Cate always knew her sense of humour would be her downfall. But she never thought she’d be dumped over a joke.

‘Get out,’ Alistair said. ‘I never want to see you again.’

It wasn’t that she was inappropriate, or secretly racist, or overly fond of puns, more that she often found herself putting her own amusement first in situations where … well, perhaps ‘inappropriate’ was the right word after all.

‘Are you even listening to me? Hello?’

As Alistair shouted, Cate thought back to five minutes earlier that Sunday morning, when she’d been lying in his bed trying to figure out if she really did have a hangover or just needed more sleep. She could tell Alistair was getting annoyed, but increasingly that had become the norm between them. Men always seemed to find her sense of humour attractive when they first met her, but once the relationship inevitably began to fizzle, Cate’s jokes seemed to lose their appeal. When she’d started dating Alistair, she’d thought he was someone she could laugh with – now, the more she tried to lighten the mood, the grimmer it became.

For his part, the ambition that had made him seem so energetic when they’d first met was now looking a lot closer to snobbery. Why else would he be trying to drag her to a polo … game? Match? Race? He’d never even asked her if she wanted to go, and now he was striding around the bedroom, banging and clanging, trying to be annoying enough that she’d have no choice but to get out of bed. She was scared to look out from under the covers in case he was wearing jodhpurs and smacking a riding crop against his thigh.

When she’d said the night before that she was going to go wearing tracksuit pants and a T-shirt that said ‘RUM PUNCH’, he hadn’t seen the joke. Instead, he’d rummaged through the wardrobe where she kept a few staying-over clothes, and when none of them had met his high standards he’d laid out an outfit for her – white shirt, blue blazer, baggy beige pants, all his own clothes – as if she were eight years old. Did he really want her to show up to this posh event in ill-fitting drag, as some Halloween-costume version of him?

‘We’ve got to get going in half an hour,’ he said loudly. ‘It’s a two-hour drive down the coast to the playing field.’

‘Can we put the bed in the car and I’ll sleep the rest of the way?’

He frowned. ‘I told you not to have that second wine.’

‘You didn’t say anything about the third, fourth or fifth.’

‘You knew this was happening,’ he said. ‘You know how important it is to me. I can’t believe you’d act this way when –’

‘It’s sport,’ she groaned. ‘Can you even gamble on it?’

‘Get up, get dressed, get going,’ he said. ‘George and the Quanty boys are going to be there.’

‘I hate their music,’ she said, then giggled. Something thudded against the doona she had over her head. Wow, she thought, none of my jokes are landing. Maybe today’s not the day to test out the ‘Ali-Stair’ gag about his social climbing.

‘This is serious,’ Alistair said. ‘This is serious to me. If we’re going to make the start of the polo you have to get moving right now.’

‘Forget the polo,’ she groaned, ‘I’m more about the YOLO.’

Silence.

‘Wait,’ she said with a giggle, ‘I can do better: I might be about the YOLO, but I draw the line at polo!’

Silence.

Slowly, she pulled the doona down from her face and peered out from the bed’s tangle. Alistair was glaring at her, eyes bulging. His always-hammy complexion had deepened to an intriguing corned-beef shade. He seemed literally too angry to speak.

‘You do know what YOLO means, right?’

‘Get out,’ he said, his surface calm not fooling either of them.

‘Of bed?’

‘Of my house. This relationship is at an end.’

Cate rolled her eyes. ‘At an end? Did I wake up in the 1890s?’

‘Leave. Just leave.’

‘What, you’re dumping me over a YOLO reference?’

‘It’s not –’ he stopped, and rubbed his face. ‘Yes. Yes, it is. Why would you make a YOLO reference? No one’s even said YOLO for, what, five years? What kind of person thinks that’s something they should be saying?’

‘I was … trying to be amusing?’

‘You’re always trying to be amusing! And you never are!’ he spluttered. ‘Everything is a joke to you all the time and –’

‘That’s hardly true.’

‘You have spent the last month trying to come up with a joke about me being a social climber because my name has the word “stair” in it!’

‘No I haven’t,’ Cate said in a small voice.

‘I’ve found your notes! You’ve been leaving rough drafts all around the house! And it’s a shitty joke in the first place! I am not a social climber, so it doesn’t work!’

‘Well, you have to admit you do look upon relationships as a way to raise your social standing …’

‘Then what the fuck was I doing with you?’

Cate just looked at him. ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘I think maybe this is over.’

‘Great. Glad we agree. Now get out.’

She pulled the sheet up to her chin. ‘But I’m not dressed! And I put all my clothes in the wash last night because you wanted me to wear that horsey-set outfit today!’

‘Get out!’ he bellowed. ‘You’re not wearing my clothes because I don’t ever want to see you again.’

‘What kind of monster kicks someone out naked?’

‘Get your clothes out of the washing machine and get out.’ He folded his arms. ‘Put them on, wrap them around you like bandages, whatever. Bye-bye.’

‘But they’ll be all cold and wet …’

‘Hey, like they say, you only live once. Just do your living out of my sight.’

Cate’s jeans were too wet to pull on. But at least she could wear the tracksuit pants once she’d wrung them out a couple of times. And layering all three of her T-shirts, one over the other, would largely avoid the transparent look that comes with soaking wet clothes. Defiantly, she chose RUM PUNCH as the topmost shirt.

‘I’m fucking freezing here,’ she said, shuffling for the front door, leaving puddles on his fancy tiling.

