Heller (2 page)

I was in an
exceptionally foul mood when the bus finally arrived, struggling to
even get through the door in the stupid costume. The driver didn’t
bother to hide his gales of laughter when he set eyes on me. I was
a surly piece of fruit by the time I paid for my ticket, deciding
to hide at the back of the bus so as not to attract any more
attention.

Too late, I
realised as I clutched my ticket and manoeuvred myself in that
direction. Every pair of eyes on the bus was glued to me. That was
when I also noticed that the entire bus was full of males, every
passenger either a student from the local private boys’ high school
or a construction worker knocking off for the day from a nearby
building site. I groaned to myself, because we all know how
sensitive a bunch of teenagers and labourers would be towards a
young woman caught in such an embarrassing situation.

I lumbered my
way down the narrow aisle, accidently knocking the hats off every
schoolboy with my wide rind butt, causing a commotion as I
progressed. Even if there had been a spare seat, I wouldn’t have
been able to sit down, my butt was so big. I had to stand sideways
in the aisle just to fit, clinging to a pole as the bus lurched
back into the traffic.

Soon enough, I
became fed up with the staring and the snickering of the other
passengers.

“What’s the
matter?” I demanded angrily, looking around. “Haven’t any of you
ever seen a slice of watermelon before?”

My mistake for
engaging them.

“Not as sweet
and juicy as you, sweetheart,” quipped one labourer, and the whole
bus erupted into laughter.

“You look good
enough to eat,” said another, sniggering.

“Too right she
does! Darling, I would give my right nut for the chance to munch on
you,” piped up a third.

“In your
dreams,” I told him sullenly.

“Geez, I
wouldn’t mind getting two pieces of fruit into me every day, if
they looked like you,” said one man.

“I’d rather
get
me
into a piece of fruit, if it looked like her,”
laughed his mate, and there was much hilarity between them at that
crude comment.

“I’ve got a
banana and a couple of kiwifruits here,” said another, grabbing his
crotch. “We could make a beautiful fruit salad together.”

“More like a
baby pickle and two cherries, if you ask me,” I retorted
scornfully. “And you can keep your produce to yourself, thanks very
much.” He licked his lips and made a slurping noise. More laughter.
I rolled my eyes and returned my gaze to the ad for haemorrhoid
cream plastered on the wall of the bus, trying valiantly to block
them all out.

On and on they
went though, throughout the whole nightmare of a journey, all the
way across the city. Casting my eyes to the heavens in suffering
silence as I clung on, I realised that I was experiencing what had
to be the absolute nadir of my life. And there had been a few low
points already along the way for comparison, but that bus trip beat
them all by miles.

When the bus
finally reached my stop, I shambled my way to the exit, receiving a
friendly cheer from the remaining passengers. I gave them a
sarcastic royal wave in return and almost fell out of the bus when
I propelled myself forward after discovering that my rind was wider
than the door. Stumbling as I stepped out onto the footpath, I fell
flat on my face because fate had obviously decided that my day
hadn’t been humiliating enough already. I staggered to my feet,
dusted myself off and rued my grazed and stinging knees and hands.
Ignoring the shouts of laughter from the bus passengers and the
curious glances of passers-by, I straightened up, mustered as much
dignity as I could, and made my awkward way down the three blocks
to my home. I reminded myself that I was proud to be an actor and
that no matter what Barnaby had said, I knew that I’d made a
convincing piece of fruit.

I lived with
my best friend, Dixie, and two nerdy male engineering PhD students,
Jon and Don. The four of us crammed into a poky two-bedroom flat
located in a distant western suburb still waiting for the housing
boom to arrive. Our slummy unit block was squeezed between an
illegal rave club and an all-night kebab shop, which made sleeping
every night quite a challenge. There wasn’t a lot of privacy or
space available in the flat, especially as Jon and Don’s main goal
in life appeared to be to ‘accidently’ brush up against Dixie or me
as often as possible. They had the social niceties of league
players and the hygiene of cockroaches, but also the family means
to pay more than their fair share of the overpriced rent, so we
tolerated them. Well, Dixie tolerated them. I couldn’t stand them,
or tell them apart.

