“I don’t know where I’d park,” says Amy. She has on her fur and her high heals.
“You’ll fall off those you stupid bitch,” said Lillian. “That skirt is showing your knee, luv. Its tea not a strip show.”
“Unlike you, darling, at least I’ll have further to fall.”
“It’s the Alzheimer’s, I swear,” says Lillian. “It’s got you dear, I have no idea what you mean?”
The sun is shinning and the sky is a turquoise blue when they pull the front door of Lillian’s South Yarra town house shut. In the time it takes them to walk to the end of the street and left down the main road to the bus stop, the grey clouds have blown in and the rain is starting to fall.
“I’m sure that’s not what, um, er, Josie Jahooverwatsit said this morning on the radio.”
“Josie who? What radio?”
So there they are the two of them, Lillian on the inner with her woollen coat somehow rapped one and a half times around her and Amy in her “short skirt” and her 1980’s platform patent leather shoes getting water marked from the rain.
“If you have to be a corpse,” says Amy. “You can at least make an attractive one.”
“A pretty corpse,” whines Lillian. “Is that what you are saying to me luv?”
“I have to make some sort of impression,” says Amy “I can’t donate blood.”
“Donate blood?” Lillian says incredulously.
“Mad cow disease from England makes me ineligible to give blood.”
“You don’t need a blood test for that, darl.”
“I can be an organ donor, though.”
“An organ donor?” Lillian says it as if it is just more madness she is hearing.
“It’s philanthropic.”
“Your organs are the equivalent of your pants at home in your panties draw,” says Lillian. “Do you ever hold them up to the day light and look at the shape and think, Dear God! am I the jelly Mould Monster?”
“Hanging down in tatters, barely able to perform the function they were once designed to do.”
“Throw them out, luv,” says Lillian. “Get some new ones, those ones have done their service holding back the tides.”
“Nooo meeee, darling,” says Amy in a slinky tone. “It is lucky that Carl wore out when he did…”
“Pelvic floor,” squeals Lillian.
“For years I thought that was the level at the Children’s that specialised in diseases of the bone, possibly the pelvis.”
“Not in my day,” says Lillian. “I mean not today, I’m barely containing a gusher as we stand here.” Lillian attempts to cross her legs in an elegant way.
“You should have gone before we left.”
“I didn’t need to go before we left.”
“You need a depends, luv.”
Lillian is aghast at the suggestion. “Where is that bus?”
A bicycle crashes into the bus stop, on it a 13 year old boy, or thereabouts, crashes into the bus stop too. Suddenly, out of no where. “Crash!”
“Jesus!” shrieks Lillian.
“Oh dear,” says Amy.
The boy lays on the wet paving at their feet.
Lillian looks at Amy. Amy looks at Lillian. A cigarette burning in each of their hands.
“Can you see the bus coming?” asks Lillian making an attempt to look passed Amy.
“He’s not moving,” says Amy.
“Ignore him,” demands Lillian.
“The poor boy.”
“This is why I never travel on public transport,” says Lillian.
“That’s all very well,” says Amy. “But that doesn’t change the fact that he isn’t moving. What should his mother think if she could see this?”
“I should think she’d be saying at about this point,” says Lillian dotting her I’s and crossing her t’s. “That she should have kept him in and not let the little brat go out on his bike in the rain to terrorise the neighbourhood. That is what I would think she would be thinking right about now.”
“He’s still not moving.”
“Give him a nudge.”
Amy slides her high-healed shoe across the paving slowly. She reaches out, she reaches out, she reaches out. Her foot is no where near the unconscious child.
“With your stick,” hisses Lillian. “With your stick.”
“Ah, what?” asks Amy, still with her foot out and a little off balance.
“Is the bus coming?”
“I’m not looking for the bus,” hisses Amy. The hem of her skirt is tapered, it is tight around her thighs.
“Poke him with your stick,” hisses Lillian. “I’m not having this… on a day like today!”
The kid groans and stretches out his leg.
“Thank the lord,” says Lillian.
“Thank the lord, you are an atheist,” says Amy.
“I was trying not to say thank fuck,” says Lillian. “You know, because of the child.”
The boy groans again and then looks up at the two ladies mysteriously looking down at him.
“On your bike kid,” says Amy.
“Go away,” hisses Lillian. “The bus will be here any minute. Can you see the bus Amy?”
“Get out of the way,” hisses Amy.
The kid gets up in obvious pain.
“Come on,” commands Lillian. She points at the kid’s bike. “That, and you, gone!” She clicks her fingers.
“Shouldn’t you have a helmet on?”
“Clearly, the kid’s mother doesn’t care a whit…”
“Probably home on the drugs…”
“Waiting for her sugar papa to come over and hand out the merchandise, no doubt.”
“Tax payers money up in smoke, it is really a waste.”
“Such a waste of resources,” says Lillian. “I mean to say, what is that,” she points at the now speechless kid, “ever going to amount to?”
The kid picks up his bike and limps away.
“Shouldn’t you be under some curfew?”
“Shouldn’t you have a licence to use that thing as a deadly weapon?”
“You could have killed us,” cries Lillian.
“It is not even safe on the streets any more,” calls Amy. “The judiciary is going to the dogs.”
“Fairness in sentencing, fairness in sentencing,” wails Lillian. “Just lock them away to do their time, how hard can it really be.
“The streets aren’t safe.”
“Can you see the bus coming, luv?” Amy is clutching her self.
“Luv, go back to the house, the bus ride is a good 45 minutes.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Over and over and over and over those bumps in the road,” says Amy.
“Shut up!”
“Over and over and over and over and OVER,” says Amy.
“Thank you very much.” Lillian storms off in the direction of the house.
Amy sits down on the single seat provided.
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