Windows

Windows on to Darling Harbour. In crowded press conferences. In upmarket rooms with pastries and coffee. Bored because the meeting ran overtime. Happy because the story was actually news, for once; bound for a run. Easy work, on a platter, competent PR people, the issue of the day, petrol prices, something that affects everyone. We couldn't have been more alarmed in our own hearts, frozen from the glaciers of the past, from a thousand other stories and a life that had worn thin, the jocularity, as he smiled with plastic teeth and argued for coherence. They would never be with him again. They would never be sane. He was born with the lost twin syndrome and it was here to stay, always waiting for the phone call that never came, always thinking there was someone else there when there never was, always longing for company when there was none to be had, always making more for dinner than they could possibly eat, as if the rest of the village was likely to pop in for supper. This wasn't a village, not anymore. The snow wasn't frozen in the paddock outside. The fire wasn't burning, keeping them warm through the long winter. There were four fireplaces in his house in Redfern and none of them were functional, not to mention that coal fires were banned anyway. He had just been fined $105 for a local election he didn't even remember was on the cards. It was heavily promoted everywhere, the man told him, and he couldn't remember any of it. He found himself dazed with fury, all the arseholes have already got to me, he spat down the phone; unsaid, and you're just another in the long queue. Which of course he was, as he struggled to be polite. Smile and the world smiles with you, he pronounced, but the platitudes ran thick and fast and he could feel things going wrong inside of him. He didn't want to let go. He didn't want to escape anymore, he wanted to cling to the surface of the planet for as long as he could. There were too many things left undone; and even though that bubble of friends, the good years which had fueled him into melancholy for the rest of the days, even though in reality they hadn't lasted very long he remembered them clearly as the years that formed him. Irrevocably. The laughter clear, splattered on the street. The headaches only just beginning them. The wry twist of pain that distinguished him from everything around. When all he wanted to do was disappear. But nothing was too good, for him, for them. They awakened into a war post-Iraq, post the Twin Towers, post everything, and whatever they experienced was tiny in contrast to the great agonies on the other side of the planet. He could dream now, if not at peace. And look out the window and laugh with the others. For it was coming now, the different time. He could only last today, feel safe for today. Because tomorrow marked the beginning of a harsher time. The kids played on the Play Station and he warmed his hands at an imaginary fire place. We will all be welcome in the new tomorrow. The rapture the yanks called it. Well bless my socks; never hope to die. The bars were a remote lure in contrast to the new beginnings.