Losing Face, page 4
She stood up and turned around to look at Bankstown before she continued her walk home. It could have been the clouds, but the roads and houses and shopping centre looked like they were drooping.
Mr Harvey had been in love with her too. He’d had a special look for her that he hadn’t given the other women. And there was that time in the tearoom. The time he had kissed her. His sea salt lips had touched hers and she had melted into a silly puddle on the linoleum. She had run straight out of the room and back to her position, but she had been so faint she went home early.
There had been a moment when she had thought her life was over. That Youssef would find out about the kiss and send her back to her parents’ mud house in the village. But all those years ago on the walk home along Railway Avenue, as the trains screeched by, she had decided that the kiss was so dreamlike that she didn’t have to treat it as real.
On Elaine’s last day in the factory, when she was inches from giving birth to Amal, Mr Harvey had stayed in his office. He hadn’t come downstairs to say goodbye as the others sent her off with flowers and chocolate. Elaine had told them she would be back but, as she waddled to the green Ford where Youssef was waiting for her, she had broken into breathless sobs. She had known she wouldn’t return. She had known she was becoming a mother and that her stint at being anything else was over.
At her front door, Elaine kicked Amal’s sneakers off her feet and left them how they landed.
5
Joey posed at different angles in the full-length mirror in his mother’s room – it was the only one in the house. He wore a new grey tank top, black tapered jeans with cuts across the knees and his grey Nike Air Force 1s. Tanning in the backyard in the week leading up had paid off because his skin popped against the outfit. He took a selfie, flexing his triceps and angling his face to accentuate his jawline, and posted it to Instagram with the caption, Defqon ready.
He and his friends had been looking forward to Defqon, a trance music festival, all year. He punctuated his outfit with a spritz of his mother’s cologne. It was a men’s fragrance by Jean Paul Gaultier and the bottle was shaped like a muscle man’s torso. She preferred men’s fragrances because apparently women’s were too flowery.
He tapped his pockets. Phone, wallet, keys, tobacco pouch, lighter. His heart raced a little. When he entered the lounge room his mum wolf-whistled exaggeratedly.
‘Look. At. My. Spunk!’ she said.
‘Shush.’
‘I mean, what is this? Who are you trying to impress?’
‘Ma. You better stop.’
He raised his hand to jokingly slap her and she slapped him instead on his arm, her fingers leaving a red imprint.
‘Are you serious? Now I’m gonna leave the house with a fucking slap mark on my arm!’
‘Shut your mouth, wleh. Don’t you ever raise your hand at me.’
‘You’re so annoying.’
‘Who’re you trying to impress?’
‘You are seriously so annoying and invasive. I’m almost twenty. You think other mums ask their sons these questions?’
‘You’d be shocked to know that, yes, I have it on good authority from my friends that they ask their children similar questions. And their sweet angels answer them. But you? No. Mister can only see his reflection. You don’t divulge anything to me.’
‘Are you gonna give me a lift to Kyri’s or what?’
‘Yes, I’m gonna give you a lift because I’m a good mother.’
‘I don’t think good mothers are supposed to be that self-aware.’
Joey made his way past her as she looked up to the ceiling and stretched her palms out in apparent frustration or prayer. She was wearing black athletic tights and a bathrobe and slippers. She called it her uniform.
‘Ya Allah, I never understood why you didn’t bless me with daughters.’
‘You would be living on the street if you’d had daughters and they loved to spend as much as you. You should count your blessings for your two cheap sons.’
‘Oh, something crawled out of my arse to judge me and my spending.’ She called out into the hallway, ‘Alex, I’m driving Joey. Do you wanna come for the ride?’
A muffled ‘no’ came from behind Alex’s bedroom door.
With a bottle of vodka in one hand and a bottle of lemonade in the other, Joey charged up Kyri’s driveway towards the double garage at the back of the yard.
