High Season (10 page)

‘You need what, Jimmy?' Paddy asked, dumbstruck, as if in all the years he'd been in his line of work he'd never heard of such an outrageous request. He motioned me to sit down beside him on an old bench carved with graffiti.

‘I can't do tick, maaaate. You know thaaaat.'

And he was sorry for me. He was genuinely fucking concerned, and you could hear it in his voice. If you listened really hard.

‘I'm just across the road, Paddy. You know me, mate. You know I'm good for it.'

‘Maaaate, I wish I could. I really fucking doooo.' Paddy went on one of those epic round-the-world-with-multiple-fucking-stopovers nose scratches. He missed his snog eight or nine times until eventually I lifted his wasted wrist to his face for him, more out of concern for what other people were thinking about me at this point than any particular care I had for his unscratched itch. And Paddy, who was so wonderfully and riotously stoned, so gloriously in the sun, on the nod, turned to look at me as I lifted his hand to his face and ended up getting one of his own fingers in his eye.

‘What are you fucking doing?' Paddy yelled, standing up, making a scene.

‘Sorry, mate. Fuck, are you all right?'

‘No, I'm not all right, you fucking cunt. You took my eye out.'

‘Paddy, show me, man. Show me your eye.'

‘Fucking get away from me, you prick. You know I don't do tick. Don't come over here begging and crawling like some fucking tip-rat. I run a respectable business over here.' He walked away, holding his eye and shaking his head, like he couldn't believe what some people would do to get on.

The Newtown train station was a busy place. People were looking at me, obviously wondering what I'd done to upset Paddy. Paddy was a man who didn't do emotion. He stalked; he didn't chat and he didn't quibble. Paddy was the street hustler for the bad, mad and evil Chris, who I had now upset by proxy. And that wasn't good. Nothing was good. So I went to step two of what any self-respecting junkie who can't get on does, and jumped on a train to Kings Cross.

Up at the Cross I felt instantly better. Kings Cross is a place where it's okay to let it all hang out. And people do. Everywhere. It was just what I needed. There was only one major problem and that was I only had five dollars. Which didn't make me unique. There were dozens of people up and down the main street looking to get on without any money. But as I stepped onto the main drag on that particular sunny morning, I convinced myself I was the most desperate of them all.

I crossed the street, dodging traffic and scanning the crew, trying to make eye contact with one of the working girls who was dealing. And when our eyes met, there was the usual almost imperceptible nod, which indicated the shop was open. She played her part by turning away from me and walking in the opposite direction as I strolled up behind her. And as I fell into step with her, she took a balloon-covered cap from her mouth and held it out behind her. My part of the deal was to press a crisp fifty into her upturned palm . . . But I didn't do that: I pushed a folded five-dollar note into her fist, grabbed the cap, and ran.

‘Hey!' she yelled.

And she continued to yell as I raced away. It was almost as if she thought I was unaware of the fact that I'd just ripped her off; as if I might have somehow mixed up all the notes in my pocket and pressed the purple one into her hand rather than the greenback. But there was no mistaking of notes. I'd just scammed her.

I was approaching my mid-twenties by then and I can only surmise that the human body is a very forgiving machine. That or I was just incredibly scared, because I was not just
a
cheetah but
the
Cheetah. I didn't live very far from Kings Cross and I could have stopped off at home, put the shot away, then caught a cab back to work using some loose change. Instead, I ran a couple of kilometres, until I was able to jump on a bus that was heading straight to Newtown, and then sat down rolling the greasy stolen cap between my sticky fingers.

And while my heart was pumping more blood through its valves than it had since high school, I was crippled with what might be called an over-responsible fever to get back to the shop and get it opened. The thing I felt most strongly in the madness of that . . . madness, was the shame of abandoning the Pasta Man. My sole ambition, now that I had a deal in my pocket, was to get back inside the familiarity of its
Interview
-pasted walls and serve the customers who needed fresh pasta for their dinner; serve the workers who needed lunch from the bain-marie; and serve the people to whom I owed a lot of money and considerable goodwill.

