Omar Musa - Here Come the Dogs

The dark hair unscrolled over one collarbone.

She has small expanders in her earlobes,

a subtle nose ring and pristine fingernails.

She’s wearing a white singlet

and a gold chain,

and as she twists to the side

I can see a tattoo on her ribs of a sailboat.

She watches me watching her. We drink.

‘So tell me a story, Scheherazade,’ I say at last.

‘Like what?’

‘Where’d you grow up?’

‘Well, until I was fifteen, South Aucks. Papatoetoe.’

‘Like David Dallas?’

She laughs easily. ‘Exactly. My parents owned a dairy. Not heaps of money, but pretty middle class. But my folks always stressed — said that the kids in South Aucks were a bad influence. So when they got enough cash, they moved me away from all my friends, to Parnell, insisted I go to a private school, which I hated. Wanted me to be a lawyer or doctor. Typical Asian father, you know? But then, I started winning portraiture prizes, and he didn’t seem to mind that. Nothing like success to change an Asian dad’s mind, I guess. I picked up the tattoo gun at uni — practised it on friends, you know, then for a bit of money on the side, before I got properly registered. I always loved Samoan and Maori tattoos. Even attended some tattooing conventions, and met masters like Su’a Sulu’ape Alaiva’a Petelo.’

‘You said that like an expert. Sure you got no Islander blood?’

‘Nah. Mum’s grandparents came from China during the goldrush. Dad’s straight from Singapore. You ever been to Auckland?’

‘Nah.’

‘It’s the best.’

‘So why’d you leave?’

‘Just. things. Became too much.’

‘Things do that. But why Oz?’

She eyes me warily and seems to decide on an answer.

‘I followed a woman here, I guess. Photographer from Sydney I met at a gig. As soon as we got here, I knew it was a mistake. She was so jealous.’

‘My ex was like that. Made me delete all my other exes on Facebook.’

‘Exactly. Same here. But like an idiot, I tried to make it work. One day, I decided I’d had enough. Moved here to the Town.’

‘Good move.’

‘I guess so. Not exactly the Australia I’d dreamed of. Boring, mediocre suburbia, quarter-acre blocks, roundabouts. I wanted red sands and rainforests and highways.’

I roll my eyes. ‘Roundabouts. Always the roundabouts. That’s the least of our problems. Plus, it’s bloody beautiful here, actually — the lake, the bushland.’

‘Jeez. Relax. Was just saying.’

I’m always talking shit about the City and the Town but hearing criticism from an outsider stings. It’s like when I hear people paying out Jimmy — only I’m allow to do that. I let it go, though. ‘So, what were you were saying about your ex?’

She wrinkles her nose and continues. ‘The next few months were hell. She called everyday, alternating between sweet, morose and threatening, before just stopping altogether.’

‘Did you love her?’

She grins but her eyes squint strangely. ‘Love? Nah. Never been in love.’

‘Me neither,’ I say.

A rectangle of sky, seamless and cyanic.

A bird hangs against the lidless sun, turns, wheels and turns back before disappearing. Half an hour later, a reef of water-coloured clouds drifts across, then a distant plane, like a fugitive, carving the blue in half with its contrails.

Aleks looks down.

The remand yard is full of men in jailhouse greens, squared off behind chain links and razor wire with barbs as long as an arrow’s fletching, sharp enough to chop a line of coke. Past that is the high wall, a century old, patrolled by armoured guards trained to shoot out a man’s brainstem if necessary. All around is a murmur, the intermittent thud of ball and boot, the march of pacing feet. Most of the men are in river-like lines, walking briskly as if they have somewhere to be, trying to burn off energy before they head back into their cells.

It is his second day inside. Aleks is at a slight remove from the rest, people he knows from the outside, who are sweating and gritting their teeth against the sun and the exertion of boxing, sit-ups and push-ups, an effort as much about forgetting as penitence. One of them, a raw, bent-nosed petrol station robber, walks over and hunkers down. ‘Hot as fark.’

‘Bloody oath.’ Aleks draws a vague swirl in the dust at his feet with the tip of his index finger. He doesn’t look up.

‘Chemtrails,’ the man says, looking at the white lines dissolving in the sky. ‘Government uses that shit to control us, ay. Like crop dusting’

‘Yeah, probably,’ says Aleks. The silence sits.

The man is desperate for conversation. ‘Heard about the terrorists’ yard? Crazy cunts. Training like the army in there. Muscly as clouds.’

‘None of my business.’

‘Yair, they’re gonna make it our business, but. Wanna kill the infidel, they reckon. Gonna get us all one day.’

‘If they don’t, something else will, brother,’ says Aleks.

‘That’s one way of looking at it.’ The man laughs and looks over the yard. ‘First-prize shithole. Number one. Least you get a good feed here, but.’

‘Not holding my breath.’

‘Nah, serious! They feed us well, bro. Lessens the chance of a riot. Heard what’s going on out there in Shellfish Bay?’

‘Nah. What’s up?’ Aleks is interested for the first time.

‘A riot. Abos, Aussies, Lebs, Sudis, Islanders. No one getting along. Hard to tell what the fuck happened. You’re not in here long, anyway, ay?’

Aleks wants to ask more about the riots but instead replies, ‘Nah. Not too long.’ Thank god for Mr Chuckles.

‘Been in before, haven’t ya?’

‘How do you know that?’ Aleks says, still not looking up.

‘Dunno. Just sorta. ya, know?’ The man spits aside nervously. ‘Heaps of people been in before. That’s all.’

Aleks turns his moonface to the man and grins, remembering a quote from a movie. ‘You’re right. I have been in before. But this time I’m innocent.’

The man guffaws and slaps him on the back, then stands and claps dust off his knees. ‘Aren’t we all, ay? Aren’t we all. You’re a good cunt, bro. You’ll be right.’

Aleks had not been afraid when he arrived at the jail and stepped from the paddy wagon. A tiny cold burn of nervousness at first, a little dampness in the armpits as he was processed and strip-searched. He’d walked high shouldered through the dank, dismal hallway, alert, aware of the ambiguous shapes and voices bouncing off the paint, flitting among the bars of light that filtered in through the roof. An unnamable thrill had run in him as he walked through dark, light, dark, light. Then he’d thought, This place is ugly. It has been designed to be hideously ugly. He’d thought of the goodbye, the lie to his daughter that he was going to the Gold Coast for two months for work, her disturbing eyes.

An inmate with a Swastika tattoo strides past in the yard at a distance and nods. Aleks nods back grimly, then looks away. Crouching and standing and smoking discreetly, the inmates are all arranged in attitudes of conspiracy, desperation or malevolence in their listless faces. He studies them, wondering which of this shifting hive could resolve into the shape of an attacker. He cracks his knuckles then erases what he has drawn in the dust.

He claps the dirt off his knees and stands up. Two men are now having a push-up competition. The sun warms Aleks’ face and he smiles to himself. In his first day in the remand yard, prisoners began calling out to him, words that moved and clung together in an unrecognisable mass, like bees, before solidifying into two words: ‘Mr Janeski.’ And the truth was, as much dirt as he’d done, he’d also done a lot of favours on the street.