‘Don’t overreact.’

‘To freezing?’

He sneered. ‘I can tell you’re putting on that shivering.’

‘How do you fake shivering?’

‘You should know,’ he said. ‘You’re the one doing it.’

‘I’m really, really going to miss our little conversations.’

‘Just get out.’

‘You’re so kind-hearted,’ she said, ‘they should call you Alistairway To Heaven.’

‘Crap joke.’

‘If you were a real social climber, you’d be called Ali-Lift. Only servants take the stairs.’

‘Get out.’

‘You’re such a massive snob, they wanted to call the TV show Upstairs, Alistairs.’

He slammed the door in her face.

Cate’s sense of humour had first disrupted her love life at the age of twelve, when she was almost-but-not-really going out with a boy named Geoff. Geoff was the star of the school’s under-fourteens football … club? Squad? Team? She’d never cared enough to pay attention to the finer details of sport; all she knew was that he followed her around a lot, and he had a lot of spare time because he’d injured his ankle and so couldn’t play football, which was A Big Deal.

At first everyone wanted them to get together, then once they were together, everyone wanted her to be nicer to him. It was apparently a massive thing that he liked her, because he was basically going to be king of the school the second he was able to play again. But all he talked about was sport! Cate wasn’t all that interested in boys yet, but all the cool girls had boyfriends and once she had one too they seemed slightly more interested in her dumb jokes. Going out with Geoff wasn’t all that difficult either, especially as all it required was standing near him when he talked about football. And not yawning … though it took her a week or so to figure that out.

Then came the big day when Geoff’s ankle was finally healed enough for him to play. Flags went up; special chants were written. The game was on a Saturday morning but the whole school was basically ordered to turn out and show their support for a promising young lad who was clearly destined for great things. Cate took a Garfield comic book with her to read during the boring parts, which she assumed would be all of them.

The crowd around the small suburban oval was three deep as Geoff and his teammates prepared to run out. They hadn’t won a game without Geoff, and now the scent of victory was in the air. The parents had even made a slogan banner for them to run through: IF IT BLEEDS, WE CAN KILL IT seemed a little aggressive to Cate, but clearly the parents were passionate about their sport.

A huge roar went up when Geoff led the team onto the ground. Finally, his promise fulfilled! Finally, the months of suffering were at an end! Finally, they would see their enemies crushed before them! Finally – and then Geoff fell over clutching his leg. A stretcher was called. Slowly, funereally, he was carried from the ground to a dismayed silence from the crowd, broken only by the hysterical laughter coming from a small twelve-year-old girl.

She later tried to blame her reaction on the Garfield book. Sadly, no one believed that a fat lasagne-eating cat could possibly be that funny.

It was shaping up to be a beautiful Sunday, judging by the gleam of morning sunshine through the gaps in Adam’s venetian blinds. He blinked himself awake, adjusting to the greyish light, and reached automatically for his phone on the bedside table before remembering it was still in the pocket of his jeans, which were in a heap on the opposite side of the room.

He gave himself a second before turning to see if she was still there beside him. Saskia, of the wicked laugh and imperiously tilted chin. Yes – she was quite asleep, her hair spilled across the pillow, the ghost of last night’s lipstick still on her mouth. Adam supposed he was wearing the rest of it.

Listening to her soft breathing, watching the small movements of her eyes under their lids and the light striping her face in a vaguely noirish way, Adam felt … happy. He tried not to notice this feeling too much; he kept it at the edge of his mind for fear it would evaporate if considered directly. Don’t over-think this, he reminded himself.

Over-thinking things was Adam’s main problem. He worried about what people thought. He angsted about the significance of events. It was exhausting, living in a fog of possible interpretations. He envied people who could go about their lives without micro-analysing everything. Simple folk. Like his workmates Steve and Renton. They wouldn’t be lying here all filled with feelings. They’d be nudging Saskia awake for another go-around.

Indeed, last night over knock-off drinks Renton had nodded coarsely at Saskia and said, ‘I’d tap that bitch in a second.’ Appalled, Adam followed Renton’s sticky gaze across the room, where a proud-looking girl with tortoiseshell-framed glasses and a mass of dark hair was sitting at the bar. She saw them staring at her and a look of vague distaste crossed her face.

But then she noticed Adam and her expression softened instantly. Did he know her from somewhere? Oh god, had he met her before and didn’t remember? Adam couldn’t just sit there rudely. He got up and went over to the bar, ignoring Renton’s ‘Fuck’s sake Adam, I saw her first!’

‘Hey.’

Saskia’s eyes fluttered open, widening as she registered Adam’s face on the other pillow. She frowned, looking adorably flustered without her glasses on. ‘Hey,’ she mumbled. ‘What … what’s the time?’

Adam pushed the covers aside and hauled himself out of bed. ‘Let me see,’ he said, padding over naked to where his jeans lay, bending to rifle through the pockets.

He found his phone – Ah, shit, three texts from Renton – and turned back to Saskia.

‘It’s only 9.13,’ he said. She’d put her glasses on now, but she still had that dazed look on her face, which had turned quite pink.

‘Okay,’ she said in a funny, strangled voice.

‘No need to get up yet,’ Adam said. ‘Just hang on a minute and I’ll make some coffee.’

He pulled his jeans on and walked into the kitchen, busying himself with the stovetop coffee maker.

‘How do you have it?’ he called.

No answer from the bedroom. Maybe she’d fallen asleep again.

