24

I BOUGHT a falafel from a takeaway joint in the station concourse and sat on a bench. I took a hesitant bite: both dry and soggy, having no doubt languished for a day in its cling wrap. Two more bites and I binned it. I resumed searching among the teenagers congregated here for Alma Dunmore. They wandered in loose gangs, or sat on the floor in groups, or scoured the floor for dropped coins. They saw a loosely held handbag. They followed commuters too rushed to notice they’d dropped a twenty when they pulled their Myki travel card from their wallet.

Alma was not among them. Maybe she was too aloof for this place. She was not an aimless delinquent looking for any old fun. She considered herself a serious player, or that’s how I read her. But she had no idea what she was getting into with Josie, AKA Philomena Josephine the drug trafficker, AKA a Corpse Flower.

Half an hour passed. The crowds rushed by, ignoring me. Ignoring the teenagers.

Another half hour. It sure was depressing watching people running towards trains, families, and fun, the holidays awaiting them. While we sat here, with nothing to do.

Another half hour. No more. Time to go. What a disheartening waste of time. I put my handbag on my shoulder. As I rose, I saw movement from the corner of my eye. A girl smoothly worked her way through the throngs and perched at the other end of the bench from me.

Her twig legs, in black leggings, were crossed, thongs flapping nervously on her feet. And her toenails were painted green. This individual might be Sleeps in the Toilet at Macca’s Girl, and possibly a better information source than Alma.

I had a better look at her. Ash-white hair with green streaks through it. A grey athletic-brand hoodie. These kids with their workout clothes, all label and no fitness.

I moved closer, nonchalant, as I watched her green chipped fingernails work the screen.

After sending and receiving some texts, she glanced up at the train schedules on a bank of screens, and let out a profanity. She gathered a couple of shopping bags at her feet and dashed away. I followed her, down the ramp to Platform 5. A train was waiting. She made it on board. An announcement warned passengers to stand clear. The doors started to close. I hit the bottom of the ramp and leapt. The doors juddered shut, but I was in, face pressed against a random shoulder.

We passengers were sardines and just as smelly. I could see a white-and-green hairdo making its way to the front of the carriage and I squished my way through in pursuit. The girl found a place to stand near the disabled seats at the front. I held a strap in the middle. As the train stopped, more people got on, defying the laws of physics. All the while, I managed to keep my eye on the green streaks of hair.

As the train approached Footscray, the girl moved to the door. I followed. We alighted and I pursued her up the escalator, two paces behind. She went left, I did likewise. At the doughnut shop, she stopped. I hung around. No surprise to me that Toilet Girl lived on Macca’s and doughnuts.

She walked away from the kiosk with a hefty bag of doughy-goodness, heading left around the market. I stayed back but glimpsed her heading towards the Hopkins Street Bridge and down an alley behind the old Franco Cozzo furniture shop. It was easier to stay with her now; she was dawdling, singing to herself. The houses around here were small and close together. Patches of concrete in the front, peeling paint, bins full of beer cans. At a house with high weeds and boarded-up windows, she banged a two-handed flam on the door. It was a code no one could remember, let alone repeat. The door opened and she was admitted.

I hung around for a while, not sure what to do next. There was a rusted letter box hanging off the fence. Weathered envelopes protruded. I took a quick look around, no one was about. I casually pulled the letters out and flipped through them. Junk mail, and To The Owner newsletters from a real estate agent. Three were properly addressed mail — to Mr Richard Peck and Mr Richard Turner. I stuffed those in my bag, and the junk back in the letterbox.

I tapped lightly on the door and waited. The door opened a crack, dark interior, a pair of eyes.

‘What?’

‘Yes, hi, I’m looking for Alma. I was told she’d be here.’

The eyes narrowed. ‘Who’s asking?’

‘Friend of Isaac Mortimer’s.’

‘The fuck didn’t you say so?’

‘I … I just did.’

Something heavy was moved from behind the door, it opened and an adolescent boy stood staring at me. Floppy hair, short shorts, a bum bag slung over one shoulder. I’d noticed the kids I worked with wearing the same bags in the same way lately. Usual contents: spray-paint, or a thick Texta, a boxie, for those hard-to-open boxes, and a packet of smokes. He grinned at me, mouth full of doughnut. ‘She’s a pain, isn’t she?’ He turned to the house. ‘Brook, some lady’s here, says she’s a friend of Isaac’s.’

‘Who?’ Toilet Girl popped her head into the hall. ‘Who told you about this place?’

‘Isaac,’ I said, clearly first names the way to go.

‘She wants to know where Alma is, heard from her lately?’ said the boy.

