Tim Winton - Eyrie

The change. Which he accepted graciously. Along with the girl’s limp smile of boredom.

And there he was, successfully transacted, having paid dearly for his little digression, his minutes of stunned mullethood, hoisting this clammy bag of unnecessaries, suddenly aware again of how eerily hungry he was and why he’d ventured out in the first place.

He craved a couple of Bub’s fluffy double-shots. But he’d never make it to the Strip. He lacked the loins, pure and simple. Only a trek of three hundred metres or so, but out of range today. He was rogered. Unless he chanced his arm somewhere here in the refrigerated mini-mall. There was a nook of sorts beside the Cut and Blow. Yes, here it was. With malarial bain-marie and plastic tables. Open to the polished concourse, so the muzak was free and endless, and the smells of burning cheese and scorched hair roiled like confluences about the vinyl palm tree separating the two establishments. What the hell. Time to experiment. Necessity being the motherfucker of whatever is in its way.

Took a little round table. Pressed his thumbs, like his very own executioner, to his temples. Ordered something that sounded safe enough. And took stock.

Usually — on his standard wasted day — he’d walk an hour, take a swim, lounge at Bub’s and dodge certain faces by judicious use of the menu or a reiki tract left by some wide-eyed chump. All the while convincing himself that despite appearances his days retained a certain functional coherence. That was an effort, and today such feats were beyond him. He felt peeled, without defences. He was not himself, not even the remnant self he’d been yesterday afternoon. Maybe it was just the bad start. The nasty fright. Which, of course, would turn out to have a simple explanation. But the town felt hostile this morning and the world past its modest boundaries without pity. He could feel it pressing hot and breathless against the glass doors in the distance. Or perhaps that was just weather.

Besides, it was pension day. The fortnightly full moon. Twelve hours of tidal chaos. So if he really wanted to press on further from home in search of better fare and more congenial surrounds, then he’d have to run the payday gauntlet between this little granny mall and Bub’s. And that was a lot of crazy shit to get through. For that you needed skin. Ramrod will. And funds. Because before you even got to the corner there were toothless winos and humbugging Aborigines, each with a case to make and a cloud of misery and body odour to drive it home. Once you’d fought your way clear of the bottlo and the junkie park, you’d need to penetrate the phalanx of charity-tin rattlers skulking soulfully in the trinket alleys and shady arcades. And what could you do but honour their efforts, sign their petitions, fork out the shekels while seething? He gave bogus addresses, snail and email, and hated himself for it. Their causes were just but doomed.

Thank God they were all so fresh and endlessly replaceable, these kids, because they almost never recognized him. What could you tell them, these smiley elves from Oxfam, Greenpeace, or Friends of the Forest, what could you honestly say? It killed you, the bright-eyed marsupial innocence of their faces. No. No sir. Not today.

And even if he did make it that far without falling over again or yacking on someone, he’d still have the buskers to deal with. They were worse than any charity picket, more offensive and evil-smelling than any derro or waistcoated do-gooder. These talentless nitwits were the final obstacle between you and a fistful of arabica beans. And by the time you reached them you were already punch-drunk and desperate. Without discrimination or pride. So there you went, most days, creeping past the tattoo dens and incense emporia where they lurked, steeling yourself to stride by solemnly but almost always ending up shelling out like a man envious of the higher gifts. Just to get by, just to be left alone, just because you felt sorry for the same three chords about the usual damage done.

After all that he’d finally totter onto the little avenue of self-congratulation that everyone called the Cappuccino Strip. Fifty umbrellas around which a certain civic pride once rallied. In the seventies the Strip had been a beacon of homely cosmopolitanism, a refuge from the desolate franchise dispensation stretching from sea to hazy hills. But that was before it calcified into smugness. Somewhere along the way the good folks of the port settled in the wisdom that coffee was all the culture and industry a town required. Butcher shops, hardware stores, chandlers and bakeries had steadily been squeezed out and surplanted by yet more cafés, new spaghetti barns. Rents were extortionate, house prices absurd. The city had become a boho theme park perched on a real estate bubble, and behind every neglected goldrush façade and vacant shopfront was a slum landlord counting pennies, lording it over family and bitching about refugees.

Freo, mon amour. It gave him five kinds of sulphuric reflux to think of it. Didn’t know how he could still love it so. Tried to tell himself at least it wasn’t Perth, that pastel toy town upriver. But, Christ, that wasn’t saying much, was it?

No, this sad little caff would have to be it today. He was physically infirm and psychically unable to go any further. He’d sit tight and watch the trolley-boys trundle by, the parched oldsters wheezing in from Centrelink and Culley’s on their walkers, the rat-tailed infants chucking tantrums on the shiny tiles. He could bear this. Couldn’t he? He was here already, he’d made his order. He was all set. And yet he could not rest. For the mind charged on, cataloguing the horrors he’d spared himself. The manky footpath jewellers, the already drunk Irish backpackers, the mouthy schoolkids.

Still, when he beheld his breakfast on its sunny yellow plate, his resolve began to decay. He couldn’t help but think of properly fried bacon, of hash browns and fluffy free-rangers, of a coffee upon whose bronzed crema a spoonful of sugar might wallow, like a cherub upon a cloud. As he struggled with some aberrant species of ham-and-cheese croissant that clung to his gums like denture glue, he began to wonder if he might just man up after all and make a dash to Bub’s. Well, perhaps not a dash. A power shuffle, a wilful creep.

Hell, yes. And he was bracing against the sticky plastic in preparation for a slow-motion getaway when he remembered the time. It was witching hour on the Strip. That meant yummy mummies. Über-matrons. He couldn’t abide them. Or resist them. They’d see him off in a heartbeat. Without even noticing him. Without registering his feeble presence. With their hulking all-terrain strollers and jogging sheen, their kooky ethnic headscarves and gleaming thighs, they were enough to make a man kick a Buddhist. Late morning they ran in packs, descending upon the quarter to circle their wagons and colonize entire cafés for cistern-sized lattes and teeny-cutesy babycinos. There was something loathsome and luscious about their fruity chirrups, their sweet-smelling sweat, their mist of satisfaction. Not content to be healthy and handsome, they had to be cruelly ravishing. And Jesus, even Leni Riefenstahl had spared us lycra.

Keely’s contempt and lust were no match for them. Which was why he usually went early. To save himself the suffering. So that was that. Here he stood. Sat. Wrestling his greasy bolus. Sipping this bituminous brew. Having barely gotten change from a tenner. Let no man say he didn’t keep an open mind.

Nothing for it but to suck it up and beat a ginger retreat.

Home was only forty metres away, sixty at the most. But something of a challenge given the blurred vision and the intermittent sparks of lightning in his head. Twice he needed to steady himself. First against a jacaranda. Then by high-tackling a molten parking meter. And in these restorative pauses he leaned back like a tranquilized pole-dancer to take in the brutal monolith that rose above trees, chimneys and whining wires.