Number 8 (21 page)

“I'll have whatever he's having, please,” Asim tells the waitress. “It looks very delicious, thank you.”

The waitress smiles and gives him an extra sausage.

We take our meal over to the table. The football is on the big plasma screen right in front of us: highlights from last season. There's a replay of the Bulldogs versus the Roosters. The man at the next table sits with a forkful of steak poised halfway to his mouth while we unload our tray and get silverware and stuff. He doesn't move until a whooping cry goes up around the pub—the Bulldogs scored a goal.

“See that?” The man winks at me. He swallows his steak. “Perfect shot. Damn beauty!”

“That was El Masri kicking, wasn't it?” Asim leans over to the man. “He hardly ever misses, does he?”

“No, that's right, son,” nods the man. “You watch, he gets another before half time. He's amazing.”

Asim nods happily and starts on his sausage.

I'm starving and I've devoured half the plate before I look up.

“Okay, boys?” It's Mom leaning over us in her bright red dress. She kisses us on the top of our heads and I just about keel over and die. I hope the man next to us isn't watching. When she leans down like that you can see this long line of her cleavage. I should have told her before we left home to keep her back straight.

“Hello, Valerie,” says Asim. “These are very tasty sausages. Thank you for inviting me.”

“I'm so glad you're here, sweetheart. When you finish you can come into the other room where I'll be performing. You know, next door? With the dance floor and tables with the lamps? Normally kids aren't allowed in there but because you're with me, Barry says it's okay. Just mention that if anyone asks.” She straightens up, to my relief, and stands there beaming at us. Her flowery perfume drifts over our sausages. She's jiggling away, sending out waves of excitement and nerves.

“Make sure you visit the bathroom before you go on stage,” I remind her.

She bursts out laughing and kisses me again. My ears are burning. She's so over the top she's like a weather pattern out of control, the scary results of global warming. I hope she sings okay. I hope
she's
happy with it. Her eyelashes are about twice as long as usual. They must be false. I hope they don't fall off in the middle of everything.

When she's gone El Masri kicks another goal just like the man said he would. Asim raises his glass of ginger ale at the man and they smile at each other.

“This is a beautiful place, Jackson,” he says, and swigs down his soda.

I look around the room, at the glary yellow walls and pink carpet and the steaming roasts and lasagnas, salads and pastas
lying stacked in their silver trays behind the glass counter. We can hear the
doiing doiing
of the slot machines coming from the room at the end of the hall, with the bright lights flashing like Las Vegas. Soon the chicken raffle will be called over the loudspeaker, and then it'll be time to go in and hear Mom sing.

I suppose it
is
nice here. It's so friendly with its fresh paint and clean surfaces it almost makes you forget about the bad things that can happen. Things like nearly getting killed on your own street in broad daylight. Well, sunrise.

All day I've been burning to tell Asim about the bike and the Mustang, but somehow it never seemed like the right time. He was so excited about tonight. He was like Mom, a bit out of control. And now he's so damn happy and all, with his sausages and El Masri or whoever it is, I don't want to spoil it. Seems like I'm always the one about to spoil things. But if you can't tell your best friend, then who can you tell?

“Listen,” I say, trying to smile, as if I'm just a bit puzzled and sort of amused, “something happened this morning. I saw that blue Mustang again. It was early, and this time it wasn't going slow.”

Asim puts his knife and fork together dead parallel on the plate. He wipes his mouth with his napkin and puts it back on the table. Then he looks at me. That's one of the things I really like about Asim. He knows when something's important. He cuts through all the crap and gives you his total attention. He's a serious person.

“Tell me,” he says quietly.

So I tell the whole story, about Mrs. Bradman waiting for the bus and Badman's bunny pajamas and me doing
my challenges in the middle of the road. When I finish he doesn't say anything. But his face has gone pale.

“You know what?” I say quickly. “When you look at it, it's probably all my fault because what kind of lunatic stands in the middle of the street counting in sets of eight? I mean, the guy couldn't have been expecting a person to be rooted there like some basketcase who's escaped from the hospital. He might have been bending down fiddling with his stereo or something. You know, not looking at the road.”