‘Get fucked.’

He turned back to me with a smile. ‘Sorry.’

‘Truth is, I needed to make sure she wasn’t here. She’s —’

‘We know!’ The boy was saying, ‘A big pain in the arse.’

‘Er, yes.’

He stood back and allowed me inside. ‘So Isaac sent you? Cool.’ He led me through the house. At the rear, one step down, was a dodgy extension, aluminium, roof and walls, with a concrete floor covered in worn and blackened sea-grass matting. Graffiti on the walls. Despite it still being daylight outside, the room was dingy. I wondered if the lights worked. Maybe the electricity was off. Tinny music came from a portable speaker on an upturned crate.

Brook was sprawled on a mattress on the floor, flicking her thumb on her phone with one hand, twirling her green hair with the other. Cans of spray-paint were strewn about. I thought of Phuong’s car. It was possible, but not probable. I doubted they knew who she was, let alone which car she drove.

Without looking up, she sighed and hit a button on her phone. The speaker became silent. ‘Well, come in then,’ Brook said. ‘Make yourself at home. Have a doughnut.’

There was nowhere to sit except a couple of filthy mattresses and an esky. I sat on the esky. ‘So this place was Ricky’s?’

‘Was. Now it’s mine. Me and me graff crew.’ The boy crossed his arms.

Brook rolled her eyes. ‘You wish.’

I helped myself to a doughnut. ‘So you haven’t seen Alma around? What’s she up to, you reckon?’

‘Who knows?’ the boy said. ‘Kids these days. Am I right, Angie?’

The girl was sitting in the shadows, staring at a white card, knees up to her chin, her black hair in a top-knot bun. My guess was South Pacific background, one parent at least. Currently a resident of the streets. I realised the card was a photo, which she folded and left on the floor. Then she sniffed loudly and wiped her eyes on her sleeve.

‘Is she okay?’

‘She’s cut up about Cory.’

I knew the feeling.

Brook stood up, impatient. ‘Come on, Angie, get the gear out.’

The girl, Angie, moved into the centre of the room and pulled a jumbo pack of chem-brand ParaCode from a paper bag. Now I had a proper look at her, she was the girl we saw with Cory and Razz in the car park waiting for Alma. The night Copeland showed up and sent them scattering.

‘What happened to Cory?’ Her version would be good to know.

Angie shrugged. ‘He died.’

Brook emptied her bags on the floor: glass measuring jug with lid, and a spoon.

‘Gave an old guy near the funeral parlour a twenty,’ Angie said. ‘He got a forty-pack with paracetamol, so we have to CWE it.’

‘Um, so, Cory. You think it was an accident?’ I addressed the room generally.

‘Oh, my God.’ Angie shook her head. ‘I miss him.’ She measured out water from a bottle into the jug. When she was satisfied, she took out the blister packs, started popping out pills, sheet after sheet, dropping them in the water.

‘Has to be distilled water,’ the boy said.

‘Nah,’ Angie said. ‘I’ve used tap before, works fine. If you’ve had problems, there’s lots of other reasons why yours might not work.’

‘Mine works. I don’t have problems.’

‘It just seemed really, like, weird, the way Cory died,’ I said.

‘Maybe it’s your metabolism,’ Angie said, stirring the mixture. ‘Also, don’t have any Phenergan with it because that inhibits the shit out of codeine.’

He made a face. ‘I’m the one who told you that.’ He flicked his hair back. ‘Been extracting codeine since before you were born.’

‘Calm the farm, sunshine,’ Brook said, picking at a nail.

‘You need to filter it three times.’ He sighed. ‘Coffee filters.’

‘T-shirt’s fine,’ Angie said.

‘Comes out cloudy.’ He groaned, turned to me. ‘They’re going to mess it up.’ He turned to the wall, found a mark like a bullet hole and started scratching at it with a pen.

I was struggling to think of a way to get the conversation back to Cory.

‘He thinks he knows everything because his dad’s a scientist,’ Brook said.

‘Was. He mows lawns now,’ he said.

‘Did you know Cory?’ Angie asked. She gestured for me to stand.

‘Yeah. I knew him,’ I said, getting up from the esky. ‘He was funny.’

When I moved, she opened the lid of the esky; it was half-full of ice.

I walked around to where Angie had left the photos. Four small passport-sized portraits. Big cheeky grin. The passport types don’t like smiling. It would have been rejected. I turned to see Angie watching me.

‘Did he sit the exam?’ I asked.

‘What exam?’ Brook stopped picking at her nails and looked at me.

‘The test, I mean. Did any of you take the test? Isaac told me the Corpse Flowers wanted some kids to take a test.’