By some small
miracle the lift in the building was actually working so I caught
it to the seventh floor. Once inside though, I pinched my nostrils
closed with my thumb and index finger to avoid smelling the putrid
mix of body odour, urine, hot chip grease and dirty nappies that
permanently hung around. The lift doors opened to a dim and dingy
hallway, fronted by four closed doors. Our flat was at the end of
the hall and as I passed the other doors I noted the familiar sound
of the Samadi family’s screaming twin babies from behind the first
door, the thumping bass and marijuana smoke of the two stoners from
behind the second door, and the eerie silence of the unsmiling,
shadowy loner who never made a sound or said a word, from behind
the third door.

When I
unlocked the door to our tiny flat, it was soon apparent that
nobody was home because it was so quiet. Damn! Who was going to
help me out of this costume? I was beginning to think I would be
stuck in it forever. Of course I could have asked a neighbour to
help me, but the Samadis didn’t speak any English, I wasn’t
confident I’d make it from the stoners’ place unmolested, and I
simply didn’t want to know what the loner was doing so silently in
his flat.

I decided that
I had no option but to wait until Dixie came home from work, so
poured myself a large glass of chilled water, the only thing in the
old, cavernous fridge. Gulping it thirstily, I scavenged in the
pantry for some food. I was starving, having had nothing to eat
since breakfast when I’d scoffed a tub of yoghurt that was
worryingly past its expiry date. After a thorough search, my
available choices appeared to be a couple of stale crackers or a
small shrivelled apple.

I chose the
crackers, but spat them out after my first mouthful. They were
really stale. Optimistically, I checked the food kitty, an old
cracked pottery jar we used to store our pooled grocery money.
Totally empty – not even five cents to spend. It was so empty that
a spider had built a web inside. It glared up at me with hostility
when I picked up the jar, so I hurriedly put it back down on the
bench again. I don’t like spiders.

With no
alternatives, I unenthusiastically peeled the apple of its wrinkled
skin and ate it, flopped on the cracked brown vinyl lounge. Late
afternoon TV entertained me until Dixie came home. She announced
her arrival with a loud stream of obscenities before she’d even
opened the door. From previous experience, I gathered she couldn’t
find her keys in her chaotic, oversized handbag, so I struggled to
my feet and opened the door for her.

She took in my
costume without a word, barely even glancing at me, bursting
through the door in the middle of what turned out to be a very
long-winded and vitriolic rant about her boss. She raged about his
idiocy, his vile personality and his complete lack of respect for
her as both a human being and an artiste. Dixie’s been my best
friend since we started high school together and was petite, cute
and curvy with a Malaysian mother, Australian father, gorgeous
black eyes and a terrifyingly large libido. She had short spiky
hair that she regularly coloured and this week she was bright
green, her hair standing on end like electrified Astroturf. She was
also one of the most self-centred people I’d ever known. The entire
universe revolved around Dixie and her needs and wants and the rest
of us could go jump. But despite this, I was a loyal kind of person
and didn’t give up on her, even when she was at her worst. We did
have a lot of fun together.

Her
outrageously large handbag came in handy sometimes, as I was about
to rediscover when she pulled out from its fathomless depths some
burgers and fries. I gave a silent cheer. She had managed to
smuggle home some food from her part-time job as a burger-flipper
at a nearby fast food chain restaurant. She wasn’t always
successful in her attempts as her well-cursed boss was rather
suspicious of her and kept an eagle eye out when he wasn’t
distracted by a disaster. Fortunately for us though, disasters were
frequent at that restaurant, especially in the kitchen. Some were
probably even deliberately caused by Dixie herself. So she found
many occasions on which to supplement our impoverished lives with
greasy, heart-attack inducing food. Yum!

I grabbed one
of the burgers, greedy with hunger, only to have it snatched out of
my hands.