When the coffee was ready, he picked two of his better-looking mugs – plain, grown-up ones with no slogans or cartoon characters – and carried them, steaming, back to the bedroom.

‘Here you – oh. You’re going?’

She had her dress on already, and was sitting on the edge of the bed, pulling on her boots.

‘Yeah, sorry,’ she said evasively.

Adam tried to sound playful. ‘Not even time for a cup of joe before you go?’ He waggled the mugs up and down temptingly.

Saskia was shrugging her coat on now, lifting her hair over the collar. ‘Yeah … No, thanks.’

She was looking everywhere except at him. She cast her gaze around the room, located her handbag on the floor under Adam’s jacket, picked it up, and walked over to where he stood in the doorway.

‘Listen … um …’

‘Adam.’

‘Adam,’ she said, ‘last night was … great.’ She reached a hand up to cup his face, catching his eye at last. She stroked the side of his neck and over his collarbone, her palm lingering for a moment on his bare chest. She heaved a sigh. ‘But I have to go now.’

He just stood there awkwardly, gripping his two mugs of coffee like a stupid dork.

‘Can I get your number? I mean, I’d like to hang out with you another time, maybe –’

‘I’m sorry,’ Saskia said, ‘but I, uh, really have to go. I … um … I’ve got to save the president.’

As he puzzled over this implausibly republican emergency, Saskia edged past him along the hall and swiftly let herself out of his apartment.

Adam slumped. He was dumbfounded, and bitterly disappointed. As he turned to head back into the kitchen, he noticed the framed All the President’s Men movie poster on his bedroom wall.

He poured the coffee straight down the sink.

Heading home, Cate had plenty of time to dwell on the fact that she was now single. Alistair had picked her up the previous night, and he wasn’t about to drive her home. She hadn’t been able to find a taxi driver willing to pick up someone who looked like they’d just crawled out of a storm drain; then, when she finally found a bus, the driver told her she wasn’t allowed to
sit down.

Alistair lived in a half-empty McMansion out in the ’burbs; Cate’s house was a crumbling inner-city terrace, and it took her two miserable hours to get home. She hadn’t agreed to go to the polo with Alistair, but she hadn’t exactly told him no, either. She’d just made a bunch of jokes and hoped he’d get the message. Why am I always doing this? Cate berated herself, as the bus trundled slowly down a side street.

Men always liked a funny girl at the start of a relationship, but when things got serious, they wanted her to stop joking. Not that Cate treated her relationships lightly; there’d been a time – there’d been a long stretch of time – when she’d thought Alistair could have been someone special. But being funny was just how Cate saw the world. It wasn’t that she needed to be more serious; she needed a guy who could see the serious side of her. Good luck finding one of them! she thought, staring out the window.

Once she arrived home, she took some dry clothes off her back line. The idea had been to get changed outside rather than drip water all over her carpet. But now she wondered if any of her neighbours had seen her undress – especially the creepy dude who lived behind her. Oh well. Giving out a free show wouldn’t be the worst thing that happened to her today.

It was lunchtime, and she hadn’t even had breakfast yet. Her hangover was fading and her appetite was back, but there was nothing in the fridge. Fast food seemed like the best option. Comfort food – she needed it, she deserved it, and she was going to have it. For breakfast and lunch. And dinner. People with broken hearts shouldn’t have to cook, she told herself. Or wash dishes afterwards. Plus, fast food was what defeated people ate. ‘I should be with my people,’ she muttered, and headed out to wallow in her misery.

Problem was, after she’d made the ten-minute walk to the Chicken Shaq outlet she’d decided to make her new home, the burger she wanted was no longer on the menu.

‘We’ve got the Smacker now,’ the bored teen behind the counter sighed. ‘It’s basically the same as the Clucker, only cheese is extra and there’s a new sauce.’

‘I don’t want a new sauce,’ Cate said, pretending she couldn’t hear the whine in her voice. ‘The sauce was the best bit.’

‘Sorry. You want a Smacker?’

‘I want a Clucker. The whole point of comfort food is that it doesn’t change. Who thinks change is comforting? I mean, I guess homeless guys must; they’re always asking for change.’

The bored teen sighed. ‘Did you want anything from our current menu?’

‘An emotional connection to a time when I felt loved and cared for?’

‘Hey, just what you see, pal.’

Cate thought for a moment. ‘Is there a food court anywhere near here?’

It turned out there was a shopping mall a short bus ride down the road. It was bound to have a wide range of fast food outlets to choose from. She just wanted to sit somewhere quiet, and eat something familiar, and not have to think so much about how everything in her life sucked. She just wanted a table she could stare at for hours on end without having to worry that something was going to remind her of Alistair, and of how he was rubbish, and of how she couldn’t even keep a relationship going with a guy who was rubbish. At least a decent hamburger wouldn’t judge her.

The mall was slightly dingy – a few too many empty stores, and a few more closed for Sunday – but the food court was open, and there were half-a-dozen sushi and Indian places to choose from between the burger joints and Chicken Shaqs. There were even plenty of empty tables to sit at; it wasn’t until her third complete orbit around the court that she realised she was in no fit state to choose from a range this extensive. Nothing looked worthwhile. Nothing looked like it could fill the Clucker-shaped hole in her heart. Nothing looked like a meal she could stare at for hours wondering where it had all gone wrong.

