Making Laws for Clouds (15 page)

‘You're the saddest man in the world, aren't you, Trev?' Lurch says. ‘I'm not sure I was totally aware of that till now.'

‘Hey, it's . . . So, ever watch the Blitz do you, Tanika?' It's the first time Trev's said her name, and it makes him edgy and he has to look over her shoulder at the oars mounted on the wall behind her. He's not gifted with the ladies, they say.

‘Oh, sometimes,' she says. ‘I've watched a couple. It's on Sundays, isn't it? We usually keep pretty busy on Sundays. But I don't mind the skinny Pommie guy, 'cause his jokes are pretty bad and his accent's funny'

‘Not Jamie then? He's the Manpower one, the one who runs the show and used to be a stripper. Stripper
or a dancer, but I think semi-nude. Maybe even more nude than semi.'

‘Nah, I'm not so much into the fully professional gym body. You know, the buffed and oiled thing. I don't mind a bit of muscle but, once a man's gone around getting money poked down his jocks for a living, you know . . . it's not my thing.'

‘Sure,' Trev says. ‘I know what you mean. Every muscle on this body's au naturel, hey? Made out of sheer hard work.'

Lurch laughs and chokes on his beer. That'd be at the weekends would it, Trev? Round at your place or something? Not Monday to Friday, that's for sure. What a line – “every muscle on this body's au naturel, baby”.' He pulls up a sleeve and shows us a bit of bicep, swivelling his wrist round and stroking his muscles as though we should all be wanting them bad. ‘Let us know when you're using that line on a chick who isn't taken, Trev. I'm pretty sure we'd all want to watch.'

‘Nah, you're being a bit harsh,' Benno says. ‘There's that muscle in your finger that you use for the TV remote – Trev's got one of those that'd get a fair bit of a work-out. It'd be pretty fat, I reckon.'

‘I've got cable,' Trev says to Tanika. ‘And some people don't. If you get my drift.'

‘Sure,' Lurch says, figuring it's his turn again. ‘I'm jealous as hell. We all are. Of most of Trev's life, actually.
Trev needs that channel that gives you the weather in three hundred cities around the world, 'cause he could find himself in any part of Caloundra on any given day.'

‘There's movie channels, prick. And more sport than you could poke a stick at. And an unbelievable range of documentaries. Just last night I was watching one about these Americans in search of a frozen woolly mammoth in the permafrost of northwestern Siberia, and they got out of their truck with about sixteen coats on at this nomads' camp in the snow. And there's this nomad there, just standing there, chatting to 'em, hey? And you know what he's wearing? A bloody T-shirt. And I just thought, you, Siberian man, are one tough mother.'

‘You see,' Steve says, leaning across in front of me and talking to Tanika, ‘this is why they have a girl in the crew on those TV shows. They need a kind of moderating influence. See what I have to deal with every day? These guys'd argue about anything. Next up, Lurch or Benno'll start saying something uncomplimentary about the Siberian guy, and Trev'll take it personally.'

‘Hey. Bullshit. I was just saying . . .' Trev realises, just in time, that he's taking it personally ‘Anyway, why can't we have a chick in our crew, Stevo? A chick who humps plants around and gets a bit of dirt on her. I'd be up for that. I could do with meeting a lady like that. As a colleague, and stuff.'

‘Colleague, mate? Sounds like you work somewhere pretty flash. Would you be talking about that other part-time job of yours with your colleagues on the board of BHP, or something?'

Trev gets shitty when we all laugh. If he was at BHP, he'd be the only guy on the board with a seventies rocker mo and hair going past the collar of his Motorhead T-shirt, and the knee out of one leg of his faded jeans in a way that makes it clear it's not a design feature (not a fashion hole). He must have given the dress code of this place a fair shake on the way in.

‘Hey, rack off,' he says, having maybe had enough of being the butt of the jokes, but picking his time badly, as ever, since I think the others are only getting started. ‘This is just equality I'm talking about. Chicks have got as much right to hump plants and get dirt on 'em, hey? They shouldn't be excluded.'

