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  A fifty-cent piece pings Frank in the shoulder, and someone laughs.

  ‘Hey, that’ll be enough of that,’ he tells them. ‘This is a serious issue.’ And then he turns to me and says, ‘I reckon that just about puts me up to a whole beer.’

  And that’s when one of the Zipper crew comes around from behind the generator.

  ‘Something going on here?’ he says, knowing there’s something going on.

  Frank’s tell him everything’s fine, under control. He looks unconvinced, but he goes, and I sense grudging respect from the people in the queue, as though they realise the conglomerate’s got their interests at heart, with this close attention to safety issues.

  We keep collecting change, and the whole Ekka-job idea is starting to seem as though it might be worthwhile. We haven’t made the girl side of things fire yet, but we’ve got the uniforms, and cash is coming our way.

  And that’s when Frank says, ‘Fuck, mate, look up.’

  And I look up and see, fluttering slowly down to us, a twenty-dollar note. Frank secures the perimeter. I catch it before it lands. But I can’t bring myself to put it in my pocket.

  ‘So what do we do with this?’ I say to him.

  ‘What do we do with it? It’s twenty bucks. Plenty.’

  ‘Yeah, but it belongs to someone.’

  ‘Yeah, right. And we go up to them at the end of the ride and go “anyone lose a twenty?” We’ll never know whose it was. What are we going to do? Ask them the serial number?’

  ‘I think we’ve got to give it back.’

  ‘Yeah, and then the Zipper people are onto us.’

  ‘Hey,’ the guy from the generator shouts. ‘What have you got there?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Frank says.

  ‘Nothing, hey? Doesn’t look like nothing.’

  Frank takes the twenty, puts it in his pocket, shows the guy empty hands.

  ‘You give that back,’ the guy says.

  ‘Yeah, who to?’

  ‘You give it to me. That’s all you’ve got to worry about. And then you piss off, all right?’

  ‘And what are you going to do with it?’

  ‘None of your fucking business.’

  ‘Are you giving it back to the person who lost it?’

  ‘Just give it to me, prick.’

  ‘No.’

  And he’s coming closer, glaring at both of us, and he looks at Frank’s name tag and says, ‘Give it to me, you fuckin’ wog.’

  And Frank says, ‘Hey, I’ve got friends who are wogs. Arsehole.’

  ‘Frank didn’t mean that,’ I say, and then come over all foolishly brave. ‘You’ve probably got friends who are arseholes, and he’s not normally that insensitive.’

  The guy doesn’t have the verbals to deal with that, so he goes for menace instead. Lifts his fist, takes a swing at Frank. But Frank ducks and flails his own fist around, just to get the guy away, but it connects and sends him staggering backwards.

  ‘Shit, run,’ Franks says.

  And we go, off through the queue with the guy running after us, swearing away about what he’s going to do when he catches us. The two of us running like hell in our bright white Whipster overalls, like some remake of a knock-em-down silent movie classic, but one in which both of us could end up in actual pain if the wrong ending comes about.

  We keep running, probably long after we’ve lost him, past the Hall of Mirrors, round the Ferris wheel, past the woodchop and up into the animal pavilions.

  ‘Department of Agriculture,’ Frank shouts to someone who tries to stop us, and we hide among some pigs.

  The pigs snuffle round, make room. Frank’s eyes water with the straw and he pinches his nose hard, tries not to sneeze. A tear rolls down one cheek.

  ‘Well, Joanne, that got a bit dicey,’ I say, when I realise we’ve got away with it. ‘And I don’t think we can go back there now, can we?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ he says, in a pig-snuffly way.

  ‘Well, I don’t think we give the twenty back to its rightful owner. They’ll be long gone.’

  ‘Yeah. Must be finders keepers then.’

  ‘Must be.’

  ‘And Jesus it hurts, hitting someone,’ he says, shaking his right hand. ‘I’m a lover, not a fighter, mate. A lover, not a fighter.’

  ‘And a Latin lover at that.’

