Christos Tsiolkas - Barracuda

The young athlete walked into the middle of a wide pool of water in front of a wall of water. She leaned over and touched the torch to the pool, and around her sprang up a circle of fire, which rose and started up an incline. There was a hesitation, a malfunction, and the machine stalled. From the apartment upstairs he heard a woman say despondently, ‘I knew we’d fuck it up.’

‘Please,’ said Dan, ‘let it be a disaster.’

The machine jerked and began to move again. The circle of flame rose and kissed the towering torch.

The world burst into flame, into light. Music thundered from upstairs, so abruptly it was as if a CD had been taken off pause.

Dan would never forget that moment. It was impossible to him just then to conceive of a way to mitigate such loss. He should have been there. He had been holding his future in his clasped hands. Dust. It was all dust.

His first vodka, that was licorice. The bar was packed, a wall of sound, everyone crowded in front of a giant screen against the back wall. The replay of the opening ceremony had started. ‘This will go on for an eternity,’ he whispered over the rim of his glass.

But at least he could sit at the bar, there were empty stools there, and he could turn away from the screen. He drank his vodka and lime. All those years of training, when he’d been the other Danny, they had taught him to listen to his body. He’d only had vodka twice before, on the night of his eighteenth, and once out pub-crawling with Bennie and Omar and Herc. It was clean-tasting, fast, it cleared the head, it offered speed. Vodka would straighten him out, vodka was what he needed.

He pulled his flip phone from his pocket and scrolled through the address book. He kept clicking onto Martin Taylor’s number, then pressing the back button. Finding Taylor’s number, returning to the home screen: he couldn’t stop going back and forth.

Dan told himself that Martin was busy, studying law at uni, he’d just forgotten to tell Dan about the party. He rarely returned calls, he just didn’t have the time, he’d claimed: ‘It isn’t like school, Kelly, uni’s tough, you have to work hard. It’s not a piece of piss like working in a servo or a supermarket.’ Martin could hardly bring himself to say the word, it was as if he had never had to say the word supermarket in his life.

What are you going to do, Kelly? What are you doing with your life?

‘A white wine, thank you. A riesling if you have it.’

His first wine, fruit juice left out too long in the sun.

He looked up from his phone. The young woman asking for the drink was leaning on the bar next to him. She was short and slight and her skin was the citrine hue of olive oil. It would be such lovely soft skin to touch, thought Dan, and he had to stop himself reaching out to stroke it. He must be high, this was what getting high must be like. He could sense the alcohol coursing playfully through his body. Vodka made you high.

The woman noticed him staring at her and offered up a confused, shy grin. Then, embarrassed, she looked away.

Say something, dickhead. Martin would have had some witticism at hand, Bennie would have made a joke, Omar would have flexed a muscle and Herc would’ve asked for a light. Luke wouldn’t have had to say anything. The girls always approached Luke first these days.

Say something . She was blonde, straw-yellow hair to her shoulders, silken and smooth as a sheet of pressed metal. He wanted his first time to be with a blonde. The most beautiful people he knew, Emma, Martin, they were all blond.

Say something. The bartender had given the woman her glass of wine, she was searching for money in her bag.

‘Hi.’ That was all he had, all he could think to say. But the young woman turned, smiled, and said hello in response. He didn’t know what to say next. But she had stayed at the bar.

Dan quickly slipped off his stool and offered it to the woman. ‘Would you like to sit down?’

She hesitated, looked around, blushing, then took the seat. ‘Thanks.’

‘My name is Dan.’

‘I’m Mila.’

Mila sounded exactly right, a sweet word. He silently repeated the name to himself; and then came a flash of memory.

‘Mila means apples in Greek.’

The girl, sipping her wine, looked confused.

‘Mila,’ he continued, embarrassed now. ‘The word means apples in Greek.’

‘Are you Greek?’

‘No. Well, my mum is, but I’m not.’

She didn’t respond to that, kept sipping at her drink, looking up at him from time to time, her mien now cautious but confident, as she sized him up, but mostly she was glancing over his shoulder, to the screen where the eternal now of the opening ceremony was unfolding. He wouldn’t look.

Mila motioned to the screen. ‘Wasn’t it fantastic? I didn’t expect it.’ She was flushed, searching for words. ‘I guess I was so proud,’ she finally gushed.

‘I didn’t watch it.’

She had no response to that. There was chatter and music and shouting in the bar, a tram rumbling down Smith Street, but between Mila and himself, thought Dan, the air was lifeless.

‘Are you meeting friends here, Dan?’

He shook his head.

‘Oh.’ Mila seemed suspicious of his answer.

‘Are you?’

‘Yes, I’m meeting a couple of girlfriends here.’

He had to stop himself from saying, ‘Can I stay with you, can I just hang out with you? I don’t want to go home. Can I please stay with you?’ He didn’t dare say that.

‘Are you a student?’

He was going to lie. He wasn’t going to tell her what he did; she looked smart and poised. He nodded.

‘Me too. Whereabouts?’

‘La Trobe Uni,’ he lied.

‘Oh really? Me too.’ She was excited, but then her eyes narrowed. He didn’t like that, it reminded him of a mouse.

‘I haven’t seen you there.’

And her teeth were too big, Dan thought, she had to know it because she kept her mouth closed when she wasn’t speaking. Her teeth were too big for her small round face.

‘I haven’t seen you around either.’ He liked how easy it was to lie. He could be anything he wanted to be with her. He remembered what Demet had told him about her classes.

‘I’m doing sociology,’ he said, ‘and also cinema and gender studies.’ He finished his vodka and lime, tried to catch the bartender’s eye. The vodka made lying easy, the vodka was telling the story. ‘Would you like another?’

Her glass was still nearly full and she shook her head.

He tried to check his money without her noticing. When his drink arrived, she raised her glass and clinked it with his.

‘Happy Sydney Olympics,’ she said.

Dan smiled but said nothing.

‘I’m doing health sciences,’ Mila continued. ‘I’m in second year.’

‘Same here.’

Then Mila mentioned some people she thought he might know, and he had to keep saying sorry, he didn’t know them. Her eyes narrowed. She looked like a mouse again.

The air had gone dead between them once more. Mila’s skirt, ruby red, was riding up her thigh and her skin there was pale. Would Bennie touch her now, would Omar? Dan dropped his hand and the back of it slid off her leg.

It was the wrong thing to do. She was startled and shifted her body away from him, her eyes not leaving the screen.

Someone called her name and Dan could sense her relief. She jumped off the stool, turned to him hurriedly and said, ‘Thanks, Dan, my friends are here now.’ And like that, she was gone.

Dan wouldn’t turn around, he wouldn’t look at her greeting her friends, at them whispering about him, laughing at him. The loser. The freak. He finished his vodka and lime, the full glass, it burned his throat as it went down. He put it on the counter and walked calmly out of the bar and into the street. He wouldn’t look back to where they were laughing at him.