‘Yeah, mate,' Lurch says. ‘And then you'd be saying we should set up some team showers and you'd be responsible for soap.'

Trev glares at him, and then he decides to laugh along. ‘Well, I like to think of myself as a team player, yeah. And you know what they say, mate. At the end of a hard day on the unisex work crew, cleanliness is next to excellent.'

Steve changes the topic of conversation.

‘Hey, I've got a photo of my boy,' he says. ‘It came back today.'

He can never quite stop being in charge of the crew, even when the only thing that's going wrong is excessive smutty talk in a public place. But being in charge is something he handles pretty well. Maybe there's something for me to learn there. Maybe that's the kind of job I could do some day.

He opens his wallet and he pulls out the photo of his new baby, his son who's six weeks old.

He shows Tanika first and she says, ‘Look at him. Look at him and his little round face and his red cheeks. What's his name?'

‘Ewan,' said in a proud-father way, and Tanika looks at the photo one more time before handing it to Benno. ‘The wife's got a bit of a thing for that actor, Ewan MacGregor. But I s'pose if she doesn't take it any further than this I can be okay about it. He's married anyway, apparently. Seven pounds five-and-a-half ounces he was, so that's not a bad size. There's a bit of heat rash or something on those cheeks, but you get that.'

I get the photo last and I look into Ewan's eyes to see what he knows. To see what you know, that early on, about the world you've got. In his case, two parents who have only ever seemed happy to me. But he doesn't even know the camera's on him, doesn't even
know what the camera is. He's looking right past it, but probably not at anything.

And he's so small. I want things to work out for him, I really do.

I give the photo back to Steve and I want to tell him he's got to look after that kid. That little round-faced red-cheeked kid. Stick around and give him the best kind of life. Steve's a good guy. Why would he not stick around? But will he? Can you ever tell? Can you ever know what you're really like until you're put to the test? Can you know what the test will be? Can you ever really know what you're going to have to deal with when you're starting out? Debts and disagreements and a boat going down in a storm. And no love there in the first place, I'm now told. Eighteen years on, that's where you can be. A working adult, getting promoted, finding out the truth when you're on your way out for a beer.

Was there ever a night in a place like this when my father passed around a photo of me, and looked glad to have it in his wallet and told his friends how much I weighed and things like that? I can remember his face, and some of the things he said and most of the things we did, but I'll probably never get to ask him about that. I can't remember him ever having the expression Steve had when we started handing the photo round, but the baby in the photo never gets to see that anyway. Someone should tell Ewan about that expression,
but it's a story they should save up for some shitty day in his future, because we all have those. And that's when they can tell him he was wanted from the start.

I can't get into this evening. First, there was Tanika stirring up the guys, then the TV backyard show talk, then the baby discussion. It's easy to limit it to two beers because that's more than I want.

It wraps up pretty early. Steve's been missing out on sleep because of Ewan. Lurch says Trev'd surely have to be heading home soon anyway, for a bit more Siberian T-shirt spotting on Foxtel. Then Trev says – in a poke-that-where-it-goes kind of way – that he'll be watching a full-on
Star Wars
marathon, actually, and Lurch says if he buys the beers can he come over?

Benno stops at the door guy when we're on the way out and he gets so close to him that they're practically nose-to-nose and he puts on a look that's nearly a snarl and he says, ‘The lady's shoes, pal. They're not trainers, you dumb prick. That's a fashion shoe you're looking at there.'

And the guy looks a bit confused, and Tanika says, ‘Actually, there was a different man out here earlier.'

And Benno says to the guy, in the same tone of voice as before but with his face just a bit further away, ‘Well, I think you get my drift.'

Everyone but the bouncer laughs. He still looks like he feels a bit threatened. ‘I wasn't looking,' he
says. ‘We don't actually check shoes on the way out.'

‘He's quite a kidder,' Steve says to him, since Benno's still standing a bit too close and the line between joke and straight out mean is often a fine one for him.

Trev can't stop laughing all the way down the stairs.

‘Hey,' Benno says, ‘At least I didn't hit him. That could have been embarrassing.'

