Dumb things

In the middle, in the middle
In the middle of a dream
I lost my shirt, I pawned my rings
I've done all the dumb things.
- Paul Kelly, 1989

“Gents, the facts are these. There are only two kinds of music in the world: rock, and elevator. The End.”

That quote kept bouncing around in my brain, and not just because it was splayed across the back of the Hey Hey We’re The Drunkees T-shirt Mick’s soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend had somehow vacuum-sealed herself into. They’d said their goodbyes, as everyone had, and were wandering off into the night, his hairy arm draped across her shoulder, obscuring the Gasket logo on the back but not McCarthy’s pearl of wisdom beneath.

It had to be one of McCarthy’s, of course. I had a mate, Tim, from college – well to be fair he wasn’t really my mate because he was a bit punishing, he was a mate of my mate Laszlo (aka Les Murray, the pi-to-50-decimal-places dude from first year) – who ended up in my biology course despite not actually liking or rating biology at all. He wanted to be a physicist, but he was shit at maths, and reckoned anyway that the money in science was going to be in the life sciences in years to come. Someone should have pointed out to him there was NO money in science, life or otherwise, then or now. Anyway he was doing biology despite reckoning it was distinctly Michael Mouse as sciences went. As he reckoned of chemistry, geology and pretty much anything else that wasn’t physics or maths (which, as Laszlo always countered, was all physics amounted to.) Tim’s response to that – or to anything really – was to bust out his favourite line of Ernest Rutherford’s, which went ‘All science is either physics or stamp collecting.’ Now I’ve read a couple of books on the history of science and I like Rutherford, anyone who reckoned swearing at an experiment made it work better is my kind of Nobel Laureate. But on the umpteenth fucking occasion of his being quoted out of context, i.e. not in 1905 when biology WAS just stamp collecting, it gets a bit boring.

(Last I heard, via Dr Cletus, via his network of Arsebook contacts, Tim the Enchanter had parlayed his mediocre second-class honours degree into a gig working as a sales rep for a mid-level biotech firm. Stamp collecting’s bloody hard, as it turns out.)

Anyway Tim was also a dance-trance-take-off-your-pants music freak. Loved the shit. Cranked it at all hours. Had all the compilation CDs, the Wild FMs and Ministry of Sounds and shite, which meant house parties at Les and Tim’s flat in Taringa often literally meant ‘house’ parties. McCarthy happened to be up in Brisbane for one of them and took exception to the tunes, as you’d expect. Vigorous debate ensued, but to paraphrase TISM, he was not a man who believed you should techno for an answer. And to paraphrase Ernest Rutherford: “Gents, the facts are these…”

Fuck me, I reminded myself, he’s fucking dead. For real. To coin a phrase, the fucking fucker’s fucking fucked.

Our guests filtered had away after that little bombshell, with farewell hugs and handshakes, and yet more gratuitous congrats for the way we’d kicked out the jams, motherfuckers. We’d chopped what was left of our beers and set about our last task for the night: lugging out. Given the sounds of civil unrest out in the streets - breaking bottles, whiny adolescent shouting and screaming, the odd police siren - we were a little concerned for our welfare (and more importantly that of our gear and our vehicles in the loading bay behind the club) but Scotty insisted all would be well, and all would be safe within the temporary fencing under guard by security while we lugged out. So, in the subdued emptiness of that big, hollow room, we’d begun to pack up and lug our gear out to the loading bay, for the last time. Not for Marty, Jeff and Phil it wasn’t (though Marty would be getting his minions to do this next time he played a show), but for me, it was. It all added to the slightly sombre, reflective atmosphere.

We hadn’t planned things terribly well in terms of sober drivers, but it had somehow worked out. We still had Danno - ever-present, ever-patient Danno, whose temperance and understanding extended to being temperate and understanding even in deflating my fairly poor attempts to hit on her. I know, I know. I shouldn’t have even tried it on - she was a professional doing a job, and she was Richie’s stepdaughter, but dammit, she was seriously fucking hot, I was on post-gig adrenalin overload when all of my worst decision making traditionally occurred, and I liked her too much not to at least signal my interest. She was temperate and understanding enough to take it as a compliment, i.e. I didn’t get slapped.

