No freaking way do I have the energy to be nice to people today, I thought as I tried to smash the alarm with my fist. Not even Mike. Or especially Mike. I was exhausted after last night. Interacting with people was not something I had ever enjoyed, and although I had fun, hearing about Lee and feeling Mike’s pain was too much. Maybe I was an empath. The thought made me laugh out loud.
Snip glared at me and jumped off the bed, leaving an imprint of his little Jack Russell body on the Thai silk doona cover bought in a dusty op-shop in Melbourne. Hearing me laugh so early in the morning would have really unnerved the ageing dog.
I liked Wednesdays. There was no one else in the studio, so no need for tiresome pleasantries. I could take my time planning my show, Airwaves of Attitude, and put my feet up, so to speak. Using the office coffee machine, I swirled the milk into a perfect flat white. Opening the biscuit tin, I took three double chocolate coated Tim Tams and quickly stuffed them into my pocket. Just because I was a little chubby didn’t mean people were allowed to see why I was a little chubby.
I heard the studio door open and I could smell his arrogant aftershave before I could see him. The smell conquered the room, announcing his arrival into my treasured and well preserved space that was a Wednesday. I could hear George Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone” in my mind. Too stereotypical, so I changed it to “You’re So Vain.” The Carly Simon version, not the modern one with that terrible male singer. I felt a little better. Actually, whilst we were at it, we could add modern music to my list of things I couldn’t abide. It was a detailed list: people, especially Mike; talking to people, especially Mike; and modern music. I was a complicated woman.
Carly Simon wasn’t making me feel very good so I went back to my trusted Frank Sinatra: my soul mate, my confidant, my secret mentor. He sang “Something Stupid” for me. Good old Frank, he knew me too well. Any moment I probably would spoil it all by saying something stupid.
“Hi Rosie, looking sharp today.” There was a smile in his gravelly yet perfectly even voice. I knew I wasn’t looking pretty, so I wasn’t sure what he was playing at. Was he teasing me? Being sarcastic? Today I had the joy of wearing my favourite yellow jeans. I loved them but I could tell by the way people looked at me when I wore them that my feelings were not reciprocated. They too had begun to take on a new form, snug around my belly. I had a muffin top and breathing was starting to feel like a luxury, not a basic human right. Green sandals and a mint green t-shirt topped off my “fuck you, world” outfit.
I didn’t turn from my computer. “Yeah, yeah, Mike. I’m not really in the mood.” I knew he would be looking sharp because he was a meticulous man, nothing was ever out of place. I couldn’t even keep my curly hair under control, let alone an entire ensemble, and even less likely, my life. Yet Mike had poise, and even his breathing seemed to be perfectly controlled and in sync with the rest of his body. It was a nice body too, but it drew into focus my own muffin top seeping over my awesome yellow jeans. Better to stay angry around this man so I didn’t get sucked into conversations, or feelings that could throw me and my entire world out of kilter. Yesterday had to be a one off. It had taken a long time to build my world and I wasn’t capable of changing it. I had tried for a brief moment yesterday over a beer, but it had left a sour taste in my mouth and an angry feeling in my bones.
“Oh, come now, little flower, how about opening a petal to me?” What an annoying thing to say. I saved the song list I had compiled and turned to face him. Even after our impromptu beer yesterday, after a good six months of Mike offering to buy me one, today his continual attempts to talk to me were frustrating. Still, he took my breath away. A tight black t-shirt barely contained his muscles. As I looked at them, my muffin top grew an inch. A diver’s watch banded around his thick wrist accentuated his strong arms, and his jeans were moulded perfectly around his thighs and stomach. What a show off, wearing clothes that actually fitted him.
I quickly turned away before he could sense any sort of unseemly desire in my eyes. I hated to admit it, but it was there, swamped in a general feeling of anger towards the world.
“Look, Mike, I had fun yesterday. But today, I’m not in the mood. I just told you that.” There it was; something stupid.
“Jeez, you’re difficult!” He sounded hurt.
“Go away, Mike, I’m busy.” I busied myself in revising the songs I had chosen for today’s show. Didn’t he know it was Wednesday? Usually he slips out the door after his show and I don’t see him. One beer and he thinks he can talk to me whenever he feels like it.
