Black Rock White City by A. S. Patric

Author:A. S. Patric
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781921924880
Publisher: Transit Lounge

The change room is busy with people leaving or coming in for their shifts. Voices fill the room with the traffic of conversation. Everyone passes through this room—an intersection with busted lights.

Robert Sewell sits down to put on a fresh shirt as he asks Jovan whether he remembered the clean-up in room 302. Jovan nods. Says, ‘No problem.’ Nods again as Mr X-ray sings a bar of Hey Joe for the first time in weeks. There are two Indian men chatting in their language by a locker, their words interlaced as they seemed to talk almost at the same time, shoulder to shoulder. Offering him no smile today, Jovan walks by bare-chested Bill.

The ‘Greek’, who struts at a standstill, turns on his heel. Picks up a can of deodorant, waving it under his arm as he goes on talking, now into his cream-coloured metal locker, plastered with images of over-exposed pneumatic women screaming in pink, vanilla and blond. With bodybuilders glowing cherry red with high tension tendons and well-oiled muscles.

A newspaper has fallen on the floor and the hospital handyman walks across its pages as he says goodbye. Nobody notices, and from the way he says it, he himself isn’t expecting acknowledgment. Steps over images of a city being bombed from the air, at night time—the explosions are like the flashes of fireworks illuminating the buildings from below.

Bill has been explaining that Australia is full. Bill says that he went to the supermarket last night, and he was surrounded by Indians. A brown invasion. Customers and check-out people. ‘What the fuck is going on, letting so many of these people in?’ Talking out to the two Indians who go on with their interlaced conversation across the room, though speaking ostensibly to Robert Sewell, who is trying to clarify with Bill whether the toilets on the second floor were cleaned as requested, and whether a problematic toilet, prone to blockage, was operational again. Sewell has been asking him all day. Bill’s also directing his thoughts at X-Ray, who is leaning up against a locker not even pretending to listen as he flips through the pages of one of Bill’s pornographic magazines. “Look at these wobble heads,” Jovan hears Bill saying as he passes through. “Why do we need these clowns?”

Jovan is in his own head. He’s taken his boots off. His feet and legs are tired and heavy, so he’s very slow about it. Removing his overalls and then sitting back down on the bench as though to catch his breath. Suzana is spending more of her time scribbling into her notebooks. The only place safe for her in the time since Bosnia, was somewhere buried underground. Coming to the surface isn’t going to be easy. What he can do to assist, or impede, isn’t clear. Perhaps what he should do is look at what she’s been writing. So far he’s operated on an idea of honouring her personal space. If he can make a decision today, it’s that he can’t

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.