Also filed under ‘Win’ was DJ Scotty, who offered to drive the ute back up to the beach house, since he’d been off the grog all night, had to drive back home to Dunwich anyway, and his own car was safely stowed at his ex-girlfriend’s place a few blocks away from mine. Then again, he remarked, seeing the amount of alcohol his ex had put away at tonight’s gig, if he played his cards right he mightn’t have to drive all that way after all. That got filed under ‘Too much information’, cross-referenced with ‘Every other bastard is getting laid tonight and I’m going home to bed on my own, how the fuck does that compute, I’m the fuckin’ front man dammit’.

Ah well. It’s good for the soul, I reminded myself. I was in the middle of a messy breakup (trouble was, I wasn’t sure whether this middle was nearer the beginning or the end) and any of that sort of stuff was just going complicate matters. That had pretty much been my mantra all night, repeated in Zen-like fashion immediately after Yours Fairly Drunkenly had been ushered to the exit marked ‘Thanks But No Thanks’ by Danno, Kas Casoli, Kate from Scotty’s bar staff, some cute PR girl from Sony BMG’s Brisbane office whose name escaped me… which makes me sound like that desperate old fucker who hits up every girl still standing when the ugly lights come on at the nightclub, figuring if he asks twenty, one’s bound to be drunk enough to agree. That wasn’t usually my go, but it’d been a long, long time between drinks, and post-gig adrenalization does things to the psyche. And, in the back of my mind, I’d made my peace with the fact that if the opportunity was there, I was going to cheat on Bethany tonight. And if the opportunity wasn’t there, I’d keep fucking trying until it was.

I’d had one girlfriend years ago - it might have been Brooke the beach volleyball player - who was quite convinced I had some kind of psychological or physiological addiction to sex, as well as alcohol dependence, and a string of other textbook personality disorders. She was a lovely girl – and probably still is – but didn’t drink and had a fairly underwhelming sex drive, at least compared to mine, so relative to me I guess you could see where she was coming from. And she was a psych student, or at least had taken a few psych subjects as part of her sports science degree, which was never going to help. Meant she already had the textbook to look up the personality disorders, for one thing.

Thing is though, after the adrenalin and endorphin rush of a great show, the overwhelming physical response once you get off is to… get off. I’d come home from gigs and want to make with the hot monkey love, which wasn’t always the Current Significant Other’s primary concern at half one in the morning. That was if I was in a relationship, of course; if I wasn’t, I’d probably be at some after-party or similar post-match function spading some little cutie who was showing reciprocal interest. And sometimes, yes, I’d be doing the after-party thing even if I WAS in a relationship, which was approximately how I ended up losing Brooke (and picking up Kas, albeit briefly.) That was where the mantra came from: going home alone is good for the soul. You gave it your best shot, didn’t lower your personal standards or completely humiliate yourself; going home and sleeping in your own bed was the most dignified result the evening can provide from here.

That was my story and I was sticking to it, anyway.

By now Danno and Jeff had disappeared into the throng with a mining-company-Rodeo-load of gear, destined for my garage - presuming they didn’t get ute-jacked by the marauding zombie hordes of pissheads who were stumbling down the main street, occasionally herded away from the middle of the road by coppers in high-vis jackets and Schoolies workers in those fucking horrible purple shirts. This was where hauling about the place in a jacked-up 4WD ute starts making sense. Crowd won’t disperse? Run the bastards over, Bob Askin style. Meanwhile Marty, having helped load his gear into the utes, had said his farewells for the night before escorting Maddy across the street under cover of darkness (and with a minor punchup outside the takeaway shop acting as a decoy) back to the relative safety of their resort unit. I say ‘relative’ safety as that place was also crawling with pissed schoolies, but being the most expensive resort in town, at least it was a better class of pissed schoolies. Phil and Scotty were sorting the tiedowns on my ute, i.e. Scotty was tying everything down and then Phil was undoing it and tying it down all over again. Selective OCD in the house, y’all. Figuring there was no further value we could add to proceedings, Lena and I were sitting in grubby old plastic deckchairs on the loading dock, indulging our vices (Alpine Menthols and the last Mika Heikinen on our rider respectively), watching this little tableau and trying not to laugh. It was good to actually spend some time with her at last, things had been a bit weird tonight. As I’d already acknowledged and tried to apologise for, but she’d shrugged it off. “Cheers for fucking my big exclusive, though,” she remarked. “If I see that stuff about Sam in Kas Casoli’s gig review, death will descend upon you, little man.”

“She’d fucked off by then, hadn’t she?”

