Bluffworld by Patrick Evans

Author:Patrick Evans
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Victoria University Press
Published: 2021-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

Götterdämmerung

Chapter 11

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Here I am, typing this in one of the cubicles when—boom!—the outer men’s-room door flings open, hard, and a man thumps in below the squawk of the pneumatic muscle. I can hear the metal in his soles striking the abject, pitted lino: one of the tradies. Harrison? Whoever he is, he’s into the cubicle next to me—doesn’t shut the door, doesn’t pull the seat up: instead, he starts giving the cubicle walls a bloody good shake!—the whole thing, my side and his. He stands there shaking them left and right and forward and back, and then he bangs his hands on them—

Beside me the toilet roll bounces on its fitting. The laptop slides about on my knees, I clutch at things.

‘Oy!’

I look up. Big chipped nails, fingers gripping the top of the cubicle wall: hands, wrists, black tangled hair. A scramble and now here’s a face—bulging eyes, horrid nostrils.

He stares down into the cubicle.

‘What the fuck you up to?’

I manage a coprophagous smile.147

‘I’m—writing a book. A novel.’

It sounds ridiculous, of course. What am I doing here?

‘Writing a book—?’ He stares at the laptop, he looks around and down again. ‘This is a crapper, mate.’

Now he drops back on the other side and gives the wall another manly slap: the toilet roll bounces right off its holder this time and onto my lap.

His voice comes back to me. ‘These’re all going anyway.’

‘What—?’

‘The lot.’ Another slap, another rattle; the sound of his boots to the door. I hear him stop. ‘Gettin’ a revamp,’ he calls back.

‘What about the bookshop out there?’

‘Whole fucken thing.’

I call out to him. ‘The whole men’s room?’

‘Whole shebang. Whole building.’

What’s this? Everyone knows what a toilet revamp means—the start of yet another managerial change process, yet another blow to the soul of an institution. Everyone knows they start by removing the men’s urinals.

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