The bottle shop was off to one side, near the exit that led to the car park. She wandered in as if drawn by an unseen force. So much alcohol! This was a far better place to grieve than a grotty old food court. She made a beeline for the white wine and started browsing. It took her a moment to figure out why the clerk was shouting at her.

‘Lady, you can’t just come in here and start opening bottles. You’ve got to pay for that.’

‘But the supermarket lets you sample stuff all the time,’ Cate protested. ‘If you eat it before you get to the checkout, it’s free.’

‘Yeah, nah, I don’t think so. You’re gonna have to pay for that wine.’

‘What wine?’ she said. ‘This bottle was empty when I found it.’

Her phone beeped. She checked the screen while the clerk glared at her. It was Vanessa: she wanted to know how the polo was going. Didn’t go. Broke up instead, Cate texted back. The phone rang seconds later.

‘We’re down the park. Come join us,’ Vanessa said.

‘No, I’ve made plans. But thanks.’

‘Lying on the floor under a blanket does not count as “plans”.’

‘I’m at the bottle shop.’

Vanessa gasped. ‘Cate, no. Leave! Leave now, don’t buy anything, and come join us at the park.’

‘But if I don’t buy anything I’m going to get in trouble.’

‘Forget the booze – what you need is some bracing open air.’

‘I’m too emotionally fragile to fly a kite.’

‘What? You don’t need to bring your kite, just come hang with us. See you in fifteen.’

Cate mumbled something noncommittal.

‘Or we’re coming to get you.’

Twenty-five minutes later and clutching an empty but paid-for bottle of wine, Cate was walking across the last oval before the cliff that led down to the river. Kirsty’s orange bat-winged kite was rising off the thermals and Vanessa’s remote-controlled drone buzzed around threateningly. She would rather have stayed at home and moped, but experience had taught her that the initial break-up debrief was best done as soon as possible – and during daylight hours, otherwise the boozing would get out of hand and she might end up having poorly judged rebound sex. Cate had made a promise to herself that she’d only choose her sleeping partners sober after spending the night with a guy who’d turned out to have football-themed bedsheets. Then again, if Alistair was the best she could do sober, bring on the booze.

Kirsty was the first to see her, waving excitedly as Cate approached. Kirsty was a little woman with big hair, a bigger
smile, and an even bigger hip flask. As far as her hair was concerned, big was an understatement. She had the kind of thick, bouncy hair you saw in shampoo commercials where they’d brought in Hollywood special effects artists to animate it. But Kirsty was unaware of the power her hair had, barely seeming to notice the endless, grasping hands reaching out to touch it. And yet she had once drunkenly confessed to Cate that she had nightmares about creatures clawing at her hair every night; whether that explained her steady drinking was an open question.

Beside her Vanessa looked like an Amazon. Tall, thin and blonde, Vanessa projected an air of severity. Some might even call her ruthless. There were whispers she was really a robot. Vanessa was well aware of these rumours, and had done nothing to dispel them; sometimes she even walked jerkily around her office chanting monotonously, ‘Does not compute!’ and ‘Kill all humans!’ Coming from anyone else, this would have seemed funny. From Vanessa, it was deeply unsettling.

‘Poor you!’ Vanessa said, throwing her non-steering arm around Cate, who made a sad face. ‘What did he do wrong?’

‘It was the polo,’ Kirsty said, not turning around. ‘Am I right?’

Cate nodded. ‘Uh-huh. He didn’t like my joking about it.’

‘Awww,’ Vanessa said.

‘I’d offer you a swig from my flask,’ said Kirsty, ‘but I can see you’re way ahead of me.’

‘Alistair is a total tool,’ Vanessa said, bringing her drone buzzing over their heads. It was a metal X-shape with rotor blades at each end. Nudging the controls with her acrylic nails, Vanessa was good enough with it that she could make it hover at eye-level right in front of her face. Which kind of defeated the purpose of their kite-flying club, but Vanessa always did what she wanted.

They’d been friends since high school. At university, they’d all done business-related courses: Cate studied marketing, Vanessa and Kirsty did commerce. They’d managed to avoid taking on board the smarmy jargon and aggressive money-making ambition, but as they’d moved ahead in their respective careers, they’d found it harder to make time to get together. A shared hobby was the solution. Well, other than drinking – you could hardly talk in bars these days. They’d tried knitting, dog grooming, trainspotting, scuba diving, rambling, movie nights and going on television game shows, but nothing had stuck.

Kite-flying had been big a few years earlier, thanks to a virtual reality app where you attached your phone to a kite, and wore special glasses that turned your kite into a fantastical flying creature. The one time Cate and her friends had tried the app, Kirsty had thrown up within two minutes. She claimed it was vertigo; they suspected it was the pinot noir she’d had with
lunch. Still, even without the app, kite-flying was great. It got them out in the fresh air and gave them some casual exercise. And unlike most indoor venues, the park wasn’t full of sleazy guys trying to hit on them. A year later, they still hadn’t got bored.

‘You are much, much better off without that guy,’ Vanessa continued.

‘Are you sure it’s over?’ asked Kirsty. ‘You’re not going to get back together in a couple of days so if I tell you he’s a fucking dickhead now you’ll forever hold it against me?’

‘It’s over,’ Cate said.

‘Awww,’ Vanessa said, giving her another one-armed squeeze.

‘Well, the lesson is obvious,’ Kirsty said, ‘never date a fuckwit.’

‘Or a dickhead,’ said Vanessa, her drone whizzing around their heads.