“I was more thinking she’d try to shag it out of you,” she quipped. “She’s done it before, after all…” This wasn’t likely to be the last I’d hear about this, I realised. I’d avoided telling Lena about me and Kas for a reason. One which was about to be justified, repeatedly, over the next couple of weeks. “In fact, the mere fact you’re sitting here talking to me rather than off banging some silly girl even sillier is a serious worry, boy. Thought you were supposed to be lead singer in a rock and roll band?”

“Lead guitarist, too…” I corrected wryly. “Nah. Things are complicated enough at the moment without throwing that into the mix as well. The way I see it, I’ve still got the moral high ground against Bethany so long as I don’t actually sleep with someone else…” Yeah, keep telling yourself that, matey. “Anyway,” I added philosophically, “it’s good for the soul.”

“THAT’S the sort of thing LOSERS say,” Lena drawled in a fearsomely dodgy Scots accent. At least I think that’s what it was. “WINNERS go home and FUCK the PROM QUEEN…”

“What the fuck was that meant to be, Jean-Luc Picard?”

“It was meant to be Sean Connery from that stupid Alcatraz movie,” she protested. “Fuck you very much.”

We still had a numbers problem - four people into one Falcon ute wouldn’t go. Three across the bench would, just about, but not four. I’d already volunteered to walk back home - I knew the quickest way up the hill, through the bush between the houses, and was quietly confident that if I legged it with even moderate enthusiasm I could probably be cracking a beer on the balcony by the time the ute managed to dodge all the wasted jaywalking randoms on the roadways and make it into my driveway. Yes, more drinks were in the offing; honest, it wasn’t my idea. But I did have a hard earned thirst and that, studies show, needs a big cold beer. And the best cold beer is… whatever you happen to have in the fridge, IMO.

“So I guess you’re stuck with me for the night then, huh?” Lena observed. “Drinking red wine and talking complete crap...”

“Well, that all depends,” I began. “Depends on the red, for starters.”

“I brought some of that Italian red you like,” she replied. She tended to favour stuff like Farnese, a ripe, robust, ferociously flavoursome Italian red that also had the advantage of being (a) cheap and (b) retailed in a larger than normal container - all qualities you could just as easily attribute to Lena herself (though ‘taller’ rather than ‘larger’ would be more fair).

One slight problem though.

“That’s not me,” I reminded her gently. “That was the other guy, remember?”

“I thought you liked it?” she said, brow furrowed.

“Girl, you know me, I’ll drink anything,” I offered by way of conciliation. McCarthy’s ghost had popped into conversation again. He’d made more comebacks than Ali, Foreman and Aussie Joe Bugner combined. I was anticipating learning more about the McCarthy story (in particular, its end) as the night progressed. I wasn’t looking forward to it, but I was anticipating it. Though ‘motorbike accident, near Queenstown, about four years ago’ seemed pretty conclusive, to be honest - and, as I’d rather bluntly assessed, pretty inevitable, as well. Probably too bluntly; I’d managed to hurt her with it, though she was damned if she was going to admit it, because she was a stubborn bitch when she wanted to be.

“All done,” reported Scotty. “You joining us, Lena?”

“I’ll walk with dickhead,” she replied. “There’s no way my butt’s going to fit in there between you two...”

“You sure?” I queried. “It’s going to be a fucking zoo getting home, lots of pissed fuckwits causing trouble… think I’d rather you were in the car with the lads, to be honest.”

She gave me a patronising smirk. “The overprotective boyfriend schtick is cute, Angus, but it’s really not you.” She squeezed my hand; a little tingle of something. I wasn’t sure what it was and decided to ignore it until it went away. I was all for making bad decisions in the post-gig endorphin haze, but not suicidal ones. “And besides, who’s going to protect you from all those desperately horny underage teenyboppers throwing themselves at you in an immoral drunken frenzy?”

“Fuck it,” said Phil, “In that case I’m walking, you lot can take the car.”

“You’d better go with him in the ute,” I suggested, “and keep a cold spoon close to hand.”

“I’m telling you,” Lena insisted, “three adult arses will not fit along that bench seat if one of the arses is mine.”

“Come on,” Phil said. “I only have a skinny arse, honest.”

“He’s right,” Scotty agreed. “How many fat-arsed drummers do you know?”

“That’s usually down to their debilitating amphetamine habits though isn’t it?” I suggested. “Garn, git,” I told her. “I’ll probably beat you home, you realise.”

