On the Monday, a quiet banking day, the second teller’s box was out nearly five thousand dollars under and I couldn’t find it. It was deemed a near disaster. Symons, the batch clerk, the senior ledger examiner, the senior teller, they all crammed into my little teller’s box and squeezed me out. They found most of it, all but seven hundred and forty-two dollars seventy-eight cents. Symons was worried. He called me into his office.
Maybe you should think about curtailing your extracurricular activities, Jack, he said.
I thought about it that night, over at the Pacific Hotel where Robbo and I got paralytic and the bar manager had to get two of the hotel boys to carry us back to our rooms. I thought about it again on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, each night over at the Pacific. On Friday Symons called me into his office.
Jack, he said, you had such a good start.
Yes Richard, I said.
Are you okay?
I’m fine. I just made a big mistake.
Yes, that’s clear. Look, the car accident probably affected you. It must have affected everybody on board, but you seem reluctant to curtail your nightly activities. It is very easy in the islands to get caught up in the expat lifestyle. There are not the normal restraints in place from family and social norms.
I must have looked puzzled.
Look, what I mean is, the drinking and partying. You and Robinson hang out quite a lot together. Maybe offering you a big challenge first up was not such a good idea. We should have eased you in. It’s most unfortunate, Jack, but you are forcing us to make changes.
I looked away. My head was heating up. Clouds were appearing on the horizon.
I did well the first three weeks, I said. They gave me some antibiotics up at the hospital, so my arm wouldn’t get infected. Maybe they have been affecting me.
He looked at me and said nothing. His face seemed longer and narrower than I remembered. His skin smoother and shinier. Those three weeks no longer counted. Symons was about to rip it all out from under me, ignoring my success as though it had never happened. He was taking away my big break, all because of a lousy seven hundred dollars. And he was telling me who I should and should not hang out with. There was blood in my face, my neck; my entire upper body was infused with hot blood that kept pumping as I watched Symons cross a line, a line of salt I hadn’t seen come up it came up so fast and there he was stepping into it, then over it. My stitches itched. You fucking shit, Symons, I screamed, you bastard, you fucking line-walker. But nothing came out my mouth.
I’m going to take you off the second teller for a week or two, give you a chance to settle in, he said. We might have been a bit premature.
That was it. I lost the second teller’s box. They gave it to some punk from Tasmania, a boy who looked like he had never left home, like shaving was a mystery to him, like his mum and dad were waiting in the carpark with his lunch wrapped in greaseproof paper. Not only that, they gave him a vacant room up in the new quarters, went right by me and Robbo, didn’t ask us, didn’t tell us and when we went looking for him after work and couldn’t find him we thought he might still be chewing on his lunch in the carpark with his parents, but no, there he was, up in the dining room along with all the others and when we asked him he said: Oh, I live here. Where do you chaps live?
Robbo looked at him and said: Chaps? We’re down in the boondocks.
The what?
With the cockroaches.
The kid smiled. He thought we were joking.
That night we went out to the Bulimbi Bar and got well and truly pissed.
Whaddya reckon we should do now? said Robbo.
I feel a raid coming on, I said.
What? A parade? You wanna get dressed up or something?
Robbo was having trouble with his words. They were forming, but having difficulty squeezing through his lips. He didn’t seem to want to open them.
I reckon we should go up to the new quarters and raid the dorms.
Dorms?
Yeah, or whatever they live in up there.
Up there, my sandgroping friend, they have new rooms like you dream about.
What, no fucking cockroaches? Bastards.
Let’s get ’em.
Robbo climbed on his black Honda like it was a fifteen-hand horse, fell off, got up, and said: Here, you ride the fucking thing. It’s bucking me off.
I got on. He got on and put his arms around my waist.
Not too close, I said. I’m very sensitive about blokes up my arse.
Robbo fell off again.
The new bank mess hill seemed steeper and windier than ever and it wasn’t easy manoeuvring the bike with one very drunk passenger and a fairly drunk driver. But we made it. There were a few lights on but most were off.
Let’s get that fucking Tasmanian, said Robbo. He’s taken our room.
Our room? They were going to put us in together?
Ha ha. No, what are we, a coupla poofs?
Let’s not pick on the Tasmanian, Robbo, he’s got enough on his plate, you know, with his mum and dad being his brother and sister.
Jesus, you’re a funny shit, Jacko.
The front door was open, so we walked in. Down the corridor between the rooms we could see lights under doors. We had no idea who lived where.
Look, said Robbo. He pointed at a fire-extinguisher on the wall.
What’re ya thinking? I asked.
Nothing, just like the look of it.
He took it down and before we knew what we were doing the extinguisher was upside down and foam was hitting the wall, me, him, the ceiling and a bloke who opened his door to see what the fuss and noise was about.
What the hell do you blokes think you’re doing? he yelled.
There’s a fire, I yelled.
Where? he yelled.
In your room, screamed Robbo, and ran through the open door with the extinguisher shooting foam all over the man’s bed and wardrobe.
Jesus bloody Christ, you bastards, yelled the man, who I could not remember seeing before and I wondered if he was a spy sent up from head office in Sydney to keep an eye on deviant expats.
The man ran back into his room and slipped on the wet floor, which gave Robbo the chance to slip out, toss the extinguished extinguisher on the floor and follow me back out the way we came.
