Carousel (25 page)

It took me just a morning to establish that Carousel had all of these elements.

Like television, mobile networks and the internet, radio didn't reach us in Carousel. It was just static on both AM and FM. Not the type of random messy static that if you listened to carefully you might discover some distant voice. This was a constant shower that matched the snow on our TVs and made it clear that nothing was getting through.

I flicked through a couple of tech mags in the newsagent and discovered that there were a few things
that could block radio waves, but none seemed to be present in Carousel. I also read that a radio signal could pass through some pretty crazy shit such as a fully-grown elephant and a nuclear submarine. It seemed more likely that radio waves were no longer being broadcast in Perth or Australia, rather than being blocked from Carousel specifically.

This should have been pretty alarming, but all I was thinking was that it seemed fairly possible that I could broadcast Taylor and Lizzy's new album.

Rather than fill them with false hope, I set about testing this out in private. There weren't really any useful books on amateur broadcasting in Carousel. Radio was old technology and it seemed podcasts were the popular choice for small-time broadcasters. But without the internet this wasn't an option. I had to go old-school and the best reference I could find was
Future Scientist Magazine
.

It was a pretty cheesy mag aimed at geeky teenage science nuts. A lot of the content was internet based but I lucked out and stumbled across an edition with a feature on a bunch of kids who built a radio transmitter out of an old motorbike as part of a grade six science experiment. I didn't have a motorbike, but I had all kinds of other stuff, and without too much trouble I'd
gathered all the required elements in Projection Five.

The hole in the cinema roof offered a perfect spot for a broadcast antenna. From what I'd learnt from the grade sixers, the surrounding buildings shouldn't affect the broadcast, but large land masses might. Carousel was the tallest building in a big, sprawling swampland on the eastern edge of the city. If I could work out how to get a signal out it should be receivable all the way to the hills in the east, and to the Indian Ocean and beyond in the west.

Taylor and Lizzy took my sudden and secretive venture with a deal of caution. And rightly so. I felt like I'd been messing around behind somebody's back ever since I arrived in Carousel and I hated the idea that they thought I was doing it again. But this could be a great surprise and Christmas was only a week or so away. Our last Christmas sucked and we sheltered away from it with movie marathons and junk food. But if I could get my shit together and resemble the awesomeness of the sixth graders in just a small way, maybe I could give Taylor and Lizzy something decent for a present and give this long, chaotic year some sense of closure. But I resigned myself to not lying. If they asked me what I was doing I would tell them up-front. The surprise was a luxury.

But they didn't.

They just seemed to watch me silently, probably crossing their fingers that their last remaining housemate wasn't losing his shit as surely one day we all would.

Late into a warm December afternoon I was ready for a test. I had taped an antenna to the top of one of the old air conditioning units on the roof. From here I ran a wire back down into Projection Four, and across to Five where I had set up a small desk with a transformer, oscillator, computer and microphone. The mic was an afterthought and I didn't really plan on starting some crappy breakfast program, but the setup didn't seem complete without it. I ran some power to a separate radio and set the dial to the 87.2 where I was about to broadcast. I put on a song by Radiohead, turned the computer volume to zero and ran the transmission.

The static on the radio drew a tiny breath, then morphed into beautiful nineties alt-rock. I smiled properly for the first time in ages.

‘You're not going to tell the zombies where we're hiding, are you?' said Taylor.

I jumped up and spun around. Taylor was standing in the doorway with an expression I couldn't place.

‘Hadn't planned on it,' I said, after a moment.

Taylor nodded.

‘Radiohead,' she said.

‘Yeah. It's kind of obvious. But still classic,' I said.

She looked around at my setup.

‘Sorry to ruin your secret,' she said.

‘Yeah, well, there goes Christmas,' I replied.

‘What do you mean?' she asked.

‘I was going to broadcast your album. If you wanted me to,' I said.

‘Oh,' she replied. ‘To who?'

I shrugged honestly.

‘Sorry. Tough question,' she said.

We stood there and listened to the song for a bit.

‘So is it working?' asked Taylor.