‘Such a fucking dickhead,’ Kirsty agreed. ‘He liked polo? Please.’ Her hair was blowing across her face, and she tossed it back; even on a Sunday its volume was turned up to eleven. ‘Strings, Vanessa,’ she added loudly, her kite diving as she tried to avoid the drone. ‘Watch the strings.’

‘Get a real flying machine,’ Vanessa said, sending the drone soaring.

‘You are totally missing the point,’ Kirsty said, her kite spinning in wide circles. ‘Having a motor takes all the challenge out of it.’

‘Sometimes you just want a sure thing,’ Vanessa said.

‘I’d settle for anything right now,’ Cate said.

‘You don’t mean that,’ Vanessa said. ‘The only way for you now is up.’

‘It sure doesn’t feel like it. Alistair was the best of a bad bunch.’

‘A rotten fucking bunch,’ Kirsty said. ‘Remember that guy who referred to foreplay as “saucing the pie”?’

Vanessa laughed. ‘Or the guy who’d be feeling you up, and then he’d start singing the Bird’s Eye Fish Fingers jingle?’

‘What about the guy who farted in bed?’ Kirsty snorted. ‘He said he was revving the engine up.’

‘It was barely a two-stroke.’ Cate scrunched her face in disgust. ‘Now you see why I thought I was onto a good thing with Alistair. He was a jerk. I knew he was a jerk, but he was a fun jerk. Sometimes.’

‘More like, he was having the fun while you were doing the jerk,’ shrugged Kirsty. ‘Fuck, he wanted you to go to the polo with him. The polo.’

‘He didn’t want you for you,’ Vanessa said. ‘He wanted someone pretty to hang off his arm while he hangs around a bunch of horses.’

Cate’s face brightened. ‘So you think I’m pretty?’

‘Ugh, shut up,’ Vanessa said. ‘We are your nearest and dearest and we think you are awesome. You get today to mope over this loser because breaking up with losers is hard – as soon as you break up with them all their loser qualities vanish. But let me list them once more: he is a snob, and a bore, and you never really liked him in the first place.’

‘The sex,’ Kirsty said, ‘was rubbish. That’s a direct quote.’

‘But what does it say about me that I was going out with a guy like that?’ asked Cate. ‘And that he was the one who dumped me?’

Kirsty flicked her hair again. ‘He dumped you because you, what, made a joke about polo? Wanting to go to the polo is the fucking joke here.’

‘He’s a loser because he dumped you,’ Vanessa said. ‘That’s all there is to it. You’re awesome, you deserve better, he’s off looking at horses playing hockey and you’re here with us and we’re brilliant. So that makes you the winner of today.’

‘The sex really was shit,’ Cate said.

‘Focus on that,’ Vanessa said.

‘I will,’ said Cate. ‘I’m sick and tired of spending time with guys just because they seem nice, or interesting, or even just show me some attention. I want what I want, and that’s what I want. You know?’

‘Absolutely,’ Vanessa said, bringing her drone around in a triumphant swoop. But the effect was spoiled by a gust of wind that tipped it up on one side, digging an arm into the ground so it cartwheeled along, its rotor blades snapping off and flying away. ‘Shit.’

‘Well, what the fuck do you want?’ Kirsty said, as Vanessa hurried off to the wreck of her drone. Flying was done for the day; the trio would be retiring to their regular hangout, Café Nom Nom, for the rest of the afternoon.

‘That’s the trick, isn’t it?’ Cate replied, watching Kirsty slowly reel her kite in. ‘Finding out what I want.’ She shrugged. ‘Someone hot. You can’t go wrong with someone hot.’

‘So,’ Adam said, turning up the cinema thermostat, ‘how’d you go on Saturday after I left?’

‘Shit,’ said Renton, viciously dipping an ice cream cone in melted chocolate.

‘Aww, buddy,’ Steve Rogers laughed, ‘did Adam cut your lunch again?’

‘Women are people, not lunch,’ Adam said. ‘And Renton, you could totally chat them up if you want to. Just act normally. You know, rather than like a complete tool.’

Monday afternoon, the three of them were in the storage room in the bowels of the cinema, where the big chest freezer jostled for space with boxes of paper cups, straws, popping corn and wafer cones. The staff lockers were here. So was the lost property box full of black umbrellas, black scarves and single black gloves. Then there was the giant vat of chocolate, which was never, ever emptied, only allowed to solidify before being topped up if necessary and melted down again for the next batch of choc tops.

Adam, Renton and Steve were gathered now around the choc cauldron like Macbeth’s three witches. Steve was scooping as Renton dipped and Adam packaged the choc tops that would be sold at the candy bar upstairs. They were all wearing black pants with the cinema’s uniform shirts: sky-blue, embroidered all over with pink dots. Adam’s shirt was half untucked. Steve’s was preposterously tight in the biceps and rolled over his forearms. Renton’s had a splodge of chocolate on the front. It was an old stain. Chocolate just never comes out properly in the wash.

A family-friendly movie about a dog was opening that week; all three were also wearing shaggy fake-fur tails clipped to the backs of their waistbands. Pinned to their shirts were large promotional button badges that read: I HAD A ‘RUFF’ TIME AT WAGGIN’ ! Adam didn’t care if he looked ridiculous; it was just a lightweight kids’ film. It’d be gone in a week. Steve didn’t care, either. He never cared about the movies they showed; he was only working at the cinema to make industry contacts. But Renton hated the film. He’d slammed it on his review website BackedUpToilet.com: ‘This dog of a film should be
put down!’

