Chapter 26
BEST OF YOU
CHARLIE
I let the Kylie song finish, for old times’ sake, but then I revoke Zeke’s music privileges. None of that shit in my car, not when I’m feeling sparse and empty like a meteor blew right through my ribs.
At a traffic light on Loftus Street, the one that always takes three minutes to turn green and even longer if you’re in a rush, I commandeer Spotify and put on a downbeat mix I listen to when I’m in an emotional black hole. It’s all Placebo and Silversun Pickups and Portishead and Stereophonics.
Neither of us wanna talk, so we don’t. We drive.
The muscle memory of my calves takes us down old roads we used to know together.
We pass the shitty Francis Street Backpackers in Northbridge.
There’s a rowdy mix of unwashed yoof hanging in the front yard, ashing darts and drinking from goon bags and playing Circle of Death.
Us, us, us. All gone now: an era that won’t and can’t come back.
An era that collapsed before it could blossom into something better than it was.
I drive us past the Rosemount, where me and Reyna first played a gig together; past the tattoo parlour where I got my knuckles done; past the pool hall where Marshy headbutted that security guard.
Gravity suctions me into a left turn onto Scarborough Beach Road, and suddenly we are the same as any basic bitches heading to the coast on a Sunday arvo.
Scarborough Beach is what I imagine the beaches of Los Angeles might be like if they were physically more pristine, but culturally more desperate.
The coastal strip is the go-to weekend destination for surfers wanting to show off their sun-bronzed rigs, juiced-up bodybuilders wanting to show off their testosterone-enhanced rigs, and muscle-car owners wanting to show off their turbocharged mechanical rigs.
Influencers and business owners and drug dealers come here for Sunday seshes and photo ops.
Perth people call this place Scabs and there’s nothing you can do to change it.
I once tried pointing out to the Hectic Lettuce guys that by rights it should be Scarbs with an r, and the word scab implies the gross crust that grows over a wound.
But none of the guys would have a bar of it.
Scarborough is Scabs. Maybe Perth people like the shitty double meaning.
Nothing in this city is as good as it looks at first. The golden sheen is a scab if you pick at it.
Curtis and Ahmed used to love coming here on weekends.
Curtis would take his shirt off and strut in tight gym shorts down the esplanade in the sun.
He loved it when strangers thought he was still in his forties.
Ahmed would take photos next to the giant clock and put half a dozen filters over them to hide his age.
We’d have Aperol Spritzes at the Sandbar and watch hot surfers walk past dripping in their boardies and discuss which ones we’d fuck.
Mostly I remember we would laugh a lot when we were together here.
It felt like I was on a holiday in a tropical city with my family – a memory from a childhood that did not exist.
Zeke is fanging a feed something chronic, so we head to Betty’s Burgers and get a couple of burgers and shakes to go.
We sit on the lawn facing the Indian Ocean and the Snake Pit skate park and eat while we gently bake in the sun.
The teenagers at the skate park are showing off, soaring through the air, egging each other on.
For them, this Sunday will be a good memory when nobody they knew died.
Zeke eats faster than me – dude’s starving after a night in hospital. When I light up after my burger, he asks me for a durry. I know he’s not starting up again. It’s just to mark how dire today is. Curtis is dead. The world is fucked. Even Zeke will smoke today.
We smoke and people-watch the parade of shiny, tattooed, muscular trash at Scabs.
I superimpose the three dead men of my life onto the scene, imagining how they’d be if they were here.
Curtis would have his shirt off and would be asking Ahmed to rub baby oil on his muscles to glisten while he strutted around the Amphitheatre.
Matt would be with his mates getting pissed at the Lookout Bar, watching the footy and putting on a multi.
Dad would be down at the wooden Irish pub, the Galway Hooker, performing a chill acoustic Sunday set before sneaking in a Guinness.
I would kill for one more day with each of them. Even an hour. Even a word.
With my last puff on my dart, I exhale the listless words that life’s not fair, that he should still be alive, that they should all still be alive.
Zeke doesn’t need to ask who I’m referring to.
Vince phones me while we’re at Scabs and we all have a bit of a cry again.
‘What do we do about the Tool Shed?’ he asks. ‘I don’t feel like pestering Ahmed with this but – we can’t open today, right? And we can’t go announcing Curtis has passed away until Ahmed’s ready to …’
‘Maybe we say the bar is closed until further notice due to circumstances beyond our control,’ Zeke suggests. ‘I can make a graphic for it on Canva when I get home.’
‘I still have the Insta login – I can whip something up now, so we don’t get people rocking up at the bar trying to come in?’
‘That’d be even better,’ Zeke agrees. ‘Thanks, Vince.’
Vince hangs up.
We vegetate at Scabs a bit longer, then get in the car and drive back towards the city.
I take West Coast Highway south, hugging the coast, spotting the Indian Ocean’s cobalt bobbing above the beachy scrub and saltbush as the sun gets lower, and more distantly, the hazy shadow of Rottnest Island looming offshore.
We detour through the mansions of the western suburbs.
All big sick slabs of marble columns and three-storey glass windows that reflect the cloudless sky.
The homes of people who have so much more than us but are probably curled up on poolside sunlounges aching from lives they think are as unfair as ours.
Imagine being rich and realising even money can’t fix the disappointment of being alive.
As the sun’s shadows get long, I roll us through a Thirsty Camel drive-thru bottle-o.
We jump out in the browsing lane. The cool room is refreshing.
I buy a carton of Heineken. Zeke hovers over some vodka soda pre-mix cans.
There’s a fibreglass camel in the store, and I hump it doggystyle to make Zeke laugh.
The surfy dude at the counter amps us up to enter some competition to win a bar fridge, and I have no idea why, but I enter it.
The dude throws us a shaka and calls us lads. His hope is nostalgic but foreign.
Zeke and I end up parked at Kings Park as the sun sets. I crack a beer and he cracks a vodka.
‘What are you looking up?’ I ask, when I see he’s scrolling for news updates.
Zeke points his can through the windscreen, past the clean commercial shapes and shards of the Perth skyscrapers facing onto the dirty afternoon glitter of the Swan River, towards where the river’s neck curls near Crown Towers and Optus Stadium. ‘Hammer’s game will be done by now.’
‘Don’t think I’ll ever get used to you being into footy,’ I mutter.
‘No, I’m not checking the score,’ Zeke explains. ‘Although the Eagles got flogged, yikes. But there’s no mention of Hammer being outed. It’d be trending somewhere by now, but the only footage is him taking a big mark in the second quarter.’
‘Maybe the blackmailer was bluffing,’ I say. ‘Hammer got lucky.’
‘I’m sorry I thought it was you,’ Zeke says quickly. ‘I should’ve known better.’
‘Yeah, you shoulda,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry, too. You were right about Matt.’
‘Huh?’
‘When you said Matt wasn’t that different from Hammer,’ I clarify. ‘You weren’t far off the mark. Turned out Hammer was just like him, after last night, right?’
Zeke’s forehead crinkles. ‘I don’t follow you?’
I get that horrific shiver that I’ve put my foot in my mouth, like when you say Father Christmas isn’t real in front of a five-year-old.
I swirl my beer. ‘Hammer told you, right?’ I ask quickly. ‘You guys spent all night together at the hospital. He told you, right?’
Zeke flicks his phone screen off. ‘Told me what?’
Shit. You dickhead, Charlie.
‘Uh – you know why he was there, right?’
‘Not exactly,’ Zeke admits. ‘You said you called him or something, but – why? What happened between you guys? Why did he come down to the hospital?’
Argh. No avoiding it now. And he deserves to know.
I tell Zeke that Hammer found him at the house and called the ambulance – and that he was at the house desperate for Zeke’s help because he was suicidal.
‘You should have told me this!’ Zeke snaps. ‘I was so confused by Hammer being there. Now I feel horrible. I didn’t say anything to him about it. It feels like you guys were keeping me out of the loop.’
‘Well, if he didn’t tell you, maybe he didn’t want to talk about it anymore,’ I point out. ‘But you were right. I was nicer to Matt than I was to Hammer, but they were tortured by the same shit. I shoulda been less of a dick to a fellow homo.’
Zeke immediately fires off a DM to Hammer.
‘What did you say to him?’ I prod.
‘Not telling,’ Zeke says. ‘See, I can keep things secret, too.’
‘Passive-aggressive is an ugly colour on you, Calogero.’
‘I told him I wanna see him after his game.’
‘The fuck are you gonna do if he says yes?’
‘Cross that bridge when I come to it. Did you text Mason or not?’
Ah, shit.
‘You made a good argument,’ I say bracingly. ‘I’m convinced. Texting Mason is the right call. I just need to build up to it.’
‘Chicken.’
‘Yes, Zekey boy, I am a big chicken,’ I say. ‘If Mason leaves me on read or tells me to piss off, that’s gonna add a layer of crap to an already crap day.’
‘Fair. I just think you deserve to be happy. Mason made you happy.’
‘You think so?’