‘Yeah. I guess so,' I answered. ‘This radio picks it up so there's no reason others couldn't.'

‘How far away?' asked Taylor.

‘I don't know really. Most of the city,' I replied.

Taylor nodded. The song finished. I switched off the equipment. Taylor wandered around the space.

‘Christmas,' said Taylor, and shook her head.

‘Yeah, I know,' I replied.

‘I hate New Year's here the most,' said Taylor.

I nodded, understanding why.

‘Easter is pretty shit,' I said.

Taylor laughed.

‘What's wrong with Easter?' she asked. ‘Aside from having no eggs.'

‘I don't know. Perth is like a ghost town at Easter,' I said.

‘Yeah,' said Taylor, sarcastically.

‘No, I mean, like a different ghost town. Everyone in Perth goes away for Easter. The city is deserted. So I drive up to the hills and hang around at Mum and Dad's for the weekend,' I said. ‘It's so boring. Me and Danni drive each other crazy.'

I was going to keep going and try to explain why I missed that, but Taylor was already nodding.

‘I miss fighting with people too,' she said. ‘Not really fighting, just arguing about something. Having it out. Even with Lizzy.'

‘You guys fight a little,' I said.

‘Not properly. You can't in this place, right? It's too hard already,' she said.

I nodded.

‘It's like you swallow it down a little bit each day. Then eventually you stop needing to. Because in here nothing really matters,' she said.

‘You should have torn shreds off me for the roller door,' I said. ‘I mean, I expected you to.'

Taylor didn't look at me.

‘All I could think of was Rocky,' she said.

I sucked in a shallow breath.

‘But you didn't have the key in time for him. Right?' she asked.

I shook my head. Taylor exhaled a little.

‘Plus this stupid mall probably wouldn't have let him out. Like it didn't with us,' she said. ‘Lizzy has been right all along.'

I nodded.

‘The door opened for you. But you didn't leave. You came back for us,' she said, dead serious.

‘I think I just freaked out,' I said.

Taylor ignored me. ‘I watched you packing in Army Depot for weeks. All that stuff. Tiny bottles of my shampoo. Those crappy socks Lizzy likes. Rocky's hacky sack,' said Taylor.

‘You didn't say anything,' I said.

‘I didn't think you had a fucking key,' she said and we both smiled. ‘I just figured it was something you needed to do.'

I felt beat up inside and stared hard at the dirty red carpet.

‘You drive me crazy, Nox. But it doesn't bother me,' she said.

I smiled and we both focused on the carpet for a while.

‘Maybe we'll never get out of this place,' said Taylor. ‘And maybe we're lucky because there's a life in here for us. A pretty weird one, but it's still a life, and none of us knows whether anything better exists somewhere else.'

I looked up at her. She seemed relaxed but her gaze held an intensity, as always.

‘But if we do get out, the Nox you are in here, with the writing and the haircuts and the leather jackets, that Nox doesn't need to stay here. It's not determined by this place, or by me or Lizzy, or anything else. If that's you, then that's you, Nox. The apocalypse is irrelevant,' she said.

I nodded and took a breath. Taylor smiled at me and looked up at the small window of sky above us.

‘Carousel does a decent summer. All things considered,' she said.

She stepped across to ruffle my hair and wandered back toward the stairs. I watched her go. With the album done and the doors left alone, the tension had finally left her shoulders. Taylor Finn was calm and stable, and for better or worse had found a place in Carousel. She stopped and turned around.

‘You should do it, by the way,' she said.

‘What?' I asked.

‘Broadcast it. Lizzy will totally lose her shit,' she said.

‘Seriously?' I asked.

Taylor nodded, and smiled magnanimously.

Christmas morning was awkward. We'd put up a plastic tree in our lounge area and covered it with some lights and a scattering of decorations from a discount stand in David Jones. In the days prior, a few presents appeared underneath as one of us made a wordless decision to gift something and the other two followed. We wandered over after breakfast and unwrapped them to flickers of surprise and guesses over which shop each item was from.

