Escaping the interrogation room and the Crestfield grounds only brought partial relief because it was thirty-eight degrees outside and Edgecliff Station was closed. I stared at the sign directing commuters to the replacement bus, thinking it heralded the end of the world instead of a minor inconvenience. A rail employee with high-vis sweat patches bellowed, ‘System meltdown, mate. All lines are affected.’ So I walked home.
I’d been living in the city with Dad for ten days and it sucked more audibly than a Dyson – especially in this heatwave. For one, I couldn’t surf with my mates after school anymore. Bondi’s not far but public transport’s a bitch. We’d brought my bike over on Sunday and it had been stolen outside a convenience store on Monday. Dad had spewed, saying I was stupid for leaving it unlocked.
‘That’s the neighbourhood for you,’ I’d said.
He said I needed to start taking responsibility for myself so I stuck my hand in front of his face and said, ‘Mirror!’
It didn’t go down well. I now had an 8 pm curfew and had to answer Dad’s constant video calls for him to make sure I was doing homework. Gold star for vigilance, Lance. Maybe there’s an opening for a warden at Long Bay?
As I passed through the lobby of our apartment building, Frank the concierge said, ‘Hot enough for you this afternoon?’
‘Hot enough to fry an egg on my forehead.’
Frank is the gatekeeper, the concierge station his gate. T H E E Y R I E is hermetically sealed from anyone or thing that isn’t welcome – probably one of the most appealing factors for the type of people living here.
I pressed my thumb to the elevator’s sensor pad and exactly eight seconds later arrived at level twenty-seven. Inside my room I dumped my satchel, changed into Speedos and boardies, grabbed a towel and rode up to the unsupervised fitness centre and pool on thirty-three. Marble columns, a tiled mosaic and an enormous overflowing urn – very ‘lost city of Atlantis’. There was nobody around, so I peeled off my boardies and slid into the cool water. Refreshing, but it didn’t clear my mind like surfing does. The narrow twenty-five-metre strip demanded laps. Ten down, I was joined by a woman in a daisy-covered bathing cap who, despite her age, soon caught up to me. Paranoid that with goggles on she might spot the nub, I got out.
The phone was ringing back at the apartment and, assuming it was Mum checking up on me before she and Venn left for their girls’ retreat in Bowral, I let it ring out and went to the balcony. Beyond the CBD, the Corporate Bandits’ Domain, the Blue Mountains were turning purple beneath synthetic-looking pink clouds. My phone plinked. A text from Dad, saying he was on the verge of sealing a deal and couldn’t make dinner. A second instructing me to order home delivery because it was past lockdown.
I called Big Tony’s Oven™ and ordered a large Roman Holiday. Half an hour later, Frank buzzed to tell me the pizza boy was in the lobby. The pizza boy turned out to be a solid fifty-year-old dude with no discernible neck, a shaved head, gold tooth and a nose you could build a viewing platform on. ‘One piping-hot Roman Holiday,’ he said, pulling the box from its vinyl pouch. ‘That’ll be thirty bucks for you, champion.’
‘I thought it was twenty-five?’
‘Five for delivery.’ I gave him forty bucks and the big lug said, ‘Cheers!’ and turned to leave.
‘Hey, what about the change?’
‘Don’t carry any. You can have one of these instead.’ He handed me a fridge magnet with a caricature of Big Tony on it.
‘Is that you?’ I said.
‘Smartarse. Enjoy your Roman Holiday.’
‘Sure, I’ll send you a postcard.’
I ate the pizza on the balcony, watching the action heating up on Darlinghurst Road twenty-seven levels below. Thrillseekers arriving from the other side of town. British rugby lads singing their club anthem and getting blasted from the gridlocked cars and taxis. The wail of sirens and the parting of traffic to let a fire engine, ambos and cop car through. Exploiting their slipstream, a stretch Hummer limo pumping gangsta rap for the benefit of the street crowd. Was it Jay-Z and Beyoncé bouncing behind the smoked glass? More likely chicks from the sticks on a hen’s night. Exciting either way.
