Cardy had a long way to Monday.
The thoughts of the sepia hued sunset that lived beyond today enriched the penultimate start of another shift and called the moths of revelry to assemble around the lightbulb of hedonism–the slump of Monday morning not yet ordaining to obscure their delusion.
Yes, it was hot, yes, the inevitability of trackwork had made them walk several blocks beyond what was considered an inner-city marathon, but the sky was blue. How often could a person sit down and take in the general beauty of a weather forecast guessed correctly and effervescent happiness of the meteorologist that predicted it.
It was always a gamble, weather; Cardy had often thought about establishing some kind of betting system wherein a high chance of rain would activate a multi-ball–they didn’t really know how gambling worked but was informed that it was fun enough when you got into the stride of it.
‘How do you put the money on the horse,’ they had asked the tired-eyed bookmaker who worked their bar on Saturdays.
The bookmaker just sighed and receded into the faded away look of a person seven races past their point of bankruptcy.
Feeling the absent weight of their bookie bag, the bookmaker still didn’t have enough desperation to take an innocent person’s money. The moths will starve damn it, he thought before shouting ‘all bets are off’, how could he take money from a person who thinks that you have to donate to the TAB, so each horse feels like it has something to run for.
‘All bets off,’ the bookmaker repeated, pulling the bag behind their back and assuming a defeated air.
The bucks party had run through his meagre holdings, Norma, the casual gambling addict, had suddenly become a savant and had picked the last four trifectas of the group races on that day.
Where had this come from? Why was everyone so inclined to win today? The brutalist reel of odds continued to tick over in front of the bookmaker, every horse was at long odds, why was nothing a favourite?
Race 10 Rosehill, only one horse running, and the odds were still at 10 to 1; for the first time in twenty years the unflappable bookie had thrown down his trilby in defeat.
‘Take it you harpies!’ he yelled, stomping on scattered dreams and bidding farewell to the world of equine running predictions, ‘I was self-made,’–they were not–‘and whatever you try to sling against me will fall into the harbour along with you!’
Storming out of the Tab the ex-bookmaker flashed a rude gesture to the room and moved with a freedom that many would pay a great deal for.
‘It’s not every day you get to sack yourself’ said Cardy, as they scrapped another half-touched salad into the waste bin and then blasted the plate with a jet from the washing station.
Pubs were fun, the rolling wave of quiet, to busy, to a stampede were an unending patch of drunks and underpaying overtime.
How many people had they comforted for mistaking ash trays as the complementary nuts? Why did the smell of old carpet only seem to grow worse when a window was opened? In 2 a.m. hazed patches of walking home of Cardy would wonder why they didn’t work somewhere more agreeable, like a warehouse.
The hours suited a student in all the ways that were contradictory, the pay was a pittance, and the abuse was abundant. It might only be the revelry of the lunch shifts that kept them nostalgic about the bar job that will probably make them drop out of university.
Sun dappled days that made the beer garden tables tacky and brought dogs into the front bar; smiling sports fans that were fiscally irrelevant enough to forget that their team had stopped playing four hours ago, these were Cardy’s brethren, the few that they would gladly change a keg for.
There was Mick, a grim-faced financial auditor who once admitted to making a sapient Excel spreadsheet that caused their job to become irrelevant. He came in every Thursday for a lunch meeting and usually rolled the minutes over into dinner, with a kebab on the way home if it was almost time for breakfast. They had always said business was hard, money made itself, but people were the thing that made it scarce.
A brow could never look more furrowed than Mick’s during the call for last drinks; reeling equations of a mind unable to turn off, cycle round and round towards question of who hasn’t finished their shout. Tom, Jane, Martin, me, he would appear to remember, homing in on their mental abacus of accrued statistics that was more laboriously composed than Wagner’s ring cycle.
If Tom owed Martin from last week and Jane was still a shout down, Mick’s second shout of the night was a Fortuna non gratis and meant the bowl of wedges the Jane bought were nullified.
Whatever fiscal gymnastics that were to go on within Mick’s frazzled brain they were not the problem for Cardy, people were beginning to shuffle in from the afternoon sun and air took on a note of frivolity. It was Saturday, people were happy.
Far-from-sight-Ron had wandered in and placed a bus pass upon the counter. Blind in every way but a legal sense, Ron had once brought an injured possum that they thought had been a dog into the front bar and allowed it to take nest somewhere within the bistro. Late at night Cardy would sometimes hear its corpulent little feet patter over the tiles of the kitchen in hunt for any half-eaten schnitzels that may be left unattended. Whatever the possum’s long-term plans were for its cholesterol, Cardy knew that it was happy, so they were happy to let it roam.
Ron was a caster of invisible strings; he would tie a tiny knot around a place and remember exactly how to find it again. Time and time again Cardy had watched Ron walk to the bar and then find his table again, feeling each step, carefully moving, and being guided by their string, not once appearing to be lost.
Ron had a laugh of blood and bone, a pure lung full of thunder that would let people in the beer garden know that a joke had just been told.
They all laughed in those quiet afternoons where even the dust was gold and the bar had become its own world. The minutes would all become memories and no sling could harm what was a moment of serenity.
It was still a long way to Monday, but for now, that was fine.
J.McCray
2021
Sunday Short Stories 