Miles moved into his new residence - a box-like room with an old fashioned lino floor and a single, small window - unpacked his stuff, which had been several weeks in boxes, and spread it around. It was a poor collection. He also had no furniture. His PC he put on the dining room table; his socks and underwear in a cardboard box. His bed would be an air bed he had borrowed from his parents, which he put along one wall.
He rang Jake from work the next day. “Seems like I owe you one, but this Friday we should debate the existence of one type of alcohol at a time – no port.”
“’Spose we can do that. Port is way too expensive to be real anyway.”
A few calls came in. The community center wanted to publicise its activities and would the Bugle feature a person involved in one of the activities at the centre? The perennial question of residential zoning reared its head. Developers wanted more apartment blocks, residents did not; nor did they want units. One child in kindergarten had his aunt in year six at the same primary school, and the younger child’s mother thought to ring the Bugle. A youth outreach program about to run through its grant also called. And so it went on.
Then there were the personal calls. In fact, there was one personal call and Miles did not want to take it but, like all his calls, came directly to him. At Miles’ request Kelly never asked who was calling, she just put them through.
“Hey Miles, it’s Jas.”
He had known Jasper Willis from the year dot.
“What is it?” said Miles, in what he hoped was a truculent voice.
“I’m in Sydney for a few days, mate, for some high times. What’s say we hit the Cross?”
“You’re too late; it’s become civilised. They’re closing the strip joints and opening restaurants. Try the places out west, that’s where all the low lifes go.” Miles kept his voice flat but he felt anger rise within him.
“Whaddya mean low lifes?” said Jas, passing off the remark with a laugh. “Haven’t had a chance to do anything yet, but just show us where a boy from the bush can get into trouble.”
“Just go out west somewheres,” said Miles. “There’s places out that way with girls used to guys like you. They’ll give you things you can’t spell.”
“Then let’s go!” whooped Jas, thinking the conversation was back on track.
“’Ave a good time.”
Jazz stopped whooping. “You’re not showing me?”
“Nope!”
“Awww! This is the one time I’m gunna get off the farm all year. You gotta come with me. I don’t know anybody else up here.”
“It’s Sydney. Wave money around. Someone ‘ll be your friend.”
“Why won’t you come with me, mate.”
“’Cause you’re a fuckwit. I suspected it in school, I knew it in college and now I’m telling you to your face you’re a flat out fuckwit.”
Jas had finally realised that Miles was serious and he had to search his shadowed mind for a few moments to work out what was biting his long standing friend.
“Aw mate, why are you taking it out on me for. I didn’t do anything.”
“’Cept didn’t say anything. And laughed when I found out.”
“Oh yeah, well..” Jas was sufficiently tactless to laugh again. Miles could not believe he had ever had anything to do with the man. “Mate ya gotta admit it was funny.”
“Glad you’re amused, mate. I wasn’t.”
“Aw com’n mate, it’s been months.”
“Jas!”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t bother with the girls here, mate. Go back to yer farm, ‘n fuck a few cows. It‘ll make ‘em milk better.” He slammed the phone down. Lots of journalists slammed phones down but not Miles, at least, not much. Kelly looked up from her desk, surprised at this uncharacteristic gesture.
“Miles, I hope that wasn’t a girlfriend?”
He tried to smile and shrugged, but did not answer.
That had done it. Now that he had shown he had been hurt and was upset, he would never be allowed to forget. Well, so what! After a taste of the city and beaches, he was no hurry to move back. But was he doomed to write about residential zoning and the over-50s exercise groups until he died? Then Ros poked her head in the news cubbyhole to tell him not to bang phones down, and Miles cheered himself with the thought that if he was going to die there he could at least spend a lifetime making Ros miserable.
Another almost as unwelcome piece of business occurred later in the week in a call from Eve, just before Miles was about to head off for the day and look in second hand shops for tatty furniture to put in his tatty, rented room.
“About this story from Angela.”
“She’s written a story?”
“Um, yeah. It’s something to do with a panel beaters.”
“Oh right. I guess it’s that thing Ros was trying to get me to do.” He looked through the stuff Ros had given him, which was still in his drawer, and found that Angela’s story involved the same independent business that had been promised editorial. Ros must have spoken to Angela quietly after Miles had rebelled.
“So its advertorial,” said Eve.
“Guess so. She’s gone for the day. Why don’t you drop her an email?”
“It’s completely unusable in its present form. It doesn’t even make sense. Listen, ‘the business on Grey street, standing in for 10 years, has gone from strength to strength on its present form’.”
“That’s her first par?”
“Its her first par. The next sentence is ‘Greg Robard says he knows heaps about the business and says he will take on anyone, for a free quote’.”
Miles laughed. “Okay, its bad but leave her a message. I’d take it for you but she’d just chuck it at me. Anything else you wanted?”