Taylor gave me a pretty awesome writing pad she'd found down the back of a newsagent. Lizzy gave me a t-shirt from Myer that I somehow hadn't seen despite walking past for over a year. It was navy and had a small pocket stitched into the front. I liked it straight away. I gave Taylor a book on hydroponic gardening I found when I was looking for radio information. I don't think she'd considered this before and she seemed at least a little excited by the idea. To Lizzy I gave a small
radio from Dick Smith. She was confused but I told her I would explain later. Taylor and Lizzy gave each other a trolley full of carefully selected clothes for a special Christmas edition of trolley shopping.

The whole thing was fine but over in a matter of minutes, leaving a giant Christmas vacuum to fill for the remainder of the day. We strolled east to see Rocky's garden and ended up sitting down there for a while talking about all the foods we missed.

On the way back I sat through a few hours of trolley shopping in the corridor next to David Jones. It actually wasn't so bad. Lizzy had baked some muffins and made a playlist of some great artists like Elvis and Bright Eyes doing Christmas songs. I flicked through some magazines and watched the Finns circle from trolley to change room in a kind of Zen state that seemed pretty comforting.

Eventually we returned to JB's and watched the
Home Alone
box set up until halfway through the third one where I conveniently suggested that we head up onto the roof with a few drinks and catch some afternoon sun. I told Lizzy to bring the radio. She gave Taylor a glance but to her credit she didn't give anything back. My surprise remained intact.

I had draped a sheet over my broadcast setup and
Lizzy didn't seem to notice it as we edged outside into what was a stunning Perth day. The sea breeze had probably rippled across Fremantle an hour or so ago and it reached us in cooling wafts of freshness as our skin sucked in the sunshine and thawed out what was beneath. The sky in Perth could be crazy blue. At the start of summer, before the first bushfire of the season, it regularly looked liked somebody had photoshopped the hell out of it. Even for me, it was hard not to stare at it when I ventured outside. Taylor and Lizzy dipped their eyes behind another pair of Wayfarers and gazed up with wonder as we made our way to the edge of the roof.

We spread out a blanket and some cushions and cracked open some Beck's from the rapidly diminishing shelves of Liquor Central. Soon we would be onto liqueurs and fortified wines. Facing a long, hot summer with just Tawny Port or Tia Maria for refreshment was a pretty depressing thought.

‘So?' asked Lizzy and looked at me.

‘Yeah. Okay,' I said. ‘I'm a little terrified about this so try not to lose your shit too much.'

Lizzy looked at Taylor. She shrugged. I stood up.

‘You'll need to turn that radio on and tune to 87.2 AM,' I said.

Lizzy looked at me pensively and nodded. I headed back to the projection booth.

I pulled off the sheet and turned on my equipment in what now felt like a fairly routine procedure. I loaded up the new Taylor & Lizzy album and hesitated for a second. I think if Taylor hadn't already have caught me out and told me it was a good idea I might have gone back out and checked with Lizzy first. But she had, and they were out there waiting now. So I hit
Play
and listened.

From a distance I heard the first few chords of track one on Lizzy's new radio. I grabbed my beer and headed sheepishly back outside to catch her reaction. She and Taylor were talking as I approached. I couldn't hear what they were saying but at one point Lizzy flashed a smile and looked out over the horizon. It was a good sign.

I reached them and sat down and the three of us listened until the first song faded.

Lizzy looked over at me.

‘Thanks, Nox. This is pretty awesome,' she said.

I went to tell her she was welcome. And that the album was awesome. And it would be a fucking beacon of hope for anyone listening. And that if anything about Carousel was worthwhile it was this album. And that
when we got out, she and Taylor could go back to their lives in Canada and forget me and I would be okay, or better even.

But the second song started and Lizzy turned back to face her horizon of hidden listeners. Instead, Taylor gave me a little smile that reminded me that she knew pretty much everything I didn't say, and if she knew, Lizzy probably did also.

So I sat back and enjoyed the music and the beer like I don't remember ever enjoying them. I thought of that great scene from
The Shawshank Redemption
where Red and co get an hour or so to drink some beers on the roof of the prison and bask in the momentary freedom. Maybe our circumstances weren't quite as poetic, but in another way, maybe they were.