Angie laughed. ‘He means the blood test. You need your blood type to get your passport.’

Not true, I thought. I didn’t contradict her.

She put the lid on the jug, placed it down into the ice and closed the lid on the esky.

I could contain my curiosity no longer. ‘What’s CWE?’

‘Cold water extraction,’ the boy said, lighting a cigarette. ‘Get the codeine, but leave out the paracetamol. That shit will kill ya.’

‘Why are you here again?’ Angie asked.

The boy sucked on the cigarette. ‘She reckons Isaac sent her.’

‘That’s right.’ I acted solemn and official, like I was on a serious mission. ‘Isaac’s very concerned. Since Cory died.’

‘What’d he say?’ Brook said, getting to her feet.

‘Um, he’s concerned.’

She appeared to accept that. ‘Isaac goes, stop using their shit, and stay away from them. But they were giving us wads of cash, buying us drinks. We were having a great time.’

‘Yeah, haircuts,’ Angie said. ‘Tried to.’

‘Wait, haircuts?’

‘They made appointments, but we didn’t go,’ Angie was saying. ‘One time, Brook did show up, but they went bat-shit about her green hair.’

Brook shrugged. ‘I started getting suss, then. Isaac goes, “Yeah, stay away.”’

The boy agreed. ‘Don’t even talk to them, he reckons.’

‘Who’s them? Can you be more specific? Was it Josie?’

Brook smirked. ‘Some old lady came in Macca’s toilets asking Alma where Isaac was. After Alma left, I fed her some bullshit about The Ashbrook.’

‘Good one, Brook.’ The boy laughed. ‘As if he’d go there.’

I nodded furiously. ‘Yeah. Good move, Brook, sending her to The Ashbrook, which she probably would have hated because, like, the food there isn’t that nice, and her boyfriend too, if she had one, I bet he hated it. Probably created all kinds of tension between them.’ I hooted. ‘Too funny.’

‘I don’t think one bad meal would create tension.’ The boy was pensive. ‘Only if things were already a bit rocky, like if there was another underlying issue.’

‘Like what?’ I asked.

‘Well, maybe he’s got pressures in his life. Conflicting priorities.’

‘What the fuck, you guys,’ Brook said.

‘This boyfriend, say he just got retrenched, and he’s finding it hard to adjust, and he doesn’t feel supported by her …’ the boy was saying.

‘Alma thinks she’s so smart, but they’re using her,’ Angie said. ‘It’s like Amway. My mum was into that for a while. You have to get your friends to buy. It’s horrible.’

‘What’s Alma selling?’

‘Kengtung, and the money everyone’s gonna make.’

Brook laughed. ‘Yeah, but they didn’t realise we hate Alma.’ She stood in front of me. ‘That’s why we’d never bring her here. We’re not supposed to be here, no one is. If you’re friends with Isaac, you’d know that.’

We faced each other. My heart rate rising, but my gaze steady.

‘He’s skipped town,’ she said. ‘He’s not talking to anyone.’

‘He’s still in Melbourne.’ I kept my voice low and flat.

She put both hands in her back pockets. I exhaled, my fear easing. She was mere bones. I could lift her off the ground with one hand.

Then her hand came out holding a blade. My legs went to water. She darted forward and pressed the edge into my flab, looking for a rib, twisting. ‘Where?’

I found myself against the wall, no room to move. ‘I spoke to him today.’ Calm as I could, as blood trickled down my side.

‘Who are you?’

‘Me? I’m the one with the cool drugs Isaac wanted you to have.’

She lowered the blade.

‘That’s right.’ I was speaking, and moving sideways. ‘They’re in my car. Which is parked. Near. The Footscray market.’

The three of them were watching me. ‘Thank God,’ said Angie. ‘This CWE is shit.’

‘I’m going to get the stuff from my car, and I’ll bring it back here.’

They stared at me with heartbreaking optimism.

‘Be right back.’ I gave them a thumbs up.

I darted down the hall and slammed the front door behind me. I hit the footpath at a canter. It had been a very long time since I’d run flat-out. Soon I was puffing, struggling to get air in my lungs. Like a middle-aged fool, I worried I might trip, maybe break something. On the other hand, if Brook or Angie caught me, they’d go the bash. Or the slash. The boy, not so much.

I ran alongside the market, in the shadow of the awnings, and turned into Leeds Street. The passers-by went about their business, shopping, and chatting. Some looking to score. No one seemed concerned by the desperate life-or-death expression on my face, or the blood stain spreading on my t-shirt. At last, I thought, I was fitting in.