Lots of jazz and swing make up my show list, because those types of music give me the potential to slip into a good mood, as I almost was, just moments ago. How quickly it had disappeared. Even my flat white wasn’t improving the situation. I looked forward to dunking the Tim Tams into it and feeling the chocolate melt in my mouth.
For the moment, instead of enjoying the coffee and biscuits in peace, I was again discombobulated by a man who made me feel out of control when he was around. The selected songs were happy ones, but there were three Sex Pistols songs mixed in with the Glenn Miller band and Puppini Sisters, which was an odd choice. I took them out and replaced them with Ray Charles, Sammy Davis Jr., and Tony Bennett. Much better.
“Fine. But I would like to take you for another beer sometime. I knew there was a nice girl in there somewhere and yesterday I found her. I’d like to see her again.”
“You’d make an ex-drill sergeant very happy,” he added, shifting his weight. “I don’t know many people in town, and people need other people, Rosie.”
Drill sergeant. I doubted there was a sexier career in all the world. Every time I thought of him in his uniform, which was more often that I cared to admit, I saw him barking instructions to lesser men and my imagination ran wild. It turned me on, thinking about this powerful, dominant man in charge, but then I would come back to reality and I would remember what a pain he was.
Mike was basically the human version of the 90s song, “The Macarena,” which was possibly the most annoying song ever written, but secretly, when no one was looking, we all turned the volume up and danced. Then we went back to feeling shitty about ourselves because we had given in to something that wasn’t good music. It was just fluff, a quick money maker that had no substance or value beyond the three minutes you were secretly enjoying it.
He quietly closed the studio door and left.
After that my show was a complete disaster. “Thanks for tuning into Airwaves of Attitude, I’ll be back tomorrow.” I said after a calamitous four hours. “And in the meantime, don’t sweat the small stuff.” Turning the microphone off, I headed out the door before Kathy, the next host, could try to engage with me. Although I had established a fairly long time ago that people in general were a pain in my butt, Kathy was more of a pain than a lot of other people. She used to be the mayor and never recovered when she was not voted back in two years ago. Now she was as negative and bitter as I was and the world was not big enough for two people like us to inhabit the same small town. Plus, her hair looked like it was done on the set of a bad 80s sitcom and I think we were distantly related.
Walking the block back to my small fibro-clad house, I puffed the entire way. I’d walked this path for most of my life but had noticed recently the hill had grown. My small gait made the walk longer and the excess kilos I was starting to carry made the hill feel even bigger. I felt awful about the extra weight and I felt even more awful about my interaction with Mike. What was happening to me?
A long time ago, I had made peace with the fact that I wasn’t a very nice person. Mum told me once that I changed the day my younger sister came home from hospital. Kendell was two years younger than me and better at simply everything.
I remembered the first time she beat me at a running race—it was the beginning of her beating me at everything. My 10-year-old legs were racing cross the freshly mown lawn but they weren’t helping me and it was too hot to go any faster. I could see the trampoline at the other end of the front paddock, Dad standing near it, doing whatever a farmer does on his day off. My younger sister was winning, for the first time she was going to beat me, she was going to get to the trampoline first. I knew it was not going to end well.
It must have been the lunch we had just eaten. The wholemeal sandwiches were slowing me down, it couldn’t be my useless stumpy legs that were covered in my favourite tie-dye hippy pants. They were getting caught around my thighs but I didn’t have time to stop and loosen them.
Kendell’s stupid hand touched the frame of the trampoline well before my stumps got me anywhere near it. She was victorious. And I was livid as I watched her literally jumping for joy on the black mat of the trampoline. She was going to pay for this, her summer was going to be over just as it was beginning. I checked to make sure Mum wasn’t watching us from the sunroom window. All clear. Dad had gone to the back paddock with the shovel in his hand, perhaps better that he removed the potential weapon from the scene.
Mid-jump, the gleam of Kendell’s bare legs under her ridiculous boy shorts threw my failure in my face and created rage in my stomach. It was a Norman Bates psychotic kind of rage, one that couldn’t be controlled. I grabbed Kendell’s stupid muscly legs and pulled.