“Actually Miles, I want you to have a word with her about this.”
“Me! But I’m not the editor here.” This was true to a point. Miles nominated a rough order of importance of the stories he submitted, but Eve could move them around as she saw fit. Justin made decisions about the shared content but had no interest in individual news stories. It was a decentralised system which mostly worked but there was no editor to deal with reporters who lacked certain skills - such as being able to write stories that made sense. Justin should really handle those problems but no-one seemed to consider the editor-in-chief fit for the role. “Angela doesn’t report to me and there’s no point in me talking to the woman, she seriously hates my guts.”
“Why, what have you been doing to Angela?”
“I haven’t been doing anything to Angela,” squawked Miles. “I never even got a chance to even think about doing anything. She just hated me from the moment I walked in the door, and won’t listen to a word I say. Anyway, you’re chief sub you should do it. She may even listen to you.”
“We just don’t have time and you need to start from the beginning with something like this. You’ve got a good style, Miles, and you get stories.”
“You’re trying to charm me into this aren’t you? Well, where I’m from we invented charm, and it’s no good. We sit here for the whole day, I swear, and don’t exchange a single word. And we’re the length of a desk apart. I don’t even know what she does apart from community notes and police stuff, which she takes verbatim from the cops.”
“What about the service station story last week? That was good.”
“I did it. I gave her the lead byline because one of her police contacts told us where it was and gave us the story. I spoke to you about dropping her police note on the same story.”
Eve sighed. “So you did.”
“Anyway, she reports to Justin. I was told that at the first interview. We just co-operate. So Justin is the guy to speak to, if anyone. Maybe he can switch her somewhere where she can be taught. Here she’s learnt nothing but won’t forget anything.”
Miles was proud of the last remark, an adaptation of a famous jibe about the old French kings restored after the revolution, but it passed right over Eve’s head.
“I’ve tried Justin on this before, he just says things like ‘give her time, or give her feedback’. This is not feedback material, this requires major work.”
“I told you she won’t listen to me. Show the story to Justin and ask him to give her feedback about it.”
“Why don’t you try first. Then I can tell him you tried raising it with her; then maybe he’ll listen.”
“Why don’t you tell him that now?”
“You can use your charm. You remember you just said they invented charm where you come from.”
“We only use it on special occasions. It’s too dangerous otherwise… Against the Geneva Convention.”
Eve did not reply. Miles sighed. He did not understand why Angela’s training had suddenly become his problem, when he had been in the office just weeks and she had been there months, doing heaven only knew what, without the subs taking such an interest in her. This was training in the Bugle Group – random and messy. In fact, it was not unlike the training system for special forces in the military. The weak were selected out.
“Okay, if I raise this with her and she bites my head off, you join with me in pushing her off somewhere where she might learn something.”
“Fair enough.”
“I still can’t see why you can’t just spike it and forget it. If I served up a story like that about a panel beater, you’d scream at me and spike it without a second thought.”
“You’re not Angela, are you?”
“It’s discrimination that’s what it is. All hands to save Angela, but if the country boy falls overboard you laugh at him from the deck. This is a big, evil city.”
“Oh please! I don’t have my violin. You know some of the guy subs here still talk about the time she was down here three months ago. They’d kill to be in the same room with her.”
“If they were in the same room with her for a month, they’d kill to get out.”
That Friday Miles and Jake had a drink or two with the journalists from the Lovett Bay Bugle. When he walked in, Ellen was having one of her regular fights with Nathan over the trainee refusing to do stories that he considered beneath him.
“I’m not doing that,” Nathan said disgustedly as Miles walked in, through the back entrance.
“What’s wrong with doing a story on the local fair for heaven sake,” said Ellen, “Hello Miles.”
“Hi!”
“Hello Miles,” said Nathan, without looking away from Ellen. “It’s such a boring story. Who gives a fart about the local fair.”
“The residents that’s who?”
“Then they can write about the fair,” he said laughing. Ellen did not get the joke.
“It’s our job to write this stuff, and you’re the junior.”
“So what’s happening,” said Miles to Karen, who seemed to have added to the aboriginal artifacts on her desk.
“One of the councilors covering our district is going to marry his boyfriend,” she said happily. “He’s making a stand for gays.” Miles was amused to see Karen so delighted over this act of defiance. “It’s Saturday week. We’re hoping the police will break up the ceremony.”
“Great story but, hang on, it’s not illegal to have the ceremony is it?” Miles had a legal turn of mind. He did not know where he got it from, but it was occasionally useful.
“Oh but gays can’t marry.”
“That’s right, but there’s no reason for the cops to break up a ceremony, unless they have a riot or something. I think you’ll find that the ceremony’s not recognised – that’s it, they just won’t be legally married. You can have a ceremony if you want – nothing against that – it’s just not recognised as a marriage by the act.”