The boys had decided they would have pre-drinks at Kyri’s before they made their way to the festival. He knew the house and family well. Mr and Mrs Kyriacos were Cypriot but born in Sydney. They adored Kyri and his little sister and were always welcoming to Joey. Mrs Kyriacos made the best galaktoboureko. And meatballs. And schnitzel. She was just an amazing cook. Maybe even better than his own mother. Which he would never say out loud for fear of being struck by lightning.
He wondered how Mrs Kyriacos managed to do all that amazing cooking and look so impeccable and be so chill. They had money so she was often wearing something from Louis Vuitton or Hermès or Yves Saint Laurent, but you couldn’t tell because it wasn’t the cookie-cutter crap that the other wogs from the area obsessed over. They probably didn’t even stock what she bought in Australia.
Mr Kyriacos was a builder and had designed their latest house with respect to the outdoors. Every room flowed easily to a patio or a courtyard or the pool and cabana. The house belonged in Bondi, not in Greenacre. Mr and Mrs Kyri were high school sweethearts and still doted on each other as though they were teenagers. Joey often referenced their long-term relationship as a functioning one to his mother when she lamented men and women and marriage. ‘Yeah, that’s because John Kyriacos is one in a freakin million!’ she’d say.
Kyri had shoulder-length hair when he came to Birrong Boys, halfway through year nine, from the private Greek school in Bankstown that he said was stifling his creativity. He wanted to be an artist. During lunch breaks he would let out his ponytail until a teacher told him to tie it back up. He looked more Swiss than Cypriot, which he explained was because his grandparents were actually from Thessaloniki. He had been to Greece with his family multiple times and had promised to show Joey around one day.
They had forged their friendship when they were partnered for an English assignment. Instead of getting to work, they’d spent the whole night before the assignment was due taking the piss out of their schoolmates’ Instagram profiles, and so made an agreement to plagiarise the whole thing.
They shared an identical sense of humour: a cutting one that didn’t afford the subjects of their jokes any concession. They’d test each other, topping their epic comments until even they were surprised at how evil their remarks could get. But they would always come to the conclusion that, ‘end of the day it’s just for laughs’. Then they’d side-eye each other and burst into laughter because it probably wasn’t.
Their friendship really blossomed towards the end of high school when they realised the rest of the guys in the group were gronks. Since then, Joey had joined Kyri’s family on holiday, they’d slept in the same bed together, given each other massages, showered together. They had even said, ‘I love you, bro’, one time when they were drunk, holding each other up and making their way home after a night out. They felt like outcasts all the time but at least they felt that way together.
As he neared the side door of the garage, he heard Kyri firing up one of the sacred pinball machines. Mr Kyriacos had a fascination with the machines and had dedicated half the garage to them. The boys had been strictly ordered to never touch the things. The other half of the garage had a sofa, a TV with an Xbox and a bar fridge. The boys hung out there a fair bit during high school but rarely since then. Mr and Mrs Kyriacos weren’t the type to pry so it was always easy to smoke joints and lie around with each other like boys do when they’re not being watched.
He paused outside the door. Kyri would only ever defy his father’s orders and play the pinball machines if he was trying to impress someone. And then Joey heard Emma’s enthusiastic, ‘That’s so cool.’
She had arrived earlier than him, which was awkward. He felt like he was about to interrupt something special. But Emma was his friend. She and Kyri had only met a few times before, in passing and at another music festival. He pushed open the side door and he could have imagined it, but Emma seemed to pull away from Kyri.
‘Sup,’ Joey said.
‘Youssef!’
He wished he’d never told Emma about the Arabic pronunciation of his name because now she used it at will. He rolled his eyes as she jumped to hug him, dangling from his neck. Joey and Kyri bumped fists and then Kyri took the bottles.
The whirrs and clatter from the pinball machine interrupted the itchy energy.
Joey gestured at the machine. ‘Won’t he kill you if he finds out?’
‘Nah, he’s chilled out about them ever since my pappou died. He’s gone full soft.’