  ‘Shit, yeah. Now, we should probably get back to work. And roll on the arvo break, hey?’ He takes the note from his pocket and unfolds it. ‘When we can blow this twenty on lime spiders and loose women.’

  And with the wild allergic response his face is mounting, it comes out as ‘libe spiders ad loose wibbid,’ but I know what he means. We’re cashed up, we’re men in uniform, we’re ready.

  ‘Twenty bucks between boredom and glory,’ I say to him, and he lets out a big solid sneeze that he moves to block, but all that gets in the way is the twenty-dollar note.

  ‘No worries,’ he says, and wipes it in the straw. ‘We can swap it back at Whipster. We’ll tell Leon it’s ice-cream.’

  LOSING IT LEAST OF ALL—1984

  Exams. End of fourth year.

  Two things I’ve learned in the last day and a half. One: if your eyes shut while you’re walking, you can fall onto the road. Two: shaving does not improve the concentration, at least, not beyond the moment you finish shaving.

  The problem: neither of these things constitutes epidemiology. Neither makes me more comfortable with generating P values, or more acquainted with the subtleties of metanalysis. All I know is that metanalysis has the word ‘anal’ in the middle and that hasn’t been funny since three-thirty this morning. But the pre-dawn hours are desperate, everyone knows that.

  I’m losing it. Four years (eight semesters) into this degree and losing it. So far, a total modest kind of success story, but that’s about to change.

  I am at the stage of believing that milkshakes become fascinating if you add a banana. Of telling myself I can have a toilet break after every even-numbered page as a reward for work well done. Of believing that twanging a rubber band against my wrist can keep me awake and make me pass this exam. Even though, as you slip into inappropriate sleep, the first thing you don’t do is twang and you end up just cutting off the blood supply to your hand.

  I tell my mother it’s not working, nothing’s working any more and she says, ‘Maybe you need a break, Philby.’

  So I go right off at her, of course. Does she want me to fail?

  Eight minutes ago I went to the toilet. What does she think this is? I’ve got plenty of breaks built into the routine. It’s the bits in between that are killing me.

  And she says, ‘That’s quite a welt you’ve got on your wrist, Philby,’ and she confiscates the rubber band. ‘Now,’ she says, knowing that I don’t take confiscation lightly, ‘I’m going to make you a nice savoury-mince jaffle. And a milkshake.’

  With the promise of an added banana, she gets the truce she wants and I don’t have to go off at her about the rubber band. Besides, I’ve got plenty more in my room.

  ‘Can I call this a meal?’

  ‘Yes, you can,’ she says, ‘if it helps.’

  ‘It helps, I get fifteen minutes for meals.’

  I’m sure the others aren’t having these problems. I tell myself that to get me going while I eat the first half of my savoury-mince jaffle. I tell myself there’s a high probability (P<0.05) that the others aren’t having these problems. That they’re cruising with this stats stuff. Declining intrusive offers of jaffles so that they can squeeze in a few more analyses of variance (if there is such a thing) before tomorrow’s exam.

  But even that doesn’t help. I can’t scare myself any more with other people’s study habits. I can’t scare myself with the thought of a supp in the holidays, ’cause I’m expecting it now. Expecting it ever since three-thirty a.m..

  I’m gone. Four years, eight semesters and very nearly two-thirds of the way through this degree and I’ve hit the wall and slid down it like old fruit. />
  Frank Green comes over. I ask him how he’s going with the epidemiology.

  Frank Green says he has an all-over tan, baby. Frank Green has been to the gym. Combed his hair, far too much. Bought groceries, made lasagna for eight (and eaten five portions overnight), washed and fiddled with his old Valiant so thoroughly you’d have to call it detailed.

  ‘Definition of perfect,’ he says as he shows me over it. ‘Definition of way-fucking perfect, baby.’

  As he shows me the customised driver’s seat, runs his hands over the brand-new bed of beads in a way that looks far too close to genuine affection. And he drives with three gonks now, on different parts of the dashboard, and seven hanging airfresheners, since, he says, six proved insufficient to distract his sinuses from their problems with seasonal change.

