“Are you okay?”
Someone I had never seen before was standing over me.
“Oh. Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks.” I stood up. My knee
was tender, but it seemed capable of bearing my weight.
“You should probably disinfect that,” said the person,
who turned out to be a dark-haired woman wearing a red-and-silver
Stereolab T-shirt.
“I was just heading home anyway,” I mumbled.
“Okay. Well, see you.” She smiled and walked off down
Tin Alley, towards the university union building.
“Watch out you don’t trip on the Imaginary Line,”
I said.
She turned around. “Huh?” I hadn’t meant her to
hear me.
I shrugged and shook my head. “Nothing. Thanks for your help.”
The pedestrian
crossing started bipping. I crossed over and headed for the bus
stop.
Walking along Johnston Street I replayed the brief encounter in
my mind. Should I have asked her out? I could at least have said
something about her T-shirt. She was pretty cute. The whole thing
happened so fast, I didn’t have time to react. Maybe I should
run back and offer to buy her a coffee or something. No. She’d
probably think I was some kind of desperate creep. She probably
already thought I was an uncoordinated dork, anyway. Or, much more
likely, she wasn’t thinking about me at all, and was getting
on with her life. Which was exactly what I should have been doing.
I waited at the bus stop on Rathdowne Street and watched the traffic
flow past, thinking of the answers I used to give when people asked
what I wanted to be when I grew up. A vet. A cartoonist. A superhero.
All good answers. But how do you know when you’ve actually
grown up? I was a good five or ten years older now than when I first
formulated those answers, but did that qualify me as a grown-up?
I peered at the cars rushing past. Were the people in those cars
grown-ups? Was that how they thought of themselves?
The bus pulled up and the doors hissed open. I sat down next to
an abandoned copy of the local newspaper and leafed absent-mindedly
through to the personals. My eyes flicked over the grainy black-and-white
photos of ‘lovely ladies’ on offer, and then to the
situations vacant column opposite. What the hell, I thought, and
turned my attention from the enticements on offer at AsianHeat-dot-com
to the two or three columns of job advertisements.
Chef, hairdresser’s apprentice, personal assistant, pizza
delivery worker (must have own car), plumber, plumber, postal worker,
sandwich hand, sandwich hand...
Postal worker? It wasn’t the stupidest idea I’d ever
heard. In fact it sounded kind of appealing. Riding your bike around,
delivering mail, singing the line from Laurie Anderson’s “O
Superman” to yourself: “Neither snow nor rain... nor
gloom of night... shall stay this courier... from the swift com-ple-shunnn...
of their appointed round...” And then the high keyboard part
kicks in and is soon joined by the middle register, following it
an octave below. What a great song.
I got off at my stop with the paper tucked under my arm, singing
under my breath. “Well you don’t know me... But I know
you... and I’ve got a message... to give to you... here come
the planes...”
Van was sitting in the lounge-room.
“They’re American planes,” I told her.
“What?”
“Made in America. Smoking or non-smoking?”
“Non. How was the last day of uni?”
“Oh, you know. Okay, I guess. I got the essay in with about
half an hour to go.”
“So what now?”
I reached into my bag and pulled out the newspaper, open at the
situations vacant page, and read the ad again.
POSTAL WORKERS wanted for the northern
inner suburbs. Call 9660 3000 for application form.
It was simple, yet evocative. It said little but it promised much.
It was almost like one of those seventeen-syllable haiku poems they
make you write in primary school.
I smiled and passed the paper to Van. “I’m going to
be a mailman,” I said.
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