Emma reached out and touched Kyri’s bicep. ‘Oh, I didn’t know your pappou died. Sorry to hear.’
Why would she know? They weren’t friends.
‘It’s cool. He lived for ages anyway. More importantly, the vodka has arrived.’
Kyri started making the drinks.
‘Where’s Boxer?’ Joey asked Kyri.
‘He said he’s coming a bit later.’
‘And he’s got the goods?’
‘Apparently.’
Joey walked over to the machine and put his fingers over the buttons lightly.
‘You sure your dad won’t mind if I play?’
‘Yeah, man.’
He’d never played one before. The way you almost straddled the machine with your hands at its sides excited him. He pulled the spring, released it, and the ball shot out into the maze. The machine’s theme was outer space. Planets, stars, galaxies, moons. Emma came over and rested her head on his shoulder as she watched. It made the playing cumbersome, having her so close, but he felt owed that moment of contact before a big day of partying and other people. He fired the buttons on the side to save the ball from the abyss. His score was a fraction of the highest, whose player name on the light-up scoreboard was Zeus.
Emma then had a quick go and Joey coached her. She would usually tell him she didn’t need his help with this kind of thing. It was then he realised she was wearing make-up. It was set to be a weird day.
‘My people, drink,’ Kyri said as he unloaded the glasses into their hands.
They clinked them and sipped.
‘Kyri, are you trying to poison us?’ Emma coughed through her words and raised the back of her hand to her mouth.
‘Whaddaya mean? This is weak.’
She reached for the lemonade bottle to dilute the drink. The boys shared a confused glance and sipped again. They played more pinball and Xbox and chatted about the DJs they wanted to see at Defqon, who else they knew that was going. Emma knew a whole group from her part of town, Picnic Point, including her brothers, but it was assumed that she would spend most of her time with the boys. She was always teasing her brothers’ mates for being too white.
Boxer clearing his throat loudly as he came up the drive quietened them before he burst through the door. ‘What’s up, crackheads?’
His voice trailed off as his eyes landed on Emma, who seemed unimpressed by the greeting.
Boxer looked like his nickname suggested. Everything about him was thick and square, including his dick, which he often whipped out in front of the boys for a laugh. He fist-bumped Joey and Kyri and kissed Emma on the cheek. The two had only met once before and she had described him to Joey afterwards as someone who hadn’t spent enough time out of the area. Nothing more agreeable had ever been said about Boxer.
He was one of the very few guys that Joey and Kyri still connected with from high school. He had access to drugs and was generally funny when they were just kicking back. His brothers were rough, rumoured to be caught up in all kinds of trade. At school, some of the boys doted on Boxer like obedient dogs: went to the canteen for him, covered for him. Joey had once seen Boxer’s father bashing him in the Woolies car park, his train-driver shirt straining over his biceps as he laid into him. Joey and his mother had stopped in their tracks, hands heavy with bags of discounted dishwashing liquid. She had yelled out, ‘Aybeshoom ahlak!’ – how embarrassing for you – her voice echoing in the near-empty lot. Joey had wished she could have acted like they hadn’t seen anything, but his mum would never stand for that shit. Boxer’s dad had stopped, fist midair. Joey had caught Boxer’s eyes, but they were tunnels to nowhere.
The next morning at school he pushed Joey against the wall in the toilets and told him if he ever said anything, he’d set his mum’s car alight and tell everyone he was a faggot. And he would have, and his dogs would have believed it.
Boxer made a beeline for the pinball machine, losing the ball within a minute and smacking the side of the machine with his knuckles before turning away. Joey made eye contact with Kyri as he walked a drink over to Boxer and discreetly switched the machine off.
Boxer threw his arms wide and some of the drink sloshed out. ‘Shu, are we gonna party today or what?’
‘Yeah, man,’ Kyri said.
‘What about you, Emma? Up for a big one?’ Boxer asked.