  And he paces up and down, squirting drops into his eyes as though he drinks through his corneas, burping big, salty, lemon-lime burps and turning them into words. Frank Green has reached the edge and travelled beyond it. Frank Green is maxed-out on Gatorade. Frank Green has a Daniel Boone hat.

  He is coping very badly with our end of fourth year exams. And I’m not looking good, but Frank is in a state of raging, open disrepair.

  ‘But don’t let me get in the way,’ he says, and blows in my ear when I get back to my desk.

  Gently, admittedly, but it’s still blowing in my goddamn ear, and I already had a bit of a concentration problem. He unravels a paper clip and pokes my ear lobes with it.

  ‘Big lobes, big lobes,’ he says. ‘Hey, is that a savoury-mince jaffle?’

  ‘And it’s all yours,’ I tell him. ‘But only as a present for quietly fucking off. Baby.’

  And he dances behind me, as though there’s a special dance you do when you get a jaffle and I’ve just never known it. And he dances out of the room, with only two brief curtain calls to mark his departure.

  I hear a splash and he’s in our pool. In our pool, wading up and down, arms above his head para-military style and chanting, ‘I’m mad as hell and I just can’t take it any more.’

  And I want to tell him, no, it wasn’t that kind of mad, but it wouldn’t seem right. And besides, I’m studying, that’s what this book’s for. This book I’m gazing at. This book that refuses to infiltrate my resolutely unthinking brain.

  And Frank’s wading and chanting, wading and chanting, and my mother brings him a pile of savoury-mince jaffles on a plate, and a milkshake. With a cocktail umbrella bobbing around on top, pinned to a maraschino cherry. And then, a separate appearance to give him a broad-brimmed hat, and I think he sings her something from The Gondoliers. She applauds, but that’s only politeness. He’s doing a shocking job of it.

  Meanwhile, I have an appointment with a trance to get to, and I only come back when I lean forward onto the unravelled paperclip, which I’m now holding in my hand.

  And there’s less noise outside, and I look out again and Frank’s still wading. Still with one arm above his head, clicking his fingers, but he’s got the kitchen phone in his other hand, dragged out the full length of its extension cord.

  I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t want to.

  So back to the books. Back to the gazing and achievement of little. Back to the menace of the paperclip, held in front of my forehead in case I drift again. And I do drift, of course I drift, but this time into a dream involving a sharp stabbing pain that just gets worse and worse.

  Then Frank’s in my room. In my room with my sister’s towel around his waist (which will, in time, mean trouble) and a beer in one hand.

  ‘I’ve been putting in some calls,’ he says, like a man with better options than he actually has.

  ‘And drinking my beer, too.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. They come in sixes. You’re supposed to share them. Anyway, stop the study for a sec. You’ll want to hear this.’

  And he tells me about the calls. Tells me Jenny Blair’s bought four tubes of toothpaste and she’s already onto the second. Tells me Slats is crying so much his nose is running. Tells me Oscar Wong told him to fuck off cause he’d never had a day like this with his Pac Man before.

  ‘Oscar Wong,’ he tells me, ‘is in awe of himself, and that’s a quote.’

  ‘Yeah, a Greg Norman quote.’

  ‘Yeah, but you get it, don’t you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They’re gone, aren’t they? I’ve got this exam pretty much pissed in if I can keep my cool. I made ten calls out there, and I can name three people I’ve got beaten already.’

  ‘Biased sample. You picked them deliberately.’

  ‘It’ll still stack up. What do you want, a metanalysis? Slats is so gone he’s losing snot over it. I’ve got a four sewn up unless I cop some serious sunburn. P less than point-o-five, no worries. So I only came in to borrow some suncream.’

  ‘So what do you know about variance?’ I ask him.

  ‘Nothing,’ he says.

  So we split the beers and drink three each, and for hours at least it won’t matter that they were my father’s.

  I’ve got four people beaten now, four out of eleven, and even though the methods are questionable, it should extrapolate just enough.

  WORLD OF CHICKENS—1985

  1

  Here goes: ‘Shouldst thou perchance purchase this mighty fowl, all will be well, and well for all.’

