From
a yellow cab slowly
By
Michael Feehan
Thursday 30 March 2006
(a short semi-fictional story based on recent events)
It's my brother's buck's night and I don't want to be here. My sister's husband is carrying another tray containing several pots of beer, and by my skewed reckoning I make that the tenth round! I am not in a good way. I'm slurring my speech and I feel quite unsteady on my feet. Big red beery faces loom in close, my personal space radar was shut down hours ago. I'm trying to figure out how I got here. Was it Chris my youngest brother, who drove me here? Oh yeah, it must have been, and err, isn't he married already? Of course, so it's got to be him then. If it had been his buck's night he would never have driven. Let me just check.
My brother is laughing his head off at some curly-headed buffoon with
a lit cigarette up each nostril. Each time Mr Party Trick sucks them through
his nose, the embers glow furiously, which then causes him to blow out
a huge funnel of blue smoke making every body around him either laugh,
cough or both.
"Chris, how did we get here tonight?" My brother turned to me
bleary-eyed and shouted, "Don't you remember? I drove you here with
Anthony and Charlie, jeez you must be pissed!" Yes, I was pissed
but so was he, and there was no way he was driving anyone or anything
tonight. I look over at my other brother Tony; he's the one getting married
on Saturday - at six foot four he has quite a presence and a personality
to match. He is holding fort, keeping several of his mates enthralled
with some of the filthiest jokes I have ever heard in my life.
I make hand and mouth signals to let him know I am leaving. Over the room
he yells, "Hold on, I'll see you out!" As we both struggle to
the front exit, I glance around at the mostly male clientele of loud-mouthed
advertising execs, all seem to be wearing shirts of similar colour and
label: pink and Polo.
______________________________________________
Outside a warm breeze is blowing. A yellow taxi cab waits with a maroon-turbaned
Sikh at the wheel and I say farewell to Tony. I climb into the cab with
difficulty as the driver looks on nervously and asks, "Where to mate?".
"New Street, Brighton" I reply, slurring the word Brighton so
it sounds more like "Braaaghton" I cant believe how high his
head dress is - nearly touching the roof of the cab. I look back at my
brother on the footpath as we drive away, watching as he stumbles back
inside the hotel and I think, my God he will be married in a couple of
days.
I lay back into a reclined position and gaze dazed out of the passenger
window. We cross over the Yarra River then cut up Grange Road, Toorak.
The Sikh and I float into a deep valley of enveloping darkness under a
canopy of trees. When we reach the top of the hill on the other side,
the cab is brought to a halt by a traffic light opposite Edward Beal's
Hair Salon. I'm focusing on the red glow of the traffic signal and it
seems to be taking over the whole of my peripheral vision. Then quite
suddenly, I start doing backward somersaults in my head and just when
I feel myself lapsing into unconsciousness, I snap to as the cab lurches
forward and turn's right into Toorak Road.
It's brighter as we pass by the Trak complex and I notice a couple of
disheveled but glitzy looking women in their early forties staggering
to their car, swigging wine coolers. Swinging left now, down Williams
Road, I see many graceful older-style apartments from earlier eras, and
notice the amber glow behind the closed drapes and Venetian blinds. We
accelerate past the Bush Inn, just making the green traffic lights and
already we are approaching the high brick wall of Windsor Cemetery. Mary
Mother of God is in all her ghostly white, weathered masonry and pleading
to me with outstretched arms. "Why, Michael, why?" Reflected
in the side mirror I still see her leaning over the top of the cemetery
wall screaming at me.
Continuing past boxy brick veneer flats near Carlisle Street, I spy through
a window a solitary figure sitting in a straight-backed chair watching
TV, above him a circular fluorescent light flickers which strobes a portrait
of a blue-faced Tahitian woman hanging on the wall.
Yeshiva College's high metal barred fence keeps them in and the terrorists
out. At the same time I notice a block of renovated apartments where I
previously lived in the early eighties. Back then they were quite awful
and decrepit, not the spare and clean pastel blue they are today. Over
the railway bridge, Ripponlea Mansion is shrouded in dark.
We are slowing down for the wait to cross the Nepean Highway. There is
a constant stream of late Friday night traffic heading back to the south
eastern suburbs. A prestige car yard displays the latest model Audi automobiles.They
look like futuristic commuter pods made for a 1920's German utopia.
The taxi cab with its sober driver and inebriated passenger cross the
highway and turn right into New Street. We lean left into a sharp bend
and go over the Elwood Canal. It's very dark down this part of New Street,
even though in the faintest of light I can make out the silhouette of
the massive Moreton Bay Figs.
A sign that I'm home once again.
Reading/Read : Yellow Dog; Martin Amis / Transformations Mary Shelley.
Watching: Smallville, The Blitz; London's Firestorm, Gardening Australia, She's Gone, Little Britain, Four Corners, Compass, 6 foot under, House.
DVD: Alien vs Predator, I love Huckabees, The Hound of the Baskervilles.
Cinema: Munich, Capote.
CD: Matthias Passion; J.S.Bach, Debut; Bjork, Chillout Sessions 7; Ministry of sound.