so they always wrote me out a replacement on the spot.
‘No charge, sir,’ they mostly would say, smiling the opposite of the fascist grin they use on the young and the poor. As I said, at first it was a thrill, but now I simply don’t need to buy a ticket.
With the Salvo togs back in the travelling bag, I left the men’s room trying not to laugh. The Purple Singlet was in front of the barrier with a couple of bored-looking policemen looking vainly for the evil Salvo. Once again my timing had been perfect.
The train was slowing alongside Platform One as I jumped down the stairs and trotted past several cars to where I’d seen the Searcher climb aboard. It was past nine, so the train was three-quarters empty. I managed to get the seat directly behind her and buried my head in the Sydney Morning Herald, while she stared out the window at the embankment graffiti and the half-built high density and the grey/green oblivion.
Pulling in to Pymble, a vague chittering woke her out of her reverie and she reached into her embroidered hessian satchel to produce an upmarket mobile phone.
‘Hello?’
It’s incredible the way these down-at-heel types need to maintain the trappings of affluence. I’m a senior manager in a law office for chrissakes, and I’ve never needed one of the things — always refused one, in fact. If people know your number, they know where you are, and there are times I don’t want to be contactable.
‘No … I’m takin’ a sickie …’
And for some reason, the more impecunious people tend to be, the more they seem to run up crippling phone bills with their pointless chatter and texting. The Searcher, for all her attractive neatness, exuded poverty so, as she stared angrily out the window, I reached over her seat and slipped all my non-coin Salvo takings into her bag — well over a hundred dollars.
‘I just had to have a day off. Why … what’d he say?’
My good deed accomplished, I leaned back in my seat, basking in the warm sunshine and the opening of intimacy. It was clear that the conversation being repeated to her over the phone did not fill her with joy.
‘He’s such a bastard! Well, I don’t give a shit. It’s my last chance to see Homo Tarot and that’s more important than answering fuckin’ telephones!’
Homo Tarot? She was a Searcher and on her way to the Body and Soul Festival at Darling Harbour. I turned to the Amusements section of the Herald and, sure enough, a half page spread informed me how I might experience the rejuvenating power of the pyramid, find my centre through tantric yoga, cleanse my soul with a range of organic books and vegetables and otherwise hand over fistfuls of cash to a bunch of money hippies. Homo Tarot was listed as a short film produced by the Centauri Society of Interstellar Beings (Earth Chapter). I was fascinated that she could take it so seriously.
She ended the call, promising to call her interlocutor later, and resumed her stare into the grey middle distance of her soul.
Okay, now I knew where she was going it was time to get out of her presence and find an alternative route. I was still wearing the wig, moustache and spectacles, so I contemplated heading in to work and hanging around some of my colleagues’ lunchtime haunts to find out what they thought of the impending regime. Instead, I simply decided to get off one station early at Wynyard, stroll down from a different direction to that she would take from Town Hall and amuse myself at the Searcher-fest until she showed up at Homo Tarot.
I left the carriage without a backward glance and strolled up through Wynyard. Yes, I really must try out one of my disguises at work one day — maybe at one of Mandy’s social functions? I could turn up at the pub or restaurant as one of my alter egos and really have a bit of fun with them.
I was still chuckling at the thought as I made my way down through Chinatown, across Darling Harbour and ultimately into the garish light and colour of the festival. The Convention Centre always reminded me of a giant public toilet, only without the ambience. But today they had essential oils and incense and Enya turned up to eleven to bring on profound insights and ethereal visions and soothe the dollars from the pockets of the damned.
I removed my glasses (once more altering my disguise) and entered the world of arcane wisdom, fighting to keep the grin off my face. I don’t believe for one second that anyone really lives their life according to the stars or the runes or the crystal-fucking-ball. Plenty reckon they do but, when it comes down to it, it’s money and pragmatism that rule every life, and any life not so ruled is not worth living.
I strolled the booths and stands for a while, trying not to laugh at the implausible, the obsession, and the naked lust for cash. The stall keepers had much in common with the trolls of Oxford Street — farming the dollars of delusion — and I amused myself with knowing eye contact, which was mostly avoided.
The Centauri Society of Interstellar Beings (Earth Chapter) had one of the larger stands, with an inner sanctum done up like a flying saucer, where the film Homo Tarot was played every forty-five minutes. I paused in front of the large plastic placard which informed me that the Centaurians were a select group who had been receiving arcane messages from Alpha Centauri for decades. Apparently, they had been given some clues as to how intelligent life began on earth, and why this had been so important for the galaxy. The clues were enshrined (so they said) in the Tarot cards, and they were looking for more people to interpret and spread the message.
But only special people.
Only people who could pass the test.
Two such people were standing at the front of the stand in shiny metallic suits — all green and silver — spruiking to passers by and making notes on aluminium clip boards. They were male and female and looked like shiny blond actors from a toothpaste commercial. As I stood reading the placard, the female approached me with a big fake smile.
‘Vilicha Gurbanyi!’
I turned and stared at her, feeling my cheek go into spasm as I wiped the cynical smile and forced my eyes to go all wide and credulous.
‘That’s Centaurian,’ she told me, utterly without self-consciousness. ‘It means: Welcome Home!’
‘Oh … thank you,’ I responded lamely, repressing the wisecracks that would certainly have revealed me as an infidel.
‘My name is Maia. Did you know we all came from the stars?’
‘Really … the stars eh? Good for us!’
Maia glanced at me quickly to gauge whether I was taking the piss, but seemed satisfied by my gormless (if difficult to maintain) expression and launched into her spiel. I’ll spare the details, suffice it to say that the Centaurians had been started in the fifties by Walter Beamish, a ham radio enthusiast from Wisconsin, who had received and recorded a powerful signal from outer space which he proved, somehow, to have come from Alpha Centauri. The signal had been accompanied, apparently, by a vision and the certain knowledge that the signal was a code containing an urgent message to human kind. Some three years later Walter cracked the code, and what he discovered changed his life.
‘… and soon it will change the world!’ she enthused, all dazzling teeth and madness.
‘Soon? Why is it only changing the world now if the message was urgent fifty years ago?’
‘Aha!’ she said, with a conspiratorial grin. ‘You’re pretty sharp! That’s a
