, Zekey, I already got your clothes out for you – they’re laid out on your bed!’
I smile. ‘You’re too good to me.’ She really is.
I shuffle back to my room and get dressed while I hear the newsreader on TV say, ‘We often hear AI is now taking our jobs – but is it really all it’s cracked up to be?’
‘No,’ Sabrina snaps. ‘No, it is not. I WANT TO SPEAK TO A HUMAN,’ she roars at her phone.
‘Transferring you now to one of my colleagues,’ the robot says jauntily. ‘We are experiencing above-average wait times. Please hold.’
‘I’d love nothing more, you useless waste of space,’ Sabrina quips.
I hunt around my room: somewhere among the debris of my final semester’s uni notebooks is the gift my mother brought me on her last visit to Perth. It’s a ritual from back when Dad had cancer. We spent that year sitting around hospital waiting rooms, so my mother would busy herself with practicalities: she’d bustle off and bring me, Robbie and Dad snacks and something to read. We all got the same baked goods, but Robbie and Dad – the men – would get some car magazine orMen’s Healthor a newspaper, while little Zekey boy got anArchiecomic. Dad went into remission, but the ritual never went away: every time she and Dad visit me, Mum brings me a snack and an Archie comic. I’m still a kid in her mind.
Under the black robes of my graduation regalia is what I’m looking for: aJughead Double Digestand a huge gift box of Italian chocolates I don’t care for.
I head back into the kitchen and brandish the chocolate box. ‘Would this work?’
Pearls of tears spring to Sabrina’s eyes. ‘Oh my God. Yes. That’ll do.’ She glares into her iPhone screen. ‘I’ll deal with you later, you piece of shit,’ she snarls, just as a young human voice says innocently, ‘Hi, you’re through to Sally, how can I help you today?’
Sabrina’s face goes bright red; she immediately hangs up on Sally, and we both burst out laughing.
‘Oh my God,’ Sabrina cries. ‘Do you think she heard?’
‘There’s no way she didn’t,’ I say. ‘Poor Sally. That’s what she gets for being a ray of sunshine. Absolutely annihilated and called a piece of shit.’
Sabrina wipes her eyes. ‘Meh. She had it coming.’
I snort.
