Читать книгу Mordialloc - James Maclean - Страница 17

‘Jesus Christ, Floyd. Just go to bed, will you!’ exclaimed Douglas McGuinness, roughly shaking his younger brother.

The fire under the barbeque had long gone. Floyd was alone, shivering by the smoldering embers in his underwear. As he shook off the double vision and felt the circulation return to his feet various oddities could be distinguished. The spotting of a jumbo bra wedged high in a eucalypt made Floyd smile. It really hadn’t taken much of the ethanol laden punch to get the party going again. Chuckling lightly, he began to regain some patchy recollection.

He remembered big Glen making life a living hell for poor Tim. Then Glen “dropped the weights” on a mousey girl with an infectious laugh. It was one of the usual crass one-liners that, remarkably, only worked only for him. Something about being an octopus. Sure enough the girl had giggled uncontrollably. Glen expertly made his way inside the old house. Floyd’s heart sunk as he realised whose bed they would have used; it wasn’t his.

Kenny’s failure to win a card game had him making the long journey round to the back of the garage. His partner in crime was a solid 6 foot Germanic looking lass. She’d been shamelessly giving him ‘moon eyes’ since her late arrival and the ‘dare’ was actually her idea. The sight of them disappearing around the corner was enough to have everyone in stitches.

True to form he re-emerged 10 minutes later. He tried to give the old story about ‘what a nice girl she was and what an interesting conversation they’d had’. ‘Real girlfriend material’, were the exact words he used; what an idiot. Shaunny Thomas had proceeded to take the same girl out behind the same garage half an hour later, and came back with a slightly different account of events.

Bullet arrived back about 3.30, without Rhonda. It was like salt into the wounds of a, by then, very drunk Tim. Finally, approximately 45 minutes later, when the remaining girls left in a taxi cheerfully funded by a sprite Glen Harkin, Tim’s humiliation was complete.

Instead of a rapid departure, which might have been the honorable thing, the broken man had decided to hang around. Strangely, Bullet Bulolwski was now his new best friend. It was pretty obvious, even through drunken eyes, that he couldn’t figure out what the big difference was, between himself and the skinny lout with the old motorbike. He definitely missed the point when Kenny tried patiently to explain to him, ‘Maybe it was because all his stories were crap!’

Tim’s only real redeeming feature had been a bizarre cigarette lighter. It was fashioned from an old 303 bullet casing. Bulowski’s eyes had lit up the moment it was produced, and what ensued was Tim’s most boring story to date. He’d stammered on for 20 minutes about how his grandfather had bought it back from the war, how it had been Grandpa’s good luck charm during the fall of Singapore, and was sometimes given for extreme acts of bravery when medals were not available. It even worked when it was wet.

Jesus, the story looked like it was never going to end. All eyes had been on Floyd to physically turf him off the premises, when the pathetic bastard finally passed out mid-sentence. He’d been attempting to slobber some useless fact in Bulowski’s ear.

They certainly got the last laugh though, before putting Tim’s comatose body into the back of a cab, and sending him off minus his underwear. The taxi driver hadn’t been too keen at first. He was another little Indian guy though, and they seldom said ‘no’ to a very pissed, very pissed off, Glen Harkin.

Using Tim’s car, they had then gone “cruising the streets”, doing burnouts and fruitlessly looking for action. They finally parking the car, running but locked, down on the Pompei’s Boat Ramp. First catch of the day, they’d joked; only narrowly missing the arrival of some early fishermen.

Back at the house, the party had all but imploded. The remaining campaigners guzzled whatever could be scrounged from the dregs while playing strip poker and doing nudie runs down the street. It had taken the presence of yet another police cruiser to finally bring the curtain down on, what was, a very entertaining party.

Ouch, thought Floyd finally finding his empty bed and noticing the big blisters forming under the nicotine stains between his second and third fingers. An old burnt out cigarrette butt was lodged firmly in its webbing. I’ve gotta stop doing that!