BRODIE HENDREN COCKED his head as a flight was called. Not his 11.50 Jetstar to Melbourne—that would be too much to hope for. Removed from his reverie, he scanned the Bali Airport waiting area. Full of Australians flying home. Unfit. Unhealthy. Overweight. Look at them stuffing their faces.
He shifted to ease a nagging ache between his shoulder blades, checked the graze on his forearm and touched his bruised face gingerly. Fucking clapped-out rental moped. It was a miracle he hadn’t come off till the last day.
He realised some fat kid was staring at him; gave her a death stare and she didn’t even blink, the little cow.
He glanced around the airport uneasily. At least he was leaving the fucking country with a few bucks in tax write-offs—being a content creator, he’d posted from cafés and clothing boutiques in Ubud and Kuta Beach, and attracted some Insta and TikTok likes. Otherwise the whole thing had been a bit of a fizzle.
He propped his iPad on the rickety cane table and logged on, checking his socials. Insta first, then Snapchat with some trepidation: yesterday he’d suggested in a private feed that Gabe Eltis, the other EnergyWarehouse ambassador, was packing an extra kilo or so. And he was, yet he had twice as many followers. All the guy did was flog EnergyWarehouse products. It wasn’t like he’d actually created something from them, like Hendro’s Header.
Then the bottom dropped out of Hendren’s world.
The Snapchat post had gone viral.
Someone must have leaked it. Who? Hardly anyone was meant to see it. No matter, the fallout was already massive, dozens of clients threatening to boycott EnergyWarehouse. Accusing him of body-shaming. Very much high school vibes, someone had posted. Gross fatphobic attitude, said another, and Body conscious guys don’t speak to each other like this!
To which EnergyWarehouse had responded: Brodie Hendren is no longer an affiliate with this brand.
The walls closed in. He swallowed; his heart thumped. Veins pulsing in his temples, tears in his eyes, Hendren checked what Gabe Eltis was saying and doing. And there he was with his pumped-up pecs, his stomach looking, yeah, fat, as he posed with a sports drink he had created, the rip-off bastard. Big E Energy.
Faintly, Hendren registered a final boarding call. He grabbed his carry-on and tore down the corridor towards his gate. He was the last passenger to board amid careful blank looks from everyone—none of these limp-dicks even had the guts to scowl—then found himself seated between two fat cunts who hogged the armrests, while the kid behind him kicked his seatback all the way to Melbourne.
He waited at least ten minutes for a bus to the long-term carpark, then forgot what section his Clubman was parked in and when he eventually found it, there was a new dent in the driver’s door. Fucking shitbox. The Mini was the right fit style-wise but it had done over 160,000 km and things were starting to go wrong with it.
He calmed a little on the freeway: the smooth flow of the traffic, and the soothing voice narrating one of his favourite health and wellness podcasts. ‘How to lead a healthier, happier life in a way that works for the you in you,’ was how Tansy Marsh introduced each segment of ‘Take Care Now’. She had 2.1 million followers, and, in addition to the podcast, she’d produced an app and a book of recipes that worked on building mind and body. Body image was a big thing for Hendren—for too long he’d had an unhealthy relationship with food and exercise—and he listened carefully as Tansy explained that connection was vital in obtaining a healthy mind and body. Connect to yourself, connect to others. Don’t let bitterness towards successful people consume you. Cry when you need to—in fact, why not block out time on your calendar for a good cry?
Yeah, well. Brodie Hendren didn’t have to timetable it: he was blinking away angry tears as he took the Brunswick Road exit. Those arseholes at EnergyWarehouse. Was he consumed by bitterness towards successful people? Fuck no. Consumed by bitterness towards fucktards was more like it.
Traffic was heavy. The Golf station wagon ahead of him had a bumper sticker in the rear window. Little Miss on Board. Jesus wept. Five minutes later a Hyundai cut him off suddenly and forced him to brake. It had a bumper sticker too: It’s okay not to be okay.
He followed it into a supermarket carpark, waited until he was unobserved and knifed both passenger-side tyres.
The next morning he realised he had to take himself in hand. What would Seb Verco do? Move on, not look back.
First, recoup the costs of the Bali trip. Taking a few closeups of his moped injuries, he set up a crowdfunding site in the name of Amber, sister of Jason who’d been mugged at Kuta by guys with knives. Cleared him out of everything—return ticket, phone, cash—and left him with a hefty hospital bill.
Then he did a bit of work designing a medical certificate. If you were in breach of a community corrections order or something, a medical certificate could help you get off re-sentencing or jail time. He’d been thinking for a while now that he could start supplying whole new IDs for people. Credit cards, driver’s licence, Medicare card…It had all started when the girlfriend of a Rebels enforcer lost her licence for drug-driving and asked him how she could get it back. Short of hacking the DMV and backdating her record, Hendren wasn’t sure what he could do for her. He didn’t have the equipment to fake a new licence, so he’d done a social-work letter for her that said she was the sole carer of her mother, who needed to be driven to her cancer specialists’ appointments.
Finally, he sketched some ideas for Your Memoirs. In Bali he’d met three women in their sixties who said they were writing their life stories for their kids. Memories. His eyes had glazed over. What memories? Getting old and fat and then retiring and dying? Two of them were struggling to put words together, the other one had written something like three hundred thousand words on a life you could sum up in five. It would be better for old dears like them to seek help from a professional. He tried a few teasers: Turn your priceless life stories into beautiful biographical hardcover books to be enjoyed by generations to come. And: From the initial interview to the final, professionally bound product that will grace your coffee table, Your Memoirs will be there to lend a guiding hand.
Get the money up front, then delay, delay, delay…
After that, he checked his memorabilia sites: he’d made another $545 in the past week.
Slow money, though. Slow.
Late morning, he checked his mailbox in the foyer: four credit cards, in addition to the two that had arrived the previous month. They were genuine replacements, ordered using card numbers supplied by donors to a charity called Toddler Trust, helping kiddies with terrible illnesses. Photos of big, soulful eyes and wan cheeks.
Time to test one of them, so he walked down the street and bought a salad. Success. If the transaction had failed, no big deal, no need for embarrassment, everyone has the occasional credit-card glitch. He simply would’ve paid cash or used his own card.
He returned to the flat, red onion sharp on his tongue.
He thought back to his life two-and-a-half years ago. Karen leaving him, then his arrest for selling the remote-accesstrojan.Threemonths’jailtime—suspended—plus a fine and 200 hours of community work. Amusingly, Ipswich police had sent him a letter through the Recidivist Offenders Program a month later, urging him to have second thoughts if he was ever tempted to go back to his old ways. ‘Consider redirecting your life,’ the letter said. Well, that’s exactly what he was doing.
Not in Queensland, though. Using the credit card that he’d used to buy lunch, he booked three flights: Melbourne to Hobart return, and Melbourne to Adelaide. He’d book his flight home from Adelaide once he’d found—and finished with—his bitch ex-wife.