Loaded Read Free Page B

about my brother having left home for ages. She broods, cries about it, holds her head low sometimes, sighing deeply, lamenting her boy’s betrayal of her. Yet she nurses the betrayal, cultivates it, makes her pain ecstatic because it adds a sheen of tragedy to a boring life. I let her rave and watch the movie. Soon she gives up on me and weeps silently to herself in the kitchen, doing the dishes.
    Â 
    There must be thousands of movies I’ve seen on television. It could be that the one I’m watching now I’ve seen years before. The best run early on weekday mornings and I often go to bed setting the alarm for 2.15 am or 3.35 am. I wake up in the middle of the night, grab some biscuits and chips from the pantry, or a glass of whisky, or roll a joint, whatever addiction I need to satisfy at that moment, and watch an old movie. There are fewer ads at that time of night and there is no one else around making noise, asking questions, ruining the film for you. I don’t talk much about movies to people. I prefer to watch them on my own, even at the cinema. Everyone around me talks about loving the movies but that’s bullshit. They’ll go to see a movie because everyone is talking about it, or they need to do something before dinner or clubbing, or because the ads for the movie are good. Most people prefer television. I hate television, only watch it to catch up with old movies. People on television – actors, journalists, entertainers – are all second-rate. Movies are movies. They’re an occasion, a night out. Television is a piece of furniture.
    An ad comes on the television and I jump to my feet. Mum, I yell, where’s Alex? At your aunt’s, Mum yells back. She comes in with her packet of cigarettes in her hand. I grab two from her and light them both. I hand one back to her. There you go, Bette, I say. She looks at me with a puzzled expression. Mum is part of the television generation as well, and she knows shit about anything except what thetelevision and magazines tell her. Brain dead. For her the real world begins every day at seven in the morning with ‘Good Morning Australia’.
    â€“I’m going over. Do you want to come? She shakes her head. I kiss her goodbye, yell something neutral in Greek to my father who ignores me, hitch the Walkman around my track pants and put the headphones on. I press play and walk out the gate.

A Vietnamese woman, thin and dressed in a white singlet, dark glasses over her eyes, walks towards me on Church Street. I wave to her and take off the headphones. She stops for a chat. Trin is lovely, with dark shimmering skin, but she’s smacked out most of the time and never takes the sunglasses off. Our conversation is stilted. I ask after her kid and she becomes a bit more animated, telling me she’s left him with her parents for the weekend. She loves her child. She walks with me to the bottom of the hill and I invite her into my aunt’s place but she declines. I don’t blame her. The Greeks, the Vietnamese, the skips, the whole fucking neighbourhood is suspicious of her. She avoids people as much as possible, except for the junkies and people like me who don’t wish her any harm. The rumour is she whores for a living but I’ve never asked and I don’t care a shit either way. She told me once, with her broken accent, in her soft voice made raw by cigarettes, that Ari, you know, it not true what they say about me. Sure, mate, I told her, anyway, a living is a living. It didn’t seem to be the answer she wanted but I wasn’t going to pretend that I believed her completely. A junkie needs cash. It’s not my business to blame her. Nor is it my business to absolve her.
    Trin says ciao to me outside my aunt’s house and walks back up the hill. Take care, I say softly and hope that mywhisper wraps around her slight shoulders and comforts her a little.
    Â 
    My aunt’s home smells of basil and lemon