  Done with flourish, as it should be. With a flouncing and flapping of wings, and with the usual outcome. Taringa’s most stylish fast-food selling, but not a word of the spruiking part reaching anyone beyond the moulded plastic chicken head it started in. To the traffic, it’s all a big wasted mime.

  The lights change and the Leyland P76 at the front drives by, with the children in the back clearly having been instructed not to look at the chicken.

  Problem is, I’m the chicken. Me and seven tall feet of costume, from my orange rubber toes to my orange rubber comb, with my broad white rooster body in between. And, sure, it’s the chicken they’re ignoring, but it’s hard not to take these things personally—at least to some degree.

  ‘Sirrah, thou art nought but a beef-witted bum bailey,’ I say rather too loudly, denouncing the driver, while giving an energetic flap of my right wing towards the World. Towards Ron Todd’s World of Chickens. And anyone who thinks that, after weeks of this, I’m in some kind of rut out here should be aware that I saw it that way first, so that’s why I turned things Elizabethan. I got in early, before all this bored me stupid and I gave it away and went looking for some other part-time job.

  Not that this is exactly the job I thought I applied for. On the student union noticeboard it offered the anticipated shit pay, included meals and required ‘some experience in the food-service industry’ and ‘good people skills’.

  Now here I am, by the road—in the lonely world well beyond people skills—because I happen to fit the chicken costume, almost, and it’s definitely one of those jobs when almost is more than good enough. If you almost fit the chicken costume you only spend half your time making burgers and the other half kerbside, attracting attention if not custom, swinging your arms around in mad-winged mime, saying whatever you want since they’re all in their cars with the windows up.

  But this time it turns out that Ron Todd is right next to me. This time, as I swivel enticingly—swivel and wave—there’s a thump and my wing takes Ron in the chest.

  ‘Whoa there,’ he says, and takes a step backwards. ‘Love the enthusiasm, Philip, but pedestrian traffic isn’t out of the question. Remember that. We don’t want to have me sued when one of you chickens decks someone.’

  ‘Sorry. But there is a bit of a visibility issue when you’re looking at the world through a chicken’s beak.’

  ‘Yes. I suppose we could open it a bit more, but then people’d be able to see you in there.’

  ‘And that’d completely spoil the illusion, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘True, true.’ Ron looks thoughtful, the cars cruise past. A chicken in conversation with a midd
le-aged man, maybe we should offer the traffic more of that—it’s surreal enough that I’d look at it. ‘Quite a brain for a chicken,’ he says. ‘I like that.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Now, what was that you were saying when I came out here?’

  ‘When exactly did you come out here?’ Okay, this is a cause of at least some concern. I did most of Hamlet’s soliloquy before the lights turned red and any self-respecting chicken where I come from would view that as, to say the least, a little passé.

  ‘You were talking about beef. And we don’t do beef.’

  ‘No. Exactly. Beef-witted. That’s what I was saying. As in, none too bright because they’re passing up the pleasures of the World.’

  ‘Beef-witted,’ he says, trying it out for size.

  ‘Yeah. It’s Shakespearean. I do a bit of Shakespeare out here.’ He gives me a look that says there has to be more to it. ‘It helps,’ I tell him, and I shrug the wings and turn them to him palms upwards. (Do wings have palms? Perhaps not.)

  ‘Good, Philip. Good.’ His look sidles from thoughtful to puzzled. ‘You’d be up for a swap soon, wouldn’t you? How about we see you inside in five, back on the counter with Frank, and we’ll send Sophie out here?’

  ‘Sure.’

  He walks away. I resume my courting of the traffic.

  And, all right, maybe he wasn’t expecting Shakespeare, but what am I supposed to do? The chicken thing, certainly, but a person’s brain does wander. Sometimes to old monologues or Elizabethan insults, sometimes to a list of the branches of the external carotid artery (superior thyroid, ascending pharyngeal, lingual, facial, occipital, posterior auricular, maxillary, superficial temporal), frequently to a catalogue of personal incidents that would be better off forgotten, sometimes to a few opening lines of autobiography, which might go like this: