Roast Chicken

It is a beautiful sunny Friday day. My first day back in Melbourne, when Melbourne is my only choice. My first day without Mark and Luke in my life. Twenty two years and fourteen years respectively. I’m not going to have them around?

I text Luke, of course, Mark’s mobile is inoperable, to see where they are and to see that they are all right.

Mark calls at midday, they are between Dubbo and Tamworth. Mark tells me how beautiful the countryside is.

He says that Sam and I should drive up there, and see the beautiful countryside. I remember that stretch from Tamworth to Dubbo as being especially beautiful.

Mark even looked up at the pub balcony in Coolah and thought of me. A few miles out, I drowned my car in a flooded stream, two years ago. And that balcony was where I spend two glorious days reading my book waiting for my car to be fixed. The sun shine was so warm and inviting, the peace, the solitude, by the second day I decided that I just didn’t want to leave.

I should have got a job at the bar there and given the country life a whirl. If only it were that easy? It is, of course, it is that easy on paper, but then life gets in the way.

I was touched that Mark remembered.

I write on my computer all day. Stuff. Journal. Dirty stories. I still haven’t got back to my romance novel. I should. Jill would market it, after all. All I seem to be doing is missing opportunities.

I feel mean about telling Sam that I would meet him at his place tomorrow morning for the body corporate meeting at his place, rather than him coming over tonight and us both going together in the morning.

I just want to give myself time to feel sad. Just a moment on my own, to feel what I am feeling. To feel something? But, the truth is that the world is very small now and nothing seems very far away, so it is hard to feel a huge loss. I can skype them now.

I buy dope from Guido in Victoria Street. He’s nearby again, good and bad.

Last bag, I tell myself.

Well, the last pot I bought was the 1st June, if you don’t count last weeks, so that has to count for something very major. Mark and Luke are now gone and they are my major pot influences. Shane doesn’t have pot now a days, even if he too has had it for the last few weeks. He bought a bag two weeks ago, which still seems to be going. I smoke pot when I go to Bolago. If I don’t go to Bolago, I don’t smoke pot.

I feel sad that Mark and Luke have gone too, so getting stoned in the face of your two best friends leaving you, possibly, for good, feels nice. 

It’s true.

I play with my potted plants in the sun. It’s a lovely day.

Sam arrives at 6pm. I’m pleased to see him. I’m glad he came over. I am equally as glad that I haven’t been masturbating to porn and have a greasy dick to go with my otherwise unwashed appearance.

We sweep the back yard together. It is back to looking like a dumping ground for assorted neighbourhood debris, since the week I have been gone. 

It really doesn’t take that long, I tell myself. 

Every day, I tell Mark. 

What is wrong with that?” he says.

He is right. It all starts with one sweep of the broom, I tell myself. I’ve become quite backyard proud since I have been off work.

Shane’s behaviour seems different almost as soon as he gets home and I say to Sam, Shane is doing meth.

I suggest roast chicken for dinner on the way to the supermarket. Not one of Sam’s favourites.

“Really?”

Truthfully, I’m too stoned to think of anything else and I could, quite easily, just repeat it dumbly, if encouraged.

Sam and I make up a pasta sauce, chorizo sausage, eggplant, olives, capsicum, tomatoes, something else, I forget.

We hired dvds. Transformers and The Hangover 2. Both are just so so. Transformers is almost unintelligible. The Hangover’s structure doesn’t work the second time. 

Sam tells me off for my pot smoking.

I have the epiphany that Sam shouldn’t be smoking as much as me, as I have been unwittingly doing. He should enjoy that first stage of pot smoking where just a little does a lot and not spoil it for him by shoving it down his gob as often as I shove it down my gob.

After that, I only hand him the joint once and I smoke the rest. It’s not exactly back to the consumption of a beginner, but at least it is something. Besides, his hand keeps reaching for it, if I deny him altogether.