When we get out onto the street, we go our separate ways. Or at least the others do, and I stand at the door with Tanika.

‘Does anything embarrass Benno?' she says.

‘Not that I'm aware of so far. But I've only known him a couple of years.'

I unchain my bike from the railing and push it along beside us as we walk to the church bus. Tanika's parked it a street or two away, the nearest she could get. This is the part of the evening I wanted. This is the part of the day that I wanted all day. There's a night breeze coming in off the sea, blowing Tanika's hair around and, finally, it's only the two of us. No Mum, no baby photos, no stupid talk.

It's all crowding around in my head at the moment, and I want to stop here and think about it. Just stand still, and say nothing and think. There was too much noise in there, inside the surf club, too much going on. Dumb jokes about nothing and Tanika
playing up to it all, messing around with the guys and I'd rather she hadn't but I don't know why.

‘You're quiet tonight,' she says.

‘Yeah, well, there was enough bullshitting going on in there without me needing to chip in.'

‘Is something wrong?'

‘Why would something be wrong? There was just too much bullshit, and you were showing off your legs and fooling around with them and . . .'

She stops, pushes the hair back out of her face. ‘And what?'

‘What do you mean, “And what?”?'

‘What? What was I doing wrong? I just wanted to create a good impression with the people you work with. And you always said they like a joke. That's all it was. What did you think I was doing?'

She's right, obviously right. I'm not thinking straight. She was just playing along with what was happening.

‘Nothing. Nothing. I'm an idiot. And I'm pretty sure you created a good impression. There'll be a fair bit of talk about you during the
Star Wars
marathon at Trev's place. Talk about how lucky that young Kane is, a level two and a girl of that sort.'

‘That's more like it,' she says, and she takes hold of my free hand.

We walk along the path not saying much, tree
branches bending down over us in the breeze, people walking past heading the other way, going out for a few drinks at a bar or maybe to see a band. Backpackers, from the accents. Backpackers from Europe, with dark tans and sandals and hippy clothes. I think the pubs have a different dress code for them.

‘How about that baby of Steve's?' Tanika says when we get to the bus. ‘Funny looking thing, but kind of cute. I never really know what to say about babies.'

‘Yeah.'

‘He'd be a good dad, Steve. Don't you think?'

‘Yeah. He's a good boss, anyway. A good dad? He probably would be. But I don't know about that.' And it hits me again, like a fist in the guts. What's got into me tonight? ‘I don't know about that stuff. I never had a good dad, did I? I don't know how I'd get to know about that stuff, about who'd be good and who'd be bad. About who stays and who leaves. I don't know if you can ever know, anyway. Not for sure. I don't know what Steve'd be like or what anyone'd be like. This level two – I can take that responsibility. How would I be if I was in Steve's position? That could happen one day.'

‘You being the boss?'

‘No, the father. I'm being totally theoretical.'

‘What? What do you mean?'

‘Nothing. Nothing, really. Like I said, it's all theoretical. Way, way in the future, hey, but you wonder
sometimes. I had this kind of fight with my mother. She said a few things. Some about Dad, some about me. How do you ever know when you're ready for that kind of responsibility? Ever. How do you know you'll take it on and do it well and keep doing it well? It's so easy to make a mess of things.' She nods, but she doesn't say anything. ‘Look, it's easier for you. Look at your family. You couldn't understand. You get the paper at your house, delivered every day, right? Even though no one really reads it and your mother always says there's nothing in it. You told me that. She's said that your whole life about the paper. But you still get it, and you get it every day, and you sit at the breakfast table and you can talk about anything. All the news, anything. You and your family, like a TV ad.'

‘What? What are you saying? Why shouldn't we be like that? We've . . . What are you saying? You have no idea about my family, about . . .'

She stops there, pulls it to a stop and gives me a hard look. I've done something wrong. I don't know what it is. I'm doing a lot wrong tonight. She takes a big breath in, lets it out.

‘I'm not totally sure what you mean,' she says, in a calmer voice. ‘Why don't we go and see how your mother is? See if some of that can be sorted out . . .'