She crashed onto the steel frame of my trampoline. Satisfaction replaced the rage but it was short-lived. Her screaming was louder than it was supposed to be and Dad was running towards us. I’d never seen Dad run before, it was unnerving. The look in his eyes was even more unnerving.
Once again Kendell was the centre of attention as Mum joined Dad in running towards us. They cradled an almost hysterical Kendell into the car, her arm bent at a weird angle.
Alone with the trampoline, I enjoyed a carefree bounce.
After a decade of secret hard work, I had managed to control these psychotic tendencies of wanting to kill my sister. But there was something wrong with me still. And I never wanted to find out what it was exactly, or if I needed to fix it, which was one of the many reasons I pushed people away.
It occurred to me, as I pushed open my squeaky garden gate and wrestled with the overgrown rosebush in the front path, that perhaps radio was my life’s calling after all. In the studio, I was shut away from other people, isolated from them in a sound proof room. And after my rudeness towards Mike, that’s exactly where I should be. I couldn’t remember the last time I had socialised or even spoken to anyone beyond the usual pleasantries that I had secretly enjoyed last evening. Had I been avoiding people all this time or had they been avoiding me? It was ironic that Mike was the only person who had attempted to form any sort of relationship with me in a long time, and I was responding with meanness.
Snip greeted me at the front door, as he always did, excited about his afternoon walk. Clipping his purple faux fur harness into place, I looked at the cupcakes in the glass holder in the kitchen. They were right next to the fruit bowl which currently housed a single, lonely apple. It had been there for a while. I chose a cupcake and headed towards the park. The highway was busy this afternoon; road trains carried wheat and barley from the latest harvest to all corners of Australia. I lived in what was known as the “food bowl” and our farmers were the cornerstone of almost all the industry and jobs in town.
I was puffing again. “Things I do for you, Snip,” I said between ragged breaths.
Snip barked at a truck as it lumbered past. “You wouldn’t win that fight, little mate.” I gave him a pat, biting into my cupcake. “But I still think you’re the toughest dog around.” Snip answered by tugging at the lead, knowing the park was near. Our pace doubled as I almost ran to keep up with his excited, almost comically small legs. Reaching the white fence that surrounded the dog park, I pushed through the gate and unclipped his lead. Snip took off at full pace, enjoying the freedom that was running through his white fur. Fastening some of my disobedient, red curls from my face with a bobby pin, I sat on the bench eating my red velvet cupcake and watched my best friend, my only friend, yip around the enclosure.
The outer area of the park housed an outdoor gym that the local council had installed, hoping to encourage more people to exercise. It was free to use and consisted of nine types of gym apparatus. But most people didn’t use them because the equipment was very much in the public eye. There were no high fences to offer privacy, not even a thick tree to offer seclusion. Living in a small town automatically meant you had to watch your step, no one ever wanted the wheel of gossip to turn towards them. The wheel was never very well controlled, loose lips and meanness was used to steer it. And the wheel could venture off in any direction at any given moment or even run people over. So donning your gym gear and sweating off excess fat in public would be a sure-fire way to get the wheel rolling. I stuffed the last mouthful of cupcake into my mouth. Fuck it.
Finishing the cupcake, the thought that perhaps I should start using the equipment flashed through my brain. I tried to squash it with a sugar rush but the flash had left a smoky residue in my mind.
I didn’t know anyone who wanted to do pull-ups or use elliptical trainers when people driving past could see you and judge you. But today they were in use. I squinted to see rippling arms pulling up a muscular body and rolled my eyes. This guy has no issues with people watching him, I thought. Which is a good thing because it’s a treat to watch him right now. Frank sang “High Hopes” in my mind.
A white hatchback slowed down as it drove past the muscly man doing pull-ups and I could see a platinum blonde head of cropped hair peering out the window. Taking a few steps to the muscled silhouette, I could see it was Mike. Of course, it is. If anyone wants attention whilst they work out, it would be Mike.
Shit. Not two encounters in one day. My brain was going 100 miles an hour. I had to get out of here before he saw me. Already he had encroached on my radio world, my solitary world, and now he was sneaking into my dog park. Snip, of course, was at the other end of the park, closer to Mike than to me, running around like he’d never run before in his life. Mentally I willed him over. If I called him, Mike could hear me, and because he was a masochist, would want to talk to me. Snip either didn’t have very good telepathy or he was ignoring me.
It was possible that Mike was enjoying an innocent workout, not doing it for the attention of all the females in town. It didn’t look like he had noticed platinum blonde, who was now driving at snail’s pace. It looked like Kellie, the local hairdresser. It had to be her bright blonde hair poking through the window, no one else in town had hair that colour. The Kellie shaped silhouette saw me looking and the head ducked back into the car as it sped up. The ducking out of view approach seemed to work for Kellie, so I followed her lead and childishly ducked under the park bench I had just enjoyed my cupcake on, praying that my fluoro yellow jeans would morph into camouflage gear complete with boot polish for my face.
From under the bench, I could see his sweat glistening, having formed tiny bubbles on his olive skin. The bubbles were smiling at me, welcoming me closer. Sweat was an odd thing to notice, and an unusual trigger for the emotions in my body, which were mostly between my legs. I crossed my short, yellow covered legs, just to be safe. If he wasn’t such an arrogant man, I would have licked his perspiration off right then and there. Luckily for me he was arrogant, because there were people about. Kellie could have still been lurking in the shadows, pen and paper in hand, taking notes about us which she would show to all her clients.
I didn’t dislike Kellie, well, actually I did. She was constantly cheerful and positive when I went to get my hair done. I thought she was either on drugs or heavily medicated. It had got to the point where I had to tell her not to talk to me unless it was a succinct question directly related to my common and uninteresting hair colour. She hadn’t appreciated my command but I appreciated the quiet and not having to listen about her early morning bike rides. Happy, thin, and attractive people like Kellie were the worst members of society.
Kellie also baked in her spare time and would offer me homemade brownies when I was locked in her studio of happiness filled with thin people. I doubt she ate them though, judging by the tautness of her I-hate-you-with-a-passion arse. But I beat her at her own game because I always ate the brownies and I did it with my head held high. Later I would collapse into a chubby person’s depression but at least I didn’t have thin and happy Kellie around to witness the calamitous effect her stupid brownies had on me. And, I had shiny hair again, so that was a plus.
Mike’s hands were placed in the dead centre of the steel bar, equal distance apart from his shoulders. He dropped down from the bar, landing with an elegant thud into the dirt below. The sand reached up to grab his sturdy calves, greeting him and cushioning his landing. Now playing: Sinatra’s “I Get a Kick Out of You.”
“Snip! Snip! Let’s go!” A mixture of a terrified whisper and an urgent screech came from my throat. That was weird. The white flash of enthusiastic fur came bouncing over and I clipped his lead back on. He’s a well-trained and obedient dog until a push bike comes near, then it’s anyone’s bet who survives his “small dog syndrome” bites. Better to have him on a lead, even if it was a purple fluffy one. I’d bought his harness and matching lead in Katoomba, and against the hippy backdrop of the mountain town, the lead had looked almost normal. But back in the country it looked downright hilarious. Snip didn’t seem to mind, though.
Crawling on my hands and knees, conscious of how ridiculous I must have looked, I promised myself I was going to start doing some serious reflection as to why I insist on wearing bright, strange clothes when I don’t want to be seen by anyone. So far, I knew it all must be my sister’s fault, something she had done in our childhood to ruin my life and make me the oddity I was in adulthood. Thank god, I had taken some philosophy classes at University, because it was going to be all hands on deck to get to the root of some of my issues. It was a shame that Freud was long gone. I think he would have enjoyed talking to me.
No time for that now. I put my head closer to the ground, figuring that way, there would be less wind resistance and I could get out of the bloody park faster. The dirt did not reach up to cushion me, it turned into cement with shards of glass sticking out of it. The cutting feeling may have been bindies, but I was going too fast to stop and examine the cause of the discomfort.
We headed away from Mike’s form, which was beautifully silhouetted by the fading light, the same light that bathed him at the pub yesterday. Did he always go out and be sexy when the light was just right for him? I mean, I had never seen him do anything sexy at five a.m., but that was probably because no amount of manly sexiness was going to get me up at that time of the morning. He was strong. I had never seen muscles like that on a man except in the movies. I was feeling tingly all over, but that could have been from the crawling at an unnatural pace. It seemed I was the type of woman who went weak at the knees at the sight of a muscular man. I didn’t know this until now because I had never seen real life muscles like that before.
“Hmm-mm.” A cough got my attention from a body standing in front of me. Oh god, this wasn’t happening. I could see Mike’s brown joggers. I froze. Fuck my life.
“Rosie? Snip? What on Earth are you two doing?’
I liked that he directed the question to Snip too, but having been caught in possibly the most embarrassing moment of my life, the pleasure was short-lived. I sighed. There wasn’t really any way I was going to be able to come out of this encounter with my dignity. May as well go the full monty. “Walking my dog. Obviously.” I stood up and brushed the dirt from my knees and hands. I was filthy. Mike pulled a cockatoo feather out of my hair.
“Do you always walk your dog on your hands and knees?” It would have been better if Mike was laughing at me, but he looked concerned, as though I might actually be a crazy person—which I might. Frank was singing “All or Nothing at All.” “Shut up, Frank!”
“Who’s Frank?” Mike asked, looking around as though there was supposed to be a Frank nearby.
“No one. Never mind. And yes, I do walk Snip on all fours. I like to see the world from his perspective sometimes.” Yep, I totally had control of this situation. “Well, no. No, I don’t. Today is a special occasion. But I don’t want to go into it.” I couldn’t look away from the picture-perfect shape of the man standing before me. I could see his dog tags dangling from his neck. Lee’s would probably be in his pocket. I wondered why some ex-army people couldn’t let go of their dog tags, but then again, I had Dad’s in my dresser at home.
Please god, let the earth open me up and swallow me whole. Stupid god was too busy answering the prayers of people who actually believed in him, or her, to grant my wish, though. I squared my shoulders, attempting to look like a proud, dignified woman in bright yellow jeans covered in dirt. I pulled a bindy from my t-shirt.
“You looked impressive doing pull-ups. If I could do half a pull-up, would you lift me the other half?” I shook my head at my own weirdness. Attempting to socialise with people was harder than I thought. Even though I’d been cornered and forced to have the interaction, I still gave it a red-hot-go. It was not panning out well, so I figured I have three choices: continue to be rude to people, because that comes naturally to me and just get on with my life, alone yet comfortable; try to be nice and end up looking like a dickhead; or in this particular circumstance—run. I’d tried running once before and it hurt, and was really hard work, so I knew I wouldn’t get very far without having a heart attack. Rudeness it was then.
Had I always been this strange?
A fourth and random choice popped into my head: be polite. I couldn’t look any more like a fool, dirt on my damp knees, dirty jeans and hands, crawling away from a grown man with a dog in a fluffy purple harness and collar. Fine, here goes, let’s see how politeness tastes. “I’m sorry I was rude to you today,” I said, my head down, shoulders no longer squared. Politeness tastes exactly like humble pie.
“Um…thanks?” He was confused and understandably so. My change in attitude would have caught anyone off guard, let alone Mike, who had been at the centre of my universal disdain since we first met.
“I don’t know why you don’t like me, Rosie. I know I annoy you but I don’t think I really did anything to deserve it, do you?” I didn’t answer. He was being annoying right now and he was smiling. “To be as mean as you are, it’s a special skill. Black-ops sort of skills. I like your jeans, by the way.”
I had no reply for him. These stupid yellow jeans. I wished for the millionth time I wasn’t wearing them. The moment I got home, they were going in the bin with the stupid overalls. What had seemed chic and cutting edge when I put them on this morning now seemed childish. The fabric was still pulling at my hips, even though I had walked two blocks today. If I was going to venture out into the big wide world and be forced to talk to people, I was going to have to lay off the cupcakes.
Immediately I felt as though this “venture” I been a part of for exactly nineteen seconds may not be worth it. Snip didn’t care when I ate cupcakes, and he never noticed when I put on weight. Then again, he never noticed when I lost weight…at least, he never mentioned it. I was out of my depth, and these stupid clothes weren’t making me feel any better. Since they obviously weren’t going to morph into camouflage gear because god hated me, they could at least change into a slinky dress. I tugged at the waist band, hoping and praying. As if.