“That one’s
mine! I made it myself and it’s got loads of extra extras. I call
it the Dixie Special. You can have the other one,” Dixie ordered,
and I had to settle for its poorer, less-endowed cousin. Why she
just couldn’t make two Dixie Specials so we could both have one was
beyond me, but that was Dixie for you – rarely a thought for
anybody else. I felt my customary pang of guilt at eating stolen
goods as I bit into the burger and shovelled the fries into my
mouth, but hunger does a good job of realigning your moral
code.

After we’d
demolished the food, Dixie sat back and finally noticed that there
was something different about me.

“What the fuck
are you wearing?” she asked, eyes wide with incredulity as she
realised she’d just dined with a giant slice of watermelon.

“I’m kind of
stuck in it,” I admitted sheepishly. “I need some help to take it
off. I had to catch the bus home wearing it.”

She laughed
for a solid five minutes at that confession, tears pouring down her
reddened face, gasping for oxygen. I thumped her on the back and
waited with patient resignation for her to finish. Finally she
subsided, only the occasional watery snort of laughter disrupting
the quiet.

“You’re such a
moron, Tilly,” she said, wiping her eyes.

“Yeah, yeah.
Skip the personality analysis, will you, and help me? It’s so hot
in here,” I snapped with annoyance, standing up and turning around
so she could unzip me. “You might need some pliers. The little
thingy’s broken off.”

“No, it
isn’t,” she said, unzipping me easily. Realisation that I’d been
duped swamped me in an instant.

“
No!
That bastard! He tricked me,” I groaned, slapping my forehead in
disbelief at my own stupidity. “I trusted him and he lied to me.
I’ve just completely humiliated myself in public for no
reason.”

Dixie started
giggling again. “Tilly, you’re a mega-moron. You shouldn’t be so
trusting. Especially of men.”

I frantically
began peeling the costume from my body, only to have it tear apart
in my hands. Shit! There went any chance of receiving my money from
that job, because I suspected that Barnaby was the type of person
who would calculate the cost of replacing the costume to the exact
cent that I was owed in backpay. I collapsed on the lounge with my
head in my hands, my singlet top and gym shorts plastered to me
with sweat. I had just worked my butt off for two weeks for
nothing.

Dixie screwed
up her face and recoiled in disgust as I sat down. “Oh yuck, you
stink! You need a shower.” She pulled me to my feet and gave me an
ungentle push towards the bathroom. “Go have a shower and then I’ll
buy you a drink. Sounds like you could do with one after the day
you’ve had.”

She was right,
twice over. I was rank with BO and I certainly could do with a
drink after making such a fool of myself. I scrabbled around in our
bedroom for some clean clothes and headed to the bathroom. It was
its usual mess, dirty clothes and damp towels covering the floor.
Dixie’s makeup took up most of the tiny vanity bench-top and her
toiletries hogged the mirrored medicine cabinet. That was okay with
me, because I didn’t have much of either anyway, so didn’t need
much space. And neither of us cared whether the students minded or
not. I wasn’t sure if they even bathed much at all.

The shower
cubicle had never been cleaned once the entire two years that I had
lived in the place, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to be the one
to start a precedent. Its disgusting state did mean that I took the
fastest showers I’d ever had in my life though, and that day was no
exception. I quickly lathered, shampooed and rinsed, finishing as
soon as possible. I ran a comb through my longish, wavy dark
chestnut hair and slapped on some deodorant and moisturiser,
noticing that my container was nearly empty. I cursed Dixie out
loud. She was a frequent and unrepentant borrower, user and keeper
of my clothes, makeup, shoes, boyfriends – anything she could get
her hands on.

I dressed in a
short denim skirt and stretchy black v-neck t-shirt and pulled on
some flat sandals, carelessly applied some makeup and dried my hair
while Dixie showered and changed. I emptied my purse on my bed and
counted my available money. Twenty dollars was all I had in the
world, which had to cover food, rent and utilities, not to mention
bus fares and some new moisturiser. If I didn’t find another gig
soon, I would either have to move back home or sign up for a
low-level temping job in an office. With those depressing options
crowding my mind, we walked down to our local pub. It was busy that
evening and almost chilly inside, its air-conditioning turned up
full blast to compensate for day’s high temperature. Evidently,
everybody had decided that night to go out to dinner to escape the
heat, because the pub was packed.