Christos Tsiolkas - Barracuda

Dan forced a smile onto his face, widening his mouth and squaring his jaw. ‘It’s alright,’ he answered, turning to the screen. ‘Fuck me, eh? I think they’re going to pull it off.’

And then Demet was hugging him and Leanne was blowing him a kiss, and Luke was gesturing to the other woman and beaming as he said, ‘Danny, sorry, Dan , this is Katie.’

Katie rose, kissed him on both cheeks and said excitedly, ‘I’m so glad to meet you, I’ve been so wanting to meet you.’

And Dan knew at once that Katie and Luke were together.

‘Dan, what do you want?’ asked Luke. ‘It’s my shout.’

His first bourbon, that was the taste of sugar and sulfur, the sting to the nose of toffee burning.

‘A bourbon and Coke,’ he said.

There were no chairs and Katie indicated that he should squeeze in beside her on the bench facing the wall. He was glad to, from there he couldn’t see the screen. He could hear the music, could sense the celebration behind him, could even imagine the lights and the colours. But not being able to see it was good, he couldn’t stand for it to be in his face.

‘How did you get here?’

‘Mum and Dad dropped me off,’ he told Demet.

‘They’re off dancing?’

He nodded and felt Katie’s hand on his wrist.

‘Luke’s told me how your folks are rock ‘n’ rollers. I think that’s so cool.’

‘Neal and Stephanie are cool,’ Demet agreed. ‘They’re the coolest parents in the world.’ She had her body tilted away from the table, she too was looking at the screen. Even bloody Demet couldn’t look away. And he knew that she had protested about the huge expense of it, had written articles for her uni newspaper on the racism of the clean-up of the Sydney streets. Even bloody Demet was being taken in by it.

Luke came back with the round and Dan had to tell himself not to scull the drink in one go, though the sickly sweet heat of the alcohol was exactly what he needed.

He sat and listened to Leanne and Demet and Katie and Luke talk about uni, about people he didn’t know, ideas he didn’t quite comprehend, futures he couldn’t share. Demet and Luke didn’t even attend the same uni, but it was as if just by being students they had a life in common.

Dan kept stealing glances at Katie; he thought she was so beautiful. Her skin was translucent, her features elfin, delicate. He wondered what her skin would feel like, how smooth it would be. He imagined his friend’s hands touching Katie’s breasts, touching her all over. Dan had never touched a woman. Would it be warm and dry down there, or would it be moist? Would the muscles there clamp tight on your fingers, squeeze deliciously on your prick? Dan downed the dregs from his glass, shattered the melting ice with his teeth. He stretched out his legs, and his thigh softly nudged Katie’s leg. She subtly shifted away from him.

She was so good, and he was so disgusting; he was an animal.

Dan looked up from his drink. Demet was now observing him keenly, was she going to keep a close watch on him all night? He was both touched and resentful. If she wanted to mother him, the least she could do was buy him a fucking drink.

She reached over and tilted his empty glass. ‘Do you need another, mate?’ She knew him, she was going to look after him all night. He nodded gratefully.

The pub was packed, filled with shouts and cheering. Dan could hardly hear Katie, but all that din was also drowning out the music and commentary from the television. Demet was making her way through the throng, carefully balancing a tray of drinks. Dan got up to help her and as he did so the bodies around him surged as if they were a current sucking them towards the television. Dan used his elbows to ease through the crowd. He took two of the drinks off the tray.

Demet inclined her head towards the mob in front of the television. ‘The teams are marching into the arena!’ she shouted.

They both squeezed back into the booth. Sitting in the far corner again, he couldn’t see the television at all.

‘Will it be the Australians first?’

Dan couldn’t look at Demet or Luke. He knew their eyes would be on him.

‘No.’ He growled out the word. Then, apologetically, his tone softened; he was aware he had startled Katie. ‘The Greek team always comes out first, and the host nation comes out last. That’s how it works.’

‘Fuck me,’ Leanne exclaimed as she reached for her tobacco pouch. ‘This circus is going to go all night.’

Dan adored Leanne at that moment, her surliness, that she wasn’t impressed. He’d have to make more of an effort with her, be more friendly and agreeable.

He held his drink in both hands. He took a gulp, knowing he should be sipping, taking it slow, but he couldn’t. The syrupy drink warmed him, made him feel calm.

He drank and listened to the others talk. University was still at the centre of their conversation, but Dan didn’t understand how it could be that there was no mention of study, of classes or of books. It was the world around university that animated them, and he didn’t know anything about that world. So he concentrated on what they were saying; not its meaning, just its sound. That way he didn’t have to listen to the cheers, the euphoria in the pub and the delirium on the screen, he didn’t have to be conscious of that world at all. So he took in sound: that Leanne’s voice was nasal, that she breathed through her mouth as if she had a cold. And Katie’s tones were hushed, fragile, her words fell like feathers and Dan had to lean in to hear her. As for Luke, he spoke confidently, with no trace of the old stutter; he had a pleasing low register marred only by a propensity to monotony: You’ve always had a pompous side, thought Dan wickedly. You like the sound of your own voice. And Demet, she was still strident in delivery and pitch; what had changed was that she didn’t swallow the ends of sentences as she used to. University had trained her out of that.

Dan reached for his empty glass. ‘Another round?’

Leanne was the only one with an empty glass; the others all shook their heads. Dan walked to the bar, looking straight ahead but above the line of the television. The bartender smiled as she took his order but didn’t move her attention from the screen, even as she poured the beer and mixed Dan’s drink.

‘Fuck me,’ said Dan, ‘this circus is going to go all night.’

The woman was no longer smiling. ‘Fifteen dollars,’ she snapped, her eyes still fixed on the television.

When he got back to the table, Katie was talking about living overseas. ‘I’d love to do my master’s in the UK. But I’d have to get a scholarship to do that and that’s pretty hard.’

‘You’re pretty smart,’ Luke interjected, and then added, reaching for her hand under the table, ‘And pretty, period.’

‘Fuck pretty,’ said Demet. ‘Katie is beautiful.’

Leanne was rolling cigarettes, one for herself and one for Demet. ‘Europe is Disneyland,’ she said. ‘I only want to travel in Asia. I want to take Demet to Thailand, don’t I?’

‘Please, take me, let me be your kept woman.’

‘So you’ve been to Europe?’ Katie asked.

Leanne nodded, licking the edge of her cigarette paper. ‘I took a year off after school, went through Europe, west and east, but then I came back through Vietnam and Thailand and I loved that. That was real.’ She handed the rolled cigarette to Demet. ‘Have you been to Asia?’

Katie shook her head. ‘Nah. I mean, my background is Chinese but, you know, three generations back now. I’m pretty much bog Aussie Chinese.’ She made a self-deprecating face, and Dan thought she was pretty, it was the right word for her. She was light, delicate, fragile as a sparrow.