I hurried back into the shop and bolted the door shut behind me so that I could shoot up. I determined I would throw out the food in the bain-marie, get a pot of water on the stove for some fresh pasta, and maybe buy some flowers. I reached for the checked chef's cap and put it on my head, wiped my face down with some Wettex and then bit the balloon casing from the cap and poured the white powder into a dessert spoon. I sucked up fifty mils of water with a syringe, squirted it back into the spoon, stirred the powder and the water together with the butt of the syringe and drew it back up into the needle through a cigarette filter. I popped a vein, which were frankly fucking pumping after my mid-morning run, then put the stolen deal away.

As the smack flooded through my veins, I felt both intense relief and had a vision of how the shop was going to look in about twenty minutes, after I'd cooked off some new dishes, got some sweet music playing and bought those happy flowers.

When I woke up it was dark. My face was deeply grooved from lying on the cigarette packet and spoon. Outside, cars were tearing along King Street on their way home, and inside I was more alone than I had ever been.

14

Vinnie has sacked Scotty on three separate occasions over the last few years and today could well be number four if Scotty doesn't manage to contact him and let him know that Paris is in for lunch. And by sack I mean, ‘Fuck off and don't come back.' And after each such occasion, Scotty has gone and got another job and moved on with his life. Then Vinnie employs a new maître d' and after about five minutes realises that no one else is quite like Scotty. The same problem always recurs for Vinnie—and always after a short period of time: the new maître d' begins thinking they actually run things out on the floor. This might be the job description of a maître d' in other restaurants, but at Rae's it is just seen as so much arrogance. And in Vinnie's eyes, arrogance is very unbecoming in a waiter. And maybe Scotty's not the best maître d' in the world, maybe he even pisses some customers off, but he does possess the rare skill of being able to put up with Vinnie's illogical ways of dealing with the world. And that unique quality means that he has become something of a hero at Rae's.

The money the maître d' gets paid in wages and tips is good; sometimes at Rae's it's even great, since the hotel occasionally attracts those super-rich folks for whom tipping can become a game of one-upmanship. Waiters go home and pray for those people to sit down at a table in their section. Literally, on their knees, prayers before bed. I've seen it. And maybe in Scotty's case he was doing something else while he was on his knees, but as I've always said to the guy, ‘It's because you can do two things at once that Vinnie loves you, mate.'

During the high season Scotty's tips can total well over a thousand dollars a week. After you factor in his pitiful wages, he can almost afford to rent somewhere in town where, after a bruising day at the office, he can run a hot shower, shine his shoes and get ready to do it all over again. That's Scotty's dream for next year anyway, a place in town. Until then he's happy enough driving the fifty kilometres to work each day.

‘Push those desserts out, Jesse,' I say as I slop water over the stainless-steel wall behind the stove.

‘Yes, Chef,' Jesse replies, clapping twice and calling, ‘Service!'

‘Those fucking waves are calling me, you hear?'

‘You heading out, Chef?' Soda asks.

‘You're damn right I'm heading out, Sodapop. There's a trimming two-foot swell out there with a space in the line-up just for me,' I tell him.

‘I've got to go do a couple things before service tonight, Chef.' Jesse tries it on, like
now I'm worried
.

‘Do not fuck with me tonight, Jesse. Do you understand me?'

‘Yes, Chef,' Jesse answers.

‘Seriously, though, we're close, you know what I mean?'

‘Yes, Chef,' Jesse repeats.

And really, if I had any dignity left I wouldn't ask him where he's going or what he's doing but I don't and I ask him.

‘What do you
have
to do in town, Jesse?'

And the boys stop what they're doing, just for a beat, and turn to catch my back soaping up the wall.

‘Just got to see a man about a dog,' Jesse replies, like it's none of my fucking business.

And that's when I stop scrubbing and turn toward the boys.

‘See a man about a dog . . . You know my dog is the biggest and angriest dog of them all, don't you, Jesse?'

‘Yes, Chef!' Jesse laughs. ‘I'll be back for service, Chef.'

