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‘Go away.'

‘And that all the daughters, they should be being the locked up when Monsieur Philby is about and on the look for lurve.'

‘That's it. I'm going to kill myself if you don't go away,' I say to her in the most forceful, quiet voice I can manage. ‘There'll be blood on your hands.'

‘But no, Philby,' she whispers back in her regular voice. ‘I think we're just getting some interest. And Frank did say you were both doing this to meet girls. So I thought it'd help if I talked you up a bit.'

‘Frank only ever does anything to meet girls. Now, thank you, but I think I'm probably as talked-up as I need to be now. I really think I have to take it from here myself.'

‘Well, if you're sure . . .'

‘Oh, I'm
so
sure.'

‘All right, then. Now, you give me one of those cones and I'll go off saying some good things about it.'

‘But restrained.'

‘Restraint, Philby, is my watchword.'

I hand her an average-looking ice-cream. She tips me generously, backs away through the queue, giving them all a good look.

‘Such style,' she's saying, that French accent more outrageous than ever. ‘Such form. Surely there is genius in the young soft 'ands of Monsieur Philby.'

And the girls in the queue now treat me as though I, too, am touched by madness, give me their simple orders carefully, hand over exact change where possible, back away before I try to get interactive.

I keep squirting, keep coiling, keep up the young, soft genius and keep trying to ignore Frank, hard at work up the other end. Cruising into Latin-lover win-on mode.

He's got someone interested in his name, and he's handling it like clumsy fishing, trying to reel her in as quickly as possible. But so far it's working, and it's the results Frank seems to get that have always made me hate his patter most.

‘So. Joo-ahn,' a girl's voice is saying. ‘Where's that from, exactly?'

‘Spain,' he says, with an exotic kind of confidence.

‘Spain? Wow. What part of Spain?'

‘Part of Spain?' Less confidence now. ‘Spain generally. We travelled a lot when I was young.'

He thinks it's a slick save, and I'm about to laugh at him when she says, ‘Hey, cool,' and it's looking as slick as it needs to be.

‘Hey, Leanne, how long are you going to be with that?' a guy says as he comes up to her, chomping at the end of a Dagwood Dog.

And she takes the large lime spider with two complimentary Flakes and says, ‘See you, Joo-ahn,' and the two of them leave, starting an argument that begins with, ‘Hey, did you know that guy?'

‘Fuck,' Frank says, but quietly, so it's not bad for business. ‘Fuck, I was in there. Thirty seconds more . . . Hey, what part of Spain do you reckon I should be from?'

‘Portugal. Portugal could be good.'

‘Okay. Portugal. Is that still actually part of Spain? Didn't it become independent, like, in the seventies, or something?'

‘Yeah, good point. Still be a few Joo-ahns there, though, I'd think. But maybe Madrid. Maybe go for Madrid.'

‘Madrid. Okay. So what do I need to know about Madrid?'

‘No details, Joanne. It'll only get you in trouble. You came out here when you were a baby.'

‘Joo-ahn,' he says. ‘Joo-ahn. There's an inflection involved. And I'd stop putting shit on this if I were you. People are getting into it, you know.'

Leon turns up again at two, and tells us we're on lunch.

‘I'll look after things with young Steve,' he says. ‘And I'll see you at quarter to three.'

We go out the back and I'm about take my overalls off when Frank says, ‘What are you doing? Men in uniform, remember? Don't even touch the cap.'

So we head out into the Ekka crowd, men in uniform, and pass conspicuously unnoticed by girls. I'm not sure what Frank expected would happen, but it doesn't happen.

We're leaning against the railings near the Zipper, taking stock, when a twenty-cent piece falls from high-up on the ride and lands near Frank.

A guy in the queue is about to pick it up when he notices the uniforms.

‘Oh, sorry,' he says. ‘I guess that's why you guys are there.'

‘Yeah,' Frank says. ‘That belongs to someone.' He picks it up and pockets it. ‘And I'll be minding it for them till they get off.'

‘Sure. But do you actually work here? Doesn't that say
Whipster
on your name tag?'

‘Yeah, but it's like . . . a conglomerate.'

