The Diary - April 13, 2010

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

10, 531 words, or thereabouts! Pretty sweet number of words to be on I reckon. Once again, this shit just cuts off right in the middle of a scene.

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Still April 13, 2010

Shit falls through all the time for me.

Like three years ago, when me and Alex had planned to move in together. Strictly as friends, of course. We'd planned for six months, and it took about six minutes for it all to fall through when Alex got fired from her job as a deputy manager for a Coles in town. To be honest, I think she was kind of glad she'd been fired; no-one wanted to be a manager for a supermarket, let alone a deputy.

Or like seven years years before that, when plans for a family vacation fell through because of the not entirely unexpected death of my father. I'd been 12 at the time, just old enough to be sad, not old enough to know how to deal with it all. I'd been told he was an alcoholic and he'd had a heart attack because of the raised blood pressure he had from trying to quit; my mother neglected to mention that it was in fact meth he'd been addicted to and he hadn't been trying to quit at all - the dopey bastard had just overdosed.

I'd moved out at 20, a year after our plans had fallen through, got a job at a hotel and stolidly avoided getting addicted to methamphetamines. Alex moved in with a big group of lesbians, and then I met Dave and Josh after a plan to get tickets to see a rugby match had fallen through. They'd been pretend-scalping at the time; whenever anyone tried to buy one, they'd nod and give them a picture of a horse with Gary Busey's head pasted on. I knew their routine because they did it about once every month and told everyone about how funny it was about once every hour.

I'd been one of their first victims that day. I still had the picture of a horse with Gary Busey's head pasted on.

'This is just a picture of a horse with Gary Busey's head pasted on,' I said.

'No, it's a ticket,' said Dave.

'It looks like a ticket to me,' agreed Josh.

'It looks like a picture of a horse with Gary Busey's head pasted on to me,' I said.

'I think you're not seeing right,' said Dave. 'Maybe you should get better glasses.'

'I'm not wearing any glasses.'

'Exactly,' said Josh.

'There's no worse glasses than no glasses,' said Dave helpfully.

'What if you've got some real bad glasses?' I asked.

'Well there's no worse glasses than no glasses apart from real bad glasses, then,' said Dave.

'Hasn't really got the same punch,' I said.

'It'd have the same punch if you hadn't demanded we change it,' said Dave.

'I didn't demand.'

'I distinctly heard demanding.' Dave turned to Josh. 'Did you hear demanding?'

'I heard demanding, yes,' said Josh. 'A whole lot of demanding, really.'

'There you go, "A whole lot of demanding," he said,' said Dave. 'Straight from the horse's mouth.'

'He's not the horse in that phrase,' I said. 'I'm the horse.'

'You don't look like Gary Busey to me,' pointed out Dave.

'That's true,' added Josh, 'you don't look like Gary Busey at all.'

'More like a Steve Buscemi,' said Dave.

'That's not a nice thing to say at all.'

'Hey, I'm not the one trying to scalp tickets,' said Dave, and that was that. They asked for my phone number and my autograph because they'd always wanted to be friends with Steve Buscemi, we departed, and two days later they called me and asked if Steve Buscemi wanted to play pool with them. He did.

*

I woke up at 1:30 to the sound of the television advertising soap. I rolled over and on to the floor and it was only when the stench hit me that I realised we'd forgot to clean up the damn bathroom. It smelled like what I would imagine a baby made of shit gestating would smell like.

I rolled over and groaned, then rolled over again and groaned for emphasis.

'Did you know there used to be real cocaine in Coke?' asked Alex above me. I peered upwards. She was sitting on the couch, drinking a Coke, idly watching the television while it advertised soap. She looked . . . calm. She still had the bruise on her head, and she was wearing a long-sleeved jumper but I presumed the scratches were still there. I thought about a way to bring up the subject of last night then realised that was probably a bad idea; Alex would perhaps bring it up herself in time.

Perhaps.

'I know,' I said instead. 'Everyone knows that.'

'That was only a hundred years ago, or so,' said Alex. 'I bet there's still one of the cans from back then still around.'

'It would have biodegraded by now,' I said.

'YOU would have biodegraded by now,' said Dave, and chucked me a bottle of spring water as Josh and him came through the door. 'We tried to get Cokes, but the vending machine was out of everything but spring water.'

'I don't want spring water,' I said. 'Spring water is just normal water, but from a spring.'

'And springs are tasty, dumbass,' said Josh. 'Don't you know anything about spring water?'

'Apparently not.'

'So when are we heading off?' asked Alex.

'What?' I said.

'I said, "When are we heading off?" '

'I know what you said. What I'm worrying about is WHY you said it.'

'I said it because I was wondering when we would be heading off,' explained Alex.

'But what about . . .' I trailed off, with Alex's stare on me. I know now I should have brought it up then, but with the sun shining outside, and a seemingly hour long soap advertisement playing on the television, holding spring water that was just normal water but tastier because it was from a spring . . . I could almost pretend that last night had just been a trifle of an issue, like we'd lost some postage stamps, or we'd misplaced some keys.

'You're probably wondering about the toilet,' said Alex. 'That's what you were about to say, I bet. "But what about the toilet".'

'Yes,' I said. 'That was what I was going to say.'

'Well we mopped it up and then threw out the mop,' said Alex.

'That's good then,' I said. 'I am glad my question was resolved.'

'I'm thinking we'll leave in 10 minutes or so,' said Dave. 'We can have lunch in a few hours at this nice pie place I know out of town.'

'Isn't than an oxymoron?'

'No seriously, it's really great. Honestly. And I've drawn up a route for us to take for this whole thing. I figure we'll drive down to Brisbane then cut across to the A2,' said Dave. I didn't know what the A2 was, so I nodded mutely. 'You can have a look at it if you want. And I've packed all our luggage in the back. You two have told your landlords you'll be doing this, right?'

'. . . Not exactly,' I said. 'Not at all, really.'

Dave and Josh turned to Alex. She shook her head. Dave shrugged. 'They'll figure out eventually. That's everything, right?'

'Just don't forget to pack the spring water,' I said.

*

The pies were pretty good, and Dave didn't forget to pack the spring water.

The place was called Palace of Pies and was just outside of Brisbane. It had a faded old sign and there were no other customers but us. There was a big courtyard outside of it with an artificial pond that was kinda pretty. We made some light conversation about how pretty it was and how much we admired it, not at all talking about last night in a manner that was probably more obvious than just straight up talking about the whole thing.

The place had obviously been designed for whole swathes of customers, and it all looked a bit comical with 20 tables inside, 20 tables outside, and four people in the whole place - not including the guy who worked there, who looked about seventy years old and called me madam.