“Just so you know, if you stand me up, I’m going through your room and selling all the incriminating shit on eBay.” She ashed her cigarette and climbed into the Falcon with her usual ironic smile.

“As long as I get a cut of the profits,” I called after her, but by then Scotty had fired up the V8, revving it lustily - now I knew why he was so keen to volunteer to drive - and the ute began to gingerly-though-growlingly roll out of the fenced enclosure, past the two remaining seccies on duty, as Scotty started to pick his way through the crowd on the way uphill into town, blipping the throttle to scare the punters away, or just for fun. It only succeeded in attracting the males of the species, and if I still had wing mirrors or the like by tomorrow morning it’d be an achievement, but these things are sent to try us and you get that on the big jobs and AU Falcon parts were cheap anyway.

It’d been an interesting night, to set a new Olympic record for understatement. We'd all learned something today. McCarthy was dead, Marty wanted to write a hairy-arsed rock song, and I was still capable of playing the guitar while hanging off a lighting gantry. Lena was a little drunk and a little melancholy, but that wasn’t news. I wasn’t sure how to broach another bit of unconfirmed speculation with her, that Beck might be trying to match us up together. Tonight, while she seemed a bit vulnerable, probably wasn’t the time to bring that up - better wait until she was hungover, grumpy and sarcastic tomorrow morning. Then she’d see the funny side. Knowing Lena she’d probably suggest we phone Beck and tell her we’ve already rutted like animals on her couch when we were last down there, or something equally appropriate.

After the skanky oppressive foulness of the day, the night was cool and calm, with a refreshing sou-easterly off the ocean. Seemed to echo my mood, though that was more through ignoring the thousand-and-one conflicting things racing through my head than finding myself at peace with them, as I decided on the best path home. Rather than straight up into town into the teeth of the melee, it was probably the same way Marty had gone, across the street and along the pathway to the back of the resort he was staying in, then continuing along the street which ran along the south-eastern face of the ridge, which was called Samarinda Way. Samarinda ended in a 90 degree right leading back down the hill, and you could keep meandering through the back streets to get back to my place, pretty much as Marty and I had done in reverse earlier in the day, if you wanted. Alternately, a walking track known to the locals diverged from that corner and wound for about a hundred metres through the ridgeside bush around to the back of the my street, where my place was parked looking down over the south headland with a reasonably clear view down to the beach… other than the gaudy pink monstrosity over the way which was beginning to pollute the view. Surely Crittenden’s own property on Samarinda was having its sightlines fucked up by that thing? Unless he didn’t care because he intended to sell his own place as well, was going to make a shitload of money regardless of any decrease in value in his own property, or he didn’t care because he thought Tuscany on Point was beautiful and was going to stay and live there regardless. Either way he was a fuckwit and he deserved to get gonorrhoea from a tramp.

“You right to get home on your own?” grunted one of the seccies on the gate.

What are you going to do about it if I’m not, Humpty Dumpty, piggy-back me home?

“I’m fine, mate. Good job tonight lads,” I added, completely ignorant of whether it had or hadn’t been. “Catch you later.”

Humpty Dumpty and his offsider, presumably one of the King’s men, mumbled something vaguely positive in response. I left them and walked through the fencing and out of the carpark, into open ground. Away to my left, the beach stretched almost endlessly down to the channel at Jumpinpin, along which sands I’d opened up the R 80 what felt like months ago. Tonight, instead, underage binge drinkers and frisky young lovers were taking advantage of the cover provided by the sand dunes and the darkness, largely unmolested by the fuzzy muff or the purple-shirted fun police. To my right, the road back up the hill into town - Kennedy Drive - was splashed with spilt drinks and glittered with broken glass, among the strolling punters and occasional enforcer of authority. And straight ahead, on my chosen path, there was… a girl. A girl I recognised. A tall, slender girl with long, black, shiny hair, a clingy, probably-white T-shirt, and skinny grey-black jeans. She looked gorgeous, if a little lost. And she looked happy to see me, which made her all the more gorgeous.

Okay, so she had turned up, after all. Eventually.

“Hey,” Annalise began.

“Hey,” I replied, my voice a gravelly shambles. Hey, I’d already done a lot of talking tonight, I was running out of words, let alone voice. Her T-shirt was indeed white, was indeed clingy (oh Lord, and how) and was actually one of ours - the Flange Gasket-Hayabusa ‘Anzac Cultural Exchange Program’, when they supported us around Australia and we backed them around NZ in late 2001. I didn’t even want to contemplate what her age would have been back then. Just kept coming back to the same small-print disclaimer: she’s legal. And you can’t be arrested for thought crimes. Yet. “You’re aware how try-hard it looks to wear a band’s T-shirt to one of their shows, yeah?”

“Hey, fuck you, I put a lot of effort into stealing this shirt,” she pouted, dark eyes twinkling mischievously. “I had to invent a reason to go and visit my mother at that commune in fucking Bellingen last weekend to raid her closet. Least you could do is show me some respect.”

I nodded, with a slow, deliberately ambiguous smile. Anna’s mother was a petite (read tiny) Thai lady - the phrase ‘mail order bride’ had sprung to mind the first time I’d heard, as well as a bunch of even less savoury thoughts, but (a) she was actually second-gen Australian from the Sunshine Coast and (b) at least she’d eventually figured out Crittenden was an arsehole and had left him to join a commune in the hills south of Coffs - and seemed to be a size or two smaller than her daughter, who was five-ten and played goal attack for the SCC senior netball team. It left a few inches of flat brown midriff bare, showing off a stud through her navel which Pater, I’d have guessed, didn’t approve of. But Tracks magazine had, judging by her appearance in Billabong’s latest ad campaign. Or so I’d been told by someone who'd bought the issue. Specially.

“I’m all about the respect,” I replied.

The night was cooling off, and in her rush to get ready tonight, Anna appeared to have forgotten her bra, a fact which was becoming more and more obvious as time went on. If I didn’t know her so well, I might have thought she’d planned it that way. Wait. WTF? I did know her well and I did know she planned it that way. Work, brain.

“My eyes are up here, Angus,” she pointed out.

“Thanks for the anatomy lesson,” I quipped. “You’re awfully bright, aren’t you? A credit to your teachers.” This was me attempting to put distance between us using comedy. It failed, because it wasn't funny, and because we both knew I’d have preferred the distance between us to be measurable in microns.

“So, are we going to stand around here flirting all night, or are you going to take me home?”

I’d kinda wondered if that was where tonight might be headed, but I hadn’t really expected her to just throw it out there. Then again, Annalise was the sort of girl who told you what she thought, and got what she wanted. “Sure, I’ll walk you home,” I said. “Wouldn’t want any seedy old men trying anything unsavoury, yeah?”

The irony, it burns.

“I’m sorta into seedy old men at the moment,” she remarked wryly. “It’s kind of a phase I’ve been going through since, I don’t know, ever…” A wicked smile. Hers didn’t come any other way. “Besides, it’s the pissed adolescent fuckwits I’m more worried about.”

That was the thing about Anna. She was the same age as those ‘pissed adolescent fuckwits’ but refused to identify herself with them. Like she refused to identify me as a teacher, an authority figure, or just about anything other than that guy from that band she liked. She was seventeen going on twenty-five, and had been since I’d met her. Your Honour. Anna slipped an arm around my back; I did the same to her, my arm nestling into the curve of her waist, my skin tingled as though it’d forgotten what it felt like to have a girl this close. Pretty much had forgotten, to be honest. The post-gig endorphin buzz: making Angus’ bad decisions even worse since 1998.

We walked in silence for a few metres, which for Anna must have been some kind of record. I had my internal monologue to keep me company. Actually it was more of an internal parliamentary shouting match, half the senate had been ejected and someone had thrown a chair at the Speaker. Eventually she offered a bashful smile. Hey, there were other kinds. “Good set tonight,” she began. “For a bunch of old has-beens, of course…”

“So you were there?”

“Oh, thanks. Four rows back, jumping up and down, screaming my heart out to every song, even the totally obscure shit that made everyone look at me like a fucking moron… just fuck ya then. Break my heart why don’t you.”

“That was you yelling for the Gambler then?”

“I don’t think so somehow. Though at least three of those tools hit on Manda and me.” She went on to mercilessly sledge the rest of her friends for bailing on the gig, individually and collectively. “I’ve been going on about you fuckers for as long as the show’s been announced….”

