"Yes I would be very happy for Cujo to be right as well.
Have the truck fairly well backed up!"
Hi 34
Yours is but one in a long line of trucks parked outside Cath's French Style Hotel and Brasserie. Its garish orange neon sign cuts the night air, the last four letters long ago reduced to useless dead shards by neighbourhood kids to whom 'Cath's Bras' was an image too good to pass up with so many loose gutter tiles to bust up and throw.
Inside, the drivers of these trucks have been sitting in for endless months, leaving impatient fingerprints on the cracked and stained coffee cups and shot glasses.
A wooden fan - its fourth blade broken in a long ago bar fight - turns slowly, failing to stir smoke-filled air the consistency of molasses. The corner jukebox plays the same song over and over and over again. It's Tom Waits' paean to down-and-outs, Tom Traubert's Blues. "And it's a battered old suitcase to a hotel some place, and a wound that will never heal" - entirely apt for this long-defeated crew.
Conversation once animated has become endlessly repetitive. No one listens to the sorry man in the norgahyde booth repeating his endless takeover mantra. The optimist who once inspired dreams of fast cars and faster women has long gone, although some long-timers cling to his promise of riches beyond imagine.
They drink and drink again. Whisky. Every day. They drink not to forget but to try to recall the halcyon days of toot-toots and dollar parties. The waitress goes through the motions in desultory fashion, warily approaching a smile only when the more desperate grudgingly offer a tip.
Some of the oldest old-timers recall fallen comrades: Mandurah, Ya, Aqua, Craw Vert, others now faded in the memory. Legends all. Some died valiantly battling the feared gang of Mods, whose mantra - the pen is mightier than the sword - is cliched but nonetheless effective. Others fell on their own pens, citing frustration with the entry into Cath's of fraudsters purporting to be drivers but whose trucks were not evident in the silent queue outside. Driverless trucks? No, truckless drivers. Time-wasters. Oxygen thieves. To be despised.
Days become weeks. Weeks drag into months. The world outside Cath's turns while inside is stasis. Occasionally heads lift from whisky glasses as a smart alec roars past the front door in his truck laden heavy with goods acquired from the ASX Warehouse up the road. Lucky bastards, the drinkers mutter. Lucky, lucky, tin-arsed bastards.
But what's this? Into Cath's walks a stranger. Sharp. Serious seersucker suit. Man about town. Doesn't even bother breasting the bar. Stands in the doorway and shouts. "Lagavulin 16. Neat. Doubles all round."
The murmur dies, all eyes now on Mr Sharp. Doubting eyes. Clouded eyes. Dead eyes. Soulless. Drained of their light by the eternal darkness into which their owners have plunged. But slowly they turn, turn towards the man silhouetted in the doorway.
"P.E." he announces. "P.E. Ruffiesque at your service." Delivered with an exaggerated bow and a sweep of his pork pie-hatted hand.
As his hand sweeps the smoke lifts, as if by command. The fan suddenly seems lively. Young-at-heart. Full-bladed. Returned to its pomp.
The jukebox, too, is jolted from its torpor - a change of tune, if not singer. It's still Waits, but a whole new Tom-cat - a faux Sinatra belting it out behind a suddenly bigger band. "I'm goin' straight to the top, oh yeah. Up where the air is fresh and clean." It's Vegas. Fast cars. Yachts. Those faster women. Lots of them. Jackson. Carmelita. My god, it's Dr Brookes himself in top hat and tails puffing on the biggest spliff. Laughing. Urging Jackson to sing and Carmelita to swing those hips.
It's mayhem - a high fiving, back-slapping, story swapping, self-congratulating mayhem. Bedlam. Delirium tremeloes but in a good, good way. Months of whisky sours suddenly sweetened by the man in the seersucker suit. Good old P.E.
Sudden silence.
Black. So black.
OOO is awake. Suddenly awake. He knows this is reality, the former a dream. Mrs OOO slumbers unknowingly beside him. The bedside clock ticks.
On.
And on.
And the music - the ever-present background music. Waits. But what is he singing? It's a blues. Tom Traubert's Blues.
"I'm an innocent victim of a blinded alley
And tired of all these soldiers here
No one speaks English and everything's broken
And my Stacys are soaking wet
To go waltzing Mathilda, waltzing Mathilda
You'll go a-waltzing Mathilda with me"
One day, OOO thinks. One day that song will change. Soon. And I can wait for that other Waits. The winner. The grinner. The highest of high fliers. The toot-toot man about town. Vegas town.
"I can't let sorrow pull ol' Frankie down
Live for tomorrow, I have found, you
I'm going straight up to the top, oh yeah
Up where the air is
Up where the air is
Up where the air is
Up where the air is
Up where the air is fresh and clean, hoo"
OOO
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