“Oh!” Karen’s smile failed. Facts had an unfortunate tendency to mess up good stories. “Well, it’s still a symbol, isn’t it.”
“Not a bad story,” said Miles, wishing one of his councilors would be revealed as having a gay lover, “but timing’s a bit off for the next issue. You’ve got a preview in the one just gone but the big story is the ceremony itself, right? ‘N that’s just after your deadline.”
“Ellen and I were talking about this before. What do we do if something happens – you know, the police bust it up.”
“Well they won’t, so why not do the usual. Get Emma to take a picture of councilor and intended – I dunno, with the wedding cake; and one of ‘em wearing a veil or whatever.. and splash it on the front.”
“This about this gay councilor,” said Jake, walking in through the back door. “He wants to get arrested, I hear.”
“We’re going to run him big, ‘n see if the cops do anything. We can really help gays,” said Karen, her grin back.
“Use the paper as a social weapon, you mean?” said Jake.
Her smile faded again. “Isn’t that what the paper’s there for?”
“I thought it was there for readers to read, not serve minority causes. However worthy the minority,” he added seeing her open her mouth to defend gays. “Do readers care whether one of their councilors is gay? Do they want it thrust down their throats?”
“They should be made to care,” said Karen.
“Why’s that?” Jake had his philosophy hat on. “Doesn’t that mean we’re trying to tell them what to think?”
“When they read about the gay councilor and his lover,” said Miles, heading off what promised to be a tiresome argument, “they’ll want to know where they go for the honeymoon.”
“They will at that,” admitted Jake.
In the round of drinks that followed at the Bugle local the gay councilor was forgotten in favour of the stand-by topic of general bitching about the Bugle Group, and wondering if they could get jobs somewhere – anywhere - else. Ellen was in a foul mood over Nathan who flatly refused to do the basic work of a trainee – that is, the unpopular jobs that no one else wanted to do - and simply did not care what Ellen thought. He went off grinning. Ellen could do little short of complaining to Justin, which she was considering. Miles thought of Angela and wondered again why the chief sub simply did not throw her copy onto the editor in chief’s desk.
Karen also had some news. “I’m in line for the ABC radio job in Karratha,” she told Miles in confidence.
“Karratha? That’s WA isn’t it?”
“Up the coast; two hours flying time from Perth.”
“Ye Gods! ‘N people think that Corroyong’s in the sticks. That’s outback, that is.”
“There are aboriginal communities, and if I stay long enough I get transferred.”
“You could work your way up to television at Broome. If a cyclone hits, you’ll be person on the spot.”
She gave him one of those puzzled-reproachful looks that, Miles noticed, he occasionally received from women. “There’ll be aboriginal communities with problems and that’s all that matters.”
The ladies departed to their respective boyfriends leaving Jake and Miles to grab a hamburger and then, at a whim while passing a video game parlour a few doors from the pub, to play video games. After a couple of rounds on a shooting game, with the local youths busy all around them, they switched to the Daytona car racing game, racing against each other on the intermediate track. Miles beat Jake easily.
“Where did you get so good at this stuff?” asked Jake.
“I’m from the bush. It’s all we do.”
“Yeah, country boy. Let’s see if yer can do it again.”
They were part way through the race on the beginner’s track – they had decided the beginners circuit would make for a fairer competition - when Miles was aware that someone had tapped Jake on the shoulder, just as the philosopher’s video car had pushed past Miles’ vehicle.
“Hang on,” said Jake and promptly crashed. He started again.
“Listen man!” someone slurred. The owner of the voice, the same person hassling Jake, was drunk. Jake elbowed whoever was pestering him to one side and tried to continue with the game, but the other man came back and shook his shoulder. He abandoned the game, got out of his seat and turned to face his tormentor. Miles followed, leaving his car to be counted out by the game.
“What was the big idea?” said Jake. “We’re playing.”
The two reporters found themselves facing off with a group of four young boys who brought the headline ‘Youth gang terrorises city’ to mind. All four were in jeans and T-shirts with denim jackets. Two were sandy haired, pimpled and looked as if they should be doing their homework. They hung back. The other two looked more serious. The one facing off Jake was lanky, of the physical type Miles knew well from up his way, with arms long enough to worry any boxer. The second, who was eyeing Miles, was shorter and much darker, perhaps of Italian extraction. He was wearing a bandana and sunglasses, despite the gloom in the video parlor, as if he was a black from South Central Los Angeles instead of a second generation Italian in a video parlor deep in suburban Sydney. The bandana in particular made the youth so ridiculous – he was too obviously copying style from American films – that Miles would have laughed but for the fact that the youth was also heavily built, and sneering at him.