Asim still says nothing.

“I mean, like, there are probably eight million different reasons why he didn't stop.”

“You said he
accelerated
.”

“Well, maybe it just seemed like that.”

“He smashed your bike.” Asim takes a deep breath. “It was deliberate, I think. And that car drives down our street too often for it to be just a … what is the word?”

“Coincidence,” I suggest reluctantly.

“Yes, that one.” He sips the last of his ginger ale. “This happened to me and my family back in Iraq. It feels the same. Saddam, when he was suspicious that you were not being loyal to him, he sent his spies to look at you.”

“Like stalking you?”

“Yes. Many people disappeared.”

“But this is Australia, it couldn't be anything like that—”

“No, I know.” But Asim was staring at his plate. His eyes had gone inward. I knew he was looking at something I would never see.

“Number 33! 33 is the winner, ladies and gentlemen! Come and collect your top class chicken from Chunky's!”

I tap Asim on the hand. “Let's go and get a good table. Don't think about it now.”

Asim swims up out of his thoughts. He tries a smile. “Yes.”

I nod and we walk up the pink carpet, past the yellow walls to the concert room.

A guy with an electric guitar is introducing the band as we find a table near the front. “We're the Shining Souls,” he announces quietly. He's got dreadlocks folded into a knitted beanie sort of hat. The beanie is all red and yellow stripes. He looks shy.

“Cool hat,” I say to Asim.

The guy introduces Mom and then he does a riff right up the scale. He doesn't look shy anymore and Mom launches into “Try a Little Tenderness.” It's a song by Otis Redding off
The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul
. I know it by heart. It has a great horn solo to it. I wonder if she had to bribe the Shining Souls on the choice of music? The guitarist looks more like a reggae fan to me.

Mom never starts off slow. By the end of the song her face is glowing with sweat. She gives it everything she's got. She never holds back. When I used to watch her at the casino I thought she was a bit like the kids running in marathons at school carnivals. The teachers are always telling them to take it easy at first and save their energy for the last laps. Otherwise they'll run out of breath. Still, I've never seen Mom tired at the end of a good show. She's always buzzing and she can never sleep right after a performance.

The shining soul on the guitar is really getting into it now and they go onto a medley of songs that just seem to flow into one another. There are lots of
nah-nah-nahs
and
gotta-gotta-gottas
and Mom is doing this thing where she's no longer singing words, but keeping the rhythm with her voice, as if she's a piece of percussion. She and the guy on the bongo drums are sort of working together, and then Mom takes the melody suddenly into a whole new direction and I recognize “In the Midnight Hour.” She starts to shimmy her shoulders and shake down low and I'm sure her cleavage is showing. I look around to see if anyone is staring but people are smiling and nodding their heads in time and a few jump up and start dancing on the polished wooden floor.

I catch Asim's eye and he gives the biggest smile I've ever seen on him. His mouth is wide open as if he's drinking in the sound and his hands are working steadily on the table like it's a bongo drum. I think he's forgotten about the other stuff. I think he's enjoying the night.

After about an hour Mom announces they'll have a short break and she'll be right back. We're watching her hanging up her mike, talking with the bongo player when a man looms up behind us and claps a hand on both our backs.

I nearly fall out of my chair. We whip around to see Asim's dad, Mehmet, smiling down at us.

When I can breathe again I say, “hi.” Mehmet grins and ducks his head and gives Asim a big loud kiss on the cheek. Asim throws his arm around him—he never seems embarrassed by his relatives like I do—and starts telling him about the music. He's talking at about eight million miles an hour and his dad is laughing.

Asim's dad has big strong white teeth and a silky dark mustache. His hair is quite long and wavy, and he's wearing his work shirt with a blue jacket. When Asim told me that his dad might come after work, because he really likes music, I made sure to tell Asim that he'd need to bring a jacket.
There are these weird dress rules at the pub.
Don't
Wear This and
Do
Wear That,
No
T-shirts,
No
Flip-Flops,
No
Shorts (even in summer). So Mehmet's sitting there, dressed like everyone else in his jacket and shirt, but he looks like he should be right up there on stage. I guess he's quite good-looking. Drop-dead exotic, Mom would say.