“G’day Snip,” Mike said, leaning to give Snip a pat. My heart did something weird and I felt strange. Oh god, was he making me…happy?? I swallowed the feeling but it didn’t digest and disappear. “I love dogs, but when we were in the army, we travelled too much to keep one. I guess I could have one again, now that I am a bit more stable.” Sinatra performed “My Town.” It was a good song.
“I guess I could do a lot of things now,” he added as an afterthought.
“My dad was in the army too. He was killed in action four years ago.” Mike stopped mid-pat. Slowly standing, he stepped towards me and put his arms around me. He smelt like sweat and summer rain. “My Town” stopped abruptly and “Summer Rain” murmured into my brain. The scent of his aftershave had long been replaced by the by-product of his serious workout. I resisted the urge to pull away, focusing on feelings of comfort and safety. It was nice to be hugged again. I didn’t realise I had missed it.
“I still wear Lee’s dog tags, never take them off.” He touched them, correcting my assumption they had been his. He started to rub them between his thumb and forefinger as if they were a lantern housing a genie, and if he rubbed hard enough, Lee would come back from the grave. Hopefully my dad would get a lift back into this dimension too.
His pain must have been unbearable, and probably accounted for his grouchiness that I had seen surface on a whole of two occasions in seven months. What was the excuse for my attitude? Okay, my dad had died, but I knew that once Dad joined the army when I was eleven, that every time he left Mum, Kendell, and I for a tour, he might not come home again. And the last time, he didn’t come home. I’d had four years to come to terms with grief and deal with the anger. How long had Mike had? Seven months? My sadness and anger would never go away, but most days now, they were at manageable levels.
At least I thought they were. But talking to Mike and seeing him in a new light, literally, I began to think the anger had just morphed into a closing down of myself, an unwillingness to be part of life. It was a lazy cop-out, but I had been inherently lazy my whole life.
There was a kindness in his eyes, an emotion I had only seen him possess once before, when we shared a moment at the pub. And here, in the open space of the park, he was a different man. Now that he was out of his area of control—pressing buttons on radio—and in a place of freedom and fresh air, he seemed content. And very fit. We had partially bonded over our dead loved ones, the army does that to the surviving families of dead soldiers.
“Look, I’d better go,” I said.
“Oh. Um…okay.” He bent to give Snip a last pat and the overly energetic dog lapped up the attention. “I’ll see you tomorrow at the station?”
“Seems likely, since we both work there.” Be nice, Rosie! It sounded like Dad in my head.
“Against my own better judgement, you are my only friend in town, Rosie. I think you’re interesting, you’re different. I’d like to get to know you more.” Mike must have been having me on. I wouldn’t bother to get to know me if I wasn’t already me, so it didn’t really make sense that a man as beautiful and kind as Mike would take the time. Either he was a con-man or he was using me to get closer to Snip.
“Yeah, fine. I’ll give you some tips on how to make your show less painful for your listeners.” I smiled as I said it, but I meant it. If Dad wanted me to be kind, I figured I would start with being sardonic and move up from there. Baby steps, which would be easy because my short legs didn’t really allow for anything but baby steps, unless I walked like I was mimicking a dinosaur.
Before he could answer, I gathered what dignity I had left, which was almost none, and strutted off towards home. At least I hoped I was strutting and not doing the dinosaur walk. I heard him chuckle as I increased the distance between us. Dinosaur walk it was then.
Being a radio host wasn’t my first career choice. It wasn’t actually a career choice at all. I don’t think normal people go through their formative years hoping to be shut in a room with oversized earphones ruining their already terrible hairdo. And as far as I knew, I was a normal person, even if I did walk like a dinosaur and wear weird clothes. I mean, I ate, slept, and generally felt shitty. That’s what normal is, right?
No, I was going to be a journalist. And by journalist, I mean be famous and see my name in print. I was going to be Lois Lane and have Superman fall in love with me and fly around the Sydney skyline with me. But it turned out a lot of other university students in the early 2000s were looking for the same thing and Superman was not actually a real person. Journalism majors were being churned through the system disproportionate to the jobs available.
At twenty-five I took a job at the radio station in my hot, dusty home town of Pindari in New South Wales, and I’d been there for the past six years. Not exactly my dream job, but it paid well, and instead of seeing my name in print, I got to hear my name on air. I felt this was a bit lacklustre since I was the one saying my own name, but it was a job and I had to eat, more than I should.
Radio wasn’t all bad. Music was fundamental to the human existence, we were all born with it in our souls, so playing tunes all day was okay. Everyone loved music, in one way or another, especially the music I play. And if, on the off chance they didn’t love it, and I got wind of it, I shamed them on air. Eventually people stopped admitting if my music wasn’t to their taste. Anyone who wasn’t obsessed with Sinatra shouldn’t have been alive anyway. And that included Kellie, who had the frustrating habit of ringing in to request lame Top 40 chart music. Sometimes I would play it, if station management was around, otherwise I would pretend the phone system was down.
A job’s a job and I didn’t hate it, exactly, I was just bitter that I missed out on having the life of my dreams, even though I had no idea what those dreams were beyond a career in journalism. When I did envisage this dream job, my story was always on the front page, underneath a world changing, news first headline of some sort. Something like; Journalist Discovers Cold Fusion on Weekend Off!
A small portrait accompanied my name; I looked thin, elongated, neither of which I was, and my long dark curls had miraculously morphed into shiny tendrils of control. I had glasses on, proving my intelligence in a librarian-like fashion. Everyone knows that people who wear glasses are smarter than people with 20-20 vision. That’s why Kellie’s eyes were covered in blue eye shadow and not glasses.
But in Pindari’s economy, any job was a good job, so I tried to remind myself I was lucky I could pay my mortgage each month, as small as it was, and have enough left over to buy as many cupcakes as I fancied, which was a lot. I got my house for next to nothing and Dad renovated it for me before he passed away. His farming background prior to becoming a mechanic in the army gave him all the necessary skills to revamp an old house. Dad could fix anything he turned his hand to—squeaky floor boards, sunglasses, toasters—you name it. I think he liked the solitude of quietly tinkering in the shed, and mostly it didn’t matter what he was tinkering on.
A lot of people in the country couldn’t pay their bills, especially in rural parts of Australia, unless you were a farmer. We were the most urbanised country in the world, so most people moved to the city to find jobs. It was a vicious cycle, but I’m glad I got to stay amongst the river red gums and koalas and live in a town that doesn’t have any traffic lights or roundabouts. Life was simple here. It was quiet and easier to disappear here. I could go days without speaking to anyone, assuming I didn’t run out of milk or cake, and I liked it that way.
Walking back from the park, Snip and I approached the run-down brick house with the scary, oversized demon dog in the backyard. I grabbed his lead tightly and shortened it, bracing myself. The demon dog sensed our approach and let out his thunderous bark, jumping against the unstable fence. My heart leapt into my throat but my faithful, albeit tiny companion put up his hackles and barked back, brave through the flimsy fence. I picked him up and attempted to run the rest of the block, a yapping Snip even braver in the folds of my arms. One day that dog was going to get out, and when he did, I would be seeing my dad again. I’d probably make the time to find and introduce myself to Lee too.
When I got home, it was disappointing to see there was only one cupcake left. I stood in front of the glass container, deciding if I should go and buy more or if it was time to start fitting back into my once-trendy-clothes. I ate the lone serving of sugar and went to have a shower. I’ll see how it goes with sugar withdrawals, I didn’t want to put too much pressure on myself, there were a lot of changes towards my personality presenting themselves. One thing at a time. I just couldn’t decide which one I needed to work on first—weight or kindness. Silently I asked Dad if he was listening. Do both popped into my head, so I threw the ill-fitting yellow jeans and overalls in the bin. This had better be worth it.
For once, sleep was ignoring me. The sugar withdrawals were getting to me already, far worse than I expected. My head hurt, my mouth was dry, and my stomach was rumbling. To add to the discomfort, Mike was playing on my mind. Again. So far, I knew he was a kind man, and as he said, he needed a friend. Was this something I could be for him? Was I capable of giving friendship to anyone? My phone told me it was one a.m. I crawled out of bed and took the clothes out of the bin.