‘But hang on,’ Adam had said when he read this review, ‘wasn’t it movie of the year on your other website?’

‘Everything’s movie of the year on BestMovieOfTheYear.com!’ Renton had said.

‘Why have you even got two websites?’

‘I do BackedUpToilet for the cred, but the film publicists love BestMovieOfTheYear. I’m quoted on every poster; they send me free tickets and loads of swag. And then I rubbish their films on my other website. It’s the perfect crime!’

‘Yeah, a crime against your readers!’ Steve had sneered.

‘Why is it even called BackedUpToilet?’ Adam had said.

‘Because every real cinema’s got a backed up toilet! All these sterile multiplexes with their clean bathrooms, freshly vacuumed carpets and bleached-out atmosphere – they’re where movies go to die!’

‘You’d rather a cinema where people go to die?’ Steve had said.

‘I want a cinema where movies live!’

Steve shook his head. ‘More like a cinema where bacteria live.’

At this point, Adam had to put a stop to it. ‘Speaking of which, maybe we should get back to cleaning now. The audience really took Professor Pantswetter literally tonight.’

Now, Steve was staring intently at Adam. ‘So, did you nail her?’

Adam stared back.

‘Did ya?’

Adam gave in and nodded. ‘Not that it’s any of your business, Cap.’

Steve howled and tweaked Adam’s fake tail. ‘Ahh-wooo! You dog!’

‘I saw her first,’ grumbled Renton.

‘Did you do it …’ Steve dry-humped the cauldron, making his own tail bounce, ‘doggy-style?’

Adam squirmed away from Steve. ‘I thought she was great,’ he said. ‘Well, I thought … ah, she didn’t even know what All the President’s Men was about! She thought it was about saving the president!’

‘What a loser,’ Renton said.

‘That was your dealbreaker?’ Steve said. ‘I mean, if she didn’t know what Ant-Man was about …’

‘A guy who dresses up as an ant?’

‘Oh my god Adam, he can become the size of an ant!’ said Renton.

‘No, dipshit,’ retorted Steve, ‘he can control ants.’

‘Well, look, Ant-Man isn’t really my thing …’

‘It’s not that hard to understand, Adam,’ Renton said. ‘He’s a man! Who does ant-related things!’

‘How did we even get onto Ant-Man?’ said Adam, slipping another choc top into a cellophane sleeve.

‘Hey, you should totally cosplay Ant-Man at the Christmas party,’ Steve said.

‘Haha, and tell people you came as Adam Ant!’

Steve and Renton both laughed and fist-pumped. ‘Yessss!’

Adam did not laugh. ‘Whatever, guys. I’ve got heaps of double choc here; better dip some more boysenberry.’

Steve punched Adam lightly on the shoulder. ‘Aw, mate. It was just a joke. So you liked this one, eh?’

‘Well, yeah. I wouldn’t have slept with her if I didn’t like her.’

Renton and Steve looked momentarily puzzled.

‘Well, I wish I’d gone drinking with you guys,’ Steve said. ‘But, y’know, I had to get those headshots done.’ He smoothed his hair back with one hand, leaving a smear of ice cream on his forehead.

Renton stifled a snigger. ‘Yeah Cap, gotta think of your acting career.’

‘Stop calling me “Cap”.’

‘Your fucking name is Steve Rogers,’ Renton said, ‘and you get mad when we make Captain America jokes.’

‘I’m not mad,’ Steve said, ‘It’s just unoriginal.’

‘For once I agree,’ Adam said. ‘Why does everything have to come down to comic book superheroes?’

‘Ask Hollywood, man,’ Renton said.

‘Superheroes or supernatural romance,’ Steve said.

‘Like that bullshit Consumption series,’ Renton said. ‘Teenage girls eat that up, but it’s shit.’

‘They eat up Consumption, do they?’ Steve laughed.

Adam sighed and let the others rabbit on without him. He never wanted to discuss his love life with his coworkers; he suspected they would even mock him for using the term ‘love life’. But because they insisted on dragging him to the bar across from the cinema for Friday and Saturday night knock-off drinks, they always noticed when Adam took a girl home, and then insisted on prodding him for the kind of gory details Adam didn’t really feel like sharing.

He was only working the cinema job to finance his next short film, which certainly would not be anything like Consumption, or Ant-Man for that matter. It was a two-hander: a psychological drama set in a dystopian world where each citizen is assigned a government agent to spy on their every move. It raised important issues about the intrusion of the state into private life, the essential asymmetry of the panopticon, the spread of bureaucracy, and the intimacy that can grow between spies and those they surveil. If it came out well, Adam was hoping to seek funding to expand it into a feature. It was called Metadata.

Ever since casting his stuffed toy polar bear as Charles Foster Kane in his own childhood adaptation of Citizen Kane (which, he’d read in a library book, was the greatest film of all time), Adam had thought it would be fun to run a movie set. While other kids his age were renting I Know What You Did Last Summer and Dumb and Dumber, Adam was working his way through the French New Wave and the screwball comedies of Ernst Lubitsch and Preston Sturges. And while his peers worshipped Jason Akermanis and Gavin Wanganeen, Adam worshipped Akira Kurosawa and Michelangelo Antonioni.