‘I guess so. I have the day off tomorrow so why not?’
Boxer reached into the side-bag that hung across his rig. It was very noticeably fake Gucci. He pulled out three baggies. ‘Hectic, cos I got enough to keep us going for a week.’
Kyri clapped. ‘Yew.’
Boxer sat between Emma and Joey on the sofa and placed the baggies in a neat row. ‘This one is rack. This one is MD. And this is green, for later.’
It felt like primary school when the teacher reads a page of a picture book to the class and then turns it around for everyone to gawk at the illustrations. Joey needed to poo.
‘Emma, you taken stuff before?’ Boxer asked as he racked up lines of coke onto the tabletop.
It was a coffee table Kyri had made in year eleven woodwork. Joey had been jealous of its sturdiness. His own table ended up too short and too long, like a sausage dog. Mr Dowd had poked fun at it in front of the whole class. Tayta still used it on the back patio.
‘Yeah, once. I took a pill at a friend’s house party. I didn’t feel much. Just, like, fluffy.’
Joey spoke before anyone else could. He felt especially responsible for Emma, being the bridge between friend groups. ‘Maybe just have half a cap later, then, to start off with.’
‘Uff. And who are you? Her dad?’ Boxer licked the Opal card he had been using to set up the lines.
‘Kyri, pass me a note.’
They all took turns snorting decent-sized lines of coke.
‘Someone play some fuckin tunes, man. Are we at a funeral or something?’ Boxer commanded.
Kyri played an EDM mix on the bluetooth speaker and they bopped around, then lay down on the sofa and spoke over the music for an hour. At one point Boxer had Emma cornered in conversation and Joey could see spit flying from his mouth onto her cheek. He continued watching them as Kyri spoke to him, waiting for Emma to make some sort of rescue gesture, but she didn’t.
‘Did you hear what I said?’ asked Kyri.
‘Huh? Nah.’
‘I was saying are we gonna do both days of the festival?’
‘We’ll see how we go today, ay.’
‘Aiight.’
Joey went back to watching Emma and Boxer.
Kyri punched his arm playfully. ‘Bro, relax. They’re just talking.’
One by one they bowed their heads and popped the MDMA capsule into their mouth as the busy train pulled out from Seven Hills station. Emma ended up taking a full one.
At Penrith station they disembarked with the rest of the revellers, who were already wide-eyed, jumping up and down like Indian myna birds; the girls in lycra hot shorts and fluffy socks, their hair glossy and straightened; the guys in tight singlets, crisp sneakers, expensive sunglasses, side-bags swinging at their waists. Joey felt tiny next to the muscle boys who had already taken their tops off.
The shuttle bus from the station to the Regatta Centre was a riot of whistle blowing, music playing from phones and chair dancing. Eventually someone crowd-surfed to the front of the bus, which is when the flustered driver pulled over violently and kicked everyone off, forcing them to walk a few extra hundred metres to the entrance. The crowd were bubbles from a just-opened bottle of Sprite. He was one of those bubbles. He smiled and pulled Emma close to him, kissing her on the cheek. It was a decent cap.
‘How are you feeling?’ he asked her.
‘I’m a bit nervous, but excited.’
‘Why nervous?’
‘I’ve got the drugs inside me.’
He hadn’t given any thought to how they would smuggle the rest of the drugs into the festival. From what he had experienced the previous year, the organisers had a zero-tolerance policy and there were sniffer dogs and strict bag searches. If they didn’t like you, they targeted you, and if they found something you were out. They hadn’t taken the drugs in last time; they had bought them inside from an Asian guy in a poncho and tribal tattoos down his legs.
He cursed himself for not having thought it all through. He felt sick to the stomach looking at Emma, at the position he had led her into. Her folks would slaughter him if anything happened to her.
‘You don’t have to. No pressure, yeah? If you wanna ditch them, we can go over there and you can pull ’em out and we’ll go in without anything.’
