Sabrina grabs the chocolates off me before kissing me on the cheek. ‘This is why I love you, Zekey. If Shane was still living here he’d just be like, “Stiff shit, babe.” But you’re so thoughtful. Thank you.’
She bustles off to her room to change her blouse.
Sabrina broke up with her ex-boyfriend Shane nearly a year ago, but he still comes up in conversation almost daily. They were together two years, and he lived here, though they were a mismatch. Shane made good money working FIFO on the mines up north, but he was too rugged and boofheaded for Sabrina. She’d dress him up in Tommy Hilfiger polos and chinos and he’d take her to Nobu and the Ritz-Carlton, but when he was at the house he’d happily lounge around watching car racing or footy and day-drinking himself into a stupor. I think Sabrina thought she could fix him, but she couldn’t.
Eventually she found out Shane had a massive porn habit behind her back and she flipped out. They had this massive fight. I heard it all play out through my door. Sabrina crucified him. She later insisted to me and her uni friend Victoria that she wasn’t being old-school prudy Catholic, rather a progressive feminist: porn was degrading to women, and she didn’t want her boyfriend watching it. Victoria and I both agreed Shane was ‘an arsehole’. Victoria had always hated Shane, so this gave her a chance to go in for the kill.
Me? I never hated Shane. We weren’t close, but I didn’t really believe he was an arsehole for logging on to Pornhub to explore his milf and BDSM fantasies. If watching porn makes Shanean arsehole, you can lump me right in there with him, proudly, along with the entire fraternity of men. It’s healthy to jack off and enjoy porn: like my dad once said, ‘There’s two types of people in this world: wankers and liars.’
But I knew sex-positivity wasn’t going to get through to Sabrina, and I didn’t want to defend Shane and have her realise I’m a chronic wanker, too. I’ve learned if a girl breaks up with a guy, you have to call him an arsehole if you want her to still like you.
And ultimately, I did feel sad for her. Sabrina’s sweet and she gave a lot to Shane – she thought they’d get married and have kids – so I was gutted to see her fall apart.
She’s never been allowed to fully recover, either, because a few months ago, there was a sordid,Days of Our Lives–esque plot twist to the saga, when Shane started going out with Victoria’s sister, Allison (who Victoria hates). Now when Victoria comes over, they bitch about Shane and Allison over Tim Tams and English Breakfast tea. I’d like to pretend I’m above it, but I sometimes join them. I blame it on my Sicilian genes.
While Sabrina races around getting changed, I finish packing away the Woolies delivery, putting the fridge out of its beepy suffering. Just as I crush the paper bags into a giant ball and shove it into the bin, my phone rings with a video call from my brother, Robbie.
I startle, and answer it fast. Robbie never video-calls. My blood chills.
‘Hey, bro – everything okay?’ I ask, before seeing the face on the screen belongs to a chubby toddler and has porridge all over it. ‘Hey, little Bianca!’ My voice goes into that high-pitched voice guys have to use with babies to not terrify them. ‘Did you call Uncle Zeke by mistake?’
‘Say hello to Uncle Zeke,principessa!’ Robbie calls, half off-camera, followed by a dramatic shout as Bianca’s little hands grab two fistfuls of his thick, almost Ned Kelly–length beard.‘Ow. Ow. Ahhh! Let go of my beard, you little psychopath! Ahhh! Nat!’
There’s some chaos as the phone drops onto a couch and I’m left staring at a stuffed Peppa Pig. Then Nat’s tired face – make-up free but also flecked with porridge – appears, flashing a kind smile my way and an apologetic, ‘Hang on, Zeke – extricating your niece from Robbie’s facial hair as we speak!’
There’s a bloodcurdling shriek from Bianca like she’s a vanquished Sauron and just saw the ring destroyed in front of her; then, finally, Robbie’s face appears squarely on my phone screen, his black beard even more frizzled than usual.
‘Oi, bro, just ringing to let ya know we can’t get down to Perth for your graduation,’ Robbie tells me. ‘Nat’s mum’s had to go to work, so we don’t have anyone to watch Bianca, and we’re not dealing with that terror on a Perth trip.’
‘Fair enough,’ I mutter, using Robbie’s usual catchphrase against him.
‘I’m like, full proud of you, and shit,’ Robbie mutters, sucking some stray porridge off his work polo shirt. ‘You big square gettin’ a degree and whatever. We’ll send a present down with the olds. Congrats, bro.’
‘Thanks, bro,’ I say. This is the Robbie equivalent of a hug. Gotta take it while it’s offered.
‘Orright, I gotta get to work. You still in the call centre?’
‘Yeah, heading off to a shift there myself.’
‘Fair enough. But now you’re done with uni, you gotta get a big-boy job, ay,’ he mutters. ‘Oh shit, now she’s on the kitchen bench – I gotta go – BIANCA GET DOWN FROM THERE, YOU ABSOLUTE GOBLIN!’
The call ends.
‘Oh, you put all the shopping away.’ Sabrina beams, emerging back into the kitchen with her hair dried and wearing a fresh blouse. ‘Shame you bat for the wrong team – you’d make sucha perfect boyfriend for some girl someday. Oh, speaking of boyfriends … Victoria told me Shane and Allison had a massive fight last night. Serves her right. We kept telling her what an arsehole he was.’
‘Total arsehole,’ I agree.
Sabrina taps on her phone. ‘I can’t believe Woolies is using AI on their phones now. It sucks. I hope the uni doesn’t do that to you guys in the call centre, too.’
I grimace. ‘Change sucks. But it’s inevitable, right?’
Sabrina’s phone call debacle is a premonition for my day at the uni call centre. The uni’s systems crash, the day before the midyear graduation ceremonies. We get a hundred callers in the queue, wait times blow out and everyone’s stressed. My peak frustration is when I get a regalia confirmation code for Colby, a Paramedicine grad who’s having a panic attack about not getting his sash in time. I’m thinking,Man, if you can’t handle this, how will you cope when someone’s coding in front of you?
I spell the code out to him using the NATO phonetic alphabet, but the line is super crackly cos he’s phoning from some remote location – so when I say the last letter – ‘C for Charlie’ – Colby can’t hear me.
‘What?’ he comes back. ‘Z for Charlie?!’
‘No,Cfor Charlie,’ I repeat calmly, plastering on a grin. Our training taught us Albert Mehrabian’s theory that communication is fifty-five per cent nonverbal body language, thirty-eight per cent tone and only seven per cent the words you say. So even if I want to shout ‘C FOR CHARLIE’, I need to smile smile smile. Our calls are monitored by our supervisors, and callers get surveyed to grade our service out of ten. Nobody tells them the uni only counts a nine or ten as passable, so if you get eight out of ten (a percentage this same uni recognises as a high distinctionfor students) you fail your performance review. It’s the most dystopian shit out.