“Fifteen minutes…”

“Yeah, if that… going on about how fucking awesome you used to be live and stuff… not that I’d KNOW since you had to go and fuck yourselves up before the first festival Mum was meant to take me to…” Anna rarely passed up an opportunity to remind me I’d failed her by not holding the band together long enough to make it to Homebake 2003, which she’d saved up for tickets to, convinced/cajoled/blackmailed her father into letting her take her mother to (they were estranged by that stage, I’d gathered), trained and bussed all the way from Port Macquarie down to Sydney for... the story got more diabolically heinous every time she told it. Next time she would have had to trek thirty miles through fresh snow and lick road clean wi’ toonge, Four Yorkshiremen-style. “And yet on my big night, everyone had to fuck it up for me, didn’t they?”

There was an ironic sniff of prima donna to her performance, but it was intentional. She wasn’t top of the year in drama for nothing.

“Yeah, your big night. Because we only got back together for you, Anna. That’s it.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling everyone. You guys knew it was my birthday, you knew it was my big farewell…” I knew neither, of course, and maybe my expression betrayed it. The impish look in her eyes faded to curiosity. “You know I’m outta here, right?”

My brow furrowed in response; news to me.

Anna rolled her eyes. “The boss,” she muttered, her sardonic codeword for Father Dearest. “He’s shipping me out to some Godforsaken dyke-farm correctional facility out in the sticks for year twelve.” She gave the name. It was actually one of rural NSW’s most prestigious boarding schools for ladies, NEGS, the New England Girls’ School in Armidale. “He’s even fucked off there for the weekend already with half my shit, he’s that desperate to get me out of sight. Back at first light for the rest, me included. Tried to make me go with him yesterday, but fuck that, not this weekend, no chance…”

“Farmadale?” I grinned. “Not such a bad town. Played there a bit over the years. Cold as a bastard. Decent student pubs. Friendly locals…”

“What sort of friendly?” she eyed me suspiciously.

“The fun sort of friendly,” I replied, as if there was any doubt, recalling our last show at the UNE Bistro in the dead of winter when a rather cute ex-flatmate of Chops’ had kindly volunteered to ensure I had something to keep me warm in the cold of the New England night, namely her good self. Christ, that was ten years ago. Making bad decisions worse since 1998… “You’ll like it, trust me.”

We turned into Samarinda, which was remarkably quiet; given that some of the most expensive houses in town ran along this street (none of which seemed to be being rented out for the festivities) as well as the fact it wasn’t really a thoroughfare from town to the beach, or from anywhere to anywhere else at all really, maybe not so surprising. In fact my main concern, increasingly, wasn’t being seen by drunken punters, but by locals. Particularly, for instance, ‘The Boss’, and I don’t mean Springsteen. Then again, all was above board; I was just on my way home, alone, because it’s good for the soul; I was heading towards a drinks date with an old friend; and I was merely walking an innocent young girl home in order that she didn’t get molested by anyone. Officer.

“Easy for you to say,” she remarked. “You’re not being sent to frickin' Nun School for your sins.”

“Sins?”

“Boss man don’t like my crew,” she exhaled. “Seems he’s serious about it this time, yeah?”

“Harsh.” I knew he wasn’t keen on her circle of friends, but it wasn’t legitimate grounds for deportation to the People’s Republic of NEGS, I thought, and said.

“Yeah. I figure my best plan for survival is to either kill someone or make someone my bitch.” She’d screwed with the line from Office Space a little, but it fitted her better - I couldn’t see Anna becoming anyone else’s bitch, somehow.

“Ah well,” I said, with a reassuring squeeze of her waist. “If your crew couldn’t be arsed to come out and watch the show with you, they’re busted-arse useless as well.”

“More that they’re smashed on goon from about four o’clock this afternoon,” Anna replied. “A bit overenthusiastic about seeing me off. Goon gives me splitting fucking headaches so I started flicking mine over my shoulder into the sand dunes after a bit. Everyone was too fucking trashed to notice. In fact by gig time everyone was too pissed to move, apart from Manda who was on herbals and No-Doze and will probably be awake until New Years. The whole town is fucked out of its skull. Even the security guy who checked my ID thought it was fake and that I was actually 21 - fuck knows what he was on. I almost took the overage bracelet off his hands, but I knew the staff wouldn’t serve me because they knew me.”