We both tried to get on the front seat of the bike and pushed it over, allowing the inhabitants of the bank mess to stream out the door and identify their invaders.
The next day we were both called into Symons’ office and told the bad news.
But first the good news, said Symons. You are not being sent home, or fired.
Thanks, Richard, I said. It was just a bit of fun that got out of hand. We were a bit upset about the Tasmanian getting a new room before us.
Yes, well, there was a reason for that. We thought it might be better for the lad to be among senior members of staff. As it’s turned out, we were probably right.
And now the bad news. You are being separated, for your own good. We understand you have become good friends, but the relationship is not helping your work one iota. Robinson, you are heading off to Lua, on the other side of the island, where we have quite a large branch. And Muir, you will be going to Moroki, up in the highlands, a small branch, but one that will provide you with the opportunity to experience a wide range of banking responsibilities.
That was that. Banished. Exiled. Should I write home to the family and tell them they were right, that I had fucked up, that it was time to come home, admit my faults, face the music, and lick my wounds?
As we left, Robbo said: One good thing, Jacky boy.
What’s that?
From where we’re going, a trip to the Islands of Love will be a lot cheaper, and a lot closer.
Shit, Robbo. You only think of one thing.
And you, you horny little sandgroping fucker, what are you thinking of? Algebra? The price of wheat?
There was one more thing to do, go out and get pissed, which we did, straight after work.
We had a week before we got on our respective planes. And what a week it was. Every night we went out. Every night we got home late. Half the nights we chucked our guts. Every morning we were useless. And the mixed race girl, thank you Jesus, on the Saturday night, she put her face on mine.
I was late for my job at the rugby stadium. The boss was angry, but what did I care? It was my last night. There were already a number of cars in the yard and most of them were badly parked. I took my cue from them and made sure that no car parked in a designated area according to my specific instructions as laid down in the Car Parking Manual of 1957. There were cars parked in the way of other cars. I tried to cut off cars that normally left early and cars driven by people who I thought were arrogant pricks. It worked, because at the end of the night the air was full of horns. Everyone was tooting at the car in front of them, behind them, at the side of them. Some of them were stuck there a month and had food brought to them and a water tanker drove by every two days. But all that was nothing to me, because when I left for the bar, once the entire carpark was in complete chaos, she was there, the mixed race girl with the calves, the arms, the long hair and the succulent lips. Not only was she there, she was alone, looking at me, and smiling. I walked over to her.
Hello, I said.
Hello, she said.
Where’s the big guy?
Who?
That man, your boyfriend.
He’s gone south for a week. He’s in a camp with a Sydney Rugby League club.
He didn’t take you with him?
No.
He must be mad.
She touched my arm with her long fingers. Hello Lizard.
Can I buy you a drink? I asked.
Yes, she said.
I did. And then another. And more. And then, when I thought she was going to take me to her little apartment on a hill and take all her clothes off, wrestle me naked with her strong arms and rub her calves against mine and show me all the things I needed to know but hadn’t seen, heard, or learnt yet, a man mountain loomed in front of me.
Diana, he said.
Her name, I had her name. And soon I’d have her and she me.
Oh, Stanley, she said.
You all right?
Yes.
Jack Muir, I said, and put my hand out.
He took it and refused to give it back. While he had it he crushed the life out of it, twisted it, turned it and just when it seemed like it might live, he crushed it again.
Stanley, he said. I’m a mate of Diana’s boyfriend. You probably seen him out on the paddock.
Yes, I squealed. Then said again, from a deeper place: Yes, I seen him here, I seen him there.
Hey, aren’t you the wanker who parks the cars? he said.
Oh yeah, that’s me, Mr Carpark Wanker. Leave your car with me, I’ll pull it off.
His face twisted a little as though confused, as though behind it there was a brain trying to grapple with a complete sentence. Just then I saw the stadium manager looking frantically around, as though anxious and irritated. The horns had started up again and seemed to be reaching new levels. I thought it might be a good idea to leave.
Well, I’d better go, I said.
Me too, said Diana. Early night.
Stanley looked at both of us.
I’ll see you to your car, Di, he said.
My heart, my pants, my being, collapsed.
Hang on, I’ll just go dunk Duncan in the dunny, he said.
What?
He’s going to the toilet, said Diana.
He walked away. Looked back at us. We stood still. Waiting. He disappeared into the men’s.
I turned to Diana and saw a look on her face that said: Kiss me. I kissed her, lightly, but her lips opened up and before I knew where I was I was inside her and she was sucking at my face but in a gentle way that enabled me to keep my general appearance and after she released me I could feel my lips again on her lips and I wanted to cry, which seemed strange, but we had to hurry because the man mountain would soon have his dick out of his mouth, back in his pants and on its way back to us, so we stopped and as we stopped he stormed up to us and we had no time to exchange addresses, numbers, handkerchiefs, underwear, all we had was the taste and smell and memory of each other.
What the fuck is it with my life, I thought, that I’m always getting great kisses just as I’m leaving a place?
One thing I learnt in boarding school: nothing was sweeter than revenge. Just before my taxi arrived at the carpark, I worked on Stanley’s Vauxhall Viva. I let down the back driver’s side tyre and the front passenger side tyre. My plan was that the wanker would change the driver’s side first and think he was done and dusted, hop in the Viva and get a nice little surprise.