It is night-time. They have the music turned off, listening for his approach. So when Marcel Leech knocks on the armour-plated door of the Stinking Pariahs’ headquarters, all eyes turn to Larry Skunk. Everyone knows this is his gig, his mess, his little buddy. The place goes pin-drop still. He feels the eyes, feels their expectation, their excitement. A virtuoso is about to perform. He slaps his own cheeks sharply a few times, shakes his head as if seeking clarity, cracks his knuckles in the silence. They smile. A genius is going through his warm-up. He sits up on the pool table and takes a swig of beer and nods to Low Billy Low to open up.

Marcel peeps the sheepishly smiling head of Michael Jackson around the door. ‘I have the money. Most of it. I’ll get the rest,’ he says in Michael’s falsetto.

‘Use your own voice. Stop pretending to be him. Speak in your voice,’ Larry Skunk tells him.

‘I … I can’t. I’ve lost it.’

‘Well, I got to tell you, I’m sick of hearing Michael Jackson come out of you.’

‘Sorry. Sorry, Larry Skunk. Is Turton …’

‘Put the money on the table.’

Marcel crosses the room with an overnight bag and puts it on the pool table. ‘Most of what’s missing is the airfare. With a good excuse for not flying I can get a refund on that.’

‘How’s death sound? As an excuse?’

Knowing no prayers, Marcel begins to silently incant the names of his mother and father. Joyce Mabel Batterby. Neville Leo Leech. Joyce Mabel Batterby. Neville Leo Leech. Joyce Mabel Batterby.

It has been noted that Larry Skunk is blessed with a hallucinatory psychosis that transforms the people he is beating into beasts and ogres, so he feels no compassion for them. It makes people easy to injure and helps keep him unerringly violent. But to Larry Skunk’s surprise, when he beats Marcel, Marcel doesn’t turn into a werewolf or a paedophile or a crocodile, or any damn thing at all. He moans in pain and whimpers in fear of the place he is going, and he remains Marcel. This disconcerts Larry Skunk. Shit. It’s not as easy to beat Marcel as to beat a hyena or a boar. He can’t understand why Marcel won’t do the honourable thing and change into a monster. He blinks in wonder. Maybe, he thinks, Marcel has already become the worst thing possible. Worse than crocodiles, paedophiles or werewolves: a friend who cheated on me.

Larry Skunk, with his fellow Stinking Pariahs looking on, is struggling to bash Marcel with the flair, joy and sincerity he usually brings to the task. He feels clueless. His mojo has been snatched from him. He is afflicted with a confusing pity. He begins to call out the name of a different enemy with each blow he lands, hoping, thus enticed, Marcel will metamorphosise. ‘Wolf.’ A blow lands softly. ‘Rottweiler.’ Another inadequate blow. ‘Hell’s Angel. Gorilla. Nigger. Slope. Commie.’ But Marcel doesn’t change into any of these things and Larry Skunk’s blows become less regular, less forceful, until they are hardly slaps. Marcel eventually opens his eyes and looks up at Larry Skunk and asks, ‘What?’

‘You,’ replies Larry Skunk.

Marcel, realising Larry Skunk’s predicament, apologises.

Larry Skunk stands above Marcel, looking down at his friend panting. The Stinking Pariahs watch on, amazed and saddened. They are witnessing the end of a giant. Low Billy Low, in order to put Larry Skunk out of his misery, steps forwards and touches the muzzle of a .357 magnum revolver gently to Marcel’s temple. He’s about to pull the trigger when Larry Skunk tells him, ‘Hey.’ Breathing hard, he looks around at the other Stinking Pariahs. ‘What’s mine’s mine. I’ll do it out the Brooklyn tip. I don’t need an audience. I’ll do it out there.’ They all know he is lying, but as he hauls Marcel to his feet and pushes him towards the door, nobody moves to stop him. This is sad. This is just sad, what can happen to a man.

Holding Marcel by a wrist he pulls him onto his bike behind him. He can feel Marcel’s fingers on his ribs this one last time. His anger turns into speed and they ride into the night fast. He is finished with the Stinking Pariahs. He has no family now. Something inside him has gone haywire. A millstone of pity, or compassion, or love, or some damn thing, has hung itself around his neck.

On a dark street in Coburg, with silver tram tracks thinning away to a distant neon of shops, Larry Skunk slows and pulls up onto the footpath and kills his bike. ‘Get off,’ he tells Marcel. Marcel stands by the bike, waiting. Larry Skunk leans forwards and brushes raindrops off his fuel tank, the snarling skunk painted there. It’s an inappropriate skunk now, he thinks. I need a more magnanimous skunk. A Mother Theresa skunk. A Red Cross skunk. A handing-over-Christmas-parcels-to-orphans skunk.

He begins talking softly, staring down at the fuel tank. ‘When some Joe Shithead sees us, the leather and long hair, riding round giving the finger to every bastard, he thinks we don’t have feelings. He thinks we’re hard-hearted. Can’t be hurt. Well, that’s all right. Joe Shithead doesn’t know us. The way we look serves a purpose there. It’s a barrier that keeps a nice distance between Joe Shithead and us. He can never know what’s inside our hearts. What good things live there. ’Cause it’s against our interests to let him know.’ He runs the raindrops on his fuel tank together with his gloved forefingers. ‘But I let you see through the leathers and the hair and the tatts. You know my heart, man. You knew how it would hurt me, you stealing from me.’ He reaches with both hands to rub his eyes. ‘Don’t you have a set of rules of right and wrongdoing? Shit. You want me to write some out for you?’

‘Will I need them? Where I’m going?’

‘I’m not going to kill you. You deserve to walk away. To live, knowing you got your only friend killed.’

‘Turton’s dead?’

Larry Skunk doesn’t answer. He doesn’t know if Turton is dead, but he has a need to hurt Marcel in some way.

‘Come with me, Larry Skunk. We’ll go to São Paulo. It’s where I’m going. There are whole cafés full of sad guys with screwed-up lives. We’ll fit right in.’

‘Cafés? Cafés now? You going to sit in some café batting your fucking eyelids?’

Marcel lays his hand on Larry Skunk’s gloved hand. Larry Skunk pulls it away, tucks it under his arm. ‘I’ll see you, Larry Skunk. I’m sorry. And … thank you. I know what this cost.’ Marcel has still got his ticket. He’ll catch another plane. He’ll be in São Paulo yet.

Larry Skunk doesn’t watch Marcel walk away. He starts up his bike and sits there, staring down at its shuddering chrome dials. A Harley Davidson is a stallion if you’ve got a tribe to ride with. It’s heavy-set and laughably conspicuous if you haven’t. Slow, clumsy, loud and vain. You can’t creep along alone, unnoticed, on a Harley. It honks vainglory and hubris. An ugly sound, Larry Skunk thinks – a sound engineered to draw attention. It always made him feel strong. But tonight, here in the dark, it makes him glance over his shoulder. He turns the throttle slow and low, trying to tiptoe away.

Larry Skunk is living in a frightening new land where everyone is stronger and smarter than he is. He is practically a boy again, with this compassion thing afflicting him. He doubts he will be able to make it. A hard heart was all he brought to the table. He knows nothing about making a lawful, legitimate living. How do you scrape together even ten bucks for a veal parmigiana if you got to care about everyone involved?