‘And we're multiskilling,' I toss in, in case it helps, particularly now that a few people in the queue are taking an interest. ‘So if you could all get back a bit, that'd be great. We're actually here on safety duty. You know, Safety Regs? It's a government thing. We need a perimeter.'

‘No untrained people directly under the Zipper is pretty much what we're looking at,' Frank says. ‘Some stuff comes out of these things, you know. And we can't have any of it landing on anybody. Plus, it's all got to go to its rightful owners.'

And at that, a cigarette lighter drops onto the grass, followed by some more loose change and, a matter of seconds later, two Iced Vovo biscuits. We pocket the change, begin a responsible-looking pile of other items. And we usher the crowd along carefully, keeping it all low-key so that the Zipper staff round at the booth don't see what's going on.

A fifty-cent piece pings Frank in the shoulder, and someone laughs.

‘Hey, that'll be enough of that,' he tells them. ‘This is a serious issue.' And then he turns to me and says, ‘I reckon that just about puts me up to a whole beer.'

And that's when one of the Zipper crew comes around from behind the generator.

‘Something going on here?' he says, knowing there's something going on.

Frank's tell him everything's fine, under control. He looks unconvinced, but he goes, and I sense grudging respect from the people in the queue, as though they realise the conglomerate's got their interests at heart, with this close attention to safety issues.

We keep collecting change, and the whole Ekka-job idea is starting to seem as though it might be worthwhile. We haven't made the girl side of things fire yet, but we've got the uniforms, and cash is coming our way.

And that's when Frank says, ‘Fuck, mate, look up.'

And I look up and see, fluttering slowly down to us, a twenty-dollar note. Frank secures the perimeter. I catch it before it lands. But I can't bring myself to put it in my pocket.

‘So what do we do with this?' I say to him.

‘What do we do with it? It's twenty bucks. Plenty.'

‘Yeah, but it belongs to someone.'

‘Yeah, right. And we go up to them at the end of the ride and go “anyone lose a twenty?” We'll never know whose it was. What are we going to do? Ask them the serial number?'

‘I think we've got to give it back.'

‘Yeah, and then the Zipper people are onto us.'

‘Hey,' the guy from the generator shouts. ‘What have you got there?'

‘Nothing,' Frank says.

‘Nothing, hey? Doesn't look like nothing.'

Frank takes the twenty, puts it in his pocket, shows the guy empty hands.

‘You give that back,' the guy says.

‘Yeah, who to?'

‘You give it to me. That's all you've got to worry about. And then you piss off, all right?'

‘And what are you going to do with it?'

‘None of your fucking business.'

‘Are you giving it back to the person who lost it?'

‘Just give it to me, prick.'

‘No.'

And he's coming closer, glaring at both of us, and he looks at Frank's name tag and says, ‘Give it to me, you fuckin' wog.'

And Frank says, ‘Hey, I've got friends who are wogs. Arsehole.'

‘Frank didn't mean that,' I say, and then come over all foolishly brave. ‘You've probably got friends who are arseholes, and he's not normally that insensitive.'

The guy doesn't have the verbals to deal with that, so he goes for menace instead. Lifts his fist, takes a swing at Frank. But Frank ducks and flails his own fist around, just to get the guy away, but it connects and sends him staggering backwards.

‘Shit, run,' Franks says.

And we go, off through the queue with the guy running after us, swearing away about what he's going to do when he catches us. The two of us running like hell in our bright white Whipster overalls, like some remake of a knock-em-down silent movie classic, but one in which both of us could end up in actual pain if the wrong ending comes about.

We keep running, probably long after we've lost him, past the Hall of Mirrors, round the Ferris wheel, past the woodchop and up into the animal pavilions.

‘Department of Agriculture,' Frank shouts to someone who tries to stop us, and we hide among some pigs.

The pigs snuffle round, make room. Frank's eyes water with the straw and he pinches his nose hard, tries not to sneeze. A tear rolls down one cheek.

‘Well, Joanne, that got a bit dicey,' I say, when I realise we've got away with it. ‘And I don't think we can go back there now, can we?'

‘What do you mean?' he says, in a pig-snuffly way.

‘Well, I don't think we give the twenty back to its rightful owner. They'll be long gone.'