He’d still played football – growing up in a country town, that was just what you did. It was pretty much all anyone talked about at school on Mondays. Footy was also a way to stop his parents from hovering in the lounge room doorway. ‘You shouldn’t be spending so much time watching old movies,’ his mum would say. ‘You’ll get square eyes, love.’

He sensed she wasn’t actually worried about ocular strain. A puzzled look had come over her face when, at age eleven, Adam announced he was using his family’s camcorder to film a sci-fi drama in the vein of Tarkovsky’s Solaris. It would star his polar bear in a clear plastic space helmet Adam had made from the top of a two-litre soft-drink bottle, its spout forming a futuristic spike. ‘I’m calling it Captain Horny,’ Adam told his mother.

To Adam it seemed ridiculous to ostracise one guy for liking fine cinema, yet treat another guy as a hero for kicking the winning goal. Which wasn’t exactly difficult. Adam himself had done it once, and found himself hoisted on his fellow team members’ shoulders on a victory lap around the oval. After the first lap he’d tried to hop down, but Robbo’s grip on his left thigh was suspiciously strong, while Davo wouldn’t let go of his other leg. And after fifteen minutes and six more laps, the opposing team had gone back to the change rooms while the crowd was still chanting ‘AD-AM! AD-AM!’ Footy was weird.

Well, that was how things were in the country, perhaps. But Adam had moved to a much larger town to study film and television production at university, and he’d been too focused on his studies to pay much attention to the people around him. Now he was living in inner-city bohemia, at the epicentre of screen culture, where all the action was, surrounded by far more sophisticated people.

As he bagged yet another choc top, Steve Rogers was doubled over in fits of tear-stained laughter at Renton, who was mincing about the room wearing a black beret from the lost property box and a goatee of melted chocolate. ‘Ooh, look at me Señor,’ he was shrieking, ‘I’m Dirty Sanchez.’

Adam sighed.

Cate was the deputy publicity director at Sambo Stadium – named after a local sportsman and not the racial epithet. As publicity jobs went, it was … tricky. To begin with, it was a giant building on the edge of the CBD: how much publicity did it really need if a couple hundred thousand people could see it just by looking out their windows? She’d actually made that joke to one of the seriously high-up corporate types once, but he was drunk and staring at her legs, so she managed to get away
with it.

That wasn’t to say Cate wasn’t serious about her work. She’d spent her early career as a cog in a giant corporation’s publicity machine, and she’d reasoned that working at Sambo Stadium would be a great chance to get more responsibility on a smaller team. But it turned out that being on a smaller team meant she had to do more of the nitty-gritty work: making sure promotional offers were worded right, keeping the various corporate box-holders happy with their sightlines, and so on. And on Monday, slumping through the vast cavernous spaces between the underground car park and the small office building bolted to the stadium’s side, she could no longer ignore her job’s biggest drawback.

‘I hate sport,’ she said to the protesters who were permanently camped outside the stadium entrance.

‘Yeah, well I hate racism,’ said a stringy-haired man in a buckskin jacket, carrying a sign that said, ‘NO TOLERANCE FOR PREJUDICE’.

‘Fair enough, Gareth,’ Cate said. ‘See you this afternoon.’

‘See you, Cate!’ he said, as she drove in.

‘I hate sport,’ she said to Dave, the car park attendant.

He didn’t look up. He was watching a replay of yesterday’s game on his phone.

‘I hate sport,’ Cate said to Isobelle, the receptionist, on arriving at their beige, slightly out-of-date offices. Isobelle didn’t turn around. She was hanging a framed football jumper on the wall behind the front desk.

‘I hate sport,’ she said to Mary, the office admin, when she stepped out of the elevator on the executive floor.

‘Who doesn’t?’ Mary said. ‘Coffee?’

‘We have coffee?’

‘You didn’t bring me coffee?’

‘Why would I bring coffee in to work?’

‘I sent an email saying the machine was broken,’ Mary said.

‘I know. That’s why I asked if we had coffee.’

‘I sent the email so you’d bring me some coffee.’

‘Oh,’ Cate said. ‘I got dumped on the weekend.’

‘And your boyfriend has my coffee?’

‘I’m going to go cry in my office.’

Mary turned back to her computer. ‘Better look for my coffee while you’re in there.’

And that set the tone for the day. Four hours of answering emails that had built up over the weekend – there’d been some kind of sporting event on, and generally speaking, everyone seemed happy with the result, but there was always that one little thing they figured she’d want to know about, which, really, no. Four hours of updating the Sambo Stadium social media feeds, and explaining to outraged Americans that ‘Sambo’ was the nickname of a successful Australian sportsman. And half an hour of staring out the window wondering where it had all gone wrong.

Not with Alistair, of course. He’d been half a jerk right from the start. But in general. Thirty was getting close, and she’d always seen herself at this stage as having, if not a giant ring on her finger, then at least a steady relationship with a steady guy. The kind of relationship that faded into the background a lot of the time – something you could rely on while focusing on your career. Or focusing on having fun on the weekends. Or just focusing on anything that wasn’t finding a guy.

Apart from Alistair, the closest she’d come to male interest in the last month was a weirdo who’d tried to high-five her on her way through the stadium’s car park. He was wearing a sports team scarf on a Tuesday, which ruled him out even if he hadn’t also been wearing a team cap, jumper and tracksuit pants. She’d shaken her head and hurried past.

Behind her, the guy had bellowed, ‘That’s weak, lady. You’re weak. You have no charisma!’

‘I do have charisma!’ she’d said. Just not loud enough for him to hear.

