9. Job Hunting

Stuck in Greywood with her irritable mother and invalid father, it wasn’t long before Sylvia decided to go out and look for a job at one of the local shops. She was a university educated professional, so how hard could it be? Surely not everyone would hold her past misdeeds against her. Obviously she’d have to start back at the bottom to some extent, but it’d work out. At least, that was the kind of thinking that got her out the door on an already stifling Tuesday morning. It beat skulking inside all day listening to her father’s death-rattle groans.

It was only a short walk along Warrine Road to the Greywood shops. A small park stood in between. Chronic water shortages meant that the park was no longer properly grassed as it had been in her youth. The children’s play equipment had been seedy and dilapidated even then. She used to sit under the huge jarrah trees for hours, or she’d walk through the park to the back streets of Greywood on one of her endless meanderings. But she didn’t have time for meandering this morning; she needed to get on with the job hunting.

“Got something to drink? I’m thirsty,” a blearily-eyed, stubble-faced drifter asked. Sylvia hadn’t seen him coming or she would have given him a wide berth. Now it was too late. He was obviously homeless and probably mentally unwell, judging by the sorry state of him.

“I’m thirsty too,” she lied. Now that her parents’ water purifier had been replaced, potable water was about the only thing they did have in the house.

“Haven’t seen you around here before,” the drifter said, “but you look kinda familiar.”

“I grew up around here,” she said.

His expression hardened and he moved closer. He reached out to grab a hold of her arm but she anticipated this and twisted away. She started to run and the drifter couldn’t, or wouldn’t, follow. But now she was heading in the other direction from the Greywood shops. She slowed to a walk, sweating heavily in the heat. She didn’t feel like looking for a job anymore; she felt like finding a place to hide. But the dusty streets offered little relief. It was foolish to stray out of doors in this weather, but here she was. She occasionally saw a dog or child, but for the most part nothing much stirred. Sullen faces in windows observed her passage.

Further along, the path led to a footbridge across the freeway. Her adolescence had been marked in many ways by the freeway and the drone of its innumerable cars. She had breathed the freeway and its fumes; her world had been bisected by it. She had stood on the footbridge many times, trying to imagine her way into the minds of those souls trapped in the peak hour crush. Reaching the middle of the footbridge now, she noticed signs of habitation in the form of a dirty blanket and a deflated silver sachet of wine. A man slept propped up against the bridge’s railing, his face shaded by the flattened cardboard box he’d tied to the railing above him.

It wasn’t that far a drop, maybe ten or fifteen metres. As long as she didn’t land on her head or neck, she probably wouldn’t be killed outright. The more she leaned over the railing, the tighter she gripped onto the metal bars and onto her life.

“Don’t do it,” a hoarse voice said. Sylvia looked down. She’d woken the sleeper with her stunt.

“I wasn’t going to jump,” she said.

“Thinking about it though, weren’t you?” the old man said.

“Maybe.”

Groaning, the man rolled over and got to his feet. His face was incredibly tanned and wrinkled from a life under the sun. He looked down at the freeway. “It’s never quite as bad as you think,” he said. “At least you’ve got your health. You do have your health, don’t you?”

“I guess so.”

One bloodshot eye appraised her. “Pretty young thing like you. I want you to remember this if you can: the world owes you nothing. Not life, not health, not good fortune. The fact that you are alive at all is a miracle and yet you want to throw it away. Don’t you?”

“I don’t want to throw it away.”

“Maybe not today, but you’re toying with the idea. I don’t know what misfortune has befallen you, but it’s probably no more than has befallen others. I want you to look at me. Don’t be shy: really look.”

She looked at him. His bare, wasted arms were covered in scratches and minor abrasions, his hands seemed to have been corroded by some skin disease, and his mouth was an open sore. Those teeth that remained in his head were horribly decayed and his clothes were little more than rags.

“Not a pretty sight, am I?” he said. “But I’ve got something in the old tank yet. So next time you think of jumping or slashing yourself or taking all those pills, I want you to think of that old hobo on the bridge. All he wants to do every day is find a bite to eat, something to drink and a place to rest his weary head. He’s not complaining and he’s not about to throw in the towel. And I want you to think: if he can go on, then so can I.”

“You’ve said this before, haven’t you?”

“Sure, all the time,” the old man muttered. He shook his head wearily and, his spiel over, sat back down under his cardboard roof. “You wouldn’t believe the number of kids that try to throw their lives away on this bridge.”

She knelt beside him. “Is there anything I can do to help you?”

“Not asking for a handout. Just don’t throw yourself off my bridge. Man’s trying to sleep.”

Backtracking along the footbridge, Sylvia returned to her original task with renewed determination. A bigger shopping centre than the one in Greywood, Warrine Grove, wasn’t far away and there was a bus route that could take her there. There was even a sheltered bus stop nearby that didn’t smell too strongly of urine. According to the graffiti-etched timetable, a bus would be along shortly.

She waited.

The bus took its time coming, and by the time she saw it juddering up the hill, she’d been waiting at least twenty minutes. It still beat walking. She got on and sat down near the front.

“Hey, you didn’t pay your fare!” the driver said.

She went up and peered through the grille. She’d hadn’t been on any bus for so long, let alone a bus with a human driver, that she’d entirely forgotten about such things as tickets and fares. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m getting off at Warrine Grove. It’s not far.”

“No shit,” the driver said. “Swipe your fucking card already.”

She fumbled in her purse. There, the green Hub-Nexus card. How could she be so stupid? She swiped it through the reader.

“Sorry, thought you were a fare evader,” the driver said.

Sylvia sat down and the bus started moving.

Warrine Grove looked somewhat shabbier than she remembered it. Hostile-looking youths glared at her as she approached the entrance, but they did not try to accost her or the other shoppers in view of the even more hostile-looking security guards. Inside the centre, the air-conditioning seemed to have broken down, for the air was sticky and humid. The floor didn’t look like it’d been mopped for a long while. She bought herself a bottle of water from a vending machine near the entrance and sat in the food hall trying to psych herself up to ask for a job somewhere.

A Hub-Nexus ATM blinked at her, its illuminated panel flashing. She realised she had no idea how much money she had in her account, so she went over to the machine and swiped her card. She pressed the button for Account Balance.

Account Balance: $99, 977.50.

She stood looking at the screen for several seconds, not understanding how she had so much money. It wasn’t a fortune, but if she was frugal it could last her and her family at least a month. The machine started beeping impatiently. She pressed Recent Transactions. There were only three listings:

21/11/2061 $15.50 DR WG VendCorp

21/11/2061 $7.00 DR Perthway

19/11/2061 $100,000.00 CR AusGov #4129313810-C

Hub-Nexus card in hand, she sat down at a table to think. The Government had given her one hundred thousand dollars and they’d fixed her parents’ water purifier. This meant that the SCA was definitely real. Over the past couple of days, she had almost convinced herself that the whole thing was a ruse, that the replacement of the water purifier had been coincidental. But of course it was no such thing. The Government owned her. She didn’t need a job; she had one working for them.

“Thanks for the money,” she said aloud, not caring who thought her a crazy woman. “I guess I can forget about the job hunting. I’m going to spend some of this money getting my father into hospital, all right? It’ll probably be expensive.”

Sylvia pocketed the card and got to her feet. She might as well buy her family some food while she was here.