‘Out,’ said Robbie.
‘What do you mean?’ demanded Lemon.
‘Get the fuck out of the car,’ said Chris, delighted with Robbie’s action.
‘No way,’ said Lemon. ‘That’d be murder.’
‘What do you care?’ said Robbie. ‘Haven’t you already reached the human pinnacle? Nothing can hurt you.’
‘Stop being a smart arse,’ sneered Lemon. ‘You can’t leave us here.’
‘Get the fuck out of the car,’ said Chris, raising his voice. ‘Now!’
Lemon just stared and folded her arms – defiant and immovable.
Robbie turned to Tim, who was staring at the floor in misery.
‘Tim … I’m putting you in charge of the back seat. If Lemon opens her stupid, fat mouth once more about Habal fucking Tong, she’s out. You can stay, if you want, but she’s out on her ear if I hear one more fucking word.’
‘Way to go, Robbie,’ laughed Chris.
‘Have you got that?’ demanded Robbie, to Tim, who nodded numbly as Lemon glared at him.
Robbie, turned the key again and was rewarded only with a dying cough from the engine.
He tried again and got just a few clicks. Then nothing.
‘Fuck me dead,’ said Chris. ‘Not again.’
They’d had a bit of trouble with the car in South Australia but had got it fixed in Coober Pedy. Or so they thought.
‘Well, well,’ said Lemon. ‘Looks like we’ll all be stranded in the middle of nowhere. How nice.’
‘Lemon … ’ began Tim.
‘What?’ she snapped at him.
‘Can we just stay calm?’ he pleaded as she stared at him with shrivelling contempt.
‘But we’re all about to die,’ she explained, patiently sarcastic, ‘which means I can say whatever the fuck I like.’
At that moment the engine roared into life, and Robbie turned back to her.
‘You were saying?’
• • •
Two hours later they pulled up at a roadhouse. Robbie drove the car straight into the repair bay and spoke to the bloke in charge while the others stretched their legs.
Then Robbie and Chris headed for the bar/restaurant, with Tim and Lemon straggling in their wake.
‘Buy us some food,’ said Lemon.
‘I beg your pardon?’ laughed Chris.
‘We’re out of money,’ she said. ‘But we get paid in a couple of days … we can pay you back then.’
‘I don’t want to spend another two days with you,’ said Chris. ‘We’re only a day or so from Ord City, so after tomorrow I never want to see you again.’
‘But … love is money and money is love,’ quoted Lemon triumphantly, as though revealing some logical flaw in his argument. ‘So just buy us some food anyway. And a drink.’
‘No fucking way,’ said Chris, with a glare at Robbie in case he was feeling generous.
Robbie and Chris went to the bar and ordered beers and steak sandwiches, while Tim and Lemon poured water from a jug and sat staring at them. Robbie felt a little guilty, at least as far as Tim was concerned, but Lemon was so fucking irritating – and it wasn’t as though she’d starve, from the look of her.
‘I say we leave ’em here,’ said Chris.
‘What?’ demanded Lemon.
‘We’ve done ’em enough of a favour,’ said Chris. ‘Let some other poor bastard take ’em the rest of the way.’
‘But we’ve got no money,’ wailed Lemon. ‘We can’t support ourselves here.’
‘You can’t support yourselves with us either,’ said Chris. ‘So it simply comes down to whether we’d prefer you in the car or out of it.’
He raised his hand.
‘I say out.’
The others looked to Robbie, all being aware it was his car and that he therefore had the casting vote.
‘I’ll give youse a head job,’ said Lemon.
‘What?’ cried Tim, as Chris snorted beer through his nose.
‘I’ll give youse both a head job if you take us all the way to Ord City … and buy us some food and drink.’
‘I don’t want a head job,’ said Robbie, but Chris was laughing.
‘A Habal Tong head job,’ he laughed, ‘from a chick who’s reached the human pinnacle. I could really get into that.’
‘Lemon,’ objected Tim, but she glared him into silence.
The steak sandwiches arrived at the table and Chris launched into his with gusto, with Lemon and Tim watching every bite like dogs waiting for scraps. Robbie picked up his own feeling momentarily awkward, but the toast was hot and crisp and the steak so perfectly tender that he managed to forget about their passengers, until the haggling.
‘Okay,’ said Chris, ‘we’ll take you to Ord City for a head job … but that’s all.’
‘I don’t want a head job,’ repeated Robbie.
‘Food also,’ said Lemon.
‘What are her headies like?’ asked Chris, of Tim, who continued to stare at the table.
‘How would he know?’ laughed Lemon. ‘My HJs are the best.’
‘Alright,’ laughed Chris, ‘I’ll get you a packet of Twisties.’
‘I want a steak sandwich,’ said Lemon. ‘And a bourbs … ’
‘A ride and a packet of Twisties,’ insisted Chris. ‘Take it or leave it.’
‘Two packs.’
The deal was struck, with the further details that Chris was not allowed to touch her and it had to happen in the dark so he couldn’t watch her.
‘I do have my fucking dignity,’ insisted Lemon, one paw stuffed in a Twisties bag.
Robbie was more than a little embarrassed, mostly on Tim’s behalf, and when he arrived back at the table with three beers, Chris was too amused by the prospect of his HTHJ to notice or comment. Tim gratefully sipped his beer and muttered a voiceless thank you as Chris and Lemon started giggling, negotiating further small details of their transaction and clearly on much friendlier terms than they’d been just minutes before.
Chapter 10
Thirteen is Lucky
At 5.35 on Saturday afternoon, Conan walked up to Gate C of Rinehart Stadium. There were only a handful of people around, this far from kick-off, but in an hour or so the place would be a sea of yellow – with hundreds of FENG 9 shirts among the many thousands of fans.
Conan laughed at himself and shook his head. Life would have been so different if he’d just closed the library that day. Of course he’d replayed the incident asynchronously and had been able to follow the bloke a lot better when he’d not taken his eyes off him. But even then there was margin for error when the bloke had turned into a tunnel and joined with hundreds of other fans. The camera coverage hadn’t been perfect as he swung from a stairwell into the tunnel and the bloke’s appearance was so middle-Asian neutral. He did have a fairly distinctive triangular mole pattern on the part of his face that was visible, but after the tunnel there’d been no shot he could use for a close