Ugh. All this stuff was boring. And yet, not quite as boring as the prospect of going home to an empty house and ordering something toxic for dinner. Hmm, dinner, she thought as she packed up for the day. Guess I should probably try and eat healthy now that I’m back on the market.

By Friday afternoon, there were four days’ worth of pizza boxes piled up by her sink and she was sitting in a meeting still wondering where it had all gone wrong. Seriously – she worked at a sports stadium. If she couldn’t find a smart, successful, halfway handsome man here, something was massively awry.

Even the boardroom where this meeting was being held seemed to mock her: three of the four walls (the fourth was nothing but floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the ground) were lined with photos of famous sportspeople who’d played here. Wall-to-wall babes, Cate thought sadly. She was sitting with her back to the windows, along with a couple of other department heads. Facing her was a line of accountants and lawyers who presumably were useful in some capacity, though she never saw them outside of situations like this.

‘So, what’s the point of all this?’ That was John Brunner, who ran the stadium. He had been hired, Cate was convinced, entirely on the basis of his incredibly thick head of hair. His pelt must have assured the shadowy institutional investors who owned the place that, if nothing else, he could maintain the ground cover essential for the smooth running of such an arena. Brunner didn’t look happy at having been called to this meeting; anything that kept him away from the squad of groundskeepers Sambo Stadium employed displeased him.

‘The point,’ the tall, severe-looking woman on Cate’s left said as she stood, ‘is that we need to find new sponsors. Now.’

This was Ursula, Cate’s boss. Ursula always gave the impression that she had a horse waiting outside ready to race her off to some windswept plain – though the only way to that windswept plain was via some kind of obstacle course where they handed out points based on style. One of the men around the office had tried to get everyone to call her ‘Fate’, as in ‘Fate is a cruel mistress’. Soon after that he was gone. Cate liked to think Ursula had buried him under the centre square, but a few weeks later she’d seen him on a train heading for the beach.

Usually Cate wouldn’t have been invited to a meeting like this – Ursula would have passed along anything she needed to know, which was usually ‘Corporate wants more booze in their boxes for this week’s game’ – but Ursula had announced she was heading overseas for a vaguely defined, eight-week ‘fact-finding tour’. Cate would be taking her place and Ursula wanted her to be up to speed. Cate was still trying to find someone she could high-five over this: Ursula had stared blankly at her when she’d raised her hand at the news, while Alistair had tried to turn her high-five gesture into foreplay. He’d had to stand on his head to line his groin up with her hand; she’d been so impressed by his determination she’d almost gone along with it.

‘How much money are we short?’ Brunner asked.

‘Serious money,’ said one of the accountants on the other side of the table. ‘We spent a lot on payouts after that thing where the players’ change room ceiling fell in.’

‘Sounds serious,’ Brunner said.

The accountant shrugged.

A small, balding man on Cate’s side of the table spoke up. ‘Obviously, what we need to do here is expand our sporting –’

‘Oh, Isaac,’ Ursula sighed.

‘Shut up, Isaac,’ groaned one of the accountants.

‘Sport is for losers,’ said Brunner’s admin, Hugo.

‘What were you thinking, Isaac?’ Cate said, shaking her head.

‘It’s a sports ground!’ Isaac said loudly.

‘And you’re an idiot,’ countered Ursula.

‘How does thinking a sports ground could earn more money by bringing in more sport make me an idiot?’ he said, almost shouting.

‘Calm down, Isaac,’ Brunner said. ‘You raise a good point.’ He paused. ‘Wait, did I say “good”? I meant to say “stupid”.’

‘Fuck this shit,’ Isaac said.

‘Why the hell would we want to put on more sport?’ Ursula said. ‘If anything, we want less sport here.’

‘It’s a sporting ground!’ Isaac said. ‘Sports!’

‘Isaac,’ Cate said, feeling briefly sorry for the deluded idiot. ‘We’ve got all the sports we can handle. How many sports teams do we have based here?’

‘Two. Three if you count the summer –’

‘Three. And how many other stadiums of this size are there in town?’

‘None.’

‘So where else have they got to go if they don’t like what we have to offer?’

‘They could easily move towns, or finance building –’

‘Where else could they go?’

Isaac looked at the surface of the table. ‘Nowhere.’

‘Nowhere,’ Ursula said. ‘Because they’re sports teams. Where else are they going to play without us? A patch of dirt by the river? They need us, and we need more money. But if we try to squeeze any more money out of them, they’ll run to the government and complain about how much they’re being charged. And if the government thinks there’s that much money to be made in sport, they might start thinking about building another sports ground to cut our lunch. So we can’t screw over sport any more for a year or two. Which means, Isaac, that if we want to grow the business, more sport is out.’

Brunner shook his luxuriant head. ‘Fucking sport.’

‘Fuck, I hate sport,’ Hugo said.

‘It really is shit,’ said Ursula.

‘My boyfriend dumped me because I didn’t want to go to a sporting event with him,’ Cate said, hanging her head.

‘Good on you,’ Brunner said. ‘He sounds like an idiot.’

‘We work at a sporting ground!’ Isaac said. This time everyone ignored him.

Ursula turned to regard Cate. ‘That guy dumped you?’

‘It’s no biggie,’ Cate said, not quite convincingly. ‘I know you’ve been busy organising your fact-finding mission.’

‘We’ll talk after,’ said Ursula. ‘I have a proposal you might find … intriguing.’