dream of last night and the murky depths of the Ganga came back to him, he was still the old Eliot. What about Marion now? It was bad enough talking publically about their life experiences, their challenges together, their hopes and beliefs? But he was planning to start a journey without her. The journey, if he was honest with himself, she had caused to start. There was time to change his mind, to pull out. A phone call and a couple of emails really amounted to very little. He heard himself say let’s just see what today brings, that time would eventually tell him what to do and so he tried to concentrate on other things. But the little things in his life were soon overwhelmed by thoughts of this day.
The train curled through North Melbourne, houses on both sides and the back windows of these houses looked across their yards at the train and Eliot looked back at the people’s lives through the grime and the graffiti on the glass. The old Holden jacked up on bricks, the staked broad beans beginning to flower, two little girls, maybe twins, both in yellow dresses with one pram, clambering under the feet of a women hanging out her washing. Some boys playing pool on a battered table under a carport next to a van with the painted sign : Ken The Plumber, Anytime, Any where. Every yard making its own statement, every yard different, inviting you to make some kind of judgement about the people who lived there and Eliot knew that not one of these people could be an island. Every day, every hour ,every minute people took little risks without knowing it and nudged up against someone else, something else and what coud happen? Some might be fortunate and maybe not. India. What might he be starting?
The train swayed and rattled through a tunnel and on the other side, the landscape was transformed into the ugly concrete world of modern factories, warehouses, relieved here and there by the colour and shapes of grafitti art. Eliot checked the time on his mobile phone. He had exactly fifty minutes until his appointment. A smell crept into the carriage. Sweat and maybe disinfectant. He looked up from his phone as a man sat down opposite him. He was quietly talking to himself, and then he sensed that Eliot’s eyes were on him and he stared back with feeling. This man was not one who would try to hide in the crowd. No matter what.
What you fuckin’ staring at?
Oh.... sorry?
Yeh, I bet you are. You think you can stare at whoever you want to just because you can’t handle people who are different from you. I bet you think that the sun shines out of your arse.
The man was about thirty five. He was wearing very bright pink shorts and a white T shirt, the black letters on his chest delivering the message: Homo Sapiens. Making The Monkeys Look Good. His long hair was tied up in a manbun and the manbun made Eliot felt uncomfortable. Beside him on the seat was a very old and dirty backpack containing a clutch of magazines which protruded from the top. Beside the backpack was a pair of earphones. His old black leather shoes were tired and very scuffed and above a collapsing long sock a tattoo of a rat climbing up a rope ladder. Eliot quickly looked away. The man stroked his goatee but kept his eyes clapped on Eliot.
Eliot looked out of his window and then he heard a barely perceptible hum and when he dared look again at his fellow passenger, the movement of his lips suggested that he was playing the part of two people. The one who swiped the Myki card, if he had one, the one who was now drinking from a water bottle taken from his backpack and another, someone else who lived inside his head.
You married?
What?....Yes, well no. My wife died last year.
Sorry about that. Kids?
Yes, I have two. Two daughters.
Well think yourself lucky then. You look lucky, like most of you baby boomer pricks ‘cos everything just fell into your laps, didn’t it.
The man went silent and looked out the window. The silence was awkward and then he began to speak again, much softer as if he was only talking to himself.
Thanks Daddy for the lend, thanks Daddy for the job ,for the short cut to success, that’s what you said I bet. But not everyone is lucky you know. You can be unlucky too. Good luck falls into your lap my friend, but bad luck stalks you or it’s in your DNA. Well you know that because of your wife.
He suddenly threw his eyes at Eliot and he half shouted.
Do you want me to tell you what really unlucky looks like?
The man didn’t wait for an answer, put his elbows on his nobbly knees and leaned forward, his eyes staring into Eliot’s, popping to an enormous size as if he was in a world of his own and the story would be told whether Eliot cared or not. As he spoke he began stroking his goatee again.
One day when I was about twenty I was riding my my motor bike to work in Geelong, I was working at the CSIRO at the time, looking after their monkeys so that they could experiment on them, you know, give them AIDS and that kind of stuff. Pretty cruel really, put on the planet just for us, these monkeys. I did my best to look after them. Anyhow, I was riding past the golf course and you know what, a fucken golf ball hit me here on the side of my forehead. Probably hit over the fence by some rich baby boomer who never had to go to work.Can you believe that? Well I came off my bike and broke my arm but that was not the worst of it. It was the golf ball in the head that did me in. In my head the world is a different place after that golf ball.
He placed an index finger on the edge of his temple.
If you look closely you can see a slight dent here. I can feel it now. I call it my birthmark because when it came my new life began. I started to think differently mate, very differently, lots of weird thoughts in my head about how everyone was out to get me, even my own family were stalking me. Medication mate, that’s what keeps me going, medication.
I’m sorry to hear that was all that Eliot could think to say
Too late for sorry mate! Do I look like I’m feeling sorry for myself? It’s funny though, because most of us get up every morning without thinking that anything bad is going to happen , we don’t think that anything is going to go pear shaped on that particular day,do we? But sometimes it does. You never know who or what’s around the corner.
Thoughts of Brenda in Kafue National park seeped into his mind and she was saying bullshit, nothing will stop me and laughing in a way that was so attractive. Eliot was going to say that he couldn’t agree more but Special continued, eyes wide.
What’s your name?
Eliot.
There was a pause as if the man with the manbob was weighing up a number of possible responses.
What kind if name is that? Yeh, anyway I will tell you my other secret to recovery, my secret is movement Eliot. Exercise. I walk every day, miles every day and it keeps my head in the right place, with a bit of medication to help of course and then I can do something useful like sell these magazines.
Eliot was half listening because he knew what Jalal wanted him to do and if you went to India to do that you never knew what might be around the corner just like Marion never knew until it was a death sentence that she woke up to
You know that the world is full of fat pricks, too lazy to get off their fat arses.They need to look in the mirror every day, look up the devil’s arse every day , but still they don’t notice that they are great lumps of lard. They are in love with their computers, stuffing themselves full of fucken junk food and drinking piss all of the time. They give me the fucken shit because they always seem to be the lucky ones. They don’t know their own luck! My name is Special by the way, well that’s what I call myself now. I’m getting off here.
The man called Special went quiet for