The pizza made me thirsty. I had ten dollars to blow and there was a Vietnamese bakery across the road that sold Cokes® for a buck. Time to defy the curfew and walk on the wild side.
Frank’s less vigilant son, Vince, was on the concierge desk and didn’t look up as I passed. Waiting on the corner for the green man, I heard >MEEP! MEEP!< behind me and stepped aside. Different breed of road-runner – a bald guy on a mobility scooter. He charged past and straight into the traffic. Tyres screeched and burnt, but it wasn’t enough to stop the black BMW E93 from hitting him.
>CRANG!<
The old man received a nasty jolt but his chariot remained upright. Behind reflective sunglasses the BMW driver’s face was doughy, his girlfriend’s crumbling. The old guy dismounted, walked to the driver’s side of the BMW and kicked in the door panel with his bare heel, then remounted his thunder cart and zipped off. Two cops arrived on motorbikes. Having been the closest witness but not wanting to be questioned while breaking curfew, I skulked back to the apartment without my Coke®. Hey Joe, the wild side will have to wait.
The incident with the BMW and the scooter brought back memories of the other big event from last year that I haven’t mentioned, the demise of Pop Locke. Everybody loved my grandfather, especially my dog Gus and his mate Dougal, who would trot along next to Pop’s little red Honda CT110 under the delusion of being his official escort. A few years back, my grandparents had closed their bakery in Blacktown after a franchise stole all but their most loyal customers, and moved to Dee Why to be closer to us. Unable to bear the tranquil inertia of retirement, Pop Locke found his second calling delivering the mail and ‘having a yarn to the good people’ he met on the route. Last year, on the twelfth of February, one of those adoring customers accidentally killed him.
Distracted by her kids fighting in the back of the Pajero while reversing down the driveway, Brenda Morris didn’t see Pop Locke tootling along, and knocked him over. Apparently he got up, dusted himself off and somehow managed to lift his bike, mailbags and all. Despite his protests, Brenda called the ambulance. Halfway to the hospital, Pop Locke suffered a fatal cardiac arrest. Even more devastating, he died on my fifteenth birthday. It was difficult to cop, but I told myself that accidents don’t make appointments.
Pop Locke had established a tradition of posting our birthday cards and delivering them on his mail route – a ritual that transcended logic, as many rituals do, but always delighted my sister Venn and me. Though he never reached our mailbox that day, I hoped someone from the post office might find my card in his bag and deliver it. Every day I checked our box before and after school, finding only bills and junk mail. A week later I called Australia Post and they told me that everything had been delivered. There was nothing left.
In the middle of my emotional turmoil, Homunculus made himself known. Everybody has thoughts constantly running through their minds, but early last year mine started speaking to me in voices. Some were calm and reasonable, offering wisdom and encouragement. Others were sarcastic and critical, madly superstitious or seemed to possess knowledge beyond my experience. Those ones became more insistent after Pop’s death and throughout the next few months amalgamated into one distinct bossy voice.
Its first directive was to continue checking the mailbox for a birthday greeting from Pop, with a promise that my vigilance would be rewarded. Obediently I checked the box every day for a month, but there was never anything addressed to me so I stopped. A week later, the voice piped up again: ‘Pop Locke can’t communicate from where he is, but he’s severely disappointed that you’ve given up on him.’ Regardless of whether the voice rose from a guilty conscience, my grief, or a more general anxiety around death, I feared that I was going mad. I googled ‘the little man inside my head’ and found my way to articles on the Homunculus. As I was reading them, the voice said, ‘That’s me.’ And the name has stuck.
Anyway, tonight when I returned to the apartment, Homunculus was taunting me for breaking the curfew without actually buying a Coke®, so to block him out I checked the landline for messages. I expected the earlier call would be Mum apologising for leaving me stranded in the city, bravely enduring a week at my new school. But nope. Only Steve, Dad’s business partner at The BrandCanyon, inviting him for tennis and a picnic tomorrow with his new girlfriend and her sister, a ‘topnotch bird’. Who even uses the word ‘bird’ like that, or still calls on the landline? Steve, when he’s being ironically retro.