Bird Country by Claire Aman

Author:Claire Aman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2017-07-27T00:00:00+00:00

WRANGLER

Outside my window it’s like a late-night show. Across the road in the streetlights, Wrangler Girl has acres of golden skin, but she doesn’t have a head. She’s wearing tight jeans and no shirt. She turns her back and opens her thighs. I don’t know how she ever got into those jeans. You’d have to cut her out of them. All the men who see her in the Pursegloves window won’t be able to stop thinking about her all night. As for what she’s feeling, I don’t know. Her golden body gives nothing away. Standing up there like that, without a face.

It must be around midnight because I just heard the goods train go past. I’m so fed up I could scream. The pizza shop next door to Pursegloves Country Wear has already closed its doors. Downstairs here at the Commercial Hotel they’re all swearing and laughing. It’ll be hours before everyone finally stumbles out and drives away. The thin one who brings my meals upstairs, he calls it the Comical Hotel. I don’t know his name. Jimmy or Johnny I think. Something like that. Timmy or Tommy.

He taps on my door. Yes, I’m decent, no leg or breast straying out of my sarong. I go limping to let him in. It’s always him, never the Pole. He has a bag of salt-and-vinegar chips for me, and a Tia Maria with milk, and a walking stick he says he found in the lounge bar. Somebody forgot it. I hand him my plate. I’ve left a chop bone and a mound of mushy potato salad.

You don’t like it, he says.

I was full, I tell him. This is a lie.

I love that stuff, he says. He smiles, and I see all the black teeth in his mouth.

This is the fourth day. My foot is getting worse, not better. It’s puffed up like a fat woman’s foot, with a purple bruise spreading all over my instep. I can’t put any weight on it. I can hop, which hurts my hip, or I do a sort of gasping shuffle around the room or across the hallway to the bathroom. I have an ache in my temple from being stuck here. All I want is to go home, but I don’t know how I’ll ever make it down the stairs. I can’t even get dressed—it was hard enough getting my boots off and pulling my jeans down over my foot.

I test the walking stick. I’m not sure if I should use it on my good side or my bad. The thin man tries it himself, tappety tap to the door and back, but he has the timing all wrong. When I ask him why the windows don’t open, he says they had to be nailed shut. He flicks the aircon switch on and off a few times to show me it doesn’t work, and he says it’s the same in all the other rooms. He’ll find a fan for me. We stand looking down at the street for a moment.

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