“Ah well. Life’s a bitch,” I told her, “and then you get sent to Faaaaarmadale…”

“Yeah, thanks heaps for your support,” she remarked sardonically, with her most impudent Megan Fox pout. “Here I am, stone cold fucking sober, or as near as makes no fucking difference on my birthday, my last night on Straddie, with all my friends passed out on the beach getting felt up by toolies, and you…”

“Hey,” I interceded, “we toolies have to get it where we can.” My hand slipped a little lower and rather gratuitously squeezed her gorgeous arse. I didn’t tell it to. It was just muscle memory. Autopilot. Basal programming. How the human race gets propagated. She pulled a face, but it wasn’t the placement of my hand that she disapproved of.

“You’re not a toolie,” she told me. “You’re as much a toolie as you are a teacher. You’re a fucking rock star, Ang. Millions would give their balls to have your job… your real job, I mean, not fucking around in front of a room full of teenage girls staring at their tits all day.”

“We talking teaching or music here?”

Her place was only a few houses along the street now; one way or another, this would resolved in moments. I felt a rising sense of anticipation, bittered with a little guilt; further down the street, near the corner where the road elbowed right and plunged back down the hillside towards town, there was a light on in the Toogood house. Bethany’s bedroom, not that I’d ever got to see it that often. Even if she was in there, she couldn’t see clearly this far down the street to see us, so that wasn’t what the guilt was about. The guilt was from the last time I’d walked a girl home like this, not two years ago. I’d mired myself in a closed loop, Groundhog Day-style. And now I was getting pep talks from seventeen year old girls. Or was she eighteen now? I sucked at maths. Probably why I didn't do physics.

Anna seemed to read my thoughts, which made one of us. “She wasn’t right for you, Angus,” she insisted. With a laugh, she added, “She had no fucking idea who you really were, man. Hell, even I know you better than she did.”

“Not auditioning for the role, are you?”

“You kidding?” she replied, with an eyebrow raised. “I don’t do long-distance relationships, Ang. Even for you.”

Given the tastes of its owner, the Crittenden mansion was appropriately gaudy and completely fucking hideous to look at (thankfully it was dark) and ridiculously massive, considering only two people lived in it, and soon to be half that. The odds on Crittenden selling up seemed to be shorter than I’d first thought, if he was packing Annalise off to NEGS. Meaning he wouldn’t give two good shits how rank Tuscany on Point looked when it was finished.

“So, next time I see you, you’ll be the stereotype preppy private school alpha bitch…”

“As in the song by your boys? Hey, if you want me to wear the uniform, just go ahead and say so,” she replied tartly. “Nah, I’ll survive. It’s costing him a shitload to send me there, so at least I’ll get some revenge sending him broke. And, let’s face it, it’s not like Mum can afford to send me anywhere other than Hippy Commune High with all the other stoner kids. So fuck it, I’ll take his money, spend it on my education, then fuck off to uni in a year or so.”

I had to admit, I rated her pragmatism. And her eyes, and her wicked little smile, and her luscious, unexplored body… YOU WILL GO HOME ALONE BECAUSE IT IS GOOD FOR THE SOUL. AND YOU WILL LIKE IT. The warmth of her body as it curled against my arm, the scent of her hair, the casual, carefree sexuality this girl exuded, even the simple fact that she actually liked me, in a world of girls who didn’t… this was fucking insufferable. On one hand, misery and solitude, which apparently was Good for the Soul. On the other... the end. It was going to end very, very badly. For my reputation, for my career, for my moral standing, everything. Even for my relationship with Lena, whatever that meant. Yeah, sorry, meant to come have a drink with you, but I got sidetracked and spent the night with a girl half my age. OK, to be fair, marginally more than half my age. And isn’t life just a game of margins, really? And oh yeah, minor addendum, she used to be one of my students. Actually, that sounded like the least of my problems. Even if I was still a teacher (which didn’t seem likely after tonight), she wasn’t going to be one of my students anyway.

By now we were standing outside her house, which stood dark and silent in the dissonant streetlight. My ten seconds of Thinking Music was almost up and I was still uselessly drifting between the path of Right and Good and Moral Integrity, and the path of taking this impetuous little thing up to her room and making love to her like she’d never been made love to before… which was actually a possibility in itself, of course, though I somehow doubted it. She was too cocky, too confident. She’d been there, done that, and… erm… bought the T-shirt.

“Coming in for a drink?” she mused, her dark eyes promising everything under the sun, the moon and the stars. “Or had you just planned to fuck me in the garden like the last one?”

Whatever I had planned for, it hadn’t been that.