Smoke in the Room by Emily Maguire

Author:Emily Maguire
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781741985917
Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia
Published: 2013-08-09T04:00:00+00:00

With Matty and Carl and Trick, Adam had gone to sports bars. With Jo and Ray he went to places with no sign out the front and no way of telling which of the waifs slumped over the bar were staff and which were customers. On his own, he went to an English pub where he was certain he wouldn’t bump into anyone he knew. When he met Eugenie, he stopped going to bars and when the box of wine in his fridge ran out he did not replace it. His friends called him pussy-whipped and he let them. It would’ve been mean to tell them that he had found something better than drinking, found someone better than them.

Sitting in this concrete bunker, the electronic bells of the slot machines bouncing off the bare walls interrupted only by sporadic shouts or guffaws from one or other of the far, dim corners, Adam noticed a single strand coming loose from the mass of grief and loneliness. He missed his old friends. It was a tiny thing, but he stretched it out in his mind, amazed at finding it at all. This thread of loss related to the living.

‘Hey, what are they staring at?’

Adam followed Katie’s gaze. Three men with ZZ Top beards were looking right back at him. A woman in a tartan mini-skirt and matching cap was talking into one of the men’s ears and pointing at Katie.

‘You want something or you just having a perve?’ Katie called out.

The woman raised her middle finger. One of the men said something Adam couldn’t hear and the others nodded. He was aware, suddenly, of Katie’s bald head, scarred face and combat boots.

‘Let’s go home, hey? There’s plenty of beer in the fridge.’

Katie shook her head, smiling at the group across the floor. ‘I like it here. But I reckon the fat one has the hots for me. Probably thinks he could bend me over and have his way before I managed to squeak. Goddamn bully, he’ll get a shock, I tell you. Oh, goody, here he comes!’

The man walked towards their table slowly, his legs splayed, his groin thrusting with each step. He nodded at Adam and Adam nodded back. He wasn’t sure what this meant. He hoped it meant everything’s cool, but he felt like maybe it meant I’m gonna kick your ass. He had never been in a fight. He had never so much as thrown a punch. He didn’t think being half-wasted with a bald, deranged mouse on his arm was a good starting position, but by the speed with which the nodding man was coming towards him he thought he may not have any choice.

‘What the fuck are you supposed to be?’ The man had what Adam used to think of as an Aussie accent. Since coming here he had only heard accents like this on the television, usually from someone wrestling a crocodile. But the accent was beside the point. The dude was leaning over Katie and he was clearly pissed.

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