‘Yeah. Must be finders keepers then.'

‘Must be.'

‘And Jesus it hurts, hitting someone,' he says, shaking his right hand. ‘I'm a lover, not a fighter, mate. A lover, not a fighter.'

‘And a Latin lover at that.'

‘Shit, yeah. Now, we should probably get back to work. And roll on the arvo break, hey?' He takes the note from his pocket and unfolds it. ‘When we can blow this twenty on lime spiders and loose women.'

And with the wild allergic response his face is mounting, it comes out as ‘libe spiders ad loose wibbid,' but I know what he means. We're cashed up, we're men in uniform, we're ready.

‘Twenty bucks between boredom and glory,' I say to him, and he lets out a big solid sneeze that he moves to block, but all that gets in the way is the twenty-dollar note.

‘No worries,' he says, and wipes it in the straw. ‘We can swap it back at Whipster. We'll tell Leon it's ice-cream.'

 

 

 

LOSING IT LEAST OF ALL—1984

 

 

 

E
xams.
E
nd of fourth year.

Two things I've learned in the last day and a half. One: if your eyes shut while you're walking, you can fall onto the road. Two: shaving does not improve the concentration, at least, not beyond the moment you finish shaving.

The problem: neither of these things constitutes epidemiology. Neither makes me more comfortable with generating P values, or more acquainted with the subtleties of metanalysis. All I know is that metanalysis has the word ‘anal' in the middle and that hasn't been funny since three-thirty this morning. But the pre-dawn hours are desperate, everyone knows that.

I'm losing it. Four years (eight semesters) into this degree and losing it. So far, a total modest kind of success story, but that's about to change.

I am at the stage of believing that milkshakes become fascinating if you add a banana. Of telling myself I can have a toilet break after every even-numbered page as a reward for work well done. Of believing that twanging a rubber band against my wrist can keep me awake and make me pass this exam. Even though, as you slip into inappropriate sleep, the first thing you don't do is twang and you end up just cutting off the blood supply to your hand.

I tell my mother it's not working, nothing's working any more and she says, ‘Maybe you need a break, Philby.'

So I go right off at her, of course. Does she want me to fail?

Eight minutes ago I went to the toilet. What does she think this is? I've got plenty of breaks built into the routine. It's the bits in between that are killing me.

And she says, ‘That's quite a welt you've got on your wrist, Philby,' and she confiscates the rubber band. ‘Now,' she says, knowing that I don't take confiscation lightly, ‘I'm going to make you a nice savoury-mince jaffle. And a milkshake.'

With the promise of an added banana, she gets the truce she wants and I don't have to go off at her about the rubber band. Besides, I've got plenty more in my room.

‘Can I call this a meal?'

‘Yes, you can,' she says, ‘if it helps.'

‘It helps, I get fifteen minutes for meals.'

I'm sure the others aren't having these problems. I tell myself that to get me going while I eat the first half of my savoury-mince jaffle. I tell myself there's a high probability (P<0.05) that the others aren't having these problems. That they're cruising with this stats stuff. Declining intrusive offers of jaffles so that they can squeeze in a few more analyses of variance (if there is such a thing) before tomorrow's exam.

But even that doesn't help. I can't scare myself any more with other people's study habits. I can't scare myself with the thought of a supp in the holidays, 'cause I'm expecting it now. Expecting it ever since three-thirty a.m..

I'm gone. Four years, eight semesters and very nearly two-thirds of the way through this degree and I've hit the wall and slid down it like old fruit.

Frank Green comes over. I ask him how he's going with the epidemiology.

Frank Green says he has an all-over tan, baby. Frank Green has been to the gym. Combed his hair, far too much. Bought groceries, made lasagna for eight (and eaten five portions overnight), washed and fiddled with his old Valiant so thoroughly you'd have to call it detailed.

‘Definition of perfect,' he says as he shows me over it. ‘Definition of way-fucking perfect, baby.'

As he shows me the customised driver's seat, runs his hands over the brand-new bed of beads in a way that looks far too close to genuine affection. And he drives with three gonks now, on different parts of the dashboard, and seven hanging airfresheners, since, he says, six proved insufficient to distract his sinuses from their problems with seasonal change.