‘You want a drag, bro?’ He held the joint out across the table.
‘OK.’ I took three long drags and held the smoke in my lungs as I handed the joint back to him.
‘Excuse me!’ A perky waitress with nice tits came walking up to the table. ‘I’m afraid you’re not allowed to smoke that in here.’
‘It’s cool, bro, I’m lank buddies with the manager,’ Pete said, while holding the smoke in his lungs.
‘Who?’ she asked.
‘Stefan, bro.’
‘Stefan? I’ve never heard of him. Come. Settle up and leave. Or I’m going to have to call my boss.’
‘Chill, lady. We chucking.’ He took another few drags, then passed it back to me.
The waitress shook her head and walked away.
I took a drag and put it out. We left.
He led me through the streets of Observatory, past a couple of hippies making their way out of an esoteric crystal shop, past a tattoo parlour with a Harley Davidson parked outside, and into his friend’s shop, the Grow-it-Yourself shop: specialists in hydroponics and indoor growing.
The floors inside were made of smooth cement and shone under the overhead fluorescent lights. The walls were lined with shelves covered with chemicals and trays. In the far corner was a vault with a nuclear sign painted on the door. He introduced me to his manager friend, a guy named Brad. We walked past his desk and outside into the service alley.
It was mid-morning and deliveries were still coming in: we watched men dressed in sterile white uniforms unhook the skinned bodies of dead animals and felt the cool, urine-infused breeze blow against our skin. We sat there on the steps for a few moments, unsure how to proceed. I felt slightly self-conscious, and so looked away, pretending not to know the next move.
But Pete was more confident. With his brutish fingers he started unlacing his thick leather boots. I proceeded with caution, undoing one lace at a time and bashfully bringing my little left foot out into the air. He too, had taken the left out first.
When both his were out, he leant back and held them up to the blue sky. I laughed a nervous laugh. He looked at me and said ‘Come on, bro. Let’s see them.’
I slid onto my back and held my feet up to the sky.
Pete probably had the ugliest feet I’d ever seen. The toenails were black and chipped and the toes were covered in thick hairs. Compared to his, mine looked like film stars. He didn’t seem to care about his feet’s appearance, and laughed like a man sick in the head, because, appearances aside, it was clear that we had the same problem, in reverse. As we lay on our backs, feet up to the sky, the order went as follows: big, little, little, big. It looked like a half-pipe for skateboarders.
‘Wo-ho, bro!’ he bellowed. ‘I can’t believe it, bro.’
I too began to laugh.
Pete ran off the steps, and down onto the alleyway. He jumped up and down, raising his knees to his chest, and slapping them with his hands. ‘Woo-hoo. Ha ha’ he kept screaming. His thick dirty hair bounced up and down as he shook his body around. No one took any notice of him.
‘Come bro. Byron! Hey, bro!’ He came and sat down next to me, putting his arm on my shoulder.
‘This is so weird, bro. What the chances?’
‘Slim,’ I said.
‘We’ll be friends, bro. Is that cool?’
‘It’s cool,’ I said. And, without really knowing why, or even knowing if I wanted to, put my arm around his shoulder, and gave it a pat.
We sat there, silent for a few moments, looking out across the alleyway, our naked feet resting on the lower steps.
‘Would you like a smoke?’ I asked him.
‘Sure thing, bro. Save me the mission of rolling.’
I took my arm off his shoulder, and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.
‘Did people use to give you shit, bro? When you were at school?’
‘Ummm. Not really. You?’
‘Bit. But I never gave a shit, bro. I just thought it was funny.’
‘Ja,’ I said. ‘Never gave a shit.’
‘It’s the only way, bro. But it’s expensive. Nothing you can do ’bout that.’
‘That’s why I put the ad.’
‘For sure, bro, for sure. I haven’t kept all my shoes, for all the years. But I got a fair whack. I can’t believe, bro. I still can’t believe! I’ll go to my house and fetch some of the boxes, bro. Is that cool?’
‘Yeah, it’s cool. I live at 48 Trill.’
‘Sure thing, bro. I’ll be back there later on.’
An hour later he pulled up outside my house on a dirty off-road motorbike. He was wearing leather riding gloves and a helmet that he tucked under his arm as he walked up the path to my front door.
‘Come in,’ I said.
I led him through to my room. He dumped his helmet on the table, shoved the gloves into a side pocket of the bag, then emptied the main content onto floor. Somehow he’d managed to stuff eight shoes into the bag. Then from another side compartment he pulled out a bottle of cheap brandy, which he placed on my desk. The bag was old and worn: it looked like it’d served its time.
‘You got glasses, bro?’ he asked me.
I rinsed out two mugs in the sink and brought them through to the bedroom. He filled them up to the brim and we both drank fast and in complete silence. When we were halfway through our first glass, he filled them up again and rolled a joint. When we’d finished smoking we finally got down to discussing the matter at hand.
‘So, bro, for years you’ve been having to buy two pairs to own one?’
‘That’s right,’ I said.
‘Crazy, bro. So you end up with all these extras. I never thought I’d find another ou.’
He laughed.
The forehead was the only visible part of his face. It was kidney red, underscored by wide black freckles and blemishes. He had the look of a man who seldom changed his clothes. The khaki pants, the military jacket, the black boots. They felt as if they enjoyed staying put. He was like a kid’s action figure; a standard-issue GI Joe: clothes boots and man, all one.
‘Show me what you got.’
I took out all the boxes of unused shoes. He pulled them towards himself, then emptied the contents onto the floor.
‘Nice, bro,’ he said.
I looked at all the mismatched pairs of shoes that I’d never been able to use, these big lefts and baby rights. And here was a man who could use them. And all the pairs that had been sitting unused in his cupboard, would now see the light of day from the bottom of my legs. What a great guy I was for initiating the meeting.
We spent a few minutes admiring our newly acquired shoes. From a financial point of view, he was the definite winner. Besides the Levi’s I’d just bought, he’d also won himself a pair of Nike cross trainers and some Oakley slip-ons. They were from back in my school days when I still got a spending allowance from my father, but my feet hadn’t grown since then. As for me, I was getting myself three pairs of shoes that either came from Pep or Mr Price, and a single pair of smart evening shoes. I doubted