Mehmet goes to get a couple of ginger ales (Muslims don't drink alcohol) and Mom comes over and collapses on the chair Asim pulls up for her. Oh, what a sight. She looks like she's just stepped out of the shower with her clothes on. What will Mehmet think? He's threading his way back now, juggling the drinks and a bowl of nuts. He looks so neat and elegant, like a parcel that's been carefully wrapped. I can see a stream of sweat making its way toward Mom's top lip. She sucks it up with her bottom lip. Then she gets my napkin and wipes her chest.

“
Mom
,” I hiss at her.

Mehmet puts the glasses and nuts on the table and pushes a glass toward Mom. “Would you like a drink? You look very thirsty to me!”

Mom goes red. She dabs at her face in a ladylike way.

Mehmet puts out his hand. “We have not met properly. I am Mehmet. I always seem to be at the store when my son is at your home. I am very grateful for the friendship, and all the dinners you have cooked for my son!”

“Oh, it's a pleasure, he's a lovely boy. I am grateful, too!” Mom sits there beaming at Mehmet, her glass in her hand.

“Mom, don't you think you ought to go to the bathroom? You don't have long.”

Her mascara has started to run and it's smeared down one cheek where she's rubbed her face. Soon she'll be doing her panda look-alike routine.

Mom laughs. “It's okay, Jackson. There are longer breaks here.” She leans forward confidentially toward Mehmet. “When I worked at the casino, the manager, Tony, only gave me six minutes between sets. Can you believe it? I learned to pee very fast, I can tell you.”

Mehmet looks puzzled as Asim whispers in his ear.

“You don't have to translate every stupid thing my mother says,” I tell him.

Mehmet laughs out loud. He's got a nice laugh, the deep kind from the belly that shows the person isn't keeping anything back for himself. Mom grins at him and gulps down her drink.

Mehmet asks Mom about her singing and they talk music for a while. Her neck is less red now. Then Mom asks if there's any news about renewing their temporary protection visa. Oh, why does she have to bring that up? No one wants to think about that here! She never knows how to put parentheses around things, or periods.

Mehmet sighs. “No news. But we're hoping. Now that many children have been released from detention—”

“Oh, yes, what a sudden decision that was! It only happened because there was an election looming, you know. The government were told by the United Nations to release all children from detention back in May! But they just ignored them. The United
Nations
.”

Mom bangs her glass down on the table so that ginger ale slops over the side. Asim looks around furtively to see if anyone's heard.

“Well—” Mehmet spreads his hands. “At least many refugee children are out in the community now. This is a good thing.”

“Yes, it is, it is,” agrees Mom and she raises her glass
to Mehmet. “And here's to your happy settlement in Australia.”

Mehmet raises his glass and clinks his against hers. “And here's to new friends,” he smiles.

At eleven P.M., just before the band is due to finish for the night, Mom does a strange thing. She turns and whispers something to the bongo drummer who smiles and nods his head. Then she says into the mike, “And now we will invite a special guest to come up and play with us … Mr. Mehmet Guler!”

What? I glance at Mehmet and he looks shocked. But Asim is saying, “Go on, go
on
!” and then suddenly Mehmet laughs that deep laugh again and sort of springs up out of his chair. He skirts the tables like a dancer and almost leaps onto the stage. He must not have seen the stairs.

And for once Mom isn't embarrassing or excessive. She's done the right thing, I think. Mehmet is awesome. He sits down next to the bongo drummer and when they launch into this kind of African jazz number, Mehmet goes wild. His hands fly over the drums, faster and faster, so that one minute it sounds like rain on a tin roof,
pat
ter patter
pat
ter patter, light, constant, and another it's thunder and storms and rushing rivers. He does this solo that makes my skin shiver.