Читать книгу War/Peace - Matthew Vandenberg - Страница 7

‘Chin up. That’s the first thing I wanna say. Keep your chin up at all times when you’re trying to pick up, and even if you’re not. If you ain’t confident, then just pretend to be. This attitude will get you anywhere. Anywhere at all. Here I am now in the sunny streets of Sydney Central one day in December. I’m several hundred steps shy of Central Station. The scene is a little brighter than a charcoal sketch, and my demeanor brighter than ever: sparks fly from my gaze as I scan with it the pavement and the people who pass by. I think I know why I’m here.’ – I take a sip of an EasyWay Kiwi ice tea and then place the container on a stone wall. The wall runs like the line of my gaze, dispersed like a line of coke, towards a small high school, stone walls as old as those of a canyon, grayish to a mystic degree, draped fully in the demeanor of Hogwarts. – ‘I’ve never seen this joint before. This place looks pretty awesome. Anyway, here’s the scoop: I’m in Sydney again, as I am almost every day. I decided to wander around the central area for you always see the most fascinating things when you lose yourself in a stretch of urbanity. So this is where I ended up.’ – I skip back and land my feet on the snaky stone, moving as though my legs themselves are pythons caught in the throw of some kind of trance or hip hop dance. – ‘I like it here. I’m standing just to one side of an old high school, around since the 19th century. Some English school. Namely: Cleveland Street Intensive English High. But whatever they teach here I’m thinking this would be the perfect setting for our stories when they hit the big screen.

‘So it’s simple, I’m here playing the promotional officer for Ford. I’m thinking it won’t do any harm to spread the word about our stories, wet the whistle of a school outside the coast. A few words of advice: if you wanna be someone then pretend you already are, and if you already are then pretend you’re not: you get kicks either way. But there are times’ – I catch a young Asian girl with my gaze as she leaves the school, passing through the teeth of an old, torn, steel gate – ‘when you gotta use fame to your advantage. Excuse me.’

‘Huh?’

‘Hey. Sorry to startle you. Do you go to this school?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What’s it like?’

‘It’s . . . good. You know someone who want go?’

‘Here’s the thing,’ I say. ‘Me and some mates, we’re into writing. We’ve put our stories up on Facebook and they’re kind of popular. But we wanna promote them to schools around Sydney. Do you have a Facebook page?’

‘Um . . . yeah . . .’

‘Excellent.’

‘Because I assume you all love writing, given you go to an intensive English school . . .’

‘We go . . . to learn language,’ the girl replies. ‘They teach us English.’

‘Oh,’ I say, nodding. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me! Oh. Can’t believe I didn’t figure that out. Do you like writing though?’

‘Sure. I like reading more. I read some good Australian books.’

‘Cool,’ I say. I glance at the building and then again at the girl. ‘Well: the name’s Adrian Ford. If you wanna check my profile out on Facebook then go ahead, you might like some of the stories. Have a good day, yeah.’

‘Yeah. Bye. I see you again?’

‘Maybe,’ I say. Then I smile, grab my EasyWay and back down the path, watching the girl as she watches me. I’m frozen but I’m walking. Damn she’s fine.

‘Ok,’ I say, turning to face the camera. The cameraman still has the girl in focus and so I need to click my fingers to get his attention. ‘Whoa. Dude. Back to me. Ok. So let me tell you a little something about figures. You play with them when you’re a mathematician, right? You take them and arrange them into equations, and generally you end up with something solid, something which is universal, static, pure, simple and mythical almost. Something which stretches beyond the fine, tiny, confined dimensions of time and space and into dimensions one cannot define, into the realms of a heavenly ethereal dimension. Ok: such a place is where the perfect figures lie, when in the perfect entanglement, when within the perfect equation. And there are some females who have this figure. Ha ha! Bet you didn’t grab the punchline immediately then did you? But – ok – it’s girls like this who just look so fine that you almost feel as though discrimination is justified. Ok, I’m a slut, I’ll fuck anyone, but sometimes you see someone who really makes you feel like you never have before. Suddenly, you forget about morality: say you see a young woman smoking a fag on the side of a street and she does this with style, just fine, as though she is sipping champagne from a delicate wine glass made of this same ethereal fabric the aforementioned seventh dimension is made from. Suddenly smoking isn’t such a bad thing anymore. She has style, no doubt, and the smell of her breath after she has taken another drag is analogous to that of a perfect perfume: no doubt hers has a Fan Di Fendi flavor. And she looks as innocent and mystical as Ria Vandervis and suddenly you know that there are some figures which simply fit into an equation and some which just don’t. Let’s be honest, image is everything. So if you’re gonna roll with me then don’t check your style at the door. Shit! There are so many true figures here in the city. Sometimes I don’t know why I waste any time with the girls back in the High. Ha ha.’

******

References

1 This Ain’t A Scene, It’s An Arms Race – Fall Out Boy

2 EasyWay Ice Tea website: http://www.easywayarabia.com/menu.htm