Page 49 of Down the Track
#5Fiona: I’m not broke I’m busy dealing with heartbreak. Again. Thanks for the support.
#1Regina: Yeah, yeah, keep your hair on geez.
Regina’s comment was to him, Hux assumed, not to Fiona. Fiona got herself heartbroken about once every six months so nobody was going to be taking her whingeing seriously. He shoved his phone in his pocket, wondering if it would be irresponsible to chuck it into the ditch in his front yard along with all that cracked and broken pipework.
Sighing, he pulled it out again.
Hux: The other thing is that maybe we ought to brace ourselves for some media interest. This guy, Dave, is still a no-show and what with the drug accusations, this could blow up big.
#1Regina: Everyone better get their arses out here to Gunn Station, then, if it does. We face this together.
Possum trotted ahead of Hux along the main street of Yindi Creek. The few street lights cast yellow cones onto the bitumen and footpath below, in which moths were buzzing up a storm.
Hux had passed the time at the pizza joint thinking about the wad of close-typed pages he had waiting for him back in his hotel room. As much as he was totally over the script revisions, at least it’d be work he knew he could do. When the screenwriters asked if it was okay to move scene ten from a basement carpark to under Ross River Bridge (‘because same grunge vibe but more visual drama, and we’ll get the lights from the building reflecting on the river water’) he’d have no trouble deciding yes, good idea, or no bloody way.
But this conundrum the helicopter business was facing—that Charlie was facing—deciding what to do about that was going to be a whole lot more difficult.
It took a second to switch his focus from the fictitious world of Clueless Jones back to Yindi Creek when he neared the front doors of the pub, a pizza box in one hand, a foil sausage of garlic bread in the other. A lone figure was sitting on the old pew outside. He didn’t need a scriptwriter’s introduction to tell him who this character was—it was Jo, not a character but a woman he’d promised to apologise to. He could tell it was her from the way she was hunched over a notebook, scribbling away. In bullet points, no doubt.
His dog stopped at her feet and she gave him a pat. Oh, for the simple life of a dog. No regrets. No baggage. No past.
He stopped walking when he reached the pew. ‘Hi,’ he said.
She didn’t get up and walk away, so that was promising. Instead, she said hi back.
‘You mind if I sit down?’ he said.
She waved a hand at the pew, so he took a seat and set the pizza box down between them. Possum edged closer, sliding his snubby, whiskered muzzle along the length of the box, breathing in deeply all the while.
Jo chuckled. ‘Looks like somebody’s trying to vacuum up some dinner.’
‘I’m willing to share it. With him and you, if you’ll let me apologise for being a dickhead this morning.’
‘What flavour is it?’
‘Double cheese and pepperoni.’
‘Huh,’ she said. ‘Apology accepted.’
He frowned. ‘As easy as that?’
She shrugged, then leant forwards to pick up the glass of wine she had resting on a half-barrel table. She took a sip, then said, ‘I’m really tired of fighting.’
He lifted the lid and held the box up so she could help herself to a piece. ‘Who are you fighting with?’
‘With? Well, that’d be my ex-husband. My son. Myself. Then there’s the job I’m fighting for. Which it feels like I’ve always been fighting for …’
That had all come out in a rush and it struck him that this might be the real Jo he was seeing, not Dr Joanne Tan. Herson?
TYSON: This is sad Jo.
It was hard to stay mad at sad Jo.
‘You want to talk about it?’ he said.
‘Not really.’
He took a bite of his own piece of pizza and it was so salty and fatty and totally processed and delicious he groaned. Possum made a high-pitched trilling noise by his feet so Hux took pity on him and tore off a bit of cheesy crust.
