Читать книгу Goodbye Lullaby - Jan Murray - Страница 11

Another hour passed before Rex and his student helper wrapped up the work, all frames hung and catalogues disbursed around tables. He moved back and looked around the bookshop, the part of it that was their art gallery.

‘Looks good, right? The Guest of Honour won’t be here but the rest of the known world will be.' Especially the guys out there, he chuckled to himself, checking out the Holden still parked across the way. ‘The fuck-fuckers.'

'The Morons.'

Poor bastard, figured Rex, looking his off-sider up and down, seeing the long untidy hair, the pimples, the badges covering his chest and the fire in his eyes. He’s too young to remember the other Australia, the kinder one, the one where brother got on with brother, fathers didn’t kick their sons out of home for the sake of a hair cut and a mother didn’t sit on a bed in her son's empty room, wondering if her boy was dead or alive. They had been talking about the war, he and the kid. What else was there to fucking talk about?

‘Rex?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Why’d you come here instead of going back home … to the States?’

He could tell that the kid thought he was some kind of loser, choosing Australia over the great US of A. Kids like this were brought up on a steady diet of Hollywood crap. They believed every college guy in the States spent his days sitting around drug stores swilling Cokes with the likes of Sandra Dee and rocking to a jukebox. They all wanted to be two hundred and thirty pound quarterbacks getting laid by prom queens every night, poor saps.

‘Just kind of washed up here, buddy. Busted. Pissed off with my own mob.’

He bashed his prosthetic leg. ‘As good a place as any for a cripple, hey, pal?

That’ll shut him up, he thought as he checked his watch, anxious for Miki’s call. He needed to warn her the pricks had set up camp across the road. No way could she make an appearance at the Resistance on Saturday. Not even sneak in to the shop in her usual way. It would be off-limits for the duration. He always knew once they publicized Images it would spark their interest in the author.

Like the TDT stunt back in March hadn’t done it already, he reasoned, recalling the hullabaloo. It was hard not to call her reckless but she deserved a two-thumbs-up for her spunk. Those sons-of-bitches down in Canberra would have been head-fucked the night her bit went to air. He couldn’t imagine Miki behind bars. But he had her back. He’d break her out if they fucking tried anything on, he reasoned as he emerged from his flat out the back carrying a couple of cold long-necks.

He slipped off the bandana holding his hair back from his eyes and used it to wipe the heavy beads of sweat off his forehead

‘Here! Take a break, buddy,’ he told his off-sider, flinging a beer to the kid. ‘Has to be XXXX, sorry. Clean outta Budweiser.’