For their part the youths were surprised by the size of Jake, when he unfolded from the video game, but they had been drinking. And they were stupid.
“These are our machines, man,” said the lanky youth.
“I don’t see your name on ‘em,” said Jake.
“We own these machines man.”
As far as Miles was concerned they could have them but the lanky youth then pushed Jake to emphasise his point. Jake shoved back, hard, throwing the youth into the users of a street fighting machine, scattering them. The youth sprang back, moving as he imagined someone who knew karate might move. As Miles watched all this, stunned, the bandana youth belted the high country man shrewedly in the eye, throwing him back against the chairs of the Daytona machine, then stepped back with a stupid grin on his face, as if he had achieved something. Miles was not really one for fights but where he came from blows to the eye were not taken lightly. More surprised than hurt he sprang back and charged, head down – his favorite tactic (his father had often remarked that his son’s head was the hardest thing about him). More by good luck than skill his skull thumped his opponents nose. Bandana-youth threw his arms around Miles, trying to get him in a head lock, and the pair smashed into another machines. Bandana gave the high country man another whack to the head. Miles kneed him in the groin and heard the youth yell, but he still hung on like grim death while they crashed into another machine. He was aware of Jake wresting with his opponent and the other youths standing around in awe. Then he heard sirens.
“Cops,” said someone.
Jake was suddenly there, trying to drag bandana-youth off Miles. The youth hung on until Jake stomped hard on his foot, then he yelped and let go. The lanky youth had vanished.
“Cm’n mate, time to leave.”
Miles glanced briefly at his opponent who, he noticed with grim satisfaction, had a bloody nose and was rolling on the floor holding his foot, then followed Jake to the rear door. It was alarmed. Jake pushed through the double doors setting off the alarm, and closed it just as quickly stopping the electronic shriek. The sudden rush of cold air stung Miles’ rapidly closing left eye. They weaved through a back alley, walking but trying not to run – they had retained enough sense for that precaution - and into a nearby pub through its back entrance. The toilet was just by the back door.
“Tuck in your shirt mate,” hissed Jake.
Miles duly tucked in his shirt and straightened his clothes, badly disarranged in the fight, as did Jake. One of the pub’s patrons came in, glanced at them curiously but went about his business. Both reporters walked calmly out into the street. A police car had stopped at the video parlor but the police were inside and no one was looking their way, so they walked slowly in the opposite direction.
“We’d better duck into that other pub,” said Jake. “Just in case the police get enthusiastic and look around the streets.”
The fight had not really been either man’s fault but both knew from their reporting work that it would be the police’s job to sort out exactly what happened - who had hit whom and at what point. Perhaps their conduct did not bear strict examination, as they say in the law courts. In all it was best to shoot through and leave the paperwork to someone else.
They reached the second and seedier pub, which was full, and ducked into the toilets where Miles saw that his eye had swollen up badly in the previous few minutes. Together with a big bruise on the side of his face where bandana youth had hit him a second time, it was not a pretty sight.
“Oh great,” he said, “what type of philosophy did you say you followed?”
“Greek philosophers, mate,” said Jake, unabashed at having just got them into a brawl in a video parlor. “Socrates was a soldier; could handle himself in a fight. He was even in pitched battles. Now the Chinese philosophers, they believed in harmony and in finding the way forward.”
“Maybe you should try a bit more Chinese.”
“Maybe.” He grinned.
Jake bought drinks and they wedged themselves in well down the back with Miles facing the wall. The police may have looked in, but neither man noticed. A couple of the other pub patrons observed Miles’ bruises, and one made a remark to his mates about the night being “lively” but otherwise they ignored the two reporters.
Miles and Jake discussed the fight over several rounds, in fact until closing time when Miles realised his chin had gone numb again. There was nothing for it but to accept Jake’s offer of a couch and stagger through Lovett Bay back streets. At the flat, chatting amiably was Tomasina and Anne.
“What have you been doing!” squealed Anne, on seeing Miles.
Tomasina clapped her hands to her mouth. “Oh migod!”
“Um, well… we were just playing Daytona, the racing game at the video parlor,” said Miles lamely.
“How did you get a black eye doing that?” asked Tomasina.
“Some other guys wanted to play it while we were playing it,” said Jake, casually.
“You’re supposed to be a top philosophy student and you still get involved in fights in video parlors,” said Tomasina.
“Hey, look, the other guys didn’t know much about philosophy – except maybe they knew about Darwin, except he was a scientist not a philosopher, and we’re always flunking Darwin.”
“So I see,” said Tomasina, folding her arms.
By that time Anne had found an ice pack in the fridge and handed it to Miles who put it to his eye.
“Thank you,” he said, wincing as he applied the ice pack to his eye, “you’re an angel.”
She sighed. “Drunk again.”