‘He's not a little puppy dog that you take for a walk and follow behind picking up his doggy-do-do. He's a big fierce dog who eats little kiddies and small cows.'

‘Yes, Chef!' Jesse yells, and claps again. ‘Service!'

‘We're booked out again tonight, yeah? There's work to be done,' I remind him.

‘Yes, Chef.' Jesse meets my eye. ‘I won't be long, Chef. I've just got to go into town and then I'll be straight back to box my section.'

‘Okay. Sounds like a plan. You coming for a surf, Soda?'

‘Nah, Chef. I'll probably just head into town with Jesse.'

‘Okay,' I say as I return to my cleaning. I'm nervous now. I know the boys are up to something.

And then, like a siren sounding, Sammy the barman gives the call we've all been waiting for.

‘Vinnie's in the house!'

15

Bruce, my friend from the Bondi Hotel days, was working with me again at the Pasta Man. He was a few years older than me, and one of those guys who always seemed to be at the party. He was a right-place-right-time kind of guy. But he wasn't into narcotics; he was more a champagne and bong man. And when he suggested a road trip back up the highway to our home state of Queensland, he did so because he was worried about my drug use. I think he felt that if I could get back in touch with something innocent, like Queensland or home, I might be able to arrest my self-destructive ways and actually make something good out of the opportunity that the Pasta Man represented. And the idea of the tropics was appealing. I had written off my last misadventure into Kings Cross as a silly mistake, a youthful misadventure.

I had lost my licence on three separate occasions as a drunken young apprentice chef, so I left it to Bruce to hire the car. Which turned into a nightmare anyway because between us we didn't have a credit card with any credit left on it, which meant I had to stump up a cash deposit. Obviously the seven hundred dollars required to rent the car wasn't hanging around in petty cash at this point, so I did my friends in Brisbane a favour and offered to transport some smack up to the Sunshine State if they were prepared to pay upfront. Amazing really, the optimism of junkies. No worries, mate; sounds like a plan. And the thing is, my ‘friends' had recently robbed a bank in the manner of some idiots from a two-dollar weekly they'd picked up at Video Ezy, and got busted. They were hungry for something to numb the pain of an impending prison sentence and, because they had been staying home with Mum, were able to come up with the money.

Getting busted on the freeway between Gosford and Sydney at two in the morning in the middle of winter for driving unlicensed and being fifty kilometres over the speed limit was not good. And what added heavily to that badness was the fact that I also had to dump the heroin out the window as we pulled the car over to talk to the police. This left me with some personal supply in the boot, which for a while there looked as if I was going to get busted for as well. The coppers, having established I'd made their night with on-the-spot fines, got to searching everything in the boot. I had seven deals in a film canister in my toiletry bag and it was the strangest sensation watching them as they poked through toothbrushes and aftershave, squeezed out toothpaste and tipped out pills . . . but never popped the lid off the little black film canister.

The thirty-kilometre ride back to Gosford in the police car was long and uncomfortable. And what made it worse was that, because the cops didn't find what they were looking for, they weren't interested in giving me a lift back up the highway to where they'd busted me. Bruce was a patient sort of guy and not one to act on instinct, meaning it would never occur to him to actually drive into Gosford and pick me up; rather he would sit there, in the middle of winter, wondering what the fuck he was doing on a drug-running trip to Queensland with someone who was clearly not on the up and up. Nor did the taxi driver have much sympathy. He insisted on getting paid before we left Gosford.

Brisbane didn't go well. The boys who'd paid for the smack were, to put it mildly, really looking forward to seeing me. When I explained to them that I'd been busted and had to dump their gear out the window, well, they understood it in a general sense but were nonetheless unimpressed. It was a hot and sticky few days, everyone hanging out and being quite nasty to each other. I'd put away the seven deals which were left in the film canister during the remainder of the car trip with Bruce, which meant I'd slept well in the car but now, in Brisbane, where winter doesn't visit with any real meaning, it was obvious a holiday in the tropics had not been a good idea.